The Team House - The China Summit, & the Terrible New CT Strategy | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

In this episode, Dee and Marc Polymeropoulos analyze recent geopolitical events including the China Summit, Iran tensions, and the new US counterterrorism strategy. They explore the implications of diplomatic moves, military actions, and strategic failures, offering insights into current US foreign policy and military operations.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 Start00:30 China Summit07:05 Iran: The Looming Conflict13:58 Counterterrorism Strategy: A New Approach?27:06 The Flaws in Counterterrorism Strategy32:08 The Role of Soft Power in Counterterrorism38:02 Israeli National Security Post-October 7th44:58 Media Representation and Accountability51:08 Reflections on Military Ethics and Civilian CasualtiesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Aizon Geopolitics. I'm joined today with Mark Polymeropolis, two Greeks for the price of one. Here we go. No, Marines, thank God, finally. No, everyone's had a pretty inventful weekend, so we weren't able to record yesterday, so we grabbed one. We needed to get something out because it seems like it's been a bit of a wild news week. First and foremost, there's a ton of stuff we're going to talk about.

First thing is a China summit. as far as all the reporting goes, it seems like nothing really fucking came of it, frankly. The Iran war was looming the whole time over it. Obviously, China was still, you know, digging their heels in when it comes to Taiwan. President Trump's statements really,

like his interviews and stuff like that with the press were not, you know, he was basically, I don't know, it sounded like he was spinning a little bit for China, which is kind of crazy. He has this weird thing where he, whenever he goes and meets a dictator, he like falls in love with him and like he becomes like their number one pal um so it was just an interesting thing the news was covering a floor like you know minutes a minute to minute and like

nothing happened more or less like there was a lot of like yeah we'll agree to talk about this we'll agree to maybe talk about soybeans and Boeing like in jets and stuff like that and AI chips or whatever but nothing concrete came out of it um also we're looking at you know the iran war is still going on straight at Hamoos is essentially still blocked. inflation's creeping up here in America, slowly but surely. Gas is obviously a lot or higher. In Europe, it's like crazy, I've heard. And so there's a word that the Iranians are thinking that like it's going to start up in the next 48 hours.

Beebe had a phone call with Trump, I think over the weekend to discuss next steps and stuff like that. So, you know, we're kind of in a waiting pattern. and we're waiting to see. I was telling my friend of mine, too, I was like, there's no way that we're going to start bombing Iran while we're in China, while Trump's in China with like 50 CEOs

and like basically the whole cabinet. So we're back here. We're waiting and seeing. And also I wanted to get your take on the new counterterrorism strategy, you know, because you worked in it for a couple decades. So, and how insane it reads and looks.

But first, where do your thoughts on China? Well, okay. So we'll get these things. I definitely the CT strategy is something right up my alley. We talk about China in a second, but I like that. We have two Greeks on right now. You're right. And this is actually Greek day, because earlier today is actually cool. I mentioned this. I'm in a, so let me just say I'm in a new

state of mind now. I'm going to be positive. There's too much negativity. It's too much. I post on X nonstop. It's always negative. Not good, not healthy for me. I'm in my new health kick. And so today it was actually a cool event. Good buddy of mine. He's on CNN all the time. Alex Plitzis, another Greek. Awesome, awesome friend, former SIOPS guy for DOD, then worked on the civilian side in DOD. So we went and we talked to 150 college interns down in D.C. at the Washington Center. It was so cool about passing the torch to the next generation, all positivity. The kids were all fired up. I got fired up. I have a million emails, you know, after that in terms of just mentoring folks. And so there's got to be some good in the world. There's a guy, I don't even

know who this guy is. Maybe you guys, maybe you and Jack know. on Twitter he's actual one mirth. I was just looking him up. I think he's a former seal, but it's all this motivational stuff. Okay. And usually I don't kind of get hooked into that, but it's all positive.

Just it's about, you know, just taking care of yourself and forgiveness, but it's actual one murph. It's really good. And anyway, so it's my new mood now. So I'm going to be positive.

I'm going to be critical. I'll give constructive criticism to the Trump administration. Are you starting this today? This is the first thing. I started to that. Actually, I said last night to my wife.

I said, I'm, I can't, I'm going down the dark road and negativity. It's not healthy. Not good for me. Not good for everybody. Everyone thinks I, you know, I, I'm a, I have total trumped arrangement syndrome, which I do. But, but I have to kind of modulate that into saying now, instead of just criticizing, saying, hey, what should we be doing?

So that's, I'm going to turn over a new leaf here. All right. So, so, so, so, anyways, Greeks are taking over the world today. Fuck, yeah. Greek event number one earlier today. Now I got my Greek event. event number two. The Marines can go kind of, you know, they're doing their like family celebration stuff. Right. Which is great. And they'll tell you about it. They'll tell us all about it next week.

Really cool stuff happening to some of our fellow colleagues. Listen, I hope you do keep a positive attitude. I mean, it's not great for content, really, but like it's better for your mental health. It really is. Yeah. You know, and the funny thing is I was just on, so I got to be honest, I was just on a signal chat with some buddies of mine, former agency, former DOD. And I was talking to them that the, that we're witnessing the fall. This is like the Roman Empire. America's committing super superpower of suicide. So I'm not taking my own advice.

Yeah. I mean, you're not wrong either. That's the sad part. So the China Summit, interesting. And I don't know about some of our fellow colleagues, whether it's Nick or Jonathan. But like my TV appearances went to zero last week. So what does that tell you?

Really? That means nothing happened in the China Summit. A lot of pomp. You know, we watched the big ballroom. There was the really, actually, I thought it was funny. again, in my newfound positivity, Elon Musk's faces he was making while he was taking selfies with some of the-Cetamine face, yeah.

Yeah, the ketamine face. So just, you know, but nothing really substantive happened other than, indeed, you nailed it, that any kind of resumption of military hostilities would not occur, would never occur, was never going to occur while everybody was in Beijing. And so I think you got that right. But in terms of, you know, the pomp and circumstance, sure, I think the highlight. only were that the Chinese, as they usually do, agree to some type of nebulous trade deals. We don't know the details.

There's supposed to be hundreds of Boeing planes. There might be 200 chips. Like, nothing really is substantive. If it was, we would have heard about it. And then the big thing was, frankly, President Trump's interview with Sean Hannity on Fox, in which he said, yeah, you know, I'm not sure about this giant, you know, billions of dollars of weapons package to Taiwan. I'll think about it.

Which... And he discussed it with the Chinese, which goes against decades of U.S. policy. Yeah. That weapons deals to Taiwan were not to be discussed with the Chinese. And so now the Taiwanese, I'm sure, are freaking out. Guess who is going to China right now? Jared Wicklow? Jared and, oh, I thought Jared Wicklow.

I called him by the same one name. It's just one of not. I got that. And so ultimately, it was a summit of not a lot of substance. and now our allies in the Pacific are questioning us. Sure. And so, you know, and what it, but honestly, and again, this is certainly not about me at all, but it did in terms of things which put me in the media, I was not last week.

That's interesting. But not a peep from MS now. And of course, I got on this morning because we're talking about the possibility of resuming the war with Iran. So just switching to that. fascinating. And I just got a whole bunch of texts from some other reporters. Trump is now threatening all sorts of Armageddon again, because the Iranians are not certainly adhering to any of our demands. But nobody's like, no one's panicking this time. No one's saying, because no one,

two things. One is no one believes Trump anymore. You don't know if he's going to carry throwing these threats. And number two is, and there's been a lot of really good military analysis done by this by some former Israeli military officials who are critical of the campaign. And that's a lot of campaign saying that there actually there's really nothing militarily we can do now to cause the Iranians to capitulate to what we need them to do, save 100,000, 200,000 U.S. ground forces and a full-on invasion of Iran, which is never going to happen. Additional strikes, what does that actually do? The Iranians think they can weather it.

They think they can last Trump. And so, you know, we're kind of in this box right now. And frankly, the only thing, you know, and might be a good thing, is that we're going to have to not cave but we're going to have to compromise to some of the Iranian demands and that's going to be a political problem for Trump and he doesn't want to do that so we're stuck so I don't know where this goes frankly and that's it by the way

yeah it was interesting to see like both sides I think drop site I mean dropside is Ryan Grimm and Jeremy Schaill so take it for what it's worth they do good work but uh yeah yeah but they I mean they get they're not pro Israel and they they are a little bit too much of like a might they're like the axioles for the Fars

like for Iranians to be honest but you know they posted something about the demands from both sides and it sounds like both sides are totally maximalist yeah right exactly and it's like we're even farther apart than that we've ever been

you know nail it right so so yeah that and that's not the way anything ever gets settled now ordinarily if we had kind of a you know a less kind of bombastic leader who has not put himself in a box, you would say, okay, we're going to have to compromise. I think the American people

couldn't give a rat's ass if we compromise. But politically, Trump has boxed himself in. So when he says now, you know, we're talking the details of this, and I'm not a nuclear expert, have to do with how much highly enriched uranium, how much, when do they have to, when do we, when was the moratorium on enrichment end? And, you know, we said 20 years, the Iranian said 10, five, whatever. There is a, there is a time period in there in which it would be okay. But Trump today said, no, 20 years are or nothing. And so, you know, he's, I don't know where this goes. Yeah. Because, you know, again, there's a have to be compromise on both sides and I don't see that happening yet. And, and kind of the last point on the Iran thing, because we could talk about it forever, but I don't even know if there's

anything all that new is, um, is just the notion of, uh, once again, that, that militarily, we can have been able to plan or execute anything that is even, remotely coherent. And on that note, and I've talked about it before on the podcast, you know, God bless the American, the men and women, the American military, the airmen, the sailors, everybody, the Marines, everyone involved in this. But I don't know if I or others, and perhaps, do you comment on this, you know, when I hear another Pentagon briefing, I'm not even sure what to believe anymore. Because, and I will tell you this, and here's a huge point, we talk, we've, we've kind of hammered, you know, kind of the pro-Israel right

the freedom of defense democracy folks, I've definitely pushing the war, pushing the administration's lines, even Mark Dubowitz, who heads the whole organization there, and there's some good people there who actually are really smart on this, but he actually said the other day, well, because U.S. intelligence now says only half of the, you know, the ballistic missile inventory has been degraded, we have to keep going. And I was like, well, hold on a second. The Pentagon said a couple days ago that it was much more than that. So now even the most hawkish people are saying, well, maybe those assessments are not correct. And so, you know, is this even, I guess, D, here's a question for you, is this even under the constraints we know the United States has? You know, if we're not going for 200,000 ground troops and full on regime change, you know, can we win this? I think we lost it.

You know, militarily, I don't know what the answer is on that. Yeah. I mean, we probably need more than 200,000 troops, right? You know what I mean? It's a significant amount. Yeah, I think we strategically lost this, the day. day we started bombing them when we had another negotiation set up for that Monday where supposedly on the table was, you know, digging up the uranium and rich uranium ain't sending it to another

country. Like, we're not going to get that at this point, you know? So I think we're just going to go back to this holding pattern. It's like, it's like a weird deranged like mowing of the lawn, you know, that strategy everyone fucking talks about, which is bullshit in my opinion too. But I digress. like it's like this weird deranged version of Iran. No, don't digress because I think you're right.

I mean, so when I talk to Israelis and you know I'm far closer to them than I think you are, and that's okay. We have to have different opinions on the show. But I think they're coming to the realization that it's going to be a mowing-a-lawn strategy because things are not going to kind of be settled militarily like many people anticipated. So in some ways, and maybe this is what happens, is that nothing happens. Strait of Hormuz stays like that. They get $2 million a boat.

But if Trump, I mean, you know, the, in some fashion, the Iranians are going to, so maybe, but the Iranians are going to start cutting deals with other countries on the side. And maybe the U.S. has nothing to can do about it. And then it turns into a toll booth. Now that's not good for us. But again, I'm not so sure how we get out of this. But what about like the UAE, Qataris and stuff like that? sending their boats out with their way Iraqi I'm sure whoever Kuwait are going to start

cutting deals I mean already the UAE and the Saudis are at odds over this there was all sorts of rumors over the weekend of some kind of yeah that the Saudis want to cut some kind of deal I saw that supposedly the Saudis bombed the UAE there's rumors of that too yeah I don't yeah well they got hit from drones not from Iran but from the west of them I think it was not that there was Iraqi Shia greeps okay I would imagine but but ultimately um you know it's this is this a tough one. Again, and so going to the McMulroy line, which I believe in, hey, we want to win. You know, we're on Team America. I'm not just sure how we do so right now, how we get out of this. We don't. And that's, and again, unfortunately, so there's two things. One is we can criticize the,

the entry into this mess. That's fine. But again, if you were sitting at the National Security Council, and if D was in the administration, probably something that would never happen. as a but and I say the same thing for me what kind of advice would you give I actually you know that that that would get us out of this and aside from a compromise I'm not in which which politically I don't think Trump can go through Lindsay Graham will have an aneurism

I don't know what he was on the Sunday shows like going bananas again like you know beating the drum Graham you know at some point and I hate to do this is you kind of say these folks, well, fucking sign up. Go send your kids. Now, I don't think Lindsay has any kids, but, but, you know, or just, Lindsay, go back into, I think he was a reservist at one point. But, you know, I mean, all these people who are beating the drums of war, fine, sign your kids up for it. Because I'm not sure where this goes right now. So, and, and frankly, you know, there's,

there's, there's, there's not that much more to, to, to, when I say, to say on this, unless someone has some kind of, you know, magic bullet, I mean, what was Mick saying that? That, you know, That's what I think that was his thing. Or there's no, there's no, you know, magic wand to wave or whatever that makes this all okay. I'm just not quite sure how we get out of this now. And that's a tough one. And, you know, and again, if you're on the, on the politics side of it, you know, the American people clearly are not in favor of this and are not going to. I mean, you go fill up my truck and it costs over 100 bucks.

Yeah. Gas is 450 in Virginia. I think it's probably like eight bucks in California. I think it's like just over six, like $6.15, $620 in California. Valley in the West Coast. That's what American people care about. I mean, American people don't give a shit

about foreign policy. We love this podcast, Aizond Geopolitics. But they don't. It's no, actually, let me change that. It's not that they don't care.

They don't vote on it. Yeah. It's like fifth level, fifth thing down. And so, and they vote in their pocketbook and their pocketbook is not good. The pocketbook, by the way,

is great if you invest in the stock market. Yeah. The stock market's at an all-time eye. My portfolio's crushing it. I'm as happy as can be. I'm going to go out and buy another Jeep. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that 85% of Americans are feeling good about things because they're not.

Yeah. It is interesting to see how the stock market's going off and, you know, oil is higher, you know, especially in the, you know, in Southeast Asia, those countries are getting smoked in terms of how much it costs for a barrel. But like the disconnect between the price of oil, what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz and the American stock market is something. insane. I mean, it's all it's all juiced up with AI money essentially and like the promise of AI money. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah. So yeah. So a lot of people might be getting rich in America, but not most Americans. And that's the bottom line on that. And so it's a, you know, there's a, you know, that line. I mean, again, the, the, the Trump administration, you can't criticize everything that they do. But, but, but, and I think often there are actions that the administration

takes, which, you know, for example, we'll talk about counterterrorism. There's, a couple of counterterrorism operations that I think were really good that that occurred over the last 72 hours. The problem is Trump then goes on a TV interview and says, you know, he doesn't really care that things are more expensive for Americans. I mean, it's a, it's a Marie Antoinette moment, you know, her famous line, let them eat cake. I said Trump is like a walking campaign ad sometimes for the Democrats when he doesn't have to be. It's very strange. All you have to say is, yes, you know, American people are hurting. I understand that. Right. I mean, inflation's almost at 4%.

Yeah. And so that, and I think that probably there's a lot of Republican members in the House who are very nervous about their standing now. If they're not nervous,

they're fucking crazy. Yeah, because the numbers are on the wall and it may be even, like the Senate might be in play as well. Yeah. Which is insane to see that. Just,

you never know. Listen, when you're promised getting out of wars and not being in forever wars, and then you go and spend probably $50 to $70 billion in six weeks in Iran. 13 service members died, you know, service folks die over a couple hundred injured.

One of our equipment fucked up and, you know, probably things that I'll take years to bring back, like all those radars and stuff like that are at a different basis. Yeah, if I even, you know, make America great again, it's like, where's that? Because my, my eggs are fucking expensive. Yeah, and my gas is expensive. He's never been on the team house or eyes on. I don't think he would. But he's a former dev group guy and his son's a seal too.

And I remember, I haven't talked to him for a while, but I remember when I asked him the first time around, why'd you vote for Trump? And he said very clearly, he said, because I don't want my kid going into combat. And so it just is, that kind of fundamental notion of America now embroiled in more conflict is something that is, you know,

it is kind of head scratching. But, you know, to when I say to Trump, to Trump's credit, I think he's doing what he thinks is right. It might not be right, but ultimately, you know, when he says, hey, he's the first American president to tackle Iran in ways that others have, that is correct. I just wish, and I go back to something that we've talked about a lot on the pot, is that we had people who knew what they were doing. You can have a president who's kind of out there a bit and an outlier, and that's Trump. But there's no James Mattis around. There's no adults in actually executing a political and military strategy that where we could have come out on top.

And absent that, this is not going to be a success. Was there everyone, man? I mean, like, IRC is pretty fucking well entrenched in that country? I mean, is there an... The things I don't know about, I don't know the kind of covert action operations running beforehand. Certainly there are things we could do with our allies in the preparation before such a campaign that we probably didn't do. I mean, there's a lot of operational prep of the environment that, you know, in order to kind of go after the Iranian regime. And I don't know if we did.

Wouldn't that be good if there was like ground branch teams and SF teams in there already doing that? Or other, you know, not even necessarily inside, but just, you know, some type of covert activity. And I don't know if we've done that or not. I just tend to think that we might not have only because they seem to have kind of concocted this on a napkin in the Oval Office. and so 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

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Bye. Yeah, and it seems like just a lot of wishful thinking happening, man. And some CIA officer told me, like, the enemy of like everything is wishful thinking. There's something to that effect. Hope is not a strategy. I mean, there's all these kinds of things. Yeah. Right.

And it's, it's, I don't know. there ever was a strategy unless you have three, four hundred thousand American troops ready to rock and you know get you know parachuted into Tehran. Yeah. And you know what? You know, with that not on

the table as well, by the way, and that's going to horrify people, maybe if I say it, taking that off the table means the Iranians are not scared of us. It would have been far better to have that on the table, but because Trump promised no more, you know, no more wars, he said that very, you know, if it was very clear, I mean, they kind of nuanced it a little bit,

said nothing's, you know, there are no other, no, there's no options that we wouldn't consider, but everybody knew that that was not that possible. It would have been better if the Iranians thought, holy crap, this crazy guy might send half a million Americans there. Now, again, maybe it would be believable with Trump because he's such a wild card, like that, oh, yeah, he would send a bunch, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops because like. That's that. The regime doesn't feel threatened. America's not interested in sending fucking regular kids.

Right, right. So, like, me too. And I love the military. I love the intelligence community. I think they have roles to play. I'm a fan, but, like, yeah, we can't do that shit again. Yeah, it was a strategic blunder, I would say, doing this. Let me ask you this, before we get to the CT strategy, the new CT strategy.

Like, let's say you were in the CIA, you know, if you were on the Iran desk or running it, and the Ayatollah got smoked and like 40 other top guys have gotten smoked and now there's obviously like a vacuum and things are rearranging. Are you guys like pulling your hair out at CIA to try and figure out who's making the fucking decisions here and like. Yeah, of course. So the key thing on this now, Iran is a hard target. That's a great question, D. And it's something that I think I've raised here before. I don't know the quality of intelligence we have on Iran.

you go back to back in 2011, 2012, and I would be very careful. This is as reported in the press, there were very significant compromises of CIA's agent networks. And so when I say Iran's a hard target, it's obviously we don't have a diplomatic presence there. The CIA officers are not on the ground. State Department's not on the ground, U.S. military, not on the ground. And so, you know, and so, you know, do we have clandestine collection or even signals intelligence, too, that tells us the plans and intentions of Iran's leaders? And I don't know the answer to that. And, you know, without boots on the ground,

without that kind of that level of granularity on intelligence, you know, that is, it makes, makes things a lot harder. And so I think that, you know, the agency, there's two parts of it. One is what we call FI collection, foreign intelligence collection. And that's, what are the Iranians going to do? What's the Iranian order of battle for the military? What's their decision making? You know, what's the health of the Supreme Leader? Is the IRGC really kind of the dominant faction and control? Who's on top? You know, who's who in the zoo. And then the other part of it, would be more of kind of the tactical part, the pattern of life of individuals, you know, how to support U.S. military strikes.

Yeah. But again, I don't know the level of intelligence collection that we have. And with that in mind, it makes it hard then to even, and so then you kind of, and that's, that's some types of collection. Then you have the covert action side is, are there elements of any kind of Iranian opposition figures inside who we can be working with? I mean, President Trump has actually been complaining that there was some kind of aborted covert action effort where we gave arms to the Iranian Kurds and they stole all the weapons.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he never should be talking about this in public at all. But, you know, what does that even mean? Was there a covert action plan? So lots of questions. But I don't know and I don't think there's enough scrutiny. The national security media has failed on this, but there should be much more scrutiny of the degree of success that CIA has had in penetrating the Iranian regime. Well, I'm sure we, I mean, we had him clocked pretty fucking good, right, before, you know, in 2020, when we smoked Soleimani. Like, we had him. We knew where he was going.

That's a way different type of collection. That's pattern of life on an individual. That's putting someone on the X. That's not recruiting someone in the inner circle of the Supreme Leader. And those are the decisions that, I mean, right now, so here's what we need to have. I don't know if we have it. And in agents, I've run in the past, penetrations of foreign governments, we did have this level of penetration. We need the talking points that the Iranians were going to use in Pakistan.

end. Period. The talking points. Yeah. I'm holding up a check right now. I don't even know what this is for. We need those talking points. And if you don't have that, you know, we are at a disadvantage diplomatically.

So while we can put someone on the X for a kinetic strike, that's awesome, that's pattern of life, that's recruiting the January. Yeah. That's not plans and intentions. Strategic long-term intelligence. That's hard to do. Yeah. So. Like someone's assistant or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. If anyone's listening out there and they want to make like a couple hundred thousand dollars a month, it's a great opportunity. No, you contact D and D will be your front. Yeah, yeah. I'll totally be the middle, man. I don't give a shit. Absolutely. Take a little cut. You got a little, get a little, a little slice of the pie. America, for God's sakes. I'm facilitating. The Trump administration will understand that because I think that's what we do now. Yeah, exactly. It's all about getting your slice. You know, you got it. You know, one of the funny things, what reminds me of the United, this is digressing a little bit. When I was in Jordan, I did several tours in Jordan. And the Jordan, and the Jordan, are amazing allies, but we'd always joke that some of the Jordanian security officials

when they came into positions of power would have several years to make themselves as rich as possible before they got caught and fired. I think we're there. The GID is no bullshit, right? No bullshit, but same thing. GID directors have been fired successively for corruption. Yeah. But they're a great ally, tremendous ally, and great partners and really helped in the GWAT. And that we always consider Jordan kind of our lily pad, at the Middle East to do a lot of cool stuff all right moving to the new counterterrorism strategy they they haven't been coming out like usually there's a national defense strategy or whatever like every year uh this comes out like maybe

once every four or five years like it's not exactly like every year thing um so you'd think that'd be a little bit more thought that went into it slightly but it's like 16 pages you guys can take a look at it just go to like whitehouse dot go you can read the bullshit that they they put it's extremely partisan yeah you know joe biden's mentioned like a ton of times. Right, right. It's why, you know, I'm like, we still have to go after the, you know, Islamic terrorists and stuff like that, you know, our bread and butter.

What make Mark a millionaire, you know, why he made the big bucks over the last 25 years. But then we also have to watch out for Antifa and, um, some of the transgender terrorists. Yeah, exactly. Never forget those. No real mention about like, you know, far right wing terrorism or extremists and stuff like that, which we know exists like, oh, sorry, guys. It's just the truth in America. It was just insane.

It was an insane partisan document that like, aren't you supposed to have smart people work on this? Like, you know. Well, we don't because only one person worked on this. And that's the director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, someone by the name of Sebastian Corka, who is kind of this kind of member of the right wing. He worked in the first Trump administration for about five minutes before he couldn't get a security clearance and was removed. He's insane. Let's just be very clear.

This is not right versus left. This is not Democrat versus Republican. He is totally unqualified for this. And he wrote this on his own. Now, ordinarily, the NSC document like this would be part of kind of an interagency process. You know, the NSC is the coordinating body in the United States government that's supposed to take input from the intelligence community, from the military, from Department of Treasury, from the diplomatic community, the State Department and others. And put together a strategy, a whole of government strategy. yet this was insane. Parts of it, okay, are fine. Do we have to go after Islamic extremism? Absolutely.

But let's go over the strategy one by one, because this is something, because I read it, and everyone is in kind of disbelief. There's nobody in the counterterrorism world who thinks this was anything other than a giant piece of a giant turd. And even those of my friends kind of who are the Maga Curious types and from the right, and that's fine. But they're like, oh, my God, look at this thing. So it starts off with the notion that the biggest, counterterrorism threat is narco traffickers. Right. Now, are narco traffickers an issue for the United States government? Absolutely.

You know, traditionally, we would go after them based on counter narcotics strategy, which had to do with law enforcement, the military, you know, liaison partners, public health as well. But they're kind of now saying that this is the biggest terrorism threat because they're using terrorism authorities to go kill them as we're drilling people on boats. And also active on the ground. and active on the ground too. And so I think that's a mistake. I think it's apples and oranges. You know, America has a demand for drugs. America does not have a demand for terrorists.

Right. And so that's not to say this is not an issue. Fentanol is a massive issue. But the idea that this should be done under the CT authorities, I think, is nuts. And the problem with that is you then divert resources. As we have talked about, I think, on Aizon. in the past, but certainly members of the CIA have been diverted from the threat against Islamic extremism. They're down in Mexico. In fact, tragically, two CIA officers were killed down in Mexico recently, doing things that we used to do in the war on, in the GWAT. And so I think that, I think that elevating narco traffickers to this terrorism, you know, under terrorism paradigm is not smart. But the part of it, which gets a little nuts, Dian, you noted it, is the politicization. And so, literally transgender ideology in Antifa. Two very nebulous groups.

Have transgendered people been involved in terrorism? Sure. But just think about if I was sitting in London Station and I was going to my colleagues and the British Intelligence Service at SIS and saying, let's talk CT. And they're like, all right, let's talk, you know, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, ISIL.

You're like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Thank you. Yeah. We've got to talk about the real fucking. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Because the White House has said we're talking about transgender. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, like stop. And, yeah. And we would be laughed out of the room. So this is preposterous. Alongside of that, which is, of course, blatant politicization, and it's just not, it's going to be ignored. No CIA officer is going to ever approach those foreign leads on service on this. But the other part of it is they don't talk about right-wing terrorism. And since 2001, 85% of terrorism domestically in the U.S. has been carried out by the right.

That's not to say there's not left-wing terrorism. It exists. It should be investigated. we should put the full power in the U.S. government against it, 100% on I'm for that. But not even to mention right-wing terrorism is insane because the data is very clear. Now, you have high-profile events like the assassination of Charlie Kirk undertaken by the left or whatever that person was. I think that was the transgender thing that people freaked out about. But again, the data shows that the majority of the terrorism comes from the right.

And so just mention it. By not mentioning it, it's crazy. I think the last- He's writing it for one guy, let's be honest. writing it, but it just, it was, there was typos in it. I mean, it was just, it was nonsensical kind of blather. It was, it's almost fun to respond to. And there's people in the CT world, whether it's Colin Clark or Jacob Ware or others who are really smart on this, who immediately said, this is a big load of shit. And we're very vocal on it. And, and, and, and, and, and, but the last part of it, which I think is the most important part in this, I think it will resonate with the audience here is that, you know, there has to be a whole government approach and there has to be the use of what we used, what we had in the past, which was a, American soft power. You know, so you cannot kill our way out of this problem. Every CT expert, you know, if Mick was on here and him and I did CT stuff together, he'd say the same thing. Soft power means, you know, the U.S. Department of State, it means what we used to have in the U.S.

AID, gone now. You know, General Mattis, who, and I'm going to botched his quote, but essentially he said, you know, if we don't have diplomacy, if we don't have soft power, I got to buy more ammunition. Yeah. And so ultimately not having a soft power strike, because terrorists thrive in places where there, you know, there's lack of kind of government, ungoverned spaces. Well, I'm sorry, terrorism thrives when there is, you know, a terrible poverty. And so the U.S. government has had a huge role to play in that counter-radicalization programs. Right. But the CT document basically says we're killing our way out of this problem.

And that's just, that's not a strategy. That's certainly not a solution. And this is coming from someone who did a lot of those things. And I believe in that, but I was a very small piece of the problem. pie, an important piece, but there's got to be other stuff, too. So the whole CT strategy is just comical and it's sad. And the problem is, if it was just a speech Trump gave, who cares? But, but it's not. It's the strategy that comes from the White House. And that means resources are pushed that way. And that's the, that's the key part of this. I don't care what what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, what, what, you know, how many billions, millions, millions or billions, certain entities in the U.S. government get to tackle this issue, but resources are going to emanate from this document. Now, with all that in mind, there were a couple counterterrorism successes recently. We killed a senior ISIS member in Nigeria. El Manuki is his name. Of course, the administration, as only they can, exaggerated it. He said he was the number two ISIS guy worldwide. That's not true. He's important, and it's a great strike. At the same time, we arrested in Turkey, the leading figure in Katab Hisbullah, which is an Iraqi Shia group supported by Iran, great, great get. No doubt. What's he doing hanging in Turkey? Well, I think he was en route to Russia.

That's kind of interesting. Katab Hisbullah has been involved in the deaths of Americans and he was responsible for, and now it's coming out, all these kind of mysterious attacks against Jewish targets globally after the war in Iran started. And so that's a really good, a good operation that was carried out. Interestingly, though, nothing in the document says, hey, by the way, because of our activities in Iran, in Iran, terrorism may explode now, which was all of our worry. And so now we have this really big takedown that everyone is doubting. Yet in the CT strategy, there's no mention that our actions in Iran actually will have kind of pushed such such states. And, you know, one of the things is that, you know, and again,

this, D, this is going to go back to my, I cite the Israelis a lot. But when I, I worked with the Israelis and they would think about undertaking some type of kinetic operation. And they would be very clear in their cost-benefit analysis. They would say, if we do this, a Soleimani-type thing, we're going to lose an embassy. We're willing to do that. This administration, ours, has never done that. They never said, you know what? Was there ever a document tasked the intelligence community saying, if we go after Iran, if we launch this war,

these are the things, Mr. President, that are going to occur. Americans are going to die in terrorist attacks overseas. And I don't think that happened. And that's the right way to look at these things because nothing comes free. It's not even overseas either. It's like we've had it was like lone wolf guys. Yeah. There's been.

Guy in Austin who was inspired by the Iranian thing. The kid whose family members lived in Lebanon. And the Iran is the synagogue. And so so that's where that's where I think, but the CT strategy is just just a mess. And you just kind of shake your head. And because the problem is that in this administration, there are not people who served in the first Trump. administration because they don't want to.

And but Nick is a perfect example. Mick was in the first Trump administration. Great American did great stuff there, but there's, I don't think Nick would, would, I'm not going to speak for him anyhow, but, but, you know, you don't have kind of experts there now who would be able to, uh, to help on such a CT strategy. And so you get this kind of, kind of piece of garbage as a document and, and, and, uh, but it's there and they're proud of it. That's the other thing.

There's no, and Gork is running around in the media saying how great this is. yeah it's unbelievable really the cognitive dissonance that's like just just plain it's just plain as day it's not even like they're not even trying to hide it um i think it's fucking scary you know for if you're an american citizen who maybe leans left or if you're a transgender person like come on bro what are we talking about i would say if you're a centrist i mean just anything or you're just regular american like it's just weird what are we doing talking about antifa and and and and transgender ideology when it comes to counterterrorism that's just kind of strange now talk about left-wing terrorism, sure. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, you know, and, uh, and, and, and of course, in the no mention of, of, of kind of terrorism. But that's just, you know, from the right, but that just kind of, you, you have it, like, all you have to do is write a normal document. Right. Like, why can't they just do that? I don't know, bro. I don't know. And if people like me, who are from the center and are still critics, the administration would say, hey, that was pretty good. Right. I like that. Yeah. You know, but that's, they can't even do something like that,

because it's so politicized, everything is. And that to me is the kind of the tragedy. This I say to my Republican friends and I have millions of them. I'm like, how do you defend this? And they just kind of shrug, you know. That's bad, bro. Let me ask you this. You mentioned how the Israelis do like their calculus on like when they want to go kinetic. Do you think that calculus has kind of changed a little bit since October 7th?

And like, you know what I mean? Like in terms of like what they're expecting blowback to be, you know, are they even thinking of that anymore? Did they expect when we us and them hit on February 3rd? 28th Iran that they would Iran would respond so aggressively frankly. So Dee, you're asking some, you ask better questions to me than you do when the other people are on the group. Thanks. Yeah.

Well, it's easier when it's one or two people. I know, I know. But so great question. I think October 7 changed the mentality of Israeli national security officials massively. You know, there is no more kind of tolerance for any kind of risk. And now the problem also is that Netanyahu is also drunk on power. and drunk on using the military. And Israeli diplomacy could actually be just as effective on some of these things and some

in deterrence as well. But Netanyahu, the second this war ends, is going to face elections. And so, you know, there's no – so that has really kind of screwed a lot of things up. But my friends in Israel definitely are traumatized, understandably from October 7th. And so, you know, the kind of the fallback on using the Israeli military or intelligence services, you know, I think the aperture is much wider now, the appetite for that. But it's also changing because there's – friends of mine, too, are like, you know what? We're exhausted. The IDF is exhausted.

And all these promises that Netanyu made about keeping us safer, you know, I'm not so sure now. And look exactly what's, you know, the Israelis just killed the leading military official in Gaza, again. Great operation. But Hamas still controls Gaza. They are not dismalming. There's a ceasefire, sort of, but ultimately. They're still bombing, you know, kids. Yeah. But so what has, you know, what has been the promises that the Israeli political kind of echelon have made to Israeli public have not been, have not, have not come come forward. And, and so, you know, there is that notion, again, of, you know, it's the idea of military,

you know, military operations, kinetic capabilities are really important, but it's just one piece of the pie. I mean, think about right now if Netanyahu, and he can't do it because he's kind of, He is reliant on the crazy right wing in Israel for his political survivor. But if he actually said at any point after October 7, yes, there will be peace with the Palestinians. There will be a Palestinian state. The Saudis would have signed on. This is before the Iran War. The Saudis would have signed on to the Abraham Accords.

There would have been a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And you can, and that would have changed. Ben Gavir would have had him killed. But that would have changed the region if he had done. So the Israeli government falls. But there's a peace treaty with the Saudis. That's unbelievable. And then you have this absolute kind of alliance of the Sunni Gulf Arab states in Israel against who, against Iran.

And perhaps we would have been better off globally right there rather than what you have right now. But, you know, that's kind of just wishful thinking. For sure. I mean, yeah. But this is, Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudis were ready. They just had to say something. Give us something. Yeah. I get it.

and and and and and and and and and and bb couldn't do it for his political survival but also i think there was a lot of trauma after october 7th and it's just too bad it's sad yeah i guess uh you see bb 60 minute interview yeah um and that that was designed for the american audience only fucking nonsense well he doesn't say any that stuff 70 year olds the fucking 70 year olds who's gonna buy that bullshit yeah so i mean ultimately the that you know he does this for the u.s audience and um and cbs wasn't really, well, Barry Weiss gave him

the choice of who to have as an interviewer. And they also edited a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's like, come on. It's a big deal because they,

you know, remember they, that didn't Trump sue them or something like that? Trump sued, yeah, correct. So.

But here you are. We're being positive. Positiveity. I was about to be very negative just now. The positivity. Let's see. What do we want to be positive about?

Can I bring up one thing, you know, that there's Israel is suing the New York Times for that article. The Christoff are, I didn't like, I mean, I'll be honest.

But I didn't like the Christoph article because it was an opinion piece. It wasn't written by the newsroom. Yeah, but he spoke to 14 sources. Yeah, but they're also very kind of. So you and I might disagree on this. But first of all, Christoph can write anything he wants. The New York Times can publish anything they want. Christoph, I think, has as a record of being, you know, very critical of the Israelis.

You might agree with it. You might not. I didn't like the sourcing on it, but I don't care. It's an opinion piece. Who gives a shit? And then, of course, everyone went crazy after this. And the idea of the Israelis suing the New York Times is preposterous. We have a First Amendment rights here.

It's an opinion piece. It's not in the news section. Even if it isn't a news section and it's well-sourced, fuck you. But it doesn't have to be well-sourced. And I would have argued that it's not well-sourced because I didn't like the sources that are used. But again, the point on here is that it's not from their national security team, which has a much different fact-checking process. it's an opinion piece. Nicholas Christoph can act and think anything he wants and they can write anything they want and that's fine. The smartest thing for the Israelis to do would have been like

that's an opinion piece, thanks a lot. But by suing the New York Times, it's just, it gets to be kind of ridiculous. And so a lot of my friends who are incensed about this, I'm like, sure, get angry at Nicholas Christoph. It's an opinion piece. The Washington Post has crazy opinion pieces too. That's, I mean, that's the idea. Like you can have debates on stuff. Well, all right. So, like, Christoph didn't go to Gaza, right? He went to the West Bank because Western journalists aren't allowed in Gaza, number one. Number two, that video that leaked out from the prison in Gaza was a guy getting gang raped,

that those guys got let off the hook, like the soldiers that gang raped that guy. And that's, and the point on that is. So, like, I just don't want to hear the most moral army in the world when things like that are happening in prisons. The prison system in Israel has huge problems, no doubt. And so the right response on this would have been, yeah, this is not going to happen. But the mature response is, yeah, the prison system is really messed up in Israel. It needs reform. But some of these allegations about training dogs for raping people are kind of ridiculous.

But, you know, we're looking into it because it's a big deal because we want to have the right set of morals. New York Times don't agree with all of this, but we're on it. Now, that's in another, of course, that's not going to happen. But that's the right attitude. Like, I'm not going to defend the Israelis or the Israeli prison system. I think training rape dogs, and that's been this trope that's been used by kind of the crazy left, you know, who hates all counterterrorism activity all the time. You know, there's been allegations of that forever. I don't even think that's possible.

I don't know about the dog. I mean, but they didn't, it wasn't just dogs raping people. Right. Right. But that doesn't mean horrible abuses haven't occurred. And they have. And so that's the way you tackle this. But, you know, I mean, soon in the New York Times, just, I'm like, at this point, like, you

can't defend. You can't defend that. That's just stupid. And they're just dumb. You sue the New York Times. What's that going to do? It's going to stay in the news for years. Yeah, it's fucking so dumb. It's like stupid. And if you're the Israeli embassy in DC, I've said this, the Israeli embassy officials there, I said, you have a massive problem here because the American left and right have turned against you. And so my advice would have been, don't sue the New York Times. Right. What are you doing? This is, I mean, it's like New York on, and frankly, the New York Times has had like has been called out and having like a pro-Israel bias as well. Yeah.

So let's. Yeah. So let's like, I don't know if you should be suing the New York Times. Look, look, in the United States, we face the same things. There were allegations which were confirmed with torture at Abu Ghraib. The American military did some pretty horrific stuff. American CIA did some stuff that's kind of messed up over the year. So you don't, you don't kind of, the reaction against it is not like this is not true.

Well, some of it's true. It's a lot of it's overblown. You know, we didn't waterboard. hundreds of people. But the right answer is, you know what? This was done in reaction to September. This is what I sell college students all the time when they asked me. Yep, we did some things that probably we shouldn't have.

But I'll tell you the time was people were terrified and we had a lot. We had a big, big fucking menu of options and we chose them all. There was, you know, the analogy I used sometimes as a remote control on a TV. Yeah, we chose every freaking channel. We subscribed to everything. Yeah, yeah. Looking back, like, shouldn't have done that. also frankly if you didn't get the direction from the fucking bush white house that

uh e i t's are okay you guys probably wouldn't be doing them i don't know there's there was a lot i mean again maybe like a rogue fucking maniac would but no we're bloodthirsty just like the israelis were after october seven yeah but do you think you guys the CIA would have done that unilaterally without the fucking president saying yeah it's okay no i mean you you have to get the legal opinion that it was okay right right and there was a ton of beef over that too. But the bottom line is there were plenty of people who still think it's okay.

And I'm really agnostic on this whole thing because I remember that I literally remember members of Congress from the Democratic Party from the left who were basically wanted us to kill everyone. I mean, if not, yeah, whether it's, you know,

from really senior members of Democrats who were just like, you know, why aren't you just cutting fucking throats everywhere? I remember after 9-11, normally, everybody was saying, let's fucking nuke wherever we need to, you know,

like just crazy shit. And so that, but you have to have the maturity later on to say, yeah, I'm not, I'm not defending everything we did. You have to say, yeah, we probably shouldn't have done that stuff. This is the reason why we did. I don't think we'll do it again. No CIA officer is ever going to waterboard anybody ever again, period, not because they don't think it works. Because that's debatable. It's that I'm not fucking getting in trouble with this.

I don't care what you tell me. Remember when Trump was running for president again? He said, I'm going to bring back waterboarding. And everyone at the agency is like, good luck, man. Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to jail for this shit. I don't care what kind of DOJ opinion you give. Right.

Right. Because I'm not going down for this kind of crap. What does the agency do now? We just hand them off to like GID or somebody and they take care of it? No. I mean, there's, well, I mean, first of all, the CI is not in the, in the, in the, what you'll call it? Well, sort of. We're not in the business of holding prisoners.

Right. All right. Okay. That did not look. That did not turn out. Yeah. It wasn't great. No, it wasn't great for the PR, bro.

I'll be honest. And the other thing, too, is like, I mean, I remember doing prison debriefs. I'm like, in Afghanistan early on. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm not trained. I'm a case officer. I'm not trained. I'm not a debriefer.

I don't know what I'm doing on this thing. And so, yeah, so we're not in the business of that anymore. And that's, again, it's, but at some point, I hope for my Israeli friends' sake that they will come to the realization that there were massive excesses after October 7. And my response to that would be, I understand your pain and your grief and the desire for revenge. but the government of Israel did some things they probably shouldn't have done. And I think at some point, people will come to that realization.

And you can be as hard line as you want. People in Israel? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think a lot of Americans were like, good Lord. Well, we're already there, Americans, the majority. They're going to come to their senses on this. But the trauma of October 7th is, you know, was so fresh.

And we have to remember the trauma that we had after September 11th. And so that's kind of where I stand on this, having been involved in a lot of, a lot of crazy stuff that we did. Yeah. So was a couple dozen people, they got CIA waterboarded or what? I can't talk about CIA waterboarding in any kind of authority. And actually, I didn't have anything to do with that. But just, you know, this is all reported stuff.

Right, right. If you talk about testimony, I think it's, the numbers that have kind of come in public were far less than what has, it would have been alleged. And the other part of it, too. I mean, I got in trouble in all these, and all my podcasts. I did it with you guys. I did it like on the Sean Ryan show. And I, you know, and Jack Carr and others.

When I just, what people would ask me, what do you think about this? Do you have any regrets? I'm like, no. I mean, there was, it was a different time. I just don't. Why? Yeah, I don't know. Did we do some stuff that was messed up?

Sure. But it was after October 11th, you know, 3,000 Americans died. You know, they asked us to take it to the enemy. And so in retrospect, were some of these things a little wacky? Yeah, probably. But, you know, do I have any regrets? I mean, I'd be a fucking hypocritic asshole. I could do it easily.

I could go on MS now. They'd love this. You know? Yeah, but... So bad for what we did. I just don't. I'd be lying. But again, you know, in retrospect,

probably the U.S. military and the intelligence community did some things we shouldn't have done. And the Israelis will eventually come to that realization. It just takes a lot of time. Yeah, we can go back and forth on this a lot of time. Yeah. I feel like, I don't think any war is moral, really, when it comes down to it. it. It's horrible

all the way, but what we're seeing in Gaza is pretty fucking reprehensible. The spilling deaths are, and the notion of Even Lebanon, too. I know Hezbollah sucks. In the Middle East and in Gaza in particular are far beyond anything that the U.S. government would

tolerate under the war on conflict. Andy and I have written about this. We got into fights with everybody about this. Yeah. You know, I supported him when he was doing stuff with War on the Rocks against some kind of really kind of extreme, more extreme pro-Israel folks. And so, but it's just a fact.

Like, you know, we care about Sivkast much more than Israel. I mean, we lost a fuck ton of Marines in Fallujah that Andy was commanding some of them. You know what I mean? Like, take clear house to house to avoid just, you know, wholesale bombing the entire fucking thing. Like, you know, I've been involved in some Sivkass incidents. It's really bad. Like, you don't want to be involved in that.

And so the idea of, like, we shouldn't give a shit about civilian casualties. people in the U.S. military and the intelligence community do. Yeah. You just do. You don't want to be hurting innocent people. That's not a good feeling, and that's something that's going to stay with you. And again, that's different than the conversation we just had about some of the more extreme things we did in the GWAT. And the reason why I say I don't have a lot of regrets on kind of the collective on what was done is because these are really bad people.

And so, you know, now should we still do those kind of things? Yeah, probably not. But that's way different than accidentally killing a non-combatant. Right. Yeah. Not for sure. All right. This is good.

I like this. We were supposed to go 20 minutes. It's been 52, 53. But again, but, you know, it's fun talking to on this. And I think I will say this to you. Sometimes, you know, the other guests kind of dominate a lot of stuff, but you got a lot of good, a lot of good points. And you've got to be more vocal on these things. No, listen, we have so many.

I appreciate that But I mean We have so many guys on you guys are all experts I don't really know I'm running my mouth I read the news like everybody else So I'd rather I'd rather have John Hackett

Like talk about like actual shit Than me run my mouth Like maybe I can learn something I'll always jump in When I think the CIA ghouls Are going too far I'll always jump in Well

Just remember you got a lot of good points to make That was awesome That was fun Thanks bro All right I want everyone to do me a favor Check out Mark's stuff the links are in the description. And the best place to support the show is patreon.com slash a team house.

You get both eyes on at geopolitics episodes and team house episodes ad free and early. And you help support the show. Mark a pleasure as always. Remember what I said before. We need team house slash eyes on coffee. Man, Scott. Yeah, before we jumped on, Mark was, we were brainstorming on like ideas. Black Rifle coffee.

I was like, it's pretty good. We need team. I don't think another vet bro. coffee companies in the mix. It was needed in the market right now. All right. We'll do an audience poll. Yeah.

It was actually a good coffee company we had as a sponsor called Redacted Coffee. And they had some really cool like, the coffee was good too, but they had some really cool cool like covers and stuff like that. It was like trippy like MK Ultra stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's a cool company. Check it out. It's redacted coffee.

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