September 23, 2025 • 50 mins
Tonight on The Brian Crombie Hour, Brian interviews Brian Iselin about the state of the war in Ukraine. Brian Iselin, the founder of the European Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers, discusses the war in Ukraine, Russian drone incidents, and technological advancements in war. Russia is facing significant military decline and is unlikely to sustain its current military efforts past 2026.
Iselin details the high rates of troop and equipment losses suffered by Russia, noting that their replacement and production rates are insufficient to counteract the attrition. He also highlighted the severe strain on Russia's social and economic systems due to the war, including the overburdening of healthcare and social security systems. Iselin concludes that Ukraine's strategy of waiting out Russia may ultimately lead to the latter's collapse, though this could happen suddenly once certain thresholds are reached.
Brian Iselin's expertise in intelligence and strategic matters, particularly regarding the war in Ukraine and Russia's military situation, provides insights on various geopolitical topics including Western support for Ukraine, NATO cohesion, and the impact of sanctions on Russia's oil revenue. The conversation concludes with discussions about emerging technologies like AI-controlled fighter jets and non-lethal warfare tactics, along with analysis of political challenges in the European Parliament.
Iselin details the high rates of troop and equipment losses suffered by Russia, noting that their replacement and production rates are insufficient to counteract the attrition. He also highlighted the severe strain on Russia's social and economic systems due to the war, including the overburdening of healthcare and social security systems. Iselin concludes that Ukraine's strategy of waiting out Russia may ultimately lead to the latter's collapse, though this could happen suddenly once certain thresholds are reached.
Brian Iselin's expertise in intelligence and strategic matters, particularly regarding the war in Ukraine and Russia's military situation, provides insights on various geopolitical topics including Western support for Ukraine, NATO cohesion, and the impact of sanctions on Russia's oil revenue. The conversation concludes with discussions about emerging technologies like AI-controlled fighter jets and non-lethal warfare tactics, along with analysis of political challenges in the European Parliament.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Saga nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Brian crimeby Radio
R come across a really interesting gentleman who posts quite
frequently on social media. He's coming to us from Brussels,
in Belgium and Europe. He is the founder of an
organization called the European Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers, and
he describes himself as a trusted advisor in security, defense
(00:39):
and international relations, a strategic bid writer, an intelligence led
product brokerage, a champion for human rights, integration and business.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And he's an.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Incredibly articulate gentleman who writes quite voluminously about what's going
on in the war in Ukraine, what's going on in
Eastern Europe, and also about things like batteries and jets
and AI and stuff like that. And so it's gonna
be a real pleasure to chat with Brian Islin tonight.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Brian, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Thanks very much, it's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's great to have you, sir, and I really do
enjoy your your very frequent articles and posts about what's
going on in Europe, and particularly in Eastern Europe with
the war in Ukraine. I'm going to come back and
describe your business and you in greater detail in a
couple of minutes, but just off the top, You've posted
a lot recently about the Russian drones that that have
(01:32):
flown across Poland and some other countries. You've posted a
lot about the Ukrainian drones that have been destroying Russian infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
You've posted about the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Where do you think we are, sir, right now in
regards to the chance for peace or the prolonged war.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
If you looked at all of the indicators of the
decline of the Petro state, Russia is seriously in decline
and seriously running out of time. So Putin's back is
against the wall. At the same time, Putin's ego is
one of those ones where he is never going to
admit that his survival is almost the only thing in
his mind and it doesn't matter what it costs. And
(02:15):
the closer we get to the collapse, you know, collapses
of states come very slowly but then very suddenly. So
the point is you won't really see it you'll see
indicators up until the point where it collapses, but then
it'll really collapse quickly. And we're really getting close to
that point. Let's call it an inflection point. You know, militarily,
(02:36):
he's losing a phenomenal number of units, a number of people,
and you can actually chart the rate of decline. And
you know, wherever I write, people are always asking, well,
how long until it collapses? We've been waiting and waiting,
so I always put timelines on it. So, from the
Petro state perspective, mid twenty twenty six, he's done his
(02:56):
military budget, the defense, the how much it's so let's say,
riping and pillaging the domestic budget for everything else society's
putting up with it, and his military decline. It's all
twenty twenty six. It's the early end of twenty twenty six.
He can't sustain his military past the end of twenty
twenty six. It's that simple. So he's buying time.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's always got you wrote about this about a week
is that you wrote about this about a week ago.
Let me quote from your article if I could. Russia's
war in Ukraine has claimed over one million troops, turned
thousands of tanks into twisted metal and gutted its military
for inches of scorched land. Yet Mosca still claims it's winning.
(03:39):
In this investigation, you say that you exposed the real
cost of Putin's delusion, mass graves, rusting armor and a
future mortgage to blood back by battlefield data, satellite confirmed losses,
and war zone images.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
This is a must absorb article.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And you said Russia's army is dying by the hour.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Seriously, Yeah, absolutely. I mean he's lost eleven thousand tanks,
armored vehicles, so that's armored fighting vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles.
He's lost twenty three thousand at last count, and artillery,
which is of course, as the Ukraine War has proved,
artillery is not at all dead. Artillery is way back
(04:18):
in the center of the battlefield. He's lost thirty two
thousand artillery systems. You know, these are completely unsustainable. I
put the numbers together about what I wanted to show
was what the replacement rate was, right, So of his
troops at the moment, he's losing roughly forty to fifty
thousand troops a month, and that's been higher at various
(04:40):
stages when he was when he was basically laying siege
to Bachmud, for example, he was losing up to eighty
thousand a day, sorry a month. Now he's replacing them
at a rate of thirty thousand with awful troops. You know,
quality is terrible. They're talking, they're talking, you know, the prisoners,
for example, getting between one and five days of training.
(05:00):
Many hit the field without having fired a shot. So
his replacement rate is nowhere near the rate of attrition,
huge attrition. Annual production of tanks. He's producing, you know,
sixty to seventy tanks. And he started, of course bringing
back the refurbished nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties tanks and
putting them into battle. So he's you know, he's absolutely
(05:24):
back to the wall and these numbers and yeah, one
point one million casualties to date in this war. So
what I think is really important is to think about
the percentages of loss versus the stock that he had.
You know, everybody talks about him expecting the wall to
be done in three days, and he really did believe that.
(05:46):
And if you look at the loss of tanks, for example,
he's now three hundred and eighty five percent over what
he expected. The estimated losses three hundred and eighty five
percent above one IVS avis, the fighting vehicles four hundred
and forty nine percent over on the artillery. And as
I said, this is really at the core of his battle.
(06:08):
He pounds and pounds and pounds because it doesn't cost troops, right,
he doesn't have to put people up against the wall,
which he's happy to do, but he would rather not
because he just feeds the attrition rate. But seven hundred
and seventy percent or eight hundred percent, if comparing to
the including stored a massive overshoot of what he expected
(06:31):
to be losing in this war, and he can't replace them.
You know, he's thirty two thousand, thirty three thousand artillery pieces.
He's bringing up about one thousand or nineteen hundred units
a month, and he just can't. He just can't achieve
what he's expected, what he expected to achieve, and his
attrition rate is phenomenal. And I think one of the
(06:52):
interesting things about the casualty numbers one point one million,
it's the breakdown. It's casualties. The breakdown is killed, the maimed,
let's say, and missing mia as well as included in that.
So On one side, he's losing soldiers a lot to injury,
being maimed, for example, now they go into a social
(07:14):
security system. Effectively, they've got to go to hospitals unless
his soldiers shoot the injured, which is happening. There's lots
of recorded incidents.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Soldiers are shooting the injured really.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, yeah, instead of trying to battlefield evacuate them, they're
killing their own wounded. In many cases, there's been video
examples of that from Ukrainian drones and the Russians shooting
the wounded in their head. So this is happening. They
don't want to bring wounded back when it slows them down.
It's a vulnerability, which is of course why a lot
of militaries seek to aim maime or injured soldiers rather
(07:48):
than kill them. Because each injured soldier that takes three
people to evacuate him. So there's a huge, let's say,
a loss to effectiveness for every wounded soldier. So yeah,
they're killing their own, but at the same time those
they're sending back. He is eating into the civilly civilian economy,
which includes hospital care and the like. He's eating into
(08:08):
that phenomenally. His military budget, the military is taking forty
percent of the government budget, government spent. That is massive.
He's basically depleted the National Wealth Fund, which is the
money behind society meant to shore it up. His social
security and the health system are absolutely overtaxed, and so
(08:28):
this is causing an interesting thing. He's getting more and
more injured going back into that system, and at the
same time he can't help them. So everything is getting
everything is getting squeezed. He's really made a phenomenal mistake
with Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
To put it in perspective, one of the senses that
you had that really stuck with me is that as
many people have been killed in this as many Russian
soldiers have been killed, as the army was in.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Size prior to this attack. So he's destroyed a.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Whole army, one whole army.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, it has. And you know he's lost he's lost
more tanks than he had originally. So he's got all
sorts of problems on his hands from attrition. Now, this
is something he didn't expect, right, as I said.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Three days a week or two.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Yeah, he wasn't expecting to be the victim of attrition,
because how many times in history have we seen the
large attacker of let's say a city putting it under siege.
How often have we seen them the victim of attrition.
We've had the people inside victim of attrition. Right, they
just have to be waited out. Well, in fact, in
this case, Ukraine just has to wait out Russia because
(09:41):
he is collapsing. It's just a matter of you know
that that tipping point where the slow collapse becomes a
sudden collapse.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Okay, but you pointed out, you pointed out your article, Sir,
you said that what they're hoping for, what they're dreaming of,
what they're waiting for, is uh is the West to
stop supporting Ukraine. Because you're saying the only way that
Ukraine has been able to withstand this is because of
Western support. So what's your assessment rate? You're in Belgium,
you're an intelligence officer. You see what's going on. Do
(10:14):
you think Western.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Is gonna Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:18):
Putin's doing everything. Putin's doing everything you can to influence
the calculus within NATO of whether they continue to support
or knock. So he's actually trying to do things like
the incursions over Poland and Estonia and the cutting abundan
sea cables. And so on. What he's doing is actually
creating an environment where because he's probing us and we're
not responding effectively, he's he's actually splitting us. He's dividing
(10:43):
NATO into hawks and doves in a way, and that
slows us down, and it also undermines our ability to
defend and support Ukraine. While we have these gaps exposed
by his incursions over Estonia, we're not focused on our
continued to Ukraine. And so we will see I think
we're already seeing this. We will see NATO members with
(11:07):
drawing their support for Ukraine. We're already seeing, you know,
Slovakia is questioning it, Hungary is not supporting Ukraine. And
so there are countries in the region that are just
not stepping up and they cause they're effectively quizzlings for us.
They are traitors to what Europe needs to be. And
that's what he's counting on. He's splitting us with these
(11:28):
diversionary tactics.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And I don't understand. I apologize.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
You know, if there's a threat to Poland, if there's
a threat to Estonia with drones, I would have thought
that would have become you know, even more persuasive that
NATO's got to stand up and stop it. Why is
this distraction a problem?
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Do you think because it's a The thing is, it's
not everybody is committed to the idea that we need
to respond. There are a lot of countries on the
border that are quite afraid, and I think some of
the largest states actually are also a bit afraid of responding.
You're not going to see Germany responding very quickly to
these things. For example, Poland wants to Poland just didn't
(12:06):
have what was in place necessary to shoot down those drones.
They were relying on a NATO responsor. In fact, Poland
should have had its own. So I think that he
is doing this specific doing these things specifically to divide us,
and the intention being to conquer us right to make
us back down. He doesn't want war. Let me just say,
(12:28):
I don't think he wants war. He's doing everything he
can stopping short of war, to upset the balance in
the region because that's his game. He's a one hundred
percent control freak and he just wants to feel powerful.
He wants to make us back down at every opportunity,
and to make us question ourselves and question each other,
(12:49):
and at the moment that's working. Member states. Member states
are questioning each other Native member states, not necessarily EU
member states. But he's achieving is objectives in that regard.
NATO hasn't responded in any worthwhile way, and all that's
done is caused internal discord and that's got to be fixed.
(13:10):
And I think, you know, if we're looking at the
NATO concept, the United States has seriously let us down there.
I don't know the ins and outs of what happened
over Estonia and the decision making of the Estonians not
to shoot down these MiGs mix thirty ones. As you know,
three meg thirty ones flew over Estonia twelve minutes in
Estonian airspace and they weren't shut down. They absolutely should
(13:32):
have been shot down. But it very clearly demonstrated, not
just to Putin but also to ourselves that the Union
is not a union at all. We're not together. And
I get the sense the United States probably told you
take Estonia to back down. I don't have that, you know,
I don't have that information, but that's the way it points.
(13:52):
United States has divided NATO.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
The United States has divided NATO. Wow, yeah, we're gonna
take a break for someges and come back in just
two minutes with Brian Islan, an intelligence expert coming to
us today from Brussels, Belgium. He is a prolific writer
of articles and posts about what's going on in Eastern
Europe and a whole bunch of other topics, and it's
(14:16):
a real pleasure to have him on.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
The show tonight.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Stay with us everyone, We'll be back in just two minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crime Radio hor
I've got Brian Islin with us said tonight. He is
the founder of an organization in Europe of intelligence officers.
(14:48):
He is a prolific writer of articles and posts about
what's going on in Eastern Europe and Europe, with the
war in Ukraine and numerous other topics. And this is
going to I think it would be a really interesting
congress sade. Brian, tell us about your organization and why
did you start it?
Speaker 4 (15:03):
If you could, I started because Europe doesn't have this,
let's say, the central professional theme of intelligence officers or
network of intelligence offices that work together to create shared standards,
to lift each other up, to build networks. It's something
Australia has done really well. The Australian Institute of Professional
(15:23):
Intelligence Offices or APO. They provide lots of training and
networking opportunities, annual conferences and so on, so that everybody
across the intelligence spectrum, so military intelligence, law enforcement intelligence,
or criminal intelligence, national security intelligence, competitive intelligence, which I
don't know whether you know that, this is people who
(15:44):
use intelligence methods in business to understand their market and
their competitors. So in many cases this ends in that
common phrase corporate espionage, right, it's using intelligence, trade, trade
work field work to work within the business. Well, so anyway,
the idea is.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So are you are you a corporate corporate spy?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
No, not at all. I've done a little bit of
work with some companies, but I'm not at all a
core competitive intelligence person. I started out in military intelligence
and criminal intelligence, and then to the last let's say
twenty years, been working on yeah, modern slavery, mostly human
(16:26):
rights and traffic, human trafficking. This has been my focus
last let's say twenty years. So building networks, they're helping
national security intelligence agencies work on human trafficking and the like.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You've got dozens if not more than that. Of articles
on what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. One of
the ones that I found really interesting about a week
ago you posted about the Putin oil squeeze at forty
seven dollars and sixty cents, how can the twenty twenty
five price cap cut Russia's oil margin? And you're saying
that effectively the pre cap is taking away all the
(17:01):
profit from Russian oil.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Explain that if you could please.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Okay, since he invaded Ukraine in twenty twenty two, we've
had a price cap on Russian oil. Now that means
that they can't sell over a certain price. They well,
they can sell, but then there are sanctions that mean
that those people involved in buying it are going to
be hit with, for example, economic sanctions. So people generally
don't buy over the cap. The cap is, what's the
(17:31):
best way to describe it's a moral cap, right. It
creates ethical quandaries for people who want to buy above it.
So the problem we've had is that the Russian oil
price has been pretty much below sixty hasn't triggered the
price cap for the last three years. So in the
various sanctions package that the EU has been putting forward,
and we're now we've now just implemented the eighteenth sanctions package.
(17:53):
What we wanted to do, what we really needed to achieve,
was move away from this fixed cap so that wherever
the price market, the price went in the market, the
price cap would also move with it. So this new
one in the eighteen sanctions package is forty seven point
six cents a barrel. Now, the fact that it's a
(18:13):
moving cap means that as the Brent price goes up,
so the cap stays in effect. If the price goes down,
then the forty seven to sixty comes into effect and
can drop. So what we're doing is squeezing him no
matter what the market does. We haven't been doing that.
We've been not squeezing him because the market's been he's
(18:37):
been making enough money on it. One of the interesting
sides to that is that sixty dollars a barrel has
been the cab. That has been the number for three years.
The National Wealth Fund in Russia, which I mentioned before,
which is basically the national reserve in a way, he
can't put money into that. The Russian state can't put
money into that because of their own individual rules, internal
(18:59):
rules above the sixty cents a cap, a sixty sixty
cent cap. So if he's selling, for example, at sixty
three dollars a barrel, then that three dollars extra can
go into the national wealth fund. He can top it up.
But what he's been doing that price hasn't been there,
so he hasn't been making money above the sixty So
the national Wealth fund hasn't been getting topped up, which
(19:21):
means the state is running out of money. Think of
it like a like a yeah, it's a wealth fund.
Think of it like a federal reserve that's running money.
He's tapping into it to be able to fund the military.
So you're tweeting it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
You argue that the cap.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Oil oil is the way to go, right, he runs
the petro state. He's basically a petrol station with a flag.
And the more we can attack his oil transactions, the
less money he has coming in to feed the military,
and the less lower his ability to sustain the economy
and all the other aspects besides military. So we've got
(19:55):
to squeeze the countries that are buying oil from him,
no matter the sanctions, and so we're talking their Turkey, India,
and China. Of course, the biggest, and they see a
petrol station with a flag that has got to sell
their price, to sell their oil low. It's cheap and
it's reliable. It's it's bad oil, right, but that's what
(20:16):
they need for plastics. This the oil, the Urals crew
coming from the Russia, which is the lower quality than
the Brank crew, which is the number you see in
the markets when they say oil is up, oil is down.
That's Brent. Urals is dirtier, so it comes at a
lower price. Anyway, there's a discount, let's say, and our
(20:36):
job has got to be to force the price that
he's able to get closer to his cost of production.
That's got to be air objected. Then he can't make
any money above the cost of production. Then we've got
him completely over a barrel. So no pun intended.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You also track these shadow shipments and you show how
the shadows have client precipitously, and then you also talk
about how insurance is a real issue. And I hadn't
focused on this part of the question that you're saying
that the insurance is almost impossible to gat. So tell
me a little bit about what's happening with these shipments
(21:16):
and how insurance plays.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Insurances. It basically feeds into this follow the money concept, right.
So there is a leverage point, which is that the
ships can't be ensured if the purchase of the oil
is above the cat price, which is of course why
the ghost fleets that go to the shadow fleets. These
these fleets exist the vaguely flagged, they're vaguely owned, and
(21:40):
the idea is that they can sail with the sanctions
busting oil and they can freely. There's no other way
we can do it. We can't arrest them on the
high seas or anything like that. It's just it's sanctions
busting only. But what it means is we can implement sanctions.
We can sanction all those parties to the transaction, and
the principle, the biggest financial party to this is the insurers.
(22:03):
These ships are rather lousy and if you can't ensure
your ship, then you're up for all sorts of costs
and the owners of those ships, even though most of
them are rat bags, let's say, they will still not
sail as much or as likely if they can't be insured.
Nobody wants to buy oil that is going to end
up floating up against the beach and under the sea.
(22:24):
So insurers are a way of us being able to say, well,
if you ensure that ship that badly flagged, badly maintained,
ship full of sanctions busting oil, then we will make
sure that all of the business with you, government business
with you stops. That's worth more. You know, they follow
the money, put the pressure where you can with money.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You've also talked about a Ukraine attacks on Russian infrastructure.
Is this actually happening. We've seen, you know, media reports
about it. But is this just sensationalism or is it
a good strategy.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
There are two sides to this coin. The first one
is yeah, they're devastating the Russian infrastructure, it's actually happening.
I think they've reduced the Russian oil production, so theres
refineries principally, they've reduced that by forty it's a very
big number. So if we're talking about reducing Russian capacity
to refine, they have to sell their oil unrefined, so
(23:22):
that's a slightly harder market. That's again where China, Turkey
and India come in that needs their oil needs to
be refined abroad, so they can't sell their own aviation
fuel for example. So the way that works just quickly is,
you know Air Canada has jet fuel. They buy their
jet fuel from Turkey. Turkey has refined that from Russian
(23:43):
urals oil, so this is how Air Canada gets into
the market. They are using Russian oil subsidizing the Russian
economy anyway. So yes, they're devastating the Russian refining processes
and they're cutting pipelines. One of the interesting things there
is that the prices being paid by China, India, Turkey
(24:03):
are low principally though, they're interested in maintaining it with
Russia because it's reliable flow. So the more we eat
into the reliable flow, the more we make it uninteresting
for the likes of China. China support for Russia is
basically they're a petrol station that is reliable. As soon
as their reliability becomes a problem, they become a liability
(24:24):
to China, So we can use these attacks on the
Russian oil industry are undermining the relationship that China has
and they're interested in supporting Russia. So there's awful lot
of interesting things there. But the other thing is that
the other side of the coin, though I mentioned, it's
a bit of a double sided coin is that the
(24:45):
price of Russian oil is under more pressure if the
demand is high but the supply is low. So if China, Russia, India,
and Turkey still want to buy Chinese sorry Russian oil
at a low price, there's less of it available, which
of course make it's scarcer and drives the price up,
so that'll become less interested in it. On that From
(25:05):
that side as well, you.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Talk as well about how China has been propping up Russia, but.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Then you're almost it's kind of issue.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
You're almost suggesting that China wants to do this but
not too much. And you talk about and I didn't
realize that the ancient port city of Vladis Vastok was Chinese.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
At one point in time.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yes, you're almost suggesting. I think that China wants to help,
but not too much so so that it weakens Russia
such the what it can retake Vladis Vostak. What's what's
your What's what do you think China's endgame is here?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
So China doesn't want instability on its borders, that's its
principal issue that it wants to deal with. So if
Russia as it stands with all of its minority groups
around China. If Russia fails and those states become warring
states or they become independentist, then we're looking at potential
(26:01):
real instability along the Chinese borders, in particular in Sindian.
So that's what China doesn't want. So it needs a
state or country that stays together but is so weak
that it'll keep selling cheap oil to them at a
reliable at a reliable supply and a reliable price. So
they're getting something out of Russia, so they don't want
(26:21):
to see it completely killed. They don't care about Putin
Putin can go. That's not what they care about. They
care about a decisive defeat of Russia that fractures Russia.
That's what they will not want.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
So they want a weak Russia, but neither a defeat
of Russia exactly.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
They want to see Russia. They don't care if Russia
loses in Ukraine, despite the signaling recently, they don't actually care.
They do believe Russia is on the ropes, which is
why they started signaling in the first place, but they
don't They don't so much mind if Russia loses the
war in Ukraine, but not decisively such that it fractures
the country. It means Putin's end without a fracturing of
(27:02):
the country. My view is they'll be okay with that.
So you mentioned Vladivostok, there is this that it's not
The nationalist feeling is not as strong as with Taiwan.
You know, the nationalism within China is being stoked by
the party or by siege im ping in particular, not
necessarily the party being stoked to make sure that Taiwan
(27:24):
doesn't break away too far, all right, they keep it
within rich So the Pacific side of Russia, the Pacific
Siberian area was Chinese, so Vladivostok was Haitian y. And
the Chinese do feel strongly about getting that back. They
see it as territory, a bit like gun blop, the
gunboat diplomacy. They see it as territory that was seeded
(27:45):
from them at the point of a gun. And there
is an interesting move at the moment from within China
for allowing they're what they call netizens, this is in
the average Internet user in China. They're allowing Medicans to
start commenting publicly about taking that back. Now, this would
(28:06):
not be happening the central government would not allow these
sort of conversations to be going on amongst medicines, if
they didn't want to sew that discord, if they didn't
want to stoke that feeling. So stoking that feeling is
something that you know, it's obviously quite real. They would
like to get that back. Whether if Russia doesn't fracture,
can China negotiate a deal to take back what used
(28:29):
to be Siberian Chinese territory. It's possible, right, Russia will
need to deal.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Fascinating. I didn't even know if.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So many interesting, so many interesting glamics around China and Russia,
and the difference between what they say publicly and what
they're signaling by saying those things publicly, And I think
that not enough people are probably reading between the lines.
You know, Wangi, the Foreign Minister for China, he only
speaks between the lines. There's anything he says publicly, there's
a reason for it, and there's a there's a sub messaging.
(29:00):
So he said something recently when he was visiting. He
said to Kaya Kualis, the foreign policy chief for the EU.
He said, China can't you can't take a defeat of Russia.
Can't see a defeat of Russia. What he was actually
saying by that was, well, China actually messaging about this,
(29:20):
says that they're worried that that's possible. They see Russia
against the ropes in Ukraine. Now, they would not have
said that a year ago because they had no sense,
well not a sense that they would talk about that
Russia was losing. China now thinks Russia's losing and they're
signaling what happens after.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I appreciate your articles.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I didn't even know that Vladispastak was taken by Russia
in eighteen sixty under duress from China, and so appreciate that. Yes,
what's North Korea's game here? What's their play?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Money? It's really money. And of course he struck a
Kim Drong and has struck a very bad deal with Russia.
He's losing much more than he's gaining. I think he's
gained a million dollars, sorry, a billion dollars and he's
lost the one point I think I was reading just
yesterday one point six billion in it and troops. So
(30:16):
his endgame is basically money. He's not into it for recognition.
He's supporting Russia. Russia is in turn sending presumably sending
a great deal of technology that's helping him. I wouldn't
be surprised if they're even sending scientists. But Kim Jong
one's principal issue here is money. That's his interest.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
You talk about a.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Lot of his troops are not good. You know, they're
not particularly well trained, they're highly indoctrinated, they can't make
decisions for themselves. You know, these are low quality troops
that Kim Drong is sending, and that's why they're dying
in quite significant numbers. And we are going to see
an increase, I think from Kim Jong un because Russia
(30:56):
is in decline, right, So the military that I mentioned before,
Russia putin can't replace the soldiers he's losing. And those
that number the thirty thousand a month that he is
replacing their terrible, terrible quality, and so they're dying at
a faster rate. They are overrepresented. These these new recruits,
often prisoners. These new recruits are so lowly trained, so
(31:18):
poorly trained, they are dying at a faster rate than
the average soldier in the Russian military, which is why
they're being used as canon foddering. It's a meat grinder concept.
They throw bodies at the wall. Always done this, It's
always been Russian away right, throw bodies and expect that
we're going to use all the bullets of the enemy,
use them up. So the Korean position, the North Korean position,
(31:41):
is principally about money. He's going to support Russia while
Russia is able to give him.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Something you've written.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Whence Russia can't give him, he's gone.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You've written about numerous other issues, including AI jets and
the control of water. We're going to take a break
for some messages and we're going to come back and
we're going to go through some of the others issues
that that Brian is talking about.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Everyone back in two minutes.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
But.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
No Radio No Problem stream is live on Sagay nine
sixty am dot c A.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Well, come back everyone to the Brian from Radio War.
I've got to Brian Iceland with us Islin Island Islin
apologize with us tonight and if you get a chance,
check him out on LinkedIn, er on social media. He
writes on a very frequent basis, and it's excellent writing
dozens of articles about different topics. But I got to
ask you about some others you know about the war,
(32:45):
but sort of less directly connected. You wrote about a
jet and I think it was Sweden that's controlled by AI.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
What's going on there.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Yeah, So this is let's say, let's call it the
next evolution in AI control in fighters. It started way
back when the Americans had dealt with the used F
sixteens and put some algorithms into them to take over
some of the work. It's all been testing that's never
been put into the field. Classified results from the United States.
(33:17):
They did one at the end of twenty twenty four
where they used AI in an F sixteen to take
over some of the dog fighting responsibilities to be able
to make these split second decisions that are hard for
pilots in really stressed circumstances. And they found the result
was that it was it was a relative success. Now,
(33:38):
the limit there was that this was in visual range,
so the pilot was there, the pilot could see and
within the range of the ponge of that aircraft, they
could do something like dog fighting. Now, the next step
was to prove that an aircraft could take over beyond
the horizon, beyond visual range, because that means they can
(34:01):
assess where the emerging battlefield let's say, is in the air.
They can see what's coming, they know where the threats are,
they can order the threats, and they can cube the
right weapons and the right maneuvers for that environment beyond
the visual range. So they're well prepared. So the idea
was with Sweden. They've got this excellent fighter jet called
(34:21):
the Grippin and the latest model is the Grippin E.
It's an exceptional piece of kit made by Saab, and
they fitted it with AI to deal with these let's say,
these questions in the aircraft. They didn't give it the
power to run everything in the aircraft, but they gave it,
(34:46):
let's say, they had it control tactical software, not flight control,
so there was a there was a pilot in the aircraft.
Now they shaped up this aircraft being with many of
the systems being controlled by AI. They shaped it up
against a real part of in another Grippani and although
the results were inclusive, they went all the way to
missile queuing. Now that means they had missiles ready to
(35:10):
go in the right order against the right target over
the horizon. That's way beyond what the sixteens were doing
in the United States. That's something that was never really tested.
So this is I mean, this is absolutely cutting edge,
just the forward edge of technology. Injecting AI into aircraft
with a view to eventual autonomy. That's obviously the endgame.
(35:33):
There will come a time where this technology and it's
leaping really quickly, where this technology can lie a fighter
jet without a human aboard. That's the obvious endgame. And
you know why they would do that when there's already drones,
for example, that can be used for aerial combat. They
don't dogfight, they don't queue missiles in the same way.
(35:55):
They don't have the versatility or the range of weaponry
and systems that are a full bodied fighter does. The
Grippin e sensors, all range sensors, radars, they can sense
so many things out to such a distance. No drone
can compete with this. They're bigger platforms, quite frankly, and
much more enabled. So getting an AI into that instead
(36:19):
of a human can put an aircraft like a Grippin
out over Russia and running all sorts of missions that
a drone just can't. It hasn't got that capability. So
this is where we're going. And you know I made
the comment this week on LinkedIn, somebody said, wow, this
is really going forward very very quickly, and it is,
(36:41):
and they brought up and certainly I have the imagery
of the movie Terminator, the Schwarzenegger film where the future
escape was all of these unmanned aerial drones and swarms.
This is where we're going. It's not hard to see
that happening rather quickly.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Actually, this is this good?
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Is this good or bad?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
You know?
Speaker 2 (37:05):
I've had people say this is great because less people
will die, and I've heard other people say, once less
people die, there'll be more war, because the biggest negative
of war is that people die. And so if you
take that negativity out, more more more countries are going
to be interested in war.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
What's your sense.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
I don't think people are going to war or not
go to war because of whether they're going to lose pilots,
you know. I don't think that's the key they will
go to. It'll change the calculus on the battlefield because
a drone, a ground drone, will be going up against
another ground drone and then it will just be a
matter of whose tech is better than that at the
other's tech. So I don't see it as a to
(37:45):
war or not to war question. It's really not that
existential losing troops as we've seen with Russia, that's not
a problem. That's not the key. It's rather about the
economic and political cost of doing so. I don't see
that it's going to necessarily lessen the barriers to the
decision about going to war.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I got a couple of other issues, could be wrong.
I want a couple of other issues I want to
talk to you about.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
You've talked a lot about batteries.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I'm surprised you talk about silicon carbon batteries. You talk
about about getting electricity out of batteries and using solar.
Why do you are you so focused on batteries.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Because energy is everything in the future. It's becoming it now,
but it's but it's everything in the future. And if
we're not understanding our capacity to improve on energy production
and storage, then we're destroying ourselves. We can't maintain this
terminator sky unless we've got great, reliable, rechargeable machinery. So
(38:47):
that requires batteries, and it's not just for warfare, you know.
My interest is of course in electric vehicles because this
is where the technology is moving fastest, improving ev batteries
to get more electric vehicles into the market to help
save the planet. This is what's driving the green agenda
is driving a lot of that, and the battery tech
(39:07):
is moving so quickly that it's something that we all,
I think, need to understand where it's heading and how
fast it's moving. So we're going from the old standard
lithium ion battery that you find in the original VS
and in your phones, we're moving well beyond that to
a range of chemistries, many of which are still based
(39:28):
on lithium, but many of which are moving away from
that to things that are much more sustainable and created
an economy around, for example, salt molten salt, or sodium
ion instead of lithium ion. We're talking about new materials
where a supply chain can't be held to ransom by
one country. So there's obviously this anti China subtext for
(39:52):
Western interest in these things, but China is exactly is
actually advancing much faster than anybody else, and that's largely
because their energy are much greater than anybody else. And
if they want to be the AI economy of the future,
which is largely one of their targets, they need to
invest strongly in energy production. So we're looking at all
sorts of potential nuclear fusion going into a lot of
(40:16):
the vessels and vehicles. So they are advancing very very
quickly on battery tech. So this is my interest in
battery tech right. It's a very fast advancing thing, and
we won't survive our future world without massive advances in
battery tech.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
A month ago you wrote about something I never heard
about before. Graphight bombs. There's silent, non lethal and tactically devastating,
and Ukraine just needed them in a war defined by attrition,
drones and long range missiles. One of the most effective
weapons is one the world barely sees. Graphight bombs. Non
lethal munitions designed to paralyze electrical systems.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
What's going on, Yes, Well, a couple of layers to this.
One of them is that if you can win a
war by non lethal means, surely that's an attractive option.
So the idea of a leaf of non lethal munitions
is you can do things like the Americans did in Baghdad,
and they did also in Belgrade. They blacked out areas
(41:13):
before strikes were required, tactical strikes, so they shut down
graphite bombs Basically, it uses graphied filaments or little little pieces,
little particles to put them on electric wires and substations,
and they cause electrical arcing which blacks out the thing
for you know, twenty four to forty eight hours, depending
(41:34):
on how fast the clean up crews can get there.
But the electricity won't come back on in that substation
or all those wires and those roots won't come back
on until the filaments are cleaned away. So if the
bad clean out cruise or if it's in a highly
contested area, the cruise I get there very quickly. If
(41:58):
you Craine wants to strike a military facility in the
things they should be trying to do is black it out,
no cell phones. You know, Arking of electrical equipment on
a military base causes fires everywhere. So this is a
great presud to a more surgical tactical strike in what
(42:19):
is a blacked out therefore uncontested airspace. It's a great potential.
It's high tech and it it requires some technical capacity
that Ukraine absolutely has. You look at what the Ukrainians
are building now with their own crew's missile, the Flamingo,
and they have what it takes to build graphiede bombs.
I think though the issue at the moment is that
(42:39):
that's non lethal, and both sides in this for are
not prioritizing non lethal means. Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
So you said that water ends up being critical, and
you said that the Ukraine water wars, and that's canal
now decides who lives with taps on. Tell me about
water well.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
I was particularly talking about a canal that runs along
the front line in the Donetsk region. So there are
points in the canal where Ukrainians need to drink the water,
but the Russians have control of the source, so they
can turn taps on and off like as they like.
So they're hurting people in Donets, which, as you probably remember,
(43:21):
they felt they feel they own and those people were
loyal to Russia. They're hurting the people in this area
by being able to turn the taps on and off,
and so that's causing a lot of pressure in the
Nesk and the capacity to control the source of water
is an issue. I think it was going back. You
could go back this idea of water wars. You could
(43:43):
go back to the early eighties or mid eighties, when
people were strategists were already talking about the use of
water to create instability and to starve populations or countries
and force them to the drawing board. And this is
what was thought to be happening or did happen with
the tigers and eu euphrates in Syria and in Iraq.
(44:04):
These water courses have been controlled upstream as a way
of forcing pressure downstream to negotiate. And I think that
this the netic case. I just I was just making
the point with that that water is as anything else
and in a really important, let's say, a resource to
(44:25):
be able to control and to lead a war in
the way you want it to go.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You know, it's amazing that of your coverage of your
articles from oil to drones, to AI jets to China,
to electric batteries to water. It's absolutely incredible. We're going
to take a break and we're going to come back
with politics, which is one other issue that Brian has
been talking about fascinting conversations. Did Brian stay with everyone.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Stream us Live at SAGA nine.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Welcome back everyone to the Brian Cromby Radio. We've got
Brian isn't with us tonight. He's a security defense in
international relations expert. He runs a intelligence organization in Europe.
He's coming to US tonight from Brussels, Belgium. We've talked
about a whole bunch of things in regards to the
warren in Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But we've
(45:33):
also talked about China. We've talked about Korea, We've talked
about AI, We've talked about insurance for shadow fleets, We've
talked about destruction of Russian infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
And I want to talk about politics.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
You had a really interesting article about the double majority problem,
the switch hit parliament that hands Moscow time. And let
me just read a section from your article. You say
Europe faces it's most dangerous decade yet, Russia advances, Trump destabilizes,
China expands, hungry stabs in the back well. The European
Parliament's double majority problem quietly sabotages every response. What the
(46:11):
heck is the double majority problem?
Speaker 4 (46:13):
In the last election for the European Parliament, one party,
the European People's Party in the European Union, the parliament
comprises communities of parties from across Europe. So the EPP
is rather centrist or maybe just slightly right of center.
I would say all those parties that are in that
(46:34):
same position on the spectrum in each member state are
members of the EVP. So now the EPP won such
a significant majority, they are able to make decisions that
the rest of the Parliament or many many large parts
of the Parliament can no longer can no longer block.
But it means that the EPP can cast or pass
(46:58):
laws without any of the other groups, particularly attaching themselves
to those. And so what happens is to pass the
law they have, they have to have some, but they
don't need all, and they don't need many. So their
coalitions required to pass the law are much more transactional.
And so what they're able to do is make short
(47:20):
term deals on a particular law and then move on
and change the coalition for the next law. And this
is this, this is causing I would say, let's say,
a narrowing of the political discourse on an issue. They
don't need to negotiate in the same way. They can
play a small game in the background with one smaller
(47:43):
group and still get a law through. So this is
this is causing, well, this is causing problems across all
sorts of things, So small deals need to be made
to get a small number of parties on board with
the major party, and those I'm just trying to think
of an American equivalent. For example. You know, we've all
(48:04):
watched West winging and they like those small parties are
able to attach riders to legislation that goes through the parliament.
And those riders are swing interests, let's say, or niche interests,
and they can stop things happening as well with the
same power. So the EPP is now having to start
(48:25):
working with more extreme groups like the far right and
the far left, or they are working with those. They
don't have to, but they are working with them because
they can swing deals where they have the power. They
attach a few riders to settle down the hard right
people's interests, and the hard right go with them on
a voat, So they're able to swing a majority in
either direction, far left or far right, and that causes
(48:48):
a kind of a schizophrenia in the parliament. And so
this is I mean, this is a difficult legislature and
this has not happened before. There's never been a party
with such a such a power. It doesn't balance regional
interests in the way that it should, which it's interesting.
(49:09):
It's about representing.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
It's interesting to me because I think the bottom line
of your article is that what we need to do
is have more politicians that are less interested in short
term political gain and more interested in long term you know,
sovereignty of Europe, security of Europe, the economy of Europe,
et cetera, which you know, you think politicians would want
to do, but regrettably, too many of them are just
(49:32):
interested in their own potical lives rather than the long
term benefit of their society. Brian, this has been a
fascinating conversation. If people want to follow you and read
your articles, what's the easiest and best way to do that, sir?
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Probably on medium is the best way. Medium dot com,
which is the only place where I publish everything, so
LinkedIn is about twenty percent of what I publish, So
medium dot com they can look for Brian Island sixty
seven and they'll find me there.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Brian. I've enjoyed reading your articles.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
I'm going to have to go check out this other
one because I only read your LinkedIn articles. But it's
been a fascinating time following your writing. Thank you so
much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
Thanks for having me, Brian, It's been great.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
That's our show for tonight. Everybody, thank you for joining.
I remind you I'm on every Monday through Friday at
six pm on.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Nine sixty am.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
You can stream me online frankly even from Brussels at
TRIPLEW Saga nine sixty am dot cal. My podcast and
videos go up on my website Briancromby dot com, on
my YouTube channel, on social media, on podcast servers as
soon as my radio show goes to air.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Good Hey, everybody, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Brian, no Radio, no problem. Stream is live on Saga
nine sixty am dot cl
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Saga nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Brian crimeby Radio
R come across a really interesting gentleman who posts quite
frequently on social media. He's coming to us from Brussels,
in Belgium and Europe. He is the founder of an
organization called the European Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers, and
he describes himself as a trusted advisor in security, defense
(00:39):
and international relations, a strategic bid writer, an intelligence led
product brokerage, a champion for human rights, integration and business.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And he's an.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Incredibly articulate gentleman who writes quite voluminously about what's going
on in the war in Ukraine, what's going on in
Eastern Europe, and also about things like batteries and jets
and AI and stuff like that. And so it's gonna
be a real pleasure to chat with Brian Islin tonight.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Brian, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Thanks very much, it's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's great to have you, sir, and I really do
enjoy your your very frequent articles and posts about what's
going on in Europe, and particularly in Eastern Europe with
the war in Ukraine. I'm going to come back and
describe your business and you in greater detail in a
couple of minutes, but just off the top, You've posted
a lot recently about the Russian drones that that have
(01:32):
flown across Poland and some other countries. You've posted a
lot about the Ukrainian drones that have been destroying Russian infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
You've posted about the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Where do you think we are, sir, right now in
regards to the chance for peace or the prolonged war.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
If you looked at all of the indicators of the
decline of the Petro state, Russia is seriously in decline
and seriously running out of time. So Putin's back is
against the wall. At the same time, Putin's ego is
one of those ones where he is never going to
admit that his survival is almost the only thing in
his mind and it doesn't matter what it costs. And
(02:15):
the closer we get to the collapse, you know, collapses
of states come very slowly but then very suddenly. So
the point is you won't really see it you'll see
indicators up until the point where it collapses, but then
it'll really collapse quickly. And we're really getting close to
that point. Let's call it an inflection point. You know, militarily,
(02:36):
he's losing a phenomenal number of units, a number of people,
and you can actually chart the rate of decline. And
you know, wherever I write, people are always asking, well,
how long until it collapses? We've been waiting and waiting,
so I always put timelines on it. So, from the
Petro state perspective, mid twenty twenty six, he's done his
(02:56):
military budget, the defense, the how much it's so let's say,
riping and pillaging the domestic budget for everything else society's
putting up with it, and his military decline. It's all
twenty twenty six. It's the early end of twenty twenty six.
He can't sustain his military past the end of twenty
twenty six. It's that simple. So he's buying time.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's always got you wrote about this about a week
is that you wrote about this about a week ago.
Let me quote from your article if I could. Russia's
war in Ukraine has claimed over one million troops, turned
thousands of tanks into twisted metal and gutted its military
for inches of scorched land. Yet Mosca still claims it's winning.
(03:39):
In this investigation, you say that you exposed the real
cost of Putin's delusion, mass graves, rusting armor and a
future mortgage to blood back by battlefield data, satellite confirmed losses,
and war zone images.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
This is a must absorb article.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And you said Russia's army is dying by the hour.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Seriously, Yeah, absolutely. I mean he's lost eleven thousand tanks,
armored vehicles, so that's armored fighting vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles.
He's lost twenty three thousand at last count, and artillery,
which is of course, as the Ukraine War has proved,
artillery is not at all dead. Artillery is way back
(04:18):
in the center of the battlefield. He's lost thirty two
thousand artillery systems. You know, these are completely unsustainable. I
put the numbers together about what I wanted to show
was what the replacement rate was, right, So of his
troops at the moment, he's losing roughly forty to fifty
thousand troops a month, and that's been higher at various
(04:40):
stages when he was when he was basically laying siege
to Bachmud, for example, he was losing up to eighty
thousand a day, sorry a month. Now he's replacing them
at a rate of thirty thousand with awful troops. You know,
quality is terrible. They're talking, they're talking, you know, the prisoners,
for example, getting between one and five days of training.
(05:00):
Many hit the field without having fired a shot. So
his replacement rate is nowhere near the rate of attrition,
huge attrition. Annual production of tanks. He's producing, you know,
sixty to seventy tanks. And he started, of course bringing
back the refurbished nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties tanks and
putting them into battle. So he's you know, he's absolutely
(05:24):
back to the wall and these numbers and yeah, one
point one million casualties to date in this war. So
what I think is really important is to think about
the percentages of loss versus the stock that he had.
You know, everybody talks about him expecting the wall to
be done in three days, and he really did believe that.
(05:46):
And if you look at the loss of tanks, for example,
he's now three hundred and eighty five percent over what
he expected. The estimated losses three hundred and eighty five
percent above one IVS avis, the fighting vehicles four hundred
and forty nine percent over on the artillery. And as
I said, this is really at the core of his battle.
(06:08):
He pounds and pounds and pounds because it doesn't cost troops, right,
he doesn't have to put people up against the wall,
which he's happy to do, but he would rather not
because he just feeds the attrition rate. But seven hundred
and seventy percent or eight hundred percent, if comparing to
the including stored a massive overshoot of what he expected
(06:31):
to be losing in this war, and he can't replace them.
You know, he's thirty two thousand, thirty three thousand artillery pieces.
He's bringing up about one thousand or nineteen hundred units
a month, and he just can't. He just can't achieve
what he's expected, what he expected to achieve, and his
attrition rate is phenomenal. And I think one of the
(06:52):
interesting things about the casualty numbers one point one million,
it's the breakdown. It's casualties. The breakdown is killed, the maimed,
let's say, and missing mia as well as included in that.
So On one side, he's losing soldiers a lot to injury,
being maimed, for example, now they go into a social
(07:14):
security system. Effectively, they've got to go to hospitals unless
his soldiers shoot the injured, which is happening. There's lots
of recorded incidents.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Soldiers are shooting the injured really.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, yeah, instead of trying to battlefield evacuate them, they're
killing their own wounded. In many cases, there's been video
examples of that from Ukrainian drones and the Russians shooting
the wounded in their head. So this is happening. They
don't want to bring wounded back when it slows them down.
It's a vulnerability, which is of course why a lot
of militaries seek to aim maime or injured soldiers rather
(07:48):
than kill them. Because each injured soldier that takes three
people to evacuate him. So there's a huge, let's say,
a loss to effectiveness for every wounded soldier. So yeah,
they're killing their own, but at the same time those
they're sending back. He is eating into the civilly civilian economy,
which includes hospital care and the like. He's eating into
(08:08):
that phenomenally. His military budget, the military is taking forty
percent of the government budget, government spent. That is massive.
He's basically depleted the National Wealth Fund, which is the
money behind society meant to shore it up. His social
security and the health system are absolutely overtaxed, and so
(08:28):
this is causing an interesting thing. He's getting more and
more injured going back into that system, and at the
same time he can't help them. So everything is getting
everything is getting squeezed. He's really made a phenomenal mistake
with Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
To put it in perspective, one of the senses that
you had that really stuck with me is that as
many people have been killed in this as many Russian
soldiers have been killed, as the army was in.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Size prior to this attack. So he's destroyed a.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Whole army, one whole army.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, it has. And you know he's lost he's lost
more tanks than he had originally. So he's got all
sorts of problems on his hands from attrition. Now, this
is something he didn't expect, right, as I said.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Three days a week or two.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Yeah, he wasn't expecting to be the victim of attrition,
because how many times in history have we seen the
large attacker of let's say a city putting it under siege.
How often have we seen them the victim of attrition.
We've had the people inside victim of attrition. Right, they
just have to be waited out. Well, in fact, in
this case, Ukraine just has to wait out Russia because
(09:41):
he is collapsing. It's just a matter of you know
that that tipping point where the slow collapse becomes a
sudden collapse.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Okay, but you pointed out, you pointed out your article, Sir,
you said that what they're hoping for, what they're dreaming of,
what they're waiting for, is uh is the West to
stop supporting Ukraine. Because you're saying the only way that
Ukraine has been able to withstand this is because of
Western support. So what's your assessment rate? You're in Belgium,
you're an intelligence officer. You see what's going on. Do
(10:14):
you think Western.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Is gonna Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:18):
Putin's doing everything. Putin's doing everything you can to influence
the calculus within NATO of whether they continue to support
or knock. So he's actually trying to do things like
the incursions over Poland and Estonia and the cutting abundan
sea cables. And so on. What he's doing is actually
creating an environment where because he's probing us and we're
not responding effectively, he's he's actually splitting us. He's dividing
(10:43):
NATO into hawks and doves in a way, and that
slows us down, and it also undermines our ability to
defend and support Ukraine. While we have these gaps exposed
by his incursions over Estonia, we're not focused on our
continued to Ukraine. And so we will see I think
we're already seeing this. We will see NATO members with
(11:07):
drawing their support for Ukraine. We're already seeing, you know,
Slovakia is questioning it, Hungary is not supporting Ukraine. And
so there are countries in the region that are just
not stepping up and they cause they're effectively quizzlings for us.
They are traitors to what Europe needs to be. And
that's what he's counting on. He's splitting us with these
(11:28):
diversionary tactics.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And I don't understand. I apologize.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
You know, if there's a threat to Poland, if there's
a threat to Estonia with drones, I would have thought
that would have become you know, even more persuasive that
NATO's got to stand up and stop it. Why is
this distraction a problem?
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Do you think because it's a The thing is, it's
not everybody is committed to the idea that we need
to respond. There are a lot of countries on the
border that are quite afraid, and I think some of
the largest states actually are also a bit afraid of responding.
You're not going to see Germany responding very quickly to
these things. For example, Poland wants to Poland just didn't
(12:06):
have what was in place necessary to shoot down those drones.
They were relying on a NATO responsor. In fact, Poland
should have had its own. So I think that he
is doing this specific doing these things specifically to divide us,
and the intention being to conquer us right to make
us back down. He doesn't want war. Let me just say,
(12:28):
I don't think he wants war. He's doing everything he
can stopping short of war, to upset the balance in
the region because that's his game. He's a one hundred
percent control freak and he just wants to feel powerful.
He wants to make us back down at every opportunity,
and to make us question ourselves and question each other,
(12:49):
and at the moment that's working. Member states. Member states
are questioning each other Native member states, not necessarily EU
member states. But he's achieving is objectives in that regard.
NATO hasn't responded in any worthwhile way, and all that's
done is caused internal discord and that's got to be fixed.
(13:10):
And I think, you know, if we're looking at the
NATO concept, the United States has seriously let us down there.
I don't know the ins and outs of what happened
over Estonia and the decision making of the Estonians not
to shoot down these MiGs mix thirty ones. As you know,
three meg thirty ones flew over Estonia twelve minutes in
Estonian airspace and they weren't shut down. They absolutely should
(13:32):
have been shot down. But it very clearly demonstrated, not
just to Putin but also to ourselves that the Union
is not a union at all. We're not together. And
I get the sense the United States probably told you
take Estonia to back down. I don't have that, you know,
I don't have that information, but that's the way it points.
(13:52):
United States has divided NATO.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
The United States has divided NATO. Wow, yeah, we're gonna
take a break for someges and come back in just
two minutes with Brian Islan, an intelligence expert coming to
us today from Brussels, Belgium. He is a prolific writer
of articles and posts about what's going on in Eastern
Europe and a whole bunch of other topics, and it's
(14:16):
a real pleasure to have him on.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
The show tonight.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Stay with us everyone, We'll be back in just two minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crime Radio hor
I've got Brian Islin with us said tonight. He is
the founder of an organization in Europe of intelligence officers.
(14:48):
He is a prolific writer of articles and posts about
what's going on in Eastern Europe and Europe, with the
war in Ukraine and numerous other topics. And this is
going to I think it would be a really interesting
congress sade. Brian, tell us about your organization and why
did you start it?
Speaker 4 (15:03):
If you could, I started because Europe doesn't have this,
let's say, the central professional theme of intelligence officers or
network of intelligence offices that work together to create shared standards,
to lift each other up, to build networks. It's something
Australia has done really well. The Australian Institute of Professional
(15:23):
Intelligence Offices or APO. They provide lots of training and
networking opportunities, annual conferences and so on, so that everybody
across the intelligence spectrum, so military intelligence, law enforcement intelligence,
or criminal intelligence, national security intelligence, competitive intelligence, which I
don't know whether you know that, this is people who
(15:44):
use intelligence methods in business to understand their market and
their competitors. So in many cases this ends in that
common phrase corporate espionage, right, it's using intelligence, trade, trade
work field work to work within the business. Well, so anyway,
the idea is.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So are you are you a corporate corporate spy?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
No, not at all. I've done a little bit of
work with some companies, but I'm not at all a
core competitive intelligence person. I started out in military intelligence
and criminal intelligence, and then to the last let's say
twenty years, been working on yeah, modern slavery, mostly human
(16:26):
rights and traffic, human trafficking. This has been my focus
last let's say twenty years. So building networks, they're helping
national security intelligence agencies work on human trafficking and the like.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You've got dozens if not more than that. Of articles
on what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. One of
the ones that I found really interesting about a week
ago you posted about the Putin oil squeeze at forty
seven dollars and sixty cents, how can the twenty twenty
five price cap cut Russia's oil margin? And you're saying
that effectively the pre cap is taking away all the
(17:01):
profit from Russian oil.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Explain that if you could please.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Okay, since he invaded Ukraine in twenty twenty two, we've
had a price cap on Russian oil. Now that means
that they can't sell over a certain price. They well,
they can sell, but then there are sanctions that mean
that those people involved in buying it are going to
be hit with, for example, economic sanctions. So people generally
don't buy over the cap. The cap is, what's the
(17:31):
best way to describe it's a moral cap, right. It
creates ethical quandaries for people who want to buy above it.
So the problem we've had is that the Russian oil
price has been pretty much below sixty hasn't triggered the
price cap for the last three years. So in the
various sanctions package that the EU has been putting forward,
and we're now we've now just implemented the eighteenth sanctions package.
(17:53):
What we wanted to do, what we really needed to achieve,
was move away from this fixed cap so that wherever
the price market, the price went in the market, the
price cap would also move with it. So this new
one in the eighteen sanctions package is forty seven point
six cents a barrel. Now, the fact that it's a
(18:13):
moving cap means that as the Brent price goes up,
so the cap stays in effect. If the price goes down,
then the forty seven to sixty comes into effect and
can drop. So what we're doing is squeezing him no
matter what the market does. We haven't been doing that.
We've been not squeezing him because the market's been he's
(18:37):
been making enough money on it. One of the interesting
sides to that is that sixty dollars a barrel has
been the cab. That has been the number for three years.
The National Wealth Fund in Russia, which I mentioned before,
which is basically the national reserve in a way, he
can't put money into that. The Russian state can't put
money into that because of their own individual rules, internal
(18:59):
rules above the sixty cents a cap, a sixty sixty
cent cap. So if he's selling, for example, at sixty
three dollars a barrel, then that three dollars extra can
go into the national wealth fund. He can top it up.
But what he's been doing that price hasn't been there,
so he hasn't been making money above the sixty So
the national Wealth fund hasn't been getting topped up, which
(19:21):
means the state is running out of money. Think of
it like a like a yeah, it's a wealth fund.
Think of it like a federal reserve that's running money.
He's tapping into it to be able to fund the military.
So you're tweeting it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
You argue that the cap.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Oil oil is the way to go, right, he runs
the petro state. He's basically a petrol station with a flag.
And the more we can attack his oil transactions, the
less money he has coming in to feed the military,
and the less lower his ability to sustain the economy
and all the other aspects besides military. So we've got
(19:55):
to squeeze the countries that are buying oil from him,
no matter the sanctions, and so we're talking their Turkey, India,
and China. Of course, the biggest, and they see a
petrol station with a flag that has got to sell
their price, to sell their oil low. It's cheap and
it's reliable. It's it's bad oil, right, but that's what
(20:16):
they need for plastics. This the oil, the Urals crew
coming from the Russia, which is the lower quality than
the Brank crew, which is the number you see in
the markets when they say oil is up, oil is down.
That's Brent. Urals is dirtier, so it comes at a
lower price. Anyway, there's a discount, let's say, and our
(20:36):
job has got to be to force the price that
he's able to get closer to his cost of production.
That's got to be air objected. Then he can't make
any money above the cost of production. Then we've got
him completely over a barrel. So no pun intended.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You also track these shadow shipments and you show how
the shadows have client precipitously, and then you also talk
about how insurance is a real issue. And I hadn't
focused on this part of the question that you're saying
that the insurance is almost impossible to gat. So tell
me a little bit about what's happening with these shipments
(21:16):
and how insurance plays.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Insurances. It basically feeds into this follow the money concept, right.
So there is a leverage point, which is that the
ships can't be ensured if the purchase of the oil
is above the cat price, which is of course why
the ghost fleets that go to the shadow fleets. These
these fleets exist the vaguely flagged, they're vaguely owned, and
(21:40):
the idea is that they can sail with the sanctions
busting oil and they can freely. There's no other way
we can do it. We can't arrest them on the
high seas or anything like that. It's just it's sanctions
busting only. But what it means is we can implement sanctions.
We can sanction all those parties to the transaction, and
the principle, the biggest financial party to this is the insurers.
(22:03):
These ships are rather lousy and if you can't ensure
your ship, then you're up for all sorts of costs
and the owners of those ships, even though most of
them are rat bags, let's say, they will still not
sail as much or as likely if they can't be insured.
Nobody wants to buy oil that is going to end
up floating up against the beach and under the sea.
(22:24):
So insurers are a way of us being able to say, well,
if you ensure that ship that badly flagged, badly maintained,
ship full of sanctions busting oil, then we will make
sure that all of the business with you, government business
with you stops. That's worth more. You know, they follow
the money, put the pressure where you can with money.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You've also talked about a Ukraine attacks on Russian infrastructure.
Is this actually happening. We've seen, you know, media reports
about it. But is this just sensationalism or is it
a good strategy.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
There are two sides to this coin. The first one
is yeah, they're devastating the Russian infrastructure, it's actually happening.
I think they've reduced the Russian oil production, so theres
refineries principally, they've reduced that by forty it's a very
big number. So if we're talking about reducing Russian capacity
to refine, they have to sell their oil unrefined, so
(23:22):
that's a slightly harder market. That's again where China, Turkey
and India come in that needs their oil needs to
be refined abroad, so they can't sell their own aviation
fuel for example. So the way that works just quickly is,
you know Air Canada has jet fuel. They buy their
jet fuel from Turkey. Turkey has refined that from Russian
(23:43):
urals oil, so this is how Air Canada gets into
the market. They are using Russian oil subsidizing the Russian
economy anyway. So yes, they're devastating the Russian refining processes
and they're cutting pipelines. One of the interesting things there
is that the prices being paid by China, India, Turkey
(24:03):
are low principally though, they're interested in maintaining it with
Russia because it's reliable flow. So the more we eat
into the reliable flow, the more we make it uninteresting
for the likes of China. China support for Russia is
basically they're a petrol station that is reliable. As soon
as their reliability becomes a problem, they become a liability
(24:24):
to China, So we can use these attacks on the
Russian oil industry are undermining the relationship that China has
and they're interested in supporting Russia. So there's awful lot
of interesting things there. But the other thing is that
the other side of the coin, though I mentioned, it's
a bit of a double sided coin is that the
(24:45):
price of Russian oil is under more pressure if the
demand is high but the supply is low. So if China, Russia, India,
and Turkey still want to buy Chinese sorry Russian oil
at a low price, there's less of it available, which
of course make it's scarcer and drives the price up,
so that'll become less interested in it. On that From
(25:05):
that side as well, you.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Talk as well about how China has been propping up Russia, but.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Then you're almost it's kind of issue.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
You're almost suggesting that China wants to do this but
not too much. And you talk about and I didn't
realize that the ancient port city of Vladis Vastok was Chinese.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
At one point in time.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yes, you're almost suggesting. I think that China wants to help,
but not too much so so that it weakens Russia
such the what it can retake Vladis Vostak. What's what's
your What's what do you think China's endgame is here?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
So China doesn't want instability on its borders, that's its
principal issue that it wants to deal with. So if
Russia as it stands with all of its minority groups
around China. If Russia fails and those states become warring
states or they become independentist, then we're looking at potential
(26:01):
real instability along the Chinese borders, in particular in Sindian.
So that's what China doesn't want. So it needs a
state or country that stays together but is so weak
that it'll keep selling cheap oil to them at a
reliable at a reliable supply and a reliable price. So
they're getting something out of Russia, so they don't want
(26:21):
to see it completely killed. They don't care about Putin
Putin can go. That's not what they care about. They
care about a decisive defeat of Russia that fractures Russia.
That's what they will not want.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
So they want a weak Russia, but neither a defeat
of Russia exactly.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
They want to see Russia. They don't care if Russia
loses in Ukraine, despite the signaling recently, they don't actually care.
They do believe Russia is on the ropes, which is
why they started signaling in the first place, but they
don't They don't so much mind if Russia loses the
war in Ukraine, but not decisively such that it fractures
the country. It means Putin's end without a fracturing of
(27:02):
the country. My view is they'll be okay with that.
So you mentioned Vladivostok, there is this that it's not
The nationalist feeling is not as strong as with Taiwan.
You know, the nationalism within China is being stoked by
the party or by siege im ping in particular, not
necessarily the party being stoked to make sure that Taiwan
(27:24):
doesn't break away too far, all right, they keep it
within rich So the Pacific side of Russia, the Pacific
Siberian area was Chinese, so Vladivostok was Haitian y. And
the Chinese do feel strongly about getting that back. They
see it as territory, a bit like gun blop, the
gunboat diplomacy. They see it as territory that was seeded
(27:45):
from them at the point of a gun. And there
is an interesting move at the moment from within China
for allowing they're what they call netizens, this is in
the average Internet user in China. They're allowing Medicans to
start commenting publicly about taking that back. Now, this would
(28:06):
not be happening the central government would not allow these
sort of conversations to be going on amongst medicines, if
they didn't want to sew that discord, if they didn't
want to stoke that feeling. So stoking that feeling is
something that you know, it's obviously quite real. They would
like to get that back. Whether if Russia doesn't fracture,
can China negotiate a deal to take back what used
(28:29):
to be Siberian Chinese territory. It's possible, right, Russia will
need to deal.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Fascinating. I didn't even know if.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So many interesting, so many interesting glamics around China and Russia,
and the difference between what they say publicly and what
they're signaling by saying those things publicly, And I think
that not enough people are probably reading between the lines.
You know, Wangi, the Foreign Minister for China, he only
speaks between the lines. There's anything he says publicly, there's
a reason for it, and there's a there's a sub messaging.
(29:00):
So he said something recently when he was visiting. He
said to Kaya Kualis, the foreign policy chief for the EU.
He said, China can't you can't take a defeat of Russia.
Can't see a defeat of Russia. What he was actually
saying by that was, well, China actually messaging about this,
(29:20):
says that they're worried that that's possible. They see Russia
against the ropes in Ukraine. Now, they would not have
said that a year ago because they had no sense,
well not a sense that they would talk about that
Russia was losing. China now thinks Russia's losing and they're
signaling what happens after.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I appreciate your articles.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I didn't even know that Vladispastak was taken by Russia
in eighteen sixty under duress from China, and so appreciate that. Yes,
what's North Korea's game here? What's their play?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Money? It's really money. And of course he struck a
Kim Drong and has struck a very bad deal with Russia.
He's losing much more than he's gaining. I think he's
gained a million dollars, sorry, a billion dollars and he's
lost the one point I think I was reading just
yesterday one point six billion in it and troops. So
(30:16):
his endgame is basically money. He's not into it for recognition.
He's supporting Russia. Russia is in turn sending presumably sending
a great deal of technology that's helping him. I wouldn't
be surprised if they're even sending scientists. But Kim Jong
one's principal issue here is money. That's his interest.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
You talk about a.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Lot of his troops are not good. You know, they're
not particularly well trained, they're highly indoctrinated, they can't make
decisions for themselves. You know, these are low quality troops
that Kim Drong is sending, and that's why they're dying
in quite significant numbers. And we are going to see
an increase, I think from Kim Jong un because Russia
(30:56):
is in decline, right, So the military that I mentioned before,
Russia putin can't replace the soldiers he's losing. And those
that number the thirty thousand a month that he is
replacing their terrible, terrible quality, and so they're dying at
a faster rate. They are overrepresented. These these new recruits,
often prisoners. These new recruits are so lowly trained, so
(31:18):
poorly trained, they are dying at a faster rate than
the average soldier in the Russian military, which is why
they're being used as canon foddering. It's a meat grinder concept.
They throw bodies at the wall. Always done this, It's
always been Russian away right, throw bodies and expect that
we're going to use all the bullets of the enemy,
use them up. So the Korean position, the North Korean position,
(31:41):
is principally about money. He's going to support Russia while
Russia is able to give him.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Something you've written.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Whence Russia can't give him, he's gone.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You've written about numerous other issues, including AI jets and
the control of water. We're going to take a break
for some messages and we're going to come back and
we're going to go through some of the others issues
that that Brian is talking about.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Everyone back in two minutes.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
But.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
No Radio No Problem stream is live on Sagay nine
sixty am dot c A.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Well, come back everyone to the Brian from Radio War.
I've got to Brian Iceland with us Islin Island Islin
apologize with us tonight and if you get a chance,
check him out on LinkedIn, er on social media. He
writes on a very frequent basis, and it's excellent writing
dozens of articles about different topics. But I got to
ask you about some others you know about the war,
(32:45):
but sort of less directly connected. You wrote about a
jet and I think it was Sweden that's controlled by AI.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
What's going on there.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Yeah, So this is let's say, let's call it the
next evolution in AI control in fighters. It started way
back when the Americans had dealt with the used F
sixteens and put some algorithms into them to take over
some of the work. It's all been testing that's never
been put into the field. Classified results from the United States.
(33:17):
They did one at the end of twenty twenty four
where they used AI in an F sixteen to take
over some of the dog fighting responsibilities to be able
to make these split second decisions that are hard for
pilots in really stressed circumstances. And they found the result
was that it was it was a relative success. Now,
(33:38):
the limit there was that this was in visual range,
so the pilot was there, the pilot could see and
within the range of the ponge of that aircraft, they
could do something like dog fighting. Now, the next step
was to prove that an aircraft could take over beyond
the horizon, beyond visual range, because that means they can
(34:01):
assess where the emerging battlefield let's say, is in the air.
They can see what's coming, they know where the threats are,
they can order the threats, and they can cube the
right weapons and the right maneuvers for that environment beyond
the visual range. So they're well prepared. So the idea
was with Sweden. They've got this excellent fighter jet called
(34:21):
the Grippin and the latest model is the Grippin E.
It's an exceptional piece of kit made by Saab, and
they fitted it with AI to deal with these let's say,
these questions in the aircraft. They didn't give it the
power to run everything in the aircraft, but they gave it,
(34:46):
let's say, they had it control tactical software, not flight control,
so there was a there was a pilot in the aircraft.
Now they shaped up this aircraft being with many of
the systems being controlled by AI. They shaped it up
against a real part of in another Grippani and although
the results were inclusive, they went all the way to
missile queuing. Now that means they had missiles ready to
(35:10):
go in the right order against the right target over
the horizon. That's way beyond what the sixteens were doing
in the United States. That's something that was never really tested.
So this is I mean, this is absolutely cutting edge,
just the forward edge of technology. Injecting AI into aircraft
with a view to eventual autonomy. That's obviously the endgame.
(35:33):
There will come a time where this technology and it's
leaping really quickly, where this technology can lie a fighter
jet without a human aboard. That's the obvious endgame. And
you know why they would do that when there's already drones,
for example, that can be used for aerial combat. They
don't dogfight, they don't queue missiles in the same way.
(35:55):
They don't have the versatility or the range of weaponry
and systems that are a full bodied fighter does. The
Grippin e sensors, all range sensors, radars, they can sense
so many things out to such a distance. No drone
can compete with this. They're bigger platforms, quite frankly, and
much more enabled. So getting an AI into that instead
(36:19):
of a human can put an aircraft like a Grippin
out over Russia and running all sorts of missions that
a drone just can't. It hasn't got that capability. So
this is where we're going. And you know I made
the comment this week on LinkedIn, somebody said, wow, this
is really going forward very very quickly, and it is,
(36:41):
and they brought up and certainly I have the imagery
of the movie Terminator, the Schwarzenegger film where the future
escape was all of these unmanned aerial drones and swarms.
This is where we're going. It's not hard to see
that happening rather quickly.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Actually, this is this good?
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Is this good or bad?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
You know?
Speaker 2 (37:05):
I've had people say this is great because less people
will die, and I've heard other people say, once less
people die, there'll be more war, because the biggest negative
of war is that people die. And so if you
take that negativity out, more more more countries are going
to be interested in war.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
What's your sense.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
I don't think people are going to war or not
go to war because of whether they're going to lose pilots,
you know. I don't think that's the key they will
go to. It'll change the calculus on the battlefield because
a drone, a ground drone, will be going up against
another ground drone and then it will just be a
matter of whose tech is better than that at the
other's tech. So I don't see it as a to
(37:45):
war or not to war question. It's really not that
existential losing troops as we've seen with Russia, that's not
a problem. That's not the key. It's rather about the
economic and political cost of doing so. I don't see
that it's going to necessarily lessen the barriers to the
decision about going to war.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I got a couple of other issues, could be wrong.
I want a couple of other issues I want to
talk to you about.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
You've talked a lot about batteries.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I'm surprised you talk about silicon carbon batteries. You talk
about about getting electricity out of batteries and using solar.
Why do you are you so focused on batteries.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Because energy is everything in the future. It's becoming it now,
but it's but it's everything in the future. And if
we're not understanding our capacity to improve on energy production
and storage, then we're destroying ourselves. We can't maintain this
terminator sky unless we've got great, reliable, rechargeable machinery. So
(38:47):
that requires batteries, and it's not just for warfare, you know.
My interest is of course in electric vehicles because this
is where the technology is moving fastest, improving ev batteries
to get more electric vehicles into the market to help
save the planet. This is what's driving the green agenda
is driving a lot of that, and the battery tech
(39:07):
is moving so quickly that it's something that we all,
I think, need to understand where it's heading and how
fast it's moving. So we're going from the old standard
lithium ion battery that you find in the original VS
and in your phones, we're moving well beyond that to
a range of chemistries, many of which are still based
(39:28):
on lithium, but many of which are moving away from
that to things that are much more sustainable and created
an economy around, for example, salt molten salt, or sodium
ion instead of lithium ion. We're talking about new materials
where a supply chain can't be held to ransom by
one country. So there's obviously this anti China subtext for
(39:52):
Western interest in these things, but China is exactly is
actually advancing much faster than anybody else, and that's largely
because their energy are much greater than anybody else. And
if they want to be the AI economy of the future,
which is largely one of their targets, they need to
invest strongly in energy production. So we're looking at all
sorts of potential nuclear fusion going into a lot of
(40:16):
the vessels and vehicles. So they are advancing very very
quickly on battery tech. So this is my interest in
battery tech right. It's a very fast advancing thing, and
we won't survive our future world without massive advances in
battery tech.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
A month ago you wrote about something I never heard
about before. Graphight bombs. There's silent, non lethal and tactically devastating,
and Ukraine just needed them in a war defined by attrition,
drones and long range missiles. One of the most effective
weapons is one the world barely sees. Graphight bombs. Non
lethal munitions designed to paralyze electrical systems.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
What's going on, Yes, Well, a couple of layers to this.
One of them is that if you can win a
war by non lethal means, surely that's an attractive option.
So the idea of a leaf of non lethal munitions
is you can do things like the Americans did in Baghdad,
and they did also in Belgrade. They blacked out areas
(41:13):
before strikes were required, tactical strikes, so they shut down
graphite bombs Basically, it uses graphied filaments or little little pieces,
little particles to put them on electric wires and substations,
and they cause electrical arcing which blacks out the thing
for you know, twenty four to forty eight hours, depending
(41:34):
on how fast the clean up crews can get there.
But the electricity won't come back on in that substation
or all those wires and those roots won't come back
on until the filaments are cleaned away. So if the
bad clean out cruise or if it's in a highly
contested area, the cruise I get there very quickly. If
(41:58):
you Craine wants to strike a military facility in the
things they should be trying to do is black it out,
no cell phones. You know, Arking of electrical equipment on
a military base causes fires everywhere. So this is a
great presud to a more surgical tactical strike in what
(42:19):
is a blacked out therefore uncontested airspace. It's a great potential.
It's high tech and it it requires some technical capacity
that Ukraine absolutely has. You look at what the Ukrainians
are building now with their own crew's missile, the Flamingo,
and they have what it takes to build graphiede bombs.
I think though the issue at the moment is that
(42:39):
that's non lethal, and both sides in this for are
not prioritizing non lethal means. Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
So you said that water ends up being critical, and
you said that the Ukraine water wars, and that's canal
now decides who lives with taps on. Tell me about
water well.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
I was particularly talking about a canal that runs along
the front line in the Donetsk region. So there are
points in the canal where Ukrainians need to drink the water,
but the Russians have control of the source, so they
can turn taps on and off like as they like.
So they're hurting people in Donets, which, as you probably remember,
(43:21):
they felt they feel they own and those people were
loyal to Russia. They're hurting the people in this area
by being able to turn the taps on and off,
and so that's causing a lot of pressure in the
Nesk and the capacity to control the source of water
is an issue. I think it was going back. You
could go back this idea of water wars. You could
(43:43):
go back to the early eighties or mid eighties, when
people were strategists were already talking about the use of
water to create instability and to starve populations or countries
and force them to the drawing board. And this is
what was thought to be happening or did happen with
the tigers and eu euphrates in Syria and in Iraq.
(44:04):
These water courses have been controlled upstream as a way
of forcing pressure downstream to negotiate. And I think that
this the netic case. I just I was just making
the point with that that water is as anything else
and in a really important, let's say, a resource to
(44:25):
be able to control and to lead a war in
the way you want it to go.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You know, it's amazing that of your coverage of your
articles from oil to drones, to AI jets to China,
to electric batteries to water. It's absolutely incredible. We're going
to take a break and we're going to come back
with politics, which is one other issue that Brian has
been talking about fascinting conversations. Did Brian stay with everyone.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Stream us Live at SAGA nine.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Welcome back everyone to the Brian Cromby Radio. We've got
Brian isn't with us tonight. He's a security defense in
international relations expert. He runs a intelligence organization in Europe.
He's coming to US tonight from Brussels, Belgium. We've talked
about a whole bunch of things in regards to the
warren in Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But we've
(45:33):
also talked about China. We've talked about Korea, We've talked
about AI, We've talked about insurance for shadow fleets, We've
talked about destruction of Russian infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
And I want to talk about politics.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
You had a really interesting article about the double majority problem,
the switch hit parliament that hands Moscow time. And let
me just read a section from your article. You say
Europe faces it's most dangerous decade yet, Russia advances, Trump destabilizes,
China expands, hungry stabs in the back well. The European
Parliament's double majority problem quietly sabotages every response. What the
(46:11):
heck is the double majority problem?
Speaker 4 (46:13):
In the last election for the European Parliament, one party,
the European People's Party in the European Union, the parliament
comprises communities of parties from across Europe. So the EPP
is rather centrist or maybe just slightly right of center.
I would say all those parties that are in that
(46:34):
same position on the spectrum in each member state are
members of the EVP. So now the EPP won such
a significant majority, they are able to make decisions that
the rest of the Parliament or many many large parts
of the Parliament can no longer can no longer block.
But it means that the EPP can cast or pass
(46:58):
laws without any of the other groups, particularly attaching themselves
to those. And so what happens is to pass the
law they have, they have to have some, but they
don't need all, and they don't need many. So their
coalitions required to pass the law are much more transactional.
And so what they're able to do is make short
(47:20):
term deals on a particular law and then move on
and change the coalition for the next law. And this
is this, this is causing I would say, let's say,
a narrowing of the political discourse on an issue. They
don't need to negotiate in the same way. They can
play a small game in the background with one smaller
(47:43):
group and still get a law through. So this is
this is causing, well, this is causing problems across all
sorts of things, So small deals need to be made
to get a small number of parties on board with
the major party, and those I'm just trying to think
of an American equivalent. For example. You know, we've all
(48:04):
watched West winging and they like those small parties are
able to attach riders to legislation that goes through the parliament.
And those riders are swing interests, let's say, or niche interests,
and they can stop things happening as well with the
same power. So the EPP is now having to start
(48:25):
working with more extreme groups like the far right and
the far left, or they are working with those. They
don't have to, but they are working with them because
they can swing deals where they have the power. They
attach a few riders to settle down the hard right
people's interests, and the hard right go with them on
a voat, So they're able to swing a majority in
either direction, far left or far right, and that causes
(48:48):
a kind of a schizophrenia in the parliament. And so
this is I mean, this is a difficult legislature and
this has not happened before. There's never been a party
with such a such a power. It doesn't balance regional
interests in the way that it should, which it's interesting.
(49:09):
It's about representing.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
It's interesting to me because I think the bottom line
of your article is that what we need to do
is have more politicians that are less interested in short
term political gain and more interested in long term you know,
sovereignty of Europe, security of Europe, the economy of Europe,
et cetera, which you know, you think politicians would want
to do, but regrettably, too many of them are just
(49:32):
interested in their own potical lives rather than the long
term benefit of their society. Brian, this has been a
fascinating conversation. If people want to follow you and read
your articles, what's the easiest and best way to do that, sir?
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Probably on medium is the best way. Medium dot com,
which is the only place where I publish everything, so
LinkedIn is about twenty percent of what I publish, So
medium dot com they can look for Brian Island sixty
seven and they'll find me there.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Brian. I've enjoyed reading your articles.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
I'm going to have to go check out this other
one because I only read your LinkedIn articles. But it's
been a fascinating time following your writing. Thank you so
much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
Thanks for having me, Brian, It's been great.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
That's our show for tonight. Everybody, thank you for joining.
I remind you I'm on every Monday through Friday at
six pm on.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Nine sixty am.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
You can stream me online frankly even from Brussels at
TRIPLEW Saga nine sixty am dot cal. My podcast and
videos go up on my website Briancromby dot com, on
my YouTube channel, on social media, on podcast servers as
soon as my radio show goes to air.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Good Hey, everybody, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Brian, no Radio, no problem. Stream is live on Saga
nine sixty am dot cl
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