The Team House - Who is Israel Going to Bomb Next? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

In this episode, the hosts discuss the recent military actions by Israel, particularly the bombing of Qatar and its implications for regional geopolitics. They explore the internal divisions within Israeli society, the impact of these actions on U.S. relations, and the broader context of global order, including provocations by Russia. The conversation also touches on the U.S. defense strategy and the ongoing controversy in the veteran podcasting space regarding military oversight and freedom of speech.Jon Hackett's book:https://www.amazon.com/Irans-Shadow-Weapons-Intelligence-Unconventional/dp/1476696934Andy Milburn's book:https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554Jack Murphy's book:https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History/dp/B0DQ8259VQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1T0H4INL6I2OE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hU07Ilgd0pqToRUvlNrjjvxgbpfGzgPnL4b-TXaf0hseKNZLDQoIvwVqdC7KwCbC7oTGWwBQXwZi7dwrGzI7XpHYVXNP9dnuLVRc0MaPQgJ6wSL11l9yMcKIKx1MWk3NER3xEFbb07ioP3KhuX9xEdRHh27SWkK14Bct43OdFWQiOySw8cwM5Z142YXtDolGahzoYI5FJvHwLQeJ39rDbyhfWKQXzp8QB-u1TVwLyZQ.N7FuOqCJQwq9p3NG6fbUtIRBfoW9D7w5bQRisn6ayrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=jack+murphy&qid=1757886468&s=books&sprefix=jack+murphy%2Cstripbooks%2C63&sr=1-1Support the show here!https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseSign up for our newsletter!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/00:00 Introduction and Context of Current Events01:50 Israel's Military Actions and Strategic Implications10:36 US-Israel Relations and Geopolitical Dynamics18:31 Internal Demographics and Political Divisions in Israel27:09 The West Bank Situation and Future Prospects33:46 Global Geopolitical Tensions and the Risk of Escalation44:40 US Defense Strategy and Domestic Focus50:08 Cultural Perspectives on Drug Issues51:20 China's Global Economic Influence52:44 Security Cooperation vs. Military Intervention54:09 Lessons from Successful Foreign Policy55:36 The Role of Special Operations58:33 Drama in the Vet Bro Podcast Space59:35 Delta Force Controversies and Military Oversight01:04:03 Freedom of Speech in Military Contexts01:10:55 Book Recommendations and Closing ThoughtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. It's felt like a few years this past week with the amount of news that's been going on. We have Jack Murphy, Andy Milburn, and Jonathan Hackett here. A little bit of house cleaning. Check out Jonathan's new book about Iranian covert operations. It's incredible. The link is in the description. He was also on the team house about a week ago, maybe less.

Check out that episode as well. an encyclopedic knowledge of what goes on in Iran. Of course, our dear leader, Jack Murphy's joining us today. Jack, who's going to be? I dragoon Jack late in the game to come on. I was surprised he said yes. I just set up my whole audio and video system. This is a new computer, so I had to rush to set it up in the last 30 minutes.

It's working good, though. It's very impressive. Hey, anything for you guys, man. Andy Milburn. show some star quality. Yeah, Andy Milburn looking as felt as possible. Who cuts your hair, Andy? Do you do?

No. You have a barber? That is absolutely the retired Marine Colonel haircut right there. Like, that guy is exactly what you think he is. It's actually shorter than I had it when I was on active duty. You just need like a cigar stub in the corner of your mouth. Just chewing on one? Not even smoking.

All right. him going on in the world over the last week. We're going to start off with Israel bombing cutter, targeting Hamas political leadership and the negotiation team who was supposedly negotiating the peace or the ceasefire. It seems there was a bit of like, you know, the Musad chief and IDF chief. People were not down for this and BB Netanyahu went ahead and did it. Tarj just came out today and like strongly condemned Israel and stuff. stuff like that.

Where are you guys at? What are you guys tracking? Who's going to go first? I'm going to pick John Hackett to go first. Our guest goes first. Yeah, thanks. So to me, this represents kind of what has already been going on where we see there's the larger Israeli government and then there's a smaller component of that government making

certain decisions kind of on their own or at least against the greater interest of the larger apparatus. And to me, it represents a shift in what Israel has been doing in the Middle East where they've been relying on the United States for backing and things like. that. And I think as each little bite at the apple has been taken, they realize that they can take bigger bites with very little consequence or no consequence. There's a big difference between making statements and condemnation and then doing something. And there's a lot of statements in condemnation and very little of doing something to prevent future acts from happening or to even

do something to moderate current actions like in Qatar, but not just Qatar. Same thing's happening in southwest Syria right now in Dura, where Israel sent a ground force into Dara across the 1974 ceasefire line. Again, taking little bites at the apple to see how far can we nibble before we can make a bigger bite. And this is not a new technique. We saw this also with the assassination of Hezbollah leaders, then moving up the chain, killing Nasserola, seeing what was the reaction to that, then killing Hania in Iran, seeing what was the reaction to that.

Further back, killing Mosin Fakhrizadeh, the nuclear scientist almost 10 years ago, seeing what was the reaction to that, and then killing six more scientists, that. So this is probably not an isolated strategic move. It's probably an early move in a longer term plan for some further end state that we as observers think like, oh my gosh, they just hit Qatar. That's crazy. That's not what they're all about. What they're doing is testing to see what happens in Qatar with what we are trying to achieve. And of course, there's a longer term game plan to that. Hitting the negotiators is pretty provocative, but there are further provocative acts they could do, especially where we have our own

absent and SOCAF forces stationed there. And that's the only Gulf country that Trump has recently visited. In fact, it was the first time a U.S. president ever visited Qatar very recently. And to do that is a huge provocation, not just to the Gulf countries, but also to the United States, to say this part of the Israeli government that's making these decisions can do it without even U.S. support or knowledge,

because as far as I know, the U.S. was not informed until the bombs are either in the air or already had struck. Mel Byrne? Yeah, I am. John, by the way, welcome. Good to have you on. I agree with John, what's John said with, I think one caveat, though. So normally when Israel kind of pushes the limit, test the waters, there is something that they consider of great national interest to them at stake, right? You know, when they were going after the nuclear scientists, you know, and you can trace this all back to I mean, they've jeopardized U.S. relations before in a big way.

Even back in the time of the Soviet era, do you remember when they were trying to get, they were trying to negotiate with the Soviet government to get, to enable Jews to emigrate to Israel? And part of that deal was allegedly espionage information from the United States about our sources and methods against the Soviet Union. And that's what Pollard was apparently involved in. And so that was a big risk. Remember back then using an agent against us and ally,

but they took that risk. It was worth it to them. And they got away with it, right? I mean, Pollard went to jail, but that was it. There were no more repercussions. I would say that this is different in that. It's not clear. Well, let me put whether this a different,

way. Furthering Israeli national interest by doing this. It's not, there's not a clear line. And I think that's why Mossad and the IDF were against a strike. There was a lot of risk involved, jeopardizing negotiations in Doha with Hamas by breaking that kind of unspoken rule that not to strike in Doha. And doing that, it's not clear that they gained anything by it, that they removed Hamas, anyone really effective within Hamas with the strike. And what they have done is they've thumbed their nose of the United States. I don't think that's been made clear in the media how much they did that, because either they informed the United States, in which case we enabled or allowed a strike on a Middle Eastern partner who is allowing us to keep our troops on their territory in a base.

In other words, implicitly providing our protection to that country. And we've allowed his throughout to strike. I agree with you, John. I don't think that happened that way. I think we found out at the last minute, but we haven't objected vociferously. Again, you know, whether we, whatever you think of Qatar, we have a base there that is important to US national interest. And by the way, we don't pay anything for that base. We pay very little for that base. So, and yes, those of us who have been there for an extended time, we'll tell you it's a shithole, but it is a, as strategically placed shit hole. And so, you know, I just feel regardless of the way you look at this, whether we knew about it

beforehand or whether we found out the last minute and didn't object, we've lost a massive amount of credibility again in the Middle East. And, you know, of course, that leaves a vacuum. And Netanyahu thumbed his nose at us. He thumbed his nose at a large segment of his own government, of his own advisors. And why did he do it? The only possible answer that I can come up with, isn't that this was in pursuit of Israelis' interests?

These were in pursuit of Netanyahu's interest because he stands to gain by letting the war in Gaza drag on. And his own generals are telling him that continued military operations will gain little. They will damage the economy. And, of course, they'll continue to have catastrophic effects on the Palestinian population in Gaza about whom no one really seems to care that much.

So I think I would say... Sorry, go on. If I could. Yeah, just to help understand the geopolitics here, Israel received $6 billion a year of security assistance from the U.S. that was granted after the agreement with Anwar Sadat back in 79. And there's, of course, Jordan and Egypt also receive lesser amounts that are part of that agreement. But if you look, as you mentioned with Qatar, Qatar pays for our presence there.

They pay us to be there. And similar with the Emirates, the Emirates pays us to do foreign military sales. There's a foreign military sales case for the U.S. Marine Corps to train the Presidential Guard and the Emirates. And the Emirates actually pay the U.S. forces salaries to DFAS to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service while those U.S. forces are partnered with those Emirates. So it's just very interesting to see the disparity where these Gulf partners are paying their way to work with us. whereas on the Israel side, we are paying Israel to not listen to us, essentially. It's an interesting chasm between these two, because I think many Westerners might think that we're just supporting all these nations the same way, and that's not true.

Some of the nations are pulling all of their own weight, and they're there making sacrifices like Qatar or the Emirates or Saudi Arabia to have us there, sacrificing some of their sovereignty and some of their resources for us to be there. And the opposite is true in Israel. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, it's just another sad indication of the bigger picture, the fact that we are, any criticism of Israel is verboten, our own ambassador there seems to be subservient to their foreign policy. And, you know, another point about this, strike, it did the Abraham Accords no good.

You know, I mean, yes, Qatar is not a signatory, but UAE and Saudi Arabia, well, Saudi Arabia, potentially, And this is just driven a further wedge in that, in that Abraham Accords were, we're driven by U.S. foreign policy. And we just seem to have turned up back on all of this. Yeah, and the reasoning that Netanyahu said he gave the reasoning of Bahit and Qatar in the Hamas delegation was because there was a terrorist attack in Israel a few days before that. I think in the West Bank, I might be wrong. I could be totally off on it. But there wasn't a shooting there that killed, I think, six Israelis. Jerusalem, right?

Jerusalem, there you go. Yeah. And that's sure if the population there, I've heard more than missile strikes. But again, you know, who knows? I doubt that that was front and center of Netanyahu's motivation for because there was no direct correlation between the people he was going after. Certainly not between the people who were killed because it still hasn't been verified that they were even. members of Hamas, let alone Hamas leaders. And notice

normally the Israelis trumpet this and come out with names and all this, they've been remarkably silent about it this time, which suggests maybe that they weren't, didn't get the people that they were after. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been

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Thank you. Yeah. Jackie, you say something? Go ahead, brother. No, not really. Yeah, I mean, the only kind of thing that, you know, I'd like to tease out of you guys if it's possible is, you know, the question that's unavoidable is how does this end? You've both kind of mentioned how Israel is making this strategic gambit. But it seems to be a incoherent foreign policy and that there are different factions within Israel that have different motivations.

And maybe one faction thinks longer than the other, right? You know, one of them might be for short-term political gain. How do you see this playing out for Israel over the next 10 or 20 years, this sort of a total breach of, you know, what we would have called the Westphalian system, right? They can cross these international boundaries and strike whoever they want, wherever they want, and sometimes it seems without a lot of rhyme or reason. I'll just say real briefly, and then Andy, you can be longer on this, but the Westphalian sovereignty is, is very important. just a social contract. As long as everybody agrees and follows their agreement, it's great. If certain actors are not following it, then other groups have to either choose to sanction or not sanction those bad behaviors. And right now, the U.S. that's the only superpower that can sanction

those behaviors is not sanctioning them. And until those conditions change, there's one trajectory that this could go down. If those conditions do change, there's the opportunity for a new trajectory to a different outcome. And right now, I think the Israeli government, or at least the Netanyi Now who cabinet is taking a very opportunistic approach to this moment, which they did during the first Trump presidency as well, where they tried to get as much as they could out of these four years. It squeezed the most benefit without a clear probably idea about five to ten years from now. Rather, they were looking at the U.S. domestic politics and trying to use U.S. domestic politics to increase their own outcomes.

But I'll hand it over to you, Andy, to be more in-depth on that. So, no, it can be more in-depth, but I would say that I think the way, By the way, when we say Westphalia, it's the Treaty of Westphalia from 1648, that basically established the concept of the nation state, a sovereign nation state, with inviolable borders, right? And it was at a time, obviously, when democracy was not alive and well, but it was based anyway on, regardless of the good or bad, it was literally sorry.

At the time, they were sovereign states, they were kingdoms. And then I mean, I would say that that concept is in atrophy to say the least. I mean, we violated it. We robustly a couple of times, right? Most notably, of course, in Iraq. And we use then concept of, you know, the right to protect and the concept that you abdicate your right to sovereignty if you are doing certain things and preemptive aggression.

preemptive defense, I guess, is the term that we used at the time. But nevertheless, we weaken the concept then, and since then, we've turned our back on it. Most recently, I think, with Ukraine and all these verbal gyrations to try and show it somehow is Ukraine's fault for getting invaded in the first place. But back to the discussion about Jack, what you were saying about, I think it's really interesting. I mean, first of all aware that since 7 October, we've seen a giant move to the right within Israeli society. I mean, that's been taking place since the assassination of Rabin back in, when was that, 1990.

Was it 95? I think it was 96 right after Oslo, too. Yeah. But since then, there's been a study shift, and then it's accelerated. And so you've got now within Israel actions that previously would be attacked by the Israeli public, of the percentage of the Israeli public, now being condoned. And I'm talking about what's happening in Gaza. The only time you hear opposition and you hear significant opposition to the government,

but it's not based on what's happening to the Palestinians, it's based on what potentially is happening to the hostages. and that again was largely the basis for the opposition against the Doha strike. And you have, sometimes in the United States, I think we get an skewed view because we see our own government kind of following along in part of the Israelis just almost obsequiously agreeing to everything that they do. But elsewhere in the world, Israel is becoming a pariah, you know, among European governments and that may not matter to Israel,

but down the line, when the U.S. administration changes, that may matter a great deal. I'm not talking purely in financial terms, but you can't, without consequence, make yourself a prior for long periods of time. And I think there are Israelis who are concerned about that. And I think, too, when you're talking about direct threats to Israel, this feeling that, hey, all we need to do is flatten Gaza and kill all the Palestinians we can and the province will go away. and likewise in Lebanon of course that's not going to happen

I mean his Bola is down for the time being but can you imagine you know we we are familiar with counterinsurgency the Israelis don't understand counterinsurgency I mean that's the bottom line and they don't understand that you generate

you generate recruits for the cause by doing the things that you were doing and that again is just going to build up pressure of steam that sooner or later is going to burst again. You know, you can't clamp down 100% time on all these territories. Israel's economy is suffering, and that's another reason why Netanyahu's indefinite extension of the war in Gaza is unpopular because it's affecting individual Israelis across the board.

They've mobilized 300,000 reserves, which is a huge. reserve is over and over again, which is a huge percentage of a 10 million person population. And the economy has suffered severely. I mean, I've been to Israel three or four times since 7 October, and the tourist industry is down the toilet. And, you know, unfortunately, it's the same in Jordan. It's the same in neighboring countries. The long-term economic impact of these continued wars is there was something that is.

Israel is also having like these really interesting and maybe potentially catastrophic internal demographic issues. We see the stuff going on with the ultra-Orthodox. And recently I think there was a move to cut welfare to this population partly, or at least it's tied into the fact that they won't serve in the IDF. They won't comply with conscription. And do you see that as having like some pretty drastic internal effects on Israel? in the coming years? That's a really good point about the Hasidic Jews. Bottom line is, I don't see that as being such a rift.

So the move to enforce the fact that they have to join the military to conscript them is genuinely very popular in Israel because there's building tension and resentment against that community. And just a little bit of a background. They were, you know, in the post-war years at the birth of Israel, they were, the acidic Jews were brought in and given these protections and in a purposeful policy to rebuild them as part of Jewish and Israeli culture after, you know, the Holocaust. And like a lot of preservation programs, though, it's got out of control, right?

It's like the, I mean, you name it. I'm trying to, without being too facetious, I'm thinking of wildlife. They don't have a predator. But the point is that they build and build. They don't contribute to the economy. They don't work. They just, you know, they learn about the Torah and they forward the Jewish religion, which is always being considered an important aspect of Israeli culture.

But they don't work in, you know, they don't work. in IT or in companies and they don't serve in the military. And that in particular has caused resentment because they tend to be, you know, they tend to be vociferous too in the support of Zionism. And they tend to, you know, they represent a disproportion number of the settlers on the West Bank, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a feeling, at least there was before 7 October and it has continued within Israeli society that they contribute to a lot of the problems and a lot of tensions,

but they're not prepared to defend the country. And so conscripting them is largely being a positive move. But Netanyahu's walking a tightrope because he does receive political support from that community along. You know, I'm not combining, I'm not conflating right-wing Zionist with Hasidic Jews, but I'm just saying there is a big shaded area on the Venn diagram. And Netanyahu does thrive a lot of his support from both, both circles of the diagram. But to your point, yeah, I think there's a, there's tremendous amount of division, the Israeli society over the war.

But it's centered on the hostages rather than what's happening to Gaza. I'd also add on to that, that the demographic issue that you bring up, Andy makes a good point, that there's this coalition that the current government has support. That's not a majority of the country. And actually, it's a plurality country where there are many different groups. It's not like in the United States where you have kind of two big parties. It's actually even more complicated than Lebanon's politics, where there are many, many parties in Israel that some of them only have one person representing that party in their parliament, in the Nesit. And we have to also remember that in 2018, Israel passed the basic law that said it's a Jewish state.

It's like a purely Jewish state for Jewish people only. But the question remains of the 25% of the population of Israeli citizens that are Palestinian. And then there's another percentage of the population that also serves in the military and is dying for the state of Israel. and those are the Druze. The Druze are not Jewish, and some would say they're not Muslim. It depends how you define what Drew's religion is. But that's a significant part of the population that is fighting and dying for this state. And there's tension beyond the current past two years of war that we're looking at.

If you remove that from the equation and look at what's actually happening domestically, there are a lot of fissures under the surface of domestic politics that once this conflict is in the past, those fissures will begin to bubble up once again, just like they were. two years ago, right before October 7th happened. There were protests in the street in some ways related to these demographic fissures that, like I said, again, will bubble up. Yeah, at some stage, Israel cannot be both a Jewish state and a democratic state. You know, and Yasserifat used to say, eventually we will win through the womb of the Palestinian woman. And there may be some truth in that.

You know, that's partly why the Israelis were so keen to bring. in immigration in the 70s and 80s because they you know I suppose they could but they're unlikely disenfranchised to 25% of population that are Palestinian but they have a much higher birth rate than the Israeli population and to John's point yeah actually there's a lot of Druis and Bedouins in the IDF if you read about Naha laws the fall of not not the Cabberts, but the base itself. The fact that so many of the garrisons survive was attributed to a, not truce, but a Bedouin officer who died defending basically about 15 IDF soldiers who had taken shelter in the control room there.

So, yeah, it's, I mean, it's a great point. it's there's all kinds of fractures within within Israeli society. The left right, you know, the split between the left and right that was always there is not so prevalent. The left seems to have kind of drifted away. But there is definitely

vociferous opposition to Netanyahu. He's a very divisive figure. Israelis seem to either love him or hate him. And then, you know, the other Democratic graphics that John was talking about. And of course, you've got the old animosity, too, between, John, what are the non-Ashkenazi Israelis called? The Sephardum and the Mizrahi. The Sephardum and Ashkenazi, yeah, the Sephardum have, in the last decade, have kind of come to prominence, both within the IDF and also in the government than they used to be.

And there's even segregation within public schools between Mizrahi, which are Arab Jews, that were there before Israel was created versus the Ashkenazi specifically, where some schools actually separate whether you're Mizrahi or Ashkenazi, and the Mizrahis are considered less capable of attending class with the Ashkenazis, which are European origin. John, what about, what about, say, Moroccan Jews? I mean, there was a big immigration, a flux of immigrants from Iraqians, Sudan East Jews do the games. Yeah. I mean, I've heard that there's prejudice against this, well, at least from that community that they consider that they are sometimes regarded as being second tier citizens.

There's definitely a preference for Ashkenazi in leadership positions and then within military ranks and within schools and other public service places, there's certainly separation preferences that you can see expressed where Mizrahim especially, the Arab origin, are at the lowest level. Then you have Ethiopians and things around there. And then there's the safardom are kind of in the middle, and then Ashkenazing at the top. I'm sorry, go ahead, Jen. I mean, do you guys ever read that pretty, like, brutal quote from Netanyahu from, like, 30 years ago where he was talking about the black soldiers in the IDF? And he said, like, yeah, the blacks are okay as long as they're led by white officers.

Like, oh, my God. Jesus. That sounds something like, you know, from the 20s, right? Yeah. About the Indian Army, British and Dutch. Denali. I want to touch on, like, West Bank and what's going on there because there's a lot of rumblings about Israel looking to completely occupy even more spots to make it impossible

for the Palestinian sides to be able to, you know, travel to each other and stuff. And people in the news are kind of saying that it's in reaction to a lot of the European states calling for a two-state solution, which, you know, I thought it was like the broad policy for all of us in the West. maybe not inside of Israel, but what are they doing in terms of gearing up towards that, like from what you guys have heard or seen or mud wrestle for who goes first? Andy, I'm going to pick then. I'm taking control here.

Yeah, I mean, I don't have any profound insights, but I will say this. I was in the West Bank this time last year. I went into Ramallah and it was pretty, I mean, very, very tense. I've been to the West Bank before, but the difference was stark. And streets were, I mean, I may have just hit it at a bad time. Streets were, you know, unusually empty patrols everywhere. And actually, I was pulled over by, pulled aside by some Palestine. Indians because I was done me, I was taking photographs and they made some people irate.

But, you know, I mean, a year or two before, no one would have cared. You would have seen even tourists there. But the, I know it sounds like a kind of a very shallow thing to say, but a sense of occupation there was very strong. You know, it used to be, and I forget how the areas were categorized, A, B and C, were the terms for the Israelis used. And so there are certain areas that were pleased by the Palestinians and the Israelis only went in there to do targeted raids and, you know, occasionally. And for the most part, all you saw there were Palestinians where those areas now are regularly being patrolled by Israelis.

And there are regular infringements by, of course, settlers into Palestinian areas, sometimes very aggressively. and you've probably seen in the media about times where they'll just, you know, a bunch of Yahoo's will run in armed Yahoo's and set fire to a Palestinian town and shoot a few people and then leave. And sadly with impunity. And so it's just not, yeah, it's a pretty, pretty flawed atmosphere there. It's hard unless you've been there to imagine what it's like. But dear to your point, no, I mean,

I don't see any, I don't see that situation getting any better. I really don't. I mean, there's no, because there are no, I use the term sanctions and the broad term, but there's nothing to prevent the Israelis doing what they're doing on the West Bank right now. There's nothing to prevent the settlers running wild whenever they want to and basically running pogroms on the Palestinians, which is what is happening. and if you think I'm exaggerating, you're wrong. I mean, burning down,

burning down entire villages, shooting people. It happens. It has been happening regularly. And for the most part, people turn a blind eye to it. I think part of the problem also is lack of knowledge about these events from the outside, because for a long time, they weren't reported well for whatever reason. but then with the October 7th war starting, there's a lot of signal coming from the Gaza conflict, and that actually creates noise against the West Bank issues.

So there's very limited time for people to read media, listen to media, watch it. So what they're seeing instead is the things that are pulling them, gravitating toward the Gaza issues because many people can only focus on one issue on a foreign topic at a time. So Israel right now, it's Gaza. And they don't have time to separate what's going on in Gaza, what's happening in West Bank, what's happening in Golan Heights, what's happening with southern Lebanon, because that's also really important right now that the Lebanese forces, Lebanese armed forces, are basically empowered to defend the country.

Hezbollah is weakened, but they're not empowered enough to actually defend their country because if they are, then they can't counterbalance against Israel. So, like, for a long time, they haven't been allowed to have an Air Force. Like, that's one example that when people are looking at these issues, they're thinking, oh, Gaza, it's a very small moment of time that they have to find. focus on this. And I remember in 2019, I was working at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, and we had the quote-unquote peace agreement that we were signing with the Palestinians to Jared Kushner was over there setting up how the West Bank would connect to Gaza and there would be this Palestinian state.

And looking at it on a map, it was crazy to look at because it's not a state. It's two pieces of land connected by a heavily militarized piece of road and all this, which was, you know, that was on paper. now we're seeing it actually happening because this is a long-standing strategy of creating facts on the ground since 1946. It's always been this way where there will be an idea, a plan like an Oslo 1, Oslo 2, or 1967, 73, 1978, all these times where there have been public agreements between Israel, Palestinians, that have been mediated by Norway, by the United States, by whomever. And if those agreements don't pan out, Israel just continues moving forward anyway. And actually with Smotrich right now in the West Bank, that's what Smotrich's idea is, as minister, is to slowly do exactly what they said they were going to do back in 2019, which is to separate

Judea and Samaria physically, and that way that people living in the north of the West Bank cannot move to the south of West Bank. Right now it's difficult for them, but it's not impossible. But the plan is to make it completely impossible. And by doing that, you now create three landmasses inside of this Levantine region. So you have Gaza, you have Judea and you have South. Samaria as three separate physical entities, which further degrades Palestinian authority. And of course, there's no more Hamas government in Gaza. So now you have two ungoverned spaces that essentially takes power away from any Palestinian

leadership. And state there, of course, is to not have any Palestinian leadership anywhere. And it's part of Israel only, one state solution. Jeez. Jack Murphy? I mean, I don't have anything to add. I think, you know, the other question that I wanted to ask you guys, and I know we'll probably jump into Ukraine and Russia next, but it seems like between Russia and Israel, both of

these countries are in a competition, in a race, almost, to see which one of them can light the fuse on World War III first. I mean, kind of back to my original question, I guess. I mean, these countries are violating international norms, country sovereignties, crossing international borders, all this stuff with actual physical, you know, kinetic attacks. What is this bode for world order in the next couple decades? Yeah, I think, I think to me the saddest part of this is U.S. compliance. And I mean, we just cease to be a factor, right? And the more we cease to be a factor, the more everyone kind of thumbs their nose to the United States.

I mean, I think, you know, this may sound, this may sound naive, but I think certainly those of us who've worn uniform did it for, because we believe that our country represented values. And when we went to war, I won't say that was okay, but it was okay because we felt in our hearts that, you know, even if we didn't believe directly in that war, we felt that overall our country was a force for good in the world, right? and that's why we went and we went for other reasons yes for those to left the right end of us but that was the bottom line that we were proud to wear the uniform those reasons

and so now it is rather disheartening to say the least to find that our country no longer represents those values and sadly sometimes represents opposite values and you know Jack to your point what happened in Poland anyone who think

and John knows more about this than I do but What happened in Poland was not an accident. It was Russia probing again NATO defenses. You don't fly 19 drones deep into Polish airspace because of a navigational error, right? And that wasn't an isolated incident. There had been 150 kinetic attacks on European soil. When I say kinetic, I'm including sabotage.

I'm including the, you. You know, things like... Well, that's what John was saying about coming to take another bite at the apple, right? Yeah. We're going to do it and we're going to see what you... You know, it's kind of this date the comp leave of like, what are you going to do about it? And what are we doing about it? Nothing.

You know, I mean, a robust NATO response... I mean, Article 4 is nothing. Article 4 is like right to consult. It's like absolutely nothing. What NATO should be doing is moving air defense systems up to the border and shooting down drones that are even heading for NATO airs. base. I mean, that is absolutely legitimate. Those drones were launched from Belarus. I mean, it's, you know, so we should be doing things to Belarus too, but certainly preemptive contact

engagement of the threat. And that sends a message loud and clear. And we, you know, yes, we are, we're at the same time, we're reinforcing Ukraine's air defense. But that is, yeah, we're not even doing that. You know, the Russians have been, you name it, from cables in the North Sea and the Baltic Ocean, cutting fiber optic cables to attempting to poison water supplies, to planting incendiary devices in warehouses, you know, in the UK, it's a sabotage of ryan metal facilities in Germany. I mean, across the board,

it's been they've just there's just been no attempt even to keep things covert you know it's almost a joke

and it does seem like there's this new era in world order where you know we're going to see these like increasingly provocative

actions that I think would have been not completely unthinkable but they were rather uncommon and rare

and now they're seeming almost commonplace well I think what's happening is they're actually not new. Russia has had a typical probing mentality, and what has happened is in the past,

whoever they're probing will react in a way that stops the probe. And Russia's seeing how far can I get, the problem right now is nobody's stopping the probe. Think about the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, that's an excellent example of provocation to see how far can Russia get. Well, it almost got to a nuclear war. And if you look in Syria, when the Wagner group moved eastward toward our own positions, we stopped the provocation. Same thing with Russia, SU35's flying over Turkish airspace from Syria, Turkey stopped that provocation in its tracks, and Russia pulled back and didn't try again. And right now, what's happening is Russia is seeing that, oh, at my periphery, nobody's stopping me. So I'm going to expand my periphery. And this actually

happened in 2008 with the invasion of Georgia. They're still there in South Ossetia. They're still issuing Osetian passports to Georgians living in this occupied space. And same with Abkhazia and even Transnistria and Eastern Moldova. Like, there are a lot of places where Russia has just pushed out the edges to see how far can the edges go, and they create new edges when they're not stopped. And right now what we're seeing is them attempting to create new edges. And until somebody stops them, those edges will become their own interior. And that's something that has to stop from the NATO perspective. But as we were saying earlier, if Trump is making these ultimatums about unless NATO countries all stop buying Russian oil, we're not going to help. Well, that's not how NATO is written. That contract is very clear about what NATO means. It's about defense.

It's not about economics. Economics certainly is a part of defense. and vice versa. But that treaty is to help each other, period. That's what it's for. Yeah, the interesting thing is I think, I mean, we are seeing European nations step up to the plate far more than before. And they've been driven there, partly by kind of U.S. apathy, but also by awareness of the threat, especially with Poland and the Czech Republic and the Baltic nations, who have all up spending on their GDP considerably. Poland is now a leader within NATO and has completely modernized its armed forces in the process of completely modernizing its armed forces.

The Baltics are by their own foreign policy statements, you know, if you watch them, they are not, especially Estonia, they don't shrink from out to out and out confrontation, Russia, because they are sure that war is coming to them. and they have very better memories, of course, of Soviet occupation. And in fact, in Ukraine, we had a number of Estonians in the Mozart group. And if you look in the foreign legion there, and some of those guys were active duty. I'm not lying, active duty, Estonia soldiers taking leave of absence. And that government was kind of turning a blind eye. Yeah, that's no exaggeration because they knew. that they were next. So I think you're seeing a lot of that. The UK, of course, you know,

even under Labor government is all in on that's the ironic thing. I mean, you know, you've got essentially a socialist government in the UK and yet they are all in on defending Ukraine against the Russian threat. And yet we are, we have backpedaled. So I'm just looking for silver linings and all of this, I guess, Jack. because that's my role. So, Andy, you're the Supreme Commander of NATO. What are you ordering? All right.

Well, definitely. I mean, just what I said. I mean, I would say the rules of engagement are to engage Russian drones and missiles in Ukrainian airspace if they're heading towards NATO. I mean, from a distance, all right? Don't let them. I mean, it's too late to let them cross the border. That's common sense.

That's not an aggressive act. You know, and as John has pointed out. pointed out. The Russians, we're always, you know, there's this, there's this, this political dynamic within the United States. You hear this mantra about escalation and we're being dragged into World War III, which is absolute, absolute bullshit. The Russians don't escalate when you confront them. They escalate when you back down. And that anyone who thinks otherwise this just isn't reading recent history or 20th century history. And so that's what we should be doing.

Just like I think, you know, the way to drive negotiations and to come to a ceasefire isn't to like be nice to Putin lay out the red carpeted. It's to say, hey, buddy, these are the repercussions. If you don't, we're all in. Are we going to fast track Ukraine into NATO? And we are going to ramp up support for NATO in a way that you cannot imagine. and it's not going to, I mean, support for the Ukraine in a way that you can't imagine. That's the only language that the Russians seem to understand.

You know, you can't just go talk to them nicely. And for some reason, the current administration has this idea, like, we should just be nice to dictators and, like, they'll play ball with us. And we see over and over again, I mean, that's not the case. Yeah, 25 years he's been playing this game. And I was just watching a news reel because I'm a sad individual. You know, I watch old news reels from on YouTube late at night. And I was watching one from the UK where he visited Tony Blair back in Putin back in 2001. And there was all this stuff in the news about it's a new Russia and blah, blah, blah.

And the days of Russia being under enemy are over. You know, of course, sadly, that's, you know, absolute bullshit. I mean, that was the same song and dance with. George W. Bush, too. You know, he looked in his eyes and fell in love or whatever the quote is. You know what I mean? Yeah, I saw a man who I could negotiate with. Hey, John McCain said when he looked into his eyes,

the only thing he saw was a K, a G, and a B. They should make a T-shirt about for that, man. I'm just, I'm not yet comfortable enough to look so closely into another man's eyes. more about like talking about how the U.S. is kind of like, for lack of a better word, shrinking from this fight. The new national defense strategy that we talked about last week a little bit that was like rumored is like it's coming out more and more that like we're pivoting from China and Russia being, you know, the near peer threats that we're focusing on to regional and domestic. How does that explain to me what? a $1 trillion defense budget means when you're not focusing on the actual people who are the as close peer to peer competitors as we have.

The real threats are Venezuela and Greenland, of course. Yeah. I said it in the group chat, like Venezuela, Mississippi can invade Venezuela. Like, what are we doing? The smart bastards, I'm north. But yeah, those fucking Canadians. With a democratic country, though, you have domestic politics driving foreign politics. every four years or every two years, depending on what we're talking about.

And right now, the national discourse is all about immigration, cartels, drugs, and the United States, which means that U.S. foreign policy is going to reflect those domestic issues to some degree if that's the same line of agreement as those in the Senate, Congress, and the White House. And that's what it is right now, and even the judiciary. everyone is focused on the exact same direction of domestic response to these international issues. And looking at the NDS and what will eventually be the national military strategy underneath that, if we're focusing on the war on drugs, quote unquote, war on drugs, that means that our national defense policy will also focus on that,

which means we're going to point our gun southward, which always kind of shakes me a little bit because you have to think about, okay, these drugs are coming from the south, but they came from somewhere else before that, especially synthetic drugs like fentanyl. And even back in 2014, I was in Southeast Asia and we were working on an issue over there where methamphetamine precursors were coming out of India and China. Because at the time, there were only three factories in the world that produced the ephedrine that was used in methamphetamine. One of them was in India and two of them were in China. This was like more than 10 years ago.

And India agreed at the time to police that, which then meant China was the only one still selling them to cartels. As you were saying, Jack, like, why aren't we stopping the Chinese precursor points? because that would cut off the supply of synthetics to Mexico and other states in the southern South America. But instead, we're just kind of swatting at the later on down the road people that are just making money off this thing that came to them from somewhere else. I think that's very ignorant, to put it bluntly, to be hitting this, you know, seller who got it from somewhere else. And the people before them got it from somewhere else, there's a long supply chain, just like any economy. And instead of focusing on that supply chain. do you buy into or I mean do you do you support the the thesis out there that you know the Chinese feel that they have suffered this century of humiliation and that you know the the precursor chemicals being flooded into central and south America by them is to them they see it as revenge for the opium wars I think that is something that could be argued in favor of but I don't think it's actually what's going on I think it's probably more that.

that China is a modernizing economy. It has been since Deng Xiaoping in 1978 made his famous statement about the black cat, white cat, still a cat kind of thing with capitalism coming into China, but it's not capitalism. I think China, they're having a lot of economic problems right now with their own domestic real estate issues and other large-scale domestic economic problems. And probably money coming into the country is good money. And it's not a concern of where does that money come from. It's more about how do we keep up the pretense of our country rapidly modern,

Well, one way to do that is huge industrial scale espionage against the United States defense industry and also against other technology in the United States capitalizing on rare earth minerals and also production, domestic production of electronic vehicles, like all these kind of like market centered things. And one of those market centered things is precursor chemicals and other things that go to other countries. And it's not so much about like, oh, let's do this perniciously to hurt America instead we need to do something about making as much money as possible right now so that our

economy doesn't look like it's in shambles because once it's in shambles and the whole thing we've been saying, the Potemkin Village we've been building will collapse and they don't want that to happen. I think that's probably more realistically what's happening in the minds behind the scenes. So they're institutionalizing the illicit economy for economic purposes? Well, it's only illicit to us. I mean, they have their own way, they have their own laws, they have their own perspectives. I mean, for us, it's terrible and people are dying here. But how much does that matter to the factory owner that owns the effedering factory. probably not very much. He cares a lot more about the closer term issue of his balance sheet, keeping it red or black, you know.

Andrew? Yeah, no, I was I was soaking all of that in. I think, yeah, I think that's a great point. And there's certainly a prevalent feeling not that I can speak for the Chinese public at large. But we are not liked there, you know, and we haven't been for a long period of time. and saying it's someone who grew up in Hong Kong. But, you know, if you look back at, I'm reading a book right now, which I do occasionally by a guy who was New York Times correspondent in Beijing, happened to be there on 9-11.

You know, people there were cheering what was happening. And so I don't think anyone in China, you know, I think they regard fentanyl and drugs as being a, uniquely American problem because of our rather, what's the word, key in culture and our self-absorption and all of these things. And so it's, yeah, it's certainly not their problem. And it's something that we're trying to blame on the rest of the world. So I would guess from their viewpoint.

From our viewpoint, you know, I think that yes, one can overplay the military threat that China poses to the United States, but that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that there are areas of potential Chinese expansion that do not align with our national interests. And so simply pivoting away from Asia, not that we ever really pivoted towards Asia, but pivoting away can only be a negative thing. I mean, I forget what percentage of the world's economy, the world's trade has to do with Asia, but it's a significant amount. Whether or not you care about the future of Taiwan, there are issues there that go deeper than just defensive territory.

They have to do with the global economy. They have to do, again, with the credibility of the United States. And so turning away from that and can only be negative. And, you know, it's not as though, I mean, we've got the largest, most powerful military in the world. So the last point on this, I would say, is if we're focusing on our domestic borders, really? I mean, isn't that a little bit of overkill?

Why not protect our national interest overseas? Because there's no such thing. I mean, there's this viewpoint that this kind of isolationist viewpoint that there is United States and there's some cutoff line somewhere just. offshore or south or north of our borders, and that we don't have to worry about anything beyond that is it was archaic in the 19th century, and I just don't understand it now. Yeah, I think things like Planned Columbia are very positive, and we should probably replicate the successes from that, rather than just using our military instrument to do military effects,

like strikes and things like that. We should be thinking more about security cooperation, more about security assistance. China's thinking about security. cooperation much more every day. If you look at the Solomon Islands, they basically got an election to vote in their favor domestically in the Solomon Islands. So Gavare was elected, who is anti-US, he's pro-China. And China's been doing this all over the South China Sea area, the different small countries around there, gaining support for recognizing China instead of Taiwan. So that's happening. South America, they're speaking with governments there and militaries there. They're bringing Chinese police to train domestic police in those countries. This is a perfect textbook opportunity for

the U.S. to use security cooperation as an instrument of military power, a positive one that actually empowers people and shows those people what the U.S. can do for you and then what you can do for yourself once we've worked ourselves out of the job because that's the point of security cooperation. And it worked in Colombia. And it can work throughout South America, especially this is such a close area to the United States, as you're saying, Andy, like our borders are secured by our partners. That's how it should be, especially Mexico. Mexico should be one of our greatest security cooperation partners. And instead, we're looking at it as this enemy state, a rogue state with rogue provinces

that are the biggest threat to the U.S. right now, which is ludicrous. Yeah. So that brought up a really interesting point. When you look at the places and conflicts where the United States has been successful, they aren't where we've poured in conventional troops. It has been where we have had a light touch. And Colombia is a great example. You know, arguably, there are others, arguably El Salvador, though I understand that, you know, for a while today we were supporting a pretty horrific regime.

But the point is that we moved it in the right direction and helped counter a counterinsurgency without pouring troops into that. And we don't pay enough attention to that. Everyone's fixed sector in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when it comes to foreign policy, pivoting here. all there doesn't mean massive basing and it doesn't have to be or forward-deployed truths, but it does mean it does mean persistent presence, but that persistent presence could be a very light touch. And I know, you know, Jack and I are probably a little jaded, not jaded, but biased in this, but special operations forces are a great example. Marines are a great example,

too. The army, the army S-FAB brigades conceptually were a great example, but of course they've been done away with, you know, so we don't seem to be progressing and learning these lessons. And Jonathan is a former Marine and special operator. We're all Marines show. I'm sorry, Jack. I normally were all, we're all Marines show. Thanks a God, Mick and Jason are here today because I can't handle fucking four of you. Well, then we'd have a fire team.

We could solve these problems. Yeah. All over the well. Are you going to get sponsorship from the Marine Corps? I'm trying to. I honest to God, I'm trying to. Yeah. I mean, I would think that seeing us on the show would just be a huge recruiting drive.

And frankly, I was kind of shocked at their marketing budget year to over year. It's astounding. It's like $190 million a year or something. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Or they signed a 10-year deal for $1.9 bill. I don't know how they allocate it, but let's say, let's call it 190.

They could shoot us over a mill. I won't even notice it's gone. Yeah. I mean, honestly, this podcast probably puts more kids in the military every year than their entire recruiting budget does. Well, actually, I forget the name of the ad agency. It's something Thompson, right? EW. Thompson. Yeah.

And they do some great commercials. But the commercial, I mean, but they're kind of few and far between. Yeah, they've actually merged. It's called VML now. That's all right. Yeah, I've been stalking their employees on LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah, and you're right, Jack.

I mean, certainly, I mean, I would have joined the military all over again after watching half a dozen episodes of the team house. Watching your own interviews on the team house? I don't do that. That guy's so cool. I want to do that. Wow. What's what his accent, though?

He's American? What's your favorite episode? What's your favorite episode, Jack? And aside from the ones with me, Oh, man, that's a tough one. Yeah, that's a really tough one. I would ask you, D, next. The one, okay, so the funniest one is the episode we did with Phil Campion, S-A-S-S guy.

Yeah. I was laughing throughout the entire, that guy is so funny. He's a picture here. He's a funny guy. Yeah. Was he the one, he was the one telling the story about the, where the plane was hijacked on the tarmac, and they sent the guy out. to S-A-S-guy out to to empty the

shit tank. Yeah, empty the shitter. Yeah. And he pressed the wrong button. He got, he got sprayed. Yeah, that was Phil's story. He runs his own, he runs his own podcast, actually. It's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. He has a lot of the UK guys on there.

Forces, I think it's called. Yeah. But actually that brings us into topic number three, D. Do you want to, roll into that. All right. So there's been a lot of drama going on, I guess, in the vet bro podcast space. They're not even vet bros.

Like one of them, David Huckstead and a friend of ours combat story, Ryan Fuget. Yeah. They've taken down their Delta Force videos and interviews with Delta Force, former Delta Force operators. Why? I guess voluntarily because, I don't know, my guess, well, Jack's guess is like that. Some crotchety old, you know, command sergeant majors and stuff are busting the balls of the former Delta guys. And they are now, in turn, telling these guys to like, oh, maybe can you take it down for me? So it's not, you know, we're not up there.

Like, they're not breaking upsec. It's a very, for the most part, tame interviews. Yeah, yeah. And we just want to say right here right now that Teamhouse will fucking not be doing that ever. Like, I don't care if Sergeant Slaughter calls my phone. I don't give a fuck. That's not going to happen. ever.

He's talking tough now. Yeah. It's not going to happen, bro. A little bit of a backstory on that. So, I mean, the things that have happened publicly, you've seen some pretty high profile stuff with Tim Kennedy, John McPhee, and some other guys, some pretty big controversies, at least in the veteran space, you know, maybe not in America at large. But you've seen some of those things escalate.

And then as far back about a year ago, I was first. with a email that I was asked not to share, but I'll tell you what it's about. It's an email that went out from Delta Force's public affairs officer with comments from the unit CSM. And, you know, obviously the commander had to be in the mix somewhere in that. But so the PAO sent this email out to all of what they call veteran unit members or former unit members like FUMs. So it goes out to all of them. and basically is admonishing them to stop doing podcasts and reiterating that they do not support doing podcasts. They do not support guys writing books.

They do not support guys telling their stories on whatever medium it may be. And then, you know, the kind of boilerplate, you know, preamble national security secrets, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that went out. And the interesting thing about that email was, I mean, they're within their rights, I think, to remind people of classification and say, don't break classification. I get that part. But the PAO went further and encouraged former unit members to socially shame and scold their teammates. Yes. It said, call them out on social media. That's in the email like that I have. And that's pretty wild. Like, why is an Army PAO telling private.

citizens to socially shame on on social media other private citizens um that's pretty wild to me and and to my mind uh steps across some bounds um you know i'm out of the military the military can inbox me as much as they want i don't work for them sorry bro like i'm out now um so i i don't know for a fact, but I suspect that this is probably the unit CSM or you know, Trooper Squadron level CSMs

that are getting pissy about all these former unit members doing podcasts and some of them becoming very controversial. McPhee is the most prominent one, I think, and I'm not going to weigh in on that. You can make of that what you will. What's the background of that?

I'm aware of the whole Tim Kennedy thing. allegations of embellishing stories and making up stories and then there was this big expose I guess you could say where stuff came out about how he was kicked out of the unit and then he was kicked out of special forces and retired as an infantry E8 and the whole background to like there's allegations of spousal abuse and other things there um yeah and not excuse me they took away his tab as I understand it So I think probably there are there are senior leaders in the unit that got upset that all this stuff is playing out publicly. And I will also say the same thing that I said on Seth Harps interview, because I've had these conversations with people.

The thing that J-Soc in Delta Force fears probably more than anything is increased oversight. they absolutely do not want the United States government putting more oversight on them. They don't want legislation. They absolutely don't want more legislation coming in because as things are, like the oversight on J-Soc is fairly light. They have a lot of freedom to do the things that they want to do. And there are fears that this sort of like public controversies, the like vet bro podcast circuit is going to have an influence on, you know, people's perception.

and ultimately on lawmakers perceptions, and they start to feel, hey, this unit's out of control. We need to get this under control. I think Seth's book, too, is kind of like the straw that broke the candles back. It's possible. Yeah.

It's possible, yeah. I'm really getting a unit-wide message about Relentless Strike, and they were like, do not acknowledge that this book exists. Do not read it. If you see it in the bookstore, do not touch it. If someone gives it to you, give it back. I think it was like 2014 or 15. It was like a whole unit-wide email.

about that so childish yeah and now and now it's required reading when you check into jason yeah it's funny how that works isn't it you go from being a pariah to being mandatory reading so our message is we're not taking down any of the delta force guys email uh videos and no no one has come to me as of yet i have heard you know if they do like yeah no one has come to me but i i still you know i believe that you know if you believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press, then those are things you have to stand up for sometimes. Um, you know, especially when it's the military is just trying to bully you and bully people around you. Um, you really have to stand up to that. Um, this isn't a thing like where a federal judge is sending out orders to podcasters,

like take down notices, like you will be in contempt of court if you do this. I don't think there's any premise that they, you know, any law that allows them to do that because of the constitutional freedoms we have. So all they can do is kind of like threaten people. And you kind of have to, you have to stand firm against that kind of stuff. Yeah, we've also been asked by certain guys, former operators, to take out like benign stuff from our interviews, like shit about like thermobarics. Yeah, I can.

We're not doing that. It's happened once or twice where I think guys got some pushback from their former colleagues or their friends. And they've asked me like, can you take down this interview or whatever? And I'm like, hey, look, if you can point out to me where there are national security secrets being divulged that could endanger operations or personnel, I will review that. I will look at it and I'll have to make a decision. But if there's a legitimate national security issue, I will consider removing that part of the

interview. And yeah, when the one person came back to me, it was like, oh, the third. Barrett grenades are classified and I'm like there's a Wikipedia page on this like I'm not going to sorry yeah yeah so we urge the vet bro podcast fear very few people who stay strong I just want to add that very few people have suffered more than I have after a team house interview from yeah Andy got fucked like screwed over that's right you got like security clearance reviewed right yeah I got in all kinds yeah I mean for talking about I'm not going to talk about it here now, but it wasn't it wasn't a security violation. No. I got it back, but it took 14 months. And not just that, but do you remember the whole Ukraine interview where I talked about violations of the law of armed conflict by Ukrainians? And, you know, and just saying, hey, listen, this happens too. and in order to go after the Russians at the time it was you know I felt like no one had

more right to criticize what was going on in Ukraine and when I was risking my life every day in Ukraine for the Ukrainian cause but my point was simply hey I want to be on the right on the side of good and there are things that the Ukrainians have to clean up too in order to be able to point the finger at the Russians that was that was the gist of what I was saying and actually Zelensky agreed with me because he said much the same thing two days later, but without the death threats, presumably. But unbelievable. I mean, that was the spinoffs from that or the like videos that went more viral than

the T-Mouse video with just clips of me doing or saying that. Yeah, that got us in the New York Times. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you, Andy. Any other bombshells you want to drop here to get us? Yeah, yeah.

Where former soft veterans drink hard alcohol in a living room setting. That's an apt description of the show, I feel like. The same article called me a solo flyer deeply steeped in violence. A solo, yeah, a solo flyer with a background deeply steeped in violence. He's a traveling minstrel of death. Anyway, Steve, yeah, but we all survived.

But I didn't call you. I didn't call you guys and cry. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is what it is, right? Yeah, I mean, I've said stupid things at times. We're still friends, kind of. I mean, yeah, but the clearest thing was absolute nonsense. I mean, it's like so ridiculous.

Yeah, it was so overblown and over the top when Andy was making a pretty reasonable comment that didn't strike me as comments. controversial at all. And the funny thing is, when we try to extract top secret stuff from you during the show, like the first episode or second episode, when we were talking about ISIS and what was going on there, you were like, you were like back off. No, you can't say that. He's got a good memory.

Yeah. Even after the show where I collapsed and fell half unconscious in a snowbank. Yeah, it was like too great snow out. We drank the three of us together, drank like a bottle and. a half of whiskey that night. Not recommended when you're on a podcast. No. Those days, I just want to add, those days are in the past now for the team house.

Those were in the- Kind of is. Kind of God, being honest. The Wild West days of the early, early shows, you know, where Jack would say he was going to the restroom and we wouldn't see him again the rest of the show. It would be. Oh, yeah. I have a super cut of those moments that are as only allowed for patrons.

That's all you guys served was hard liquor. I mean, the studio was a food desert. Yeah, we cut the drinking way back. Yeah. There was no water. All you could drink was whiskey. Smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. Yeah.

It'll come back at some point. It'll come back. For the 500th, 400th episode maybe. Is that what you're on? That's amazing. How many years has that? Five years? Six years, right? Five years.

2019. It's longer than five years. Yeah, it's 2019. Yeah. John, do you want to tell people where they can go, show people your book and tell people where they can go to find it? Oh, this book right here? Yeah, yeah.

This old thing? This old thing just sitting here. Yeah. Yeah, this is Iran's shadow weapons, unconventional warfare, intelligence operations, and covert action. It came out in July, but it's a bunch of declassified. information that I got through Freedom Information Act requests and also a lot of foreign language media that I was able to translate myself and a lot of foreign government documents.

Like there's a lot of Iranian documents that got leaked that are now translated in there for the very first time. And it shows kind of like how everything happens behind the scenes. If you ever wondered like how do they try to assassinate people in the U.S.? Well, I lay it all out in there like very, very detailed. There's no opinion in the book. It's all analysis because I'm an intelligence guy. That's my background.

And this is basically a very long. intelligence report. That's kind of how I look at it. And about 25% of the pages are references. So you can go and look up on your own and make your own decisions about it. You can find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whatever you want. Kindle version. There's a hardcover or hard copy version. I'm working on an audiobook for it. I had to contract somebody for that to the publisher. Do you do it yourself, John. You've got a smooth voice. Really? Yeah. They told me, they started throwing all this technical stuff. like oh you got to have the sound levels here and like blah blah blah like clear they're trying

like shock me with the i did it in during covid in the closet in my bedroom and um and so seriously so all their clothes hanging around acted to muffled the noise and uh it's actually it's actually not bad you go into a zen mode at least i had to but you do yeah i should try i mean d you should do that too i think uh hey well you got to write a book first. You have to write books. Yeah. In your kind of Greek, Brooklyn, seriously, it would sell well. Yeah, I think so, for sure.

I made a movie. I didn't write a book, but I made a movie. That's my poster. That's a good movie, actually. It's fun. It's good. I watched it. Thanks, Jack. Thank you, Andy. God bless you guys. Check out Jonathan's book. The link is in the description. I've made it easy for you. It's incredible. Iran's shot of weapons. It's a great reference material.

Andy Milburn, when the Tempest gathers, his incredible memoir, link is in the description, as always. We're waiting on the other book about the Israel Gaza War, waiting with bated breath. Jack Murphy, we defy his book on Special Forces, on the unknown chapters of Special Forces history. That link will be in the description as well. I need to write a book. Everyone's got a books here. What the fuck? Jack, who's published that?

I self-published that book. Yeah, on Amazon. Yeah, I have a, I have a publisher I am working with. I'll have a new novel out in June that I'll tell folks about. It's a military thriller. I've read it. It's very good. No, I'd love to offline hear about your experiences, self-publishing.

Oh, yeah, we can wrap about that. I mean, after the show, I don't want to keep Jonathan here or any. Yeah. Patreon.com slash the Teamhouse and get you TeamHouse episodes and I's episodes completely ad-free and early. Check it out. It helps support the show YouTube is fucking us over. And that's it. I appreciate it, guys. As always, a great time. What's my T-Shunt? Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes on podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week.

It's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy, and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox,

and it will have the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man. Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kitt.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com slash join. You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link?

The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.kitt, kitkiloindia tango.com backslash join.