November 19, 2021 • 64 mins
Pundits have predicted the beginning of WWIII since, essentially, the end of the last World War. But could it really happen? How?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Boy, I gotta tell you. Uh. We did this episode
in what was it July of twenty fifteen, and it's
an episode that unfortunately remains prescient in the modern day. Uh.
We've we've looked at all kinds of of terrible things
that happened in wars of the past, and in this episode,
(00:25):
we got together and we said, well, what's the next
war going to be about? Even even the young versions
of us, the younger versions of us, you guys, assumed
there would be another big war. I mean, I'm still
waiting for it. It just feels like we've been kind
of constantly perma at war, uh, to the point where
it's just kind of like, you know, the order of
(00:45):
the day. I think that's largely because it doesn't really
affect us at our doorsteps, But who knows that one
could be coming. The big question in this episode, I
think is could a worldwide war occur again? A large scale,
hot war with powers that have nuclear weapons and other
(01:07):
forms of weaponry that could annihilate everyone at any given moment.
And what would be the spark? As the Owl from
the Tutsi role pop commercial says, let's find out from
UFOs two Ghosts and government cover ups. History is whiddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, and
(01:34):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I am Ben. We are here with our super producer
Nold the Kaiser Brown Noeld the Kaiser as in a
role as a political figure. I just wanted to make
sure he is a commanding personality. You know, no I
could see you with some epilettes on your I guess
(01:56):
we're in a T shirt, don't see. We go for it.
Epiletts I teach are not a bad idea. Hey Ben,
Hey Matt, you're probably wondering why are you guys just
talking about Noll's T shirt. Well, it's because we're in
a pretty good mood. Before we jump into the show today,
we have a special announcement. That's right, Ben and I.
(02:17):
Unfortunately Noel won't be joining us this time, but Ben
and I are going to Washington, d C. That's right,
the District of Columbia. Yeah, we're going to broadcast a
few shows live via periscope. We're gonna film some other
stuff as well. Here's the thing, folks, we'd like your help.
What should we explore. Let us know about any places
(02:38):
we should visit, people we should talk to, and you
know what, Matt, I'll go ahead and say it. I
hope we don't regret it. Uh, Listeners, if you're in
the area, feel free to drop by and say hello.
At some point, you know, we'll find us walking around
the mall or maybe in some CD part of town
that uh, you know, nobody wants to know about, but
probably has the best pizza. So what what we'll do
(03:02):
is we'll post this on our social media as well.
We're conspiracy stuff at Facebook and Twitter. If you want
to just if you'd rather type to us on the
social media's then you can do that. But you can
also write to us directly. We've got our email address,
uh conspiracy how Stuff works dot com. I just want
to emphasize that this is not a formal We won't
(03:24):
be doing formal shows on Periscope. It will be Ben
and I kind of hanging out and doing some of
our you know, conspiracy material discussing something that's going on.
But it's not gonna be I don't know, it's not
gonna be the same. It's gonna be much more informal. Hey, Yeah,
we might, uh, we might get arrested. Who knows what
happens if we get arrested on periscope? Can the can
(03:46):
the cops take the phone? Just sell don't taste me,
bro and try and keep filming as long as possible. Well,
it's going to be an adventure either way, that's for sure.
We'll have more details as we get closer to this,
but eight tuned, our road trip will be beginning, So
let's get to the show. The topic for this week.
(04:08):
This year marks the seventy anniversary of the conclusion of
World War Two, which is generally acknowledged to have occurred
on September two. So this coming September, hopefully you I,
Matt Nol, your your families, your loved ones, even your
(04:31):
frenemies can look around and say, hey, seventy years without
a world war. We did it, man, Go team, Yeah,
go team. Indeed. Well, in fact, this right now is
the most peaceful, peaceful time on Earth in the history
of the world. Yeah and recorded human human history. Yeah,
but we're not saying if everything's amazing. No, no, no,
(04:55):
And and a lot of people probably want to hear
some information about that. I think we mentioned it in
the video this week because we did we did just
one video on some possible causes of World War three,
and we mentioned this most peaceful time and history thing. Uh,
and that seems like a bomb to drop. So evolutionary
(05:17):
psychologist Stephen Pinker believes that violence has declined since the
beginning of the human race. And when he's talking about violence,
he isn't just referring to war, large scale violence. He
also talks about criminal punishment, murder rates, other stuff like that.
And because we have stable governments and theory providing mediation
(05:38):
and deterring conflict, because technology has given us a several
wildly different ways to interact with each other and to
take care of ourselves because of advancements and healthcare. Uh,
because it's possible to talk to someone all the way
across the world. You know, you can literally send a
(06:01):
message to someone in Vietnam and just say sup. Yeah.
And all these things are great. I can imagine the
listener and somewhat myself sitting here and going really the
most peaceful time in the world because you just you
think about all of the globe, the conflicts that are
happening across the globe right now, and all of the murder.
You think about murder rates in the US, and you're like, man,
(06:21):
how is this possible? But you just have to think
it's been so much worse. Just I it's a horrible word,
but I was gonna say civilized, because there's such connotation
with that word. But just that we humans tend to
walk around being rather civilized to one another nowadays largely,
(06:42):
And I can just you can just imagine, well, back
in the day there was a little less of that. Well, sure,
and it still does occur. Of course. You know, you
made a great point earlier. This is not to say
that things are perfect by any means. There are more
slaves and absolute number than there have ever been before.
Another another horrible statistic about slavery, which we're going to
(07:06):
cover in some future episodes. Another horrible statistic about slavery
is that it is also, now, adjusted for inflation, cheaper
to buy a person than it has ever been before,
which is just a horrifying thing. Wildlife, it's no secret,
is undergoing a mass extinction, a massive extinction, um And
(07:29):
you know the oceans arecidifying, right, They're collapsing ecosystems and
every people are often you know, listener. I guess it
depends on where you are based. But people are often
arguing about this in relatively small minded political terms. Money
(07:50):
a lot of times, sure, money, money is a motivating factor,
and of course there's still crushing poverty. But even with
all that, even with all those disastrous things, you listening
to this by virtue of being alive right now. If
you're listening to this when it comes out right, then
then you are actually in pole position. You are in
(08:12):
a very good time in human history. And we asked
this week, Matt, you and I asked this week, how
how long is this gonna How long we're gonna be
able to ride this one out? Yeah? We made seventy years.
Can we make seventy and a half seventy one? Even?
I don't know. Here's the thing. A lot of people
(08:35):
believe the likelihood of this massive world scale war the
next one. A lot of people believe that this next
massive world scale war, there's a very little likelihood that
it's going to actually happen because of several things. We're
gonna get into a lot of them. But you know,
just off the top of your head, you couldn't think about, well,
(08:57):
there are a lot of nukes, and you know, when
there are a lot of nukes and a lot of
different powers that have them, generally nobody is going to
be lobbing one around. The nuclear deterrence theory, sure that
that's a huge one. Another reason this might not happen
is because we all of these countries that are generally
at odds with one another, at least politically, are trading
(09:19):
and are dependent on one another to get their goods
and sometimes even their services. There's uh, what else has
been well. Additionally, it's uh, it is arguably more difficult
to stir up the domestic population of a country because
these domestic populations, with a few notable exceptions, are are
(09:42):
much more likely to be informed about other areas of
the world. So it can be a little bit more
difficult to think of a group of other human beings
as just these faceless things you're supposed to bomb. Are
you talking about some form of institutionalized racism to help
a group of soldiers maybe the opponents, right? That used
(10:04):
to happen and that still does occur, uh, you know,
in in modern times and in most countries during wartime,
that kind of othering. That's it's very interesting psychological propaganda thing.
But I would argue that what is more important is
the nature of interstate alliances. Every country is in like
(10:27):
a gang or a click or several. You know, you've
got the nonaligned countries before the fall of Libya, um
who didn't want to play ball with various Western institutions.
I don't think that's a secret. Then you have you know,
you have OPEQUE, which is primarily a commodity based organization
(10:48):
right there, trading oil. And you have NATO, which is uh,
kind of like a bunch of people who before they
went out to a bar one night said, listen, guys,
something goes down, we all have to jump in. Okay.
And then you know even that, well, okay. So I'll
(11:10):
do what might be a a little bit of a
crass analogy about international affairs. And this is this is
very um simplified. So here goes the idea of international relations.
International affairs can be thought of through the analogy of
a house party, a crowded house party, a hundred and
(11:33):
ninety three hundred nineties something, depending on I guess your
ideology and what you allow to be a country, Almost
two hundred people show up to this house party. Some
later than others, some earlier than others, and they are
under the impression that they're gonna have a great time,
but they find out that there is less beer than
(11:53):
they thought there was going to be right, and somebody,
somebody's already king of the kegs, and then other people
are in line, and uh, maybe they're playing musical chairs.
Let's up the stakes. What I'm saying is, in this analogy,
there are there's a finite amount of resources, and uh,
(12:14):
a finite amount of influence. And so beer, toilet paper, whatever, pretzels,
you can use that to fill in for anything else.
You can either get those the beer and pretzels by
being a smooth talker or giving the person maybe I
don't know, a couple of ping pong balls so they
can play beer pongs pretzels. And I like this analogy.
(12:34):
Whose whose house is it? Right now? It would be
a world, I guess in this analogy right now, the
there are a couple of answers we could do, Matt.
One would one would be like, the house doesn't belong
to anybody, man, It's like Earth has always been there.
You can't like tame the wind bro um. But then
another argument would be that the house would belong to
(12:57):
whomever was the reigning superpower, which would make it Uncle
Sam's house currently. And I don't I don't think that
either of those are a completely sustainable answer, because again
it's not the best analogy. But anyway, that's that's the point.
Because of these alliances. Because of these agreements, nation states
or countries or whatever you want to call them have
(13:18):
a higher cost or higher risk of going to war.
You know, the idea of attacking France or something a century,
centuries and centuries ago or earlier in time before NATO
was much more feasible, even if it would be a
bad idea was much more feasible because it didn't automatically
(13:42):
mean that the continent of Europe is going to attack you.
You know, it's like one v versus a hive. So
those are arguments for why the likelihood is lower, but
of course their apundans who believe that it's higher than
ever before due to several recent events, right, yeah, lots
of recent events. But I would also just throw in
(14:03):
there at the end of what you're talking about with
these alliances that sometimes those alliances, I would say, make
it more likely that you have to respond if you
are a let's say, you're not the person being postured
against or even attacked, but you are the posse of
that place or you know, person in our analogy that's
being postured against, you have to then flex up and
(14:25):
at least at least, you know, stand in the doorway
and watch what's happening with a threat. So, I don't know,
I think it's it's a weird It's such a strange
thing international politics and and foreign policy and all this stuff.
So there are all these things happening. One that we've
looked at is Ukraine, right, Yeah, the annexation of Crimea
(14:46):
by Russia. Yes, that is a huge deal. A lot
of people are looking at that and feel that it's
going to have much larger consequences down the road, not
that it hasn't already had huge consequences for the people,
right Yeah. The the issues there, and we we can
get into some of the conspiratorial stuff about this later too,
(15:07):
but the the issue in that case being that for
a while Russia was saying these are just random regular
Joe Q publics from Ukraine and they just they're separating
from Ukraine. Whatever those tactical units are, regional instability. Yeah,
(15:29):
kind of reminded me of that. Um, this is a
deep cut. Remember that Shaggy song It wasn't me. Yeah,
I can't remember. Yeah, I can't even do it. It's
like a frog voice former marine that guy. And yeah.
Anyhow so yeah, CRIMEO, We've got that. That is that
is a huge thing. That's probably one of the most
well known things. We also have the South China Sea.
(15:52):
That's another recent event that people are concerned about. And
then of course there's the Islamic State, uh, and then
there is the possibility of nuclear Korea, everybody's favorite geopolitical
wild card. Right. Of course, people are talking about fundits,
are talking about that in politicians, right. And so because
(16:15):
of these increasing tensions in these in these various different fields,
and it's leading people and and smart people, um, people
at nonprofit think tanks, professors from the academy, and military
strategists to estimate that where a few years ago people
(16:36):
would have said that war is impossible, large scale world
war is impossible, now it's no longer impossible. So it's
kind of like moving from a green light to yellow light.
So we wanted to look at how this would happen
where this would happen and see whether there's any stuff
they don't want you to know when it comes to
(16:56):
World War three. So when the video of it came
out this week, we looked at three flashpoints, is what
we called them, places where a conflict that is somewhat
smaller on a global scale then just gets ratcheted up
and everybody gets involved. The first one of those was
the situation currently going on between Russia and many of
(17:17):
the states of NATO. NATO itself actually, so the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization has been, at least in Russia's opinion,
encroaching on some of their territory and pulling some states
or our countries that were former Soviet states into the
fold of NATO. And and you know, it's one of
(17:40):
those things where nobody likes it when you're encroaching on
their territory. If you ever played Command and Conquer any
of these games, you just you shouldn't do it. It's
a fighting move. Um So, anyway, Russia is objecting to
a lot of NATO's encroachment. Like we said, um so,
Russia doesn't like what NATO is doing. But what we
(18:01):
should say here is that, well, NATO is this primary organization.
That's kind of poking it at Russia. The US is
really Russia's primary concern primary I want to so we Yeah,
it's And it's interesting that you say that because it
reminds me of an episode that we did earlier. Some
long time listeners may remember this. We asked, uh, what
(18:24):
if the Cold War never ended? And there's a very
i will say, very intriguing theory. I'm not sure how
sould I am on it. That of course, of Vladimir
Putin being a former KGB man. Uh, perhaps this this idea,
which is pretty wild, is that the KGB never really
(18:45):
ended at the downfall of the Soviet Union. It just
went underground and prepared for a long con Yeah. The
long deception, I think is the name of the video. Yeah. Yeah,
and uh that's the stuff of spy films, of political thrillers.
But the one thing that is true, whether or not
you think the Cold War ended, is that, uh, the
(19:08):
US and Russia, for several reasons in a few in
a couple of very specific areas, are the two big
rival superpowers, one in particular the most dangerous. It's safe
to say that neither of these countries or these organizations.
If you want to just say NATO want a war,
(19:29):
but both see the other as an aggressive, potentially destabilizing
and dangerous force. So this, this is something that we
hear about a lot. Whenever domestic propaganda starts ramping up,
which is legal in the US now it is used
to not be. But whenever there's domestic propaganda being whipped
(19:51):
up for like anti Russian or anti Iran or anti whatever,
than one thing that we hear about is uh, the
the US as the good guy attempting to contain or liberate,
contain a dangerous country, or liberate the people of a
(20:12):
country or an area, stuff like that from this regime.
That's just oh yeah, and that's how we've said that before.
That's how you can always tell how how you're supposed
to feel about a government, because how they're what they're called.
I guess. Yeah, if they're a regime, then the idea
is that they need to be overthrown. If it's an administration,
(20:33):
they're just doing a darn job. Yeah. If they're the government,
then that's fine too. Yeah, watch out for a regime.
If anybody refers to something you're doing as a regime,
be very careful get out, get out. I don't know
if people do that. I don't know if you can
refer to something as like the this. Uh, I don't
(20:55):
know the regime at this Bennigan's is intolerable, the Ellen
Powell regime. Alright, so sorry, it's fine. I still don't
entirely know what that's about. But I did see that
Reddit was shut down for a few hours, several subreddits.
Nothing to see there, nothing to see there, continue on,
(21:17):
don't look behind the curtains. Okay, well then we will
take your word for it. So let's look at this
from a different perspective. And this is something that um,
you'll you'll see people post online when they when they
describe Russia or Iran or or some other country that
has a lot of tension with the West. Uh, they'll
(21:39):
usually have a map of all the US bases at
the border or in adjacent countries. Right, And so imagine
if there were some sort of independent South American alliance
that was very powerful, a South American NATO, and things
like this exists, but I mean, with that amount of firepower,
(22:00):
are right, imagine it began overthrowing regimes in Central America,
you know, working its way up on tourists, believes, Guatemala
all the other stuff, and then it began positioning troops
along the Mexican border right of the United States. Yes,
the US would the US would react adversely to say
(22:22):
the least. And also, just as a side note, yes,
it is true that the US is historically the primary
force for coups in South and Central America. Yes, what
Ben says is unfortunately true. Yeah, well we you know,
we've got some episodes about some of that, specifically the
nineteen fifty four coup in Guatemala. Uh, that was one.
(22:44):
We looked at Venezuela, We looked at a couple of
other places in the school of the America's doesn't help, right,
Oh yeah, we did look at Venezuela too. So uh this.
Russia is withering currently under some sanctions and Saudi Arabia's
uh lowering of fossil fuel oil prices has dealt a
heavy blow to Russia's economy, which depends upon energy exports.
(23:09):
Irana is also not doing so well either. While this
is a weekend Russia, the population of the country is
massively in favor of Vladimir Putin. I know it, I
know it sounds like the elections are fixed, and maybe
they are, but people are honestly on board with this guy.
They at least seemed to be. They at least seemed
to be. And additionally, when these sanctions, which were you know,
(23:32):
designed to weaken Russia, they have worked there, they have
made an impact. But there was a side effect here, yes,
that that may prove to be pretty severe. We'll find out.
Russia made friends with other countries, non Western countries that
they weren't well. I guess they were always cooperating a
(23:53):
bit with China and some of these other countries, but
they became pretty close with Syria, Iran, and most importantly China. Right, Yeah,
and those countries still all have their tensions, they're all
looking out for themselves. But this kind of sanctioning or
attempted isolation from the West can bring other countries into
(24:14):
a sort of the rival of my rival is my
friend situation. So they're numerous regional proxy conflicts between Russia
and the West. This is absolutely not a secret. This
is happening more or less continually, right, There's a cycle
to it throughout history. The most well known, as we said,
(24:34):
currently occurs in Ukraine. This this means that there are
several different ways that regional tensions could turn into a
world war in Ukraine. So, for example, we found this
great article on vox dot com that showed that kind
of walks us through the scenario where something could happen
(24:55):
in Estonia. Uh. This is a flow chart by a
guy named Max fish R who will reference later and
Javier Zarcina, and this is pretty recent. UH, but most
of the people who do war games or work on
scenarios here in the West, when they think of the
idea of a war between the US and Russia, oddly enough,
(25:17):
it starts in Estonia because and just for some reference,
if you don't know where Estonia is, if you think
of the map and you can find Finland, it is
just below south of Finland, across the Baltic Sea um
and on the border of Russia. Russia is to the east. Yes,
and because it's part of NATO, that means the US
(25:38):
and most of Europe are obligated to defend it from
any attack, and UH, NATO has shipped military equipment there
to deter possible Russian aggression. Estonia, as you know, it
was part of the Soviet Union. NATO sphere is that UH,
Russia could attempt to motivate the the Estonian's Russian population
(26:03):
to become separatist, or you want to organize with Russia,
kind of like what happened in eastern Ukraine. At least
that's what appears to have happened in Ukraine. And the
danger here is that this regional violence, because again it
encounters it factors in or draws in rather NATO itself
(26:24):
and the US, that this could spiral out of control,
in from a regional conflict into a a full war.
One thing that's interesting about the way these scenarios often
work out is that most of these scenarios factor in
the concept that an accident would happen, something unforeseen, something innocent,
(26:45):
well maybe innocence the wrong word, but something not purposeful,
like a mid air collision, the bomb is deployed in
the wrong place, military exercise gets out of control, which
are already kind of dangerous games to begin with, but
when it happens, if there's that failure to communicate, then
it could become a incredibly dangerous situation very very quickly.
(27:10):
So this flow chart is really good. You guys, make
sure you head on over to vox dot com and
give it a look, it's it's just neat and terrifying
to see this written out the way that it is,
because the whole thing, at least beginning of it, hinges
on how NATO would react to protests from the Estonian people,
(27:31):
from the ethnic Russian, from the ethnic Russian population, but
just how they would react to this. So either way
that either way that NATO handles this, you know, of
course Moscow would react, so the protests might dissipate and
lead to peace, which would be ideal. Moscow might warn, however,
of impending genocide and fire up the protesters more. The
(27:55):
clashes could start to lead to violence, and then the
US would have a react and her NATO would have
a reaction, right yeah, and then that can lead you
all the way down to then Germany getting involved, to
other NATO countries getting involved. Uh. There, it's really crazy.
It just hops down to then there's war between Russia
(28:16):
and Estonia and ultimately NATO. Um then NATO invades parts
of Russia. I mean, it's crazy. It just goes through
all of these possible things to the limited nuclear war
that might happen with small tactic nukes. Uh. And it's
so much it's there's a lot of detail. We probably
won't be able to go into all of them, know,
you'll have to check it out. But then there there
(28:37):
will be a constant give and take of calculations that
would lead from a limited war. Uh And and this
looks at the possibilities of of large scale nuclear deployment,
one of the more dangerous things being that Russia could
deploy the dead hand system, or it could be triggered
(28:58):
weather by a mass of attack against the country, or
this also frightening, that Russia could lose control over its
nuclear weapons and they could end up somewhere else, which
we'll talk about a little bit further. The end result
than being the possibility of a full on nuclear exchange
where um counter attacks and attacks leave much of the
(29:22):
world incredibly damaged and civilization as we know it is
is uh if not destroyed, profoundly damaged. Okay, So why
why all this tension? What gives? From the Russian point
of view, the US is attempting to establish a hedgemonty,
make Russia like a client state, beholden to Western institutions,
(29:45):
both the government kind and the corporate kind. But from
the Western perspective, bordering countries, Eastern European countries, NATO members,
and so on need to be protected from Russian expansionism.
And both sides have some valid points there. But the
single most dangerous possibility in this conflict is is the
(30:06):
one that everybody thinks of when you think of World
War three. Yeah, the nuclear option. The nuclear option is
the most dangerous one that currently exists on this planet.
And it's a it's a messed up in real possibility. Yeah,
it's not a it's not as um apparent or inevitable
(30:27):
a possibility as some fearmongers would have us think. But
here's the deal. Of the countries that have nuclear weapons
openly have nuclear weapons openly, right, yeah, because it's such
a secret. But of the countries that do have nuclear
weapons admit having them. The US and Russia control n
(30:50):
cent of the world's nuclear arsenal, so they have all
of the big guns. Luckily, there's this. This was also
an article by the same writer, Max Fisher. There's a
political scientist named j ol Felder who estimated the probability
of war to be about eleven percent overall, with an
(31:11):
eighteen percent chance of either side using nuclear weapons if
war occurs, and there was only a two percent chance
that this nuclear war would occur between Russia and the US.
That's pretty good, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. We've
got a grizzly comparison there too. Yeah, just for comparison,
that is about twice the odds of you dying in
(31:35):
a car crash, but in this car crash, everybody's in
the car and everybody dies or many people die, the
vast majority. So that's that's a little bit of a
high level look at Russian Of course, there's more there
that we could spend an entire podcast on. But let's shift,
or let's let's pivot as governments like to say, towards China,
(32:00):
the US, Japan, and some of the other Asian alliances
in that region. So there's this comes up all the time, Matt.
We've seen this for years. We did an earlier video
on whether China was colonizing Africa, and China is definitely
doing resource extraction there on a high, a large level. Yeah,
(32:21):
And you could argue, well, it's it's true that other
like larger companies are also doing resource extraction there too,
But this issue of China's rise is an emergent superpower
it's aimed to establish regional hegemony over East Asia comes
up again and again cyclically, and it's most controversial in
(32:42):
China's disputes right now. It's most controversial in China's disputes
over naval territory, right Yeah, you mentioned the South China
see and like, who who owns this? Does anyone own this?
Who has the right to put their military ships in
this space? And yeah, there's been and lots of conflict
with that over the years, a lot recently. And one
(33:04):
of the things we found in our video is that
it seems to be a popular belief, at least among
the Chinese citizenry that the and some of the officials
even that there there will be a necessary war between
the United States and China. Right the idea that the
US is hampering China's growth, cutting it off from trade opportunities,
(33:28):
seeking to contain the country's influence. This coincides with Chinese
R and D and investment in it's called asymmetrical warfare,
and and then forming bilateral relationships or strengthening bilateral relationships
with other countries outside of the US. And there there's
(33:49):
some great uh, there's some great information you can read
about this that I think it is fascinating but also
could be scary stuff if it ever gets used. Well,
one of the things you you even noted in there
is that the a lot of the citizens that have
that opinion that this war will eventually be necessary believe
that China would be victorious. Right yeah, And that's because
(34:12):
the nature of war has fundamentally changed due to technological innovations.
Right now, the US, which vastly outspends every other country,
uh almost yeah, yeah on military endeavors. Uh, the the
US vastly outspends everyone, has the most expensive toys and
(34:34):
it has the biggest guns. But this does not mean
that such a military is invulnerable. So there's a quote
by a security analyst named Laura Horta, and Horta says
China has no illusions about its military inferiority visa VI
the US, and knows that the status is likely to
endure for at least two decades. As such, that's been
(34:57):
developing a full range of asymmetry strategies to deter the
US until it's military reaches maturity. China is, you know,
attempting to build carriers. Um, it's reverse engineering successfully several
different pieces of hardware and vehicles. Well, we see asymmetrical warfare.
(35:18):
What we mean is, why spend millions and millions and
millions and maybe billions of dollars of preparing a carrier
to fight a carrier versus carrier war when you could
just design some missiles that are faster than the reaction
time of the ships, right the defense of the ships,
(35:41):
or attack submarines or something, you can take them out exactly, yeah, surreptitiously. Right. So,
what China is working on is something that you will
often hear called uh area denial or act denial of access.
And this is just uh, this is just having stuff
set up in the vicinity, perhaps in the South China
(36:01):
Sea for uh, that would prevent any other, any approaching
force from getting close enough to attack the country. So this,
this would be a woefully costly thing in terms of
blood and treasure for both countries, neither if the US
(36:24):
invade or if whoever tried to invade China. Right yeah, yeah,
And the US currently sees control of the seas as
one of the country's biggest insurance policies for safety. Right.
But this, fortunately, this also just like Russian NATO, has
a lower chance of happening, but not not maybe for
(36:46):
the best reasons. It turns out that both the US
and China, if we're being candid, have some significant internal problems,
or at least things that would deter them from fighting
a war. Yes, so is dealing with several crippling problems
internally that they really they need to handle first before
(37:06):
they get into any of this world war stuff. Like
let's say, the the pollution problems in the cities there.
They're crippling, it's it's horrible. The citizen rees healthcare issue
is it's a pretty dire situation there right now. And
also the one child policy has had a huge effect,
huge effect on the population numbers there. Yeah, just to uh,
(37:27):
just a put a little bit of the environmental stuff
in perspective, The Atlantic had an article came out in
two thousand thir teena want to say, about twenty eight
thousand rivers in China that just disappeared. Yeah, that's not good.
And you know, as somewhat of an emerging economy, they're
(37:49):
having to use things like coal power burning cole and
a couple other, um, let's say, less than safe ways
to make energy right, right, and they're they're good things
to China does lead the world currently in solar energy
or solar power research, but the gender ratio of sex
ratio is still pretty skewed. Uh there were I think
(38:10):
it was something about like one hundred and twenty something
boys born for every one hundred girls nationwide. Recently that
has been lowering, but it's gonna be a while. It's
gonna be like a decade before it goes down to
something a little bit more um on on target. And
that's it. That's just a long term effect of that policy.
(38:33):
And uh this isn't even touching on the continuing debate
about the Chinese economy how right, like how corrupt or
not corrupt it is? Right? Uh So, speaking of problems,
let's switch to the US. The US is stretched thin
given the wars in Afghanistan or Rock and the continual
(38:55):
operations in various places around the world. Uh. Also, both
countries depend on one another economically. China has the power
to break the world's economy, uh so, or make it
if we want to be class half full people. So
they're kind of at a standoff here because China has
(39:15):
a lot of its UH finances tied up in US bonds, right,
and the US is dependent on China for a lot
of exports, so hopefully trade can save it. Hopefully it
is more advantageous for both actors in this scenario to
work together and trade things. However, and this is a
(39:39):
point that was made in a in a analysis from Yale. However,
in both World Wars of the previous century, Germany was
Britain's biggest trade partner until the war started, So both
are clearly aiming to establish themselves. Neither country once in
the war and are in and both are increasingly competing
(40:02):
for resources. Uh. China actually has done what I think
is is a not to be flip about it, but
I think it's it's pretty stylish move. Yeah, they're styling.
They're styling on it. Yeah, what are they doing, Yeah,
they're they're going They're definitely going about in a weird way.
They're actually building islands, kind of like we heard about
(40:22):
in Dubai when they were building these much on a
much smaller scale, these artificial islands out there in the
world and the palm and that stuff. Yeah, yeah, Well,
they're building islands to support the territorial claims of these
areas in the South China Sea. The Spratley Islands, I believe, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So this this is a huge uh, this is a
(40:44):
huge issue with China and the US and other countries
around there, like the Philippines has recently been engaged in
some ongoing tension with China about its expansion and its
claims regarding what what constitutes its territory versus international waters.
(41:04):
And this is a this is a very tense thing here.
So China is actually building these islands to say, no,
this is land. So given international law, this far off
from these islands, not the mainland is where it belongs
to our government. Yeah, you could just build one x
(41:27):
kilometers away from each other, then you own the whole ocean.
So we we also when we looked at this, uh,
it seems like the calculation about how or when a
war would begin with China in the US, it seems
to often depend on the just the current events of
(41:50):
the time, right, And you can see predictions about this
stuff that often can seem contradictory. One one person that
I would like to reference here is a guy named
George Friedman. He's a geopolitical scientist, and he wrote a
book called The Next one hundred Years where he said
(42:11):
that there's going to be a um a fragmentation in China,
weakening of Russia, Japan will emerge as more powerful thing,
Turkey will emerge, and that eventually what's going to happen
is that there would be a world war or fight
(42:33):
for world uh world power, right, superpower status in twenty
fifty you can you can check out this analysis online.
Just check for the next one hundred years. But there's
one other place that we haven't talked about, which we're
going to probably need to save for another episode. Yeah,
(42:53):
I think we should. Let's let's look at we're talking
about the Middle East. If you couldn't already, if you
didn't know that, uh, the place where there always seems
to be some very serious conflicts going on. Yeah. One
of the only positive things you can say about affairs
between countries in the Middle East is that it has
(43:14):
not yet resulted in a world war, thankfully. It really hasn't.
It really hasn't. Well, yeah, knock on wood. Right. But
but when we talk about the Middle East, one thing
that people think about often, right, is going to going
to be the complex relationship between countries like Israel and
Saudi Arabia, both of whom are against Iran, uh, the
(43:35):
Islamic State versus everybody, because it wants to establish itself
as a country. We also cannot discount Turkey, but remember
the Islamic State. That's that's something that's gonna come up here.
Um in this podcast and in our later podcast, did
you catch the video of the President President Obama having
(43:58):
a slip of the tongue where he said we we
were training Aisle. It was just it seemed to be
just a slip of the tongue and it was taken
completely out of context, but it was posted all over
our conspiracy and above Top Secret today. Well, you know,
people did definitely train with US instruction or US funding
(44:19):
and then later go join different militias or I just
I don't I don't see the president saying out loud
on purpose that we were training Isisle. Well I'll check
it out, because you know, we had a lot of
people writing in about our Isais video that we did
(44:40):
with with similar claims. So I'm gonna I'm gonna check
that once you get up here. We we have to
take a pause here there there probably some of you
guys are listening and thinking, come on, man, this is
fearmong Green. It is true that people are continually trying
to put the fear of world war in the news
because those had line sell. Uh. So we want to
(45:02):
talk a little bit about the alarmism people have been
predicting the beginning of World War three since essentially September three,
the day after World War two, and probably that night,
it was probably that night, it was probably like six fifteen.
And the it's we have to be careful when we
hear people with an agenda fanning these fears of war,
(45:24):
especially you know who I'm about to complain about pundits, experts, Yeah,
professional experts, people in suits. Yeah. So here's here's my thing. Uh.
Not only does it sell newspapers, does it sell you know,
get clicks online and all of that. It also helps
(45:48):
to in sell this notion that we need more security.
No matter where you are, what country you're in, the
thought of an impending global conflict will help you, will
at least help you understand that we need to spend
more tax dollars on whatever defense we need to spend
it on, right, at least according to the people who
(46:09):
are in charge, right, Yeah, that and that has definitely
happened in the past. I don't know if it's a
rule like across countries across the globe, but I can
clearly see the logic. I think officially, I think it's
pretty base, like a base emotion of fear. You sell,
you sell the fear that so that people are fearful,
and then they will they're more willing to I don't know,
(46:32):
let's say, sacrifice the money they're taking in tax dollars,
sacrifice some liberty for some security, just trade in a
little more right, one piece of the time. Think that's
what it is. So, you know what, I think that's
a good point too. So one of the things that
we we do know that there is this alarmism, and
it seems that currently while the possibility of a world
(46:54):
war is higher, it still is pretty low for a
different thing. So we do know, however, that when the
next global conflict occurs, if it occurs, it's going to
be very very different. Because out of these three scenarios
that we touched upon, um, the Middle East, China, Russia
(47:15):
or you know, these these various conflicts. Out of these, uh,
there there are several commonalities that are kind of new. Right. Well,
the first one is that it feels as though a
vast majority of this conflict, of this war will be
fought online or at least through some type of cyber
(47:37):
attack measures that then lead to other further conflicts. Um. Also,
possibly it might some of it might take place in space. Bend.
Does that sound a little crazy, Ah, yeah, yeah it does.
It sounds a little crazy, but I think about it.
Satellites are one of the most important technologies that we
have currently for communicating not only to one another as civilians,
(48:02):
as just people on this planet, but communicating for militaries. Yes.
In two thousand seven, uh, the Chinese government shot down
a satellite that it owned, and you can read about
this as a It was called a missile test, I think,
but it was also a clear message to other countries. Yeah.
(48:23):
It wasn't like, hey, we need to get rid of
that satellite, right then do it for funzies? Uh? And
and the U s did not send up it's unmanned
spacecraft just to I don't know, um, take a road
trip to you know. To be fair, we can neither
confirm or deny they might have just send it up
(48:44):
for fun. I don't know, that's right. The missions are
still classified. The X thirty seven B. That's what we're
talking about. So those two things will be those two
things will be different. There will be new frontiers in
the war. Resource wars are something that we've also talked
about the idea of a war over water. UH Fears
over diminishing resources, which in several cases are completely valid
(49:05):
and in other cases are a little exaggerated, may likely
spark regional conflicts that later, because of alliances, lead to
global conflicts. You also got trade connections, um you know,
usually see this kind of conflict as in sanctions that
are levied by one country or one group on another country.
(49:25):
Trade is a huge factor for the US, specifically in China,
specifically in Russia, really any if you're a country in
the world right now, trade is a huge deal because
if we're such a global environment now that pretty much
you can't exist if you are trying to be in
so insular that you have no imports exports right right,
(49:48):
And so this is a mitigating factor for war, but
it's probably not enough too. While it lowers the possibility
of awards, probably not enough to absolutely rule out the possibility.
There's another thing here, and this is it's this is
just my opinion. This is the most troubling of the
(50:08):
newer factors, and that is the significant influence of non
state actors in a very specific way. And we're talking
about winning a terrible lottery here. This is not a
very likely thing. But what do we mean by non
state actors? Well, the state actor would be the country
you live in in the international sphere, uh So the
(50:31):
non state actors would be institutions that are not necessarily
a state. So for instance, the i m F, the
International Monetary Fund is an institution. Uh The Vaticans a
little bit different because it is its own it does
have its own country. So let's just say, um, let's
(50:52):
the International Order of Generic Religion or something like that
with some just something like that. Interesting. And then there,
of course are gigantic corporations, right, which was the ultimate
force behind the overthrow of the democratically elected government of
Guatemala in n insert here, and which is also the
(51:16):
same year that Stalin gave quote unquote gave Crimea to
Ukraine because it was originally Russian territory. So the the
last actor here, which is one of the most dangerous,
is the idea of terrorists. Here's what is different about
this current situation with the advent of nuclear weapons, right,
(51:39):
we know that it is possible for a relatively small
group of people to detonate something, and once that happens,
a lot of stuff flies out the window. There there
are countries that have, depending upon the circumstances, there are
countries that have immediate countermeasures that go into effect, and
(52:03):
once that happens, it's it's likely it's very much possible
that those countermeasures would trigger other countermeasures from other countries
and then there would be a war. So this, to
me is the most frightening thing. What happens if a
if a terrorist group somehow gets ahold of a nuclear
(52:23):
weapon from country like Pakistan, right, or or steal something
from some other nuclear arsenal and then deploys it. Right.
What what happens then, because governments will have to react. Well, yeah,
and there would be unless unless an intelligence agency or
(52:45):
some other government agency from whatever country the attack occurred
was following and had already a lead and an understanding
that this X group has a nuclear weapon and is
determined to use it. You have no idea who needed
that thing, right, And and if that's the case, that
to me is the worst case scenario. Yeah, because then
(53:07):
it could also be a government pretending that a terrorist
did it. Uh. And that's that's sort of that's that's
part of the problem because depending on where that kind
of thing would go, Uh, it could it could very quickly,
with very little time passing, become a global conflict. So
(53:30):
we've talked about some of this. We've talked about a
lot about the speculation, right, and we've talked a lot
about the current situations. And those are kind of high
level looks. But now let's look at the stuff they
don't want you to know. So we know that there
are all sorts of conspiratorial theories about this stuff. For instance,
(53:52):
and this is not even a conspiracy, This is not speculations,
just true. Some officials in various countries want war. You
can read Western economists arguing that war is a solution
to domestic financial woes or economic woes. Uh. And that
you know, of course, reminded you and me of uh
(54:12):
Smedley Butler and John Perkins, the author of Confessions of
an Economic hit Man, which is which is a good
read to check out and if you don't know, but
fascinating and if you if you don't know who Smedley Butler.
Is you should by now kids learn about Smedley Butler.
He's fascinating. Just s M. E. D L E. Y. Yes,
(54:37):
you can find our episode on him by checking by
checking online for the business plot which was a air
alleged Yeah, which is an alleged uh plot by some
of the elites of the U S to overthrow the
(54:58):
US government and replace them with a fascist regime. Yeah.
Crazy story, really interesting. Okay, So another thing, just speaking
of people trying to take over banking, war and banking.
It's no secret that war can be massively profitable, just
(55:18):
like we stayed in the last one. But do the
banks perhaps have a hand in any of this? Right?
And this is something that we hear often, the idea
that high level investors and banking gurus know what will
happen geopolitically before the average person doesn't, even before some
(55:39):
governments do, or that banks will work to advance their
interest at the cost of the common people by perhaps
triggering a war, perhaps playing both sides of the conflict,
something like that, manipulating the manipulating the environment so as
to maximize profits. So perhaps they can go in and
(56:00):
I don't know, start a central banking a let's say,
a country that hasn't had one before. Right, So, when uh,
the Red Bulls that overthrew Gaddafi and Libya, when they
set up when they when they had completely overthrow, one
of the very first things they did was set up
a central bank. And for people who believe these sorts
(56:22):
of conspiracy theories, that is considered proof of proof of
some higher involvement. However, also, you know, for many countries
a central bank is a necessary thing for international trade.
It seems as though it really is. Uh. There are
only a few countries left that do not have a
central banking system or do not have are not part
(56:44):
of the larger interaction. Right, So this is interesting. I'd
love to hear what people think about that. The other
big one, of course, is the petro dollar argument, the
idea that because the US dollars that the facto currency
of the oil trade, that when countries don't play ball
or want to sell uh oil or petrol petroleum products
(57:08):
in something other than the US dollar, that they get
removed right to the top there on our short list. Yeah. Well,
and it might not be that way for long. With
the bricks countries setting up their own currency possibly, right, yeah,
and the bricks countries would be Brazil, Russia, India, China.
That brick is an acronym that commonly describes countries that
(57:31):
are thought to be ascendant in the world order in general. Right,
Uh so this this is another thing we could do
an entire episode on. But you know, I think we've
I think we've got to go Actually, oh man, there's
so much stuff to talk about that we didn't even
get to. We might might have to come back to
this one, I think. Yeah, in here isis again Petro Dollar.
(57:57):
I love. I wish we could go back and do
badly Butler again, but we are gonna have to get
out of here. We hope that you guys enjoyed this episode.
We'd love to hear what you think about the current
lay of the land. Do you think a world war
is likely? Do you think it's unlikely it's just a
bunch of fearmongering? Do you think that there is a
conspiracy a footo? And let's also mention one of the
(58:19):
more popular conspiracies in Russia is that the CIA was
behind uh instability in Ukraine. Maybe they were been I
don't know, man. Well, as you can imagine, there are
there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are not
that friendly to the US in places like Russia. Oh sure,
because we kind of have a history of doing some things, right, yeah,
(58:41):
and vice vice versa. Right, absolutely, so we have to go.
But there is one last thing we're gonna do. This
episode is is a little longer than norm Wait do
you hear that? Okay, it's not just me? No, no, okay,
just me alright. Well, if we're both hearing that noise,
it can only mean one thing. Leads and gentlemen, it's
time for a moment with Noel. H Yeah, how's it going?
(59:05):
Is it? Me? Am? I here? Yeah, you're here? Okay,
this this this episode guy kind of long for us.
So it's a pretty big, big topic and there's a
lot of like conceptual thought that goes into it, so,
you know, a lot of like weighing a lot of possibilities. So,
I mean, I can understand why it would be a bit,
uh a bit much to to bite off. Yeah, we
were a little ambitious. I I just hope, I hope
(59:26):
it wasn't boring, you know, No, No, it wasn't boring.
In fact, so I'm sure you guys have heard of this.
Have you heard of the site god Like Productions? So yeah, yeah,
god Like Production. Just a friend of mine just told
me about it. So I was while you were going
through your stuff and seeing if there any topics on
there that I could, you know, talk about. But it's
(59:47):
a little much, it's a little dense. What did you
What did you find? Well, the first one that I
found that that had an interesting headline was A year
of the Shark. Um let's see, let me find it.
Is it talking about shark Week? Yeah, kind of. So
the headline for this post is something is coming and
it's posted by an anonymous coward says many may remember
(01:00:08):
the Summer of the Shark, and then this quote says
the Summer of the Shark refers to the coverage of
shark attacks by American news media in the summer of
two thousand and one. The sensationalist coverage of shark attacks
began early July, following the fourth of July week weekend
shark attack on eight year old Jesse Arbogas, etcetera. It says,
now the media is once again in a frenzy with
shark sightings. Be very careful. The sharks are being used
(01:00:31):
to distract from an event. Okay, I see kind of
like a diverting the news thing, which reminds me of
our suppressed mitia. We just we just did that. Yeah. Oh,
there's another thing that's I should say in defense of
godlike productions. Anonymous coward is the generic media name. Yeah yeah, yeah,
(01:00:52):
but it's it's a great idea. Whoever, it is funny
one time I posted on there and then that's when
I learned. I said, how am I an anonymous coward?
But yeah, the uh, the godlike form is also one
of the first places I found out about the smiley
face killer theory. Did you hear that one? So this
is a controversial one. It's the idea that there is
(01:01:15):
a serial killer, a group of serial killers. They're drowning
young men around the US, and the official story is
that these are alcohol related drownings. So these guys whore
like college age, are going somewhere and they're drinking, uh,
and then they're walking out and boom, they fall into
(01:01:38):
a body of water and end up unfortunately drowning. But
there is there's an investigator who is a pro investigator
who believes that this is a murderer and for a
group or a group of murderers based on what he
says is the use of like a graffiti smiley face
(01:02:00):
in the vicinity, which is very the styles of which
have varied widely. Right of the graffiti smiley face, but yeah,
there are way too many of them with the smiley
face or murders or death's let's say. Yeah. But also,
you know, if you're looking for something, sure, yeah, I
(01:02:20):
know we're trying to keep this short. Um, but have
you guys been following Have you guys been following the
story about the Watcher? This house the film, No, there's
this house? Oh yes, that like this family sold and
then the family that bought it all of a sudden
started receiving these very sinister letters from someone calling themselves
the Watcher. And when I've last read there were only
(01:02:42):
two letters. I think, yeah, I've only read little bulleted
kind of cut ups of what you know, the contents
of the letters were. But uh, the this Watcher says
that it's been in his family for generations and he's like,
you know, his grandfather watched it in the in the sixties,
and now it's his time. And he refers to the
person's children as young's and today in the basement and
(01:03:03):
you know, the first to specific features of the house.
And a lot of the comments on sites that it
was on people are like that sounds like the plot
for like an episode of like you know, Criminal Minds
or something. Sure, it seems like a really nice house
to pures, so multiple multiple generations people just one person
(01:03:24):
writing notes. Yeah. And then my favorite line though, is
h have they found what's in the walls yet? They
will soon? It just sounds like like a teenager someone
with schizophrenia or something. Oh, I see some of this. Okay,
I am pleased to know your names now in the
name of the young Blood, you have brought to me
(01:03:44):
that I have been put in charge of watching and
waiting for its second coming. Wow, this is this is
very strange. Yeah, okay, so we gotta go because I
have to have to read up on this. I would
just say, you gotta for whoever's doing that, get a
sniper roost with a trunk gun and just sit there.
Just pay somebody. Apparently they never moved to the house,
and they're suing the people that they bought it from
because they did not disclose that it came with the
(01:04:06):
came with us stalker. Okay, alright, sorry strange, and that's
the end of this classic episode. If you have any
thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into
contact with us in a number of different ways. One
of the best is to give us a call. Our
number is one eight three three std w y t K.
(01:04:28):
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you
to know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Boy, I gotta tell you. Uh. We did this episode
in what was it July of twenty fifteen, and it's
an episode that unfortunately remains prescient in the modern day. Uh.
We've we've looked at all kinds of of terrible things
that happened in wars of the past, and in this episode,
(00:25):
we got together and we said, well, what's the next
war going to be about? Even even the young versions
of us, the younger versions of us, you guys, assumed
there would be another big war. I mean, I'm still
waiting for it. It just feels like we've been kind
of constantly perma at war, uh, to the point where
it's just kind of like, you know, the order of
(00:45):
the day. I think that's largely because it doesn't really
affect us at our doorsteps, But who knows that one
could be coming. The big question in this episode, I
think is could a worldwide war occur again? A large scale,
hot war with powers that have nuclear weapons and other
(01:07):
forms of weaponry that could annihilate everyone at any given moment.
And what would be the spark? As the Owl from
the Tutsi role pop commercial says, let's find out from
UFOs two Ghosts and government cover ups. History is whiddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, and
(01:34):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I am Ben. We are here with our super producer
Nold the Kaiser Brown Noeld the Kaiser as in a
role as a political figure. I just wanted to make
sure he is a commanding personality. You know, no I
could see you with some epilettes on your I guess
(01:56):
we're in a T shirt, don't see. We go for it.
Epiletts I teach are not a bad idea. Hey Ben,
Hey Matt, you're probably wondering why are you guys just
talking about Noll's T shirt. Well, it's because we're in
a pretty good mood. Before we jump into the show today,
we have a special announcement. That's right, Ben and I.
(02:17):
Unfortunately Noel won't be joining us this time, but Ben
and I are going to Washington, d C. That's right,
the District of Columbia. Yeah, we're going to broadcast a
few shows live via periscope. We're gonna film some other
stuff as well. Here's the thing, folks, we'd like your help.
What should we explore. Let us know about any places
(02:38):
we should visit, people we should talk to, and you
know what, Matt, I'll go ahead and say it. I
hope we don't regret it. Uh, Listeners, if you're in
the area, feel free to drop by and say hello.
At some point, you know, we'll find us walking around
the mall or maybe in some CD part of town
that uh, you know, nobody wants to know about, but
probably has the best pizza. So what what we'll do
(03:02):
is we'll post this on our social media as well.
We're conspiracy stuff at Facebook and Twitter. If you want
to just if you'd rather type to us on the
social media's then you can do that. But you can
also write to us directly. We've got our email address,
uh conspiracy how Stuff works dot com. I just want
to emphasize that this is not a formal We won't
(03:24):
be doing formal shows on Periscope. It will be Ben
and I kind of hanging out and doing some of
our you know, conspiracy material discussing something that's going on.
But it's not gonna be I don't know, it's not
gonna be the same. It's gonna be much more informal. Hey, Yeah,
we might, uh, we might get arrested. Who knows what
happens if we get arrested on periscope? Can the can
(03:46):
the cops take the phone? Just sell don't taste me,
bro and try and keep filming as long as possible. Well,
it's going to be an adventure either way, that's for sure.
We'll have more details as we get closer to this,
but eight tuned, our road trip will be beginning, So
let's get to the show. The topic for this week.
(04:08):
This year marks the seventy anniversary of the conclusion of
World War Two, which is generally acknowledged to have occurred
on September two. So this coming September, hopefully you I,
Matt Nol, your your families, your loved ones, even your
(04:31):
frenemies can look around and say, hey, seventy years without
a world war. We did it, man, Go team, Yeah,
go team. Indeed. Well, in fact, this right now is
the most peaceful, peaceful time on Earth in the history
of the world. Yeah and recorded human human history. Yeah,
but we're not saying if everything's amazing. No, no, no,
(04:55):
And and a lot of people probably want to hear
some information about that. I think we mentioned it in
the video this week because we did we did just
one video on some possible causes of World War three,
and we mentioned this most peaceful time and history thing. Uh,
and that seems like a bomb to drop. So evolutionary
(05:17):
psychologist Stephen Pinker believes that violence has declined since the
beginning of the human race. And when he's talking about violence,
he isn't just referring to war, large scale violence. He
also talks about criminal punishment, murder rates, other stuff like that.
And because we have stable governments and theory providing mediation
(05:38):
and deterring conflict, because technology has given us a several
wildly different ways to interact with each other and to
take care of ourselves because of advancements and healthcare. Uh,
because it's possible to talk to someone all the way
across the world. You know, you can literally send a
(06:01):
message to someone in Vietnam and just say sup. Yeah.
And all these things are great. I can imagine the
listener and somewhat myself sitting here and going really the
most peaceful time in the world because you just you
think about all of the globe, the conflicts that are
happening across the globe right now, and all of the murder.
You think about murder rates in the US, and you're like, man,
(06:21):
how is this possible? But you just have to think
it's been so much worse. Just I it's a horrible word,
but I was gonna say civilized, because there's such connotation
with that word. But just that we humans tend to
walk around being rather civilized to one another nowadays largely,
(06:42):
And I can just you can just imagine, well, back
in the day there was a little less of that. Well, sure,
and it still does occur. Of course. You know, you
made a great point earlier. This is not to say
that things are perfect by any means. There are more
slaves and absolute number than there have ever been before.
Another another horrible statistic about slavery, which we're going to
(07:06):
cover in some future episodes. Another horrible statistic about slavery
is that it is also, now, adjusted for inflation, cheaper
to buy a person than it has ever been before,
which is just a horrifying thing. Wildlife, it's no secret,
is undergoing a mass extinction, a massive extinction, um And
(07:29):
you know the oceans arecidifying, right, They're collapsing ecosystems and
every people are often you know, listener. I guess it
depends on where you are based. But people are often
arguing about this in relatively small minded political terms. Money
(07:50):
a lot of times, sure, money, money is a motivating factor,
and of course there's still crushing poverty. But even with
all that, even with all those disastrous things, you listening
to this by virtue of being alive right now. If
you're listening to this when it comes out right, then
then you are actually in pole position. You are in
(08:12):
a very good time in human history. And we asked
this week, Matt, you and I asked this week, how
how long is this gonna How long we're gonna be
able to ride this one out? Yeah? We made seventy years.
Can we make seventy and a half seventy one? Even?
I don't know. Here's the thing. A lot of people
(08:35):
believe the likelihood of this massive world scale war the
next one. A lot of people believe that this next
massive world scale war, there's a very little likelihood that
it's going to actually happen because of several things. We're
gonna get into a lot of them. But you know,
just off the top of your head, you couldn't think about, well,
(08:57):
there are a lot of nukes, and you know, when
there are a lot of nukes and a lot of
different powers that have them, generally nobody is going to
be lobbing one around. The nuclear deterrence theory, sure that
that's a huge one. Another reason this might not happen
is because we all of these countries that are generally
at odds with one another, at least politically, are trading
(09:19):
and are dependent on one another to get their goods
and sometimes even their services. There's uh, what else has
been well. Additionally, it's uh, it is arguably more difficult
to stir up the domestic population of a country because
these domestic populations, with a few notable exceptions, are are
(09:42):
much more likely to be informed about other areas of
the world. So it can be a little bit more
difficult to think of a group of other human beings
as just these faceless things you're supposed to bomb. Are
you talking about some form of institutionalized racism to help
a group of soldiers maybe the opponents, right? That used
(10:04):
to happen and that still does occur, uh, you know,
in in modern times and in most countries during wartime,
that kind of othering. That's it's very interesting psychological propaganda thing.
But I would argue that what is more important is
the nature of interstate alliances. Every country is in like
(10:27):
a gang or a click or several. You know, you've
got the nonaligned countries before the fall of Libya, um
who didn't want to play ball with various Western institutions.
I don't think that's a secret. Then you have you know,
you have OPEQUE, which is primarily a commodity based organization
(10:48):
right there, trading oil. And you have NATO, which is uh,
kind of like a bunch of people who before they
went out to a bar one night said, listen, guys,
something goes down, we all have to jump in. Okay.
And then you know even that, well, okay. So I'll
(11:10):
do what might be a a little bit of a
crass analogy about international affairs. And this is this is
very um simplified. So here goes the idea of international relations.
International affairs can be thought of through the analogy of
a house party, a crowded house party, a hundred and
(11:33):
ninety three hundred nineties something, depending on I guess your
ideology and what you allow to be a country, Almost
two hundred people show up to this house party. Some
later than others, some earlier than others, and they are
under the impression that they're gonna have a great time,
but they find out that there is less beer than
(11:53):
they thought there was going to be right, and somebody,
somebody's already king of the kegs, and then other people
are in line, and uh, maybe they're playing musical chairs.
Let's up the stakes. What I'm saying is, in this analogy,
there are there's a finite amount of resources, and uh,
(12:14):
a finite amount of influence. And so beer, toilet paper, whatever, pretzels,
you can use that to fill in for anything else.
You can either get those the beer and pretzels by
being a smooth talker or giving the person maybe I
don't know, a couple of ping pong balls so they
can play beer pongs pretzels. And I like this analogy.
(12:34):
Whose whose house is it? Right now? It would be
a world, I guess in this analogy right now, the
there are a couple of answers we could do, Matt.
One would one would be like, the house doesn't belong
to anybody, man, It's like Earth has always been there.
You can't like tame the wind bro um. But then
another argument would be that the house would belong to
(12:57):
whomever was the reigning superpower, which would make it Uncle
Sam's house currently. And I don't I don't think that
either of those are a completely sustainable answer, because again
it's not the best analogy. But anyway, that's that's the point.
Because of these alliances. Because of these agreements, nation states
or countries or whatever you want to call them have
(13:18):
a higher cost or higher risk of going to war.
You know, the idea of attacking France or something a century,
centuries and centuries ago or earlier in time before NATO
was much more feasible, even if it would be a
bad idea was much more feasible because it didn't automatically
(13:42):
mean that the continent of Europe is going to attack you.
You know, it's like one v versus a hive. So
those are arguments for why the likelihood is lower, but
of course their apundans who believe that it's higher than
ever before due to several recent events, right, yeah, lots
of recent events. But I would also just throw in
(14:03):
there at the end of what you're talking about with
these alliances that sometimes those alliances, I would say, make
it more likely that you have to respond if you
are a let's say, you're not the person being postured
against or even attacked, but you are the posse of
that place or you know, person in our analogy that's
being postured against, you have to then flex up and
(14:25):
at least at least, you know, stand in the doorway
and watch what's happening with a threat. So, I don't know,
I think it's it's a weird It's such a strange
thing international politics and and foreign policy and all this stuff.
So there are all these things happening. One that we've
looked at is Ukraine, right, Yeah, the annexation of Crimea
(14:46):
by Russia. Yes, that is a huge deal. A lot
of people are looking at that and feel that it's
going to have much larger consequences down the road, not
that it hasn't already had huge consequences for the people,
right Yeah. The the issues there, and we we can
get into some of the conspiratorial stuff about this later too,
(15:07):
but the the issue in that case being that for
a while Russia was saying these are just random regular
Joe Q publics from Ukraine and they just they're separating
from Ukraine. Whatever those tactical units are, regional instability. Yeah,
(15:29):
kind of reminded me of that. Um, this is a
deep cut. Remember that Shaggy song It wasn't me. Yeah,
I can't remember. Yeah, I can't even do it. It's
like a frog voice former marine that guy. And yeah.
Anyhow so yeah, CRIMEO, We've got that. That is that
is a huge thing. That's probably one of the most
well known things. We also have the South China Sea.
(15:52):
That's another recent event that people are concerned about. And
then of course there's the Islamic State, uh, and then
there is the possibility of nuclear Korea, everybody's favorite geopolitical
wild card. Right. Of course, people are talking about fundits,
are talking about that in politicians, right. And so because
(16:15):
of these increasing tensions in these in these various different fields,
and it's leading people and and smart people, um, people
at nonprofit think tanks, professors from the academy, and military
strategists to estimate that where a few years ago people
(16:36):
would have said that war is impossible, large scale world
war is impossible, now it's no longer impossible. So it's
kind of like moving from a green light to yellow light.
So we wanted to look at how this would happen
where this would happen and see whether there's any stuff
they don't want you to know when it comes to
(16:56):
World War three. So when the video of it came
out this week, we looked at three flashpoints, is what
we called them, places where a conflict that is somewhat
smaller on a global scale then just gets ratcheted up
and everybody gets involved. The first one of those was
the situation currently going on between Russia and many of
(17:17):
the states of NATO. NATO itself actually, so the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization has been, at least in Russia's opinion,
encroaching on some of their territory and pulling some states
or our countries that were former Soviet states into the
fold of NATO. And and you know, it's one of
(17:40):
those things where nobody likes it when you're encroaching on
their territory. If you ever played Command and Conquer any
of these games, you just you shouldn't do it. It's
a fighting move. Um So, anyway, Russia is objecting to
a lot of NATO's encroachment. Like we said, um so,
Russia doesn't like what NATO is doing. But what we
(18:01):
should say here is that, well, NATO is this primary organization.
That's kind of poking it at Russia. The US is
really Russia's primary concern primary I want to so we Yeah,
it's And it's interesting that you say that because it
reminds me of an episode that we did earlier. Some
long time listeners may remember this. We asked, uh, what
(18:24):
if the Cold War never ended? And there's a very
i will say, very intriguing theory. I'm not sure how
sould I am on it. That of course, of Vladimir
Putin being a former KGB man. Uh, perhaps this this idea,
which is pretty wild, is that the KGB never really
(18:45):
ended at the downfall of the Soviet Union. It just
went underground and prepared for a long con Yeah. The
long deception, I think is the name of the video. Yeah. Yeah,
and uh that's the stuff of spy films, of political thrillers.
But the one thing that is true, whether or not
you think the Cold War ended, is that, uh, the
(19:08):
US and Russia, for several reasons in a few in
a couple of very specific areas, are the two big
rival superpowers, one in particular the most dangerous. It's safe
to say that neither of these countries or these organizations.
If you want to just say NATO want a war,
(19:29):
but both see the other as an aggressive, potentially destabilizing
and dangerous force. So this, this is something that we
hear about a lot. Whenever domestic propaganda starts ramping up,
which is legal in the US now it is used
to not be. But whenever there's domestic propaganda being whipped
(19:51):
up for like anti Russian or anti Iran or anti whatever,
than one thing that we hear about is uh, the
the US as the good guy attempting to contain or liberate,
contain a dangerous country, or liberate the people of a
(20:12):
country or an area, stuff like that from this regime.
That's just oh yeah, and that's how we've said that before.
That's how you can always tell how how you're supposed
to feel about a government, because how they're what they're called.
I guess. Yeah, if they're a regime, then the idea
is that they need to be overthrown. If it's an administration,
(20:33):
they're just doing a darn job. Yeah. If they're the government,
then that's fine too. Yeah, watch out for a regime.
If anybody refers to something you're doing as a regime,
be very careful get out, get out. I don't know
if people do that. I don't know if you can
refer to something as like the this. Uh, I don't
(20:55):
know the regime at this Bennigan's is intolerable, the Ellen
Powell regime. Alright, so sorry, it's fine. I still don't
entirely know what that's about. But I did see that
Reddit was shut down for a few hours, several subreddits.
Nothing to see there, nothing to see there, continue on,
(21:17):
don't look behind the curtains. Okay, well then we will
take your word for it. So let's look at this
from a different perspective. And this is something that um,
you'll you'll see people post online when they when they
describe Russia or Iran or or some other country that
has a lot of tension with the West. Uh, they'll
(21:39):
usually have a map of all the US bases at
the border or in adjacent countries. Right, And so imagine
if there were some sort of independent South American alliance
that was very powerful, a South American NATO, and things
like this exists, but I mean, with that amount of firepower,
(22:00):
are right, imagine it began overthrowing regimes in Central America,
you know, working its way up on tourists, believes, Guatemala
all the other stuff, and then it began positioning troops
along the Mexican border right of the United States. Yes,
the US would the US would react adversely to say
(22:22):
the least. And also, just as a side note, yes,
it is true that the US is historically the primary
force for coups in South and Central America. Yes, what
Ben says is unfortunately true. Yeah, well we you know,
we've got some episodes about some of that, specifically the
nineteen fifty four coup in Guatemala. Uh, that was one.
(22:44):
We looked at Venezuela, We looked at a couple of
other places in the school of the America's doesn't help, right,
Oh yeah, we did look at Venezuela too. So uh this.
Russia is withering currently under some sanctions and Saudi Arabia's
uh lowering of fossil fuel oil prices has dealt a
heavy blow to Russia's economy, which depends upon energy exports.
(23:09):
Irana is also not doing so well either. While this
is a weekend Russia, the population of the country is
massively in favor of Vladimir Putin. I know it, I
know it sounds like the elections are fixed, and maybe
they are, but people are honestly on board with this guy.
They at least seemed to be. They at least seemed
to be. And additionally, when these sanctions, which were you know,
(23:32):
designed to weaken Russia, they have worked there, they have
made an impact. But there was a side effect here, yes,
that that may prove to be pretty severe. We'll find out.
Russia made friends with other countries, non Western countries that
they weren't well. I guess they were always cooperating a
(23:53):
bit with China and some of these other countries, but
they became pretty close with Syria, Iran, and most importantly China. Right, Yeah,
and those countries still all have their tensions, they're all
looking out for themselves. But this kind of sanctioning or
attempted isolation from the West can bring other countries into
(24:14):
a sort of the rival of my rival is my
friend situation. So they're numerous regional proxy conflicts between Russia
and the West. This is absolutely not a secret. This
is happening more or less continually, right, There's a cycle
to it throughout history. The most well known, as we said,
(24:34):
currently occurs in Ukraine. This this means that there are
several different ways that regional tensions could turn into a
world war in Ukraine. So, for example, we found this
great article on vox dot com that showed that kind
of walks us through the scenario where something could happen
(24:55):
in Estonia. Uh. This is a flow chart by a
guy named Max fish R who will reference later and
Javier Zarcina, and this is pretty recent. UH, but most
of the people who do war games or work on
scenarios here in the West, when they think of the
idea of a war between the US and Russia, oddly enough,
(25:17):
it starts in Estonia because and just for some reference,
if you don't know where Estonia is, if you think
of the map and you can find Finland, it is
just below south of Finland, across the Baltic Sea um
and on the border of Russia. Russia is to the east. Yes,
and because it's part of NATO, that means the US
(25:38):
and most of Europe are obligated to defend it from
any attack, and UH, NATO has shipped military equipment there
to deter possible Russian aggression. Estonia, as you know, it
was part of the Soviet Union. NATO sphere is that UH,
Russia could attempt to motivate the the Estonian's Russian population
(26:03):
to become separatist, or you want to organize with Russia,
kind of like what happened in eastern Ukraine. At least
that's what appears to have happened in Ukraine. And the
danger here is that this regional violence, because again it
encounters it factors in or draws in rather NATO itself
(26:24):
and the US, that this could spiral out of control,
in from a regional conflict into a a full war.
One thing that's interesting about the way these scenarios often
work out is that most of these scenarios factor in
the concept that an accident would happen, something unforeseen, something innocent,
(26:45):
well maybe innocence the wrong word, but something not purposeful,
like a mid air collision, the bomb is deployed in
the wrong place, military exercise gets out of control, which
are already kind of dangerous games to begin with, but
when it happens, if there's that failure to communicate, then
it could become a incredibly dangerous situation very very quickly.
(27:10):
So this flow chart is really good. You guys, make
sure you head on over to vox dot com and
give it a look, it's it's just neat and terrifying
to see this written out the way that it is,
because the whole thing, at least beginning of it, hinges
on how NATO would react to protests from the Estonian people,
(27:31):
from the ethnic Russian, from the ethnic Russian population, but
just how they would react to this. So either way
that either way that NATO handles this, you know, of
course Moscow would react, so the protests might dissipate and
lead to peace, which would be ideal. Moscow might warn, however,
of impending genocide and fire up the protesters more. The
(27:55):
clashes could start to lead to violence, and then the
US would have a react and her NATO would have
a reaction, right yeah, and then that can lead you
all the way down to then Germany getting involved, to
other NATO countries getting involved. Uh. There, it's really crazy.
It just hops down to then there's war between Russia
(28:16):
and Estonia and ultimately NATO. Um then NATO invades parts
of Russia. I mean, it's crazy. It just goes through
all of these possible things to the limited nuclear war
that might happen with small tactic nukes. Uh. And it's
so much it's there's a lot of detail. We probably
won't be able to go into all of them, know,
you'll have to check it out. But then there there
(28:37):
will be a constant give and take of calculations that
would lead from a limited war. Uh And and this
looks at the possibilities of of large scale nuclear deployment,
one of the more dangerous things being that Russia could
deploy the dead hand system, or it could be triggered
(28:58):
weather by a mass of attack against the country, or
this also frightening, that Russia could lose control over its
nuclear weapons and they could end up somewhere else, which
we'll talk about a little bit further. The end result
than being the possibility of a full on nuclear exchange
where um counter attacks and attacks leave much of the
(29:22):
world incredibly damaged and civilization as we know it is
is uh if not destroyed, profoundly damaged. Okay, So why
why all this tension? What gives? From the Russian point
of view, the US is attempting to establish a hedgemonty,
make Russia like a client state, beholden to Western institutions,
(29:45):
both the government kind and the corporate kind. But from
the Western perspective, bordering countries, Eastern European countries, NATO members,
and so on need to be protected from Russian expansionism.
And both sides have some valid points there. But the
single most dangerous possibility in this conflict is is the
(30:06):
one that everybody thinks of when you think of World
War three. Yeah, the nuclear option. The nuclear option is
the most dangerous one that currently exists on this planet.
And it's a it's a messed up in real possibility. Yeah,
it's not a it's not as um apparent or inevitable
(30:27):
a possibility as some fearmongers would have us think. But
here's the deal. Of the countries that have nuclear weapons
openly have nuclear weapons openly, right, yeah, because it's such
a secret. But of the countries that do have nuclear
weapons admit having them. The US and Russia control n
(30:50):
cent of the world's nuclear arsenal, so they have all
of the big guns. Luckily, there's this. This was also
an article by the same writer, Max Fisher. There's a
political scientist named j ol Felder who estimated the probability
of war to be about eleven percent overall, with an
(31:11):
eighteen percent chance of either side using nuclear weapons if
war occurs, and there was only a two percent chance
that this nuclear war would occur between Russia and the US.
That's pretty good, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. We've
got a grizzly comparison there too. Yeah, just for comparison,
that is about twice the odds of you dying in
(31:35):
a car crash, but in this car crash, everybody's in
the car and everybody dies or many people die, the
vast majority. So that's that's a little bit of a
high level look at Russian Of course, there's more there
that we could spend an entire podcast on. But let's shift,
or let's let's pivot as governments like to say, towards China,
(32:00):
the US, Japan, and some of the other Asian alliances
in that region. So there's this comes up all the time, Matt.
We've seen this for years. We did an earlier video
on whether China was colonizing Africa, and China is definitely
doing resource extraction there on a high, a large level. Yeah,
(32:21):
And you could argue, well, it's it's true that other
like larger companies are also doing resource extraction there too,
But this issue of China's rise is an emergent superpower
it's aimed to establish regional hegemony over East Asia comes
up again and again cyclically, and it's most controversial in
(32:42):
China's disputes right now. It's most controversial in China's disputes
over naval territory, right Yeah, you mentioned the South China
see and like, who who owns this? Does anyone own this?
Who has the right to put their military ships in
this space? And yeah, there's been and lots of conflict
with that over the years, a lot recently. And one
(33:04):
of the things we found in our video is that
it seems to be a popular belief, at least among
the Chinese citizenry that the and some of the officials
even that there there will be a necessary war between
the United States and China. Right the idea that the
US is hampering China's growth, cutting it off from trade opportunities,
(33:28):
seeking to contain the country's influence. This coincides with Chinese
R and D and investment in it's called asymmetrical warfare,
and and then forming bilateral relationships or strengthening bilateral relationships
with other countries outside of the US. And there there's
(33:49):
some great uh, there's some great information you can read
about this that I think it is fascinating but also
could be scary stuff if it ever gets used. Well,
one of the things you you even noted in there
is that the a lot of the citizens that have
that opinion that this war will eventually be necessary believe
that China would be victorious. Right yeah, And that's because
(34:12):
the nature of war has fundamentally changed due to technological innovations.
Right now, the US, which vastly outspends every other country,
uh almost yeah, yeah on military endeavors. Uh, the the
US vastly outspends everyone, has the most expensive toys and
(34:34):
it has the biggest guns. But this does not mean
that such a military is invulnerable. So there's a quote
by a security analyst named Laura Horta, and Horta says
China has no illusions about its military inferiority visa VI
the US, and knows that the status is likely to
endure for at least two decades. As such, that's been
(34:57):
developing a full range of asymmetry strategies to deter the
US until it's military reaches maturity. China is, you know,
attempting to build carriers. Um, it's reverse engineering successfully several
different pieces of hardware and vehicles. Well, we see asymmetrical warfare.
(35:18):
What we mean is, why spend millions and millions and
millions and maybe billions of dollars of preparing a carrier
to fight a carrier versus carrier war when you could
just design some missiles that are faster than the reaction
time of the ships, right the defense of the ships,
(35:41):
or attack submarines or something, you can take them out exactly, yeah, surreptitiously. Right. So,
what China is working on is something that you will
often hear called uh area denial or act denial of access.
And this is just uh, this is just having stuff
set up in the vicinity, perhaps in the South China
(36:01):
Sea for uh, that would prevent any other, any approaching
force from getting close enough to attack the country. So this,
this would be a woefully costly thing in terms of
blood and treasure for both countries, neither if the US
(36:24):
invade or if whoever tried to invade China. Right yeah, yeah,
And the US currently sees control of the seas as
one of the country's biggest insurance policies for safety. Right.
But this, fortunately, this also just like Russian NATO, has
a lower chance of happening, but not not maybe for
(36:46):
the best reasons. It turns out that both the US
and China, if we're being candid, have some significant internal problems,
or at least things that would deter them from fighting
a war. Yes, so is dealing with several crippling problems
internally that they really they need to handle first before
(37:06):
they get into any of this world war stuff. Like
let's say, the the pollution problems in the cities there.
They're crippling, it's it's horrible. The citizen rees healthcare issue
is it's a pretty dire situation there right now. And
also the one child policy has had a huge effect,
huge effect on the population numbers there. Yeah, just to uh,
(37:27):
just a put a little bit of the environmental stuff
in perspective, The Atlantic had an article came out in
two thousand thir teena want to say, about twenty eight
thousand rivers in China that just disappeared. Yeah, that's not good.
And you know, as somewhat of an emerging economy, they're
(37:49):
having to use things like coal power burning cole and
a couple other, um, let's say, less than safe ways
to make energy right, right, and they're they're good things
to China does lead the world currently in solar energy
or solar power research, but the gender ratio of sex
ratio is still pretty skewed. Uh there were I think
(38:10):
it was something about like one hundred and twenty something
boys born for every one hundred girls nationwide. Recently that
has been lowering, but it's gonna be a while. It's
gonna be like a decade before it goes down to
something a little bit more um on on target. And
that's it. That's just a long term effect of that policy.
(38:33):
And uh this isn't even touching on the continuing debate
about the Chinese economy how right, like how corrupt or
not corrupt it is? Right? Uh So, speaking of problems,
let's switch to the US. The US is stretched thin
given the wars in Afghanistan or Rock and the continual
(38:55):
operations in various places around the world. Uh. Also, both
countries depend on one another economically. China has the power
to break the world's economy, uh so, or make it
if we want to be class half full people. So
they're kind of at a standoff here because China has
(39:15):
a lot of its UH finances tied up in US bonds, right,
and the US is dependent on China for a lot
of exports, so hopefully trade can save it. Hopefully it
is more advantageous for both actors in this scenario to
work together and trade things. However, and this is a
(39:39):
point that was made in a in a analysis from Yale. However,
in both World Wars of the previous century, Germany was
Britain's biggest trade partner until the war started, So both
are clearly aiming to establish themselves. Neither country once in
the war and are in and both are increasingly competing
(40:02):
for resources. Uh. China actually has done what I think
is is a not to be flip about it, but
I think it's it's pretty stylish move. Yeah, they're styling.
They're styling on it. Yeah, what are they doing, Yeah,
they're they're going They're definitely going about in a weird way.
They're actually building islands, kind of like we heard about
(40:22):
in Dubai when they were building these much on a
much smaller scale, these artificial islands out there in the
world and the palm and that stuff. Yeah, yeah, Well,
they're building islands to support the territorial claims of these
areas in the South China Sea. The Spratley Islands, I believe, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So this this is a huge uh, this is a
(40:44):
huge issue with China and the US and other countries
around there, like the Philippines has recently been engaged in
some ongoing tension with China about its expansion and its
claims regarding what what constitutes its territory versus international waters.
(41:04):
And this is a this is a very tense thing here.
So China is actually building these islands to say, no,
this is land. So given international law, this far off
from these islands, not the mainland is where it belongs
to our government. Yeah, you could just build one x
(41:27):
kilometers away from each other, then you own the whole ocean.
So we we also when we looked at this, uh,
it seems like the calculation about how or when a
war would begin with China in the US, it seems
to often depend on the just the current events of
(41:50):
the time, right, And you can see predictions about this
stuff that often can seem contradictory. One one person that
I would like to reference here is a guy named
George Friedman. He's a geopolitical scientist, and he wrote a
book called The Next one hundred Years where he said
(42:11):
that there's going to be a um a fragmentation in China,
weakening of Russia, Japan will emerge as more powerful thing,
Turkey will emerge, and that eventually what's going to happen
is that there would be a world war or fight
(42:33):
for world uh world power, right, superpower status in twenty
fifty you can you can check out this analysis online.
Just check for the next one hundred years. But there's
one other place that we haven't talked about, which we're
going to probably need to save for another episode. Yeah,
(42:53):
I think we should. Let's let's look at we're talking
about the Middle East. If you couldn't already, if you
didn't know that, uh, the place where there always seems
to be some very serious conflicts going on. Yeah. One
of the only positive things you can say about affairs
between countries in the Middle East is that it has
(43:14):
not yet resulted in a world war, thankfully. It really hasn't.
It really hasn't. Well, yeah, knock on wood. Right. But
but when we talk about the Middle East, one thing
that people think about often, right, is going to going
to be the complex relationship between countries like Israel and
Saudi Arabia, both of whom are against Iran, uh, the
(43:35):
Islamic State versus everybody, because it wants to establish itself
as a country. We also cannot discount Turkey, but remember
the Islamic State. That's that's something that's gonna come up here.
Um in this podcast and in our later podcast, did
you catch the video of the President President Obama having
(43:58):
a slip of the tongue where he said we we
were training Aisle. It was just it seemed to be
just a slip of the tongue and it was taken
completely out of context, but it was posted all over
our conspiracy and above Top Secret today. Well, you know,
people did definitely train with US instruction or US funding
(44:19):
and then later go join different militias or I just
I don't I don't see the president saying out loud
on purpose that we were training Isisle. Well I'll check
it out, because you know, we had a lot of
people writing in about our Isais video that we did
(44:40):
with with similar claims. So I'm gonna I'm gonna check
that once you get up here. We we have to
take a pause here there there probably some of you
guys are listening and thinking, come on, man, this is
fearmong Green. It is true that people are continually trying
to put the fear of world war in the news
because those had line sell. Uh. So we want to
(45:02):
talk a little bit about the alarmism people have been
predicting the beginning of World War three since essentially September three,
the day after World War two, and probably that night,
it was probably that night, it was probably like six fifteen.
And the it's we have to be careful when we
hear people with an agenda fanning these fears of war,
(45:24):
especially you know who I'm about to complain about pundits, experts, Yeah,
professional experts, people in suits. Yeah. So here's here's my thing. Uh.
Not only does it sell newspapers, does it sell you know,
get clicks online and all of that. It also helps
(45:48):
to in sell this notion that we need more security.
No matter where you are, what country you're in, the
thought of an impending global conflict will help you, will
at least help you understand that we need to spend
more tax dollars on whatever defense we need to spend
it on, right, at least according to the people who
(46:09):
are in charge, right, Yeah, that and that has definitely
happened in the past. I don't know if it's a
rule like across countries across the globe, but I can
clearly see the logic. I think officially, I think it's
pretty base, like a base emotion of fear. You sell,
you sell the fear that so that people are fearful,
and then they will they're more willing to I don't know,
(46:32):
let's say, sacrifice the money they're taking in tax dollars,
sacrifice some liberty for some security, just trade in a
little more right, one piece of the time. Think that's
what it is. So, you know what, I think that's
a good point too. So one of the things that
we we do know that there is this alarmism, and
it seems that currently while the possibility of a world
(46:54):
war is higher, it still is pretty low for a
different thing. So we do know, however, that when the
next global conflict occurs, if it occurs, it's going to
be very very different. Because out of these three scenarios
that we touched upon, um, the Middle East, China, Russia
(47:15):
or you know, these these various conflicts. Out of these, uh,
there there are several commonalities that are kind of new. Right. Well,
the first one is that it feels as though a
vast majority of this conflict, of this war will be
fought online or at least through some type of cyber
(47:37):
attack measures that then lead to other further conflicts. Um. Also,
possibly it might some of it might take place in space. Bend.
Does that sound a little crazy, Ah, yeah, yeah it does.
It sounds a little crazy, but I think about it.
Satellites are one of the most important technologies that we
have currently for communicating not only to one another as civilians,
(48:02):
as just people on this planet, but communicating for militaries. Yes.
In two thousand seven, uh, the Chinese government shot down
a satellite that it owned, and you can read about
this as a It was called a missile test, I think,
but it was also a clear message to other countries. Yeah.
(48:23):
It wasn't like, hey, we need to get rid of
that satellite, right then do it for funzies? Uh? And
and the U s did not send up it's unmanned
spacecraft just to I don't know, um, take a road
trip to you know. To be fair, we can neither
confirm or deny they might have just send it up
(48:44):
for fun. I don't know, that's right. The missions are
still classified. The X thirty seven B. That's what we're
talking about. So those two things will be those two
things will be different. There will be new frontiers in
the war. Resource wars are something that we've also talked
about the idea of a war over water. UH Fears
over diminishing resources, which in several cases are completely valid
(49:05):
and in other cases are a little exaggerated, may likely
spark regional conflicts that later, because of alliances, lead to
global conflicts. You also got trade connections, um you know,
usually see this kind of conflict as in sanctions that
are levied by one country or one group on another country.
(49:25):
Trade is a huge factor for the US, specifically in China,
specifically in Russia, really any if you're a country in
the world right now, trade is a huge deal because
if we're such a global environment now that pretty much
you can't exist if you are trying to be in
so insular that you have no imports exports right right,
(49:48):
And so this is a mitigating factor for war, but
it's probably not enough too. While it lowers the possibility
of awards, probably not enough to absolutely rule out the possibility.
There's another thing here, and this is it's this is
just my opinion. This is the most troubling of the
(50:08):
newer factors, and that is the significant influence of non
state actors in a very specific way. And we're talking
about winning a terrible lottery here. This is not a
very likely thing. But what do we mean by non
state actors? Well, the state actor would be the country
you live in in the international sphere, uh So the
(50:31):
non state actors would be institutions that are not necessarily
a state. So for instance, the i m F, the
International Monetary Fund is an institution. Uh The Vaticans a
little bit different because it is its own it does
have its own country. So let's just say, um, let's
(50:52):
the International Order of Generic Religion or something like that
with some just something like that. Interesting. And then there,
of course are gigantic corporations, right, which was the ultimate
force behind the overthrow of the democratically elected government of
Guatemala in n insert here, and which is also the
(51:16):
same year that Stalin gave quote unquote gave Crimea to
Ukraine because it was originally Russian territory. So the the
last actor here, which is one of the most dangerous,
is the idea of terrorists. Here's what is different about
this current situation with the advent of nuclear weapons, right,
(51:39):
we know that it is possible for a relatively small
group of people to detonate something, and once that happens,
a lot of stuff flies out the window. There there
are countries that have, depending upon the circumstances, there are
countries that have immediate countermeasures that go into effect, and
(52:03):
once that happens, it's it's likely it's very much possible
that those countermeasures would trigger other countermeasures from other countries
and then there would be a war. So this, to
me is the most frightening thing. What happens if a
if a terrorist group somehow gets ahold of a nuclear
(52:23):
weapon from country like Pakistan, right, or or steal something
from some other nuclear arsenal and then deploys it. Right.
What what happens then, because governments will have to react. Well, yeah,
and there would be unless unless an intelligence agency or
(52:45):
some other government agency from whatever country the attack occurred
was following and had already a lead and an understanding
that this X group has a nuclear weapon and is
determined to use it. You have no idea who needed
that thing, right, And and if that's the case, that
to me is the worst case scenario. Yeah, because then
(53:07):
it could also be a government pretending that a terrorist
did it. Uh. And that's that's sort of that's that's
part of the problem because depending on where that kind
of thing would go, Uh, it could it could very quickly,
with very little time passing, become a global conflict. So
(53:30):
we've talked about some of this. We've talked about a
lot about the speculation, right, and we've talked a lot
about the current situations. And those are kind of high
level looks. But now let's look at the stuff they
don't want you to know. So we know that there
are all sorts of conspiratorial theories about this stuff. For instance,
(53:52):
and this is not even a conspiracy, This is not speculations,
just true. Some officials in various countries want war. You
can read Western economists arguing that war is a solution
to domestic financial woes or economic woes. Uh. And that
you know, of course, reminded you and me of uh
(54:12):
Smedley Butler and John Perkins, the author of Confessions of
an Economic hit Man, which is which is a good
read to check out and if you don't know, but
fascinating and if you if you don't know who Smedley Butler.
Is you should by now kids learn about Smedley Butler.
He's fascinating. Just s M. E. D L E. Y. Yes,
(54:37):
you can find our episode on him by checking by
checking online for the business plot which was a air
alleged Yeah, which is an alleged uh plot by some
of the elites of the U S to overthrow the
(54:58):
US government and replace them with a fascist regime. Yeah.
Crazy story, really interesting. Okay, So another thing, just speaking
of people trying to take over banking, war and banking.
It's no secret that war can be massively profitable, just
(55:18):
like we stayed in the last one. But do the
banks perhaps have a hand in any of this? Right?
And this is something that we hear often, the idea
that high level investors and banking gurus know what will
happen geopolitically before the average person doesn't, even before some
(55:39):
governments do, or that banks will work to advance their
interest at the cost of the common people by perhaps
triggering a war, perhaps playing both sides of the conflict,
something like that, manipulating the manipulating the environment so as
to maximize profits. So perhaps they can go in and
(56:00):
I don't know, start a central banking a let's say,
a country that hasn't had one before. Right, So, when uh,
the Red Bulls that overthrew Gaddafi and Libya, when they
set up when they when they had completely overthrow, one
of the very first things they did was set up
a central bank. And for people who believe these sorts
(56:22):
of conspiracy theories, that is considered proof of proof of
some higher involvement. However, also, you know, for many countries
a central bank is a necessary thing for international trade.
It seems as though it really is. Uh. There are
only a few countries left that do not have a
central banking system or do not have are not part
(56:44):
of the larger interaction. Right, So this is interesting. I'd
love to hear what people think about that. The other
big one, of course, is the petro dollar argument, the
idea that because the US dollars that the facto currency
of the oil trade, that when countries don't play ball
or want to sell uh oil or petrol petroleum products
(57:08):
in something other than the US dollar, that they get
removed right to the top there on our short list. Yeah. Well,
and it might not be that way for long. With
the bricks countries setting up their own currency possibly, right, yeah,
and the bricks countries would be Brazil, Russia, India, China.
That brick is an acronym that commonly describes countries that
(57:31):
are thought to be ascendant in the world order in general. Right,
Uh so this this is another thing we could do
an entire episode on. But you know, I think we've
I think we've got to go Actually, oh man, there's
so much stuff to talk about that we didn't even
get to. We might might have to come back to
this one, I think. Yeah, in here isis again Petro Dollar.
(57:57):
I love. I wish we could go back and do
badly Butler again, but we are gonna have to get
out of here. We hope that you guys enjoyed this episode.
We'd love to hear what you think about the current
lay of the land. Do you think a world war
is likely? Do you think it's unlikely it's just a
bunch of fearmongering? Do you think that there is a
conspiracy a footo? And let's also mention one of the
(58:19):
more popular conspiracies in Russia is that the CIA was
behind uh instability in Ukraine. Maybe they were been I
don't know, man. Well, as you can imagine, there are
there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are not
that friendly to the US in places like Russia. Oh sure,
because we kind of have a history of doing some things, right, yeah,
(58:41):
and vice vice versa. Right, absolutely, so we have to go.
But there is one last thing we're gonna do. This
episode is is a little longer than norm Wait do
you hear that? Okay, it's not just me? No, no, okay,
just me alright. Well, if we're both hearing that noise,
it can only mean one thing. Leads and gentlemen, it's
time for a moment with Noel. H Yeah, how's it going?
(59:05):
Is it? Me? Am? I here? Yeah, you're here? Okay,
this this this episode guy kind of long for us.
So it's a pretty big, big topic and there's a
lot of like conceptual thought that goes into it, so,
you know, a lot of like weighing a lot of possibilities. So,
I mean, I can understand why it would be a bit,
uh a bit much to to bite off. Yeah, we
were a little ambitious. I I just hope, I hope
(59:26):
it wasn't boring, you know, No, No, it wasn't boring.
In fact, so I'm sure you guys have heard of this.
Have you heard of the site god Like Productions? So yeah, yeah,
god Like Production. Just a friend of mine just told
me about it. So I was while you were going
through your stuff and seeing if there any topics on
there that I could, you know, talk about. But it's
(59:47):
a little much, it's a little dense. What did you
What did you find? Well, the first one that I
found that that had an interesting headline was A year
of the Shark. Um let's see, let me find it.
Is it talking about shark Week? Yeah, kind of. So
the headline for this post is something is coming and
it's posted by an anonymous coward says many may remember
(01:00:08):
the Summer of the Shark, and then this quote says
the Summer of the Shark refers to the coverage of
shark attacks by American news media in the summer of
two thousand and one. The sensationalist coverage of shark attacks
began early July, following the fourth of July week weekend
shark attack on eight year old Jesse Arbogas, etcetera. It says,
now the media is once again in a frenzy with
shark sightings. Be very careful. The sharks are being used
(01:00:31):
to distract from an event. Okay, I see kind of
like a diverting the news thing, which reminds me of
our suppressed mitia. We just we just did that. Yeah. Oh,
there's another thing that's I should say in defense of
godlike productions. Anonymous coward is the generic media name. Yeah yeah, yeah,
(01:00:52):
but it's it's a great idea. Whoever, it is funny
one time I posted on there and then that's when
I learned. I said, how am I an anonymous coward?
But yeah, the uh, the godlike form is also one
of the first places I found out about the smiley
face killer theory. Did you hear that one? So this
is a controversial one. It's the idea that there is
(01:01:15):
a serial killer, a group of serial killers. They're drowning
young men around the US, and the official story is
that these are alcohol related drownings. So these guys whore
like college age, are going somewhere and they're drinking, uh,
and then they're walking out and boom, they fall into
(01:01:38):
a body of water and end up unfortunately drowning. But
there is there's an investigator who is a pro investigator
who believes that this is a murderer and for a
group or a group of murderers based on what he
says is the use of like a graffiti smiley face
(01:02:00):
in the vicinity, which is very the styles of which
have varied widely. Right of the graffiti smiley face, but yeah,
there are way too many of them with the smiley
face or murders or death's let's say. Yeah. But also,
you know, if you're looking for something, sure, yeah, I
(01:02:20):
know we're trying to keep this short. Um, but have
you guys been following Have you guys been following the
story about the Watcher? This house the film, No, there's
this house? Oh yes, that like this family sold and
then the family that bought it all of a sudden
started receiving these very sinister letters from someone calling themselves
the Watcher. And when I've last read there were only
(01:02:42):
two letters. I think, yeah, I've only read little bulleted
kind of cut ups of what you know, the contents
of the letters were. But uh, the this Watcher says
that it's been in his family for generations and he's like,
you know, his grandfather watched it in the in the sixties,
and now it's his time. And he refers to the
person's children as young's and today in the basement and
(01:03:03):
you know, the first to specific features of the house.
And a lot of the comments on sites that it
was on people are like that sounds like the plot
for like an episode of like you know, Criminal Minds
or something. Sure, it seems like a really nice house
to pures, so multiple multiple generations people just one person
(01:03:24):
writing notes. Yeah. And then my favorite line though, is
h have they found what's in the walls yet? They
will soon? It just sounds like like a teenager someone
with schizophrenia or something. Oh, I see some of this. Okay,
I am pleased to know your names now in the
name of the young Blood, you have brought to me
(01:03:44):
that I have been put in charge of watching and
waiting for its second coming. Wow, this is this is
very strange. Yeah, okay, so we gotta go because I
have to have to read up on this. I would
just say, you gotta for whoever's doing that, get a
sniper roost with a trunk gun and just sit there.
Just pay somebody. Apparently they never moved to the house,
and they're suing the people that they bought it from
because they did not disclose that it came with the
(01:04:06):
came with us stalker. Okay, alright, sorry strange, and that's
the end of this classic episode. If you have any
thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into
contact with us in a number of different ways. One
of the best is to give us a call. Our
number is one eight three three std w y t K.
(01:04:28):
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you
to know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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