TRIGGERnometry - CIA Agent - Is This How Israel-Palestine Ends? - Mike Baker

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

Mike Baker is an American-British former Central Intelligence Agency officer and security expert, technical advisor for the entertainment industry, TV commentator, and host of the podcast, 'The President's Daily Brief': https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-presidents-daily-brief/id1617887885 SPONSORED BY: Manscaped. Get 20% off and free shipping when you use the code TRIGGER20 at https://www.manscaped.com/ We are proud partners with GiveSendGo - a world-leading crowdfunding platform that believes in free speech. Go to givesendgo.com and raise money for anything important to you. Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine you're the national security advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel. What's your advice? You take out their command and control structure. You take out as much of their resources as possible. They're not going to create a buffer zone and then say, okay, well, Hamas is back. We've got the status quo. Status quo is going to lead to more deaths on all sides. We're going to have to have a reckoning at some point with the Iranian regime

because they are the reason why we have this conflict right now. The White House has been talking about that. We need a two-state solution. Well, read the recent studies. You know, they've been talking about two-state. solution for generations. Hey guys, Trigonometry needs your help. We took a big risk creating the show and for us to keep doing the incredible work that

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When you support us, you also get incredible extra content, such as extended interviews with none of those irritating adverts, and they'll be released 24 hours early just for you. We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear. Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. Mike, so first question is you were in the same. CIA for a long time. And I think for people like us who don't really know much about it, a question

that never gets asked, really, is what is the CIA and what does it do? Yeah, I don't have a clue. We're still confused. No, no, it's not. The CIA is a central intelligence agency, right? really hasn't been around that long, came out of World War II, originally called the Office of Strategic Services. And OSS was created during World War II and was essentially modeled after the British model for intelligence operations, right? I mean, that's kind of where they said, okay, well, I guess this is what we're going to need to do. So OSS, kind of under the tutelage of the British service, during the course of World War II, began to develop this sense of, okay, what we need is we need this other way to protect national security, right? And that is a collection of intelligence all over the world.

And that essentially is the, that's the job of the CIA or any intel service theoretically, is to respond to priority tasking from whoever's in charge. It doesn't matter who's in the White House. So whoever's in charge, they, along with their national security team, determine the priority tasking. And that priority tasking list is then sent to the CIA, and you fan out all your various resources, whether it's human sources or technical collection or whatever. And you respond to those priority taskings with the overall goal, and it's the only

objective, is to protect national security. And the CIA certainly seems to me is no longer just collecting intelligence. It's also doing things proactively, taking people out, some people argue. Making people out. Is it not doing that? Am I being silly? I mean, of course during the global war on terror, yeah. I mean, there's no doubt about it. And that's, you know, depending on what side of the fence, people will argue with me, but that's a good thing. I mean, if you're taking out high-value targets who are involved in terrorist operations to kill not just.

US personnel or allies, but, you know, think of the countless Muslims who were killed as a result of the actions of a group like ISIS or Al-Qaeda or. So I think there was never just a collection and analytical component to OSS and then developing into CIA when the Cold War hit. There's always been the operational side to it. So the collection of intelligence and And then, you know, you got to do something with it, otherwise it's useless. You collect intelligence for the sake of it. You put it on the shelf over there. There's no point in having it, right?

Because all intelligence, for the most part, has a pretty short shelf life, right? Meaning the operational value of it, you know, is pretty brief for the most part. So, yeah, it's, I mean, it was interesting. You came out, I'm not going to disappear down the historical rabbit hole, but you came out of World War II. Harry Truman, the president at the time, said, well, thanks very much, you know, to a fellow named Bill Don. who ran OSS, the predecessor for CIA. So they don't let the screen door hit your ass on the way out. And they shut it down.

And then it didn't take very long, you know, as the Soviets started rampaging and doing what they're going to do for the US to realize, well, we probably shouldn't close that operation. So they restarted it and then came to CIA. Can I ask one more stupid question? We specialize in stupid questions here. But it's interesting to explore the meanings of all these terms. You mentioned that the purpose of it is national security, and that's a word that get term that gets used often.

What does national security mean? Well, every nation acts in its own best interests, right? I mean, okay, maybe you can imagine that the world's a community of nations, and we're all holding hands, and, you know, corns are flying out of our ass, but that's not the way the world works. So every nation acts in its own best interest. Every nation then determines what is in its own best national security interests, typically defecority. defense of borders, you know, defense of its economy, whatever it may be, that nation will set up its priority tasking. And then, you know, typically works with its allies and in a, you know, somewhat, you know, community of nations, I suppose you could argue, whether it's NATO.

OPEC is a good example. I mean, they band together to protect their own interests. So, Mike, I'm, my mother is from Venezuela, and there's, there's some suspicion, shall I say, about the CIA in Latin America. No. I'm shocked. How much do you think that is fair and warranted to have that suspicion of the CIA and be distrustful? And how much of it do you think is unfair? God, trying to quantify that.

Look, there's no doubt that some of it is warranted, right? Because, you know, you can't, you can't. you can't be operating an intelligence organization with the size of something like the CIA, or MI6, or any large nation that's got well-resourced capabilities, and not say that there's going to be, what's the best word for it? There's going to be clash. There's going to be intrusions. There's going to be in other nation's activities, right?

because, again, we're all interconnected. So it's not as if you sit inside your bubble, right, and say, well, we're protecting our national security interests, and that never impacts anyone else around, right, because other nations are doing their own thing. So I guess that's a long rambling way to say some of it's warranted, some of it's not. It is way above my pay grade to quantify what the percentages on both sides would be. So what we have in Venezuela now, as you know, there's talk of a war with Guyana. And you have Maduro who's done a referendum. Yeah, I want that.

I want two-thirds of Ghana. Yeah. Exactly. And all of a sudden, he seems to have discovered democracy when it interests him, which is quite interesting. Well, if you assume the referendum is actually clear and transparent referendum. But I'm sure the discovery of oil. In the ski, I have nothing to do with it. No, of course not.

Yeah, yeah. No, of course not. No, of course not. He's a principled guy. We know that. So how would the CIA approach this? Because actually, I don't think people are taking this seriously enough. This is a big deal.

And it's happening right on the back door of the United States. Right. Well, yeah, it's a great question. And I agree with it. I don't think it's not that they're not taking it seriously. I don't think anybody's paying attention. Right. People have very limited bandwidth, it seems, right?

They get very sort of ADHD on most issues. So right now it's all been Israel, Hamas. Prior to that, it was Ukraine when 7 October kicked off the conflict in the Middle East. Now, you couldn't find reporting on Ukraine for weeks. So the fact that nobody's looking over at Venezuela, right, even in within the U.S. administration, and it's in their own backyard, that doesn't surprise me in the least. But yeah, you're absolutely right. You're talking about a move, a referendum that's supposed to be.

supposedly guarded up, what, 95% positive response to seize two-thirds of a neighboring country's territory. That's basically what it is. That region's about two-thirds of that size of that country. Just in the region, but more importantly, you know, outside of the region geopolitically, that's a major concern, right? But you get very little attention paid to it. So what is the, what's the role of an organization or the CIA? that i mean if that's the question um well first of foremost it's to be proactive and stay ahead of the curve in terms of understanding what's happening right getting insights so that you're not surprised because that is part of national security is ensuring that the leadership right whether it's the

president the prime minister Vladimir Putin or whomever isn't surprised by what's happening and so you have to be ahead of the curve that means you're collecting intelligence that means you're gathering information from whatever source you may have that can tell you what are the plans and intentions right what's the motivation what are the intended actions and that depending on the topic is a really heavy lift right so you look at um look at iran as an example understanding iran's ambitions with its weapons program incredibly heavy lift, very difficult, limited sources that you can potentially, you know, tap into to understand that. But with Venezuela, no, it's a perfect example. Look, we missed the boat many times, whether you're talking about CIA or broadly U.S. administration policy

over what's happening in our own backyard, Central America, further south. It's an area that we tend to not so much disregard as ignore, right, and focusing on other concerns. Oftentimes, you know, recently terrorism, obviously, but oftentimes the Middle East. Oftentimes our, you know, activities related to China, Russia. So right down there, right south of the United States, tends to get short shrift, right? We don't, I don't think, tend to focus enough attention or our best resources or adverse personnel, and then we get surprised. You know, somebody like Chavez shows up. You know, Maduro, we're thinking like, what the hell? You know, what's with this cyclical shift to the left on a somewhat regular basis? It's because we don't pay attention. And you say we don't

pay attention. And I think that, you know, that's a very interesting point that you raised there. But what you're faced with is political instability there of a huge kind, which is then going to impact the US. In a way, I would argue, and people say I'm crazy when I say this, on a similar level to Israel, Palestine, for the United States. Because Venezuela is backed by Iran. They're backed by China. They're backed by Russia.

This is a proxy war, isn't it? Yeah. Well, it is, essentially. I mean, that's certainly how China, if you just take them, that's how they view it, right? We talk about Iran and Iran's proxies, you know, and currently what they're doing to, in a sense, escalate the conflict, right? You know, the U.S. administration's all spun up about, well, we don't want to escalate the conflict by, you know, upsetting or targeting Iran's regime directly.

They're already done it through their proxies. China looks at Venezuela as an example. And it's not as if they approach the Venezuelan. government with offers of economic assistance because they're gracious and benevolent. That's bullshit. So they're doing it because they view this as a, as a, I don't want to say a stronghold, but an opportunity, right, to create, you know, a foothold, a potential point of disruption, instability, angst for the U.S. administration, all those things from the Chinese regime's

point of view, those are good things, right? So, you know, look, they're building a military facility, training facility on behalf of the Cuban government, right? That should be of concern, but, you know, we've been, again, previous administration or the current and the one before the Trump administration were spun up about, you know, trying to reestablish warmer relationships with the Cuban regime. And meanwhile, the Cuban regime is, you know, on the other side, they're dealing with China. Come on in. Build this facility for us. I mean, we don't, we don't seem to multitask sometimes very well, right? And by that, I mean the, the U.S. administration, at any given time, not just this one, not the Trump administration, not the Obama administration,

any administration, we seem to have a hard time with the concept that, you know, we want to do right in the world. You know, I do believe in a sense that the U.S. they tend to of a lot of the places that I've been and spent most of my life overseas in some bizarre places they tend to have this this naive view sometimes that the world is you know mirrored by our you know the western values right so and everybody does that you know you mirror your own values on other people the U.S. tends to do it you know in a more or a less pragmatic way because they sometimes actually believe it. Oh, you're going to behave like we do. Right? Yeah, we go into Iraq.

We go into Afghanistan and we imagine somehow, you know, you're going to get this. Boy, you're going to love our whole idea of democracy. And 20 years in Afghanistan, and they didn't know what the fuck we were trying to sell them. They had no idea after all that time. And so we could have known that by looking at what the Soviets did in Afghanistan.

We have all that information about what the Soviets did and how much trouble they had and how many years they spent trying to get the hell out of there. For the same reasons that we ended up trying to get that out of there and eventually did. So, you know, we tend to do that. And that's a problem. You know, so I think, and at the same time, then, you know, when you make those mistakes,

when you mirror your values and then you don't get the results because you've given them the party hats and all the money and the resources and they don't behave the way that you want them to, you know, then you spend this time trying to recalibrate. And it's a tough thing. But, yeah. Mike, one of the things we've been talking a lot on the show, we recently had the former prime minister of Australia. Tony Abbott and others talking about the phrase that Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, the leader of Iran, the leaders of many countries are not using, which is multipolar world. They keep talking about this,

which seems to me like a code for throwing America off the pedestal, essentially, right? Challenging American hegemony, et cetera. And Francis brought up the issue with Venezuela. What is happening in the world at the moment? And why is it happening? Well, you're right. You're getting this growing. effort, a lot of it led by China, frankly, their global initiative to create this, this concept of the global South, right? We're going to build up, you know, this, this, this entity, this, this global South operation that is going to, essentially the goal is to supplant the U.S. at the top, I mean, at the future, I'm simplifying this thing, but, but if you imagine you've got

your, your, your ladder, and right now, and again, I'm not saying it is or isn't, but this is the Chinese regime's view. The U.S. sits on top of that, and they don't like that. They view themselves, Xi, remember what I'm saying? I don't mean the Chinese people, Chinese culture, history, fantastic, but the Chinese regime, led by Xi, views itself at the top of the food chain, right? And they've got a plan, their global security initiative, to get there.

It's a blueprint. And part of that is to develop this world where you don't have the U.S. sitting up there. I don't think there's so much interested in a world. a multi-polar world. They're interested in a world where China replaces the U.S. and sits up top, right, and creates this influence. And they're doing it through a variety of means, and they've been very successful, as you pointed out, in South America, they've spent well over a decade and a half, traveling around, locking up mining rights and doing a variety of things that they do to, under their Belt and Road initiative, to get to this point. And that's their goal, right?

And it's not because they think the world will be a better place because of it. That's, they just want to sit up there. Well, like you said, every country pursues its national security interests and national interest in general. And they're not doing it because it's in the best interests of Venezuela or the best interests of the Democratic Republic of Congo or wherever they've been busy, you know, doing their business and creating these relationships, mostly by handing out bags of cash. And so, and then the bill comes due, and some of these countries are starting to realize that's a problem. But, look, you can, you can make an argument that the world is a less chaotic place when you have a, what's the word I'm looking for? I'm bipolar, no, but when you have a world that isn't a multipolar, I don't even know, I don't even know if I understand what, multipolar means sometimes because I've heard different definitions of it. But when you have a

multipolar world, I think the potential, the downside, maybe as an upside, downside is probably more chaos. Well, right, this is what I always think about because, look, I'm no, you know, I haven't worked on a say I'm not great expert. But it just, when I look at what's happening in Mexico, when you take out a stable situation where one cartel is dominant, that doesn't usually end in stability and peace and kumbaya. What seems to happen is a power source. struggle until the emergence of the next hegemonic cartel, and then you just go around in these circles. So if you apply that to the world, it doesn't seem to me that replacing the world as it is now with a world in which you have Russia, China, the U.S., all competing for that top-dog position,

that does not seem to me like a more stable and secure world for everybody involved. I don't think it is. I mean, you could point not just the cartels, but we could look at Tito. you could look at Gaddafi. You could look at, I mean, shit, Saddam Hussein, right? I mean, you know, I'm not saying better to the devil you know, but just proving the point, which is when you take out what is a strong leader or situation, then you better be aware that what comes in behind that could be chaotic and not particularly pleasant. Libya is a hot mess, right, since Gaddafi left.

Now, before Gaddafi got taken out, he was kind of our guy in terms of, He had pledged his support for fighting terrorism and all of this. And so theoretically he was like, and then there were other, you know, reasons, I suppose, why, you know, some countries were very keen to see Gaddafi removed. And he was. And now nobody talks about Libya, but Libya is a disaster, right? It's a complete disaster. Slave markets everywhere.

It's terrible. You know, so I think, yes. I think there's there is that problem, but again, I get it. People look around at a situation where, you know, the U.S. sits on top of the food chain. People, you know, complain whether they're acting as the policeman of the world, imposing their, you know, views on things. And, you know, okay, fine. China sits over here and goes, well, that's what we want. It's not like they're upset because, you know, not enough.

voices are heard. They're just so that's fine. I get why people complain about whoever's at the top at that particular moment in time, but don't be unrealistic about why somebody else is complaining about it, right? They're not doing it because they feel as if, well, we should all have more of a say in things. They want more of a say in things. Mike, and the obvious question is given the U.S. support for Ukraine, given the U.S. obvious support for Israel, given the U.S.'s huge level of indebtedness of its own, irrespective of those conflicts too. How well positioned is America to actually fight off these very serious challenges? Right. Yeah, it's a problem because you're talking, I mean, look at, you're talking about with Israel, you know, the concern was

opening up a multi-front war, right? Well, you know, the U.S. is facing these various fronts in a much more serious way. I can remember when our biggest issue was Haiti. The, The Balkan crisis, which was a real problem. But you look at the scale of it now and you look at, you know, the theater of war involving Ukraine and Russia, you look at the Middle East. Now, the Middle East is, you can argue, okay, well, it's just more of the same, I suppose. I mean, I've heard this. You know, it's always a problem over there. What?

So, okay, if you want to dismiss it that way, but it is. And they're having discussions in the states. in Washington, D.C., up on Capitol Hill, at this very moment talking about, what can we and can we not do? There is a growing sense that with Ukraine, part of this is obviously based on domestic politics, that, you know, enough's enough, maybe.

You know, maybe that money needs to be brought back and spent at home. Maybe, you know, there's not the appetite, you know, that people thought at the outbreak when during the, it's been almost two years since Putin moved in in a big way. But I think, you know, we had people out in the streets waving Ukraine flags. Everybody's, you know, free Ukraine. Everybody's got bumper stickers, flags on their front porches.

And it's not been quite two years. And there's a fair amount of fatigue, right? Which is, I think, surprising to a lot of people. And also the attention, because, you know, we have short attention. spends. Everyone's now focused on Israel. Do you think it's also because the Ukrainians aren't winning? Oh, sure.

If the Ukrainians were kicking ass, I don't think you'd have war exhaustion in this way. Yeah, I agree with the 100%. There's no doubt about it. The emotions were running high leading into the counteroffensive, you know, at the beginning of summer. And you're right. If they had made

inroads, if they had, you know, made their way as maybe even to their own borders again, on the East and sure we wouldn't be having the same conversation there wouldn't there wouldn't be this sense of well maybe enough's enough you know but I think look you have to be pragmatic right and again this is where I think sometimes you know the U.S. can miss the boat a little bit and they sometimes they catch up for domestic political reasons and in this case we've got a 2024 election coming up and I think the current White House looks around and thinks okay well what's

you know where's the wind blowing as far as the voters go right do they have the stomach to continue putting billions and billions of dollars into Ukraine just like with Israel you know where's where the wind's blowing and the current administration looks out there and sees protests in the street you know related to free Palestine or from the river to the sea and they look at the Arab American voters they look at the youth voters and they you know suddenly it goes from okay unequivocal support to Israel to Yes, but we have to be very, very careful here. And you have to be very careful about how you conduct your operations in a mosque,

and we have to look for a truce, and they're playing both sides, right? And that's a strange place to be. We'll be back with our guests in a minute. But first, if you're looking for the perfect Christmas present for the man in your life, then look no further than this incredible offer from Manscaped. The Foxover at Manscaped have been working night and day to bring you a below-the-weigh, grooming experience like none other with their brand new performance package 5.0 Ultra. We've been working with Manscape for two years now and if like me you're a

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Yeah, it's a strange place sometimes when you think that your foreign policy is driven by domestic political concerns. I mean, I'm not sure that that's the best route to go. Because again, you define your national security interests. Those should be free of your own domestic political interests, I would think. But I'm not a politician, so what the hell do I know? Mike, we're looking at this situation around the world. We're seeing these wars potentially springing up or springing up.

You go, how much is this the responsibility of the Biden government? How much of this is these leaders looking at Biden and going, yeah, now's our time. Yeah. Yeah, I try not to be too political, right? I mean, you know, one of the things that I always tried to imagine, whether it's true or not, I suppose, but, you know, you deal with based on your own experience, the CIA tends to be an apolitical operation at the operational level. You know, again, you've got a director who has some, you know, he's got his own relationship with the president. But if you're just, you know, somebody within CIA operations, you don't believe me, spend any time sitting around chatting about politics. You don't care. And ideally, I've seen and I've been in a lot of countries where you have wholesale change every time there's a change in the government, and they just clear out that particular intel operation, law enforcement, and bring in their own people. That is a terrible place to be. So to the degree that it can be, you need to do.

everything possible to ensure that your intel operations are apolitical. And again, realizing it's a human endeavor, so you're never going to get down to completely apolitical. But as far as, you know, is the current turmoil the result of people looking at Joe Biden and saying, well, he and his team seem a little bit weak. So maybe now is the time to engage in this. I think every administration gets tested, right? Joe Biden is a known quantity, right? These various leaders out there, they've seen him for 50 years, in one way or another, or their personnel have seen him.

Their intel operations have been assessing politicians for all this time. So they've had 50 years to look at everything about Joe Biden. So it's not as if in the past couple of years they thought, well, let's test him. They kind of knew what they were getting, right? And he came in, and I think certainly, if we just kind of look around the world, Iran has certainly made the calculation that they're not dealing with a strong leader, right? They're not dealing with somebody who they can't quite read. And by that, I mean, you could go back to Ronald Reagan, right? one of the things that the Soviets had a problem with with Reagan in terms of profiling and

assessment was they really weren't sure exactly how aggressive he was going to be at any given moment. They didn't know because they felt as if he was capable of walking in to NORAD and saying, well, let's let those missiles fly. And that tends to keep people a little bit more guarding and on the back foot. So Iran's made the same calculation, I think, in a different way with the Biden team, in part because the Biden team came out at the very beginning and said, we want to bring in a different mindset. We want to have a warm relationship with Iran. They took their foot off the sanctions pedal, right?

And they put in place in their various positions that are Iran forward leading, whether the State Department or the Pentagon or elsewhere, they put in people who had appeasement in mind, who had, you know, let's get rid of this maximum, pressure approach that was previously used with the Iranian regime. And let's call it a new day. The Iranian regime doesn't want a new day. Every time you put your hand out to shake their hand, they smack it away. Right. I mean, that's a track record that they have. So I think, yes, the chaos now that you're seeing in the Middle East, because Hamas wouldn't exist without Iran,

Hezbollah wouldn't exist without Iran. The Houthi militants that are launching missiles into the Red Sea, they wouldn't exist without Iranian support and training and funding resources. So what they're doing now is based on their assessment that they're dealing with a weak White House. Did Putin make the same calculation? That one, that almost feels to me like I'm just wasting your time by speculating way too much. I don't know. But I will say there's nothing really surprising. about the Biden White House, you know, or Secretary Anthony Blinken or any of them.

So I don't think they had a hard time reading what their response would be. They looked at Obama and Obama, you know, had laid down a couple of red lines in the past when he was president. And apparently they weren't actually red lines or lines in the sand because he didn't take any action. I think they look at that sort of thing and think, okay, well, Biden is part of that same mindset. China, I think, is a little bit different. They play a much longer game. I don't think they look in terms of we're going to take advantage of a two-year, or three, four-year time frame.

I mean, they're way down the road. So I don't think they look at Biden and think, okay, now what's our move on Taiwan? And that's a much longer runway for them. So I don't know. It's a great question. I don't think I gave you much of an answer. No, I think it was a very good answer. And I think it was a very honest answer, Mike.

You know, I find it surprising. And look, maybe I get this wrong, and please correct me, that the American government have been giving Iran money? Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, recently. Yeah, yeah. That's insane.

Well, you could argue that there's no reason for it right now because they haven't done anything in the sense to deserve it. But it's part of this idea that they've been unfreezing assets. So they unfroze a while back $6 billion that really hit the half. headlines, right? They, because I think the Republicans were, they saw, you know, blood in the water and thought, okay, this is an opportunity to make some hay here. But in reality, the Biden administration's actions had been giving the Iranian regime much more money than that because they had, again, eased on the sanctions, allowing Iran to realize much greater revenues from their oil. And, but they unfroze

six billion as an example of assets. And, um, um, Their idea, their concept, which I think is extremely flawed, was that we are just giving this to them. It's their money anyway from their old oil proceeds, but we froze it, you know, and they're saying it's only to be used for humanitarian purposes. And they did the same with another tranche of money that they just unfroze, $10 billion. It's only for humanitarian purposes. Well, A, the U.S. government has a hard time keeping track of its own money, right? So the idea that they're going to somehow monitor this stack of cash, right, that they've now unlocked is absurd, but also money's fungible. So, you know, if you tell me that you're now giving me $10 billion, but you can all use it for medicine or to build another school, well, that's great.

Okay, that's what I'll use it for. But I'm going to take this other $10 billion that I got sitting over here in my reserves. And now I'm going to spend that on more drones and missiles for the Houthi militants to spend some time fucking up the Red Sea and creating more of the chaos that I want. Because instability from their perspective is good. It keeps distance from what they don't want, which is a stable Middle East. You get a stable Middle East. By implication, that means Israel has a right to exist. If the Saudis make that deal and normalize relationships, are you kidding me?

Iranian regime doesn't want that. So whatever they do is designed to meet that ultimate objective, which is the destruction of Israel. But I guess going back to the money, the idea that the U.S. administration could stand in front of the cameras and tell the American public or Congress that, yeah, you know, we're monitoring it. Only used for humanitarian purposes, it's just either they think that the American people are incredibly stupid, right, or the American people are really stupid. And they know something. And they know something. And they're just doing the obvious. So anyway, yeah, they are giving them money.

Mike, you mentioned Israel-Palestan. I think I think we'd really like to talk about that a little bit. The obvious question for me is, imagine you're the national security advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, the morning of October 8th. What's your advice? How do we respond? What do we do? Well, I think, A, your first response is what they did.

And to me, that makes perfect sense. You have to destroy this entity. You have to remove Hamas. Can you? Is that possible? Well, no. And that's the next part of the calculation, which they've now come around to, which is you can't do that.

Counterterrorism is not a zero-sum game. You can't reduce the risk down to zero. It never will happen, right? You mitigate and you do what you can, right? Doesn't mean that you don't take out targets. I mean, that's a, you know, in counterterrorism anyway, I don't want to sound mercenary. And people go, oh, my God, that's terrible. Well, that's great.

And when we live in that wonderful world where everybody gets along, fine. You know, don't do it. But people don't act in other people's best interest. So when you're talking about counterterrorism, I do get it. If you, their initial response, it was a motive, it was anger, it was despair, it was anguish, it was all these things. We're going to destroy Hamas. And the concept is right. But what they don't mean is is in reality, right?

So what you want to do is you degrade the structure of Hamas so much that you've mitigated the risk down to as much as possible, which is not going to be zero, right? Because they've got a bottomless well of potential recruits, it seems, on the fighter level. You take out their command and control structure. You take out as much of their resources as possible. Iran will keep filtering it in, right? But that's what you do. Now, the problem, and they knew this was going to be a problem right at the outset, was the narrative. And the narrative turned remarkably quickly, given how brutal 7 October was, the narrative turned amazingly quickly to Israel's fault.

Because look at all these dead Palestinians. Well, Hamas knows exactly what they're getting. Hamas has been in charge. Sometimes you talk to these young people that are out on the college campuses and they're like, well, you know, you've got to get the Israelis out of Gaza. You think, well, how long have they been there? And they've been, oh, you know, ever since Israel's been a state. And you think, okay, well, look, not that to, you know, pick too fine a point here. But they handed Gaza over to Hamas, right? Hamas kicked Fatah out. And what was that? 06, I guess, 06. And Hamas has done nothing in that interim period to now to better the lives of the

Palestinian citizens. In fact, they've taken most of the money that was. funneled by NGOs and governments to improve the lives of Palestinians, right? And they've pocketed it or used it for their own terrorist purposes, right? So billions of dollars have just been funneled away from the people on the ground. And then people go, well, they voted Hamas in. Okay, well, okay, fine. But it's kind of like the referendum. Jada.

I don't know. Was the referendum honest? Was the vote honest? Who knows? I mean, there is very high levels of support for Hamas and Gaza. Now there are, certainly. And I would say that before, and I would also argue that it's not in your own best interest to say you don't support Hamas. So, you know, it's like any poll numbers.

I don't trust a lot of poll numbers in the U.S. or the UK or anywhere, right? So I'm not sure. I'll just give this example. Chow Cheshko had a 93% approval rating the day before he was arrested and executed. Right. The 7% are very powerful, Mike. Yeah. So I suppose, Mike, what I'm getting at is it seemed to me with,

The October 7th attack, Israel was in a position, I forget what it's called in chess, where every move you make makes you lose. It seems like that to me. You respond, you're the evil, bad guy killing innocent Palestinian kids. You don't respond. You've just had your 9-11 and you're not doing anything. You want to destroy Hamas, but actually you can't. So what is the play here? Well, the play is what is going to happen, which is they're going to hit a point.

where they feel as if they've done what they can. And they balance that with the international pressure, which is enormous, right? And rightly so. You don't want, and they understand this. It's insane to me. Sometimes when people go, well, they just don't have a disregard. They have no regard for life. Well, yes, they do.

Right. And people won't believe that. My personal experience with the IDF and operations is they have a great concern, in part because they know what it means on the world stage, right? And in part because they just, they're not a Hamas. Hamas embeds themselves with the civilians because they know they're going to get dead civilians because they know that's going to help their narrative, right? I mean, it's just, you know, I'm not going to be pushed off of that belief anyway. And so they have no regard.

It's like saying ISIS had regard for, you know, the people of Iraq or al-Qaeda had regard for, they drive bomb-laden vehicles in the middle of a market. They don't care about casualties, right? It's not their point for being. So with Israel, they've got to find that point. I think they've already assessed it and made that decision. Look, they're already talking to the Saudis and Egyptians and Jordanian government about the plan, the security plan for Gaza once the conflict ends. They're talking about a buffer zone along the border,

an increased buffer zone along the border. that implies that they understand they're not going to be able to get rid of Hamas, right? So Hamas can't do what they did on 7th October. But it implies that they understand this idea that they're going to completely destroy Hamas is probably not going to happen. The question then to backfill that is, well, what happens to Gaza, who governs Gaza, right? The U.S. administration had a relatively simplistic answer. You know, they've been pushing this about, well, we get Mahmoud Abbas from the West.

West Bank, you know, they'll go back in, you know, point being is Hamas kicked out, Fata, Hamas kicked out, you know, that, that organization. That's why they ended up in the West Bank and you had this split situation with Hamas and Gaza. People really don't have much time for Machmoe Abbas, right? So that's probably not a realistic thing. But what does it mean? Hamas cannot remain governing in Gaza. I don't think that's going to, that's not going to happen.

So they're not going to create a buffer zone and then say, okay, well, Hamas is back. we got the status quo. Status quo is going to lead to more deaths on all sides and more instability. And you might feel righteous about calling for a ceasefire right now, right? But until you get, you know, some plan in place and says this is what we're going to, and it's not the status quo, you're just basically kicking the can down the road so you feel righteous about yourself because you can go out on the campuses and protest for, you know, a ceasefire.

Hamas has already clearly stated they're going to keep doing it. 7 October, I mean. They've said it repeatedly. Sinwar has been very clear. And it's probably a good thing for people to take them at their word based on what they've done. Mike, the thing that I find frustrating when we talk about Israel, Palestine, is, and we've already touched on this point before,

we look at these people like Hamas through Western eyes, and they think that they think like us. When the reality is, they look at the world a little bit differently, don't they? just just a little look yeah and that is and that's an incredibly important part this the CIA one of your toughest jobs is to is to understand that that that if you're because again imagine it's not an easy sales job right trying to convince say a russian colonel or a you know member of the foreign ministry in russia or wherever to provide information that will benefit the West and could likely end up to that individual's death.

That's a tough sell. So you have to be deep into the psyche of whoever you're talking to. You have to really understand what their mindset is. And terrorists, it's the same way because you're still trying to collect intel, right? You're still looking for sources of information. You want, hey, if you can get a source inside Hamasal-Kasangasangbabagate, great. right so it's not as if you don't do the same intel collection effort or like with a cartel whatever it may be um so that's that's an incredibly important part of it we don't understand the west

i mean doesn't understand the brutality right we don't understand the disregard for for human life for values that we hold dear and so you're right we imagine scenarios, or we game out potential to attack scenarios. How do we defend ourselves against these things? And sometimes it's a very difficult process because you can't imagine the lack of regard that some of these organizations have, some of these people have for human life. It's just we can't fathom it. It's not part of our abilities.

We can't, for whatever reason, right? We think we can, you know, because we've seen. the news and we did, but ultimately at the end of the day, it is a real problem. It's a flaw that we have in the whole process of assessment, of recruitment of sources, of understanding potential attack plans and scenarios of motivations, plans and intentions. It's a real problem you've outlined. We'll be back with our guests in a minute. But first, do you remember the Canadian trucker protest in 2022, where thousands of Canadians came out to protest COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates? Now, These protests lasted for weeks, and the people out on the streets needed funds,

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To me, it's this utopian way of seeing the world, which is lovely in a way, but it's, you know, quite demented as well. You know, you're going to sit down with Hamas or you're going to sit down with Nicola Maduro. And, you know, and he's going to be, you know what. You're right. I've just seen it. You're right.

Yeah, you got it. Human rights. Don't know why I didn't think about this. Yeah. Yeah, you've just, you know what? We've watched this Disney film together and all of a sudden, you know what? It's really important that we treat everybody as equal. The bare necessities.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, um, look, you need to have hope in the world, right? You want to think, you want to imagine that things get better that people think that way. And, and that's a good thing. But I can only, you, uh, I can only, talk from personal experience. And, you know, I tend to be pretty cynical about, about things, in part because you see the worst of people out there, right? And so while you want to imagine

that you can get to a place where there's this peaceful world and everybody's operating together and we're all concerned about the common good, you know, you've got a responsibility, again, and going back to the original thoughts about national security. And national security interests first responsibility, protect your citizens, your population, your people. So being naive or being hopeful, hope is not necessarily or feelings, right? Or the idea of being righteous, it's not a good way to direct your planning for as far as national security interests, homeland defense, whatever it may be. And if that makes you cynical, will so be it. But again, I look around and I think sometimes we get caught short because we, it's not just about mirroring values, right?

It's sometimes it's deeper than that. We genuinely imagine that taking the high road is somehow going to force others or lead others to do the same. And it never happens. And certainly it won't happen with a group like Hamas or the Iran. Iranian regime. You know, again, I go back to the same thing. At some point, the U.S. is going to deal with the Iranian regime or the U.S. and allies. It's going to take that, it's going to take a very strong coalition to do this.

And I don't mean militarily, but we're going to have to have a reckoning at some point with the Iranian regime because they are the reason why we have this conflict right now, and they have been the reason in the past and they will be in the future as long as they are allowed to imagine that they can continue to disrupt and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, pursue their dream of the destruction of Israel. Neither fronts or have anything like the expertise that you bring to this conversation. But the one thing, I think the reason people sometimes listen to what we say about these things is he mentioned his mother, family from Venezuela.

I was born in Russia, grew up in the Soviet Union. So this idea that Western people have about people in other parts of the world being all nice and sweet and friendly. But you know what? we spend more and more time in America now. When I go to America, it kind of makes sense to me because Americans are genuinely, from my experience, like really nice people.

They're kind of very friendly and helpful and collaborative. And so I think it's hard for people in the US to imagine that there are parts of the world where people don't think about the world in that way. Do you have to have some kind of like anti-mirroring training as part of your CIA thing? Or do you just land in Baghdad and you're like, after three days you kind of got it all suss out.

Yeah, you're there and you go like, well, this is fucked. So, yeah, part of it with the U.S., I think, part of it's a space issue, by that I mean size issue, right? You've got the luxury of this landmass, right? And so while it's not an isolationist place, right, in a sense it is. It's constantly inward looking, right? So, you know, a lot of problems just seem a long ways away. And that allows you, I think, to be, whether it's nicer, maybe it's naive, whatever the word is, you have that benefit because of distance and size.

And it's the same reason why people make fun of Americans for so few of them having passports. You don't need a passport in America. You've got everything. You want to go skiing, go skiing. You want to go to the beach, go to the beach. You want to live in the city, live in the city. You want to go to the desert. You got everything.

Yeah, yeah. And so, and that's always my response to is, look, have you, have you been there? I mean, it's got its benefits. No, it's got its drawbacks too because, you know, the variety is amazing when you start traveling around the world. I tell you what you don't have in America. And actually, it's really important. The one thing you don't have is history. And I think that's one of the reasons that American foreign policy and just general, people sometimes, you know, they haven't seen 2,000 years of the same mistake being made over and over in their buildings, in. their monuments, in their history books. So it's easier to think in a more idealistic way, perhaps, which can be a strength. But I also think it can be a weakness as you were leading to it. I think that's, I think that's right. We have a short-term view, in part because it's a short history over there, right? And in part because we just, we just, everyone seems to have ADHD. But they're certainly all taking the medication for it. Let's put it that way. So it's, I think It's just a, it's an interesting idea, but I think, I mean, where does that, what does that lead to?

I mean, the, the problem I think that's facing the U.S. right now is not so much outside our borders, right? I mean, that's a problem, right? That obviously goes without saying. But our political system right now is really divisive. And in talking about how little history we've got, it's incredible that we've gotten now. to this point in such a short period of time, right? It's a two-party system, and it is like trench warfare right now. Nobody's talking on the other side, and there's nobody living in the middle, you know,

and so that is contributing, I think, to some of the problems that we're facing, right, both domestically, certainly, and then outside the country, because it impacts the way that any administration comes in and views foreign policy and because they're so focused on how dysfunctional the internal politics is right now. And also there's a tremendous amount of self-interest. There's self-interest with every politician everywhere around the world. But in the U.S., we have senators who can maintain their job as a senator for, you know, 42 years, you know, 50 years. Their entire career, they can have done nothing else except be a politician.

And that's a, I think it's a real problem. but that's not a topic for today. And it's that division because a nation divided is going to be weaker. Yeah, absolutely. No, absolutely. And you tend to get, then you'll get these cataclysmic events, you know, 9-11, whatever it may be, draws everyone together. That's kind of standard human behavior. You have that one.

And, you know, Putin's very good at that. Putin is extremely good. It has been good at creating the outside threat. You know, whenever he's faced with internal turmoil or potential, political dissent, create an outside threat, rally the people around it, and he's been extremely good about that. She and China, you know, does the same thing, essentially, although he's got problems from an economic perspective.

I think that we are still struggling to understand, I think, and that's going to be important because that speaks to his ability to stay in power. Mike, we want to ask you some questions from our supporters, so we'll head on over there in a second, but before we let you go, we always ask the final question. Before we do, though, I just wanted to ask, I mean, it feels like, I think, to a lot of people, the world is kind of on fire at the moment. Do you think, is your short-term prognosis that it's going to get better or is it's going to get worse? I think it's going to get better. And I'll tell you why. Really? Wow. I think it's going to get, I know, right? You spent too much time in America.

Yeah. You might be booed here, right? But you don't bridge. You don't bruce any more, like. That's right. It's got it's fucked and it's going to get more fuckety. I don't think it gets a word, but I've just made it up. You think it's going to get better? And here's why I say that. Okay. It's because I think that there will be a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, in part because there is this fatigue in the EU as well, obviously, in the U.S., in terms of resources. Putin was counting on that, I think.

He knew that this got drawn out that this would happen. I think that was their assessment. He hasn't made a lot of right calculations about this war, but I think that was probably one of those that he intuitively understood that the U.S. would not be, politically would not have the will for a long period of time. Zelensky, I think, will see that. Zelensky's got his own internal political issues right now.

That's going to be a serious problem. If they don't get that shit pulled together, If he starts, you know, you start seeing these fractures and criticism and a lot of nitpicking and all these arguments, that's going to do nothing to show up support, you know, from allies. So I think the solution will be that they will come to a negotiated settlement that will, unfortunately, kind of leave things looking the way that they were at the outset. You know, if anything, I think maybe the Russians will end up with a little bit more land. I'm not saying this is a good result. I'm just saying that that's what I think is going to be the result. Israel of Moss, I think, is also,

I know it doesn't look like it right now, but I think it's winding down. Because, again, I think they've made that decision. The toughest part is going to be who governs. That's going to be the biggest issue, right? It's not going to be the biggest issue is not going to be, when do we pull troops out of Gaza, right? And what backfill says it's going to be,

what's the longer-term situation they're governing? People talk about, We need a two-state solution. The White House has been talking about that. We need a two-state solution. Well, read the recent studies. Read the recent, you know, case history on this. And, you know, they've been talking about a two-state solution for generations, right, 48.

You know, and they talked about it in 93. They talked about an 0-3. Talked about it 14. Never happens, right? But somebody's got to come up with the solution. But what I'm saying is the conflict itself, I think, will wind down. And again, if it ends up in just the status quo and homoest, and Hamas remains as sort of a governing entity in Gaza,

I think then it'll kick off again and we'll have problems. But if they can solve that problem, I think we're in better shape. Xi, I don't think you're looking at a near-time move on Taiwan. And anyway, I think that that will be a soft move. I don't think, you know, we imagine that he's going to, like, bring the ships in and, you know, and drop in troops and suddenly they take over Taiwan. I don't think that is the way that they're planning this out, right?

I think you look at Hong Kong and how they did Hong Kong, and I think that that's more of the approach they're looking at with Taiwan, a soft, slow envelopment of the society. So, yeah, I think, will we always have problems? Of course, we're not saying, don't kill me wrong. We don't know where the next shipstorm is going to come from, but that's why you have intel services, theoretically to be out there looking for those next crises,

not just in the one that's in front of you, right? We did that with terrorism for a while, right? We made that mistake, right? You respond, you get a terrorist attack. Next thing you know, you're responding by by building in physical protocols to deal with that previous attack rather than what that next next next one might look like, right? So the key to, you know, intel services is you've got to be imagining what is the next crisis, what's the next hot spot, what's the next problem? And that's what they spend all their time trying to do. But yeah, you know, as bizarre as it sounds, I'm a somewhat, I'm a cynic, but I'm a somewhat hopeful person too. And I also think it's a pretty resilient world that we live in. So, you know, at some point, we'll, you know, I'll be proven wrong. But then you can have me back and I'll say, yeah, I fucked that one up.

Mike, final question. What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? God, that's a hell of a question. We are school, I guess, that one. That same one? Yeah. I'll bet some people have given really good answers, too. Some. Yeah, some. Yeah, well, this won't be one of those times.

Yeah, I think for me, and again, this will be boring, but I think the one thing that we need to be focused on that we're not focused on right now, I mean, some people are, but it's a small group, would be the underlying strength of the economy in China. right second largest economy in the world and we've been kind of kicking that can down the road willing to look the other way as they present us with three or four or five different sets of books you know in terms of their economy there are a lot of problems they've been having issues she has actually been getting some pushback from party elders and over the course of the past year

very upset about the economy very concerned about what does that mean it means population unrest So one thing that they worry about is losing control of the population. Again, we have to imagine because this is where we put our Western values on there and go, well, I mean, sure, of course they'll get out in the streets and they'll protest and everything. It's not really. They've tried that. Didn't work out. It didn't work out.

Yeah. Didn't work out very well at all. But I think that that is the thing that people should be focused on because so much of what goes on globally, we're very interconnected, right? In terms of economics, which drives a lot of other issues and concerns and conflicts, that's the thing that I think people need to focus a little bit more on. Look, not that we're going to get that transparency. We still don't know what the hell happened as far as COVID goes, because the Chinese regime has failed to be transparent in any way,

and the world has failed to demand answers as opposed to just asking and then giving them a free pass. And so we don't know. We're going to have another pandemic. there's no doubt about it. We'd be better positioned to mitigate the risks of the next pandemic if we had transparency from the Chinese regime over what actually happened there, but we don't. So anyway, I guess my point there is understanding

the underlying problems with their economy will be no easier, right? Because it's very hard to gather that sort of information. But it's something that people should look at. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on. No, thank you. What do you think of this latest news about the 20 to 40 year infiltration of the US government by a Cuban spy?

And what are the potential consequences of such an infiltration?