The Team House - Is America's Influence Eroding? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

We break down Russia’s use of gig-economy recruits and online networks for espionage and violence, the growing damage to U.S. bases across the Middle East, and what Iran may be gaining strategically from the conflict. We also discuss the Houthis’ leverage over another maritime choke point, the messy legacy of U.S. proxy warfare in Syria, and how Saudi, Emirati, Omani, and other regional actors are hedging as American influence erodes.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseJack'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/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-Operations00:00 – Start01:05 – Russia’s New Gig-Economy Espionage Model02:36 – Foreign Governments Hiring Proxies for Assassinations03:18 – Russian Online Networks & Recruitment for Violence05:00 – The KGB’s History of Using Terrorist Proxies06:11 – Is Russia Directing Online Chaos?07:24 – Chinese Influence, Ghost Guns & Suspicious Networks in the U.S.09:20 – Accelerationism & Using Chaos as a Weapon10:14 – Recruiting Vulnerable People Online11:20 – How Intelligence Services Slowly Escalate Recruits12:27 – Iran Recruiting Israelis Through Fake Relationships14:03 – The Damage to U.S. Bases Across the Middle East15:06 – Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain Is Effectively Abandoned15:59 – Losing America’s Foothold Inside the Strait of Hormuz16:41 – Did the Pentagon Expect Its Gulf Bases to Get Hit?18:34 – Why Deterrence Against Iran Failed19:32 – Has Iran Strategically Defeated the U.S.?20:50 – What Would It Actually Take to Defeat Iran?21:21 – Iran’s Likely Endgame in the Strait of Hormuz23:19 – Gulf States Are Beginning to Hedge Away From Washington24:47 – Houthis Threaten a Second Maritime Choke Point25:39 – Why the U.S. Is Now Talking Directly to the Houthis27:23 – Houthis Say Saudi Shipping Is the Target27:58 – The Mecca Agreement Is Already Being Tested28:56 – Who Actually Struck Mecca?30:08 – Saudi Arabia’s Secret Counter-Iran Programs31:26 – The Gig Economy of Proxy Warfare32:35 – Timber Sycamore & the Chaos of the Syrian War34:45 – The Myth of the “Moderate Rebels”36:30 – When the U.S. Bought Syrian Rebels Xboxes37:05 – Trying to Get U.S. TOW Missiles Back From Warlords37:43 – Did the TOW Missile Program Actually Work?39:21 – Assad’s Intelligence Services & Fear as a Weapon40:52 – Why the Houthis Aren’t Simply Iranian Proxies42:11 – Who Was Operating the Captured Saudi Equipment?43:32 – Saudi vs. Emirati Proxy Forces in Yemen43:59 – Oman’s Role in the Yemen & Hormuz Crisis45:50 – JSOC Operations in Eastern Yemen46:32 – The Failed U.S. Strike in Yemen During the Soleimani Operation47:24 – Could Yemen’s Rival Factions Be Turned Against Each Other?47:30 – UAE Mercenaries & Covert Operations in Yemen48:14 – The UAE’s Huge Paydays for Former U.S. Intelligence Personnel48:45 – Foreign Officers Running Emirati Elite Units49:00 – Training the UAE Presidential Guard50:36 – Closing Thoughts51:02 – American Insurgent & Final Plug51:29 – EndBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

What's up everybody? We're back. Eyes on Geopolitics, midweek episode. I'm here with Jack and John. Jack Murphy, of course, Jonathan Hackett. A lot happening as usual. What do you guys want to hit on first? You want to hit on the Russians being indicted? Kind of in abstentia, because none of them are in the United States. So I told you guys this on our group chat that I was a little, I don't know, it sounds a little sketch to me. Obviously, it's fucking crazy and the Russians are dirty bastards. But, you know, that these guys are basically. not in the states. And this comes out of nowhere, based. I don't know if they're trying to change, change the subject on something, change the story on something, but they've indicted five Russians and a kid from Brooklyn. Two Russians,

two Cubans and one Venezuelan. Okay, so it's a mixed bag. Are any of them here? I don't believe so. Yeah. One of them's a fucking salsa dancer instructor. That's why I've always told my, I used to tell my ex-girlfriend about worrying about the salsa dancer

instructors, not because they were Russian like saboteurs, but because she was having an affair with him. But anyway. This is really interesting, I think, and we talked about this. We had actually some academics on the show when we spoke to Rory Cormick and Magda Long. And she was saying, like, one of the big changes in espionage in this century is that it's happening on the gig economy. And I first ran into this in investigating Havana syndrome and the harassment that Havana victims had state

side after they came back. And victims, these guys, former CIA, former State Department people, they're being followed around and photographed by people. And, you know, because some of these people have, you know, counter surveillance training and so on, they picked up on it pretty, I mean, it wasn't even being hidden, really, is harassing surveillance. And some of the people were found to have connections to Venezuela, connections to Cuba. but a lot of times they were also using like Bangladeshi Doordash guy, you know, who has, he's unwitting in a sense, you know, he just knows he's being paid $100 to go and take some pictures and that, okay, cool.

So it's sort of this relatively new phenomenon, but you're also seeing it, like I've heard reporting about, you know, allegedly people who are conducting acts of sabotage and Russia being recruited on telegram channels. So it's kind of going both ways. And I think that's a very interesting dynamic and something that's maybe very difficult to defend against. Yeah, actually, the Masa Amini, the outspoken Iranian woman living in New York City was they tried to kill her with. Yeah. Or Masia Alina Jed, I'm sorry. They tried to kill her with Chechens multiple times. And of course, the plan was to move her to Cuba on a speed.

boat. So there is the Cuban connection there as well, just like this story, which is kind of interesting because, you know, you can hire these people, like you said. And also Hells Angels was involved in a similar attempt where they were actually illegal immigrants from Canada coming over here. Hells Angels guys who one of them overstayed his visa and the other two illegally entered the country to go do an assassination just like this. And here's something else I'd like to draw people's attention to. Okay. United by Chaos examining the Russian nexus to online networks of nihilistic violence. Now, this is talking about a number of different groups,

764 and others, you know, predominantly Russian-speaking groups. And, you know, they make the point here, it cautions, their report, cautions against portraying the calm, this sort of conglomerate organization, as a Kremlin directed project, suggesting instead that potentially state-linked actors

are attempting to hijack an otherwise organic youth-driven network as a recruitment pool for violence. So these are the guys that you've probably heard some pretty disturbing reports over the last couple of years about these networks and how they essentially groom children online and get them to commit acts of self-harm and other terrible stuff. And blackmail them, you know, have them produce, you know, compromising videos of themselves. These are young people, you know, they don't know how to respond or react, you know, they're vulnerable people. And so I bring people's attention to this article and this dynamic because some of these groups are coming out

of Russia and some of the main players are in Russia and they're targeting people in America and inspiring them to commit acts of violence. And yeah, it's notes that they may not be Kremlin directed, maybe not, but here's the next thing I would point towards. So here we have Wali Haddad. He was a terrorist back in the 1970s, worked with the Palestinian Liberation Front, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB files were opened, we had access to them, and this guy was a directed KGB asset. He was working as a proxy to commit acts of terrorism against the West and to drag the West down strategically to occupy our resources, run around fighting Palestinian aircraft hijack, things. So this one was directed, but the other more famous terrorist, if you will, that people know about is

Abu Nadal. And Abu Nadal was probably, I would say definitely not KGB directed, but he was influenced. It was the kind of guy that the KGB would meet with in East Germany and they would give him information and just let him do what he's going to do. Right. So it's influence as well as direction, depending on how they handle that person. And so I just bring this stuff up to, you know, maybe make people a little bit more aware of what's going on in the background of the headlines. Now, Jack, do you think this is like a directed chaos agent thing from the Russian government or is it more organic people in Russia who are disaffected and angry at the world and just trying to make other people do harm? I think that it has some government direction behind it. I mean, it probably does, and that report is probably correct that it's largely organic, so to speak, that. It's, you know, just nihilistic assholes that want to spread the hate, but that at some point it becomes hijacked and used by the Russian government as well.

And I mean, this is a little bit more controversial, actually, but I believe the Chinese have agents of chaos here in the United States as well. And there's a few things that I, conversations I've had with law enforcement folks where they pick up somebody. So like one instance was a guy who was ethnically Chinese, but he worked here in the United States. He had advanced degrees. But this guy was living out of his minivan, and he was selling ghost guns in New York City. Wasn't he a doctor? Yeah. He worked for a governmental agency, had the ID card and everything.

Living out of your van. That's unbelievable. And selling ghost. The way the ghost gun thing works is you go into Pennsylvania, you buy a kit. It's like an AR-15 kit. It's like the pieces of the rifle. And then you transport it, sell it in New York. person constructs the rifle and now you have a rifle without a serial number on it and which

and by the way this is completely illegal to do and so the police will follow these smugglers from pencil all the way from pennsylvania into new york city and once they come within city lines arrest them so i had a friend directly who was arrested and went to prison for a couple years for doing this not because he was selling him but because he uh he just loved guns and stuff he's an idiot new york city has like a whole task force like i think it's a the Queens District Attorney's Office actually ran that task force. So it's one of these things that I couldn't prove to you that this guy was a Chinese agent, but he may be more along the lines of like these young kids you hear about, young Chinese kids that try to jump the fence onto a military base

in the United States and take pictures, but they're not necessarily like directed assets of the Chinese MSS or something like that. It's more like they want to do something to impresses. you know, the government when they, you know, like, look what I did, you know, look, look, you know, how prominent I am. I did a good thing. Or they maybe even be pressured in some cases where they get a phone call from someone from like, you know, their aunt who's like, yeah, yeah, I got a visit from, you know, party representative in our town. And he was asking, you know, what our son studying in America has done to support the party lately. And they get the message when they hear that. So I think this is something that suffice to say is warrants further.

investigation. You know what it kind of like a little bit reminds you ever has some like kind of threads that like it parallels between is a accelerationist. Yes, it's closely related. Yeah. Yeah, because once you start like just doing it just to fucking cause chaos, it's like really does like it's the light bulb went on my head in terms of like accelerationsists. The thing with the guy living in the van though, that that rings some bells for me because I've heard stories about Chinese spies that have been captured by the, arrested by the FBI. One case, it was a husband and wife couple. And they both had like good paying government jobs, but they lived like poor people.

Like they ate off of newspapers. They didn't even have plates. And that was because they were hardcore malists. There are hardcore committed ideologues who, you know, all the money went back to the party. Wow. Well, even with these youths, you know, like you find some. male 15-year-old kid who's been, you know, online a lot and already has tendencies that once identified could be easily manipulated to achieve some kind of outcome across the internet in

the United States. Exactly. You know, yeah, you find somebody who's like a borderline school shooter and then just push them over the edge. And that's, we've seen that with like, you know, back in the day, it was like 4chan, you know, where they encourage people to go and do that. And it continues like on dark web and discord forums and things like that. Can't this kid just like

beat off like I did when I was 15? You know what I mean? Like, sorry, bad joke. But the interesting thing, like you were talking about it, how like they start off slow where they're like, yeah, just take some pictures. And then they're like, you know, make a grand,

1,500 bucks. And then it's like, would you mind, you mind killing this guy for like 40 grand? Is that in, like, is that in your wheelhouse? Like, because like the story that just came out, the, about the charges, that's literally what happened. Then the Venezuelan kid from Brooklyn was like, I don't really want to do it, but I could probably find somebody that can do it.

But that's the whole thing with recruiting assets in the intelligence community. We don't give them a task right away that's going to be the task that we recruited them for in the first place. We give them small little things that slowly create a dependency that they have on us. And they also prove to us that they're willing to do things under certain time pressures within certain requirements. We also correct their behaviors. You know, we create this whole structures so that when they do get to that moment, when you ask them to do that thing, that's a little bit more than they should be doing. They almost feel so committed to you that they have this problem in their brain.

They're like, well, I have to do it because that's my friend or that's my whatever, however, they rationalize it. And they'll do it for that reason, even though reason is in their brain saying, don't do that. See, I mean, there's example after example like this of people being recruited over the internet and, you know, directed to go and do things. Is this the UK? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We saw the same thing in Israel, actually. There was a older Jewish man who was recruited online by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence or Vaja, who basically created a romantic relationship that was fake and convinced the guy to go take pictures of military installations and other sensitive things and so on. And then they gave him other tasks as well, but the Israeli intelligence services thwarted it and then publicized it. It's kind of an interesting operation as well. weren't they like escalating him up to conducting violent attacks? And that's when the authorities moved in. Yep. They were doing exactly what we just described. They gave him small little things at first, slowly building him up. And of course, you know, sitting there in your chair, you're like, I shouldn't do that. That's wrong.

Like I shouldn't be going on to a base I'm not allowed on. But I like talking to this person. I want to please them, you know. Yeah. And it's a, again, somewhat vulnerable person. They're lonely. Wasn't Iranians also? Weren't they getting an Israeli like teenage?

to go do BDA? Yes, they were. And these weren't like Palestinians. These were Jewish-Israeli kids. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting.

Be careful, kids, if you're online, you know what I mean? If some weird guy or your fake girlfriend is asking you to go and step on a military installation and take pictures. Or some elf and world of warcraft dressed scantily asked you to go, observe a military installation and give you gold in exchange. Be careful. Yeah. Yeah, you got to have that conversation with like your seven-year-old. Like, yeah, don't talk to neo-Nazis on Roblox, okay? You guys, let's talk about what's going on.

Like, we really haven't touched on it. Obviously, like, we've talked about it, like, slightly, but, like, what's happened to, like, our bases in and around the Middle East? Oh, yeah, I got one for that, too, did? Yeah, so CBS reported something. And I think also, didn't the Inspector General come out with something, too, in terms of like, well, how much and what the damage was. Like, they really didn't get super specific, but that was only up until June.

It took me like another three months. The Office of the Inspector General, which was on the DoD side, and the Congressional Research Service, which is on the legislative side. So two different branches of government just put out two reports, which you have to take with a grain of salt, but also appreciate that they at least put the reports out. So we at least have some data to work with. But the OIG one, I would definitely scrutinize that one quite a bit because they fired all the inspectors general last year.

And so the ones who remain are the ones that were considered worth keeping. Right. So definitely put some question marks when you see the conclusions they reached in that report. Yeah. And we really don't talk about it. Like our barraint, like the Fifth Fleet HQ is essentially abandoned and probably destroyed. And all the other, you know, Prince Sultan Air Force Base.

Like you see that, that. Yeah. Is that an E3? Yeah. It's a Boeing E3 century four-engine aircraft torched. Yeah. And that's an extremely expensive. and rare aircraft, right? That's the one with the big dome on top of it. That's like early warning

radar. Yeah, and actually the Vice Admiral that was the Fifth Fleet commander was asked to this week, you know, our sailor is able to go back to Bahrain and pick up their personal items because they're staying at different bases. They're not in Bahrain. The Fifth Fleet is like evacuated from Bahrain, which is crazy. And the Admiral said no. And for the foreseeable future, they won't be going back. Yeah. So forget your, your belongings. Like forget, you know, buy another vibrator. Yeah, but that means we just lost our toehold inside the Straits of Hormuz.

Like, that means we have to go operate out of Diego Garcia or Jordan. As we can see, Jordan is not safe from the way it was before the war. And Diego Garcia is thousands of kilometers away. And Iran did fire a missile there at the beginning of the war. If people remember this, the very beginning of the war, Iran fired two hypersont, or two very fast missiles, essentially, would say. One of them almost struck. Correct.

Yeah. One of my friends was there when it happened. We're like, you know, like the war planners and stuff like that, were they, did they think that like, oh, the Fifth Lee H.Q and Bahrain will be have a massive target on its back, essentially. You know, these bases were going to get schwacked if we want to. Yeah, I'm assuming, right? Because, like, Bahrain is pretty, it's pretty close. It's not that far from Iranian. Well, one of the things I used to do for, like, preparation of the environment is set up these things called continuity of operation sites, coop sites.

which are basically either fallback positions or alternative positions in exactly these scenarios. So like all these bases have coup sites that have been set up somewhere else so that they can move troops out of there and put them somewhere else. And it's exactly what you said, Jack, like we have to make the military assumption that these will be attacked. You just cannot plan without that assumption in there. It has to be part of the assumption. The problem is like how far away can you get?

Because this was a big problem with like China deterrence, like the weapons engagement zone concept where like there's these the rings of weapons engagement where you look at, Okay, how far can whatever weapon reach? But now with ICBMs and even the Houthi is having ICBMs, like there is nowhere outside the weapons engagement zone. The whole world is inside the weapons engagement zone, especially if we're talking about space-based weapons, which the U.S. just admitted we have weapons in space, which is a violation of a treaty. And those weapons are up there publicly now. Russia has had them for a while. China has had them since the early 2000s.

That's why we have about 90% of the debris in space is because of a single Chinese weapons test in space. that blew up a satellite and spread millions of pieces of debris around. So the problem now is like how far away can you get to still be safe from the adversary that you're fighting? Well, fifth fleet was right on the cusp of the territory of the adversary, you know? So it's kind of crazy. You'd put that same thing with Qatar. That's where Air Force's Central Command is at.

So it's like the equivalent of the Navy for Central Command. Both of those are now like inoperable, essentially. Like the Qatar one too, I mean, I guess that at the time when we were really, really using these bases, Iran wasn't the primary, you know, threat, you know, but at the same time, the thing is we always thought that deterrence would be enough. So like the bases themselves were part of our deterrence of Iran. And in the last six months, we've seen that that was a facade and that we were not actually capable of fighting an offensive war for a sustained period of time sufficient to actually defeat them. So we started it that way. You know, we ramped up, but then

we dropped off. And then every time we restarted, it was below the amount of intensity we had at the opening of the conflict. And those bases are not designed to sustain inside of such a low intensity exchange with an adversary who actually has medium range ballistic missiles and other asymmetric capabilities like we see with the Houthis modifying anti-chip weapons to launch them at Saudi Arabia and things like that. I mean, what do you, Jack, what do you make of this? Like, obviously, this isn't really talked about a lot, like, in American Western kind of news until, like, recently. You know, we kind of mentioned it, but, like, not really gotten into it. Well, I mean, I would skip straight to the end game here.

We're talking about the tit for tat, the back and forth, obviously, is important. But the end game, I think, is that Iran has soundly defeated us at a strategic level. And that's the conversation that people don't want to have. Yeah, because it goes to admitting defeat, which Americans don't want to do. I mean, nobody, no, no person wants to admit defeat, you know. But it's like when Rome was conquered by the Gauls and the Gauls roll into Rome and the Romans are complaining because they ask for some gold. And then the conqueror, I think it was Brennis comes in there and he's like, now give me a thousand pounds of gold, a thousand pounds of cinnamon and a thousand pounds of silver. And the Romans are like, no, no, it's too much. And he's like, well, woe to the vanquished. And he throws his sword on the scale too and makes it even heavier. It's like, what are we doing? Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early, and you can ask us questions.

Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to Patreon. dot com slash the team house that link is in the description uh we appreciate the supporters and we hope you would consider being one so it's patreon dot com slash the team house thanks guys yeah i think well i mean there's there's a there's a cognitive dissidence is real but i mean i think most people at this point have to admit that this war is not going well it's not going as the administration

planned. And I mean, I don't know, John, I mean, I've opined on it. But I mean, how do you see this like playing out over the next like six and 12 months? Well, the only way it could actually succeed is if we had ground troops at this point. And we restarted the air campaign. I mean, like, I hate to say that and I don't support that. But like if you're asking like what's the way to win, that's it. So that that means because we're not going to do that, that means we're going to be in a war of attrition. And part of the war of attrition from the Iranian and viewpoint, like from the regime's viewpoint, like from the regime's viewpoint. is political attrition. It's not just a military activity, whereas we like to look at things as this foreign military operation. And they're looking at, someone would even call it a special military operation, looking at it as like this political, military economic war against a huge enemy that's existential to their existence, which is a very different way than how we're looking at it. And so what's probably going to happen is there will be a lot of fait accompli that will be set up. For example, Iran will gain control over at least half the straits. They're going to set up

a treaty with Oman. I almost guarantee that the GCC states will agree to that treaty and start paying taxes or some kind of toll to Iran to pass through safely. And there will be a lot of these things that people have been saying like, well, they might do this, they might do that. Iran's going to do that because it's in their interest to do it. And it's in the interest the GCC states to accept it. Because right now oil exports are so low, it just cannot sustain for their economies. I mean, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have been trying for a very long time to set up alternatives to a single commodity economy, the Emirates in particular, especially with tourism and other things. But with the way that sanctions are working on, let's say Dubai, for example, that's not really tenable right now unless the

conflict ends. So they need this conflict to end ASAP. And the way to do that is to make agreements with Iran. And it's not like this is an alien concept. Saudi Arabia already had agreements with Iran in the past. Turkey already had agreements. And I could list off many of the other countries in the region have had their own unilateral and bilateral agreements and multilateral agreements with Iran on security cooperation, on mutual defense, on economic policy. So this is not like an alien concept for them, although it is to us in the West. How could you, how dare you go meet in Salala, which is what they're doing this week to go meet with the foreign minister of Iran? Well, I mean, it's their waterway and their economy is right there. Like, you've got to understand this. So that's the most likely

outcome is that we will basically lose control of the maritime waterway there, that we, for the last 50 years have controlled in one way or the other, which is a huge sacrifice to think about because a lot of the conflict that we've, we've justified the conflicts in the Middle East in many ways as, you know, freedom of navigation, freedom for governments, like freedom,

freedom, freedom, and we just lost it. By choice. We gave it up, yeah. We gave it up. Yeah,

it wasn't like a stronger power came in and took care of it. Like, it's, there's an interesting, like, parallel, I'm going to say again with, like,

what's going on with like the GCC country. in the Gulf countries and a little bit, you see it happening with like South Korea and China, right? Like they're kind of seeing that America is like, they're not going to be here for us. We don't think. And we got to make, at least we need to make sure, like, have an insurance policy, like, where we make nice with the powers in the region and kind of like manifest our own destiny rather than like have the U.S. kind of dictate us what goes where and how things work really,

right? You see it decoupling. And we're not doing a great job. either with like Europe to and our NATO partners, right? Like, well, even more regionally with South Korea, for example, I mean, they're looking over their northern border at North Korea and they're like, well, who has the ability to tell North Korea not to attack us? China.

So it's in, it's in South Korea's interest to at least develop some more deeper ties with China, even if that's the only reason why. But the economic reason is also very important, especially when we're looking at microchips, AI development, the actual like physical infrastructure for AI that South Korea is a part of that supply chain. and China is a consumer of that supply chain. So there are people in South Korea that stand. Here's another one that is worth at least mentioning, John.

The Houthis have been on the move. And potentially it looks like closing off another maritime choke point on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula at the Red Sea. And they, you know, are, I don't know if you want to use the term Iranian proxies, but, you know, they're working with each other. And that would give Iran control, of both of these choke points. Yeah.

And the thing with the Houthis is like, as we've talked about in the show before, like, they're not under direct control of Iran in the way that Hesbollah was. Yeah, yeah. They have a lot of their own unique things. And their interests really align right now with Iran's interests. But as we've seen, the Houthis are not always responsive. Sometimes they do the opposite of what the regime wants. Sometimes like, for example, today, the Houthis had a direct discussion with the United States.

I don't know if people saw that in the news. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy because MBS called Trump twice and Trump would not help. the Saudis defend themselves against the Houthis, but then we took a phone call from the Houthis. So that's kind of an interesting thing, probably because the U.S. is concerned that the West is about to lose control over another straight. So they're probably trying to do some negotiations with the Houthis to get around that, but it may be too late because just like happened in Iran, the Iranians didn't understand exactly how valuable the Straits of Hormuz were, but they knew they were worth something.

Now they know they're this like critical peace, just like a nuclear weapon. The Houthis now are like, hey, look, the U.S., the biggest superpower on the planet just called us to talk to us about something. They want to negotiate. The Houthis haven't really fired many shots yet, especially relative to what it took from the Iran war for the U.S. to start talking to Iran to negotiate. So the Houthis are probably feeling pretty strong right now. And they, I mean, they have every right to be, look, the U.S. just called them on the phone to negotiate. Yeah. A tribal group that's got like very small arsenal of weapons relative to the other powers that the U.S. is designed to fight against.

at the negotiating table as if they were equals. Not bad for a militia full of guys chewing cot. Exactly. Yeah, living up in the mountains. I mean, and they don't even live down in the area that they're about to control. Like the Tahama plain area and the little islands that they've just occupied are like not part of the Houthi traditional homeland. So like they're they're basically expanding the territory beyond what even the Yemeni government controlled before.

Right. So it's kind of amazing. And they haven't really fought that much of the United States. They've done some, you know, small things here and there. But they haven't really sacrificed too much against the U.S. And they're about to probably get something pretty big. I would not be surprised if there was some big U.S. announcement about what the Houthis are about to get in exchange for whatever they asked for. So I saw, I read today that that conversation with the Houthis, the Houthis basically said, like, we're not going to attack American shipping or even Israeli shipping.

We're not specifically targets Saudi. Yeah. And couple that with the Iraqi militias, smote, hitting the pups. pipeline, which put that out of commission. And there was some, I saw a couple, like, a couple tweets about, like, showing that Saudi Arabia is, like, sending a ton of, like, oil to the east. I'm assuming go through the straight of Hormuz, hopefully, like, fingers crossed, maybe. Well, this exactly illustrates, like, the weakness of that tripartite agreement, the mecca agreement that Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia recently signed, where it's supposed to be, like,

an Article 5 like mutual defense treaty. And, like, it just got invoked. And, like, it just got invoked. he's helping you know I mean it just kind of shows like who was the junior partner in this agreement and of course Saudi Arabia being weakened is positive for Turkey this is like a great opportunity for Turkey to expand because we've talked about this before like Turkey sees Saudi Arabia as like they're not necessarily an adversary but a competitor in exactly the area that we're talking about Western Iraq like Anbar area Syria the desert the Badiah Desert and then all the way down to those pipelines that in Erdogan's mind Saudi Arabia used to be part of the And Erdogan is the Ottoman emperor, right?

Like in his mind. And he's like, well, I'll just let them get attacked because the weaker they are, the better it is for Turkey. And John, you had mentioned earlier that, that Mecca had been hit recently. Yeah, it was the first time in 10 years, actually, that Mecca was hit in any significant way. And it was the Houthis. So it's interesting because the Saudi government said the Houthis did it. And the Houthis said that they would never hit Mecca or touch the holy sites.

So there's something, of course, going on here. I'm not sure. So I wonder if perhaps it was Khatib has been. or another group, maybe, or a group of Yemenis that inside of Ansarola, which is the Houthis car bombing or something? It's unclear. So that's why I've got some question marks about what's going on here. It could be a way to, some would say maybe a false flag, perhaps, to have Saudi assistance

more readily available from other Muslim countries who would see this as a director front to the Muslim world. It could also very much be the Houthis launching something and the Saudis exploiting that. I think we definitely need to see some more. Because if you remember a few years ago, I think it was seven years ago, six years ago, the Saudi intelligence headquarters was hit by a drone. Do you remember this? Which was like a really big deal because how did the Saudi headquarters intelligence head? Like their CIA got hit by a drone, right?

So like it's these kind of actions that there's a lot going on behind it that the public is not seeing that is certainly very substantive. And without that we can't really analyze it too thoroughly. Yeah. I mean, it's also, you know, worth pointing out maybe that like the Saudis are, you know, neat. deep in all sort of like counter-or-ran programs with us. And, you know, if you, you know, folks out there remember that movie Charlie Wilson's War where, like, you know, we would donate X amount of arms or X amount of money into a program and the Arabs would meet it. They would meet whatever it was that we were putting into it. Well, that kind of relationship continues with Saudi Arabia to this day

where I actually know somebody who was in the room where the CIA was putting like, I think it was like $300 million into a counter-or-or-A-ramping. program and the Saudi, you know, Amir or whoever was sitting in the room was like six. And they were all like six what? What are you talking about? It's like six million, six hundred million dollars into the program. I mean, there's, yeah, definitely stuff going on behind the scenes, as John says.

Same thing happened in Syria during timber sycamore when we were, you know, trying to overthrow the Assad government and then ISIS came up. And there was a lot of Gulf participation in that, which ended up actually being a bit of a mistake in how it was organized or disorganized. And the Saudis, the Emirates and the Qataris were all playing separately in that game. That kind of like in a strange way dovetails with what we were talking about earlier about, you know, how the gig economy interfaces with espionage. During the Syrian war, you saw these militias and these terror groups even form up like, you know, one person described it as being like dot com LLCs, that they'd come together mission to mission, then kind of like

dissolve and then reform and reconfigure in different ways for the next battle. I mean, it's fascinating to see how that works. And one part of me thinks, you know, maybe this is like how it was in medieval Italy when there were just mercenary bands roaming around the countryside. But at least in our lifetimes, it seems like, you know, sort of a new phenomena. Yeah, it actually reminds me at the Hessians coming from Hess and Germany to the America to fight in the Revolutionary War. Yeah.

And they were like pretty vicious. Yeah. And we were Francis. proxy force. That's right. We won. So you think like that stuff that was going on in Syria, was it like just money talks and like a lot of it. I mean, it was just mayhem. It was a poorly planned covert action. Like the political outcome was not well defined for how it should be structured. Like once we reached certain benchmarks and within the first year, we'd already spent a billion dollars and we didn't know where many of the

weapons ended up. And actually for years after that, we were still trying to track down some of the weapons like the tow missiles. I was part of that track down operation. It was really interesting to try to get the weapons back from these warlords who were like, I'm not giving you my toe missiles back. And we'd say like, okay, well, can you just verify that you have them, please, just show them to me. So I know that they're here and not in this other guy's camp over there that we don't like. And that kept going on. And actually the very last remnant of that just ended this year when Autanaf Garrison, ATG, was closed. That was like for a long time, like the last vestige of this program. And what happened was we got involved in the conflict too late.

And the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, the so-called moderate rebels had lost so much power that they were subserving it to the Islamist groups, Al Nusra, and others. And so when we gave them those tow missiles, we were giving tow missiles to the FSA. But they were influenced. I mean, they couldn't really do anything that Nusra didn't want them to do. So, yeah, the guy that fires the tow missile is in the FSA, but really, whose agenda is being served there. And then, yeah, so the problem that we came in kind of late in the conflict with those programs

and with the moderate rebels either being irrelevant or non-existent was we were recruiting whoever was left. And some of them were Islamists. Some of them were just losers, you know, that like the Syrian army wouldn't even want those guys. And but, you know, these guys, they, you know, are very shrewd and they figure out how to milk the United States for as much money as possible. And there's also just incoherence, I think.

I don't know what you saw, John, but I think all the way up to the National Security Council level where I knew guys that were working on programs in Turkey and Jordan also and where we were training these so-called moderate rebels. And those programs were being flipped on and off, like weekly, monthly. Like, it was really crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's tough too because like these rebels, I always just laugh whenever people say moderate rebels. Because like if you knew who these people were, you'd also laugh too. But I mean, there's one of them leading Syria right now that used to hold two severed heads in his hand in a photograph. I mean, like, these guys are, yeah, these guys are good guys. We had a $10 million a bounty on them.

Yeah. Well, that went away in a week. Remember, like, December that went away. Yeah. He's a good, he's a good man now. He's a statesman wearing a Rolex. But the problem is like, we would promise them cash or weapons. And like, the stuff would be on the way and it would be arriving and then it would be cut off.

And then they're like, well, what are we going to do with this? Or they'd be in battle. And we'd be like, well, we don't have enough ammunition to give you guys. They're like, oh, you got to wait because the ammunition is coming through this other pathway or channel because the other one's not available or something like that. So it wasn't like regular resupply. So they would feel betrayed all the time or that they can't trust us. Or Turkey is saying like Turkey wants this outcome and the U.S. is like, no, no, we want this like slightly different outcome. And then the guys in the ground are like, well, who's giving me my ammo?

Okay, I'm going to do what Turkey said because Turkey's getting me the ammo. Oh, and these weird scenarios played out where there'd be like American soldiers and Turkish soldiers in the talk. and the Americans are having to pretend like we don't know that the Turks are supporting ISIS and that Turks are having to pretend like they don't know that we're supporting the Kurds. And it's like, what the fuck is going on here? Yeah. Yeah, I remember when we were in Syria and one of the team guys was wearing his YPG little patch and it got on the news.

And it was like it was the Kurdish news, but then it immediately got up national news. And like there was a big hoo-ha about that and it's so controversial. And like we're not allowed to call them the Pekaka. We have to call them the YPG. And then we have to call them the SDF only and we cannot refer. refer to the subgroups because if we name the subgroups, that's a problem. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, it was totally out of control.

There was one story I heard. One of the camps where we had these rebels, we were supposed to be training in Turkey. And because of training kept getting turned on and off, the supplies, as you mentioned, John kept getting turned on and off. And our rebels started getting antsy in their pansy out there in the camps. So the U.S. military came in and we bought them all Xboxes and flat screens. TVs so that they could get their, you know, rocks off playing call of duty all day. John, let me ask you, when you were trying to get those tow missiles back from like whatever

warlord, you guys were offering the money and they still said no? In some cases, yeah. Because the problem is, so first the question was, do you have the tow missiles? And of course they would say, oh, yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Well, we're like, okay, show us. They're like, oh, well, they're like in this other area, like, you know, whatever.

But the truth is they had sold them on the black market. So, like, they don't want to say that because they get in trouble. So like they're trying to like talk around it and like we need to verify the serial numbers of these things to make sure like they where are they? But you know like you can keep them but like you can't use them or you can't sell them and even you can use them just don't sell them. Right. But like they had already sold them. Big picture, John. I mean, how would you assess the tow missile program's effectiveness? Like I know there's all these complications around it, but did it accomplish the thing we wanted it to accomplish? And what was that? I assume it was, you know, hitting the regime.

Yeah, my thought is that we were trying to replicate Operation Cyclone, which is the arming, in particular the Stinger missile component, because it was a very public thing that could be clearly communicated outside to show the world, like, these are objectives we're achieving, because it's a lot harder to do that with small unit tactics, like with automatic weapons and small engagements and things like that. So if you can blow up a tank and then videotape that, photograph that, share that, that's an information operation, win, right? I think that was the true reason for the tow missiles, because if you look at the mechanized

forces of the Syrian Arab Army, like, there is no way you were going to defeat them with a couple of tow missiles. These aren't like the hind helicopters that the Russians were flying around doing vertical envelopment in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Like, these are massive divisions, multiple divisions of highly trained, very, you know, carefully conscripted forces that are believers of what the Assad family was pushing, which is basically sovereignty of Syria, which is actually an easy idea to push when you see that there's all kinds of actors trying to come into Syria and do stuff and have been for a long time. And so I don't think the tow missiles were actually for a discrete military objective. I think it was more of an information objective. I want to say we, but between the

tow missiles and everything else going on in Syria, I mean, tons and tons of armor vehicles were destroyed. But belonging to the Syrian military, we're destroyed. But the thing is what the Syrian military would do. They have something called Air Force Intelligence, AFI, which is not actually the Air Force. It's just the name of an intelligence entity in the military, which was like highly fear. I mean, that was where the Assad family came from, like the coup that overthrew the Syrian government was from Air Force intelligence and so on. There's this huge, like, deep legacy with it. They also conducted the Hama massacre in Hama. And then in 1982, like, killed tens of thousands of Syrians at that time.

So the Air Force intelligence guys would roll around and just, like, execute people. And so you're talking about like the death squads, the Shaheed. Exactly. Yeah. So, like, they were using fear as a weapon. So it didn't really matter if they had their armored vehicles blown up. Because like, let's say you blew up an armored vehicle from the second armored division. Well, then Air Force intelligence is coming to your village and they're going to execute 100 of you and capture the rest.

So, like, you're just going to be super careful about what you strike. And you're not going to strike anything actually significant. Not only that, but each village had their own loyalties to their villages and to their provinces, especially down south, like Dara and Soweda. Like those guys, some of them are Druze, which is not part of the other religious groups around there. They're defending their own place, especially Sueda, from everybody. literally every other entity in the area is trying to attack sueda and the syrian civil war started in dera when the two kids went out there and started protesting and then people got slaughtered in the town so like darrah had its own view so like even if you arm them they're not defending future

syria they're defending their town or their city or their province primary loyalties right and that goes back to the huthies exactly because that's what the huthies are defending like just because iran is there right now saying like hey here's some weapons and money if russia came in or if the united states came in, I offered the same thing. The Houthis would accept that because they don't really care about the beliefs in Iran. I mean, they're not even 12 or Shia Islam. They're a different branch of Islam that believes in only nine imams. And like they have a whole different religious system than the Shia in Iran. So like it's not about Shia Islam as this like arc, the Shia arc of danger or whatever people describe it as for the Houthis. The Houthis care about their

mountain terrain area that they've controlled since the 10th century. This is a super important area for them. They actually have a different way of electing imams. They have these people called dais, which is like uncle in this area. That's kind of like a spiritual leader, like the Mirabatun in West Africa also has a very similar thing where they like select a spiritual leader from just a small, let's say, 500 people village. That's the guy they get their orders from. So they don't look beyond that to like some foreign country telling them like go fight Saudi Arabia or something like that. They're seeing it as like an existential defense of their soil. How do you even try and corral that?

You offer them incentives that align with your own interests and then you get the outcome that you want. And hopefully somebody doesn't outbid you. It looks like that might be happening. Yeah, yeah. Jeez, Louise. Oh, my God. Let me ask you guys, we also like the shots of like the Houthi rebels like grabbing all the armored vehicles and stuff like that. And there were memes everywhere like saying to America, this is why you don't have free health care and stuff like that because you keep losing all your military equipment.

in different countries, who's operating that military equipment that was abandoned? You're talking about in Yemen? Yeah, yeah, in Yemen, when the Houthis was like a few days back, remember, like, the videos and stuff, they're grabbing, they're jumping on these big grablies or whatever. Saudi, you know, Saudi, is it actually Saudi National Guard or is it just their proxy forces? It's a proxy force. It's not actually like Saudi armed forces. But this has been the story with the Houthis since the 2014 conflict started when, like,

the government collapsed in Sana'a. the Houthis and other groups raided all the arsenal. That's like where all their equipment came from and still is a lot of it from there. And they got like divisions worth of equipment overnight, you know, amazing amounts of ammunition and weapons and things like that. And that's kind of like as old as war is, like, you know, one side like leaves their stuff behind and you go take it. So the Saudis had proxies in Sana'a. And it had proxies all over, especially Western and Northern because that's what the Emirati split was with the Saudis. Like the Saudis, like the Southern Transition Council was the southeastern part of Yemen, which was South Yemen during the Cold War.

And that was aligned with the Emirates and still is aligned with the Emirates. Those were like Yemeni fighters working for the Emirates. And then now you've got Yemeni fighters working for the Saudis that have a different view than the Emirati guys and also oppose the Zaitis up in the mountains, which are the Houthis. If we were to, you know, the other player that we haven't really talked about, you mentioned very briefly, John, Oman is over there on the peninsula as well. How do you see them playing into this? And it's interesting because the Omanis, it's a very small population. It's a few hundred thousand people in the country of Oman. And if you look at a map of the border between Oman and Yemen, it's like a straight line.

But it's actually like a blurry line because there's no border at all. I mean, you just, if the Hodgeramount is like, that's actually where on where Alaki was from. You remember the U.S. citizen we killed without due process in 2013? He's from the Hajimout area, which is eastern Yemen, right? And that area has just been like ungoverned forever because it's a tough piece of terrain. So the Omanis are looking coastal. They're like, we want to protect Salala, Dukum, which is another port that they have as well. And they kind of want to keep that maritime route that they have on the north secure.

So their interests have to do with economics and security. That's their interest. And I mentioned interest because like if you're looking at how do you make a partner do what you want, your interests have to align. So for the Omanis right now, they're acting as kind of a mediator because they have to, because their interests are stability. So they're facilitating talks in Salala with Iran, bringing Iran in and the GCC countries in there to talk, because that's in their interest to do that.

If the U.S. was helping those things happen, they would probably come to those meetings. The Amani's would, right? And the Omanis have also a very different type of Islam than Iran does. And then the Sunnis do also. And actually, women's rights in Oman are separately governed than they are in the rest of the Muslim world. Women have, like, certain marriage rights that other Muslims don't have. So I just highlight the cultural thing because, like, if you're an Omani, you don't see people in the Emirates as similar to you. They're very different than you, you know.

So when you're sitting at a table negotiating, you're negotiating with. others, not with like a like-minded person because you don't have the same interests in mind. My God, busying, dude. Jack, let me ask you like John mentioned Eastern Yemen. That's kind of where like J-Soc got busy, right, for a while. I mean, continues to be active over there. That's where Al-Qaeda is based. There's a lot of untold stories about various ops that happened in Yemen and things that didn't quite go as planned. Yeah, and we've been there. a recent one. What was the more recent one? I was thinking about the one where the seals got ambushed and the armored vehicle, like that across the windshield. The day Kassam Soleimani was assassinated,

we also tried to kill someone in Yemen and it didn't go well. I remember that. Yeah, we missed them, right? Yep. Yeah. And that's the thing with Yemen. You know, you've got Sunnis in the east in the desert. That's why the Emirates work with them quite a bit. In the west, you've got some Shia and you also have some of these Zaitis, which is the religious system that the Houthis follow. The, It's called the nine imam type of Islam. Right. But in the east, you have al-Qaeda. So Al-Qaeda is not friends with Iran.

They're not friends with, you know, the Zayidis. Sometimes in the past, they had been lined up with what Saudis were doing. I'll just put it that way. But so you have like different groups of these guys that are bad guys that are like all living in the same area. And they don't like each other. You know, like the Zayides and Al-Qaeda do not, like they have an existential reason to kill each other. So it's like maybe that would be an opportunity for one of them to be co-opted against the other. I was just going to say that, John, I was going to say that.

Like, why not do what you need to do and have them fight each other? Remember, this is also. So they're not bombing other places. This is also where the UAE was sponsoring mercenaries, our friends Dale Comstock and Daniel Corbett were over there. Yeah, we have a couple episodes on the team house for that. You could check it out. We're like, Dale's just openly talking about it. Like, you know, I had this fucking bomb and I had to throw it in the, just absolute chaos.

The Emeraldies try to hire us out of the National Security Agency, too. they have like a special recruiting system for that to come bring you over to their SIGAN entity you remember that big scandal came out when they hired all those people yeah and they like told them oh yeah this is approved by the u.s government etc etc yeah yeah it was supposed to be here it's okay we're supposed to be yeah yeah yeah your clearance will transfer it it's easy oh my god and they were throwing around big money for like NSA guys yeah yeah so it was around 600k annual salary housing provided you get a driver um there's some other specifics that's like kind of crazy that they're giving this to like a mid-level person.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're like very much in the business of hunting for capabilities. And like they had a former CIA knock working for them. Um, they hire ex-agency people to come in and teach all kinds of trade craft that like, I'm like, how is this even legal?

Like what? Well, even the Emirati presidential guard, their most elite unit they have is led by the Australian Australian SAS two star. And like that's, that's what that bill it is. It has to be an Australian SAS two star. Interesting. It has to be like. Yeah.

And actually when I, in my previous work, we were training them a lot in the mountains in California doing their cold weather training. And it would be funny because we'd have like, it would be close enough to Las Vegas that they could go on a drive to Las Vegas at some point, right? And so they would go get hotels in Las Vegas and like refuse to train. And like this is their presidential guard, like their best, the best guys, right? And they, so like we'd eventually like convince them to go to the mountain to the base camp and be like, all right, guys.

Like that's why you're here. And it's funny because like when we. would train them as a partner force. The way the foreign military sales agreement was set up, the Emirates would actually pay our paychecks. So they would pay money to the U.S. Treasury. And from the treasury, it would go into DFAS, which is how we get paid in the military. So that any of us, like, touching that program, it wasn't the U.S. taxpayer paying our salaries,

which is crazy. And it was totally transparent to us, but this is how the case was set up. Right. So like, we'd be up on the mountain telling him, like, you guys got to get up on the mountain. And they'd be like, oh, it's too cold. It's too cold. Like, you better get up on the mountain. Like, we've got to go get one of their guys to go, like, beat them and

tell them to get out of the tent and go up the mountain. It was pretty wild because I'm like, how are you guys going to go fight war like this? Yeah, you guys are like the elite. I love these stories like, we brought over, you know, I mean, I know like an Afghan dude that did Ranger's school graduated from Sandhurst, like super squared away guy. But then you hear other stories where we've brought Afghans over here to train them

and they disappear. And then they show up like two weeks later in a strip club in Nashville. You're like, what the fuck? Yeah, he got someone, you got a stripper pregnant. He's like, I live here now. All right, John. I'll see you later. Take care.

All right. Let's wrap it up. Jack, unless you got something else you want to keep a gap in about. All right. I want everyone to do us a favor. I want you to go to our Patreon.

Patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. You get episodes of Eyes on and Teamhouse, ad free and early, and you help support the show. Of course, all the links for all the guys, the books, Jack's, the High Side. Jack's book, of course, The Most Dangerous Man, that's out.

All those links are in the description. So if you want to help support the guys, those links are in the description. There it is. Beautiful. Look at that cover. And I'm going to keep teasing. And I have a book coming out next month. October 20th, I think, is the day.

Oh, you have a date? I have a date. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, all right. I'm very excited. It's called American Insurgent.

And it's a fun novel. That'll probably upset many people, but that's okay. Such is life. Jack, I love you. Thank you. I'll see you in a little bit because we have a team house right after this at the studio. up in a couple hours very excited later later