January 20, 2026 • 12 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Fifty five KRC Dan Carroll in for Brian Thomas coming
down the final half hour of the show today, and
my great honor to welcome in Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis,
retired from the United States Army, a analyst of all
things that deal with Warren policy and Daniel Davis. Great
(00:29):
to have you on the show this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
How are you, sir, I'm doing really well. Thanks for
having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Thank thank you for being here. I think a lot
of Americans have been trying over the last several weeks,
ever since the Maduro Caper. Well actually, I would say
starting with blowing the Venezuelan drug boats out of the water,
and then we roll in there and we get Madua
out of there, and he's on trial now, and we
just saw a lot of I think it was thirteen
(00:57):
individuals who were guarding him come in from q A
lot of people trying to get their head around, you know,
why are we taking these actions in Venezuela. And I
fought from the very beginning that this is part of
a larger play on foreign policy with what's happening in Venezuela.
Give me your take on what we've seen as it
(01:18):
relates to Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It's a bit of a puzzle, we have to admit,
because a lot of the stated reasons seem to have
just vanished over not which was always about national security
for the United States. It was about keeping the drugs
out of the United States, even though by our own accounting,
even by the administration itself, that the priority are the
primary number of fentanyl, for example, and even cocaine comes
(01:42):
out of Columbia, comes out of Mexico. Ironically, even China
and India. People are not aware of that those two
especially and a very small amount had even comes out
of Venezuela. Most of what is produced there goes to Europe, interestingly,
So that was the claim. But then we went in,
we took him out, we knocked out a lot of
(02:02):
those drug boats, et cetera. And then after we take
took Maduro, you haven't heard any I haven't seen a
single report of a drug boat being taken out since
that time. So I don't know why that would have
stopped if it was about drugs into the US. But
then of course we have the focus on Actually it's
about oil and about taking the oil infrastructure, setting up
this long term situation where the United States controls the
(02:24):
oil coming out, and we left the madurod government in
the Maduro himself was taken out, but the government was
left in place. And other than the fact that we
now have access to the Venezuelan oil, not much else
has changed.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well. I think from the very beginning it was all
about the oil. And one of ven Azuela's largest customers,
if not the largest customer, is China, and China gets
a lot of it's oil from Venezuela. I believe Iran
gets a lot of their oil from Venezuela as well,
or they've got some kind of relationship going on there.
(02:59):
So I look at this as a positioning move on
the part of Trump and Marco Rubio to I guess,
facilitate whatever it is they want to get out of
Iran and whatever they want to get out of China.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, yeah, I mean, you really can't not acknowledge those
facts there. And you can add Cuba into that mix
because they got most of their oil from Venezuela, or
at least a large portion of it. So that's that's
a big question. What's going to happen to that country internally.
That's something that apparently Marco Rubio is quite excited about
the possibility of bringing down that government. But you know,
we have to look at it from a national security perspective,
(03:37):
from a diplomatic perspective in the United States, and I'm
just not sure how that benefits us and upon what
basis and what legality or any other kind of morality
can we just say we're going to take the head
of state out of a country, We're going to take
their natural resources and drive China and Russia out of
that market. I mean, we always talk about how we
(03:59):
want the globe comments to be open to everybody, to
include areas in Asia and in Europe and in the
South America, et cetera. We want to keep everything open.
But now we're saying it's only open to us, so
we're going to literally drive out other people. And looking
at when you take actions like this, very often there's
a tip for tat there's a reaction. People are not
just going to be driven out of a market and
do nothing. We could find ourselves potentially being blocked out
(04:22):
of other markets that we want to be in. So
it's a problem when we say we want the rule
of law and the open global commons in one hand,
but then we take it by force in another it
just doesn't play out well for us.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, that's that's a good point. Well, let me ask
you about this. How interested were you to read about
the operation that was conducted to get Maduro out of
there and the information that came out afterwards about these
sonic weapons that the United States may have used during
that operation that incapacitated these these guardsmen. And I guess
(05:00):
you bleed from the years, and you bleed from the
eyes and all that sort of thing. This use of
this sonic weapon in order to make this operation take place,
is that something you knew about or is that something
that is relatively new on the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It's relatively new on the scene in terms of its
production and performance in a real operation. It's been something
that's been deployed for quite a long time. I remember
in the mid two thousands, when I was still in
active duty, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems
at Ford Plis, Texas, where we were doing a lot
of futures things, and one of the weapons systems that
was publicly being developed at that time was a microwavetop
(05:38):
technology that does those kinds of things. We didn't hear
a lot about it after that, but obviously, at least
according to reports. I don't have any insider info, but
just according to reports, it just kind of went dark.
No one was talking much about it. Now this is
the first time I'm aware that something has occurred in
an operational environment. So you can be sure that this
is like everything else you ever see in war. Once
(05:59):
something and it opens on the scene, others are going
to emulate it. So's it was helpful to us in
this operation here, but we can probably count on it
at some point where it's going to be used against
us as well. That's just the nature of war.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, and my next question was going to be, doesn't
send a message to those who might be our enemies
that look, here's another component that you're going to have
to deal with.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, it is. I mean that, of course, we see
that on routine display in the Russia Ukraine War about
the development of various types of drones counter drone technology,
and then the other side always emulates it, tries to
improve upon it, then the other side tries to counter it,
et cetera. And that is definitely a play here where
our adversaries are saying, okay, I see that that works.
Let me develop one, because it's been out in the
(06:44):
open anyway. I'm sure they didn't do it anyway, but
if if they needed any incentive to accelerate their valuement,
it's now.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
In your opinion, How much trouble is the leadership in
iron How much trouble are they in? And the reports
of this that there are billions, millions or billions of
dollars that are leaving the country, and Scott Descent was
talking about that over the weekend, that they're seeing all
this money being deposited in other banks around the world.
(07:14):
How much trouble is the leadership in in Iran in
the face of these demonstrations that we've seen in the streets.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, there is no question that they are in a
weakened position from what they were prior to the twenty
eighth of December when a lot of this stuff started.
But I think that it's an exaggeration to say they're
in a seriously weakened position. So far, we've seen that
they the regime has been able to handle this. They've
been able to crack down on a lot of this
descent that happened. And we also have to acknowledge that
a lot of the descent, according to Mike Pompeo, was
(07:45):
because of we and the Mosade and probably m I
six were part of actively trying to foment a lot
of this stuff. So it's trying to create more because
there's already a fisher there. There's already weakness because of
the regime itself. There's also a weakness because of these
sanctions we've imposed upon them to try to bring their
economy to crashing to the floor. Anyway, So a lot
of these things have existed before, but so far, it
(08:08):
appears that the Iranian government is whethered the worst of
the storm here. And then the real question is, since
that appears to be the case, now, what is the
Trump administration and the Israelis going to do? Because it
looks to me like that they're getting ready to do
something bigger than what they might have done earlier this month.
According to Lindsey Graham, anyway, something bigger is coming and
a regime change operation is coming. We'll see if that's
(08:30):
just hyperbole or if we see another attack.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, I mean, what do you think the next step
would be? Because I feel pretty confident in saying that
there really is no appetite in this country to see
anything that looks like boots on the ground in in Iran.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
That is the real problem to some of these people
who want regime change. They want regime change on the cheap,
and they want it with that with cost free. Lindsay
Graham and his pronouncement of this last I think Friday
made this comment that, yeah, once that the regime is dropped,
it's gonna usher in a whole new era. And I
just couldn't help but cringe. I'm like, dude, you realize
that's exactly what the United States said in the Bush
(09:15):
administration before Iraq in two thousand and three. And we
see how that turned out, and we see it nearly
always turns out like that. And if you think you
can go on on the cheap and just throw a
few missiles out there and that's going to make the
regime fall and it's going to be great after that, Man,
you hadn't been paying attention to world history or paying
any attention to human nature. It's almost certainly not going
to work out that way. And the regime is aware
(09:38):
of our plans, and they have plans. They have con
continuity of government plans. So even if you took out
the Ayatola, they said, by the way, that would be
full on war. And now then they have no reason
to withhold and they would attack other Americans in the region.
We don't want a situation to where we bring our
own troops else in the region under fire. And by
the way, their missiles can penetrate our air defense out
(09:59):
there they choose to, they can reach a wreak a
lot of damage and death on our troops. And I
hope we don't find out.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, when you when you look at green have
you ever been to Greenland? By the way, a beautiful cloud?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Okay, been to Austin, had been to Greenland?
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Right, But when it when it comes to Greenland, I
think it's easy to make the and and understand the
argument for its its position on the on the on
the globe, why it would be a strategic importance for
the United States. Uh, I don't know that I can
get my head around with. You know what has been
coming from the administration as far as wanting to have
(10:38):
more influence in Greenland? How do you size up that situation?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Look, here's the here's the troubling part about all this,
This claim that we have to have Greenland or our
national security will be at risk, and Denmark camp defend it,
et cetera. Denmark has never defended Greenland. It's always been NATO.
It's got Article five protections, the same as every other
NATO country. So I mean, just like you'd say, well,
(11:05):
you can't say Lithuania, the little Lithuania can defend itself
against Russia. It can't. That's why it's a part of NATO,
because it wants that protection. The same would be for Greenland.
But the other issue that I talk about is that look,
even when you look at Russia, why in the world
would Russia ever want Greenland to risk an Article five
attack against a nuclear powered alliance when it already has
(11:27):
a massive Arctic presence on its own border. China is
even worse. China wants access to the Arctic free economic reasons,
but they don't have the military to project naval and
air power to even make an attempt to seize it.
So there is literally there is no risk from it.
Our Article five already protects it. And by the way,
if you want it for air defense or this Golden
(11:49):
Dome situation, you already have that with the treaties that
we have in place, we can expand our footprint. We
don't need to own it in order to have those
things met. So I don't really understand the really at
the heart of why President Trump seems so emphatic about
owning it because it comes a great cost to us,
and I'm talking great cost over an extended period of time.
(12:09):
I don't know that he's thought through a lot of that,
because I think if he did, he would see we
don't want to saddle our country with billions of dollars
already going to another country just to keep them afloat.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
All right, Well, Daniel Davis, Lieutenant colonel retired from the Army,
and thank you so much for your perspective this morning.
Great to have you on for the fifty five KRC
Morning Show, and keep up the great work. I certainly
hope we can get a chance to talk on down
the road or too.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Thank you a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
All right, thank you very much, and with that we
will get to a break eight forty two on fifty
five KRC de Talk Station. Now that a new year
is here, Start twenty twenty six,
Fifty five KRC Dan Carroll in for Brian Thomas coming
down the final half hour of the show today, and
my great honor to welcome in Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis,
retired from the United States Army, a analyst of all
things that deal with Warren policy and Daniel Davis. Great
(00:29):
to have you on the show this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
How are you, sir, I'm doing really well. Thanks for
having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Thank thank you for being here. I think a lot
of Americans have been trying over the last several weeks,
ever since the Maduro Caper. Well actually, I would say
starting with blowing the Venezuelan drug boats out of the water,
and then we roll in there and we get Madua
out of there, and he's on trial now, and we
just saw a lot of I think it was thirteen
(00:57):
individuals who were guarding him come in from q A
lot of people trying to get their head around, you know,
why are we taking these actions in Venezuela. And I
fought from the very beginning that this is part of
a larger play on foreign policy with what's happening in Venezuela.
Give me your take on what we've seen as it
(01:18):
relates to Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It's a bit of a puzzle, we have to admit,
because a lot of the stated reasons seem to have
just vanished over not which was always about national security
for the United States. It was about keeping the drugs
out of the United States, even though by our own accounting,
even by the administration itself, that the priority are the
primary number of fentanyl, for example, and even cocaine comes
(01:42):
out of Columbia, comes out of Mexico. Ironically, even China
and India. People are not aware of that those two
especially and a very small amount had even comes out
of Venezuela. Most of what is produced there goes to Europe, interestingly,
So that was the claim. But then we went in,
we took him out, we knocked out a lot of
(02:02):
those drug boats, et cetera. And then after we take
took Maduro, you haven't heard any I haven't seen a
single report of a drug boat being taken out since
that time. So I don't know why that would have
stopped if it was about drugs into the US. But
then of course we have the focus on Actually it's
about oil and about taking the oil infrastructure, setting up
this long term situation where the United States controls the
(02:24):
oil coming out, and we left the madurod government in
the Maduro himself was taken out, but the government was
left in place. And other than the fact that we
now have access to the Venezuelan oil, not much else
has changed.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well. I think from the very beginning it was all
about the oil. And one of ven Azuela's largest customers,
if not the largest customer, is China, and China gets
a lot of it's oil from Venezuela. I believe Iran
gets a lot of their oil from Venezuela as well,
or they've got some kind of relationship going on there.
(02:59):
So I look at this as a positioning move on
the part of Trump and Marco Rubio to I guess,
facilitate whatever it is they want to get out of
Iran and whatever they want to get out of China.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, yeah, I mean, you really can't not acknowledge those
facts there. And you can add Cuba into that mix
because they got most of their oil from Venezuela, or
at least a large portion of it. So that's that's
a big question. What's going to happen to that country internally.
That's something that apparently Marco Rubio is quite excited about
the possibility of bringing down that government. But you know,
we have to look at it from a national security perspective,
(03:37):
from a diplomatic perspective in the United States, and I'm
just not sure how that benefits us and upon what
basis and what legality or any other kind of morality
can we just say we're going to take the head
of state out of a country, We're going to take
their natural resources and drive China and Russia out of
that market. I mean, we always talk about how we
(03:59):
want the globe comments to be open to everybody, to
include areas in Asia and in Europe and in the
South America, et cetera. We want to keep everything open.
But now we're saying it's only open to us, so
we're going to literally drive out other people. And looking
at when you take actions like this, very often there's
a tip for tat there's a reaction. People are not
just going to be driven out of a market and
do nothing. We could find ourselves potentially being blocked out
(04:22):
of other markets that we want to be in. So
it's a problem when we say we want the rule
of law and the open global commons in one hand,
but then we take it by force in another it
just doesn't play out well for us.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, that's that's a good point. Well, let me ask
you about this. How interested were you to read about
the operation that was conducted to get Maduro out of
there and the information that came out afterwards about these
sonic weapons that the United States may have used during
that operation that incapacitated these these guardsmen. And I guess
(05:00):
you bleed from the years, and you bleed from the
eyes and all that sort of thing. This use of
this sonic weapon in order to make this operation take place,
is that something you knew about or is that something
that is relatively new on the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It's relatively new on the scene in terms of its
production and performance in a real operation. It's been something
that's been deployed for quite a long time. I remember
in the mid two thousands, when I was still in
active duty, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems
at Ford Plis, Texas, where we were doing a lot
of futures things, and one of the weapons systems that
was publicly being developed at that time was a microwavetop
(05:38):
technology that does those kinds of things. We didn't hear
a lot about it after that, but obviously, at least
according to reports. I don't have any insider info, but
just according to reports, it just kind of went dark.
No one was talking much about it. Now this is
the first time I'm aware that something has occurred in
an operational environment. So you can be sure that this
is like everything else you ever see in war. Once
(05:59):
something and it opens on the scene, others are going
to emulate it. So's it was helpful to us in
this operation here, but we can probably count on it
at some point where it's going to be used against
us as well. That's just the nature of war.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, and my next question was going to be, doesn't
send a message to those who might be our enemies
that look, here's another component that you're going to have
to deal with.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, it is. I mean that, of course, we see
that on routine display in the Russia Ukraine War about
the development of various types of drones counter drone technology,
and then the other side always emulates it, tries to
improve upon it, then the other side tries to counter it,
et cetera. And that is definitely a play here where
our adversaries are saying, okay, I see that that works.
Let me develop one, because it's been out in the
(06:44):
open anyway. I'm sure they didn't do it anyway, but
if if they needed any incentive to accelerate their valuement,
it's now.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
In your opinion, How much trouble is the leadership in
iron How much trouble are they in? And the reports
of this that there are billions, millions or billions of
dollars that are leaving the country, and Scott Descent was
talking about that over the weekend, that they're seeing all
this money being deposited in other banks around the world.
(07:14):
How much trouble is the leadership in in Iran in
the face of these demonstrations that we've seen in the streets.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, there is no question that they are in a
weakened position from what they were prior to the twenty
eighth of December when a lot of this stuff started.
But I think that it's an exaggeration to say they're
in a seriously weakened position. So far, we've seen that
they the regime has been able to handle this. They've
been able to crack down on a lot of this
descent that happened. And we also have to acknowledge that
a lot of the descent, according to Mike Pompeo, was
(07:45):
because of we and the Mosade and probably m I
six were part of actively trying to foment a lot
of this stuff. So it's trying to create more because
there's already a fisher there. There's already weakness because of
the regime itself. There's also a weakness because of these
sanctions we've imposed upon them to try to bring their
economy to crashing to the floor. Anyway, So a lot
of these things have existed before, but so far, it
(08:08):
appears that the Iranian government is whethered the worst of
the storm here. And then the real question is, since
that appears to be the case, now, what is the
Trump administration and the Israelis going to do? Because it
looks to me like that they're getting ready to do
something bigger than what they might have done earlier this month.
According to Lindsey Graham, anyway, something bigger is coming and
a regime change operation is coming. We'll see if that's
(08:30):
just hyperbole or if we see another attack.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, I mean, what do you think the next step
would be? Because I feel pretty confident in saying that
there really is no appetite in this country to see
anything that looks like boots on the ground in in Iran.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
That is the real problem to some of these people
who want regime change. They want regime change on the cheap,
and they want it with that with cost free. Lindsay
Graham and his pronouncement of this last I think Friday
made this comment that, yeah, once that the regime is dropped,
it's gonna usher in a whole new era. And I
just couldn't help but cringe. I'm like, dude, you realize
that's exactly what the United States said in the Bush
(09:15):
administration before Iraq in two thousand and three. And we
see how that turned out, and we see it nearly
always turns out like that. And if you think you
can go on on the cheap and just throw a
few missiles out there and that's going to make the
regime fall and it's going to be great after that, Man,
you hadn't been paying attention to world history or paying
any attention to human nature. It's almost certainly not going
to work out that way. And the regime is aware
(09:38):
of our plans, and they have plans. They have con
continuity of government plans. So even if you took out
the Ayatola, they said, by the way, that would be
full on war. And now then they have no reason
to withhold and they would attack other Americans in the region.
We don't want a situation to where we bring our
own troops else in the region under fire. And by
the way, their missiles can penetrate our air defense out
(09:59):
there they choose to, they can reach a wreak a
lot of damage and death on our troops. And I
hope we don't find out.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, when you when you look at green have
you ever been to Greenland? By the way, a beautiful cloud?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Okay, been to Austin, had been to Greenland?
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Right, But when it when it comes to Greenland, I
think it's easy to make the and and understand the
argument for its its position on the on the on
the globe, why it would be a strategic importance for
the United States. Uh, I don't know that I can
get my head around with. You know what has been
coming from the administration as far as wanting to have
(10:38):
more influence in Greenland? How do you size up that situation?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Look, here's the here's the troubling part about all this,
This claim that we have to have Greenland or our
national security will be at risk, and Denmark camp defend it,
et cetera. Denmark has never defended Greenland. It's always been NATO.
It's got Article five protections, the same as every other
NATO country. So I mean, just like you'd say, well,
(11:05):
you can't say Lithuania, the little Lithuania can defend itself
against Russia. It can't. That's why it's a part of NATO,
because it wants that protection. The same would be for Greenland.
But the other issue that I talk about is that look,
even when you look at Russia, why in the world
would Russia ever want Greenland to risk an Article five
attack against a nuclear powered alliance when it already has
(11:27):
a massive Arctic presence on its own border. China is
even worse. China wants access to the Arctic free economic reasons,
but they don't have the military to project naval and
air power to even make an attempt to seize it.
So there is literally there is no risk from it.
Our Article five already protects it. And by the way,
if you want it for air defense or this Golden
(11:49):
Dome situation, you already have that with the treaties that
we have in place, we can expand our footprint. We
don't need to own it in order to have those
things met. So I don't really understand the really at
the heart of why President Trump seems so emphatic about
owning it because it comes a great cost to us,
and I'm talking great cost over an extended period of time.
(12:09):
I don't know that he's thought through a lot of that,
because I think if he did, he would see we
don't want to saddle our country with billions of dollars
already going to another country just to keep them afloat.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
All right, Well, Daniel Davis, Lieutenant colonel retired from the Army,
and thank you so much for your perspective this morning.
Great to have you on for the fifty five KRC
Morning Show, and keep up the great work. I certainly
hope we can get a chance to talk on down
the road or too.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Thank you a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
All right, thank you very much, and with that we
will get to a break eight forty two on fifty
five KRC de Talk Station. Now that a new year
is here, Start twenty twenty six,
Brian Thomas News
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