How World War III Might Start

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

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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, then,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I am Ben. We are here with our super producer

(00:23):
Noeld the Kaiser Brown. Noeld the Kaiser as in a
role as a political vigor. I just wanted to make
sure he is a commanding personality. You know, no I
could see you with some epilettes. H d your I
guess we're in a T shirt. Don't see We go
for it. Epiletts a T shirt not a bad idea.

(00:44):
Hey Ben, Hey Matt. You're probably wondering why are you
guys just talking about Noel'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 on. Fortunately Noel won't be joining us
this time, but Ben and I are going to Washington,

(01:04):
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 we should visit, people we should
talk to, and you know what, Matt, I'll go ahead

(01:25):
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 definitely. So
what what we'll do is we'll post this on our

(01:47):
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
email address, uh conspiracy how stuff works dot com. I
just want to emp emphasize that this is not a
formal We won't be doing formal shows on Periscope. It

(02:09):
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,
and who knows what happens if we get arrested on periscope?
Can the can the cops take the phone? Just sell,

(02:31):
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 stay tuned. Our road
trip will be beginning. So let's get to the show.
The topic for this week. This year marks the sevent

(02:54):
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 frenemies can look around and say, hey,

(03:17):
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 was amazing, No, no, no,

(03:37):
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

(03:59):
evolutionary 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 and deterring conflict, because technology has given us

(04:25):
uh 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 message to someone in Vietnam and just

(04:45):
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, how is this possible?
But you just have to think it's been so much worse.

(05:09):
Just 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, and I can just you can
just imagine, well back in the day there was a

(05:29):
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 cover in some future episodes. Another

(05:51):
horrible statistic about slavery is that it is also, now
adjusted for inflation, cheaper to buy a person 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 you know the oceans areidifying, right they're collapsing

(06:15):
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 A lot of times, sure, money, Money is a

(06:35):
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 a very good time in human history. And we

(07:00):
asked this week, Matt, you and I asked this week,
how how long is this gonna How long we're going
to 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 believe the likelihood of this massive world

(07:20):
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, there are a lot of nukes,

(07:41):
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 and are dependent on one another

(08:04):
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,

(08:24):
are are 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 all their opponents, right?

(08:46):
That used 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

(09:09):
is in like 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 OPEQ, which is primarily
a commodity based organization right there, trading oil. And you

(09:33):
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, if something goes down, we
all have to jump in. Okay. And then you know,
even that's kind of like NATO. Well, okay. So I'll
do what might be a a little bit of a

(09:56):
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
ninety three hundred and nineties something, depending on I guess

(10:19):
your ideology and with 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
they thought there was going to be right, and somebody,

(10:40):
somebody is already like 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, a finite amount of influence. And so beer,
toilet paper or whatever, pretzels you can use that to

(11:02):
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. Whose whose house is it?
Right now? It would be a world, I guess in
this analogy right now, the there are a couple answers

(11:26):
we could do, Matt. One would one would be like
the house doesn't belong to anybody. Man, It's like Earth,
you can't like tam the wind bro um. But then
another argument would be that the house would belong to
whomever was the reigning superpower, which would make it Uncle
Sam's house currently. And I don't I don't think that

(11:47):
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, a nation
states or countries or whatever you want to call them
have a higher cost or higher risk of going to war.
You know, the idea of attacking France or something a century,

(12:13):
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
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

(12:36):
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
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 saying, you're not the person being postured

(12:57):
against or even attacked, but you are the see of
that place or you know, person in our analogy that's
being postured against. You have to then flex up and
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

(13:17):
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
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

(13:40):
that it hasn't already had huge consequences for the people
of that area, right Yeah. The the issues there, and
we we can get into some of the conspiratorial stuff
about this later too, but the the issue in that
case being that for a while Russia was saying these
are just random regular joe que publics from Ukraine and

(14:03):
they just they're separating from Ukraine whatever. Those tactical units are,
regional instability. Yeah, 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 just yeah. Anyhow, so yeah, CRIMEO, we've got that.

(14:27):
That is that is a huge thing. That's probably one
of the most well known things. We also have the
South China Sea. 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 iron of course, people are

(14:51):
talking about bundits. They're talking about that in politicians, right.
And so because of these increasing tension in these in
these various different fields, it's leading people and and smart
people on people at nonprofit think tanks, professors from the Academy,

(15:12):
and military strategists to estimate that where a few years
ago people would have said that war is impossible, a
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

(15:32):
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 World War three. So when the video
that 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

(15:54):
those was the situation currently going on between Russia and
many of 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

(16:18):
into the fold of NATO. And and you know, it's
one of 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 it's the fighting move. Um. So anyway, Russia is
objecting to a lot of NATO's encroachment, like we said, um,

(16:40):
so Russia doesn't like what NATO is doing. But what
we 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 don't want
to say so we Yeah, it's And it's interesting that

(17:00):
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 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, Vladimir Putin, being a former KGB man, Uh,

(17:21):
perhaps this this idea, which is pretty wild, is that
the KGB never really ended at the downfall of the
Soviet Union. It just went underground and prepared for a
long cone deception, I think is the name of the video. Yeah, yeah,
and uh that's the stuff of spy films, of political thrillers.

(17:45):
But the one thing that is true, whether or not
you think the Cold War ended, is that the 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

(18:05):
that neither of these countries or these organizations, if you
want to just say NATO, want a war, 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

(18:25):
the US now it is used to not be. But
whenever there's domestic propaganda being whipped up for like anti
Russian or anti Iran or anti whatever, than one thing
that we hear about is uh, the the U S
as the good guy attempting to contain or liberate, contain

(18:50):
a dangerous country or liberate the people of a country
or an area, stuff like that from this regime. That
is oh yeah, and that's how we 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

(19:13):
is that they need to be overthrown. If it's an administration,
they're just doing a dark 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

(19:33):
refer to something as like the this. Uh, I don't
know the regime at this Bennigan's is intolerable, the Ellen
Powell regime. Alright, 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.

(19:56):
Nothing to see there, nothing to see their continue on,
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

(20:16):
has a lot of tension with the West. Uh, they'll
usually have a map of all the U. S 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

(20:39):
of firepower. Right. Imagine it began overthrowing regimes in Central America,
you know, working its way up on Durists believes, with
the Mala 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

(21:02):
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 h
the nineteen fifty four coup in Guatemala. Uh, that was one.

(21:24):
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

(21:44):
blow to Russia's economy, which depends upon energy exports. 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, I know, it
sounds like the elections are fixed, and maybe they are.
But people are honestly on board with this guy. They

(22:06):
at least seemed to be. They at least seemed to be.
And additionally, when these sanctions, which were you know, 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

(22:31):
they weren't well. I guess they were always cooperating a
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

(22:54):
a sort of the rival of my rival is my
friend situation. So they are 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, currently occurs in Ukraine. This this means that

(23:18):
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 in Estonia. Uh. This is a flow chart
by a guy named Max Fisher who will reference later

(23:41):
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, it starts in Estonia because and just for
some reference, if you don't know where Estonia is, if

(24:03):
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 and most of Europe are obligated
to defend it from any attack, and NATO has shipped

(24:25):
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
Estonians Russian population to become separatist or you want to

(24:46):
organize with Russia, kind of like what happened in eastern Ukraine,
much in the same way, at least that's what appears
to have happened in Ukraine. And the danger here is
that this regional violence because in it encounter it factors
in or draws in rather NATO itself and the US,

(25:07):
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, well maybe
innocence the wrong word, but something not purposeful, like a

(25:29):
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. So this float

(25:50):
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, from the ethnic Russian,

(26:12):
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

(26:32):
and and fire up the protesters more. The clashes could
start to lead to violence, and then the US would
have a reaction, or 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

(26:54):
then there's war between Russia 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, right,
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,

(27:16):
you'll have to check it out. But then there there
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,

(27:38):
whether by a massive attack against the country or the
Salso 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

(27:58):
counter attacks and attack x uh leave much of the
world incredibly damaged and civilization as we know it is
is uh, if not destroyed, profoundly damaged. Yeah, we're in
now and fallout. 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

(28:22):
client state, beholden to Western institutions, 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

(28:44):
this conflict is is the 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 mess
stop in real possibility. Yeah, it's not a it's not
as um apparent or inevitable a possibility as some fearmongers

(29:11):
would have us think. But here's the deal. Of the
countries that have nuclear weapons openly have nuclear weapons, 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 nine percent of the world's nuclear arsenal, so

(29:34):
they have all of the big guns. Luckily, there's this Uh.
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 eighteen percent chance of either side using nuclear
weapons if war occurs, and there was only a two

(29:57):
percent chance that this nuclear war would cur 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 a car crash, but in this car crash,

(30:18):
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 governors like to say,

(30:39):
towards China, 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,

(31:00):
a large level. 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

(31:20):
most controversial in 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
lots and lots of conflict with that over the years,

(31:43):
a lot recently. And one 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,

(32:06):
cutting it off from trade opportunities, 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

(32:27):
of the US. And there there's some great uh, there's
some great information you can read about this that I
think it's 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,

(32:52):
And that's because the nature of war has fundamentally changed
due to technological innovations. Right now, the US, which vastly
outspends every other country, uh yeah, yeah, on military endeavors. Uh,
the US vastly outspends everyone, has the most expensive toys

(33:14):
and 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

(33:37):
been developing a full range of asymmetric 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.

(33:58):
What we mean is why spin uh, millions and millions
of 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,

(34:21):
or attack submarines or something, you could 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

(34:41):
South China 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 lead and treasure for both countries. Neither. I

(35:03):
mean if if the US 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,

(35:25):
but not not maybe for 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 China
is dealing with several crippling problems internally that they really
they need to handle first before they get into any

(35:47):
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,
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, just a put a little bit of

(36:10):
the environmental stuff in perspective, The Atlantic had an article
came out in two thousand thirteen, i want to say,
about twenty eight thousand rivers in China that just disappeared. Yeah,
that's not good. And and you know, as somewhat of
an emerging economy. They're having to use things like coal

(36:31):
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 sex ratio is still pretty skewed. Uh there
were I think it was something about like one hundred

(36:53):
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. And uh this isn't even touching on the

(37:16):
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 then, given the wars in Afghanistan or Rock and
the continual operations in various places around the world. Uh Also,

(37:40):
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 a lot of its UH finances tied up in
US bonds, right, and the US is dependent on China

(38:03):
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 point that was made in a in a
analysis from Yale, However, in both World Wars of the

(38:26):
previous century, Germany was Britain's biggest trade partner until the
war started, So both are clearly aiming to establish themselves
in either country once in the war and are increased
and both are increasingly competing for resources. Uh. China actually
has done what I think is is a not to

(38:48):
be flip about it, but I think it's it's a
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 in Dubai when they
were building these much on a much smaller scale. These
artificial islands out there in the world and the palm

(39:10):
and that stuff. Yeah, yeah, well they're building islands to
support the territor 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
huge issue with China and the US and other countries
around there, like the Philippines has recently been engaged in

(39:34):
some ongoing tension with China about its expansion and its
claims regarding what what constitutes its territory versus international waters.
And this is a this is a very tense thing here.
So China is actually building these islands to say, no,
this is China lands. So given international law, this far

(40:00):
off from these islands, not the mainland is where it
belongs to our government. Yeah, you could just build one
x 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

(40:21):
war would begin with China in the US, it seems
to often depend on the just the current events of
the time, right, And you can see predictions about this
stuff that often can seem contradictory. Uh. One one person
that I would like to reference here is a guy
named George Friedman. He's a geopolitical scientist, and he wrote

(40:44):
a book called The Next one hundred Years where he
said 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

(41:05):
to happen is that there would be a world war
or a fight 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,

(41:26):
which we're going to probably need to save for another episode. Yeah,
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 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

(41:50):
countries in the Middle East is that it has not
yet resulted in a world war. Thankfully. It really hasn't,
It really hasn't. Well, Yeah, knock on wood. Right, But
what when we talked 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

(42:13):
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

(42:36):
a slip of the tongue where he said we we
were training isisl Uh. 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

(42:57):
and then later go joy uh, 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 with with similar claims. So I'm gonna I'm gonna

(43:21):
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 fear mong green. It is true that people are
continually trying to put the fear of world war in
the news because those headlines sell. Uh. So we want
to talk a little bit about the alarmism people have

(43:42):
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 ann in
these fears of war, especially you know who I'm about

(44:04):
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 to in sell

(44:27):
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 are in charge, right, Yeah,

(44:49):
that 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. I
think it's pretty base, like base emotion of fear. Oh yeah,
you sell, you sell the fear that so that people
are fearful, and then they will they're more willing to

(45:10):
I don't know, 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.
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

(45:32):
world war is higher, it still is pretty low for
different things. 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 or

(45:54):
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

(46:15):
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 think about it. Satellites
are one of the most important technologies that we have
currently for communicating not only to one another as civilians,

(46:40):
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.

(47:01):
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.
You know, to be fair, we can neither confirm or deny.
They might have just send it up for fun. I

(47:22):
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. Fears over diminishing resources, which in
several cases are completely valid and in other cases are

(47:44):
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. Trade is a huge

(48:05):
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 are such
a global environment now that pretty much you can't exist
if you're trying to be in so insular that you
have no imports exports right right, And so this is

(48:28):
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 newer factors, and that
is the significant influence of non state actors in a

(48:53):
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, a
state actor would be the country you live in. In
the international sphere, uh So the non state actors would
be institutions that are not necessarily a state. So for instance,

(49:17):
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 the International Order of Generic Religion
or something like that with some just something like that.

(49:38):
And then there of course are gigantic corporations company right,
which was the ultimate force behind the overthrow of the
democratically elected government of Guatemala n here, and which is
also the same year that Stalin gave quote unquote gave
crimea to praying because it was originally Russian territory. Uh So,

(50:03):
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,
we know that it is possible for a relatively small

(50:23):
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
once that happens, it's it's likely it's very much possible

(50:45):
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 a whole of a
nuclear weapon from country like Pakistan, right, or or steal

(51:06):
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
some other government agency from whatever country the attack occurred

(51:28):
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 detonated
that thing, right, And and if that's the case, that
to me is the worst case scenario. Yeah, because then
it could also be a government pretending that a terrorists

(51:50):
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 ly,
with very little time passing, become a global conflict. So
we've talked about some of this. We've talked about a

(52:10):
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,
and this is not even a conspiracy, This is not speculations,

(52:32):
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
Smedley Butler and John Perkins, the author of Confessions of

(52:54):
an Economic hit Man, which is which is a good
read to check out. And if you don't know, yeah, oh,
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.

(53:15):
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 UH
some of the elites of the U S to overthrow

(53:35):
the 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

(53:56):
like we stayed in the last one. But do the
bank perhaps had 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

(54:17):
governments do, or the 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

(54:37):
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 rebels 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 the these sorts

(55:00):
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

(55:22):
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 the de facto currency
of the oil trade, that when countries don't play ball
or want to sell uh oil or petrol, patrolling products

(55:46):
in something other than the US dollar, that they get
removed right to the top. You're 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. Yeah,
and the bricks countries would be Brazil, Russia, India, China.
That brick is an acronym that commonly describes countries that

(56:09):
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. Yeahs again Petro Dollar, I love. I wish

(56:36):
we could go back and do Smantly 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

(56:56):
let's also mention One of the 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, and

(57:20):
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,
it's not just me. Alright. Well, if we're both hearing
that noise, it can only mean one thing. Ladies and gentlemen,
it's time for a moment with Nolan. Ya. How's it going?

(57:43):
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 my to to bite off. Yeah, we were
a little ambitious. I I just hope, I hope it

(58:04):
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? Godlike Productions? So yeah, yeah,
Godlike Production. I just a friend of mine just told
me about it. So I was while you were going
through your stuffing it up and seeing if there are
any topics on there that I could, you know, talk about.

(58:24):
But it's a little much, it's a little dense. What
did 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

(58:46):
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

(59:09):
to distract from an event. Okay, I see kind of
like a diverting the news thing, which reminds me of
our suppressed Mikia. 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 name. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(59:30):
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 smiling
face killer theory. Did you hear that one? So this
is a controversial one. It's the idea that there is

(59:53):
a serial killer, a group of serial killers. They're drowning
young men uh around the US, and the official story
is that these are alcohol related drownings. So these guys
whore like college age, are going somewhere they're drinking, uh
and then they're walking out and boom, they fall into

(01:00:16):
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

(01:00:37):
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 deaths, let's say. Yeah. But also,
you know, if you're looking for something, sure you're yeah,

(01:00:58):
And we're trying to keep this short. Have you guys
been following Have you guys been following the story about
the Watcher, the 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, uh,
very sinister letters from someone calling themselves the Watcher. And

(01:01:18):
when I've last read, there were only 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 bloods
and today in the basement and you know, the first

(01:01:42):
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. It seems
like a really nice house too. The pictures so multi
multiple generations, people just staring at one person writing notes. Yeah.

(01:02:03):
And then my favorite line though, is uh, 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 that I have been
put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. Wow,

(01:02:27):
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 us sniper roost with a trank 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 came with stalker. Okay, alright, sorry strange. Yeah,

(01:02:49):
so we're gonna hopefully have an update on that a
little bit later in the future. In the meantime, thank
you so much for listening, and uh do let us
know what we should be doing in e see and
what you think about the possibility of World War three.
As always, you can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Twitter. You can send us an email directly.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. For

(01:03:17):
more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.