June 9, 2026 • 59 mins
In this week's Classic episode, Ben, Matt and Noel return to a bizarre harbinger of chaos to come: on November 22, 2020, the United States withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies. This treaty, signed in 1992, allows 34 member countries to perform unarmed aerial observations over foreign soil. Imagery captured is shared with the member countries. The U.S. cited Russia's activities with regards to the treaty as their reason for withdrawing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning to you with a
classic episode for of our not so secret archives. It
is one that is becoming terrifyingly relevant in twenty twenty six.
Remember back in twenty twenty one, you guys, when the
United States let everybody know they were withdrawing from the
(00:23):
Open Skies Treaty.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
How could I forget, especially with all the with all
the more recent treaties we've been withdrawing from more and
more relevant. Indeed, on November twenty second, twenty twenty, the
US withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies, which in
nineteen eighty two allowed thirty four member countries to perform
unarmed aerial observations in foreign airspace or over foreign soil.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, yeah, the whole point of the thing is so
everybody can have a little bit of trust with each other. Yeah, Because, Ben,
they're primarily looking at military infrastructure and available forces and
things like that, right, And it's kind of to make
each member state assured that hey, nobody's gathering a bunch
(01:10):
of military stuff in anyone place.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It gives predictability and transparency. And for a time this
was just absolutely tikety boo. People loved it. The US
said Russia has withdrawn from the treaty, and therefore we
will too. There was a lot of controversy and conspiracy
about this. As of twenty twenty six, the US has
(01:36):
not rejoined. And I'm just gonna say it. I don't
want to sound like a jerk. Things are bad. This
is what my old professors would call a non ideal situation.
I can't believe that this is still a thing that's happening.
This is spooky stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Guys, Cold War Volume two, get the whole set the
Cold War?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Ever really? And the guys, well, I think we're in
the DLC. Anyway, here's hard. Here's our classic episode for
this week.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. We've often said in
earlier episodes that history hinges on the smallest things, and
this is true in fact. You know, if you think
(03:00):
about it, you could describe this story of humanity as
a series of terrifying close calls. Did you guys ever
hear about this ancient population bottleneck?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, please tell us right now, we've got a little
less than eight billion people on the planet, right, and
everybody agrees it's kind of a crowded place. Back in
the day, the opposite was true. There were around ten
thousand people or so on the planet. That was it.
(03:34):
That was all of the Homo sapiens, and the odds
were not looking good. And then in the modern era,
post nuclear weapons, the world is almost ended by accident.
So many times, panic miscalculation. We have so many close
calls where people almost deployed nuclear weapons, like it went
(03:57):
down to one or two people who said, let's think
about this.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Clearly the impetus for the fantastic Stanley Kubrick film Doctor
Strangelove that sort of satirizes how on the edge of
annihilation we as a species constantly live, largely because of
ignorance and incompetence.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
The hunt for Red October if you're talking about. Film
is also a pretty good study of what signals people
send during times of rising tensions or war. But altogether,
it's pretty impressive to realize the human species has made
it to twenty twenty one in the first place. The
(04:39):
first part of twenty twenty one. We can't call the
end yet. Reporters, politicians, generals obviously don't want to meet
the public every week and say we don't know what
the hell's going on, But everybody is acutely aware of
this problem. Human beings are not super great at communicating clearly,
(05:03):
and this miscommunication can have disastrous consequences. So as a result,
all of the countries on the planet now have been
playing a very strange game with the balance between transparency
and optucation.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, and that leads to things like rules of engagement,
you know, like these sort of codes that we all
agree to follow, but maybe it's a little more like, Okay,
this would be nice if we all agreed to this,
and in theory we do, but we've also seen the
way those things can completely break down with just a
few bad actors or a few people that don't adhere
(05:41):
to these kind of tacit codes of understanding, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
No, and humanity. Humanity has formed all these things for
a long time. Think about NATO, Think about you know,
the World Health Organization. Think about all these groups that
try to come together from multiple nations in.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Paristic like you know, as a warsaw pack. Yes, so
we're talking about treaties. We're talking about international conglomerates way
of a state. They come together and we make rules
that are honestly well intentioned. And like you said, we're
(06:19):
not attempting to give all of our secrets away as
a country, but we are trying to minimize inaccuracies, minimize miscalculations.
One of the agreements that the human species reached not
too long ago something called the Open Skies Treaty. So
(06:41):
here are the facts. This treaty is pretty extraordinary. Actually,
it allows all of the signatory countries to fly unarmed
surveillance craft over the entire territory of every other country
that participates in this treaty. Right now, there are more
(07:03):
than thirty countries on board with this, and it's it's
pretty weird when you think about it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
It is weird, especially when we think of things like
you're in our air space. You know, ideas like that
of being shot down or being threatened because you accidentally
wander to someone's airspace, are into you know, waters that
are part of a sovereign nation. Ben right up front,
How is this different than that? Is it the unarmed quality?
Because I feel like that kind of threat happens even
(07:29):
with just like like say a commercial flight or whatever,
like a private jet.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, it's it's it's kind of like that stuff. But
the Open Skies Treaty specifically is for optic observation from
the skies, and there are a couple other sensors that
are used in the flights, but it was specifically designed
so that each country could have a direct a direct
(07:56):
role in looking at the military activities of other countries.
So you know, it's not you hear a report, even
if you know all these countries are friendly with each other,
you hear a report about the military gathering armored vehicles
in one part of their country. You get to actually
go and look at it. And it's really just a
(08:17):
way to make sure everybody's on the same page. We're
not doing anything secret here. Everything's fine. You can take
a look it's cool. That's really what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, the idea here is that there will be less
cloak and daggers stuff going on, because the issue here
is that misunderstandings used to proliferate pretty often. You know,
we have to remember, like during the Napoleonic Wars, for instance,
the fastest method of communication was this game of throne
(08:49):
stuff like send send a raven kind of things, and
and that's that's not super reliable then, you know, as
you guys know, I'm the last person to dunk on
rave and orvids in general. But there's just people. They're
just not as good as planes in terms of surveillance.
So so we could maybe the idea of open skies
(09:10):
is we could maybe knit some of this stuff in
the butt. It's an historic agreement, you guys.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I mean, given how the problems that you've discussed throughout
humanity and the problems that we continue to have with miscommunication,
can you imagine what it must have been like to
have to wait for a letter to arrive by carrier,
pigeon or raven or what have you, and all of
the horrible things that could happen in between. It's like
it's like we joke about how like so many of
the problems in modern sitcoms could be solved if people
(09:39):
had cell phones, you know, like I mean, I can't
even imagine so much like diplomatic nightmare scenarios could have
taken place.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
For sure, you know, and horrible things can still take
place with the machinery, you know, with the the planes
and jets that are out there doing this kind of surveillance.
But it's not the same as a rave and getting
caught in a storm or attacked by an eagle.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Have you guys ever been in that situation, you know,
a situation of limited communication. Not for a long time.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Uh yeah, I mean I've been in the wilderness before
where there's no signal for anything. Sure, it's an eerie feeling.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's something that a lot of our listeners in the
developed world may be unfamiliar with, because there's a pretty
great communication infrastructure in most of the West, most of
the developed world. But if you get you get too
far in the wild. We've got some listeners now in
rural areas who you know, may have just gotten a
(10:47):
fiber Internet connection, you know what I mean, like a
fast internet connection. However, in much of the world, communication
is still stymied, and it still if you go on
Reddit or you go on a travel forum and you
look for problems in the developing world that aren't really
(11:11):
mentioned in the developed world, what you'll see is that
safe delivery of accurate information is kind of a luxury.
Open skies is meant to eliminate miscommunication, which is still
rampant in the world today, but was even more widespread
(11:33):
in decades past. And it's not a new idea. President
Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, the military industrial Congressional complex Guy first
proposed the US and the Soviet Union allow He called
it aerial reconnaissance flights over each other's territory. He pitched
(11:53):
this in July nineteen fifty five at the Geneva Conference.
And again this is you know this, before widespread satellites,
both the USSR and the United States were kind of flying,
kind of flying blind. I'm gonna say.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It, well, yeah, think about the tensions that existed there
with the two superpowers after World War Two. It had
been a little while since then, but there's you know,
there's still tensions. They're still worry about what the other
one is doing and what machinations may exist over on
that other side, just you know, and that exists for
both countries. So you can imagine that this concept was
(12:33):
probably not taken very warmly immediately because it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yes, Matt, you are correct sir. The USSR, the Soviet
Union was not having it. They said this initiative was bs,
it was malarchy, it was hogswallop.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
No, well yeah, I mean essentially, what it sounds like
is you just want to spy on us. You just
want to openly spy on us. Cool, really, really you
want to have a conversation about how it's cool that
you spy on us, but you can spy on us too, dude,
It's fine. It's so weird.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, it is weird. And you know, this is
something we came across off air in the research. You'll
notice that we've used the word surveillance and reconnaissance interchangeably here.
But there's there's an important difference, right.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yes, there absolutely is. So reconnaissance refers to specifically monitoring
outside of friendly territory, which makes sense if you think
about it in like a let's think about like you know,
Metal of Honor or whatever, those video games, like you know,
you're doing recon. You're like the squad that's going out
and checking the area for like mines and stuff, or
(13:50):
like you know, making sure ahead of everyone that's moving
in that it's okay, or you know, getting intel about
what your target is like, et cetera. Definitely the image
that this conscious for me is creeping around through hostile.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Territory, right, and surveillance could be just monitoring in friendly territory.
The point is the USSR and the United States were
the definition of not friends at this time. So of course,
of course the government of the USSR is going to say,
what the hell is wrong with you, dude, You're being crazy.
(14:27):
But the problem was there, and eventually all parties realized it.
The problem was miscalculation is rife. You could, for instance,
based on your intelligence at the time, mistake or routine
supply operation as preparation for the launch of a missile.
(14:47):
Or you could be a pilot and you could be
doing a routine flight and you could have something messed
up with your instrumentation and you could have human error.
You could end up violating sovereign airspace, which could also
be considered an active aggression instead of just some hapless
(15:11):
schmuck in the wrong part of the air, or in
the worst case scenario, you could mistake something innocuous as
preparation for nuclear war. And that's where that's where the
Open Skies Treaty comes from. So to Eisenhower and the
Eisenhower administration, this could save lives.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Or you know, humanity.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, yeah, them too. And so of course Moscow says, no,
no deal. You're you're crazy American. Well, I don't know
what they would call us at that time, Yankee. They say, so,
you're you're crazy Yankee. This doesn't work out, but the
(16:00):
seeds are planted. And so in nineteen eighty nine, then
President George HW. Bush. It's also you may remember him
from his earlier work in the CIA. He's he's the
guy who says, oh, you know, that not bad, let's
do some flyover stuff, which makes sense, you know, spy wise.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
There's one more thing to bring in here. We mentioned
it early early on, just the concept that there weren't
a lot of satellites that had good enough imagery that
were you know, in the right places in order to
have just kind of a large scale surveillance, like wide
wide surveillance that is constant. We didn't have that, so
(16:43):
we really were relying Every country was relying on planes,
and you know, film cameras, like theme about nineteen fifty
five film cameras, and then how much optical technology expanded
and evolved from fifty five to like eighty nine to ninety.
It was still really good stuff. But we're gonna talk
about it later once we're in the nineties. Satellite technology
(17:08):
is a thing. It's heavily a thing. So it is
a bit strange still that this treaty, in this pact
ends up being focused strictly on jets airplanes.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, to a degree, it's a self limiting treaty, and
we're getting to the conspiratorial aspects of this very soon, folks.
Just for a note for long type listeners, you could
say that the satellite program on the US end began
(17:42):
in the very late nineteen fifties, the Corona satellite program,
which is nuts that people don't talk about that more
often because it is logistically objectively impressive. They were dropping film.
(18:02):
They got these things up in like lower orbit, and
they were dropping Cannis. There's a film that's so nuts,
But yeah, they did it, and for a long time
the planes were better, but obviously, in the modern day
satellite technology is a huge piece of the problem. Let's
(18:22):
talk about how the treaty itself works, right, So, in
nineteen ninety NATO and the Warsaw Pact think of that
as the Russian NATO if you want a really easy comparison.
They started negotiating this in nineteen ninety and it went
(18:44):
into effect in two thousand and two. Currently, as we said,
thirty four countries signed on. There is no expiration date
to this treaty. And if you are a country that
is not involved, like if you are Nepal, Bhutan, or Switzerland,
all three of those countries are not involved, then you
can petition to sign on and you there there's like
(19:08):
a there's an explicit process for it. But essentially all
that needs to happen is for the other countries that
are already in the treaty to be like, yeah, we
want to fly our spy planes over your stuff too.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
And doesn't the treaty actually kind of really spell out
exactly what kind of equipment can be used?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
So when I asked at the top.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Of the show, like how is this different from like, Okay,
you're in our airspace, this is essentially like making an appointment,
like you have to give notice and you know exactly
what the rules are and you have to follow you know,
using this agreed upon type of equipment.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Correct, Yes, you have to give seventy two hours notice essentially.
And then and then there's it's really I mean, it's great.
It's a treaty, lots and lots of words, lots and
lots of stipulations about how many hours do you get
to agree to this, to agree to that, to give
your flight plan in to get it approved. It's u
It's all fun in that way. Last thing here I
(20:04):
bring to go in and talk about all this. If
you want to follow along with any of this and
just read more, we highly recommend the websitearmscontrol dot org.
You can actually see pictures of a lot of the
stuff we're mentioning in the show today, so you can
kind of check it out.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I would also recommend the Federation of American Scientists. They
have a great summary of this. We're going somewhere with this, folks,
and it's not just enemy airspace. It turns out, Nola,
You're absolutely right. The treaty is not just specific on
(20:41):
the type of equipment that can be used for surveillance,
but it also has rules regarding how new equipment can
be introduced or how it can be turned down. It
also there's a really cool thing in this treaty. Well,
I say cool, I think it's funny.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Let's say you're a smaller country and you don't have
the biggest air force, but you're a member of Open Skies.
There's this thing in the treaty called the taxi option.
So imagine that like Matt is France and Nole is Germany,
and Matt's country wants to surveil Knowle's country, then Nol,
(21:30):
as a leader of Germany, has the option to say,
get your own planes, buy your own planes over here,
you know the rules, Buddy or Noel as the you
know in Germany can say, actually the Veltek's a German plane.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Indeed, of course what I would say, because as you know,
I was once a young German boy.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yes, yes, and I didn't mean to stereotype you there,
but it's but it is pretty neat, you know. The
idea like this applied to the US too, past tense.
You could if you were the US, you could say, okay,
you want to surveil me France. Matt, I don't know
why I'm major the leader of France, but here we are.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
It's all good. It's in my blood. So yeah, well
let's do it. Keep going, all right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So so that if you're the US and you know
France wants to surveil you under this treaty, then you can.
You You have the choice as the observed country. You
can either say, okay, yes, send your plane's over, send
your folks over, or you can say, oh yeah, well
we'll run a plane around for you. The treaty does
(22:43):
require people from the observer country to be on board,
so they got the get in front of that. Anyway.
Getting into the weeds a little bit, each member of
the treaty has a couple of quotas. They have a
number of flights that they can conduct over other countries.
That's a called their active quota that has a maximum number,
(23:04):
that has a ceiling of threshold. And then every country
has a number of flights that must accept from the
other countries. Think of that as something with a floor.
There's a minimum there. It's called a passive quota.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
It has to do with the size of the country,
I believe, or I believe that's the actual, like physical
size of the.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Country, right, yep, because we are talking geography at this
point more so than geopolitics. But eventually they end up
being the same thing. So the cool part is one
of the cool parts. One of the distinct parts of
this treaty is that any member has the right to
request information received by any other country under this treaty.
(23:51):
The weird thing is being that it's the government. They
have to pay for the cost of reproduction, they have
to pay for printing.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah, dude, come on, you see this is high quality
now digital hopefully photography.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I just I love that part. I love those parts
and treaties because it's so it is so petty, but
it is easy to imagine if that stipulation did not exist,
wouldn't one country just to be super petty. Wouldn't one
country just start demanding reproductions of everything and try try
(24:29):
to break the bank. I just love it. I love
the idea. I love the idea. But yes, that's the
treaty came into force January first, two thousand and two.
As you might imagine, things did not work out as planned.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
And we'll tell you why they didn't work out after
a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And we're back. Turns out, during the Cold War, Russia
and the US spoilers. Folks hated each other like very much,
so loath, despised, feared, and were fascinated by one another.
So they repeatedly, pretty much immediately, they repeatedly began accusing
(25:20):
one another of violating the treaty. Fast forward to not
that long ago, as we record today. On November twenty second,
twenty twenty, the US bailed out of the treaty. So
what happened. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
So the US kind of let the badger ohead of
the bag as far as its plans to withdraw well
in advance of November, with the Trump administration sending mixed
messages about whether the country would actually leave the agreement.
This is something that the Trump administration has done many
times in terms of will they won't they same with
the Paris Climate of Corps. They ultimately did get out
(25:58):
of that one. But there's a lot of this kind
of level ridging of kind of like keeping people on
the edge of their seats in some kind of weird
power move. But the Federation of American Scientists sums up
the United States logic pretty succinctly saying this quote. According
to the US State Department, Russia has restricted access for
(26:19):
open Skies flights over Kaliningrad, over Moscow, and along the
border of Russia with the Georgian regions of South Osssia
and Abkhazia. Russia has reportedly also failed to provide priority
flight clearance for open skies flights on a few occasions.
The United States raised these issues in the Open Skies
Consultative Commission, and some have been resolved. Nonetheless, the United
(26:43):
States responded to limitations imposed by Russia by limiting the
length of flights over Hawaii and removing access to two
US Air Force bases used during Russian missions over the
United States. So a little bit of a tit for
tat situation here, Ben, Can you help us unpack.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
A little bit? Yeah, everything you just said is true. Russia,
as a signatory to the agreement was not playing by
the rules. Folks will notice that the areas Nol just
mentioned south of Setya, Kasia. These are I would add
(27:22):
parts of Ukraine as well. Crimea.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
The these are areas that are hotly contested on the
international sphere, and Russia is saying duh, some sky open
other No, you know what I mean. I I apologize.
I've just I watched too many eighties movies. Oh gosh, folks,
(27:49):
we had the We had the most fun riff. It
was so mad we didn't record it. Where we were
just imagining vladbear Putin playing board games, regular people at
plus goal. It possess park bliss. But but yes, bad
(28:10):
accents aside. It's true, it is provably demonstrably true that
Russia violated the terms of this treaty, and so this
became a rationalization for other parties. Kauf cough wink, wink,
nudge nudge the US cough cough, winking, nudge nudge. It
(28:33):
became it became this rationalization for the US to also
not obey parts of the treaty. It's understandable, right, It's
an understandable concept. However, there are some problems with this perspective. First,
the biggest one, the biggest badger in this bag, the
biggest elephant in this room, as you said, Matt, satellite technology.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Yeah, I mean they can. They can get extremely high
resolution imagery and some of the other sensors that are
on board many satellites can give you just ridiculously detailed
information that you don't need to send a big loud
plane over there, and you don't need to send seventy
two hours notice. You just got that thing. It's up there,
(29:18):
and it looks always, it never looks away on Yeah,
that right there is alone. I is reason. I don't know.
It's reason that makes this whole treaty a bit more ceremonial,
in just a something that just shows all the other
(29:42):
countries that hey, we have nothing to hide. That's literally
all it has become, and has been really since because
we're talking two thousand and two is when it was ratified,
we've had extremely good satellites. All many of the countries
that have signed have had ridiculus lessly powerful satellites in
the sky, in the above the skies for a long time.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Is it like having a treaty
with very specific rules on how to how to transport
VHS tapes in a world of digital downloads. That's not
a bad comparison. Really. The problem is the problem is
(30:27):
the satellites. Is this ceremonial? I love that you use
this word because for people objecting saying that Russia is
not obeying the rules of this treaty. Are we then
just saying Russia is not doing the ceremonial song and
dance that we wish it would do with us? You
(30:50):
know what I mean? Is it just offbeat for this,
for this choreography, this pageant, this theater, not quite the thing.
If we go back to what Noel mentioned earlier with
the Federation of American Scientists, we see that in nineteen
ninety two, US analysts determined that this treaty doesn't really
(31:14):
make risk for the US Russia. Russia could already collect
information with these observation satellites, and Russia for a time
was running behind. They were lagging in terms of monitoring
(31:37):
capability in their own satellites, and then the US was
also lagging behind in different things. There's this constant push
and pull, this constant gap in capability. But as we
said earlier, the thing about this treaty is it does
(32:00):
and care about satellites. It is only about the planes,
and it's only about what specific stuff one can have
on a plane. So this criticism of Russia not obeying
the rules, it's again, it's absolutely true, but it also
sort of ignores what is implied to be the larger point.
(32:24):
The larger point is who spies on whom and how?
And now now to argue, you know, our plane flights
aren't working, it's kind of like pretending the US satellites
don't exist, which is you know, I'll say it's it's
at best misleading. Second problem, this is huge for NATO,
(32:49):
This is huge for European security. And of course NATO
is a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.
As various poets would say, It's not a perfect thing,
but it needs it needs the US. The North Atlantic
Treaty organization needs the US. So the European countries who
(33:12):
are signatories to open skies very much want the US
on board. The US is not on board, by the way,
as recently as we said, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Who else is not on board? Any East Asian South
East Asian countries. None of them are on board. And
I'm trying to imagine approaching China right now and attempting
to get them on board with something like this. But
from a strategic standpoint is really what I'm thinking about,
(33:46):
Like what would be the benefit, I don't know, and
I guess it would be just the same argument that
was made when making it before. We have nothing to hide, everybody,
I know you have nothing to hide, right, I have
nothing to hide. Okay, lots to It's all about optics, right,
(34:06):
I mean that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Ben like this idea that this is some sort of
like understanding, but it doesn't mean full transparency.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
That's not what it means.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
No, no, And it's so you know, it's so strange
with with humanity, the rules it puts in place. There
were laws about the right way to kill people. Isn't
that nuts? No one ever thinks about that, no one,
no one ever talks about that. They're they're they're like
the same way you would have a slaughterhouse with health regulations.
(34:41):
That's the way this species is. It's like, Okay, some methods,
maybe a lot of methods of killing people or in
dangering innocence are wrong. However, you know if you do it,
if you do it according to the following guidelines, I
don't know. That's story for a different day. We're going
(35:03):
to pause for word from our sponsor, and then we're
going to return with the more conspiratorial accusations regarding the
Open Skies Treaty. We're back. So we mentioned the two
big problems. First, the European countries feel like they very
(35:26):
much need the US on board for open skies. Second,
satellite technology. How much of this stuff is ceremony at
this point, right? This is the third part. This is
the third part. It's a little more speculative. You see,
critics of the US decision to withdraw from this treaty
(35:50):
are not just objecting to withdraw from this one treaty.
They are objecting to what they see as a larger
pattern of withdrawing from armed treaties in general. And they
think that there's something amiss. They think there's something wrong
(36:10):
with this pattern.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, and the critics aren't exactly shying away from how
they feel about this. The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
Elliott Engel, who's a Democrat from New York, in addition
to Representative William Keating, a Democrat from Massachusetts, issued a
statement on November the twenty third saying that the Trump
administration broke the law when withdrawing from the treaty as
(36:35):
the administration did not give Congress a one hundred and
twenty day notice. They went further in their statement and
got pretty heated by congressional standards anyway, saying the following
President Trump is attempting to burn down our critical institutions
on his way out the door. In doing so, he
not only jeopardized US national security, but he blatantly ignored
(36:59):
and deliberately.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Broke the law.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Burn The one thing that you can say is true
is that we withdrew I believe, Ben correct me if
I'm wrong November of twenty twenty, which is very very
late into the four year term of the standing current
standing president. So it's just it is a bit weird
(37:23):
to drop out of that. We will talk about it further,
but I personally don't see the immediate need to do so,
even with the stuff we discussed about Russia not necessarily
playing by the rules.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's a good point that we read
a lot of government publications, government statements. That's kind of
provocative for people to say, you know, this guy that
we don't like is not just leaving, it's burning everything down.
It's it's made for TV. But the point stance, and
(38:00):
you are correct, this is a withdrawal very late into
a presidential term. If we are to look at it
from a larger perspective of continuity of government, then we
could perhaps argue that any specific four year period doesn't
(38:21):
specifically matter. The problem is the rest of the world
observes the US on this four year period, and as
a result, the US does not have the best reputation
abroad because you can if you're another country, let's say,
(38:42):
matt or France and all your Germany, let's make Paul
a fun when what country is Paul Michigan control Luxembourg.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I was gonna say, Luxembourg went out of my head head.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, well you were both going to say that, because
you are correct, Paul, Luxembourg decad So Luxembourg, France, Germany
are looking at the US and they've maybe made a
deal and they say, okay, we can trust this guy
who's here for four to eight years, but after that
(39:16):
it's a new ballgame. Can we trust this person? So
now we see domestic echoes of that problem, because critics
are alleging this decision to leave the Open Sky's Treaty
was somehow politically motivated, and the argument there from Engle
(39:38):
and Keating and others who agree with him, is that
this is an effort to prevent the incoming administration of
the US from easily rejoining or even strengthening not just
this agreement, but others.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
I honestly do not know this, Ben, and I didn't
find this in my research. How difficult is it to rejoin?
Is it something that's going to be a major process.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
It should not be because of the rules or the
procedures outlined in the treaty. As we said earlier, for
a country to join the Treaty on Open Skies, they
need to have a they need to win a consensus
vote from the signatory countries. And we know Europe very
(40:29):
much wants the US back in the game here because
they consider it crucial for their own transparency and security.
And you know, US has a pretty substantial air force.
We have the planes, So yeah, exactly, So this is
this is weird because it, again, as we've said before,
(40:50):
nothing occurs in a vacuum. Right, So, these withdrawals from
arms treaties, whatever, whatever the proposed logic for them is,
they occur in tandem with pushes from some factions of
the US government to develop new nuclear weapons. And this
(41:12):
scares the heck out of a lot of people, rightly. So,
So here's the big question. Gone into the weeds on
this on this treaty, it's kind of dry stuff. But
here is the million dollar question, the billion life question.
Why has the US withdrawn from so many arms controlled
(41:33):
treaties in the last few years America?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
First, I don't know, isolationism, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I'm just that's a good question. Well, some of it
rest upon the lasting influence of former officials, pundits, and
hawks like John Bolton. He that you guys remember John Bolton.
Speaker 5 (41:56):
Yeah, he's been as he's been as like the whole career,
hating any kind of arms control stuff because or hating
anything that applied to the US because he assumed.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
That those kind of agreements would limit the US and
that other countries would just not obey those agreements and
have no consequences.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
John Bolton, he was a neo conservative, I believe. Maybe
is that Bush George W. Bush ere and then a
little prior to that. Wow, it's been a while since
I've thought about that, dude, But it makes complete sense. Right,
you get into one of these big agreements with other countries,
everybody doesn't have to follow the rules, even though they've
signed something and say they're going to. But it also
(42:42):
means that the US, like John Bolton's side, doesn't have
to necessarily follow the rules. Maybe he knows how we
are going to roll in that kind of agreement and
then he's just applying it. He's that's what it is.
John Bolton is just projecting.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Is it all just like symbolic though? Like, what's the
point if it's non binding? Is it just to kind
of like have the like optics of rules, of the
optics of like order when it's all really just chaos
and up to whatever the individual parties want to do.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
There would be theoretical consequences, right, but how many sanctions, well,
how many people as the International Criminal Court convicted? Yeah, exactly.
That's another uncomfortable question. So shout out to you, Joseph Coney.
The Open Sky's Treaty is the third arms control agreement
(43:35):
that the we're so very close to the to the
shift and the executive branch here the current president as
we record this, this is the third arms control agreement
that administration has left. The raw Nuclear Deal I'm probably
(43:55):
all familiar with that went that went could put on
the US side in twenty eighteen, there was another thing
a lot of people may not have heard about the
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This country left that in
twenty nineteen, so there are salients, valid and immediate fears
(44:23):
that the US will also leave something called New Start,
which is due to expire next month. This is a
treaty about nuclear weapons, specifically between Russia and the US.
We don't know at this point how Russia is responding
(44:43):
to the US withdrawal from open skies, but it is advantageous.
It is inarguably a good deal for Russia for the
US to not be involved in this treaty because because
it means that now Russia will be able to fly
(45:04):
over US bases and other treaty members airspace, right, it
will be able to fly over US facilities, and the
US will not be allowed to fly over Russia. Of course, yes,
the satellites are still in orbit and pinging one another continually.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
It feels like like like putting ourselves at a disadvantage purposefully. Oh,
that's we It's not necessarily true, but it reads that way.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Right, Like, why even if it is ceremonial, even if
it is symbolic, why hamper oneself in this manner? To
be fair? The president at the time, these decisions did
specifically state there would be there may be light at
(45:58):
the end of the nuclear time, there may be hope
for new agreement in the future, and he said the following.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
He said, I think we have a very good relationship
with Russia, but Russia didn't adhere to the treaty, So
until they adhere to the treaty, we will pull out.
And he went on to say there's a very good
chance we'll make a new agreement or do something to
put that agreement back together, which makes sense. I mean it,
it feels like something that would get that would happen again.
(46:28):
But there's a window at least where we're not going
to be a part of it.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yes, And the this is this is the conspiratorial part here.
Is there a larger, longer game at play? Why now
right two thousand and two to two thousand and twenty,
Why out of the eighteen years that this was in force,
(46:54):
why did it end? Now? We have to say it.
It's long been suspected that parts of the US government
have been and are compromised by Russian intelligence. In recent years,
the executive branch of the United States has been the
target of a majority of these allegations. The idea is
(47:17):
that there is blackmail a foot.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
The comproman is sometimes used for the Russian version. And
there's something many of our listeners remember called the Steele dossier.
You guys remember that I.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Was the one with the peepee tape in it, right.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
It's one with allegations of recreational urination.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yes, I am, among other things, many other things. And
you know, recently we've seen stuff coming from both sides
of the congressional aisle in this country, memos, you know,
highly redacted memos that have very specific things to say
that you and I, as you know, just regular old
citizens don't get to read. And of course we just.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Pay, we pay those people to write things we can't read.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Is that it yeah? Yeah, And the dossier itself has
been called into question a ton. It's also one of
those things that it's it's hard for us as lay
people to know, you know, what's in it, if it's real,
or like, if what's in it is real.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah. However, James Comy was pulled off LECO from his
job while investigating this stuff, and the US intelligence agencies
can confirm many of the allegations in the dossier add
(48:45):
up or have at least some sand to them worthy
of investigation. They're also this is also coupled with controversial
remarks about Russia performatively too Russia in public, public statements
by the current administration. As we record this, you know, saying, hey, wow,
(49:10):
Russia is going to help us with the election. Do it?
Which is not your political party, doesn't matter if you're
in this country. You should not ask foreign countries for
help in an election. That's the big thing. Now, at
this point, we have to say, there's been no official,
widely accepted confirmation that Russia has its hand on the
(49:31):
neck of the executive branch. There's no official confirmation of this,
but it is certain that Russia interfered with the US
elections to put their chosen candidate in office. Yes, that's
a scary eighties action movie thing to say, but the
question is is it true. We know that Russia tried
(49:56):
to influence the election. We just don't know the degree
of success. Really, we don't have. Oddly enough, the official
Russian position is that they didn't interfere with the election.
So so there are people who are going to tell
you that the reason the US has withdrawn from multiple
(50:16):
arms controlled treaties especially open skies, is that they were
told to by some foreign asset. What do you guys think?
What do you guys think about that? It's a big
thing to say, you.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Know, it's a big thing to say, and it's a
hard thing to like know.
Speaker 3 (50:36):
Yeah, something feels off, I would say, just personally with
a lot of these things, I think I've watched way
too much mister Robot for me to objectively even like
ponder it at this point.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Maybe it's a corporation, Yeah, maybe it's the Pepperidge Farm folks.
Are they the ones who make cookies?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah, it could be that. Yeah, try to inviteing them.
But you know, the the other thing is that we've
we've discussed this before on the show The Long Game,
the concept that perhaps the KGB or some other essentially
sleeper organization within Soviet intelligence went underground for a long
(51:23):
time and then resurfaced and with plans. To god, it
sounds silly, with plans to become the world power, the
leading world power eventually in the future at some point,
and to rebuild the power that they once had. It
rings of that. That does not mean this has anything
(51:46):
to do with those alleged plans, But yeah, again maybe
in my head is just too deep in some of
that stuff to think about it objectively.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
I mean, it makes a whole lot of sense, the
idea of US doing it to benefit Russia in some way.
Sure has been a lot of rhetoric that benefited Russia,
a lot of kind of you know, Trump aligning with
Putin in ways that previous presidents just never have or
never would in a million years. So it's hard to
not think where they's smoke, there's fire, But again, really
(52:16):
really hard to prove, and very much in the realm
of conjecture.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yeah, that's the pickle. It's something that historians of the
future are going to be debating and picking apart. Right now,
the facts are this, the satellite technology that is not
part of Open Skies delivers some of the same capabilities, right,
and these satellites do pretty well right now. By stepping
(52:42):
out of this treaty, the US has put itself at
a bit of a disadvantage. The degree of that disadvantage
remains to be seen. But the logic behind that withdrawal is,
you know, it makes sense when you read the statement,
they said, the other folks aren't playing by the rules,
(53:03):
so why should we continue to play the game.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
And we'll come back if the rules are all followed again.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Right right, So not super apocalyptic here, but the more
you dig into it, the stranger it seems, especially given
that pattern of withdrawals from other existing agreements.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
Well, and the more tensions rise, the more dangerous it
is for everyone, not just Russia. In the United States,
the Federation of American Scientists and then the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists that the group that puts out that
doomsday clock that we've mentioned before in the show a
lot of times. You know, over the years, it's changed
(53:51):
quite a bit since we've been making this show. My goodness,
Let's see twenty ten, it was six minutes to midnight,
twenty twelve, it was five minutes to midnight, twenty fifteen
to three minutes twenty seventeen, two and a half minutes
twenty eighteen to two minutes to midnight, and as of
last year, twenty twenty, it was one hundred seconds to midnight,
(54:14):
less than two minutes away. What does that mean midnight?
That means a highly likely apocalypse, essentially nuclear war or
you know, devastating things with all of that happening in
the world, having these tensions run higher and higher is
just terrifying.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Right because we don't have to just think about the
world today, We have to think about the world in
the future. The most important part of this story, the
species's story, is not us doing this show now, and
it's it's not you listening. It's the people who come
after us, and that's in they are in a very
(54:59):
real sense, our responsibility. So of course, nobody wants nuclear
weapons to deploy. I we think most people don't. But also,
just like Eisenhower, most people want transparency. If you look
at the number of close calls we have had with
(55:22):
nuclear weapons, as we said at the top of this episode,
you will and should be terrified. Things got very very close,
like multiple times, the decision whether or not to go
to a nuclear war hinged on one person being reasonable,
(55:45):
like what like, Matt, Matt, one guy. One guy was like,
I don't know, man, maybe we shouldn't launch the NWKE
just yet. Let's let's hang on. Everybody have a snack.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Except there was so much sweat being generated and I'm
going to assume a generous amount of urine as well.
Who knows, because it's it's it was very it it
could have been the end. Okay, I don't want to
think about that anymore. Ben, That's all happening. This is
(56:20):
all happening.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
One last note, a bit of a current event. As
we were recording this podcast, Russia went public with its
plans to follow the United States and withdraw entirely from
the Open Skies treaty, creating a future that looks even
more uncertain. So let us know what you think, folks.
(56:42):
We know we got in the weeds a little bit
on Jill politics and on a very specific treaty, but
there is there does seem to be a larger pattern
at play. Do you think that these moves are legit?
Is it the right thing to do to pull out
(57:03):
of these treaties? Are other countries not behaving in good
faith or not signing on in good faith? Is there
something amiss with this pattern of withdrawal? If so, what
is a miss? Do you give any credence to the
repeated claims that foreign powers have compromised areas of the
(57:27):
US government? If so, we would love to hear from you.
If not, we would also love to hear from you.
We want to know your opinion. We try to make
ourselves easy to find You can drop by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
you can find us there. We'd like to recommend Here's
Where It Gets Crazy, which is rated by us as
(57:47):
the best website on the Internet, the best web page.
Speaker 3 (57:51):
I should say absolutely. It is all you have to
do to join up. Is no one or more of
our names, the hosts or creators of this show. I'm
not going to tell you our names again. Hopefully you
remember from when we said them every episode that we've
ever made of this show.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
But what if people hate social media?
Speaker 3 (58:10):
Matt ah if you dislike that stuff, you can use
your telephone device to get in contact with us. With
your throat device, uh, the thing that makes sounds that
you know I love you, got it? You can call
our number. It is one eight three three std WYTK.
(58:32):
You can leave us a voicemail. We will hear it,
and you may end up on one of the listener
mail episodes. Just please tell us if you don't want
your voice to be included in one of those episodes.
And guess what. This episode was inspired by someone who
sent us a voicemail. Someone that goes by Hidalgo.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yes, thank you so much, Hidalgo.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Seriously, you've sent us several just great messages. And you
may guess that's not this person's real name, but Hidalgo.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
And if you would like to take a page from
Hidalgo's book, as we said, of course find us on
the internet. You can find us on your local telephone.
That's weird, I guess when you think about it, we're there,
We're on your phone. And if you don't care for
any of that that doesn't quite fly your nukes, then
(59:26):
you could always hit us up at our good old
fashioned email address where.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't
(59:53):
want you to know.
Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning to you with a
classic episode for of our not so secret archives. It
is one that is becoming terrifyingly relevant in twenty twenty six.
Remember back in twenty twenty one, you guys, when the
United States let everybody know they were withdrawing from the
(00:23):
Open Skies Treaty.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
How could I forget, especially with all the with all
the more recent treaties we've been withdrawing from more and
more relevant. Indeed, on November twenty second, twenty twenty, the
US withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies, which in
nineteen eighty two allowed thirty four member countries to perform
unarmed aerial observations in foreign airspace or over foreign soil.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, yeah, the whole point of the thing is so
everybody can have a little bit of trust with each other. Yeah, Because, Ben,
they're primarily looking at military infrastructure and available forces and
things like that, right, And it's kind of to make
each member state assured that hey, nobody's gathering a bunch
(01:10):
of military stuff in anyone place.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It gives predictability and transparency. And for a time this
was just absolutely tikety boo. People loved it. The US
said Russia has withdrawn from the treaty, and therefore we
will too. There was a lot of controversy and conspiracy
about this. As of twenty twenty six, the US has
(01:36):
not rejoined. And I'm just gonna say it. I don't
want to sound like a jerk. Things are bad. This
is what my old professors would call a non ideal situation.
I can't believe that this is still a thing that's happening.
This is spooky stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Guys, Cold War Volume two, get the whole set the
Cold War?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Ever really? And the guys, well, I think we're in
the DLC. Anyway, here's hard. Here's our classic episode for
this week.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. We've often said in
earlier episodes that history hinges on the smallest things, and
this is true in fact. You know, if you think
(03:00):
about it, you could describe this story of humanity as
a series of terrifying close calls. Did you guys ever
hear about this ancient population bottleneck?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, please tell us right now, we've got a little
less than eight billion people on the planet, right, and
everybody agrees it's kind of a crowded place. Back in
the day, the opposite was true. There were around ten
thousand people or so on the planet. That was it.
(03:34):
That was all of the Homo sapiens, and the odds
were not looking good. And then in the modern era,
post nuclear weapons, the world is almost ended by accident.
So many times, panic miscalculation. We have so many close
calls where people almost deployed nuclear weapons, like it went
(03:57):
down to one or two people who said, let's think
about this.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Clearly the impetus for the fantastic Stanley Kubrick film Doctor
Strangelove that sort of satirizes how on the edge of
annihilation we as a species constantly live, largely because of
ignorance and incompetence.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
The hunt for Red October if you're talking about. Film
is also a pretty good study of what signals people
send during times of rising tensions or war. But altogether,
it's pretty impressive to realize the human species has made
it to twenty twenty one in the first place. The
(04:39):
first part of twenty twenty one. We can't call the
end yet. Reporters, politicians, generals obviously don't want to meet
the public every week and say we don't know what
the hell's going on, But everybody is acutely aware of
this problem. Human beings are not super great at communicating clearly,
(05:03):
and this miscommunication can have disastrous consequences. So as a result,
all of the countries on the planet now have been
playing a very strange game with the balance between transparency
and optucation.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, and that leads to things like rules of engagement,
you know, like these sort of codes that we all
agree to follow, but maybe it's a little more like, Okay,
this would be nice if we all agreed to this,
and in theory we do, but we've also seen the
way those things can completely break down with just a
few bad actors or a few people that don't adhere
(05:41):
to these kind of tacit codes of understanding, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
No, and humanity. Humanity has formed all these things for
a long time. Think about NATO, Think about you know,
the World Health Organization. Think about all these groups that
try to come together from multiple nations in.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Paristic like you know, as a warsaw pack. Yes, so
we're talking about treaties. We're talking about international conglomerates way
of a state. They come together and we make rules
that are honestly well intentioned. And like you said, we're
(06:19):
not attempting to give all of our secrets away as
a country, but we are trying to minimize inaccuracies, minimize miscalculations.
One of the agreements that the human species reached not
too long ago something called the Open Skies Treaty. So
(06:41):
here are the facts. This treaty is pretty extraordinary. Actually,
it allows all of the signatory countries to fly unarmed
surveillance craft over the entire territory of every other country
that participates in this treaty. Right now, there are more
(07:03):
than thirty countries on board with this, and it's it's
pretty weird when you think about it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
It is weird, especially when we think of things like
you're in our air space. You know, ideas like that
of being shot down or being threatened because you accidentally
wander to someone's airspace, are into you know, waters that
are part of a sovereign nation. Ben right up front,
How is this different than that? Is it the unarmed quality?
Because I feel like that kind of threat happens even
(07:29):
with just like like say a commercial flight or whatever,
like a private jet.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, it's it's it's kind of like that stuff. But
the Open Skies Treaty specifically is for optic observation from
the skies, and there are a couple other sensors that
are used in the flights, but it was specifically designed
so that each country could have a direct a direct
(07:56):
role in looking at the military activities of other countries.
So you know, it's not you hear a report, even
if you know all these countries are friendly with each other,
you hear a report about the military gathering armored vehicles
in one part of their country. You get to actually
go and look at it. And it's really just a
(08:17):
way to make sure everybody's on the same page. We're
not doing anything secret here. Everything's fine. You can take
a look it's cool. That's really what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, the idea here is that there will be less
cloak and daggers stuff going on, because the issue here
is that misunderstandings used to proliferate pretty often. You know,
we have to remember, like during the Napoleonic Wars, for instance,
the fastest method of communication was this game of throne
(08:49):
stuff like send send a raven kind of things, and
and that's that's not super reliable then, you know, as
you guys know, I'm the last person to dunk on
rave and orvids in general. But there's just people. They're
just not as good as planes in terms of surveillance.
So so we could maybe the idea of open skies
(09:10):
is we could maybe knit some of this stuff in
the butt. It's an historic agreement, you guys.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I mean, given how the problems that you've discussed throughout
humanity and the problems that we continue to have with miscommunication,
can you imagine what it must have been like to
have to wait for a letter to arrive by carrier,
pigeon or raven or what have you, and all of
the horrible things that could happen in between. It's like
it's like we joke about how like so many of
the problems in modern sitcoms could be solved if people
(09:39):
had cell phones, you know, like I mean, I can't
even imagine so much like diplomatic nightmare scenarios could have
taken place.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
For sure, you know, and horrible things can still take
place with the machinery, you know, with the the planes
and jets that are out there doing this kind of surveillance.
But it's not the same as a rave and getting
caught in a storm or attacked by an eagle.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Have you guys ever been in that situation, you know,
a situation of limited communication. Not for a long time.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Uh yeah, I mean I've been in the wilderness before
where there's no signal for anything. Sure, it's an eerie feeling.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's something that a lot of our listeners in the
developed world may be unfamiliar with, because there's a pretty
great communication infrastructure in most of the West, most of
the developed world. But if you get you get too
far in the wild. We've got some listeners now in
rural areas who you know, may have just gotten a
(10:47):
fiber Internet connection, you know what I mean, like a
fast internet connection. However, in much of the world, communication
is still stymied, and it still if you go on
Reddit or you go on a travel forum and you
look for problems in the developing world that aren't really
(11:11):
mentioned in the developed world, what you'll see is that
safe delivery of accurate information is kind of a luxury.
Open skies is meant to eliminate miscommunication, which is still
rampant in the world today, but was even more widespread
(11:33):
in decades past. And it's not a new idea. President
Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, the military industrial Congressional complex Guy first
proposed the US and the Soviet Union allow He called
it aerial reconnaissance flights over each other's territory. He pitched
(11:53):
this in July nineteen fifty five at the Geneva Conference.
And again this is you know this, before widespread satellites,
both the USSR and the United States were kind of flying,
kind of flying blind. I'm gonna say.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It, well, yeah, think about the tensions that existed there
with the two superpowers after World War Two. It had
been a little while since then, but there's you know,
there's still tensions. They're still worry about what the other
one is doing and what machinations may exist over on
that other side, just you know, and that exists for
both countries. So you can imagine that this concept was
(12:33):
probably not taken very warmly immediately because it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yes, Matt, you are correct sir. The USSR, the Soviet
Union was not having it. They said this initiative was bs,
it was malarchy, it was hogswallop.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
No, well yeah, I mean essentially, what it sounds like
is you just want to spy on us. You just
want to openly spy on us. Cool, really, really you
want to have a conversation about how it's cool that
you spy on us, but you can spy on us too, dude,
It's fine. It's so weird.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, it is weird. And you know, this is
something we came across off air in the research. You'll
notice that we've used the word surveillance and reconnaissance interchangeably here.
But there's there's an important difference, right.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yes, there absolutely is. So reconnaissance refers to specifically monitoring
outside of friendly territory, which makes sense if you think
about it in like a let's think about like you know,
Metal of Honor or whatever, those video games, like you know,
you're doing recon. You're like the squad that's going out
and checking the area for like mines and stuff, or
(13:50):
like you know, making sure ahead of everyone that's moving
in that it's okay, or you know, getting intel about
what your target is like, et cetera. Definitely the image
that this conscious for me is creeping around through hostile.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Territory, right, and surveillance could be just monitoring in friendly territory.
The point is the USSR and the United States were
the definition of not friends at this time. So of course,
of course the government of the USSR is going to say,
what the hell is wrong with you, dude, You're being crazy.
(14:27):
But the problem was there, and eventually all parties realized it.
The problem was miscalculation is rife. You could, for instance,
based on your intelligence at the time, mistake or routine
supply operation as preparation for the launch of a missile.
(14:47):
Or you could be a pilot and you could be
doing a routine flight and you could have something messed
up with your instrumentation and you could have human error.
You could end up violating sovereign airspace, which could also
be considered an active aggression instead of just some hapless
(15:11):
schmuck in the wrong part of the air, or in
the worst case scenario, you could mistake something innocuous as
preparation for nuclear war. And that's where that's where the
Open Skies Treaty comes from. So to Eisenhower and the
Eisenhower administration, this could save lives.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Or you know, humanity.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, yeah, them too. And so of course Moscow says, no,
no deal. You're you're crazy American. Well, I don't know
what they would call us at that time, Yankee. They say, so,
you're you're crazy Yankee. This doesn't work out, but the
(16:00):
seeds are planted. And so in nineteen eighty nine, then
President George HW. Bush. It's also you may remember him
from his earlier work in the CIA. He's he's the
guy who says, oh, you know, that not bad, let's
do some flyover stuff, which makes sense, you know, spy wise.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
There's one more thing to bring in here. We mentioned
it early early on, just the concept that there weren't
a lot of satellites that had good enough imagery that
were you know, in the right places in order to
have just kind of a large scale surveillance, like wide
wide surveillance that is constant. We didn't have that, so
(16:43):
we really were relying Every country was relying on planes,
and you know, film cameras, like theme about nineteen fifty
five film cameras, and then how much optical technology expanded
and evolved from fifty five to like eighty nine to ninety.
It was still really good stuff. But we're gonna talk
about it later once we're in the nineties. Satellite technology
(17:08):
is a thing. It's heavily a thing. So it is
a bit strange still that this treaty, in this pact
ends up being focused strictly on jets airplanes.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, to a degree, it's a self limiting treaty, and
we're getting to the conspiratorial aspects of this very soon, folks.
Just for a note for long type listeners, you could
say that the satellite program on the US end began
(17:42):
in the very late nineteen fifties, the Corona satellite program,
which is nuts that people don't talk about that more
often because it is logistically objectively impressive. They were dropping film.
(18:02):
They got these things up in like lower orbit, and
they were dropping Cannis. There's a film that's so nuts,
But yeah, they did it, and for a long time
the planes were better, but obviously, in the modern day
satellite technology is a huge piece of the problem. Let's
(18:22):
talk about how the treaty itself works, right, So, in
nineteen ninety NATO and the Warsaw Pact think of that
as the Russian NATO if you want a really easy comparison.
They started negotiating this in nineteen ninety and it went
(18:44):
into effect in two thousand and two. Currently, as we said,
thirty four countries signed on. There is no expiration date
to this treaty. And if you are a country that
is not involved, like if you are Nepal, Bhutan, or Switzerland,
all three of those countries are not involved, then you
can petition to sign on and you there there's like
(19:08):
a there's an explicit process for it. But essentially all
that needs to happen is for the other countries that
are already in the treaty to be like, yeah, we
want to fly our spy planes over your stuff too.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
And doesn't the treaty actually kind of really spell out
exactly what kind of equipment can be used?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
So when I asked at the top.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Of the show, like how is this different from like, Okay,
you're in our airspace, this is essentially like making an appointment,
like you have to give notice and you know exactly
what the rules are and you have to follow you know,
using this agreed upon type of equipment.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Correct, Yes, you have to give seventy two hours notice essentially.
And then and then there's it's really I mean, it's great.
It's a treaty, lots and lots of words, lots and
lots of stipulations about how many hours do you get
to agree to this, to agree to that, to give
your flight plan in to get it approved. It's u
It's all fun in that way. Last thing here I
(20:04):
bring to go in and talk about all this. If
you want to follow along with any of this and
just read more, we highly recommend the websitearmscontrol dot org.
You can actually see pictures of a lot of the
stuff we're mentioning in the show today, so you can
kind of check it out.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I would also recommend the Federation of American Scientists. They
have a great summary of this. We're going somewhere with this, folks,
and it's not just enemy airspace. It turns out, Nola,
You're absolutely right. The treaty is not just specific on
(20:41):
the type of equipment that can be used for surveillance,
but it also has rules regarding how new equipment can
be introduced or how it can be turned down. It
also there's a really cool thing in this treaty. Well,
I say cool, I think it's funny.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Let's say you're a smaller country and you don't have
the biggest air force, but you're a member of Open Skies.
There's this thing in the treaty called the taxi option.
So imagine that like Matt is France and Nole is Germany,
and Matt's country wants to surveil Knowle's country, then Nol,
(21:30):
as a leader of Germany, has the option to say,
get your own planes, buy your own planes over here,
you know the rules, Buddy or Noel as the you
know in Germany can say, actually the Veltek's a German plane.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Indeed, of course what I would say, because as you know,
I was once a young German boy.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yes, yes, and I didn't mean to stereotype you there,
but it's but it is pretty neat, you know. The
idea like this applied to the US too, past tense.
You could if you were the US, you could say, okay,
you want to surveil me France. Matt, I don't know
why I'm major the leader of France, but here we are.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
It's all good. It's in my blood. So yeah, well
let's do it. Keep going, all right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So so that if you're the US and you know
France wants to surveil you under this treaty, then you can.
You You have the choice as the observed country. You
can either say, okay, yes, send your plane's over, send
your folks over, or you can say, oh yeah, well
we'll run a plane around for you. The treaty does
(22:43):
require people from the observer country to be on board,
so they got the get in front of that. Anyway.
Getting into the weeds a little bit, each member of
the treaty has a couple of quotas. They have a
number of flights that they can conduct over other countries.
That's a called their active quota that has a maximum number,
(23:04):
that has a ceiling of threshold. And then every country
has a number of flights that must accept from the
other countries. Think of that as something with a floor.
There's a minimum there. It's called a passive quota.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
It has to do with the size of the country,
I believe, or I believe that's the actual, like physical
size of the.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Country, right, yep, because we are talking geography at this
point more so than geopolitics. But eventually they end up
being the same thing. So the cool part is one
of the cool parts. One of the distinct parts of
this treaty is that any member has the right to
request information received by any other country under this treaty.
(23:51):
The weird thing is being that it's the government. They
have to pay for the cost of reproduction, they have
to pay for printing.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah, dude, come on, you see this is high quality
now digital hopefully photography.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I just I love that part. I love those parts
and treaties because it's so it is so petty, but
it is easy to imagine if that stipulation did not exist,
wouldn't one country just to be super petty. Wouldn't one
country just start demanding reproductions of everything and try try
(24:29):
to break the bank. I just love it. I love
the idea. I love the idea. But yes, that's the
treaty came into force January first, two thousand and two.
As you might imagine, things did not work out as planned.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
And we'll tell you why they didn't work out after
a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And we're back. Turns out, during the Cold War, Russia
and the US spoilers. Folks hated each other like very much,
so loath, despised, feared, and were fascinated by one another.
So they repeatedly, pretty much immediately, they repeatedly began accusing
(25:20):
one another of violating the treaty. Fast forward to not
that long ago, as we record today. On November twenty second,
twenty twenty, the US bailed out of the treaty. So
what happened. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
So the US kind of let the badger ohead of
the bag as far as its plans to withdraw well
in advance of November, with the Trump administration sending mixed
messages about whether the country would actually leave the agreement.
This is something that the Trump administration has done many
times in terms of will they won't they same with
the Paris Climate of Corps. They ultimately did get out
(25:58):
of that one. But there's a lot of this kind
of level ridging of kind of like keeping people on
the edge of their seats in some kind of weird
power move. But the Federation of American Scientists sums up
the United States logic pretty succinctly saying this quote. According
to the US State Department, Russia has restricted access for
(26:19):
open Skies flights over Kaliningrad, over Moscow, and along the
border of Russia with the Georgian regions of South Osssia
and Abkhazia. Russia has reportedly also failed to provide priority
flight clearance for open skies flights on a few occasions.
The United States raised these issues in the Open Skies
Consultative Commission, and some have been resolved. Nonetheless, the United
(26:43):
States responded to limitations imposed by Russia by limiting the
length of flights over Hawaii and removing access to two
US Air Force bases used during Russian missions over the
United States. So a little bit of a tit for
tat situation here, Ben, Can you help us unpack.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
A little bit? Yeah, everything you just said is true. Russia,
as a signatory to the agreement was not playing by
the rules. Folks will notice that the areas Nol just
mentioned south of Setya, Kasia. These are I would add
(27:22):
parts of Ukraine as well. Crimea.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
The these are areas that are hotly contested on the
international sphere, and Russia is saying duh, some sky open
other No, you know what I mean. I I apologize.
I've just I watched too many eighties movies. Oh gosh, folks,
(27:49):
we had the We had the most fun riff. It
was so mad we didn't record it. Where we were
just imagining vladbear Putin playing board games, regular people at
plus goal. It possess park bliss. But but yes, bad
(28:10):
accents aside. It's true, it is provably demonstrably true that
Russia violated the terms of this treaty, and so this
became a rationalization for other parties. Kauf cough wink, wink,
nudge nudge the US cough cough, winking, nudge nudge. It
(28:33):
became it became this rationalization for the US to also
not obey parts of the treaty. It's understandable, right, It's
an understandable concept. However, there are some problems with this perspective. First,
the biggest one, the biggest badger in this bag, the
biggest elephant in this room, as you said, Matt, satellite technology.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Yeah, I mean they can. They can get extremely high
resolution imagery and some of the other sensors that are
on board many satellites can give you just ridiculously detailed
information that you don't need to send a big loud
plane over there, and you don't need to send seventy
two hours notice. You just got that thing. It's up there,
(29:18):
and it looks always, it never looks away on Yeah,
that right there is alone. I is reason. I don't know.
It's reason that makes this whole treaty a bit more ceremonial,
in just a something that just shows all the other
(29:42):
countries that hey, we have nothing to hide. That's literally
all it has become, and has been really since because
we're talking two thousand and two is when it was ratified,
we've had extremely good satellites. All many of the countries
that have signed have had ridiculus lessly powerful satellites in
the sky, in the above the skies for a long time.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Is it like having a treaty
with very specific rules on how to how to transport
VHS tapes in a world of digital downloads. That's not
a bad comparison. Really. The problem is the problem is
(30:27):
the satellites. Is this ceremonial? I love that you use
this word because for people objecting saying that Russia is
not obeying the rules of this treaty. Are we then
just saying Russia is not doing the ceremonial song and
dance that we wish it would do with us? You
(30:50):
know what I mean? Is it just offbeat for this,
for this choreography, this pageant, this theater, not quite the thing.
If we go back to what Noel mentioned earlier with
the Federation of American Scientists, we see that in nineteen
ninety two, US analysts determined that this treaty doesn't really
(31:14):
make risk for the US Russia. Russia could already collect
information with these observation satellites, and Russia for a time
was running behind. They were lagging in terms of monitoring
(31:37):
capability in their own satellites, and then the US was
also lagging behind in different things. There's this constant push
and pull, this constant gap in capability. But as we
said earlier, the thing about this treaty is it does
(32:00):
and care about satellites. It is only about the planes,
and it's only about what specific stuff one can have
on a plane. So this criticism of Russia not obeying
the rules, it's again, it's absolutely true, but it also
sort of ignores what is implied to be the larger point.
(32:24):
The larger point is who spies on whom and how?
And now now to argue, you know, our plane flights
aren't working, it's kind of like pretending the US satellites
don't exist, which is you know, I'll say it's it's
at best misleading. Second problem, this is huge for NATO,
(32:49):
This is huge for European security. And of course NATO
is a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.
As various poets would say, It's not a perfect thing,
but it needs it needs the US. The North Atlantic
Treaty organization needs the US. So the European countries who
(33:12):
are signatories to open skies very much want the US
on board. The US is not on board, by the way,
as recently as we said, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Who else is not on board? Any East Asian South
East Asian countries. None of them are on board. And
I'm trying to imagine approaching China right now and attempting
to get them on board with something like this. But
from a strategic standpoint is really what I'm thinking about,
(33:46):
Like what would be the benefit, I don't know, and
I guess it would be just the same argument that
was made when making it before. We have nothing to hide, everybody,
I know you have nothing to hide, right, I have
nothing to hide. Okay, lots to It's all about optics, right,
(34:06):
I mean that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Ben like this idea that this is some sort of
like understanding, but it doesn't mean full transparency.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
That's not what it means.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
No, no, And it's so you know, it's so strange
with with humanity, the rules it puts in place. There
were laws about the right way to kill people. Isn't
that nuts? No one ever thinks about that, no one,
no one ever talks about that. They're they're they're like
the same way you would have a slaughterhouse with health regulations.
(34:41):
That's the way this species is. It's like, Okay, some methods,
maybe a lot of methods of killing people or in
dangering innocence are wrong. However, you know if you do it,
if you do it according to the following guidelines, I
don't know. That's story for a different day. We're going
(35:03):
to pause for word from our sponsor, and then we're
going to return with the more conspiratorial accusations regarding the
Open Skies Treaty. We're back. So we mentioned the two
big problems. First, the European countries feel like they very
(35:26):
much need the US on board for open skies. Second,
satellite technology. How much of this stuff is ceremony at
this point, right? This is the third part. This is
the third part. It's a little more speculative. You see,
critics of the US decision to withdraw from this treaty
(35:50):
are not just objecting to withdraw from this one treaty.
They are objecting to what they see as a larger
pattern of withdrawing from armed treaties in general. And they
think that there's something amiss. They think there's something wrong
(36:10):
with this pattern.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, and the critics aren't exactly shying away from how
they feel about this. The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
Elliott Engel, who's a Democrat from New York, in addition
to Representative William Keating, a Democrat from Massachusetts, issued a
statement on November the twenty third saying that the Trump
administration broke the law when withdrawing from the treaty as
(36:35):
the administration did not give Congress a one hundred and
twenty day notice. They went further in their statement and
got pretty heated by congressional standards anyway, saying the following
President Trump is attempting to burn down our critical institutions
on his way out the door. In doing so, he
not only jeopardized US national security, but he blatantly ignored
(36:59):
and deliberately.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Broke the law.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Burn The one thing that you can say is true
is that we withdrew I believe, Ben correct me if
I'm wrong November of twenty twenty, which is very very
late into the four year term of the standing current
standing president. So it's just it is a bit weird
(37:23):
to drop out of that. We will talk about it further,
but I personally don't see the immediate need to do so,
even with the stuff we discussed about Russia not necessarily
playing by the rules.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's a good point that we read
a lot of government publications, government statements. That's kind of
provocative for people to say, you know, this guy that
we don't like is not just leaving, it's burning everything down.
It's it's made for TV. But the point stance, and
(38:00):
you are correct, this is a withdrawal very late into
a presidential term. If we are to look at it
from a larger perspective of continuity of government, then we
could perhaps argue that any specific four year period doesn't
(38:21):
specifically matter. The problem is the rest of the world
observes the US on this four year period, and as
a result, the US does not have the best reputation
abroad because you can if you're another country, let's say,
(38:42):
matt or France and all your Germany, let's make Paul
a fun when what country is Paul Michigan control Luxembourg.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I was gonna say, Luxembourg went out of my head head.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, well you were both going to say that, because
you are correct, Paul, Luxembourg decad So Luxembourg, France, Germany
are looking at the US and they've maybe made a
deal and they say, okay, we can trust this guy
who's here for four to eight years, but after that
(39:16):
it's a new ballgame. Can we trust this person? So
now we see domestic echoes of that problem, because critics
are alleging this decision to leave the Open Sky's Treaty
was somehow politically motivated, and the argument there from Engle
(39:38):
and Keating and others who agree with him, is that
this is an effort to prevent the incoming administration of
the US from easily rejoining or even strengthening not just
this agreement, but others.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
I honestly do not know this, Ben, and I didn't
find this in my research. How difficult is it to rejoin?
Is it something that's going to be a major process.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
It should not be because of the rules or the
procedures outlined in the treaty. As we said earlier, for
a country to join the Treaty on Open Skies, they
need to have a they need to win a consensus
vote from the signatory countries. And we know Europe very
(40:29):
much wants the US back in the game here because
they consider it crucial for their own transparency and security.
And you know, US has a pretty substantial air force.
We have the planes, So yeah, exactly, So this is
this is weird because it, again, as we've said before,
(40:50):
nothing occurs in a vacuum. Right, So, these withdrawals from
arms treaties, whatever, whatever the proposed logic for them is,
they occur in tandem with pushes from some factions of
the US government to develop new nuclear weapons. And this
(41:12):
scares the heck out of a lot of people, rightly. So,
So here's the big question. Gone into the weeds on
this on this treaty, it's kind of dry stuff. But
here is the million dollar question, the billion life question.
Why has the US withdrawn from so many arms controlled
(41:33):
treaties in the last few years America?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
First, I don't know, isolationism, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I'm just that's a good question. Well, some of it
rest upon the lasting influence of former officials, pundits, and
hawks like John Bolton. He that you guys remember John Bolton.
Speaker 5 (41:56):
Yeah, he's been as he's been as like the whole career,
hating any kind of arms control stuff because or hating
anything that applied to the US because he assumed.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
That those kind of agreements would limit the US and
that other countries would just not obey those agreements and
have no consequences.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
John Bolton, he was a neo conservative, I believe. Maybe
is that Bush George W. Bush ere and then a
little prior to that. Wow, it's been a while since
I've thought about that, dude, But it makes complete sense. Right,
you get into one of these big agreements with other countries,
everybody doesn't have to follow the rules, even though they've
signed something and say they're going to. But it also
(42:42):
means that the US, like John Bolton's side, doesn't have
to necessarily follow the rules. Maybe he knows how we
are going to roll in that kind of agreement and
then he's just applying it. He's that's what it is.
John Bolton is just projecting.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Is it all just like symbolic though? Like, what's the
point if it's non binding? Is it just to kind
of like have the like optics of rules, of the
optics of like order when it's all really just chaos
and up to whatever the individual parties want to do.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
There would be theoretical consequences, right, but how many sanctions, well,
how many people as the International Criminal Court convicted? Yeah, exactly.
That's another uncomfortable question. So shout out to you, Joseph Coney.
The Open Sky's Treaty is the third arms control agreement
(43:35):
that the we're so very close to the to the
shift and the executive branch here the current president as
we record this, this is the third arms control agreement
that administration has left. The raw Nuclear Deal I'm probably
(43:55):
all familiar with that went that went could put on
the US side in twenty eighteen, there was another thing
a lot of people may not have heard about the
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This country left that in
twenty nineteen, so there are salients, valid and immediate fears
(44:23):
that the US will also leave something called New Start,
which is due to expire next month. This is a
treaty about nuclear weapons, specifically between Russia and the US.
We don't know at this point how Russia is responding
(44:43):
to the US withdrawal from open skies, but it is advantageous.
It is inarguably a good deal for Russia for the
US to not be involved in this treaty because because
it means that now Russia will be able to fly
(45:04):
over US bases and other treaty members airspace, right, it
will be able to fly over US facilities, and the
US will not be allowed to fly over Russia. Of course, yes,
the satellites are still in orbit and pinging one another continually.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
It feels like like like putting ourselves at a disadvantage purposefully. Oh,
that's we It's not necessarily true, but it reads that way.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Right, Like, why even if it is ceremonial, even if
it is symbolic, why hamper oneself in this manner? To
be fair? The president at the time, these decisions did
specifically state there would be there may be light at
(45:58):
the end of the nuclear time, there may be hope
for new agreement in the future, and he said the following.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
He said, I think we have a very good relationship
with Russia, but Russia didn't adhere to the treaty, So
until they adhere to the treaty, we will pull out.
And he went on to say there's a very good
chance we'll make a new agreement or do something to
put that agreement back together, which makes sense. I mean it,
it feels like something that would get that would happen again.
(46:28):
But there's a window at least where we're not going
to be a part of it.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yes, And the this is this is the conspiratorial part here.
Is there a larger, longer game at play? Why now
right two thousand and two to two thousand and twenty,
Why out of the eighteen years that this was in force,
(46:54):
why did it end? Now? We have to say it.
It's long been suspected that parts of the US government
have been and are compromised by Russian intelligence. In recent years,
the executive branch of the United States has been the
target of a majority of these allegations. The idea is
(47:17):
that there is blackmail a foot.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
The comproman is sometimes used for the Russian version. And
there's something many of our listeners remember called the Steele dossier.
You guys remember that I.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Was the one with the peepee tape in it, right.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
It's one with allegations of recreational urination.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yes, I am, among other things, many other things. And
you know, recently we've seen stuff coming from both sides
of the congressional aisle in this country, memos, you know,
highly redacted memos that have very specific things to say
that you and I, as you know, just regular old
citizens don't get to read. And of course we just.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Pay, we pay those people to write things we can't read.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Is that it yeah? Yeah, And the dossier itself has
been called into question a ton. It's also one of
those things that it's it's hard for us as lay
people to know, you know, what's in it, if it's real,
or like, if what's in it is real.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah. However, James Comy was pulled off LECO from his
job while investigating this stuff, and the US intelligence agencies
can confirm many of the allegations in the dossier add
(48:45):
up or have at least some sand to them worthy
of investigation. They're also this is also coupled with controversial
remarks about Russia performatively too Russia in public, public statements
by the current administration. As we record this, you know, saying, hey, wow,
(49:10):
Russia is going to help us with the election. Do it?
Which is not your political party, doesn't matter if you're
in this country. You should not ask foreign countries for
help in an election. That's the big thing. Now, at
this point, we have to say, there's been no official,
widely accepted confirmation that Russia has its hand on the
(49:31):
neck of the executive branch. There's no official confirmation of this,
but it is certain that Russia interfered with the US
elections to put their chosen candidate in office. Yes, that's
a scary eighties action movie thing to say, but the
question is is it true. We know that Russia tried
(49:56):
to influence the election. We just don't know the degree
of success. Really, we don't have. Oddly enough, the official
Russian position is that they didn't interfere with the election.
So so there are people who are going to tell
you that the reason the US has withdrawn from multiple
(50:16):
arms controlled treaties especially open skies, is that they were
told to by some foreign asset. What do you guys think?
What do you guys think about that? It's a big
thing to say, you.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Know, it's a big thing to say, and it's a
hard thing to like know.
Speaker 3 (50:36):
Yeah, something feels off, I would say, just personally with
a lot of these things, I think I've watched way
too much mister Robot for me to objectively even like
ponder it at this point.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Maybe it's a corporation, Yeah, maybe it's the Pepperidge Farm folks.
Are they the ones who make cookies?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah, it could be that. Yeah, try to inviteing them.
But you know, the the other thing is that we've
we've discussed this before on the show The Long Game,
the concept that perhaps the KGB or some other essentially
sleeper organization within Soviet intelligence went underground for a long
(51:23):
time and then resurfaced and with plans. To god, it
sounds silly, with plans to become the world power, the
leading world power eventually in the future at some point,
and to rebuild the power that they once had. It
rings of that. That does not mean this has anything
(51:46):
to do with those alleged plans, But yeah, again maybe
in my head is just too deep in some of
that stuff to think about it objectively.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
I mean, it makes a whole lot of sense, the
idea of US doing it to benefit Russia in some way.
Sure has been a lot of rhetoric that benefited Russia,
a lot of kind of you know, Trump aligning with
Putin in ways that previous presidents just never have or
never would in a million years. So it's hard to
not think where they's smoke, there's fire, But again, really
(52:16):
really hard to prove, and very much in the realm
of conjecture.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yeah, that's the pickle. It's something that historians of the
future are going to be debating and picking apart. Right now,
the facts are this, the satellite technology that is not
part of Open Skies delivers some of the same capabilities, right,
and these satellites do pretty well right now. By stepping
(52:42):
out of this treaty, the US has put itself at
a bit of a disadvantage. The degree of that disadvantage
remains to be seen. But the logic behind that withdrawal is,
you know, it makes sense when you read the statement,
they said, the other folks aren't playing by the rules,
(53:03):
so why should we continue to play the game.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
And we'll come back if the rules are all followed again.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Right right, So not super apocalyptic here, but the more
you dig into it, the stranger it seems, especially given
that pattern of withdrawals from other existing agreements.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
Well, and the more tensions rise, the more dangerous it
is for everyone, not just Russia. In the United States,
the Federation of American Scientists and then the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists that the group that puts out that
doomsday clock that we've mentioned before in the show a
lot of times. You know, over the years, it's changed
(53:51):
quite a bit since we've been making this show. My goodness,
Let's see twenty ten, it was six minutes to midnight,
twenty twelve, it was five minutes to midnight, twenty fifteen
to three minutes twenty seventeen, two and a half minutes
twenty eighteen to two minutes to midnight, and as of
last year, twenty twenty, it was one hundred seconds to midnight,
(54:14):
less than two minutes away. What does that mean midnight?
That means a highly likely apocalypse, essentially nuclear war or
you know, devastating things with all of that happening in
the world, having these tensions run higher and higher is
just terrifying.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Right because we don't have to just think about the
world today, We have to think about the world in
the future. The most important part of this story, the
species's story, is not us doing this show now, and
it's it's not you listening. It's the people who come
after us, and that's in they are in a very
(54:59):
real sense, our responsibility. So of course, nobody wants nuclear
weapons to deploy. I we think most people don't. But also,
just like Eisenhower, most people want transparency. If you look
at the number of close calls we have had with
(55:22):
nuclear weapons, as we said at the top of this episode,
you will and should be terrified. Things got very very close,
like multiple times, the decision whether or not to go
to a nuclear war hinged on one person being reasonable,
(55:45):
like what like, Matt, Matt, one guy. One guy was like,
I don't know, man, maybe we shouldn't launch the NWKE
just yet. Let's let's hang on. Everybody have a snack.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Except there was so much sweat being generated and I'm
going to assume a generous amount of urine as well.
Who knows, because it's it's it was very it it
could have been the end. Okay, I don't want to
think about that anymore. Ben, That's all happening. This is
(56:20):
all happening.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
One last note, a bit of a current event. As
we were recording this podcast, Russia went public with its
plans to follow the United States and withdraw entirely from
the Open Skies treaty, creating a future that looks even
more uncertain. So let us know what you think, folks.
(56:42):
We know we got in the weeds a little bit
on Jill politics and on a very specific treaty, but
there is there does seem to be a larger pattern
at play. Do you think that these moves are legit?
Is it the right thing to do to pull out
(57:03):
of these treaties? Are other countries not behaving in good
faith or not signing on in good faith? Is there
something amiss with this pattern of withdrawal? If so, what
is a miss? Do you give any credence to the
repeated claims that foreign powers have compromised areas of the
(57:27):
US government? If so, we would love to hear from you.
If not, we would also love to hear from you.
We want to know your opinion. We try to make
ourselves easy to find You can drop by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
you can find us there. We'd like to recommend Here's
Where It Gets Crazy, which is rated by us as
(57:47):
the best website on the Internet, the best web page.
Speaker 3 (57:51):
I should say absolutely. It is all you have to
do to join up. Is no one or more of
our names, the hosts or creators of this show. I'm
not going to tell you our names again. Hopefully you
remember from when we said them every episode that we've
ever made of this show.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
But what if people hate social media?
Speaker 3 (58:10):
Matt ah if you dislike that stuff, you can use
your telephone device to get in contact with us. With
your throat device, uh, the thing that makes sounds that
you know I love you, got it? You can call
our number. It is one eight three three std WYTK.
(58:32):
You can leave us a voicemail. We will hear it,
and you may end up on one of the listener
mail episodes. Just please tell us if you don't want
your voice to be included in one of those episodes.
And guess what. This episode was inspired by someone who
sent us a voicemail. Someone that goes by Hidalgo.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yes, thank you so much, Hidalgo.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Seriously, you've sent us several just great messages. And you
may guess that's not this person's real name, but Hidalgo.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
And if you would like to take a page from
Hidalgo's book, as we said, of course find us on
the internet. You can find us on your local telephone.
That's weird, I guess when you think about it, we're there,
We're on your phone. And if you don't care for
any of that that doesn't quite fly your nukes, then
(59:26):
you could always hit us up at our good old
fashioned email address where.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't
(59:53):
want you to know.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
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