The Team House - Why Did U.S. B-1B Bombers Suddenly Leave the UK? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

We break down the return of airline hijacking concerns, suspected covert activity around RAF Fairford, drone threats, and a mysterious pneumonic plague death at a Russian research facility. We also dig into the John Chapman/SEAL Team Six controversy, the politics of valor awards, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and how American policy reshaped Iran’s influence across the region.VAER Watches ⬇️https://www.vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse get a free watch roll with your purchase.20% for active duty, veteran, leo, & first responders Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseJack's news outlet:⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️Jon's Twitter:https://x.com/jonathanhackettJon's LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettJon's books:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettJon's article we referenced in the show:https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/04/covert-action-in-irregular-wars/00:00 – Start02:12 – Eyes on Pastrami & Opening Banter02:38 – The Return of Aircraft Hijackings03:32 – Insider Threats & Pilot Security05:11 – Copycat Attacks, Radicalization & AI07:05 – Airline Security After 9/1108:12 – Lone Wolf or Sponsored Hijacking Plot?08:52 – What’s Really Happening Around RAF Fairford?10:06 – How British Counterintelligence Handles Suspected Cells11:25 – B-1 Bombers Evacuated From RAF Fairford12:05 – Why Drone Swarms Are So Hard to Stop13:28 – What the Fairford Threat Says About NATO14:17 – Is America About to Heavily Regulate Drones?16:36 – America’s Drone Startup Boom17:39 – Why U.S. Drone Innovation Is Falling Behind20:05 – “Escalate to De-escalate” & the Failure of Policy22:38 – A Pneumonic Plague Death at a Russian Research Facility24:01 – Russia’s History of Biological Weapons Programs25:14 – Novichok, Polonium & State Assassinations27:19 – AI, Microfluidics & the Future of Biological Warfare29:55 – The John Chapman / SEAL Team Six Controversy32:15 – Why Is the Chapman Story Coming Back Now?33:03 – Sorting Through the Roberts Ridge Claims34:25 – Does John Chapman Deserve the Medal of Honor?35:56 – The Legal Implications of Challenging the Award37:08 – The Optics of Attacking a Fallen Medal of Honor Recipient40:59 – Who Financed the Upcoming Documentary?42:29 – The Bigger Problem With GWOT Valor Awards43:56 – The Politics Behind Medal of Honor Awards45:26 – Revisiting the U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq45:46 – What Were U.S. Troops Still Doing in Iraq?46:50 – From Counter-ISIS to Containing Iran48:20 – Did the Iraq War Make Iran Stronger?49:43 – The Untold Intelligence War in Syria50:16 – Timber Sycamore & the CIA’s Syria Program52:00 – What the Episode Covered52:23 – Why Sykes-Picot Still Shapes the Middle East53:30 – SAS Operations in Northern IrelandBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

This episode is presented by VareW watches. Go to VareWatches.com slash the team house. It's going to be hard to redo it in the way that's like, as... Well, the one I had was like the size of a grapefruit. It was gigantic. Like, literally, it was round. And it was not a flat sandwich. It was a round.

Yeah. Like, there was so much, it's probably like a pound or almost a pound of roast beef in this thing. It was insane. We're talking about roast beef and not pastrami. So they had pastrami, roast beef, Rubin, turkey, there was a gluten-free and a vegan one that I ignored and just got the main sandwich. It was delicious. I mean, the corn beef is not like bad or anything like that, but at cats, you've got to get the

bistrami. Like, that's the thing. Yeah. I had the pastrami last week. They keep bringing this stuff up here to school. Shit, every week. Oh, that's pretty sick. Yeah.

This time it was Jane Street that was doing the talking. So they had to bring the sandwiches. That's pretty good. I go to these like academic events a lot of times. And like the folks from the UK tell me that when they have them over there, everyone's getting drunk on wine afterwards. Yeah. You have them here in the United States and like there's nothing. There's no refreshments.

There's no food. There's, you know, nothing. It's the stoic tradition like Mick has, you know. Yeah, yeah. Just suffer in silence, basically. Exactly. Yeah, like live on the street and just think about philosophy. Yeah.

Like Diogenes living in a clay jar on the side of the street and the, the agora. Speaking of the agoran philosophers, that's us what we're doing right now. Exactly. I will shout out one place in Brooklyn called Schelskis on Court Street. They make incredible pastrami. It's like you don't even need teeth to eat the sandwich. Like it just melts in your mouth. The cat is incredible.

Cats is the best. I'll try that place, D, next time I'm down there in the bridge. Sheldyski is really good. No, it's not. It's like Cobble Hill. Oh, no shit. Okay. Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side is also very,

Very good. Never even heard of that. Yeah, they've been there forever. Every time I go, like if I'm driving by cats, it's always like chaos. It's always like lines are massive. You have to try and get in there like at the perfect time where it's not as like packed. Guys, we're back. Izon geopolitics and Izon pastrami.

We're going to start another podcast called Izon Pistrami. Yeah. Yeah. Teeth optional. I try to go live. It doesn't work. And I'm not going to troubleshoot it. So whatever.

There's a lot of shit happening. Jack, you go ahead. You're smart. Well, you put it all on me. I don't know what's going on. How about this? This last week, there was an attempted aircraft hijacking.

It was fly Dubai, right? Yeah, we talked about that. I mean, that's kind of interesting because we haven't really seen hijackings. a long time. You know, they started really in the 1970s, and then we increased airport security and airline security, and that kind of stopped the hostage taking and that kind of stupid stuff mitigated a lot of it. And then, of course, 9-11 happened where they kind of flipped the script where we're not having political demands anymore. We're just murdering everyone. And obviously, you know, we drastically increased airport security after that. And since then, like, when we

When was the last time you really heard about an aircraft hijacking? I'm sure there have been some in other parts of the world. John's got them listed in this had the area. Yeah, there was one in Germany 11 years ago. That was the last one. Yeah, but the thing is, like, when we look at who is doing these things, look how much security we put at the gate for passengers, you know, a multi-billion dollar effort and how little we put on the pilots.

And there's a lot of trust in the pilots. And, I mean, the pilots generally are doing fine. There's actually a very interesting study highlighted in one of Malcolm Gladwell, books, I can't remember which one it was, maybe what the dogs are, one of them, about when a pilot will commit suicide with an aircraft, suicide by pilot. There's actually a spike in other suicides by pilot after that because of the way that the media effect has on readers, which includes some people who might be on the ledge and thinking about it. And it's kind of interesting to think about, will there be more hijackings in the near future because it kind of inspires or kind of gives

that little nudge to people who might have been thinking about this or planning about it? And they're like, you know what? Maybe this is the right thing to do. And actually, there was a chat GPT log that was just released to the public from someone that, a school shooter that killed two people and themselves. I think it was, I'll misspeak. I think it was FSU. It was one of these universities in the U.S. very recently. And he went through this whole chat GPT conversation, basically saying, like, how many people should I kill to get media attention? What kind of weapon should I use? How do I fix my shotgun so it works properly and all this stuff? And you look at the chat log and chat GPT is basically like pushing him along. And that's a new factor. I wonder, you know, if a future hijacking will this also be a part where you don't need this cell of guys because you've got the support of artificial intelligence or machine learning to serve that role to kind of push you along and develop you just like a human might that we used to have, you know. There's definitely social learning that takes place and learning in a negative context here as we're talking about. And I've never seen any literature to back this up, but I've suspected for a while. And I think a lot of other people have this observation with veteran suicides as well, that when one guy in the platoon, you know, takes his own life, you see like a spat of it of people around him. And so, yeah, like you said, it's these other folks who, you know, maybe we're on the ledge and they were very good at hiding it. And, you know, unfortunately, that happens.

But back in the 70s and the 80s, we saw some sophisticated aircraft hijackings, more sophisticated than this one we just saw the other day. And so when it comes to like the social learning of it, the old school, the Palestinian groups, I mean, they like received training in Libya and stuff like that. And some of them were nudged along by the KGB. They're making trips to East Germany and having meetings with Astazi. I mean, there's all kinds of weird shit that was going on back in. those days. So these groups, I guess what I'm getting at is these groups do not all evolve at the same time or the same pace that, you know, the ones we're going to see now are maybe going to be a little bit more amateurish, maybe because the people are relying on the internet and AI to tell

them, you know, hey, AI, how do I do a hijacking? And they're not being trained by, you know, professional, so to speak, terrorists or intelligence agents. And even with the guardrails the AI has, like, you know, maybe it won't let you ask the question of like, how do I hijack a plane? Instead, you could say, I'm a pilot. How do I protect myself from hijackings? And then it will give you instructions and you just invert them and then use that to do the exact thing that you weren't allowed to do. Well, it's also worth pointing out that flights that are flying into America have all kinds of added security measures. I think it's a lot, the security is a lot more stringent. And then the actual Israeli airline, L.L. is like super locked down.

Like, they're very, very few flights. You know, so like as far as like scale goes, it's not as hard for them. But I mean, nonetheless, I mean, they take security very seriously. So it's interesting that this one was, it was fly Dubai, I believe, and the actual hijack. Yeah. Well, they actually was over Saudi Arabian airspace. But when you look at the flight path, it's like, on the border. You know, there's that, that's almost flights track in the Middle East as they

fly over border lines to kind of minimize risk on either side. It's interesting. Yeah, we'll see what comes out of it. I mean, it's, it's interesting. So he's going to have stuff that people will release, yeah. You guys, go ahead, Jack. Well, the other thing that I was going to mention as far as things that seem to be percolating behind the scenes and like this aircraft hijacking, I wonder if it didn't have a sponsor. I mean, maybe it was a guy speaking to AI or, you know, a lone wolf radicalizing on the internet, but was there somebody behind it? Was there an entity behind it? And, you know,

I think that also brings us to what's been going on in the UK, the last, what, couple weeks now, starting with that totally bizarre sequence of events of a bunch of dudes getting arrested next to a, it's next to an airfield, right? Yeah. It's actually interesting. You can see kind of the volatility of the reporting reflected in the comments to our video two weeks ago on the eyes on regular on Sunday because we were on there.

It was like less than 24 hours after the arrest happened. And we were analyzing it and talking about how this doesn't look like a mistake. this looks like surveillance, this looks nefarious. And then that same night, the British media says, like, oh, it was just guys siphoning diesel. And the comments on our videos kind of reflected that in real time where people would say like, oh, you guys misspoke. You guys don't know what you're talking about. And suddenly it's like, oh, wow, you guys were right. And then there was a new report that comes out like, oh, you guys are idiots. It's kind of interesting to see how people would like come back to the video to update based on what's going out with the news. But we were

right the whole time. I mean, this thing is way deeper than even it looked like at that time, You know, especially there was a guy arrested in London that was connected with it as well. There's a supposedly unconnected other set of two guys picked up. Clearly, MI5 is watching other cells that have not been publicly released right now. And that's a difference between the UK and U.S. style counterintelligence, where in the U.S. we kind of tend toward neutralize, where the U.K. tends toward exploit. These are two different kind of paths you can take. That's a little bit of the old IRA counterinsurgency method.

Yeah, exactly. So looking at it from our perspective, we're like, hey, hurry up, guys, why aren't you grabbing these dudes? And they're saying, hold on. Why aren't they had a black side already? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. And I mean, also, the UK laws are a little bit different. I don't think they would have had, they had to let them out of, out of jail so quickly. Because they, like, bailed them all out within, like, 24 hours or something, which is also very, very strange. Like, the only reason why I can think they would do that is because they're, you know, tracking them to, you know, whoever their buddies were. They want them to get up on their cell phone, start making phone calls and that kind of stuff. And also see who goes dark because there will be a negative space too where some individuals get spooked and stop doing certain things. And that's also out of pattern.

That's the danger in running an op like that is like, what if one of those guys disappears and the next time you see him, you know, he's shooting up families at a supermarket? Like, that's not going to look very good on the government. Well, not only that, a number of these attacks in the UK over the last year were not with guns. they were with knives or arson. Yeah. And there was also one that was a fake, it was a fake explosive that was sent into the Israeli embassy that was shown to be a completely benign substance. But just the fact that this thing entered the embassy was enough, you know, to be considered

a really serious breach. And then we had the also evacuation of B1 bombers from the RAF airfield in the UK this week. So again, it makes you wonder what's like percolating beneath the surface over there right now. Well, what I saw was that apparently, This is a DOD source that said this, that there was an Operation Spider's Web-like attack being planned against that base. And the U.S. was acting preemptively using some indicators. They weren't confirmed that that was actually happening, but the indicators were kind of pointing in that direction possibly. And they were being cautious and removing them out of the region for that exact reason.

Isn't it bad that we can't protect our bases from that? It's challenging me. The way that drone technology works, I mean, if you have a swarm of very, very low cost, low altitude pieces of equipment, even if you intercepted some of them, that's not all of them. And the fact that they could infiltrate, again, similar to the Israeli embassy thing I just mentioned, that was a small commercial off-the-shelf drone that carried a little, you know, container with it. What if you had a thousand of those, five thousand of those? You know, and you set them all at the same time or in a coordinated way, not just on Raff Fairford,

but at other locations as well. I mean, we have other stuff in the UK as well, lots of U.S. forces in the U.K., permanent forces there. that are well known, you know, I think, you know, just hitting a couple of them would be a really big deal, even if you didn't kill anybody, just causing some damage. And remember that, like, terrorism harms people, but you've also got sabotage and subversion. And sabotage doesn't really require any human casualties. It's actually more targeted towards physical assets on the ground. Yeah, I mean, it's not good when we can't defend our own bombers on an RAF airfield in the UK. And I mean, I guess removing them is better than the alternative if you really think there's an attack pending. But the fact that you can't mitigate

it is, yeah, that that's like kind of a canary in the coal mine sort of moment about what's coming in the direction we're heading in. It's another canary in the coal mine for what our alliances and partnerships look like right now. Because we have this whole NATO construct, right, where theoretically we should be able to land a B1 in any one of those countries airfields. That's the whole point, right? And the fact that we have one country only, the list. We now can't even be there. I mean, Spain basically said, do not use our airfields. Like if you've been to Rhoda and things like that, like that's a normal point of access in the past that we would use for this kind of stuff. Turkey even, I mean, the whole reason Turkey

is in NATO is because of certain things that we have there. And we can't even use the B-1s in Turkey, right? I mean, that's a big deal. That's right in theater would be fantastic to use the B-1s in Turkey, but we're not for political reasons. So that's a finger pointing toward, you know, what's the relationship with NATO like right now? It doesn't. doesn't look very good. Well, you're in law school, John, so this is another interesting and related topic is I was having a conversation with a lawyer friend and he was telling me that in the United States, we're about to start regulating drones about as drastically as we regulate guns.

And maybe more so because there isn't a Second Amendment, you know, there isn't a constitutional amendment protecting drones. Yeah, that's a huge problem because, okay, let's say that we regulate it. Is China going to regulate it? their? Is Russia going to regulate theirs? And then in the face of our regulation, they may further deregulate because now they have an incentive to maximize within the two-year period of time that they know that they have when we still have this administration in power. They could really ramp up in a way that could be irreversible. So by the time we come in two years later and we suddenly

send a bunch of funds over to the Defense Innovation Unit and to new drone commands two years from now, it'll be way too late. Yeah, but are they going to regulate the commercial drones? Like people like us being able to buy a drone and fly it wherever we want, or is it going to regulate the actual industry? They're going to regulate the industry, the equipment, and the airspace. So those are three separate things. And probably the third one, the airspace is the most challenging because even if you have a drone, it might be either defeated, switched off, or have some other way of interference if it comes within a certain distance of some location or something like that. So you can't even use it the way that you want to use it, right? Most of these drones are produced

by B-YD, which is a Chinese company. China has already has, you know, the jump on this. They're the ones producing most drones on the planet. If you remember back to the Huawei problem during Trump One, we were trying using diplomatic carrots and sticks to stop other countries, like the actual governments of countries from buying Huawei stuff in their infrastructure when they're building their Wi-Fi networks because of the back doors in Huawei, which, by the way, Huawei was led by the former NSA equivalent director from the Chinese government.

He retired out of the NSA equivalent to take over Huawei, right? all these companies are owned by the Chinese government, controlled by the Chinese government, B-Y-D is no different. So you have this device that has remote access because by design it has to, that could reveal all kinds, it could suddenly be turned on into a either passive or active surveillance tool for the Chinese government on a wide, wide scale inside the United States. I mean, we are seeing a bit of the like proliferation of drone companies in America,

specifically on the defense side. You know, I wrote, like as a joke, like the, you know, If you're a white guy now, don't start a podcast, start a drone company, you know, because I see it on LinkedIn. Like, who's getting, you know, $100 million in seed money at a $3 billion valuation? Sure, more than likely two-thirds of these companies that are started and are operating right now are vaporware and will not be around in a few years time. But you've got to assume some will last. I think the reality of that is reflected in two platforms. One is the predator series of platforms that includes the Grey Eagle and other larger, like, our,

rivet joint and things like this, still an operation, but originally invented in the late 1980s and used for the first time in Kosovo and Bosnia in the early 90s, that platform is still there now. Nothing really since then, except the Grey Eagle, which is again an iteration of this older platform. And the Shahhead, like the, what did we, I can't remember what we call it. There's some acronym we came up with to call Lucas. It's basically a copyright ripoff of an Iranian-produced Shahhead, like, do we really not have any other innovation between what was invented in 1987 and used in Kosovo to what Iran invented on a much lower budget with sanctions, by the way, and export controls and all this, and they still produced it, and it's still being used by Russia,

the U.S. and Iran, like, I mean, there's a huge gap here in innovation incentives, at least, in the U.S. because like you mentioned, there's vaporware for sure. There's all kinds of ideas, very expensive ideas. But where's the actual product that someone could ramp up and do in this, like, startup environment to make, make the things? happen that needs to happen, you know. I wonder why we don't see more, and I will say this, like, at least from the companies that I've seen, a lot of them are more defensive in nature, you know, like knocking out drone swarms with drone swarms and stuff like that, but I'm sure it could be easily turned

into an offensive capability. I don't know. That's definitely there. Well, the thing is you got like, let's say you got a C-RAM, which is on an aircraft carrier that actually like shoots so many rounds that it cuts the device in half with heat and speed. You've got these fixed devices that do counter UAS stuff. For example, like some of our partners in the Middle East have purchased some of our proprietary equipment to be able to bring drones down.

But the problem with all these things, and there are many others, many of them are fixed point assets or limited mobility assets, whereas the thing it's countering is high mobility and not fixed. So it's almost like we're kind of giving up on the mobility part as far as offensive capability while also not creating a viable defensive capability. So both in both directions, we're not really doing well. That's not good. No.

I'm not an expert, but it doesn't sound like it's good. I could give me a billion dollars. I'm sure I could come up with something that looks a lot like a shothead. And there's AI. There's AI integrated in it, of course. Right. Right. We have to say that for the investors.

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I have the C4 Tactical Field Watch. It's solar power too. I'm loving it. And it's funny because I had this laying on my coffee table the other day. Actually, my homie came in and to watch football or whatever. And he's a watch guy. And he's like,

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that you could fill up with three watches so you could travel with your watches and stuff like that. It's really cool. It's leather. Yeah. And I was so excited when he was like, oh, is that that Vair watch?

I see it all the time. I was like so amped that he came up with that. Yeah, it's nice. I really like the nice big watch face. You can find them at VairWhorch. Watches.com slash the team house. That's V-A-E-R-Watches. dot com slash the team house.

And if you use our link, you'll get a free watch roll with $59 with your purchase. Also, Vair does offer a 20% discount for active duty military, veterans, and law enforcement, and first responders. So you could check that out at any time if you are any one of those. Yeah, I'm excited about this sponsorship. So I really hope people go and check out there. Yeah, absolutely. Just hit all the buzzwords. And we are not woke.

We are not a woke company. Send it to my crypto wallet. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. You get a billion dollars. We got a reestablish deterrence. They, I love that way. Salaid to deescalate.

I mean, dude, where did they like test that line out? Because you see like the whole Atlantic Council crew, like when things were popping off, I think with Iran initially, maybe a year and a half ago. That was like the talking point about escalate to deescalate. It's like, it seems to have worked really well. They brought it up in regards to like October 7 and Gaza and everything also. And it's like that term alone is like it to me it represents like the abject failure of politics like across the board. Like diplomacy, military action, all of it is just an abject failure when you start thinking like that.

Well, war is the failure of policy. And the thing is if you look back to like June 6, 1967 when Israel made it surprise offensive, the way they've decided. that is as preemptive self-defense. And that is exactly what the last two years has also been described as from many supporters of this type of recent doctrine as well. Oh, we had to do it because they were going to do something. And actually, I remember when we killed Qasem Soleimani back in 2020, June 8th, that was also described as preemptive self-defense. And we used the authorization for use of military force for Iraq to kill him, an Iranian general. which, again, very tenuous, but doesn't really matter.

Because if you have the executive authority button, you can hit the button and then let people argue about it later, but you've already hit the button. It's a fate accompli, and there's nothing anyone can really do about it. I mean, we're doing the same thing with the boats and the Atlantic and the Pacific, you know. Right. And many of these guys in these boats are just contracted fishermen guys that are like, oh, yeah, you're going to pay me 10 times as much. I mean, this is a thing in Afghanistan.

If you do the math on the economics of opium, you could make 500, times more growing opium than growing sorghum, why would you ever not grow opium? It just doesn't make sense. So you're four drugs, John, is what you're telling us. Hey, I'm a capitalist. I mean, yeah, everything is self-defense except we renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War, and we call everyone a war fighter, and we're fighting a war, but it's not a war. I'm confused. That's what happens when you have a reservist major in charge of the Defense Department. Who'd have thought?

It was funny. Yesterday, somebody was mentioning about what they would do when they don't know what's going on and what to talk about. And he wrote, I just think about what would Pete Hexat say and say the opposite. Whoever said that must be pretty wise. Very smart guy. Yeah. Whoever said that. You guys want to talk about.

the plague in Russia? Oof. Oh, yeah. So it's a pneumonic plague. So there's four types of plague. This is Yersinia Pestis, which is what caused the 14th century, 13th century, and 15th century plagues in Europe that killed like a third of some populations, like super serious. It's also a thing that has been largely eradicated, but does pop up every now and then

in the wild, like in human places. Apparently, this person, though, came down with something completely unrelated. It was totally coincidental that they got very sick. with pneumonia-like symptoms and died at this facility that was doing research on pneumonic plague. And it's not bubonic plague. Bubonic plague is actually less bad than pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague, like the word numa refers to your lungs. And it actually causes these fissures and growths inside your lungs.

Yeah. And it makes your lungs basically liquefy into this like phlegmatic grossness that makes you drown in your own lung tissue. Fun. way worse than the bubonic plague, which many will survive. Actually, some did survive that. But yeah, this guy coincidentally came down with pneumonia. Again, the word numa in pneumonia means lung.

So again, connected and completely coincidental that it occurred and affected his same body part as this other thing. So I don't know what your thoughts are on it, Jack, but to me, it's just an interesting coincidence. There was a lab leak in the, geez, this is from memory reading in Ken Alebeck's book. in like the 70s, I believe. There was a, they had a bio, bio weapon lab week where, and I can't remember exactly what it was that failed in the lab, but long story short is that they vented it from the facility. And there was like a lumber factory or something like that nearby and a whole bunch of people got sick and died.

And the Soviet Union covered that stuff up. And then, you know, when even after the Soviet Union collapsed, a lot of these facilities, and probably the one we're talking about in this case, they're dual-use facilities. They're, you know, for like public health and developing vaccines and all that kind of stuff. But secretly, they're also developing some gnarly stuff. That's what happened throughout the Soviet era into the 1990s. And I wouldn't put it past the Russians to be working on those types of programs today.

I mean, if you look at, you know, the assassination unit that the FSB has, and they mess with all kinds of different poisons and stuff like that. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had an active program. Well, it's the same with the Navichuk, like you mentioned. I mean, Navichuk does not occur in a natural way that you could just like accidentally run into some Naviuch and get on your skin and die. It has to be isolated. It has to be contained. It has to be put into a delivery mechanism.

And I believe there was a polonium as well, which is not a biological weapon, but it's also radiological and requires very similar places to develop these delivery. mechanisms, like the umbrella that it was delivered out of. You can't just do that in your garage. You have to have a very high level of safety and structure so you don't harm the people developing it. Yeah. And in those cases, they use those substances specifically to signal who was behind it, because they want to send a message to other defectors and exiles and so forth that like, hey, man, like the UK, They can't protect you. And also that many countries can't produce this. There are very small number of countries that could make it in the first place. So you know, not only is it a state actor, you know that it's Russia. Ruskis.

Yep. It's not like when Navalny dies in his cell, which we know why he died in his cell. But he didn't die from Nabichok or something like that. So they weren't trying to send the same message that they sent to defectors, for example. So a political person inside of Russia might fall out of their hotel window or die in their prison cell. still, we pretty much know what's going on. Or they may die in an air crash, like another fellow. Promotion? Right.

Which is an accident, of course. Yeah. But that's the thing. Like, it could be described as an accident, just like with this guy who died at the pneumatic plague. Whereas the Navichuk people and the Polonium victims, there is no question. This was a murder from a government against a dissident.

And then the question is, what are they doing the research for on this pneumatic plague? And, you know, thinking about the Navichuk one in particular, it could be that they were developing this for delivery as an assassination tool. Yeah, I mean, and this is another whole subject now in the era of biological warfare, there's a lot of talk about the use of AI that anybody ostensibly could get on there and start messing with it. Also, I've heard talk about microfluidics, which is another sort of interesting topic that allows very, very precise dosing. Right now it's used in like the pharmaceutical industry, but there's fears that, you know, bad guys could access this and create weapons with it. But I've also heard experts say that, you know, there's a lot of focus on like apocalyptic scenarios and things like sarin and VX and stuff like that, which is actually pretty difficult to manufacture. Whereas anthrax is something you can go and dig up in a farm and get a live culture of it and start replicating.

it and weaponizing it. And then the weaponization, there's some difficulty there. The difficulty isn't so much in the culture, creating cultures. It's more an aerosolizing the material and making sure that the agent remains alive and active as it's aerosolizing out. And there's additives that are put into it to do that, and that's the part that's actually like classified information that the governments don't want public mass. knowledge for sure.

That's actually one of the differences between boobonic plague and pneumonic plague. Bubonic plague is transmissible through contact with the fluids that come out of the booboos, whereas pneumonic plague is only transmitted person to person through aerosol transfers. So that's an interesting question of like, how are you intending to use this? What was the point of the research on this, you know? Was there a wet market nearby? Were they selling bats? Wasn't it pangolins? Pangolins. I heard that too.

It was brought down to penguins or bats, one or the other that, like, did it. Someone should ask Fauci, I'm sure he knows, right? Yeah. He'll fight. He'll pay. He'll pay, guys. Don't, don't you worry. I'm going to ask Bill Gates, that he has some info.

Yeah. Didn't he create malaria? Polio. Did he do polio? Purple's more children than polio. Is that, you talk about the IDF? Whoa, whoa. Sorry.

Sorry. This podcast is going to alienate the listeners. Sanctioned. and tariffed. Whoops. Apologies. Well, you might get the terrorists removed. Yeah, that's true.

And we'll get a refund. We'll be put on the FTO. We have like another fun. It's not really fun. It's actually kind of fucked up story. And we're springing this on Jonathan Hackett. He's definitely too smart to know that this is actually going on. Maybe he came across it.

I doubt it, though. Is it a Twitter thing? No, it's like the whole drama with CLT. Team 6 and John Chapman, how they came out and did an Andy Stump podcast. Basically, he's trying to say that John Chapman was killed like three minutes after he got off the Chinook and doesn't deserve his Medal of Honor, essentially. You know, and I don't know, like, if you're having bad PR and you want to, like, change the PR of your group, which is Steel Team 6 in this case, I don't know if I would disparage a dead Medal of Honor recipient. it. Not only that, but Medal of Honor requires witness statements and a lot of pre-researched

before it's even submitted. So that means that you're basically saying that a bunch of false statements were submitted. Right. So, yeah, I want to get your takes on it because we had some responses from like other vet bros, like Jay Dorleyes. He's been on our, he's been on the team house before. Really good episode. Check it out for him in Green Beret.

I think he's got the YouTube channel, Green Beret Chronicles. Yep. And he went fucking ham on Slabinsky. I think it came out a few days ago. I just watched it today right before we did this. And he called him out. He was calling him out for sure. I mean,

because like some of the interviews that Slubinsky has done, and there are connections between the filmmakers of this documentary that's supposedly coming out in a couple months. One of the guys is a former Blue Squadron guy, Mitch Hall, I want to say his name is, I think Mitch something. He's tight with Slabinsky, and he's also tight with Samanski,

who's another, Blue guy. And like the first person in the interview was Slabinsky, who was on the mountain on Talker Gar when that all went down. And so, but Jay's video, he was like in the initial part, he was looking at an interview with Slabinsky who was on there. And basically, is he lying in that interview or is he lying to the filmmakers? Like the story continues to change.

So I want you guys to let me know. What do you guys think of SEAL Team 6 and the Navy SEALs in general? as a former Marine and Ranger. I mean, this is like two decades. I mean, like, why is this coming out right now? What's, what's in it? And I always say, you know, I was an interrogator, and I always say there's three sides to every story,

your side, their side, and the truth. And we'll never know the truth in anything, right? So I'm extremely skeptical right away of like the timing, the source, the platform, the message. Like, why are all these things connected together right now at this moment from this person? You know, that's a big question mark. that people who are responsible should answer.

For example, Andy Stump should answer that question. I mean, he's responsible for platforming the person. So it's his responsibility to do the diligence to provide either, you know, someone's opposing view or someone's corroborating view or the source of this information or an explanation of why is it now that this person's choosing to say this. Yeah. I mean, there's a ton of, you know, details to unpack the conversation around this has become hyper-technical to the point that we're analyzing the disposition of pixels on drone footage from

25 years ago. I mean, it's getting increasingly technical. And all that stuff needs to be hashed out, I guess. I didn't think it needed to be, but now apparently it does. I'm not going to speak too much about this because I'll let the people who are there talk about it or people who have actually gone through and interviewed those who are involved. Like Sean Naylor did and others, Dan Schilling wrote a book. There are people out there who are subject matter experts on this topic. Well, yeah. Well, Sean was getting some shots thrown at him during that podcast with Mitch Hall and the soap opera actor guy who tries to look like a seal team guy amongst other SEAL team guys.

Was it Dan Bilzerian? No, no, no, no. Yeah, I'm not going to speak for Sean either. I'll let him formulate his own rebuttal if he chooses to do so. But what I will say about this topic is, yes, I think John Chapman deserves a Medal of Honor. And I think that you have to be in a very low and dark place in life to be going after a dead service member's medal all these years later. ostensibly as near as we can tell, simply out of self-interest to rehabilitate, you know, your own image. And it's also the only value that he has remaining is the knowledge of this event, perhaps to himself.

Yeah. Well, and here's the other part of it that I will say is that, you know, if Slabinsky was coming out and defending himself, and that was his only thing was, you know, hey, I feel some of my actions were mischaracterized that day. here's what I really did or what I didn't do. I think I could accept that. That wouldn't even bother me. I don't think it would bother a lot of people, actually. But when you're actually going after, you're saying that Chapman doesn't deserve the Medal of Honor,

that guy Mitch Hall said it outright. And if you watch that video with Eric Deming, he asked Slab like 10 times, does Chapman deserve the Medal of Honor? And Slab either can't or won't answer. And this guy is the president of the Medal of Honor Foundation and the director of the Medal of Honor Museum. I don't know if he's the director.

I think he's on the board. He's on the board. Okay. Now, square that circle for me. How do you serve in those positions while you're actively trying to undermine a service member's Medal of Honor who's in your own museum? That does not compute for me. And like from the legal perspective, I'll say it again, like by saying that,

they're implying that at least two to six people made false official statements not only on the Title X military side, like UCMJ, but also to Congress. So like huge, huge implications of what, what that means. Like, that means they're facing jail time, these people that wrote those statements. If they can, and they could be convicted because the way our system works, it's very, very low bar to convict somebody in the military, especially if these guys were retired, they can be reactivated and tried in a court martial. So, and even if they, even if they were being honest and said the truth because the way the system is designed. So like this person is not only putting the reputation of someone who died in combat in jeopardy, they're putting the lives

of people who are alive in jeopardy, their entire livelihoods in jeopardy by saying that kind of statement with no backing whatsoever. And I bet that these people didn't think about that. You know, because like you said, it's a moment for them to steal the spotlight for some reason or to engage with their own value of themselves, the only value they might have left. at the expense of not only a dead person, but living people who have lives. You know, and it seems pretty unfair. Yeah. And I mean, we've kind of had people on Team House especially who've painstakingly documented, like, the ins and outs of this drama, especially like when they, I guess the Air Force try to up his awards from a cross to a Medal of Honor.

and then the reaction from the Navy was to do the same with Slabinsky and there seems to have been some kind of like pie fight or you know behind the scenes kind of wrangling that was going on between Navy and Air Force and stuff like that so yeah I don't I have nothing I can't really say anything because I haven't done shit like in terms of service or anything like that but like in terms of an optics thing if you're Slabinsky and somebody asked you a question about John Chapman even if you don't believe Whatever, you know, you're the guy who's alive. He's the guy who's dead.

Show a little bit of deference and be a little humble in terms of, because you're out here, you're out here cash and checks now. Like, let's be real. Like, what, you know, you're on a master class about, like, leadership and shit. Like, you're doing speeches. You're making money based on what you're, and I'm not saying he was a bad seal. I'm sure he was fine. You know, I'm sure he was good.

But when they, like, just be a little magnanimous. in terms of like talking about somebody who fucking died on that hill. You know? There are, I mean, there are guys that I served with that I didn't personally like. Some people who I think have ethical integrity issues, honor issues. But unless it's like a violent crime or something like that, like, I'm not going to jump on a podcast and start disparaging other people's military service all these years later. Because the question is, what for? What does that do?

And it's like you're stroking your own ego. It's like a very petty thing. It would be very petty of me to hold on to a grudge for, you know, 20 years. Like, what the hell for? What's that accomplishing? And I'll go ahead and I'll make a little prediction here. And, you know, folks can throw this in my face in the future if I'm totally wrong. But I think that when all is said and done with this Chapman drama that has been stirred up,

I think the seal. are absolutely going to look like the biggest fucking douchebags on the planet. Like that is going to be the final result of all this. And people are just going to look at them like, you're a piece of shit. And in the meantime, there's a lot of collateral damage, right? Chapman's family being pulled through all of this. So, you know, the VEPRO drama is very much in high gear. You know, they continue to find new new and new things.

Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible. to me and I will say this about Andy Stumpf like he platformed him obviously but he was I saw I didn't see the whole thing but like the couple hours I did see because there's like nine hours of it he was doing a pretty good job of like kind of like you know questioning things and stuff like that and so I'll give him that for sure like he wasn't just like you know this it wasn't just like dev guru propaganda hour I will say that and the goober the goober the goober fucking actor filmmaker guy he literally dressed up like a Navy SEAL who's like off duty like you know black beard hat flannel shirt and like you see Andy Stumpf there in Mitch Hall whatever you know if he's lying he's being a dick or whatever he's still a SEAL Team 6 guy

like they look like normal people and this guy's like black bearder you could tell like he just dyed it with some shoe polish and look like an absolute fucking clown I can say that because he's a regular guy and I'm a regular guy So he's a fucking clown. I think the big question with this documentary that's coming out is how was it financed? And they have said it was 100% privately financed. Okay, privately financed by whom? That's the question I have.

And I'm not going to speculate on who the whom might be. But I think if that comes out, first off, it'll answer a bunch of questions that we have. But secondly, I would speculate that it will be a very familiar cast of characters that we already know. Yep. It's going to be interesting. I suppose it should be coming out in the next couple months, which also silly because if you're, you know, you lined up this podcast with Stump and you want to get like max exposure. Maybe they're hoping for Sean Ryan or Joe Rogan. But, you know, you would line it up for when your documentary is ready to rock, you know, when you make a splash like this.

I'm just thinking PR-wise because I am a truffle pig at the end of the day. Yeah, it's been a crazy couple weeks in terms of that. And I'm not going to lie to you. I got a little trigger when they were talking shit about Sean. I was texting Jack, too. I was like, these motherfuckers. Yeah, I mean, there's more to all of that. And again, I just don't want to get into Sean's business or like get ahead of him on that.

I'll let him say his piece when he's ready. The other thing, I mean, it points to a larger problem, and that is the way that metals are awarded in the GWAT. And there's all kinds of different studies on this. But like, for example, the Purple Heart versus a Bronze Star. There is a study I read about 10 years ago, I think. And if you look at Purple Hearts issued and the ranks that the Purple Hearts are issued to, and this is on Marines in particular, especially during, you know, the invasion of Iraq. And there were a lot of injuries and things like that, 2003, 2004, 2005.

most of the purple hearts were awarded to guys who were like E5 and below. And most of the bronze stars were awarded to field grade officers who did not have purple hearts. And the question is like, okay, the guys that were closest to the violence, which you can measure by their purple hearts because they were touched by violence. That's why they have a purple heart are not getting combat awards, like personal awards. Whereas the field grade officers are not getting purple hearts. Some of them were, but the majority were not, especially the ones who were getting bronze stars. where is that? Like what's what's the what's the connection here? What's going on here? And if you look back at Vietnam is a different story, you know, and the types of awards awarded are different too. Like in

Vietnam, you had guys getting silver stars on patrol, multiple silver stars in a deployment. Now a silver star is like a news item because the way that we've restricted award issuance. And now we're having arguments about not, not us, but like the general public is having arguments about like should this guy get a Medal of Honor or not. And it's just a very strange change in how we think about combat valor and awards. Well, I mean, I'll say this much. The Medal of Honor is awarded by our government in cases to try to gloss over failures. And I don't mean failures of people like Slabinsky or John Chapman. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying like higher level. Like, why were those troops there in the first place? Like those kinds of like big questions. And, you know, when you,

issue a bunch of medals of honor, you don't have to answer too many questions about that. And yeah, that goes back to the Vietnam War. And, yeah, I mean, it's not a ding on any Medal of Honor recipient. I'm not saying that their actions are not brave or heroic or that they don't deserve it. I'm just saying that there is some politics behind it. I mean, you can look at the fanfare of the way that this award is awarded. You know, there's a whole thing with the president. usually, you know, awarding them posthumously, putting in the public eye and things like this.

And as you mentioned, if you look, I have a friend who's in the army that got the Medal of Honor. He was a conventional guy that was surrounded by like 60 Taliban guys and like he basically fought them off. And to your point, like, why was a platoon leader and one other guy at a fob? Like what failure led to that, you know? Exactly. John, would your friend like to come on the team house podcast? I don't know if you're familiar with it. he's still active so he can't oh okay so when he's done yeah i don't think the department of war would

like that um jack we spoke on sunday about like the official withdrawal from iraq uh you know and john are like in our in our convoy you guys wanted you wanted to like maybe dig into it a little bit more and jack i'd love to get your take to you you were in iraq you served there you know so i mean i think that at this stage in the game like the war in iraq is over so the question Like, why do we have troops there? And the excuse that I heard, the same reason why the reason given why we had troops in Syria, was that they're there to counter Iran.

Okay, exactly what the fuck are they doing to counter Iran? And how does having a bunch of American soldiers garrisoned in a country just chilling there, how is that countering Iran? It's not like, you know, we put a bunch of American soldiers in South Korea so that if the North Koreans invade, you know that you're going to be fighting American troops. You know, they're right there on the DMZ. It's not one of those things. It's like the Iranians already have a robust insurgency or, in fact, they've hijacked a huge amount of the Iraqi government. So it's not, it's like, what are we really countering by having those soldiers there?

And instead, or what we do, or what we're doing is essentially. providing targets for Iranian insurgents to shoot at. And also, I mean, during Trump one, I saw this transition from, you know, we had the counter-IS mission in the Obama administration, which then carried over into the Trump administration. There was a large shift away from certain types of counterterrorism operations to kind of a clear and hold mentality in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq. And in the Syria part, there was a big shift from there were still active operations, but more it was protecting oil facilities, like literally having SOF stationed at oil facilities, like MSS

Konoko is one of them. Shaddi is another one, and there are a couple of others around there, like Green Village. These are all oil production facilities. The reason we were there was not to deter Iran is so that the Assad government can't use their own oil facilities and make money. Like, this is the reason we were there, right? And you could see that because there was a lot of tension there between the Syrian government and the U.S. forces there and the surrogates in between because there were many different surrogate forces, not just the SDF. You're talking about that. We're trying to contest that.

Exactly, yeah, all along the river. And that's a major reason we supported the SDF was to create that buffer so that the Syrian government could not use those oil fields. And, I mean, that's an economic thing. That is not a counterterrorism thing at all. But you're putting U.S. force, like special operations forces as basically policemen of another country's oil field so that that country can't, country can't have access to its oil. And I don't know, you know, countering ISIS and countering Iran, isn't like the fact that we went into Iraq the reason why Iran became more powerful in the region and ISIS started in the first place? Well, even in 2002, when Bush gave his access of evil speech,

right before that, the Iranian government had tried to provide the U.S. with intelligence about al-Qaeda. And the Syrian government did the same thing and actually did multiple times. Yeah, they were sketched. And they were taken off guard when Trump, I'm sorry, when Bush said, you know, this is the axis of evil, Iran, Syria, North Korea, they have to be deposed, blah, blah, blah, and they were shocked because they thought they were helping, right? Because they didn't want al-Qaeda. And we saw the same thing when ISIS came up. When I was there, we were hitting targets that the IRGC was also hitting. And we were deconflicting through third parties to ensure that we didn't hit each other because we had shared interests at that time, just like in 2001 after 9-11.

And I mean, like Syria, dude, we. have to do like a long ass pot about Syria because the intertwining interests that went on there, right? Like we both, all of us hate ISIS. Maybe Turkey doesn't a little bit. Like, you know, it's like a crazy, crazy mix and web of just, I don't even know how it fucking worked out, frankly. I, um, over the last few years, you know, I'm happy that a lot of the stories that we've done on the high side, there were things that were. percolating in the back of my head for many years, and I'm glad to get them out there. One of the ones that's still there that lives rent free in my mind, and I haven't written yet,

I hope to one day, is a real long form like retrospective on the intelligence and covert ops side of what happened in Syria. I think there's a lot more reporting to be done on that topic. I've actually written an article on Timber Sycamore. People can read on interpopulum using declassified and foyer. stuff to show like how the weapons got there. What was the cover used? What were the serial numbers and the weapons? Pretty in depth. It's kind of like my Iran book where it's facts. You know, it's not opinions and things like that. And it's like, you know, you come to your own conclusion. But the conclusion's pretty clear when you, when you see what's going on here and like how it works out. So there's, but like you said, there's more to be done and more to be researched because there's a lot of stuff in the Turkish language. There's a lot of stuff in Arabic that hasn't been put out yet. A lot of these groups, you could probably contact these groups, not the general public, but. you Jack could probably contact some of these guys in Syria that would be willing to talk about

their role because there were a lot of different groups that were not connected to each other that were part of this operation and that was part of the problem was that they were not connected to each other so there was no like leveling of interest except to just do one outcome and that was it and when that outcome was achieved or not achieved or given up you know yeah exactly is this the one we're looking at sweet yeah john send me that link and i'll uh put it in the description so people could check it out yeah and And that's a picture of some of the Jundis. I don't know if I can say Jundis nowadays, but that's what they are.

Is that not allowed anymore? Jundi, by the way, is a short form of Jundula, which is a, or like the Jund, which is a soldier, by the way, in Arabic. So it's not so bad. Yeah, Jundi is just a soldier. Yeah, but the British used it really pejoratively with some of their guys. Yeah, back in the day. Dirty grits. It's so racist.

I don't even know it. Yeah. Back in the early SAS days in North Africa. What else we got, guys, to wrap up. Any thoughts, comments? That's about it. I mean, we touched on a pretty wide array of topics from aircraft hijackings to bio-weapons to Iran. We need to do an episode on the Sykes-Paco Agreement and like, what does that mean today at some point?

That will take a long time, but that should be something we talk about because we touch on the effects of it a lot. Right, right, right. But we don't get into detail on like, what does it mean, you know? Let people know what it is. So it's basically, if you look at a map of what Syria and Iraq look like and Jordan, it's because, these two guys sat in a secret room together in 1915 and drew that map. And that is now the map of the Middle East. And this is a, a reason we have a lot of the conflict that we have right now. But I won't give away all the secrets. Yeah, so look out for that. All will be revealed.

Check out Jack's high side, please. It's a great news outlet that he does. Of course, his book, The Most Dangerous Man is out now. Doing an incredibly well. Huge. Huge, huge book. Huge. Yeah. Bigly. Don't check it out. Monstrous.

John Hackett, our friend, he does, he's got these two books that ran shadow weapons and the theory of a regular war. Also, that Syria article will be in the link in the description. You can check that out there. And go to our Patreon. Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. You get ad-free episodes of Teamhouse and Aizan.

You get them early. And you support the show. show. One last alibi here, Dee, and I haven't listened to this yet, but I want to draw people's attention to it. This just came out. I think it's three parts. It's a podcast series that interviews a bunch of SAS guys that were in Northern Ireland

doing ops against the IRA. I did see this, yeah. So I'm excited to listen to these. I think it's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, we should maybe snatch some for the team house. I'm always thinking about the team house. Definitely listen to this podcast, but listen to ours first. Please, thanks.

You know, my wife actually listens to all the ads. No, I could send her a link, bro. No, because it helps the show. That's how much she cares about the show. She doesn't have to do that. God bless your time. Thank you. I can absolutely send her a free link and she can listen to it at free.

No, no, no. She wants to support the show. And so should the listeners. Yeah, they can. But somebody who's in the family doesn't have to sit through ads for God, for the love of God. And yo, hey guys, listen, or if you don't want to sit through ads,

again, the Team House Patreon, the link is in the description. Great setup, John. Incredible. Perfect. Yeah. Thanks, guys. All right, take care.

Take care. Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them.

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Thanks, guys.