September 29, 2025 • 34 mins
To celebrate four incredible years of This Week Explained, we're opening the vault and revisiting some of our most powerful conversations. In a world of constant flux, where understanding the forces shaping global events is more critical than ever, we've had the privilege of speaking with some of the sharpest minds in geopolitics and intelligence.In this special anniversary episode, join us for a masterclass in modern statecraft, espionage, and analysis. We're bringing you hand-picked clips from our conversations with former CIA officer Mike Baker, OSINT expert Ryan McBeth, strategic intelligence analyst Steve Lazarus, and real-time conflict tracker Alcon.Intel. From covert operations in the field to decoding satellite images from a desktop, this is a collection of insights you won't want to miss.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/this-week-explained--6199515/support.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/this-week-explained--6199515/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to a special four year anniversary episode
of This Week.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Explain.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is a one of two special episodes that you
guys are going to get. As you've heard, we talked
about this last week. We will not be putting out
a current events geopolitical intelligence podcast. What we are going
to do is celebrate four years of being a podcast
and of you guys enjoying this podcast special thanks to everyone.
(00:33):
So we've compiled a few of the best moments that
I could find throughout are what was once called Insightful Inquiries,
which then became Beyond this Week and has now turned
into whenever I have time to do an interview with
some great guests. So we've clipped out a few of
(00:54):
the best moments from that, and that's what you were
going to hear.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Not too long.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I hope you guys have a wonderful week and a
wonderful start to the month of October. So, without further ado,
here is a special four year episode of Beyond this Week.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
And hamas Mass has been very capable of this, and
they've got their own disinformation you know, operation that that
that that pushes out what they want to push and
it kind of works to suppress UH pro Israel narratives.
The Iranian regime does the same, They're very active in
that and they direct most of what Hamas does. The
Kamas wouldn't exist without Iran. And but the answer is
(01:45):
that also, yes, the Russian you know apparatus is doing
this to China. The Chinese regimes apparatus is doing it
through their incredibly well resourced disinformation operations. So they're all
doing it. They're all pushing the same narrative because it ultimately,
you know, comes back to the US support for Israel
(02:06):
and anything we can do to denigrate Israel in the US.
That's you know, from the Russian perspective, Johnny's perspective, the
Iranian and their toadies, the Hamas, that's a good thing.
So they're all in there, right pushing UH and and
amplifying messages and supporting UH anti Israel messages.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
They're all in there pushing and suppressing pro Israeli comment Uh.
You know, and people, you know, they know what they're
gonna get right that they're all those people operating those
disinformation campaigns. No, they've they've got a bottomless well of
useful idiots out there, you know, and who are just
looking for a reason to go out on the street.
You know, some of them just love a good time
(02:46):
and want to get out in protest. A lot of
them couldn't find Gaza on a map if you opened
it up to a map of Gaza circled it with
a sharpiet. Oh, you know, they know what they're going
to get you again, I think they're probably be surprised
at that the speed with which it turned, But they
knew they could anticipate, and they knew they could count
on that happen.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So so then from a Mike Baker perspective, what's the
end game? Where do you use this ending? If at all?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, it'll end by me, this conflict, I mean, you know,
and by that I mean we're not gonna it's not
gonna end with you know, a piece you know deal
and you know, happiness and sunshine in the region. But
the conflict as we know it right now will end
because at a certain point Israel, look, they're balancing their
operational requirements and sort of the knowledge that this, you know,
(03:37):
this can't stand right, they can't allow it to happen again, certainly,
so they're balancing their operational requirements and their tactics with
what you know, the the international pressure you know, to
to stop at some point. And again they have to
make that decision. But they're calculating that now even as
we speak. You know, at what point have we degraded
them enough?
Speaker 6 (03:58):
Right?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And they've got there's a lot of moving parts there,
because it's not just you know, from a tactable perspective.
Have we have we you know, taken care of the
Moss command structure and we killed enough of their fighters?
Have we have we denigrated them so badly? But they've
also got to worry about, Okay, what back fills it? Right?
And then the answer is not the UN UN is
completely useless. But well, the UNS come out pretty much
(04:21):
pro Palestine. Yeah, they are in agreement that you know,
basically Israel should not exist and Palestine should the Palestinian
should take over. Well, Iran now chairs a UN human
rights forum.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I mean, think about that about an oxtre.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
How insane that is, right? I mean, yeah, actually insane
that that Putin has waged war on Ukraine and and
and you know, has just set out this meat grinder
out in Ukraine and Russia still sits on the you know.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Permanent security count right.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I mean there's a lot if they were President of
the Security Council as they were taking position, and.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Yet they they don't actually have to do that. They
could say, you know what, when you want hiatus right now?
Right now, with the fact that they they're okay with
iron charity human invites for them of all things, right,
it is insane And that's kind of all you need
to know about the u N. So the u N,
you know, the idea that they would be the ones
who govern Gaza or somehow you know, sane people look
(05:24):
at that and go, that's that's not good. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Also if that high level decision maker, and that's what
intelligence is for, right, It's for the decision makers to
make quality decisions. And that's not a CEO, just a
CEO or a government leader. You know, you as a parent,
or you as a even a high school student or
college student or whatever. You have to make a decision. Yeah,
if you're traveling, That's that's what I'm trying to Niche
(05:50):
I'm trying to fill is people traveling, especially to austere locations,
what a what am I going to interact with and
what should I be careful doing. That's really what I
try to get out there in these big So if
you're a big decision maker and you're getting your decisions
from ocent accounts, even like mine just reading it on Twitter,
(06:14):
you failed somewhere that should absolutely not be happening. And
most Fortune five hundred companies will have a team of
intelligence analysts breaking it all down for them anyway.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So my first job, yeah, that's my first job out
of the army, That's what I did. I watched the
invasion of Ukraine recent live because I was on shift
and my limited ability to speak Russian was like, well,
there's some words I know, they're not positive. Putin is
not saying good things right now?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, that was I mean, that was wild.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, I mean yeah, sitting near by myself and this
suck just watching it like ramp up, like with all
the was it the high altitude bombers going up and
like the command line turned on and then all the
cameras cutting at the border and it was like the
last image of one of the cameras was Ukrainian running
(07:08):
and it was like yeah oo. And we used data
miner is our main source particular. I still use data minor. Yeah,
youreat source.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I guess I shouldn't give my sources up, but yeah,
that's one of my source.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Well it's just Twitter some other stuff, but.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
It's got some some other things in the background going.
But yeah, it's pretty much X.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
But yeah, like watching that play out, that was pretty crazy.
But yeah, if you if you were legally responsible for
travelers and ostel locations, you don't want to be lying
on public information because you'd better have some. If I'm
talking about it on Twitter, it's too late.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
And as a leader, if you're if you see it
on Twitter and you haven't found out about it, that's
the first place you go is to your analytical team
and go, why was I not made aware of this?
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Could because it's wrong, could be yeah, and let's might
have looked at it and gone it's not sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And typically what we don't do is and I really
try to help people understand that, and clients, I'll teach
them or help them understand the way that I do it,
which is basically, I don't go zero percent or one
hundred percent unless if you've absolutely verified. But we're if
we're working in like predictive analysis, I'm not going to go,
(08:31):
oh yeah, I'm one hundred percent. Even with the invasion
of Ukraine, I was at probable. I had people hitting
me up in February and I was like ninety nine
percent chance, Like, so, so there's a chance it won't happen.
There's a chance anything won't happen. There's a chance this
whole world collapses tomorrow. So I can't predict with absolute certainty.
And then when I see bullshit and know it's bullshit
(08:54):
and people are like, so that's a zero percent chance,
Like there is no zero percent anything can happen.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
My boss at that in the sock job, he was
a former Armored Corps colonel and he I think that
was one of the one of three ex military people
and the only ex military in tail dudes. And he
used to constantly pound me. He's like, you never you guys,
never say anything for certain. You're always with your assessments.
(09:24):
Is like that, I even like, what almost certain, it's
thirty five percent. You'll leave yourself some wiggle room for
a But he used to always get on to me
about it.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
He's like nothing, just like I've sat in the top
and you know, had a team come off of a compound,
come back and look at me and go don't ever
tell me there are no weapons before we get out there.
And he had like three or four different weapons, and
that was just like, first of all, I apologize for
(09:56):
not helping you understand my analysis, which is it is
never zero. It's if you if you had come out
before going out outside the wire and asking me if
there were weapons, I would say, and I did say,
I haven't seen any. But knowing where we are and
understanding the location you're going to, I guarantee you, Oh,
(10:18):
I bet there is a weapons cash or at least
one weapon. And the weapon he brought in with some
like old manufactured farming gun that was used to you know,
kill an animal or some omes and stuff.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, it wasn't an AK or anything like that. I
was like, I will never tell you no, but I'll
also tell you never tell you.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I'm certain that is.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
This is from my own experience. About eighty five ninety
percent of the FBI agents that I lead that I
worked with lean politically conservative, and I think you see
that in the military as well. It's just part and parcel.
It's part and parcel of who it is that applies
to the military and the FBI in the first place,
and it's also part and parcel of just the things
(11:10):
that you go through that kind of keep you a
little bit more of a conservative lean in terms of
certainly in terms of defense and national security issues. So
to me, the notion that the FBI has all of
a sudden turned into this partisan political puppet for the
Democrat Party is just silly. What I do think is
(11:33):
that we've had some missteps and people have seized upon
them and have built them into far far more than
they actually are. But I also think, and this is
something that I've talked about with a couple of podcasts
I've been on in terms of the general the temperature
of political discourse and using things like the FBI as
(11:57):
a political football, and I draw on it analogy. I
grew up playing sports, lots and lots and lots of sports, football, baseball, basketball, golf.
I was a competitive skier for a while, you know,
and a lot of sports from high school up to
I actually played a little bit of college football, not
very much, and by the way, I wasn't very good.
(12:19):
But one thing that playing competitive sports my entire youth
taught me was it taught me how to lose without
blaming somebody else all the time. Sometimes you just freaking lose.
You go out and you put your best foot forward
and your team just didn't have it that day. It
doesn't mean somebody was out to get you. It doesn't
(12:39):
mean that there's a vast right wing or left wing conspiracy.
It doesn't mean it's the media's fault. It means you lost.
And I think that I don't know, man, maybe it
started with participation trophies back in the nineties. I don't know,
but I think we've lost our ability as a society
to sorry own our shit and just say, hey, man,
I lost, Okay, now I'll try to do better next time. Now,
(13:03):
it was a fake election, it was fake news. It
was rigged. It was this, that and the other. And
I just and if you can throw I mean, if
you can throw the FBI in there and try to
make the FBI look like they're part of the witch hunt,
then yeah, all the better. You know, help helps your
case a little bit, at least with people who are
(13:23):
prone to critical thinking.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I agree one hundred percent. This is the conversation I
had with former candidate Andrew Yang. I don't know if
you know Andrew Yang at all, but I told him
that there is this sentiment within and I come from
the intelligence community, so a lot of what I say
is about the intelligence community. And I have definitely seen
this shift since twenty nineteen, twenty twenty against the intelligence community.
(13:51):
And I say this to everybody I talk to, and
I'll say it here. Everybody who's listening has already heard
me say this. There are legitimate reasons to have anti
sentiment to it. There they are certain leaders who have
politicized their positions within the intelligence community. I think you
have just said the same thing about certain members of
(14:12):
the FBI who have politicized their positions. We're not going
to name anybody there, but hey, listen, it's one two
percent maybe that have politicized their positions, and that's what
gets broadcast and that's what gets put out. I just
I don't know what what's the solution for that.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I think the.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Solution in my opinion, and and it's I think that
we've got to start reporting more of the safe landings,
and that you know, they don't report the safe landings
at JFK, only the crash. And I think that we
have to have a better optic to the public, and
I think that they need to know rather than you know,
(14:53):
Chris Ray going and defending the FBI. You know, Yet
again when something else doals wrong in front of Congress,
you know, I think we got to usher the good
in there with the bad.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And since we're getting into the twenty twenty five, what
do you think is going to happen with TikTok?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Ah, it seems like it TikTok. They tried to appeal
their decision. I think that was on April or December thirteenth.
I think December twelfth or thirteenth. They their appeal got
denied by a federal court and they have to find
a buyer between before now and January nineteenth. Now, President
(15:33):
Trump said that he wants to keep TikTok around, But
that's kind of a congressional decision. And you know, if
you're a congressman, it doesn't matter if you're a Republican
or not. It doesn't matter if you support President Trump.
At the end of the day, you are accountable to
your constituents. You know, you need you want to get
elected again, and so if you vote for a banning
(15:54):
TikTok and then all of a sudden, you flip and decide,
all right, well, I'm I'm going to reverse my decision.
You're gonna have to answer why, and there's gonna be
aw certain you want to be the guy that gets
attack ads Mike Flutely Dupe wants China to influence your children,
you know, and that's the ad. Right, Yeah, So that's
that's a that's a that's a tough pill to swallow.
(16:17):
And is president gonna Is President Trump gonna help you?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Then?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And you look at we can.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Say, well the up the coming generation they lift TikTok.
I've got a twenty eighteen and sixteen year old. They
absolutely hate TikTok. Now, they really do, because it's so
influencing and there's mental health issues and they see it
and they're like, I'm not on it anymore because I've
(16:45):
brought it up. I've said, hey, so what do you
guys think this could get taken out? What's your life
going to be like? And like, it's going to be
so much better if it just gets deleted because it's
it's an addiction. I can't stop it. But if it
gets deleted, that's fine. And then there's the whole free
speech aspect to it. Right. I've had a commentary with
(17:10):
a group for free speech who has said they want
to stop the ban of TikTok because it is a
free speech ban. And I'm trying to tell people, and
you can correct me if I'm wrong. I would absolutely
love to hear a different side of this that it's
not a free I think it's not a free speech
issue because you can go anywhere and put your voice out.
(17:35):
It's just TikTok. We can't allow the CCP to promote
certain things that then have a negative aspect to freedom
to the United States and to the Western world.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Really well, I think the difference is that you're right
that this is something that the Chinese government has control over.
And when it comes to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you can
haul those executives in front of Congress and say tell
me why you allowed this to happen. Right now, freedom
(18:10):
of speech it really means the government can't constrain your speech.
It's not the case with private corporations. It's it's certainly
not the case of freedom of consequences. Right like I
can I can I can say I can say things
right now that would not only get you to monetize,
that would get me canceled, right, a whole string of wordy.
(18:32):
So I have free speech. The government can't punish me
for saying those things, but people can say, you know what,
I don't I don't like Ryan macbeth. I don't like
those views that he just said. I'm not going to
watch him anymore. Right, So freedom of speech doesn't mean
consequence free. And the argument of well you can just
go someplace else, I mean I know that there was
I think it was in New Jersey a town banned
(18:55):
strip clubs and who found the argument is, well you
can just go someplace else in town? Is someplace you
can just go to a different town and expression, Well, yeah,
pole dancing could be considered freedom of expression. This is
how I express you know, my dancing is how I
express whatever my feelings or whatever. So that's that is
(19:19):
a reasonable thing to believe. And saying well you can
just go to some other town, well that you're obviously
saying that they have a right to do this. They
just don't have a right to do it your town.
Oh that that argument was kind of thrown out by
I believe the New Jersey Supreme Court. You know, you
might be able to control, like, all right, you have
(19:40):
to have a strip club in this certain location, but
you can't ban them altogether. The yeah saying oh you
can just go to a different platform, Well that that's
kind of a tough one too. The big issue is
that TikTok is essentially owned by a foreign company and
those executive is around how to cowboy.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
So like, since we I was more stunts, I didn't
get like the whole script. I knew the gist. They're like, hey,
it's about civil war, and I was like, oh, that
makes sense, and I see the writing on the wall
in the real world. I was like this is I
was all in, like mister conspiracy, Like naw, I'm all in.
But it wasn't until I saw the movie where I
was like, this is a road trip movie. I think
we might have tested and it's it's not a war movie.
(20:23):
It's a road trip movie. Yeah, and the trailer and
I'm saying this as a fan. I loved it either way,
but I was caught off guard because I was expecting
a war movie, not a road trip movie. With the
war movie with a war in the background.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I felt the exact same way. Obviously, when we had
this conversation. But uh, you know, I felt I was
going into it not hoping, So I was going into
it expect yeah, it to be.
Speaker 6 (20:48):
A war movie.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, and we're gonna you're gonna have clear this is
the bad guy, here's a good guy, and now they're
they're warring against each other. What I really appreciated about
the film was there was no good guy bad guy.
There was a bunch of humans who were fed up
versus a bunch of humans who wanted the status quo.
(21:11):
And this is all through the lens of war journalism.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
Which is technically a trap on fix no origin, fix
no originalism. Is probably not what you crap on because now, yeah,
it's right.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, so it's like journalism. I'll crap on it today
because of the you know, bias and sides of it.
And yeah, but as far as like war journalism, and
I've sat with these guys, I've been in hum vies
with these guys, and they do exactly know minus one
or two who were over the top, and and they
(21:48):
just want to get a report in. But most of
the time they will do anything that we do as
soldiers besides firing back.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
Yeah, it's almost like having an interpreter.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Right, that's it. That is the exact thing. Yes, some
of our turps had rifles. Now to think about it,
we didn't give it to him. Yeah, you couldn't take
it away from them at the same time, Now, that
is exactly you just framed that perfectly. Yeah, we didn't
give that to you, but you can keep it on
you because we we know things happen better. But like
(22:23):
the way that I describe what I like about the
war journalism in this is and this isn't a spoiler
because it's in the previous and the previews to the
movie when they go into that shop right in West
Virginia and the male journalist is like, hey, don't you
know there's like a pretty big civil war going on
(22:46):
right now and she says, uh, and I think we
have these conversations with some people today where she says, yeah,
we just kind of try to stay out of all
of this and and that then that's what the news
tells us to do, and so we think it's just
safer that way.
Speaker 6 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And for the most part, you hear that and you
want to laugh and like you're crazy, but it pans
back to his face like it goes back to him
and throughout the scene. He does such an incredible job
and I'm sorry I forgot the name of the main
male care order. Yeah, but he does such an incredible
(23:24):
job of portraying a journalist that just heard that and
felt jealous of what of what she said. He was
jealous that she could feel that way in a civil
war and he couldn't. He legitimately could not because he's
trying to give to give the news to people.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
Yeah, he has to be in that was and I'm
beating this to death, but I was just telling somebody
prior to us talking like that was what threw me
off was I assumed civil war movie. It's literally called
civil war, so I was assuming platoon modern times, you know,
with war. But the brilliant thing and I even said
(24:08):
this disclaimer. You always know when somebody's on it, like
on the Late Show, and they're they're definitely being politically
correct because they don't want to throw a coaster under
the bus, so they don't want to say the movie
was crap. I'm too low to have to do that.
I'm at the behind of the total pulse, so I
don't have to like like lie to make this. But
I genuinely loved the fact I would have wanted like
(24:28):
I loved a war movie. So I was going in
inspecting that, but I actually was pleasantly surprised. It took
me about a week afterwards to accept it, but I
was actually pleasantly surprised with how they use the road
trip movie, the road trip genre to kind of this
is so artsy FARTSI to basically allow it to be
more receptive to all spectrums left right and read whatever
(24:51):
you want to say. But it didn't come across like
you said, one sided. It didn't come like if you
went in the whole thing about like if somebody, if
somebody says, don't think about a p Calvin, You're gonn
think about pink alvit. If somebody go ok, if somebody
goes in and goes nick Offerman's Trump, you're gonna automatically
go in there going oh.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
So they definitely have gone to college. They know investigations
and research, and they can do all of those things.
But it takes an analytical mind to make an analytical assessment,
and not everybody can do that. And on some things
I can't do it, like I'm not a financial We'll
keep going into this is a finance I'm not a
(25:27):
finance bro. I can't do financial analysis. You know, I
can see the pattern if money's going back and forth
to be the guy that's like, oh, that's an incredible
lot of amount of money, or this is an exact
amount of money that is to pay for this, which
is probably meaning this is going to a terrorist organization
(25:49):
to get a meg or something like that, and then
just use that. I can't do that.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
My friend who's in order to said numbers should never
be hull and bank transit as well. If they're if
they're exact numbers, that's the ones they look into. So
if you're going to do any shady payments, don't make them.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
All there we go out.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I'm going to clip this out and put it on
on you help some people out.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
That's what he said. He's like, yeah, as in order
to the thing you look for is just like straight numbers,
because in finance, no numbers are like perfect. They're all
to the like random sents and dollars.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, which makes sense just speaking about it now, it
makes sense. And that's the the analytical processes just to
have a logical conclusion to it. So when somebody says,
you know, round numbers are not good in financial transactions.
You start thinking, yeah, when was the last time I
had a round number from work for you know, somebody
(26:49):
paying me.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Especially as soon as the ir Yeah, as soon as
you introduced tax a currency exchange. There's no one in
a million shots.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
And that's and that's what you try to do.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
You you're you're looking at something and going and that's
why you don't. I don't go zero percent because look
at something. Asad's plane was shot down by Russia and
he died in the plane crash.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Well, it's not zero.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Percent that that happened, but it is highly unlikely and
we should probably look into that. And very quickly we
all understood that that didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
And he was signed Moscow hoped that little hit up
in Moscow and one of its fourteen like multi million
dollar properties that he owns it. Oh Man Yeap kind
of mentioned when Syrian people's money.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Went, Yeah, I can't imagine. So that was that was
something that we saw right after the invasion of Iraq
in two thousand and three. So we made the push
and we took over. We the US military with you know, NATO,
forces and took over all of those compounds that Saddam had,
(27:56):
and we had the Iraqis coming on to work on
the bays and stuff like that. And I know this
being in Baghdad and being part of uh was Camp Liberty,
Camp Victory. All those areas which were Saddam some had
compounds there. And he had these vast lakes, man made
lakes filled with water. And the people were just like
(28:22):
they're doing here in California and stuff, not able to
use their water. There was a drought. Farmers were dying,
their crops were all dying out because they had no water.
And the Saddam regime told them, well, look, it's a
drought and this is just what everybody's gonna have to
deal with. And when they came on the base, they
asked us where did you get all that water to
(28:44):
fill these lakes up with? And I was like, uh, Saddam,
Hussein did that, Ude and Kusay did that. We didn't
do that. And their mind was just blown. They did
not understand that so much of their life life was
ruined because of one man and his family controlling an
(29:05):
entire country and now they're seeing it with a sod.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So what the hell do you expect?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, right, and and so then that gets us to
the question of what the hell is Putin doing? And
and I know that that sort of like tongue in
cheek because we all know what he's doing, but he is.
He's got this thing where he's being putin right, and
he's saying, yeah, I want to you know, I want
to cease fire or I want peace, I want true
(29:32):
peace because I want our soldiers to stop dying. And
then he conscripts hundreds of thousands of new Russians over
the next few years and just continues, you know, firing
popshots at Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
And so what potent Putin's not interested in peace.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
He doesn't give a rats ass about the lives of
the soldiers that are, you know, being thrown out in
front of the cannons on the battlefield. And that's that's
not his game plan, right, He's he's been pretty clear
about that. It's just it's been interesting that for a
period of time, whether they believed it or not, I
don't know, but they certainly acted as if they believed it.
(30:13):
And maybe that was a negotiating tactic, but the White House,
you know, acting as if Putin wants peace, and you know,
he's going to come to the negotiating table if we
could just get the Ukrainians on board. Right, So there
was a strange narrative for a short while in the
recent past where people, you know, because of what was
coming out of the White House again, could have been
a tactical plan on their part, you know, to do that.
(30:34):
But there was people out there genuinely thinking, well, you're yeah, yeah,
Zelenski's the problem here. Yeah, he's he's just a roadblock
to peace, you know, because if he would agree, then
then you know, Putin of course would want to sit
down and negotiate. What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I mean that what with nonsense?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So now it's starting to come out, you know, and
it looks like President Trump is you know, is rightly
so getting pissed off. But you know they should have
anticipated this to begin with, right, Putin is making incremental
you know, advances on the battlefield. He believes he's in
the driver's seat. He's watching the US slowly back away
(31:10):
from Ukraine. And so then you have to ask yourself, well,
why would he be so desperate to come to the
negotiating table. And as you pointed out, he's just put
out in order to conscript one hundred and sixty thousand
more troops, right, not typically something you do if you're anticipating,
you know, a ceasefire and a peace settlement. So you know,
(31:31):
and one of the Kremlin advisors just came out with,
you know, what I think is probably the clearest statement
of Putin's intentions, which is, you know, he was caught saying, well, look,
you know, while the US is backing away from Ukraine
and while we're winning on the battlefield, you know, why
would we stop now?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So absolutely, why would you stop when you could maybe
get Kiev without doing anything anything more?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, you could if you just me if this thing
were to drag on.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Look, and everybody agrees, for the most part, Russia's economy is,
you know, is having serious issues.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
And yes, you know, he's he's.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Got a variety of problems in terms of you know, manpower,
although he's got a three to one man power advantage
on Ukraine. So he's getting support from China. The Chinese
regime support has been you know, critical to keeping that
war machine moving. He's got support from Iran and certainly
from North Korea, not only munitions but troops. So I
(32:36):
think we need to look at this in a different
way than than the way it's been framed. So, you know,
if that's the case, and we believe that the Russian
economy is the weak link here, then we should be
doing everything possible to squeeze that economy, right, and that
means we've got to figure out a way to actually
shut off money going to Pudin through his energy sector.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And the tough part.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
There is that the EU and the US are still
buying Russian uh you know, oil and gas. You know,
it gets refined elsewhere, oftentimes from India, but we're you know,
we're buying it. So we might want to rethink that strategy.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, I don't think a lot of people understand that
that a lot comes a lot of gas, natural gas,
oil comes from Russia and we're still buying it. That
the US is still buying it no matter how many
sanctions we put And that's a big joke on on
my podcast on you know, sanctions. Sanctions don't do anything
(33:45):
unless you're actually gonna hold people's feet to the fire.
It's really not doing anything. We saw that, So what
do we what Trump very famously now told Sizzolenski doesn't
have any He's not holding any cards, right, he doesn't
have any of the cards. What cards does the US
(34:07):
have against putin to say you need to agree to
this right now?
Speaker 4 (34:12):
Yeah, I mean really it's it's economic leverage is about
the only thing that the US has at this stage,
unless they intends to, you know, significantly upgun. You know
the Ukrainian military, right, I mean, if it's so, you've
Those are the options on the old decision tree.
Hello, and welcome to a special four year anniversary episode
of This Week.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Explain.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is a one of two special episodes that you
guys are going to get. As you've heard, we talked
about this last week. We will not be putting out
a current events geopolitical intelligence podcast. What we are going
to do is celebrate four years of being a podcast
and of you guys enjoying this podcast special thanks to everyone.
(00:33):
So we've compiled a few of the best moments that
I could find throughout are what was once called Insightful Inquiries,
which then became Beyond this Week and has now turned
into whenever I have time to do an interview with
some great guests. So we've clipped out a few of
(00:54):
the best moments from that, and that's what you were
going to hear.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Not too long.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I hope you guys have a wonderful week and a
wonderful start to the month of October. So, without further ado,
here is a special four year episode of Beyond this Week.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
And hamas Mass has been very capable of this, and
they've got their own disinformation you know, operation that that
that that pushes out what they want to push and
it kind of works to suppress UH pro Israel narratives.
The Iranian regime does the same, They're very active in
that and they direct most of what Hamas does. The
Kamas wouldn't exist without Iran. And but the answer is
(01:45):
that also, yes, the Russian you know apparatus is doing
this to China. The Chinese regimes apparatus is doing it
through their incredibly well resourced disinformation operations. So they're all
doing it. They're all pushing the same narrative because it ultimately,
you know, comes back to the US support for Israel
(02:06):
and anything we can do to denigrate Israel in the US.
That's you know, from the Russian perspective, Johnny's perspective, the
Iranian and their toadies, the Hamas, that's a good thing.
So they're all in there, right pushing UH and and
amplifying messages and supporting UH anti Israel messages.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
They're all in there pushing and suppressing pro Israeli comment Uh.
You know, and people, you know, they know what they're
gonna get right that they're all those people operating those
disinformation campaigns. No, they've they've got a bottomless well of
useful idiots out there, you know, and who are just
looking for a reason to go out on the street.
You know, some of them just love a good time
(02:46):
and want to get out in protest. A lot of
them couldn't find Gaza on a map if you opened
it up to a map of Gaza circled it with
a sharpiet. Oh, you know, they know what they're going
to get you again, I think they're probably be surprised
at that the speed with which it turned, But they
knew they could anticipate, and they knew they could count
on that happen.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So so then from a Mike Baker perspective, what's the
end game? Where do you use this ending? If at all?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, it'll end by me, this conflict, I mean, you know,
and by that I mean we're not gonna it's not
gonna end with you know, a piece you know deal
and you know, happiness and sunshine in the region. But
the conflict as we know it right now will end
because at a certain point Israel, look, they're balancing their
operational requirements and sort of the knowledge that this, you know,
(03:37):
this can't stand right, they can't allow it to happen again, certainly,
so they're balancing their operational requirements and their tactics with
what you know, the the international pressure you know, to
to stop at some point. And again they have to
make that decision. But they're calculating that now even as
we speak. You know, at what point have we degraded
them enough?
Speaker 6 (03:58):
Right?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And they've got there's a lot of moving parts there,
because it's not just you know, from a tactable perspective.
Have we have we you know, taken care of the
Moss command structure and we killed enough of their fighters?
Have we have we denigrated them so badly? But they've
also got to worry about, Okay, what back fills it? Right?
And then the answer is not the UN UN is
completely useless. But well, the UNS come out pretty much
(04:21):
pro Palestine. Yeah, they are in agreement that you know,
basically Israel should not exist and Palestine should the Palestinian
should take over. Well, Iran now chairs a UN human
rights forum.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I mean, think about that about an oxtre.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
How insane that is, right? I mean, yeah, actually insane
that that Putin has waged war on Ukraine and and
and you know, has just set out this meat grinder
out in Ukraine and Russia still sits on the you know.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Permanent security count right.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I mean there's a lot if they were President of
the Security Council as they were taking position, and.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Yet they they don't actually have to do that. They
could say, you know what, when you want hiatus right now?
Right now, with the fact that they they're okay with
iron charity human invites for them of all things, right,
it is insane And that's kind of all you need
to know about the u N. So the u N,
you know, the idea that they would be the ones
who govern Gaza or somehow you know, sane people look
(05:24):
at that and go, that's that's not good. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Also if that high level decision maker, and that's what
intelligence is for, right, It's for the decision makers to
make quality decisions. And that's not a CEO, just a
CEO or a government leader. You know, you as a parent,
or you as a even a high school student or
college student or whatever. You have to make a decision. Yeah,
if you're traveling, That's that's what I'm trying to Niche
(05:50):
I'm trying to fill is people traveling, especially to austere locations,
what a what am I going to interact with and
what should I be careful doing. That's really what I
try to get out there in these big So if
you're a big decision maker and you're getting your decisions
from ocent accounts, even like mine just reading it on Twitter,
(06:14):
you failed somewhere that should absolutely not be happening. And
most Fortune five hundred companies will have a team of
intelligence analysts breaking it all down for them anyway.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So my first job, yeah, that's my first job out
of the army, That's what I did. I watched the
invasion of Ukraine recent live because I was on shift
and my limited ability to speak Russian was like, well,
there's some words I know, they're not positive. Putin is
not saying good things right now?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, that was I mean, that was wild.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, I mean yeah, sitting near by myself and this
suck just watching it like ramp up, like with all
the was it the high altitude bombers going up and
like the command line turned on and then all the
cameras cutting at the border and it was like the
last image of one of the cameras was Ukrainian running
(07:08):
and it was like yeah oo. And we used data
miner is our main source particular. I still use data minor. Yeah,
youreat source.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I guess I shouldn't give my sources up, but yeah,
that's one of my source.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Well it's just Twitter some other stuff, but.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
It's got some some other things in the background going.
But yeah, it's pretty much X.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
But yeah, like watching that play out, that was pretty crazy.
But yeah, if you if you were legally responsible for
travelers and ostel locations, you don't want to be lying
on public information because you'd better have some. If I'm
talking about it on Twitter, it's too late.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
And as a leader, if you're if you see it
on Twitter and you haven't found out about it, that's
the first place you go is to your analytical team
and go, why was I not made aware of this?
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Could because it's wrong, could be yeah, and let's might
have looked at it and gone it's not sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And typically what we don't do is and I really
try to help people understand that, and clients, I'll teach
them or help them understand the way that I do it,
which is basically, I don't go zero percent or one
hundred percent unless if you've absolutely verified. But we're if
we're working in like predictive analysis, I'm not going to go,
(08:31):
oh yeah, I'm one hundred percent. Even with the invasion
of Ukraine, I was at probable. I had people hitting
me up in February and I was like ninety nine
percent chance, Like, so, so there's a chance it won't happen.
There's a chance anything won't happen. There's a chance this
whole world collapses tomorrow. So I can't predict with absolute certainty.
And then when I see bullshit and know it's bullshit
(08:54):
and people are like, so that's a zero percent chance,
Like there is no zero percent anything can happen.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
My boss at that in the sock job, he was
a former Armored Corps colonel and he I think that
was one of the one of three ex military people
and the only ex military in tail dudes. And he
used to constantly pound me. He's like, you never you guys,
never say anything for certain. You're always with your assessments.
(09:24):
Is like that, I even like, what almost certain, it's
thirty five percent. You'll leave yourself some wiggle room for
a But he used to always get on to me
about it.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
He's like nothing, just like I've sat in the top
and you know, had a team come off of a compound,
come back and look at me and go don't ever
tell me there are no weapons before we get out there.
And he had like three or four different weapons, and
that was just like, first of all, I apologize for
(09:56):
not helping you understand my analysis, which is it is
never zero. It's if you if you had come out
before going out outside the wire and asking me if
there were weapons, I would say, and I did say,
I haven't seen any. But knowing where we are and
understanding the location you're going to, I guarantee you, Oh,
(10:18):
I bet there is a weapons cash or at least
one weapon. And the weapon he brought in with some
like old manufactured farming gun that was used to you know,
kill an animal or some omes and stuff.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, it wasn't an AK or anything like that. I
was like, I will never tell you no, but I'll
also tell you never tell you.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I'm certain that is.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
This is from my own experience. About eighty five ninety
percent of the FBI agents that I lead that I
worked with lean politically conservative, and I think you see
that in the military as well. It's just part and parcel.
It's part and parcel of who it is that applies
to the military and the FBI in the first place,
and it's also part and parcel of just the things
(11:10):
that you go through that kind of keep you a
little bit more of a conservative lean in terms of
certainly in terms of defense and national security issues. So
to me, the notion that the FBI has all of
a sudden turned into this partisan political puppet for the
Democrat Party is just silly. What I do think is
(11:33):
that we've had some missteps and people have seized upon
them and have built them into far far more than
they actually are. But I also think, and this is
something that I've talked about with a couple of podcasts
I've been on in terms of the general the temperature
of political discourse and using things like the FBI as
(11:57):
a political football, and I draw on it analogy. I
grew up playing sports, lots and lots and lots of sports, football, baseball, basketball, golf.
I was a competitive skier for a while, you know,
and a lot of sports from high school up to
I actually played a little bit of college football, not
very much, and by the way, I wasn't very good.
(12:19):
But one thing that playing competitive sports my entire youth
taught me was it taught me how to lose without
blaming somebody else all the time. Sometimes you just freaking lose.
You go out and you put your best foot forward
and your team just didn't have it that day. It
doesn't mean somebody was out to get you. It doesn't
(12:39):
mean that there's a vast right wing or left wing conspiracy.
It doesn't mean it's the media's fault. It means you lost.
And I think that I don't know, man, maybe it
started with participation trophies back in the nineties. I don't know,
but I think we've lost our ability as a society
to sorry own our shit and just say, hey, man,
I lost, Okay, now I'll try to do better next time. Now,
(13:03):
it was a fake election, it was fake news. It
was rigged. It was this, that and the other. And
I just and if you can throw I mean, if
you can throw the FBI in there and try to
make the FBI look like they're part of the witch hunt,
then yeah, all the better. You know, help helps your
case a little bit, at least with people who are
(13:23):
prone to critical thinking.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I agree one hundred percent. This is the conversation I
had with former candidate Andrew Yang. I don't know if
you know Andrew Yang at all, but I told him
that there is this sentiment within and I come from
the intelligence community, so a lot of what I say
is about the intelligence community. And I have definitely seen
this shift since twenty nineteen, twenty twenty against the intelligence community.
(13:51):
And I say this to everybody I talk to, and
I'll say it here. Everybody who's listening has already heard
me say this. There are legitimate reasons to have anti
sentiment to it. There they are certain leaders who have
politicized their positions within the intelligence community. I think you
have just said the same thing about certain members of
(14:12):
the FBI who have politicized their positions. We're not going
to name anybody there, but hey, listen, it's one two
percent maybe that have politicized their positions, and that's what
gets broadcast and that's what gets put out. I just
I don't know what what's the solution for that.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I think the.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Solution in my opinion, and and it's I think that
we've got to start reporting more of the safe landings,
and that you know, they don't report the safe landings
at JFK, only the crash. And I think that we
have to have a better optic to the public, and
I think that they need to know rather than you know,
(14:53):
Chris Ray going and defending the FBI. You know, Yet
again when something else doals wrong in front of Congress,
you know, I think we got to usher the good
in there with the bad.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And since we're getting into the twenty twenty five, what
do you think is going to happen with TikTok?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Ah, it seems like it TikTok. They tried to appeal
their decision. I think that was on April or December thirteenth.
I think December twelfth or thirteenth. They their appeal got
denied by a federal court and they have to find
a buyer between before now and January nineteenth. Now, President
(15:33):
Trump said that he wants to keep TikTok around, But
that's kind of a congressional decision. And you know, if
you're a congressman, it doesn't matter if you're a Republican
or not. It doesn't matter if you support President Trump.
At the end of the day, you are accountable to
your constituents. You know, you need you want to get
elected again, and so if you vote for a banning
(15:54):
TikTok and then all of a sudden, you flip and decide,
all right, well, I'm I'm going to reverse my decision.
You're gonna have to answer why, and there's gonna be
aw certain you want to be the guy that gets
attack ads Mike Flutely Dupe wants China to influence your children,
you know, and that's the ad. Right, Yeah, So that's
that's a that's a that's a tough pill to swallow.
(16:17):
And is president gonna Is President Trump gonna help you?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Then?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And you look at we can.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Say, well the up the coming generation they lift TikTok.
I've got a twenty eighteen and sixteen year old. They
absolutely hate TikTok. Now, they really do, because it's so
influencing and there's mental health issues and they see it
and they're like, I'm not on it anymore because I've
(16:45):
brought it up. I've said, hey, so what do you
guys think this could get taken out? What's your life
going to be like? And like, it's going to be
so much better if it just gets deleted because it's
it's an addiction. I can't stop it. But if it
gets deleted, that's fine. And then there's the whole free
speech aspect to it. Right. I've had a commentary with
(17:10):
a group for free speech who has said they want
to stop the ban of TikTok because it is a
free speech ban. And I'm trying to tell people, and
you can correct me if I'm wrong. I would absolutely
love to hear a different side of this that it's
not a free I think it's not a free speech
issue because you can go anywhere and put your voice out.
(17:35):
It's just TikTok. We can't allow the CCP to promote
certain things that then have a negative aspect to freedom
to the United States and to the Western world.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Really well, I think the difference is that you're right
that this is something that the Chinese government has control over.
And when it comes to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you can
haul those executives in front of Congress and say tell
me why you allowed this to happen. Right now, freedom
(18:10):
of speech it really means the government can't constrain your speech.
It's not the case with private corporations. It's it's certainly
not the case of freedom of consequences. Right like I
can I can I can say I can say things
right now that would not only get you to monetize,
that would get me canceled, right, a whole string of wordy.
(18:32):
So I have free speech. The government can't punish me
for saying those things, but people can say, you know what,
I don't I don't like Ryan macbeth. I don't like
those views that he just said. I'm not going to
watch him anymore. Right, So freedom of speech doesn't mean
consequence free. And the argument of well you can just
go someplace else, I mean I know that there was
I think it was in New Jersey a town banned
(18:55):
strip clubs and who found the argument is, well you
can just go someplace else in town? Is someplace you
can just go to a different town and expression, Well, yeah,
pole dancing could be considered freedom of expression. This is
how I express you know, my dancing is how I
express whatever my feelings or whatever. So that's that is
(19:19):
a reasonable thing to believe. And saying well you can
just go to some other town, well that you're obviously
saying that they have a right to do this. They
just don't have a right to do it your town.
Oh that that argument was kind of thrown out by
I believe the New Jersey Supreme Court. You know, you
might be able to control, like, all right, you have
(19:40):
to have a strip club in this certain location, but
you can't ban them altogether. The yeah saying oh you
can just go to a different platform, Well that that's
kind of a tough one too. The big issue is
that TikTok is essentially owned by a foreign company and
those executive is around how to cowboy.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
So like, since we I was more stunts, I didn't
get like the whole script. I knew the gist. They're like, hey,
it's about civil war, and I was like, oh, that
makes sense, and I see the writing on the wall
in the real world. I was like this is I
was all in, like mister conspiracy, Like naw, I'm all in.
But it wasn't until I saw the movie where I
was like, this is a road trip movie. I think
we might have tested and it's it's not a war movie.
(20:23):
It's a road trip movie. Yeah, and the trailer and
I'm saying this as a fan. I loved it either way,
but I was caught off guard because I was expecting
a war movie, not a road trip movie. With the
war movie with a war in the background.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I felt the exact same way. Obviously, when we had
this conversation. But uh, you know, I felt I was
going into it not hoping, So I was going into
it expect yeah, it to be.
Speaker 6 (20:48):
A war movie.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, and we're gonna you're gonna have clear this is
the bad guy, here's a good guy, and now they're
they're warring against each other. What I really appreciated about
the film was there was no good guy bad guy.
There was a bunch of humans who were fed up
versus a bunch of humans who wanted the status quo.
(21:11):
And this is all through the lens of war journalism.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
Which is technically a trap on fix no origin, fix
no originalism. Is probably not what you crap on because now, yeah,
it's right.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, so it's like journalism. I'll crap on it today
because of the you know, bias and sides of it.
And yeah, but as far as like war journalism, and
I've sat with these guys, I've been in hum vies
with these guys, and they do exactly know minus one
or two who were over the top, and and they
(21:48):
just want to get a report in. But most of
the time they will do anything that we do as
soldiers besides firing back.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
Yeah, it's almost like having an interpreter.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Right, that's it. That is the exact thing. Yes, some
of our turps had rifles. Now to think about it,
we didn't give it to him. Yeah, you couldn't take
it away from them at the same time, Now, that
is exactly you just framed that perfectly. Yeah, we didn't
give that to you, but you can keep it on
you because we we know things happen better. But like
(22:23):
the way that I describe what I like about the
war journalism in this is and this isn't a spoiler
because it's in the previous and the previews to the
movie when they go into that shop right in West
Virginia and the male journalist is like, hey, don't you
know there's like a pretty big civil war going on
(22:46):
right now and she says, uh, and I think we
have these conversations with some people today where she says, yeah,
we just kind of try to stay out of all
of this and and that then that's what the news
tells us to do, and so we think it's just
safer that way.
Speaker 6 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And for the most part, you hear that and you
want to laugh and like you're crazy, but it pans
back to his face like it goes back to him
and throughout the scene. He does such an incredible job
and I'm sorry I forgot the name of the main
male care order. Yeah, but he does such an incredible
(23:24):
job of portraying a journalist that just heard that and
felt jealous of what of what she said. He was
jealous that she could feel that way in a civil
war and he couldn't. He legitimately could not because he's
trying to give to give the news to people.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
Yeah, he has to be in that was and I'm
beating this to death, but I was just telling somebody
prior to us talking like that was what threw me
off was I assumed civil war movie. It's literally called
civil war, so I was assuming platoon modern times, you know,
with war. But the brilliant thing and I even said
(24:08):
this disclaimer. You always know when somebody's on it, like
on the Late Show, and they're they're definitely being politically
correct because they don't want to throw a coaster under
the bus, so they don't want to say the movie
was crap. I'm too low to have to do that.
I'm at the behind of the total pulse, so I
don't have to like like lie to make this. But
I genuinely loved the fact I would have wanted like
(24:28):
I loved a war movie. So I was going in
inspecting that, but I actually was pleasantly surprised. It took
me about a week afterwards to accept it, but I
was actually pleasantly surprised with how they use the road
trip movie, the road trip genre to kind of this
is so artsy FARTSI to basically allow it to be
more receptive to all spectrums left right and read whatever
(24:51):
you want to say. But it didn't come across like
you said, one sided. It didn't come like if you
went in the whole thing about like if somebody, if
somebody says, don't think about a p Calvin, You're gonn
think about pink alvit. If somebody go ok, if somebody
goes in and goes nick Offerman's Trump, you're gonna automatically
go in there going oh.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
So they definitely have gone to college. They know investigations
and research, and they can do all of those things.
But it takes an analytical mind to make an analytical assessment,
and not everybody can do that. And on some things
I can't do it, like I'm not a financial We'll
keep going into this is a finance I'm not a
(25:27):
finance bro. I can't do financial analysis. You know, I
can see the pattern if money's going back and forth
to be the guy that's like, oh, that's an incredible
lot of amount of money, or this is an exact
amount of money that is to pay for this, which
is probably meaning this is going to a terrorist organization
(25:49):
to get a meg or something like that, and then
just use that. I can't do that.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
My friend who's in order to said numbers should never
be hull and bank transit as well. If they're if
they're exact numbers, that's the ones they look into. So
if you're going to do any shady payments, don't make them.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
All there we go out.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I'm going to clip this out and put it on
on you help some people out.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
That's what he said. He's like, yeah, as in order
to the thing you look for is just like straight numbers,
because in finance, no numbers are like perfect. They're all
to the like random sents and dollars.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, which makes sense just speaking about it now, it
makes sense. And that's the the analytical processes just to
have a logical conclusion to it. So when somebody says,
you know, round numbers are not good in financial transactions.
You start thinking, yeah, when was the last time I
had a round number from work for you know, somebody
(26:49):
paying me.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Especially as soon as the ir Yeah, as soon as
you introduced tax a currency exchange. There's no one in
a million shots.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
And that's and that's what you try to do.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
You you're you're looking at something and going and that's
why you don't. I don't go zero percent because look
at something. Asad's plane was shot down by Russia and
he died in the plane crash.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Well, it's not zero.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Percent that that happened, but it is highly unlikely and
we should probably look into that. And very quickly we
all understood that that didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
And he was signed Moscow hoped that little hit up
in Moscow and one of its fourteen like multi million
dollar properties that he owns it. Oh Man Yeap kind
of mentioned when Syrian people's money.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Went, Yeah, I can't imagine. So that was that was
something that we saw right after the invasion of Iraq
in two thousand and three. So we made the push
and we took over. We the US military with you know, NATO,
forces and took over all of those compounds that Saddam had,
(27:56):
and we had the Iraqis coming on to work on
the bays and stuff like that. And I know this
being in Baghdad and being part of uh was Camp Liberty,
Camp Victory. All those areas which were Saddam some had
compounds there. And he had these vast lakes, man made
lakes filled with water. And the people were just like
(28:22):
they're doing here in California and stuff, not able to
use their water. There was a drought. Farmers were dying,
their crops were all dying out because they had no water.
And the Saddam regime told them, well, look, it's a
drought and this is just what everybody's gonna have to
deal with. And when they came on the base, they
asked us where did you get all that water to
(28:44):
fill these lakes up with? And I was like, uh, Saddam,
Hussein did that, Ude and Kusay did that. We didn't
do that. And their mind was just blown. They did
not understand that so much of their life life was
ruined because of one man and his family controlling an
(29:05):
entire country and now they're seeing it with a sod.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So what the hell do you expect?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, right, and and so then that gets us to
the question of what the hell is Putin doing? And
and I know that that sort of like tongue in
cheek because we all know what he's doing, but he is.
He's got this thing where he's being putin right, and
he's saying, yeah, I want to you know, I want
to cease fire or I want peace, I want true
(29:32):
peace because I want our soldiers to stop dying. And
then he conscripts hundreds of thousands of new Russians over
the next few years and just continues, you know, firing
popshots at Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
And so what potent Putin's not interested in peace.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
He doesn't give a rats ass about the lives of
the soldiers that are, you know, being thrown out in
front of the cannons on the battlefield. And that's that's
not his game plan, right, He's he's been pretty clear
about that. It's just it's been interesting that for a
period of time, whether they believed it or not, I
don't know, but they certainly acted as if they believed it.
(30:13):
And maybe that was a negotiating tactic, but the White House,
you know, acting as if Putin wants peace, and you know,
he's going to come to the negotiating table if we
could just get the Ukrainians on board. Right, So there
was a strange narrative for a short while in the
recent past where people, you know, because of what was
coming out of the White House again, could have been
a tactical plan on their part, you know, to do that.
(30:34):
But there was people out there genuinely thinking, well, you're yeah, yeah,
Zelenski's the problem here. Yeah, he's he's just a roadblock
to peace, you know, because if he would agree, then
then you know, Putin of course would want to sit
down and negotiate. What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I mean that what with nonsense?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So now it's starting to come out, you know, and
it looks like President Trump is you know, is rightly
so getting pissed off. But you know they should have
anticipated this to begin with, right, Putin is making incremental
you know, advances on the battlefield. He believes he's in
the driver's seat. He's watching the US slowly back away
(31:10):
from Ukraine. And so then you have to ask yourself, well,
why would he be so desperate to come to the
negotiating table. And as you pointed out, he's just put
out in order to conscript one hundred and sixty thousand
more troops, right, not typically something you do if you're anticipating,
you know, a ceasefire and a peace settlement. So you know,
(31:31):
and one of the Kremlin advisors just came out with,
you know, what I think is probably the clearest statement
of Putin's intentions, which is, you know, he was caught saying, well, look,
you know, while the US is backing away from Ukraine
and while we're winning on the battlefield, you know, why
would we stop now?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So absolutely, why would you stop when you could maybe
get Kiev without doing anything anything more?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, you could if you just me if this thing
were to drag on.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Look, and everybody agrees, for the most part, Russia's economy is,
you know, is having serious issues.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
And yes, you know, he's he's.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Got a variety of problems in terms of you know, manpower,
although he's got a three to one man power advantage
on Ukraine. So he's getting support from China. The Chinese
regime support has been you know, critical to keeping that
war machine moving. He's got support from Iran and certainly
from North Korea, not only munitions but troops. So I
(32:36):
think we need to look at this in a different
way than than the way it's been framed. So, you know,
if that's the case, and we believe that the Russian
economy is the weak link here, then we should be
doing everything possible to squeeze that economy, right, and that
means we've got to figure out a way to actually
shut off money going to Pudin through his energy sector.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And the tough part.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
There is that the EU and the US are still
buying Russian uh you know, oil and gas. You know,
it gets refined elsewhere, oftentimes from India, but we're you know,
we're buying it. So we might want to rethink that strategy.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, I don't think a lot of people understand that
that a lot comes a lot of gas, natural gas,
oil comes from Russia and we're still buying it. That
the US is still buying it no matter how many
sanctions we put And that's a big joke on on
my podcast on you know, sanctions. Sanctions don't do anything
(33:45):
unless you're actually gonna hold people's feet to the fire.
It's really not doing anything. We saw that, So what
do we what Trump very famously now told Sizzolenski doesn't
have any He's not holding any cards, right, he doesn't
have any of the cards. What cards does the US
(34:07):
have against putin to say you need to agree to
this right now?
Speaker 4 (34:12):
Yeah, I mean really it's it's economic leverage is about
the only thing that the US has at this stage,
unless they intends to, you know, significantly upgun. You know
the Ukrainian military, right, I mean, if it's so, you've
Those are the options on the old decision tree.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.