Trumps WW3 Strategy & Epstein’s Israel Connection | Chris Cappy

Summary

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Camp Gagnon Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Trump’s WW3 Strategy & Epstein’s Israel Connection | Chris Cappy
Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest: Chris Cappy (Geopolitical YouTuber, journalist, former US military)
Date: March 3, 2026

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Overview

This episode dives into the recent U.S.–Israel joint military strike that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top commanders, shaking the geopolitical foundation of the Middle East and pushing tensions toward possible World War III. Host Mark Gagnon and guest Chris Cappy unpack American and Israeli strategy, the implications for global power dynamics, and how clandestine elements—like the late Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to intelligence and arms dealing—may tie into these events. They also discuss the neorealistic direction of U.S. foreign policy, the looming threat of China, implications in Venezuela and Mexico, and the challenge of communicating nuanced geopolitics to a skeptical, weary American public.

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Key Discussion Points

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1. The Iran Strike: What Happened and Why?

[00:00–14:00]

• Historic, Decapitating Operation:

  • On Feb 28, 2026, a massive air sortie by U.S. and Israeli forces killed Iran’s top leadership.
  • Israel exploited recent collapse of Assad’s Syria, enabling easier jet access ([05:15]).
  • Daytime attack: “Iran didn’t expect the United States and Israel to strike during the day ... air defense had been so degraded” — Cappy ([05:15]).
  • Primary objectives: Eliminate leadership, destroy missile launchers, nuclear sites, and suppress regime’s ability to use internal forces (Basiji militia) against protesters ([07:39], [09:35]).

• Regime Change Blueprint, but Challenges Remain:

  • U.S. hopes for an internal uprising, inspired by decapitation, but notes Iran's rigid internal oppression makes this difficult. “We’ll give them the opportunity to take over the government ... but it’s very difficult to have regime change by the people if they’re unarmed.” — Cappy ([09:00])
  • “All they need to do [to claim victory] is stay in power.” — Cappy ([10:28])

• Intelligence Intrigue:

  • Reports (rumors) of Mossad agents or dentists placing trackers in Iranian officials. Cappy notes such stories fuel paranoia, whether true or not, benefiting intelligence agencies ([13:03]).

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2. The Realpolitik of American Intervention

[15:03–27:44]

• Mixed Moral Calculus:

  • Mark expresses skepticism given America’s checkered past with regime change:
    “I’m not a big regime change guy ... can’t really think of one that worked out really, really well” ([15:03]).
  • Cappy: “There’s always blowback ... I like that this time, we’re not trying to spread democracy ... it’s a realistic attempt: they just want compliance, not necessarily liberty or democracy.” ([17:07])
  • Iran and Venezuela: Taking them “off the threat list” is key to keeping U.S. focus on China.
    “America’s goals are ... to get their ducks in a row for a future conflict with China.” ([17:07])
  • Emphasis on the limitation of U.S. resources for multiple theaters—hence urgency in neutralizing trouble spots ([17:07]).

• China’s Escalating Leverage:

  • The rare earth elements trade war with China escalated the U.S. sense of vulnerability, prompting maximalist strategies in the Middle East and Latin America ([25:47]).
  • “China basically used the nuclear option ... you’re not getting any rare earth elements ... America saw this from China [and said] oh, so it’s like that.” — Mark ([25:47], [27:44])

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3. The Israel Question & Multi-Layered U.S. Interests

[23:07–27:44]

• Beyond 'Just for Israel':
  • Cappy: “It’s an oversimplification to say everything the U.S. has done in the region is for Israel's benefit ... controlling the energy there is probably our biggest interest, Israel aside.” ([23:07])
  • Explains how controlling Iranian and Venezuelan oil is about limiting China’s access to cheap energy, thus putting pressure on Beijing.
    “We swooped in ... we’re going to get that oil and control that oil from Venezuela and Cuba’s going to fall also.” ([23:07]).

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4. Potential Blowback and the Perils of Grand Strategy

[29:57–38:40]

• Risks of Destabilization:
  • Regime collapse could mean civil war, chaos, or a worse authoritarian regime emerging.
    “If Iran were to fall and collapse into chaos ... could be very bad, could not be in American interests.” — Cappy ([31:00])
  • Mark: "It just seems like a big gamble ... If it pays off really well, this administration is genius. If it blows up—it's the dumbest move ever." ([31:42])
  • Possible side effect: Strengthening Russia/China alliance, “creating a super monster”—drawing analogy to Mexican cartel consolidation ([38:40]).

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5. Shifting U.S. Rhetoric: From 'Hearts and Minds' to Empire

[32:52–37:14]

• No More Pretenses:
  • “What has blown my mind is how we’ve gone ... from pretending to have morals ... to now just saying the quiet part out loud.” — Cappy ([32:52])
  • Younger Americans embrace realpolitik, seeing U.S. actions as empire-building rather than moral crusades ([36:14]).
  • “If we don’t play the empire game ... we’ll lose it to China.” ([37:19])

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6. Power, Legitimacy, and Who Rules Next

[54:15–57:08]

• Problem of Installing Leaders:
  • U.S. tried to find a replacement leader in Iran and Venezuela; lesson: “can’t force it.”
    “People would think this is just a puppet government ... not credible.” — Cappy ([55:50])
  • Mark: “We have an innate understanding ... that’s not fair, that’s not credible.” ([57:00])

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7. Epstein as Intelligence Asset – The Shadow Side of Geopolitics

[77:11–90:37]

• Not Just a Sex Scandal:
  • Released emails suggest Epstein predicted Trump might bomb Iran if cornered for political gain ([77:11]).
  • Epstein more than Mossad or CIA:
    “He’s a super asset. He’s 100% ... involved in intelligence ... running a blackmail operation ... a product of the Cold War ... governments needed this dark, shadowy thing.” — Cappy ([79:27], [82:24])
  • Examples of Epstein’s arms-dealing ties, involvement with Khashoggi and Middle Eastern arms deals ([83:38]–[85:54]).
  • His utility: as a gray-zone operator enabling deniability in funding shadow wars and proxy groups ([82:52]).
  • “He fell. And how many people have been arrested in America other than him? ... He took the fall.” ([92:41], [93:18])

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8. World War III or Just a New Cold War?

[104:27–108:10]

• Are We At War?
  • U.S. national security doctrine increasingly operates as if great power war is looming: “Are we in WW3? I’d say it’s more like a cold war for now ... preparing for worst-case scenario because China is nearing the ability to invade Taiwan and might succeed.” — Cappy ([104:27])
  • American interventions aimed at shutting down regional threats so U.S. can concentrate power in the Pacific.

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9. Domestic Division and Propaganda Vulnerabilities

[114:06–119:19]

• How U.S. Can Be Undone:
  • “If I was to try to defeat the U.S., I would double down on divisions within our country ... What’s a strength is also easy to exploit as a weakness.” — Cappy ([114:06])
  • Both left and right echo chambers can be manipulated by adversaries; calls for American unity are described as both patriotic and strategically vital ([116:17], [117:26], [118:10]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Decapitation Strike:
  “Iran didn’t expect the United States and Israel to strike during the day ... air defense had been so degraded.” — Cappy ([05:15])

• On Realpolitik:
  “America’s goals are ... to get their ducks in a row for a future conflict with China.” — Cappy ([17:07])

• On Foreign Influence:
  “It’s an oversimplification to say everything the U.S. has done in the region has been for Israel’s benefit ... Controlling the energy there is probably our biggest interest.” — Cappy ([23:07])

• On Power Vacuums:
  “The big billion dollar question is, will they find somebody [in Iran] to do business with?” — Cappy ([55:31])

• Epstein’s Role in the Shadows:
  “He’s a super asset. He’s 100% ... involved in intelligence ... running a blackmail operation ... a product of the Cold War ... governments needed this dark, shadowy thing.” — Cappy ([79:27], [82:24])

• On U.S. Cultural Shift:
  “We’re totally ... an empire and we’re playing the empire game. And we’re now actually trying to play it to win.” — Cappy ([37:19])

• On Propaganda:
  “What our adversaries are very good at is understanding what is good at dividing us ... These narratives are very powerful because there’s some truth to it always.” — Cappy ([114:06])

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |------------|-------| | 00:00–07:39 | Iran strike breakdown & objectives | | 07:39–14:35 | Tactics, intelligence, regime change limits | | 15:03–22:36 | Realpolitik of intervention, U.S. goals | | 23:07–27:44 | Israel, oil, and multipolar interests | | 29:57–38:40 | Potential blowback, power vacuum risks | | 32:52–37:19 | Shift from moral narrative to open empire | | 54:15–57:08 | Installing new leaders: legitimacy dilemma | | 77:11–92:41 | Epstein, intelligence, and arms dealing | | 104:27–108:10 | World War III or Cold War II? | | 114:06–119:19 | Propaganda, unity, and internal vulnerabilities |

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• The U.S.–Israel strike on Iran represents a dramatic realignment of global strategy, heavily influenced by American attempts to clear the board ahead of confrontation with China.
• Regime change is less about democratization, more about compliance and regional stability in U.S. interests.
• Oil, supply chain security, and rare earth elements are central to great power competition.
• The Epstein case illuminates the murky ecosystem of intelligence, arms dealing, and political leverage that underpins real-world strategy—often in ways the public only glimpses in hindsight.
• America’s existential vulnerability is internal division, a target for both foreign and domestic manipulation. Calls for unity and pragmatic awareness of propaganda are essential in this new era.
• In this episode, both host and guest advocate for clarity: seeing things “as they are” rather than as we might wish.

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Guest Plug:
Check out Chris Cappy’s YouTube channel, "Cappy Army," for in-depth analyses on Iran, cartels, Epstein, and more ([121:20]).

Host's Reflection:
“If there’s one thing Americans can do: call for unity and recognize the beauty and strength in our diversity, rather than let it be used to divide and destroy the country from within.” — Mark ([118:10])

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Note:
Timestamps indicate the approximate beginning of each major topic for ease of reference.

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Transcript

[A]

On Saturday, February 28, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military strike against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top Iranian commanders. This is a move that's now shaking the world and pushing us even closer to World War Three. And to make sense of what's really happening, I invited Chris Cappy into the tent. Cappy is a geopolitical YouTuber, a journalist, and former US military, and he's been tracking these developments very closely. And today, he answers the big questions, why are we fighting this conflict now? And whose war is it really? America's, Israel's, or both? And he discusses why this operation was so effective. We even discuss how the Epstein files may have even predicted this attack on Iran. And we even go through Epstein's role as an arms dealer. And he even shares how removing Iran's leader, Maduro and Mensho, the cartel leader, are all connected in preparing the United States for a bigger war against China. This episode was really interesting to me, and to be honest with you, I hate that America is involved in another conflict, the Middle East. And this is another conflict that the American people largely don't want in order to take out a regime that doesn't seem like it's a massive threat to us right now. But Cappy shared a perspective on how this could affect the bigger game, and he shows me the larger 40 chessboard of what's going on with all the global conflicts and how this actually sets us up for a bigger war against China and how it positions us for a conflict against Russia. And he really shares both sides of how this could work really well and how this could be a total disaster. So if you're interested in geopolitics, Cappy is the man, and he breaks it all down and tries to explain both sides as well as he can. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Chris Cappy. How are you?

[B]

Hey, Mark. Good to be here.

[A]

Thank you so much for joining me, man. I really appreciate it. Especially on short notice this weekend, we saw some pretty wild scenes. A pretty significant military operation just went on in Iran, basically as like a, you know, a joint effort through the United States and Israel, real, as well as many other proxies, kind of like slowly kind of entering into this conflict. So could you just break down to the audience what happened this weekend? And I guess what I want to get to is, are we currently entering into World War iii?

[B]

Right. It's a historic military operation, one of the biggest air sorties in all of history, and it's kind of the culmination of disagreements that have been happening in that region. It's a proxy war turned an actual direct war at this point where for the last 30, 40 years we've been coy about it. We've been playing around on the edges and killing each other in ways that I would say are you could plausibly deny it. You could say, oh, we're not really doing that. When I was in Iraq, when I deployed to Iraq all the time, we found Iranian agents, Iranian backed fighters who were trained and equipped by Iran. Those were the main element in our AO that was fighting us. But you know, they could always say no, it wasn't really us. So and then the United States as well and Israel has been killing Iranians on this, killing their nuclear scientists. So this has all been happening on the periphery for many years and it's coming to a head now and there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think that's kind of the starting point is that we're seeing a. The bub. What was once bubbling under the surface has now risen to the top.

[A]

I see now for people that don't know right now the geopolitical layout of the region. You have Iran kind of with some, you know, friendliness with Russia as like kind of this client state. China obviously having a direct connection a few other, you know, countries in the region. And then on the other side you have America, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE and you know, obviously NATO, Europe, things like that. Could you just kind of explain with a little bit more detail who are the players right now and what does it seem like? The position jockeying kind of is like what is the board?

[B]

The main players are Saudi Arabia and Iran have been in this proxy conflict for years, since the, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. They've been at odds and they have economic reasons for that. There's competition in the oil industry between them. We now have Iraq as well, which is sort of on the United States side. And there's Israel who's of course been at odds with Iran since the revolution and before that, funny enough, they were actually allies, but since then there's been tension where Iran is. They feel like they're standing up to Western influence. From Iran's point of view. They feel like, hey, we don't want to be a client state of America. We don't want to be just their puppet government. So that, that's how the Ayatollah had viewed it. And so that's the main, the main conflict that we're Looking at right now

[A]

on Saturday, what exactly happened? America flew in with, you know, a bunch of air power and within a matter of minutes took out basically all the heads of state. How does that happen?

[B]

Insane decapitation strike. 200 fighter jets from America, another 200 from Israel. Israel was able to exploit the fact that Syria fell, Assad fell recently. So that opened up an air corridor easier for them. There's no air defense to shoot them down over Syria. So they could just fly their jets through that air corridor, mid air, refuel over there, drop bombs over Tehran all day long. And what they did was so Iran didn't expect the United States and Israel to strike during the day. And historically we've always done our operations spooky style at night where we could be all stealthy. But they took basically Iran's air defense had been so degraded and so knocked out over the past two years that it got to a point where Israel and US assessed like we could do this during the day in broad daylight. And Iran and about a number of their other top leaders met at a compound the morning of the 28th and they met to have a military strategic meeting. And the US and Israel bombed it to hell and killed the Ayatollah. And that was the start of the strikes, was this big decapitation hit similar to how a year or two ago when Israel did a similar knocking out of the top leadership in Iran. And then they started bombing strategic sites. They're hitting the main weapon that Iran has. They have no air force, they have not big tank brigades. There's not going to be a ground war here. The main weapon they have is ballistic missile launchers. So over the past two years, Israel and the US knocked out about 2/3 of their missile launchers. So they had 480 of these. Basically they're giant trucks that just show up and these Tels shoot the missile out. And now they only have about 100 and now that number is even lower. Those are hard to replace. So this is the operation had kind of a couple of main objectives. One of them is let's knock out their capabilities to fire these ballistic missiles that can reach us. Let's knock out the warehouses where these missiles are stored and let's hit some of the nuclear sites and set them back.

[A]

Interesting. And it seems like within, you know, a very short order. I think the official timing was like four days that this entire operation will be and maybe that's extended a little bit. It seems like this is going extremely fast.

[B]

I would say that is the idea for them you listen to all the communications from the top leadership in America. They don't want this to be an extended operation that lasts months. That's what everyone's saying. This might be weeks long campaign, but the idea is to go in, go in hard, go in fast, and then get out.

[A]

Now, is this surprising to you?

[B]

No, I don't, I don't think I found this surprising at all. I think this is exactly what you expect from the United States. When you looked at their target list, the air tasking order that they put out for what they're going to hit, what the US's game plan I think in the beginning was to knock out the Thralla headquarters, which is the state apparatus in Iran that is responsible for suppressing the people. So the whole goal is, okay, we'll go in, we'll knock out their leadership, we'll knock out the big headquarters that are responsible for suppressing the protests and the people. And then we'll give them the opportunity to rise up, we'll give them the opportunity to take over the government, overthrow the government for us, essentially, when you look at all regime change operations in the Middle east or anywhere really, it's very difficult to do it without there being some kind of something on the ground, boots on the ground, factions that are armed. In Libya there were armed factions that could overthrow and find Gaddafi and kill him under the bridge.

[A]

Like a rebel force basically.

[B]

Right. But you don't really have that in Iran because they're so, they've, over the decades they built this really impressive system of oppression. And so I think it's very difficult to have regime change by the people if they're unarmed. It's very difficult. No matter, you know, we're yet to see whether or not air power can do that today. I think air power has its limits. But that, that I think was their game plan. Let's give them this window of opportunity to rise up and overthrow the government.

[A]

So what is this oppression system like? How exactly does it work?

[B]

If you want, you could pull up, there's this document that this think tank put out on the Thralla headquarters and they outline every single, there's called. It's. Everyone knows of the irgc, right? You've heard of the IRD Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It's like their hardcore Iranian military, the real hardliners. So the, but what people don't hear about as often is the Basiji militia, which is about 100 to 300,000 strong force inside of Iran, which is responsible for suppressing the people. If you were in the Basiji militia, you would get a text that morning like, hey, you got to show up to your street corner, you got to go put down the riot. You know, kill them if you gotta. But so that's, they're like this part time militia force.

[A]

They would literally just send agents out to protest and be like, break up the protest.

[B]

Oh, and they know their spot. So you know where you're going if you're in the BCG militia, you get the text from your commander, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna. So they destroyed it. Yeah. So you get that text, you go to your, your street corner and your whole job is to stop any mobility of the protesters, to put it on lockdown, and to keep the regime in power. Because if I think the stated goals for Iran right now, for them to walk out of this and claim victory, all they need to do is stay in power. That's the conditions for victory for Iran. So they don't need to shoot down 600 fighter jets. They don't need to blow up every American base in the region. They need to stay in power. And if the Islamic Republic is able to stay in control, then at the end of this, they will claim some kind of victory.

[A]

Interesting. Now, it seems like they took out all these heads of state. You know, they took down the ayatollah, like the ayatollahs daughter, the Ayatollah's grandkid, all in one place. Why is this guy that is the single most, you know, high value target for all these different nations, just like hanging out with his family all together, all at the same time?

[B]

Hubris. He didn't think we were going to attack during the day. I don't think he expected that to happen. He probably also didn't think that we'd be able to reach him in his bunker. But we have different weapon systems, bunker busters that are able to, to reach out and touch people in faraway places. So it was a little bit of, I think, arrogance.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

And also. Sorry, no, please. There was CIA intelligence on his location, so he, he probably assumed we didn't know where he was. But there were reports that have come out since then that the CIA got a fix on his location. The pattern of life is what they call it. And they were able to map out, you know, what type of Cheerios he had that morning and then where he was going to next. And they saw the opportunity and they took it. Wow.

[A]

I saw a theory. This is completely unsubstantiated. Let me, let me preface that On Twitter X, as they call it, that the. I think it was. I don't know if it was US Intelligence or Israeli intelligence, but that there was dentists that were doing dental work on high ranking Iranian military officials and placing trackers in their molars as a means of assessing where they are. This is completely unsubstantiated. I saw this. I'm curious if you've seen this or if you have any comment on something like that.

[B]

One of the things that I love about the intelligence community is so rumors like that, whether they're true or not, are very useful for them. Because how paranoid are you gonna be? You can't even go get your teeth cleaned without worrying about the CIA, right? Like, you see the CIA everywhere, you're worried about it and those type of rum. But that could very well be true. It could be the case. Or it could also be just a way for them to feel like they're not safe ever.

[A]

That's such an interesting point. It's either true. Okay, so, yeah, this is claims from March 1 that Mossad agents disguised as doctors and dentists planted nanotrackers. And the verification is that there's no confirmation from US or Israeli sources. So it's possible that, I mean, sensational rumors about Mossad and ingenuity have circulated in the past. So it's possible that it is true. But it's also possible that this information was maybe put out by an intelligence agency to basically fill the minds of their ally or of their opponents to basically say, like, oh, we're nowhere, we go safe.

[B]

And a lot of times they won't. They could have put it out or someone else puts it out and they're, they're not going to deny it. Why would they deny it? Also, it's the same is true with, with a lot of coups that happen that are credited to the CIA. Some of them are true, some of them are awful stuff that our government has done. And then some of it is way overblown. The CIA is not capable of doing that. But they're not gonna want. What reason, what interest would they have in claiming that they can't do that, that they're not that powerful.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They want you to think that they're that all knowing, all seeing powerful. But really, this is the same CIA that got the Iraq war wrong. This is the same CIA that couldn't keep our allies in Afghanistan in power. Afghanistan was toppled by the Taliban within days after we left.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Same CIA that assessed that Ukraine would fall in three days. They are capable of a lot of insane stuff. But then there's also their limits.

[A]

Right. Well, I'm curious if you can help me kind of distill my feelings about everything that's happened. Like I'm not a big regime change guy. Like I've just by looking at the pattern of history of all these coups that America's backed either directly or indirectly through like proxy coups, it seems like it always ends up in a disaster. Like I can't really think of one that like worked out really, really well. I mean like even the overthrow of Muhammad Mossadegh in 53 kind of creates the conditions for this to happen. So like that one's kind of a failure. I mean like coups through Honduras and Guatemala and I mean like Gaddafi and Saddam. Like there's just all these regime changes that either blow up in America's face or just create terrible conditions for humanity around the world. I mean a million Iraqis die trying to get Saddam. So I'm like, I don't really love it. With that being said though, I look at the, you know, the countries in the region in just the GCC in general and also the just the nature of the regime in Iran and I'm like this is obviously bad. Like they're obviously oppressing their people. Like this is obviously a group of, you know, radical authoritarians that have co opted Islam to basically oppress this entire country of 90 million people, which is bad. And I have so many Persian friends in America that are like, yeah, what's going on over there is terrible. Like this is, this country should be liberated and they're causing trouble in the region. They're sponsoring terror for not only Israel, which obviously is, you know, unpopular. People don't really care about, you know, that as much but they're, you know, causing issues for the uae, they're causing issues for Saudi Arabia and they're causing issues for America indirectly through you know, controlling oil passage and all that stuff. So I feel weird about it. Like it almost feels like like a vigilante like killed a file in the streets. You know, we're like, all right, you took out a bad guy but you shouldn't be just like killing people without authorization, you know, etc. So I feel mixed about it. So I'm curious if you can help me distill my feelings about what's going on.

[B]

Intervention always is double edged sword. Anytime you either do or do not use military intervention, there's going to be consequences. Some of them are going to be good, some of them are bad. I'M not going to sit here and, like, defend every military intervention that America has been involved in or every coup that we've supported. I think that at the same time, there are. When our. When our enemies and adversaries lose, a lot of times very beneficial for American interests. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States spread democracy throughout Europe, I think there's a strong argument that it's been in our interest. And in the Middle East, a lot of the interventions we've done there have been a complete disaster and have not been good for American interests and have ruined some of our standing around the world. So when you look at the Iraqi, when we toppled their government, million people killed. The Arab Spring that came out of that, those coups, it was a disaster for a long time. This military intervention, this attempt to overthrow the regime. America's goals are to either put the thing I. I like about this intervention, if I'm gonna say what I like about it, is that we're not trying to spread democracy. We're not trying to occupy the country. It's. They're trying to kill any leadership that isn't willing to cooperate and comply with the United States government. It's more of a realistic attempt. So they kind of don't care who's in power, if it's a dictatorship, if it's a terrible, awful authoritarian leader, as long as they're willing to comply with the United States as far as not building a nuclear weapon, not attacking allies in the region. So if the US Is able to meet those goals. So just from a pragmatic outside point of view, I'll say what I think the US Is doing, which is they're trying to get their ducks in a row for a future conflict with China. So when you look at this, this intervention, and in Venezuela as well, what do you see? It took us months to build up combat power there. Right? Got to move all the ships, move all the weapon systems. Imagine if there was a world war, we wouldn't be able to be everywhere. We've learned that it took. You have to move air defense systems into the region, and it takes months, and we can. We only really have enough resources to fight in one theater at a time. We used to think that we could fight in two, three theaters at the same time, and that would be fine. But modern weapons systems are so finite. Missile systems are so exquisite and expensive. You can't be fighting against Russia in Europe. You can't also be in the Middle east and then also fight against China. It's just from a Strategic game theory way of looking at it, the U.S. national Defense Strategy in 2026 is, hey, I'm looking at this the way the cards are on the table, the way the chessboard is, and I'm recognizing that I have limitations, and I need to prioritize. So by taking Iran off the threat list, then we will not be tied down in the Middle East. China could not coordinate with Iran to tie America down in the Middle east while they invade Taiwan because the US could not do it. We can't do it. And the same is true for when you look at just the steps that the US Government is taking. It's all focused on, hey, Europe, you need to pay your share of the defense burden. We can't send half our military to Europe to help you defend against Russia. You have to step up and invest in your defense. Why are they. And they're. They're. The US Government is so focused on that that they're willing to alienate all of their allies in Europe to do it. They're willing to be, like, use every bit of leverage that they have on them and threatened to walk away from Ukraine and let Ukraine fall. They're willing to threaten everything because they feel that it's the only option, that if Europe doesn't step up, we're screwed anyway. Because when you look at the assessments from the CIA, from the national. From the. From all of the defense agencies, they're all saying the same thing. They put out something called the Overbatch Brief, which is a classified report that assessed that the United States would be screwed in the event of war with China, and that our aircraft carriers would get hit by ballistic missiles, that all of our aircraft in that region would get hit by China's ballistic missiles when they're on the ground. And from that assessment. Well, okay, if you believe that, if you're an. If you're in the US Government and you have intelligence that China's gonna move on Taiwan in the next two years, what do you do? You have one option. Make it so that you will not face threats in the Middle East. Make it so that you will not face threats in Europe, so that everything you have can be in the Pacific.

[A]

Hmm, that's interesting. So there's a lot of people that are listening to saying, Iran's not a threat to America. They're not posing a direct threat to us. This is just us fighting a war for Israel. This is what people on Twitter will say. So the way you're framing, it seems to say, like, well, it's doing a bunch of things at once. And in a way, Iran is a threat to America in the sense that it's going to deplete our troops in the event that China is able to build an alliance there. Am I understanding that right?

[B]

Correct. Yes. And what I would say is I'm all for, I believe Israel has way too much influence on American politics. I think that that can be true and I think it can also be true that it's an oversimplification to say that everything that the United States has done in the region has been for Israel's benefit. It's a reduction of a very complicated situation. You cannot argue that we have other interests in the Middle East. Controlling the energy there is probably our biggest interest. Israel aside. And to the degree that Israel and the United States have shared interests and Israel helps the United States in those goals, then yeah, we're aligned. A lot of things we're not aligned on. I don't have to like what they're doing to the Palestinians to recognize that the Middle east is more than Israel and that yeah, regime change in Iran is what Netanyahu wants, but it's also what the United States wants. When you just look at it in a, just okay, if we control the energy in Iran, then between Venezuela and Iran, that's 20% of the oil that China's getting at a huge discount that they're getting because of this oil sanctioned. So they're getting really cheap oil to fuel their economy. And what we did was we swooped in and we said, okay, no you're not, we're going to get that oil and we're going to control that oil from Venezuela and Cuba's going to fall also. And we're also going to control the energy in the Middle East. And this doesn't mean that China will not be able to get energy from other sources. They'll get cheap energy from Russia. But it's not as easy as that. A one to one replacement. So it puts pressure on China. And what I think happened, my read of it, you might recall when the US and China were in trade, trade war and China basically went used the nuclear option and they said, well, you're not getting any rare earth elements, we're cutting off your supply of rare earth elements. So everything that we need to make cars to make all these weapons systems, you're not getting that. I don't think the United States thought that they were going to go that's the balls to the wall option. That's the no, there is no turning back option. When they did That I cannot describe how that is playing their entire hand. That's their leverage, and they're using all of it.

[A]

And when was that? Roughly?

[B]

That was earlier this year in the trade negotiations. And then Trump and the US Government, we ended up coming to an agreement that was, I think, in. In China's favor. China used their monopoly on rare earth elements to get a favorable trade deal. So the United States, I think, after seeing that, said, well, we need to have our own leverage on China. And one of the ways to do that, cut off their shadow oil tanker fleet that Iran and Venezuela have been using. So to even the playing field a little bit more, because they really have us by the balls with the rare earth elements. China is responsible for producing something like 80% of them. So I think, like, how things in the Middle east are coming to a head quickly. I think things globally are coming to a head. You're seeing people use their maximum leverage like that. So, yeah, that's how I would describe why intervention in Iran is in American interest. I'm not defending it or saying it's right.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Just giving the perspective of what they're thinking.

[A]

Right. This is the calculation that the people in charge are probably running through their heads, probably with additional information or even other motives that we don't even know. I mean, this article that Christos pulled up says early 2026, US and China are engaged intense negotiations over rare earth. Following an October 25th restriction on minerals like gallium and germanium, a truce was established, and then the US is aggressively pursuing alliances, including an $8.5 billion deal with Australia and Southeast Asia. Okay, so, yeah, this was happening earlier this year that they were basically. They said, hey, we'll just pull this whole thing. And I guess for the average person, they see this and they're like, all right, you know, some people trade. Da, da, da. This is basically an economic nuke.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And the fact that America saw this from China was like, oh, so it's like that. Like, it's a different level of intensity that the average person probably missed. That's really interesting. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because I just want to state the obvious. You're not going to hire a chiropractor to do brain surgery. And if you're going to go fight in the Octagon, you wouldn't hire a guy that was. Watches a lot of ufc. And if you have a personal injury case, you're not going to just, like, hire your buddy that's good with contracts because you Know that when you're hurt, it's because someone else was negligent. You don't want just, you know, lawyer vibes. You want real lawyers. And that's where Morgan and Morgan comes in. They are America's largest injury law firm with over 100 offices nationwide and more than 1,000 lawyers. Crazy thing, they've recovered over $30 billion for over 500,000 clients. They've got a real track record of fighting to get people full and fair compensation. So if you are ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. And their fee is free unless they win. Yes, free. You literally don't pay anything unless they win your case. That's how confident Morgan Morgan is that they can get compensation for you and your injuries. So for more information, go to for the people.comgagnon that is f o r the people.com g a g n o n or. Or dial pound law that is pound 529. And let them know that you got sent by the people here at the campsite. Also, this is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show. So I can understand why, based off of even just how you described it, you know, there are some incentives for the United States, you know, even beyond, I guess, the. The. The trope on Twitter, like, oh, this is just Israel's role or war. It's like, yeah, it does benefit Israel, obviously, but it also benefits other allies in the region. It benefits America for, you know, oil and economic reasons. Or at least it could. It benefits the United States as far as, like, clearing a front that we don't have to fight in a future conflict. All right, those seems like pretty good reasons. You know, we've gone to war for less. So now my question is, what are the potential downsides? How could this blow up in our face? And what are the. The pitfalls that America needs to avoid in the coming months?

[B]

You know, days and months, playing 4D chess can always blow up in your face like that. Trying to. Trying to play grand strategy in this way can. And every intervention has its share of blowback. I think we were just talking about before the podcast that we were saying. So one of the things I empathize with is that giving foreign money to just every country with U.S. aid, like, what are we doing? Why are we giving out billions of dollars to all these different countries? Why are we doing all these interventions that cost, you know, giving billions of dollars of weapons to Ukraine, for instance? I get that. I'm sympathetic with that, and I think we are very sort of clued into that as Americans, of where we're getting sort of the short end of the stick. But we have to remember that other countries are also doing this. Iran's Quds Force, they armed all these proxy militias in the Middle East.

[A]

And

[B]

there was blowback from that. Just like how the CIA has gone and armed groups in Syria and all over the world. And there's been blowback from it. Right. There was blowback from Iran's attempt to go and destabilize Israel with the October 7th attacks, and they're facing blowback from that. I think the downsides of intervention in the Middle east will be what type of blowback is going to come from this. If Iran, let's say, were to fall and collapse into chaos and there was civil war, that could be very bad. That could not be in American interests. So I think that's one of the big risks.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I guess you just kind of have to see. It just seems like a big gamble. It's one of those things where if it pays off really well, then it's like, oh, wow, this administration is genius. Genius. And if it blows up and it's like, oh, this is literally the dumbest move you could have ever done.

[B]

Absolutely. And that's why I would say from. From whether they're thinking is right or wrong. Their thinking is that this is they don't have a choice. They have to do this, and they have to do this now during this window of opportunity when Iran is its weakness weakest, to try to topple it. So they don't. They just take that off the board. They don't have to worry about it anymore. Don't have to get tied up in the Middle East. I mean, Syria fell, Venezuela fell. And if. And if Iran were to fall or be enough of a. Of a rump state, chaotic mess that it can't coordinate an attack. That's what America is hoping for.

[A]

Right? From the American perspective, yeah. If we put in, like, a pliable US Friendly leader in position, that's great. But also if there's just chaos and bloodshed, we don't care. Like, that is what the. The American sort of empire is thinking. That makes sense.

[B]

What has blown my mind is how we've gone over the last 10 years. When I remember when I grew up, we pretended to have, like, morals. We pretended to be ethical. Like, we're gonna go into Iraq and we're. And maybe to so much of a fault that it like, tied us down in these forever wars because we were so fixated on this Idea that we were better than everybody and that we weren't there for oil. Like, you ever just, you're so wrong about something, you're like, you triple down on it, right? Yeah, I do that all the time. I, I think that's what we were. Like, we're not assholes. Look, we're going to rebuild it. We're going to help them. No, just say like, we're. We took Maduro for his oil, right? We did it for the. We want the oil and we're going to take it and it's ours now. And also like, fuck you. That to me blows my mind that only in, you know, the last 10, 15 years, we've got, We've. We are now just saying the quiet part out loud.

[A]

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, from the, like, there might be people listening to this that are a little bit younger and they might not remember, like 2002, 2003. There was this entire media push that was basically saying, hey, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We have a global war on terror and we need to liberate the Iraqi people. It was like a three tiered thing. It's like, we need to stop terrorism, help these people and get rid of these nukes. And it was like a great sort of like hearts and minds mission. Like, this was beautiful. And we go in there and after, you know, five years or whatever, it's like, well, we can't leave because the Iraqis aren't free and we didn't find the weapons of mass destruction because there were none and there's still terrorism. So we need to be here. And so we get bogged down because of the ideology. Whereas if we just said to everyone, like, hey, we got to go in for, you know, for some oil and for some regime change. But the difference is that we had to have a congressional vote with these. We're not doing a congressional vote.

[B]

You know, I actually, I'm curious if it's the congressional vote as much as have cultural. Has culture just shifted to the point now because of, because of Twitter and because of social media, that people are tired of this sort of. I don't know what you would call that. Just like just bull. You know, we're maybe more media savvy where we can. We. We know when we're getting fed a line of bullshit.

[A]

We've lost.

[B]

You could not say that today.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You cannot say like, it's, we're going into Venezuela and taking Maduro because he, he's against lgbtq. Like, everyone would be like, shut the Shut up. No, yeah, no, we're going in there for the oil and that I think it resonates with especially the people that are even younger than me, maybe 10 years younger. I think that, that you hear that and you can at least respect that. All right. At least their talent. That's the truth.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. We've lost our, our youthful innocence.

[B]

You know, I think part of it probably has to do with some of that. That type of language and rhetoric was true in like the Cold War, maybe, or more. More. Maybe it was more, at least effective speaking that way. And also in World War II, it was very easy narrative of we're the good guys and we're fighting against evil. So we tried to take that same narrative of like, we're the good guys and we're fighting against evil to the Iraq war. And it feels really out of place suddenly. Yeah, feels weird. It doesn't fit.

[A]

I think media really blew it up. Like, I think the fact that we have social media that is relatively, you know, free and you know, non state sponsored, that you just get competing narratives and people are a little bit less, you know, less easily bullshitted and we're able to, you have, you know, if you talk to a 20 year old kid about like how they feel about the American empire, they have a pretty like real politic approach where they're like, yeah, you know, we, you know, topple some regimes, but like, my life is better here and you know, it's good, but it's also bad. And like it's a kind of a sort of a real like, like just astute, kind of honest look at the empire. Whereas I think in previous generations there was the sales pitch because media was easier to control. It's like, no, we are the most, you know, moral empire, not even an empire, we're just a very moral country. We're the good guys. We are the, you know, the monopolar sort of, you know, champions of democracy around the world. And that I think is just done. And I think the guys at the top were like, hey, the jig is up.

[B]

The jig is up.

[A]

Like, we just got to be honest with these people or else they're going to continue to rebel.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, the jig, the jig was definitely up. And it's funny because I, I, when I was younger in Iraq and I'm like, we're not an empire. We talk. But now I'm like, we're totally, we're, we're an empire and we're playing the empire game. And I think right now what we're seeing is we're trying. We're no longer, you know, mincing words about it. We're. No, we're. We're now actually trying to play the empire game, and we're trying to play it to win. Because the stakes now are China has become so powerful and so big that if we don't play the empire game and we're not honest about how we're playing it, we'll lose it. We'll lose it to China. And I think one of the ways you were talking about, how could this blow up? Another way it could blow up is that this in some way benefits and strengthens China, North Korea and Russia, that these interventions in some way end up benefiting them. And maybe the oil prices rise, they stay high, and that means far more revenue for Russia, for instance, and their ability to wage war in Europe. That could be a knockoff effect that we don't. That we're not considering. Maybe these interventions that we're doing right now in some way very much benefit Russia and China. That's something that I could see happening. And really, that would be a no good day, right?

[A]

I mean, that's my. My two biggest concerns is that one, the power vacuum that's created in Iran just gets filled by something worse and either directly worse or indirectly worse, like, you know, some type of oppressive dictator that's friendly with America that just, like, you know, kills the people of Iran and like, oppresses them at even higher rate. And America doesn't really care because we're getting what we want from it. I would see that as a, you know, a general, you know, uncalculated side effect to humanity. Sure, it helps America, but it's just bad for people of Earth. So I'm like, that would be bad if there's a civil war that results in, you know, millions of people dying. That would also be bad. Even if it's in America's interest, of course. And if there's some type of, like, way more radical dictator that takes over that isn't friendly with America and just takes that power vacuum and is even worse, then that's obviously worse. So I'm a little bit concerned with that. And then additionally, with Iran kind of moved off the table, you have Russia as a massive, you know, energy producer, and China a country that needs energy, and Iran now pulled off the map and Russia becoming increasingly more energy, you know, independent, as well as being sanctioned across the board. They really only have one place to put their oil, and China has only one place to really Buy it from. So now that, you know, that pairing becomes so strong that we've created a super monster by like this happens with cartels in Mexico, right? Like you take out one cartel and the other cartels just get stronger. So instead of having like 50 small cartels that are kind of individually pretty weak, by taking them out one by one, one cartel just takes over. The whole thing becomes so powerful that it becomes a real formidable threat. And that power vacuum creates actually a bigger issue. And yeah, that would be my probably, I think, the biggest concern that I don't know why the calculation's going the way it is.

[B]

One of the ways that we won the last Cold War, if we assume we're sort of in another one, one of the ways we won it was by sort of allying with China against the Soviet Union during the 1980s and 90s. We became very close with China and we worked against the Soviets, and that was one of the ways that we were able to beat and end up outlasting the Soviet Union. And so you're right. Are we creating this unholy alliance between Russia and China and North Korea that is going to be sort of the mirror image of how we won the Cold War is now we're setting ourselves up to lose because people would argue we should be doing everything we can to ally with Russia right now against China. And I understand that perspective. So, yeah, like, are. Are there going to be second and third order effects that are going to really bite us in the ass in the future? I'm concerned about that as well. When you talk about taking Iran off the table, let's say. I think what we're seeing right now is the United States also trying to take the cartels off the table. Because just recently we saw the US Is putting enormous pressure on Mexico to take care of that problem. And you could say it's because of fentanyl, and fentanyl has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Terrible. I think it's a little bit more than just drugs. I think it's a strategic concern at this point because the US we don't really do anything until a problem becomes a strategic level problem. And okay, you talk about we need to decouple from China right now. How do we do that? We need to shore up our interior supply chain, our interior supply lines, which is between Canada, the United States and Mexico, where our greatest allies and trade partners are. And you can't re industrialize and rebuild our industrial base. These things that we feel like we need to do to decouple from the just, even just the possibility of war with China, you need to have your shit on lock at home. You cannot fight China if you've got a armed insurgency on your southern border, who takes 15%, a cut of 15% of everything that goes across the border. You know, all these car parts that are going from us, you know, between us and Mexico, if you. Everything, everything, they skimmed 15% off the top. And you cannot let that shit go on. You cannot abide that. If you're trying to shore up your interior supplies, if you're trying to decouple and not be reliant on China in the event, even in the event that there were war, Right?

[A]

So you need a Mexico to be shored up. You need to be able to produce everything that you need militarily within our nation and the allied nations. That includes rare earths. That, to me, seems like the obvious reason why Greenland is such a enticing prospect, because it has a ton of rare earth deposits. Is that the single biggest reason why you think Greenland is within Trump's sights?

[B]

Greenland? I think it was a big mistake to. The rhetoric that they were using about we need to take it. We already have a military base there. Greenland has always been very strategically important to the United States. I don't know what we, you know, we basically already have carte blanche in Greenland and what we want to do. So I don't, I don't fully see what the whole push was to get even more from it, other than maybe to try to get Europe to capitulate in some way and show, bend the knee to our demands. I don't get it. It seems like at this point that they've worked out an agreement that they're happy with. Greenland, to me, has never been as big of a concern just because it's, it's already in our sphere. You know, it's already on lock, essentially. But the, the, the, it's important for missile defense. It's important for the, the sea lines of communication that are opening up through the Arctic as the, as some of the ice melts there. It's, it's going to be an even more important transit route through there. So I understand it's, it's strategic importance. I don't think it, it needs to be a part of the US in order for us to, to have what we need there.

[A]

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, that's, that's kind of the way I felt about it. I was like, I can't imagine that America is not just doing whatever they want with Greenland. You Know what I mean? Like, shout out to Denmark. But, like, America's just going to call up Denmark and be like, hey, we need some more, and, okay, we have to pay them a fee. Like, sure, what is money? Like, we'll just give it to them. Like, to me, it just seemed like it. My assessment would probably be, like, Trump just being like, oh, just take it. Like, him just kind of being like, it would be sick to, like, add some more land for, like, my legacy and we get it even cheaper. So. Sure. Like, that's probably, like, what I would assume, but again, I have no idea.

[B]

I agree. I. I feel like it was a little bit of that and they floated some different ideas. Like, I think they were at one point ready to give every citizen, like, 100 grand or something like that. And maybe they. They were kind of just floating idea, hey, would you guys take this? And they were still. They're saying, no, we don't want that. I would have taken it.

[A]

It's kind of like, yeah, it's basically just become like a Mr. Beast video. It's like, last one to leave Greenland gets a million dollars. Whoa. That's pretty cool. So I guess looking at the Iran conflict in a vacuum, it looks a little bit different than when you look at the sort of grander picture of what Trump and his administration has sort of been doing geopolitically. Because I guess this, I guess, would fall into the greater pattern of, like, Trump's sort of geopolitical kind of play. Like, this doesn't feel as. It doesn't feel as random when now looking in retrospect at everything else he's done.

[B]

Yeah, I think it fits in. It fits into a bigger play. And whether or not it works out and goes the way that they want it to, I think that that's well up for debate and we won't know for a while. I think guys like Soleimani was playing his own bigger picture. This guy was going around setting up all those proxy networks for Iran. And just like, how. You know, it's funny because a lot of the people in Iran chant. There's a specific chant that they say. I can't remember it now, but it's basically like, stop funding foreign wars.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Something that you would. You think you would hear here.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But the people in Iran are tired of their money being spent on Hamas and Hezbollah. You know, like, they're, They're. They're done with that shit just as much as I think a lot of Americans are.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Protesters within Iran have Increasingly used the chance, such as not for Gaza, not for Lebanon. I give my life for Iran to criticize the Islamic Republic's funding of proxy wars in the region. So you have like an Iran first movement.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That's exactly how I would describe it, yes.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm curious if you have any perspective on this because it's hard to really get a read because every Persian or Iranian I talk to in America obviously left and many of them left around the time of the revolution because they didn't like the regime. So all the people that I meet in America are very pro toppling the regime. And they're like, this is great. This is amazing. I love Donald Trump for getting rid of this guy. This is so good. But then you have people in the country and it's harder to get a read about what they actually feel. So if you had to guess, do you feel like the people in the regime are happy that it's toppled? Are they sort of, you know, cautiously optimistic, waiting to see what takes its place? Or are they mad because they love the, the Ayatollah?

[B]

If you're talking about people in the regime, they are probably upset because they benefit from that power structure.

[A]

I'm talking about the citizens.

[B]

The citizens. My under. My last time I checked was it's something like 20% are hardline supporters of the theocracy. And I think 80% of the population, and we could double check these number. I think 80% of people want the government to be switched because imagine how much they would benefit. If you look at pre Iran, their GDP was much higher. They were doing much better. If a pro Western leader were put into power there, those sanctions go away. They become ten times more wealthy of a country. Is that messed up that they have to ally with the United States in order for that to happen? That's messed up. And that's one of the ways that the regime stays in power is they point out that that's messed up, that American influence, that America basically controls everything. Here's what I'll say. What we're witnessing right now and what we've been witnessing and why the world feels so dangerous and crazy in the past 10 years is because the world order is falling apart. And there's the haves and the have nots. There's the people who benefit from the world order. America and our allies, we benefit from it. We get to sort of do whatever the fuck we want. And we can. If you, if you do Something we don't like. We'll sanction you to the point where you can't afford medicine. Like we will. Horrible things we'll do and we'll get our way. So of course we want to. We want the world order to stay the same. We don't want Russia to invade Ukraine and to challenge our authority, which would. Then we can just make the dollar not the reserve currency. We 100% want the world order to stay the same. We want the institutions that govern much of the world, like the UN and that have. These institutions have dictated life since the end of World War II. We want to keep that the same and we'll do anything to keep it the same. And we're even willing to spend enormous treasure on keeping it the same because it benefits us so much. We will protect the waterways and the sea lines of communication. We'll spend billions on that while China sits back and benefits from it because we benefit so much from the world order. But there's these other countries who do not benefit from them from it. And they feel like it's so unfair that they're willing to. This is their moment, they feel, to break the world order and to make a new one that's more beneficial for them. That's what I think Russia was trying to do in Ukraine. I think that's why China wants to invade Taiwan and then move from there because they feel like they're surrounded by us and contained by us and that their prosperity is. There's basically like a governor pin on it. We are keeping them down. That's how they feel. That's what I think on a bigger picture is happening right now.

[A]

Right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it also explains why these heads are being taken out. So Maduro, for example, seems unrelated to Iran, but it fits in the bigger picture of geopolitical strategy that if you're able to take on Maduro, all of a sudden you shore up this, you know, same hemispheric threat. This hostile Venezuelan leader that ostensibly wants America to suffer and is allied with Russia. I mean, is that a fair. It's kind of like broad strokes assessment.

[B]

That's one of Russia's client states is now gone. And what we're doing there in the Caribbean is taking over all those shadow oil tankers. The shadow fleet that funds Russia's war funds Russia. It's all what we're seeing is this maximum pressure against the other block, the adversaries, the ones that feel like they're getting the short end of the stick. We are now Putting maximum pressure on them.

[A]

Now it seems like in Venezuela now, Maduro's VP basically just takes over Nancy or Darcy Rodriguez, I think.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So that to me just seems like, all right, like the number two just took over and it's going to be the same thing.

[B]

No, no, she's being compliant. She's working with the United States. And that's the thing, what I mean about throwing out this idea of like, we need to replace Maduro with like a really super sweet, like Mr. Rogers type. No, we don't give a shit who's there as long as they do business with us. As long as they agree to not have Russian and Chinese influence there, as long as they open up their oil industry to American investment, that's all we care about. And that's what Rodriguez is doing. Right.

[A]

So this, I guess, is the strategy. You have this insane show of force, you pull up to Venezuela, you capture their leader in the span of an evening, put him on a plane, and now he's going to face a trial in America. And then the VP is like, all right, well I'll take over. And then you look at him and go, all right, you saw what just happened, Right?

[B]

Well, on top of that, people would. So I think that there's a good argument that happened that way. Other if you want to get conspiratorial, some people think that she was in on it, that she was one of the people that was like, let's give this guy up. We'll work with you Americans. And that's part of the reason why we, we saw not limited resistance. And most of the resistance was from a very hard line, Cuban intelligence agents that fired on us at the base and a couple of other units that fired on us. But largely. And we, we have incredible military capabilities. I just, I do think that there is an argument to be made that maybe some forces were told to stand down. And it's possible you could make the argument that Rodriguez, it was a coup, in a way.

[A]

Interesting. And she had the most to gain, it seems like. Which again, isn't inherently, you know, an indicator of guilt, but it does, you know, it does point a finger or two.

[B]

Yep. And it was one of the things that we looked at when, before we did the Iran strikes, we went in and we were like, is there anyone that's going to be similar? That's going to be someone that can take power inside of Iran and we'll do business with us?

[A]

And what do you think?

[B]

Who's the. From what I've heard, they're Saying that they killed a lot of the people that they were looking at, that the strikes were more effective than they thought they were, and they killed a bunch of the people that they were going to try to reach out to.

[A]

Right. I saw, like, a former prime minister or something like that that hasn't been in power for a decade or something was also killed. And do you think that was like a casualty, like collateral with the strikes, or do you think that was targeted, where it's like, oh, this guy's not going to be friendly, and he has technically a claim to the throne, so we got to get him out, too?

[B]

I think it was collateral. I think that they didn't expect the decapitation strike to cut that much of the head off, but I don't think they are losing sleep over it. They're going to look for someone else to do business. Business with. The big billion dollar question is, will they. Will they find somebody, do you think?

[A]

I mean, who would you guess? Do you think they'll put Pahlavi back in?

[B]

So that's the thing. I think there was a figure that was similar to Pahlavi in Venezuela, you might recall. I forget her name now, but she was the rightful one that won the election in Venezuela.

[A]

She won the Peace Prize.

[B]

Yes. Right. And everyone thought, like, they'll put her in power because she's very pro us and she'll do. But there's a problem with legitimacy. Don't want it to. First of all, it just wouldn't work organically. People would think they'd be like, this is a puppet government. This is just a stooge for America. You can't lead a country, can't have the political will of the people. If you look like you're just an installed leader, it becomes a problem. We saw it in Iraq, for instance.

[A]

I mean, this has existed in every society throughout history.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, you take out a guy and it's like, well, who technically has the divine right? Like, who has God anointed to take over the throne, going all the way back to ancient Egypt? Like, we need the person that is the actual correct heir. And it's like a weird sort of internal human sort of judgment about where power is supposed to lie. And this is another great example where it's like, all right, this girl technically won, but if our guy gets kidnapped and then America puts this woman in, it's not really fair. This is not what's supposed to happen. So we'll put the person.

[B]

We have an innate understanding, Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just as humans, we have an innate understanding of that. That's not fair. That's not credible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, that doesn't pass the smell test.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But Rodriguez, she comes into power, all right, That's a straight line of continuation. So I think that was one of the things that. That was maybe one of the only lessons we might have learned from the global war on terror was like, you actually can't force it.

[A]

Right. Yeah. You put Steven Johnson in charge of, you know, Venezuela. To Venezuelans, you're like, who the hell is this guy?

[B]

Yeah. Rubio is suddenly down there tomorrow in charge of Venezuela. It's. It's just not going to work.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And the same is true for Iran. It might be somebody that. And Syria, for instance. Syria is run by somebody who, when I was over in Iraq, he was in a prison, right, For. For trying to kill us. But now he's meeting with General Petraeus in Washington, D.C. and it's like, it's. It's. It's. There are no enemies. There are. There's no permanent allies. There are only interests.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I think there's maybe the Kissinger quote, but that. That's the long and short of it.

[A]

Right?

[B]

What's up, guys?

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, obviously we're not 100% aligned, but he is way more playing ball than Assad was. And one of the big things that still needs to be worked out in the whole region is the Kurdish population and what happens with them and what they get or don't get, that's still in flux. And they're trying to resolve that. But this guy was shooting at us, trying to kill us. And now he's coming to Washington D.C. and meeting with us. And we're talking about. And we're pulling our troops out of Syria. Now. We might just have some very small contingent inside the actual capital of Damascus. And so it's a totally different story. The whole playing field is totally different now from just a few years ago. I joke that this is the neocons wet dream. Like Dick Cheney would be overjoyed if he saw that Syria, Iran and that these, these were all toppling and, and Iraq and it's all seeming to go in American interests.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, they pulled it off. It's like borderline, like, oh, well, they did ultimately get what they want through all these different administrations, left and right. Whatever. They ultimately achieved the foreign policy goal of alignment with America. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I guess it really comes down to like, do you believe in. I guess it is in a way, like, yeah, this is the American interest. If it works. If it doesn't work, then obviously it's a nightmare. But you could make a very legitimate argument like, yeah, all of these things are done for the American interest. In that you don't need to have a whole story or a whole playbook. You just need to go in with a show of force, topple the regime and tell the next person that takes over say, hey, you saw what happened. Play, play Ball like you're going to do what we want. It's kind of like some mafia shit.

[B]

It is, yeah. It's very, it's if. I think the only way it makes sense is if you think there's going to be war between the US And China or the possibility of it, if, if, if that's what they're shoring up against, then, then it, it tracks. Otherwise, it's, it's very risky and it could blow up for many years. Our past interventions did blow up. So, yeah, they took the long road to get where they're trying to go, and we don't know if they'll get there.

[A]

What is the current status of Afghanistan as far as this sort of chessboard? Because it seems like Taliban's taken over. That seems like an issue for us and that obviously everything that has happened there historically has been like, you know, a quagmire. But the current standing of the government that's in power, does that pose a threat to us in the event that a conflict with China arises?

[B]

No. The big thing that they were, the strategic aspect of Afghanistan was Bagram Air Base. I would argue that there's about maybe like 10, 12 really super strategic air bases around the world that are linchpins and control a lot of waterways that you can project power from these air bases. Bagram is one of them because it's about. I forget. It's like Trump was talking about this, like, 500 miles from where China's nuclear silos are and their nuclear weapons production is from Bagram Air base. Very accessible. But outside of that air base and being able to use it or not, the Taliban, I don't see them being much of a threat or a problem.

[A]

That's so interesting. So we have these, this attack on Iran. They immediately start attacking American proxies and bases. In these proxies in Dubai is kind of the most infamous one. We saw footage of, you know, like, what seems like residential parts of Dubai getting struck. I, I think Saudi Arabia bases there also got stroke. I think three U.S. service members were killed thus far. That number might have changed. So this is kind of Iran's horizontal escalation where, okay, you attack us now, we're going to respond in kind, basically to put pressure on the proxies to get you guys to stop. Is that more or less what's happening?

[B]

If I'm Iran, what I try to do is I try to destabilize things. It's now it's at four confirmed US Service members have been killed and five injured as Far as I know, and I think about a little over 500 Iranians have been killed in the war so far. And if I'm Iran, what I want to do is I'm aiming at all of the international airports in the region, because those are what will cause the greatest economic problem. And this is what they're doing. They're targeting luxury hotels, they're targeting international airports. These are things that will shut down foreign investment in these countries and make it more risky to invest in these countries and make it. Their goal is put so much. Make it so difficult to align with the United States that you just kind of go, oh, I'm out. I'm out. Like, this is going to be too much of a hit economically if this keeps happening. So they're shutting. They say that they've shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is where, believe 20% of the world's entire oil comes through from Saudi Arabia, Iran. And I mean, really, it was going to be shut down anyway because there's a regional war going on. Like, who's going to be trying to go through there when there's missiles going everywhere? But that's shut down. That's why you see the oil market spike. So Iran, you notice they haven't shot down any US Fighter jets, and that might change tomorrow. Maybe they do, but they don't have the capability. They have no air force, so they can't fight back by attacking conventional air power. But what they can do is an asymmetric battle, which is put pressure economically on all these Arab states in the region to the point where everybody wants. They just beg for a ceasefire, basically, and then the regime stays in power and they're able to claim a victory,

[A]

they get what they want. That makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, if Iran is basically able to cause so much panic in the neighborhood, which is ultimately why Saudi and uae, you know, one of the main reasons they want the regime to be changed in the first place is that they're causing so much, you know, so many issues and funding so much local terror in the region that they're like, hey, these guys are causing a problem for us. We're trying to make money, we're trying to get foreign investment, and this radical regime is making that difficult in our neighborhood. So can you guys get rid of them? And in the attempt to get rid of them, if they make it so hot on the block, all of a sudden, UAE is gonna be like, hey, Trump, just chill. Can we just do this in, like, six months? Because we're gonna Bleed out.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah, that's it exactly.

[A]

But America must have predicted this. Like, the UAE must have known that, hey, in the event this happens, they're coming for us.

[B]

Right before I got here, I think the. That Iran sent ballistic missiles at the oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. And so that's what we're talking about here. They're trying to put that squeeze on them. And like you said. Yeah, that's their fundamental problem, which is that you got the Houthis who have been firing missiles at Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure for years now. And they would argue. Saudi Arabia would argue that the theocracy in Iran is not a rational player entirely. That, yeah, they're rational. They're not like they're going to nuke Israel tomorrow for religious purposes, but that a lot of their funding of these proxies and their fight is religiously motivated and not necessarily a pragmat. This is not, hey, let's. Let's do business and get rich in the Middle east with our oil. It's, we hate. Let's say we hate Jews, so we're gonna arm these proxy groups to fight them. Now, I will say Iran's argument would be that they are rational and that they hate the way the Palestinian people are being treated, and that's why they're arming those groups to protect the Palestinian people. So those are sort of the two arguments there.

[A]

Iran would probably say Israel is an illegitimate state, that America put them there because they want to have control in the region, that this is actually really just American influence in the region, meddling with our affairs and always doing this to us. And if we don't get rid of Israel, then America's always going to have a foothold and we're never going to

[B]

really be autonomous, which is why they call themselves the axis of resistance. They see them, everything is modeled around. We are resisting. We're resisting the greatest power in the world who. How do you say it? They are taking advantage of their position of power and that they're really exploiting and.

[A]

Right, that's what. That would be their perspective.

[B]

Right. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, again, it, like, I think it's helpful to think and, like, really try to steal a man the other side, because I think it gives a more full picture to how these games are played and what the calculations are.

[B]

It's really. It's too easy to just say, well, they're a terrorist regime and they're, you know, they're just all motivated entirely. They're animated by these crazy religious Islamic beliefs. There might be be a part of that. Yeah. But also they, I think, legitimately feel like America is, you know, bullying them and trying to get them to do whatever we want. And they're going to stand up to that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it's. It's too easy to. I wish we could get away with it by just saying, like, they're the. They're evil. They're the bad guys. But let's be real here. Like, we're in a competition. And if you're in a competition, I say you. You should. You should play to win it.

[A]

Right? And I guess this is ultimately where, like, the, you know, foreign policy perspective comes in, where it's like, what should we do? Really comes down to, like, kind of what can we do? And, like, if you look at Saddam with the BAATH Party, it's the same exact thing, like the entire BAATH Party, the sort of like, Pan Arab alliance, came out of a time where all these Arab states, Iraq namely, was like, America is just absolutely pillaging us. Like, they are just meddling with all of our stuff. They're taking all of our oil. Like, what they're doing is completely unfair to us as a nation, to us as Arabs, to us as Muslims. Like, we need to get rid of this foreign influence. And it was extremely popular. And so people rallied around and Saddam got a ton of power and was able to control this massive country under this pretense. And I'll bet if you were Iraqi in the 80s, you'd probably be like, he's got a good point. Like, he absolutely. Da, da da. Like, this makes a lot of sense. And if you're American, then obviously you're like, oh, these guys are crazy. What's going on? They're trying to kill us. They hate us because we're free. Da, da da. And as an American, you basically have to choose, like, do we want to do what's best for America to win the game, and that means potentially crushing anyone that goes against us, or do we want to, like, play the right, fair and moral way, which is like creating global peace, all the boats rise and everyone plays nice. And, I mean, maybe I'm being overly

[B]

simplistic, but no, it's 100% right. Like, he wouldn't have come to if it wasn't partly true that America was doing that. He wouldn't have gotten that power because I think underneath it all, there has to be some truth to it. And he had truth to it. And you're asking a very important question, which is like, should we be altruistic and be ethical or should we just do what's right for us? And the real mindfuck is at the end of the day, sometimes doing awful, evil things can actually forego worse things. So the obvious example is bombing, dropping the nuke on Japan. Did that save a million Japanese lives in the future with. Because we were going to invade Japan anyway. Like, these are this, it's, it's philosophical questions like that that are hard to parse out. Here's what I'll say about how Iran made their big play, which was with October 7th. What I think they were hoping would happen from that was that Israel would essentially fall because they were hoping to open up a five front war. They saw it that by launching October 7th it would then, then Hezbollah would also fight Israel and that the Hamas would fight them and maybe proxy groups from other countries would put pressure and Egypt would, would go against Israel and, and they'd be. Israel be fighting a five front war and they would be annihilated or so messed up by it that no one would want to invest in Israel and no one would want to live in Israel because they depend on that stuff so much. So that was their big play and it didn't play out like they were hoping. And that's the danger of trying to make a big strategic play like that. I think it backfired and Israel has now wiped those groups out. And so my point with that is that. But if we're not playing to win, someone else will. And then at the end of the day, is it better that America is the top dog, on top making the rules, the unfair rules, or would we want China to be on top making the unfair rules? And what would that world look like? That ultimately is the question to me, I think, yeah, it's an interesting political

[A]

question because my knee jerk is, hey, I want the President to go through Congress, I want the, you know, people in the government to vote on behalf of what the American people want and to ultimately do the bidding of the people and that we don't need to be meddling in all these foreign wars and doing all this, you know, intervention that eventually blows up in our face and we allocate all this money when we have real problems at home and da, da, da, da. That's my feeling. And then, you know, I'm like, I would hope that that would work, but I don't know if we've really ever seen that. Like America since World War II has never just like stayed home and worked on our problems. We've always been in some other type of, you know, military theater. So it's difficult to say if that's the best thing. That's my knee jerk. That's like, what emotionally, I would want.

[B]

I think as we get closer and closer to possible conflict with China, we'll see our government become more and more authoritarian in a way, and more and more dictatorship in a way, I would think, because I think it's gonna be more and more difficult to compete with them because China, they don't have to go, they don't have to vote on anything with Congress. If they want to invade Taiwan, they'll do it. Right. Because Xi Jinping says to do it. So how do you compete with a power that has that ultimate say all the time? I mean, you see, he's purged all of his generals recently to, to have complete control. You see, we're doing something similar. We've, you could say, purged a bunch of our generals. We've gotten rid of a lot, even from, like, lower leadership on up, we've gotten rid of a bunch of military leadership that didn't agree with this vision of the future that the new administration has. I think we're seeing this in a lot of countries where they're sort of like, in Russia, they got rid of a bunch of leadership right before 2014, right. When they went into Ukraine. This, this is what countries are doing. They're like, if you're not on board with the, what we're doing here, goodbye.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's no, like, let's get a second opinion and talk this out. It's like, what I say goes and we got to move fast and we got to be absolute because the other guys are doing the same thing. It's an interesting paradigm.

[B]

World War II is similar. Like how, how, how FDR was in power for like 130 years. In World War II, we became almost like a dictatorship, and we were able to step back from it and undo a lot of that. But during these type of times, I think of global power competition, it trends that way.

[A]

Yeah. I wonder if Trump tries to use this to get a third term.

[B]

Well, that, that is not out of the question. I wouldn't be beyond him. I don't think. And I don't think it'd be that surprising if it happened.

[A]

Right? Yeah, it's a, it's such a tricky thing in your brain because, like, there's what you think should happen, but then there's the realpolitik. You know what I mean? Like, like, in my mind, I'm like, yeah, everyone like, animals shouldn't die. We should all be vegan. But then I'm like, well, people need to eat food. You know what I mean? It's like this, sort of like this. These competing ideas that exist in your brain where you're like, there is something that is of, like, a higher moral standard that I can submit is probably the thing. But then there's the functional reality of living in a world with scarce resources that everyone wants, that you have to be ruthless. I truly. On a personal basis, I don't know. I don't know what the answer should be.

[B]

I don't envy politicians. Yeah. Because I don't know. I don't know either. It. It's a paradox a lot of times, like,

[A]

Oh, this is Epstein. Yeah, this is a link that Croesus just pulled up. He says Epstein suggested that if Trump felt cornered, he might bomb Iran to spark a crisis and boost his popularity. Now, these emails came from 2018. I'm curious if you've seen these before.

[B]

No, I haven't.

[A]

So assuming these are legitimate, it says here that total diversion, but the right is onto him. Everyone here surprised and happy about it. Nobody quite understand why he did it, including myself. Completely opposite of what I was told in the White House. What is he up to? Spoke with New Syria UN envoy who used to work for me. Russians, very good and kind. And it goes on to say, everyone here is surprised. Oh, no, keep going down. You guys need to understand he is psychotic and would not blink twice in encouraging an attack on us so he can leap to the country's defense mindset. If I go down, I'm taking everyone with interesting. Cornering a rat, never a good idea. And that seems like it came from Epstein himself. Cornering a rat, never a good idea.

[B]

One of the things I don't understand about the idea of getting into a war with Iran being popular for any president. Maybe his approval ratings have gone up. I would assume that they have not. Right.

[A]

I don't think most of the country doesn't want this.

[B]

Yeah, No, I think it's something like 80% of Americans don't want to be at war with Iran. It's very unpopular, and I can understand why. We're tired of. Of wars in the Middle East. 2018, when Epstein's writing this, it might have been a different proposition. It might have been different then, and maybe it would have been more popular. Epstein and these files, I'm sure you've been tracking them. Yeah, of course. Closely. Absolutely wild. And definitely lays credence to the idea that There was a blackmail operation, and it certainly gave a bunch of fuel to people who are like, we're doing all this because of Israel.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, because. Didn't help that at all.

[A]

Yeah. What did you see from the email releases that indicated that potentially Epstein is intelligence or anything relating to this current conflict account? What we're seeing now, he's a new

[B]

type of intelligence that I didn't know about before this. He wasn't privy to. Like, he. He's not a agent. He's not an officer of intelligence. He's this super asset. He's a Super Fixer. He's 100%. It's not even a question anymore if he was involved in intelligence. We know he was involved in intelligence. The question is for whose benefit? He wasn't working for them. But I think he. Here's what I think the evidence shows is that he was running a blackmail operation. I think partly so that it would insulate him from any consequences of what he was doing. He's. We know. You know, he wants to be able to get away with not just the stuff he's doing with underage girls, but also all of his illicit dealings, all of his illegal financial work that he's involved in. And by being of value to intelligence services, you protect yourself. And this isn't a conspiracy theory. I like to stick to just like what we know. We know that in the past, people who have ties to the CIA and to Mossad, they get away with everything. Whitey Bulger, for instance, was an FBI asset, and he. Yeah, we didn't prosecute him. I think Epstein was a different tier, a different level of that. But it's why he just look at the evidence. It's why he got away with what he got away with for so long. He was of great benefit to the intelligence agencies. We know he was involved in arms deals with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, and with Israel. So people's minds can go from there, and you go into conspiratorial land from there. But that was my read on it, was that he is a super intelligence asset for not just. We're learning that not just one agency, but multiple intelligence agencies. And I think he's an emerging factor that came out of after World War II. We needed ways to do things in the shadows. Like, we needed ways to move money around to arm proxy groups in. In a deniable way. Before that, we would just. If we wanted to arm a group, we'd do it out in the open. In World War II, you just send Lend Lease, you send the Money and the assets to the Soviet Union. You don't gotta hide it. But once there was nuclear weapons and once you had to fund proxy wars by saying like, oh, no, we're not arming the fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets. You need these murky, completely without morals, people like Epstein who move that money around.

[A]

You need deniability.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

If you're funding a rebel group against the ussr, Russia will be like, oh, you're fighting us now. It's a war. The Cold War's off and we're gonna nuke you. So now we need a gray zone operator to give money to, to then give the money, you know, to this rebel group. And then if Russia finds out, we'll be like, like, oh, we can't believe this guy did this. This guy is a rogue American. We got to get rid of him. And then they cut him loose. And that's what it is. And for incurring that type of risk, these people get very wealthy.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And this is the COVID world of arms dealing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Is that they sort of act as, like these sort of middlemen between America and our budget and these proxy groups that we want to fund. And it seems like, I mean, Epstein was connected. I mean, his relationship with Adnan Khashoggi, a notorious arms dealer, would at least lend some type of credence to this. And Adnan Khashoggi, as we know, was involved in the Iran Contra situation, basically arming the Contras in Nicaragua through this deal with giving weapons to Iran. And we're able to basically go around like, what is it the Bowles act that said, like, we couldn't fund these groups in Central America.

[B]

Yeah. So when you do things in the shadows like that, then you, you gotta, what, what, what happens in the darkness is almost worse than we could have imagined.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It creates a space for evils that we were like, that's not even possible. It makes a island where the most unimaginable, horrible things can happen because governments needed this like dark, shadowy thing. So he emerged out of that, out of that necessity. And you go, you can go back as far as Douglas Leese, if you're familiar with it, was like his, his mentor who. He was a well known British arms dealer. And he got connected with Epstein through Epstein's girlfriend at the time, right after he left Bear Stearns in New York City meets the Lease family. And Douglas Leese is the first one that teaches him how to hide money from these arms deals, how to set up offshore accounts. And the first arms deal that he was involved in was the Al Yamama arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which was the biggest arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia at the time in history. It's still, I think, going on or just ended recently. It was like $40 billion worth of fighter jets from Britain to Saudi Arabia. And Epstein's passport, he had a. He had a fake or he had a. A hit. A second passport under a different name that it appears like the timestamps that it was used lines up with deals from that arms deal. And the reason he. They needed someone like him was because for that arms deal to go through, there needed to be all these bribes and things that are culturally a norm in with the Saudi Arabian royal family. So Epstein helps with that. And then after that, yeah, he gets linked up to Khashoggi through Douglas Lees. And it's awful, But I think he's a product of the Cold War. He's a product of these things needing to be done off the books. And anytime you have stuff done off the books, there's corruption and criminality and underage girls and black market honeypot blackmail schemes, Right?

[A]

Yeah. It's an interesting observation because it makes sense to everyone. People that are willing to tolerate this amount of risk and willing to deal in this dirty of a world probably have terrible predilections. They're probably bad people. Like, if you're going to basically offer someone money to, like, be a hitman, for example, like, let's say you wanted to kill someone, you know, you hired a hitman. Odds are that guy also does other terrible things. You're not going to get a perfectly upstanding citizen that pays his taxes all the time that's also willing to go kill someone for 20 grand.

[B]

It's like you're some weird shit. Yeah.

[A]

You're going to get a weirdo dude. And the odds of him having, like, some type of weird sexual behavior, having some type of other nefarious criminal element, being into drugs. Yeah, probably because people that operate in these shadows are. They have a different assessment of risk, and they behave in weird ways.

[B]

And no morality. No morality, no nothing. Boxing them in and their behaviors. And so here's what I'll say about how he ended was. I think that anytime. A lot of times, anytime these assets outlive their usefulness, what happens to them?

[A]

Yeah, they go.

[B]

They get got. They go. And a lot of times they fall off a yacht or they fall out of the window.

[A]

Window's a classic. Love the window.

[B]

That's my favorite. Personally, I take that over poisoning, but it Just. We know that that happened. That's not a conspiracy. We know that you can give a dozen different examples of who that's happened to. And I think Epstein outlived his because, like, let's assume he was this Cold War thing that we needed during that time. I think we've moved into a different era now, and we no longer. Things are not done in the shadows like that anymore. Yeah. Like when we're arming Ukraine against Russia, how do we do it? We do it out in the open. We send that. The weapons. Not through, like, some shadowy network. We send it through Poland, through the U.S. army. And Russia has armed proxy groups against us in the Vietnam War. They did it in a plausible, deniable way, too. In a dark way. Now when they arm groups against us, when our adversaries have proxy wars against us, it's out in the open. And I think the reason why it's out in the open. Something's changed since the Cold War, which is that social media, the Internet, like, it's all. You cannot hide it anymore. Satellite imagery, satellites change the game entirely. You can't hide moving weapons. We could never do what we did in Afghanistan, where we armed the fighters in Afghan militia in Afghanistan against the Soviets. We just. We could not do that in a covert way today. We would do it overtly.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And we wouldn't need a guy like Epstein today.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you don't need guys like Epstein today.

[A]

Digital surveillance.

[B]

Right. So what? He outlived his usefulness, and he made

[A]

the block way too hot. Like, he got. He got sloppy.

[B]

He became a liability.

[A]

Became a massive liability. And, yeah, he got jammed up, and the blackmail thing got way too out of hand. And they were like, yeah, we gotta just get rid of him. And if you look at the day he got arrested, he dies, like, 33 days later or something like that. Like, it was. With. It was within the month, basically, whether

[B]

he himself or he's still alive in Israel today, like, whatever the case may be, or he. Or he was killed in his jail cell, to me, it doesn't matter. It's not the big question. It's just that, like, he's gone. They disappeared him.

[A]

Yeah. They don't care what happens to him. I think they probably killed him.

[B]

I think they killed him, and I think they killed him or they gave him the means.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it's almost unimportant. The bigger point is that he's. They arrested him. And the only reason they arrested him in the first place is. Is because he outlived his usefulness and we don't need guys like that anymore today.

[A]

Right? Yeah, I think that's a. That's an astute observation. And furthermore, I think when people say, like, oh, Epstein was obviously Mossad and he was only Mossad, and da, da, da, da, da. I think it's oversimplifying the point again. In my personal estimation, he was probably working with massage because he was kind of working with everyone. Like, he was working with CIA, he's probably working with MI6. Like, he was just kind of like working with whoever wanted him because he's an arms dealer and was kind of doing whatever he could do. And if he's gonna. He'll take money from whomever. And that's the way it seems to me. And I think putting too heavy of an influence or too heavy of, I think a focus of being like, he was only Mossad, I think maybe misses it a little bit. And that there's a lot of people implicated in working with a represent reprehensible human being to achieve their, you know, gray market means. Is that. What do you think of that?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I think. I think that the, the emails bear that out, which is that he had ties to Soviet intelligence. Sorry, Russian intelligence.

[A]

Right. He's tied with FSB and emailing them, being like, hey, what do you think of this?

[B]

Right. And. And working and dealing with like a blackmail issue with the Russian.

[A]

Right. There's this prostitute that's blackmailing some businessman. Like, what do we do about her? She lives here.

[B]

Yeah. And they get a whole dossier on her. They're like, she's not connected. Here's what you say. And they basically threaten her. But yeah, he had ties to all these different agencies.

[A]

And

[B]

I think that it is too narrow to just say it was just Mossad because he was this thing that we didn't know existed yet. So we're still trying to wrap our brains around it, which is like, he's this guy that all of them, all of the intelligence agencies used in a way. They all used him as an ends to a mean. And we didn't really know he. We didn't know that that type of Bond villain was like a thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, we still don't, I think, have the words to articulate what he was, you know?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, he just seems kind of like a do it all fixer for anyone that's willing to pay. That's the way it seems to me.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And that's like, even like the Les Wexner thing, I think he's probably Also implicated in a way in terms of, like, I mean, potentially, you know, a, you know, organized sex trafficking ring, I'd think. I don't know. He's not indicted as a co. Conspirator, but I think he's probably in. I think he's probably implicated in a. Probably a moving money around in a nefarious way type way. You know what I mean? Like giving Epstein all this power of attorney, the control of his entire estate, hundreds of millions of dollars, probably to move money from some place to another. Maybe that's from his personal coffers to Israel, perhaps from his coffers to avoid taxes, perhaps. But some type of criminality is being done, and Epstein's the guy that's willing to facilitate it.

[B]

He's also perfect for removing yourself from liability. Like, if you want to remove yourself from an action, you do it through this guy who's kind of a nobody, came out of nowhere and has no ties. You just use him as the way. So then maybe if he gets caught hiding commission bribe money from an arms deal and Epstein gets caught, that's not on you. He's doing these things for other people, taking on ultimately to be the fall guy. And that's what I think he was. He fell. And how many people have been arrested in America other than him?

[A]

Right.

[B]

He took the fall. Yeah. What the. What the. Like, how. I don't know how we let that go.

[A]

Yeah. I think it's because we're too comfy. Every life is. You know, everyone's like, all right, I got a TV for 100 bucks. You know, I mean, I got free cable. You know, I got my friends, Netflix. I'm really gonna go on the streets.

[B]

Come on. Right? Yeah.

[A]

I think we're too comfy. That's. That's the. Ultimately, the way I see it. But I think as wealth inequality probably increases and people feel more and more pinched and a little bit more economically destitute, I think the conditions might show up for something like that, for some type of, like, you know, tangible rebellion where people actually go out in the streets and they're like, fuck this.

[B]

But they got close enough that they released. They released those files, right? Because I think it was only the pressure from the people that got them released in the first place. And. And now we're all reading them, and we're like, oh, my God, it's worse than we thought. Yeah.

[A]

What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because I just got a cheat code that I want to tell you guys all Right. I am at an age in my life where unfortunately, a normal night out has consequences. Not like, not even crazy drinking. Like just a couple of drinks and the next day I'm wrecked. Like, my sleep score is bad. My head feels bad on my whoop. It tells me, like, hey, you slept like crap. And that's why I use Cheers Restore.

[B]

All right?

[A]

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[B]

I don't. I mean, he look like. Is he. What, is he gonna not get reelected because of it? I don't quite buy that it's related at all. I could draw ties between us moving on El Mencho, the cartel in Mexico, but being related with the move on Iran. But the Epstein files, I don't know what Trump, how maybe I'm not seeing it, but like, maybe if he was running for reelection or something, but to him, I don't think makes a difference, right? Yeah.

[A]

I mean, I was telling you about Professor Jiang, predictive history. And he predicted a lot of what was going to happen to a pretty accurate degree, I would say, on a personal assessment. I mean, two and a half, two years ago. And again, this is before the Epstein files were ever released or that really came into the fray in the same degree as it was. And he basically was able to calculate this just kind of like game theory. He's like, all of our allies in the region want, you know, it benefits Trump in a way to, like, you know, help cement him potentially to run for a third term, create chaos and, you know, domestically, that he's able to then come in as, like, a savior and, you know, obviously Israel wants it. He's like, there's a lot of, you know, economically, it's advantageous. He's like, there's enough alignment with American interests that this is probably going to happen. He said this years ago. And so that, again, kind of gives me some perspective where I'm like, it seems like the Epstein file thing was convenient that this happened around the same time. They're like, yeah, you know, we have this issue. Let's do this. Maybe it happened six months earlier because, you know, the timing worked and it also covered up this thing. But I don't know if it was like, oh, no, this Epstein thing is going to destroy us right now. We need to cover this up, because I think they're going to get away with it anyway.

[B]

Unfortunately, that's the other thing. Yeah. It'd be one thing if it seemed like it was going to topple or have a big impact, but no one's being arrested in the US other than people are stepping down. A lot of CEOs have had to step down and resign, but, yeah, I don't think they're connected. I have listened to some of his courses before. He has a perspective, I would say, like, how. I have a pretty pro American perspective. I would say he has a pro CCP perspective, which.

[A]

Yeah, he shits on America a lot.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, respect to him, because I don't have. I wouldn't have respect for someone in China who's, like, working against their country. You know, like how. I don't think anyone should expect a former soldier in the United States to, like, all over my country, God bless him, he has a perspective that. And a worldview against. Yeah. Probably against U.S. interest. Yeah.

[A]

But I'm trying to think as far as, like, the timing of this. There's another thing people have talked about where this, this operation is supposed to last four days, started on Saturday morning, and it's supposed to end on Purim, which is a Jewish holiday, where that I think symbolizes, again, I'm not a religion expert here, but I think it more or less kind of symbolizes this ancient battle where the ancient Israelites defeated, like, you know, 70,000 Persians troops or something like that in some type of, of, you know, ancient battle. And that's what the holiday signifies. And people are suggesting that like this actual real world geopolitical conflict is now lining up with, you know, religious kind of, you know, eschatological sort of predictive models. And it seems like there's a, there's an interesting overlap between like actual real world operations and like religious end time philosophy. I'm curious if you've seen that.

[B]

So I don't even think you need to go off of, you know, it's on the anniversary of this battle. I don't even think you need to go that far to see that connection because this is, in a way, I mean, I joke about this all the time. This is like, what is this, the ninth Crusade? Like, this is a continuation of a battle in some ways that has been going on for thousands of years. It's. We don't even need to necessarily look at the, what coincidence it might be because I look at it, I'm like, the attack probably was dictated based on when they had an opening to hit the leadership, when they were like, okay, they're all in one place, let's hit them. It could be that there was some, that they did it purposefully on a date that does happen. But I mean, Israel and the Holy Lands in the Middle east, people have been fighting over these four thousands of years.

[A]

Yeah, literally.

[B]

And so, yeah, I think it's just a fact.

[A]

Interesting that there's. But I guess. Do you think they're directly lining up? They're like, hey, let's go this week versus this week. Because it lines up and there's some type of symbolic element.

[B]

It's possible, it's possible. Countries do that for sure. I, I would just have to, I don't know enough about it. I'd have to look at whether there are enough of these battles that this could almost happen on any day. And you could say that because there's so many historical battles, or, or it could be that, that they chose the date because of that. I, I haven't looked into it enough. Right.

[A]

What's happening in Kuwait where you have these F15s falling out of the sky.

[B]

So it's funny that. Well, I guess it's not so funny because that's, that's terrible. But everyone's okay. So we can say it's from the time because they all survived, the pilots

[A]

all survived, which is crazy. You see a dude get shot out of the sky, land like his plane crash lands, he ejects and then Like a bunch of local Kuwaitis walk up and they're like.

[B]

They thought they're Iranian.

[A]

Yeah. And they're like, what's up? These guys like a bat. And he's like, yes. And he's like, no, I'm American. They're like, oh, get in this truck. And they like put him in the trunk of like an suv.

[B]

So the official word is that they were shot down by Kuwaiti air defense Patriot systems. Some people might argue that maybe they were shot down by Iranian systems. I think it's unlikely because to be over. That's Ali Asalim, where I've been. Actually, that's where I went before I deployed into Iraq. I was there for two weeks at Ali Al Saleem in Kuwait. And Iranian air defense would likely not reach that far. But so a lot of times they thought they were targeting shahed drones and they targeted. They hit these F15s instead. With Patriots, it sounds like. And it sounds like all the pilots were okay. But this is the kind of thing, the risk that you take when you undergo an operation like this is going to be friendly fire incidents. Even to this day, if we assume that it was a friendly fire incident. I mean, this footage is wild, crazy.

[A]

My dudes posted up in the trunk. But you think it was friendly fire.

[B]

The reason I think that was because you can geolocate and know that this happened in Kuwait. And the range of Iranian air defense is such that I don't know how they would. Their missiles would reach Kuwait near Ali Al Salim where they were hit.

[A]

Right, yeah. No, it makes sense. It's just seems like a massive F up.

[B]

So here's what happened. You're coordinating with seven different, or, you know, a bunch of different languages. And you got Kuwaiti air defense and they're doing one thing and you got American air defense and they're doing another. Miscommunicate from being in the military. Miscommunication is very easy to happen.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

[B]

And you're in an environment where you're getting. People are dying and getting shot by shahed drones and by missiles. And if you wait five seconds too long after the radar picks up something moving towards you and you don't fire, then you've just got you and everyone you know killed. Right. So you have to make a split second decision.

[A]

Right. That's interesting. Now, I guess zooming out all the way, we've touched on this a little bit. But I guess to really paint the picture, these operations that happen in Venezuela are not really against Venezuela. It is to control American hegemony. And specifically, it's kind of a move against Russia. And this move against Iran is a move against Iran, but it's really a move against China. And I guess when the question comes up, like, you know, are we entering into World War Three? What would be your answer to that?

[B]

Looking at the big picture, I think that the, it almost doesn't matter what, what I think. I'll say what the US Government thinks. I, I believe that the US Government thinks that we're nearing World War iii. And when you say we're in World War III right now, there's so much that's still up in the air where it could go anyway. Maybe we deter World War III from happening by getting our ducks in a row, by getting Venezuela to be. Their energy is now under our control and we've cleaned up the cartels in Mexico, let's say, and we've locked down the Middle east. And our allies in Europe know that we're serious and they're investing billions into their own defense. And this diverts and deters war, World War III from happening ever. Maybe we, or maybe we buy 15 extra years before it happens. I would argue that, I mean, we know that US Officials have been going around the Pacific to their allies and saying, you need to invest more, you need to invest more in your defense. The guy who wrote the national security document, the NDS the 2026, these papers were just put out. He has a Twitter account and he tweets. I don't think he has a lot of followers, but he wrote the National Security, the Grand Strategy for America. He wrote, mainly authored it. And he's out, he's tweeting what our plan is, which is to get allies in the Pacific to invest more in their defense. So are we in World War Three? Like, I'd say it's more like a cold war right now before it. And that the United States is preparing for a worst case scenario because China is now nearing the point where for the last 20 years, they didn't have the capabilities to invade Taiwan. They just couldn't if they wanted to. But now they're very close to, well, if they wanted to, not only could they do it, but they might succeed.

[A]

Now, I've heard from GPing that that plan was like 2027, maybe 2028 to invade Taiwan. Do you think this action in Iran speeds up that timeline?

[B]

That's a good question. Is it going to speed it up or is it going to slow it down or is it not going to make a difference on the timeline. And it's going to happen one way or another. A lot of times I see people tweeting and saying, well, because we captured Maduro and because we bombed Iran, like this will justify. Now China will use that as a justification for invading Taiwan. And that is such a naive way, I believe, of looking at the world like China is going to invade or not invade Taiwan. Whether China wants. It'll be their decision whether they do that or not. It's not really. It's not going to make a difference. It's not like, oh, well, America bombed Iran, we're going to invade Taiwan. No, they're going to do it or they're not right. One way or another, we're giving ourselves too much credit, too much like we have complete agency over what China does and doesn't do. It's like nearly a billion people there and they're going to do what they think is best for their country at the end of the day. So I don't know if this speeds up the timeline or slows it down, but I think that, I think that this best, you know, in science, when you look at, like, why does something happen, you look at what's the best explanation for it. I think this is the theory that best explains what we're seeing right now.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think this war in Ukraine and America's funding of Ukraine through weapons and basically supplying them with munitions was effective at depleting the Russian forces in the event that there's another global war that Russia now, you know, has exhausted itself on this Ukrainian front?

[B]

I think that what would likely happen would be Russia would try to invade in the Baltic states, so they would try to attack countries like Estonia where they're most weakest. Because, yeah, Russia does not have the ability to take over all of Europe or invade Europe, but they could invade Estonia and their, their force strengths were, would outnumber NATO troops in that one part of the front. Because the front line in Europe is very different than it was in the Cold War, where it was just about, I think, 400 miles between the Soviets and the Western powers that had to be defended. Now you're talking about an over 1,000 mile long, very porous, open, essentially border that, that Russia could attack anywhere on that. And they don't need to have total and complete ability to invade all, you know, all the way to France or something. They just need to be able to fracture the alliance by doing some kind of action against Estonia. And so has the war depleted them in some ways it hasn't. Because in Some ways they've gotten stronger in terms of, they are investing way more in their military. They now have 700, 000 soldiers inside of Ukraine, whereas at the start of the war it was like two. They've, they've transformed their military. They're not winning yet, but they're, they've, they have been fighting for many years and per. And perfecting their tactics, and they're getting better at it. I don't, I don't know how that will, I don't know how that'll shake out in a, In a scenario. World War Three.

[A]

Yeah, it just seems like, I wonder if that was a broader calculation from, you know, the American administrations, you know, through, you know, basically since 2014.

[B]

So here's what I'll say about that. Part of why we armed Ukraine is because we took away Ukraine's nuclear weapons in the 1990s, and there was this kind of like, tacit agreement that, hey, we'll help you to the best of our, like, whatever we can kind of muster and do, we'll do it. We, you know, it's not like a security agreement, but we'll help you out. You get rid of your nukes. And that's sort of what we've done, right? Like, we're not, they're not our ally. They're not head on. Like, we don't have any full partnership with them. They're not part of NATO. But we've sort of like, hey, we'll help you survive. Because that's kind of like what we did. And when you look at what the United States has done since the 1960s, we've stopped nuclear proliferation, not just with our enemies, but with our allies too. Like, Taiwan got very close to building a nuclear bomb in the 1960s. And who stopped them? We did. The CIA got information that they were building it secretly, and we said, stop listening. We've, hey, don't tell anybody, but, like, we got your back, all right? You stop building this bomb and we'll, we'll take care of you. We'll, we'll guarantee your security. But don't, don't tell anyone because China will get very upset.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Same with South Korea. South Korea was building a nuclear bomb secretly. We found out. We put pressure on them economically. We said, we'll get our, those troops that are stopping North Korea from invading. We're out of here. If you build that nuclear bomb. Chill, chill, chill, bro. We got your security. Stop building the bomb. So I think when people see we have 800 bases around the world and we have why. Why are we sending weapons to these countries? Why do we have bases all over the Pacific? Like, part of the reason is because we're tied up in these agreements from post World War II where we've tacitly said, don't build nuclear weapons to guarantee that China won't invade and we will have your back. Okay, we'll guarantee the security. And now people are looking at it, and they're like, the US Is this evil country that has bases everywhere, completely forgetting all of these strategic partnerships that we've built there over the years and these obligations that we have. And, yeah, it's in our interests, of course, but there's a lot more to it.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That makes a lot of sense. And again, I think it's helpful for people to say, you can disagree with it, you can think that, hey, we should reallocate that money to domestic issues in America, but at the very least, you should understand what I'm saying is.

[B]

Yes, exactly. If the US Wasn't there, it's not that it would be some beautiful utopia situation. I think there would just be more nuclear weapons.

[A]

Right. Which inevitably, I think is bad. You know what I mean?

[B]

Like a different type. I think both situations suck, and it's like a different type of bad.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But that is, again, the realpolitik of geopolitics is like, what do you. What evil do you want?

[B]

You know, a lot of times. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're choosing the least bad scenario.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. What do you feel like Americans, broadly speaking, as far as, like, propaganda goes, are they getting fed in America that you think they should be, you know, weary of? Is there some type of messaging that's coming through either from foreign agents or from our own politicians that are muddying the waters that, you know, if you could advise people to kind of be aware of, what would it be?

[B]

I think it. There are very effective propaganda lines that. But really, what our adversaries are very good at is understanding what is good at dividing us. I think one of the. If I was to try to defeat the United States, what I would do is just double down on divisions within our country because we have so many ethnicities here and so many different religions that. That what in some ways can be a strength is also very easy to exploit as a weakness. So I would say that when you're watching out for propaganda, easily, we know for a fact one of the things that our adversaries do is play on. And again, there's some truth to it. Is the divisions that we have ethnically here. And it's a very. These, these narratives are very powerful because there's some truth to it always or sometimes a lot of truth to it. And that's what I'm seeing right now is we see it around the country with what the ICE operations that are happening is that our adversaries are exploiting that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The division within our country.

[A]

That's how I feel like anytime there's some type of messaging that's like, hey, we need like this group of Americans is bad, whether it's Somalis, black people, Jews, any type of like, ethnic or cultural delineator, I'm like, ah, you're missing it. Like you're doing the bidding of our adversaries for them. That they want nothing more than for us to be at each other's throats trying to, you know, kill each other. That's what they ultimately want. And anytime I see it, I'm like, oh, man. I think like, you're either you came up with this organically and it's being pumped by some type of foreign regime. Like that wouldn't be shocking to me to have someone in America being like, hey, we gotta get these people out of here. Insert whatever group. And I could see Russia or China pumping money into that person to basically prop them up to help proliferate this message that leads to infighting within America.

[B]

So, yes, 100%. And we know what you said is true because yeah, if you remember, the Russians were giving millions of dollars to some conservative creators.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I. So the interesting thing is you don't even need to like, it's not that Russia's telling one of these conservative creators, hey, change your mind about. It's just that they know that that creator is. Already believes that. And that's the best type of influence to buy is the type that's genuine. And they genuinely believe that. And they might not even be wrong about what they genuinely, genuinely believe. But Russia, for instance, in that instance, believed that it was worth investing in. Not just that line. They also invest in hard left propaganda that is effective for them as well. They just want to create division in ways. Yeah. I think we're going through a period right now where a big question is just like, who is American? What does it mean to be American ultimately? What benefits should Americans get?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And how do we decide how we treat fairly?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So.

[A]

And these are legit questions and we should be asking these questions, but I don't think that this, like, you know, carte blanche kind of sweeping Thing of, like, these people are the problem. I think, again, it just misses the point. Like, I. I just. I don't think ever in history that's ever been the right move. Like, whether you take, like, you know, World War II or Idi Amin in Uganda or, like, you know, China with the Uyghurs, like, take any group. And anytime there's some type of, like, ethnic push to say, like, this group is the problem, it almost always is wrong. I can't really even think of one case where it's like, oh, yeah, no, this was the Tigrayan. Should have been starved in Ethiopia. I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, it never is the right move. So. So all that to say, I think that the most American thing you can do is call for unity amongst the American people. I recognize that we are a diverse country of many different types of ethnicities and religions, and that's just the way that it is. You're not gonna change that because of the way our empire is set up. Yeah. We annexed Hawaii. There are a ton of Asian and Japanese and native Hawaiians that all of a sudden became American overnight. And you can't tell them that they're not American. American America's built from a lot of West African black people that came through the slave trade that were here and became American. You're like, you're not going to change that. We got, what, 150, 200,000 Mexicans in the Mexican American war that became American overnight. They're American. Like, you can't stop that. So to me, it's like, it just is what it is. There's going to be downfalls with the intense diversity both ethnically, nationally, and ideologically that we have in America. But you have to embrace it, because the other option is we collapse upon ourselves. Right. Like, to me, that's the only way that it can be.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Cause if you're gonna. You know, how would you collapse the American empire? You're not gonna. Likely not gonna beat us militarily, likely not gonna invade our country. At the very least, you just can't. So what do you do? You exploit the divisions within our country, Exploit our freedom of speech? Definitely. Because, again, this is like, it's one of our greatest strengths, is freedom of speech, but it's also one of our greatest weaknesses that they can exploit. That. That's what I'm doing if I'm China and Russia is, you know, because. Because we kind of can't do that in Russia and China. We can't run those kind of psyops or campaigns because it just like they crush anyone who tries to go, go against the government. They don't their systems. You can't exploit them in that way, in other ways. Sure, but that's, that's what I'm looking out for here.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good thing that people should be generally aware of and that's why I like what you do because I think on your, your channel I think you give like a very clear, you know, concise explanation of events that are going on. And obviously you have your bias as an American and someone that served in our military. You know, you love our country, which I would hope the vast majority of people that live in our country feel the same way. Maybe they disagree on things that happen politically or domestically or you know, even foreign affairs, which that is their, you know, God given right to disagree. But I would just hope that they believe in the American ideal enough that it's something worth fighting for. And I think you and your perspective and your channel just give a good, reasonable approach to how you can feel about, you know, events that are happening geopolitically and also just like really nuanced military understanding that I think the average person is not going to get access to. Like if you really want to understand like how these operations go, like I just go to your channel and, and you know, try to digest the information as well as possible. So I appreciate you making it, man.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a blast.

[A]

This has been, this has been very informative. I feel like I've, I've. Yeah, here it is. Chris Cappy, Cappy army. And yeah, I mean, what are the most recent ones? You got an Iran episode, cartel episode, an Epstein episode. I mean that seems like all the shit that my audience would love. All the people here at the campsite, I mean if they're not already tuning in, I'm sure they will. I'm curious, is there anything that we missed or anything that you think people should be aware of as we're sort of, you know, coming away from this conflict that's still, still extremely new. We're deeply in the fog of war. You know, is there anything else that you're, you're considering?

[B]

No, I think, I think we went over everything that has been on. I'm glad I got to get this off my chest because a lot of times I do, I try to keep the channel very, I don't give my point of view as, as clearly. So yeah, I'm glad I had an opportunity to kind of to.

[A]

To.

[B]

To speak.

[A]

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, brother. You're welcome. Anytime. And as these things inevitably will develop, I'd love to chat more.

[B]

Yeah, definitely.

[A]

Thanks, Chris.

[B]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

What's up, people? We're gonna take a break real quick because this episode is sponsored by me. Yes. Camp R D. That is the merch. That is the threads that we'd be wearing around here at the campsite. And we got all sorts of cool stuff. My buddy Zach just cooked up a sick UFO collection. You can go check it out there at Camp R D. I really appreciate you guys. We had so many people that came through for the holidays and picked up their threads. It's awesome. We got hats, hoodies, T shirts, all that. And if you're still listening to this and you didn't skip through, congrats. You got a promo code. All right, what do we do, Christos? 5% more.

[B]

How much five more?

[A]

10%. 10%. Final offer.

[B]

You won't go higher?

[A]

You tell me. What? What do we give them?

[B]

12%.

[A]

All right, we're doing 12% off. Should we go more?

[B]

Hey, it's your world. I'm just living in it.

[A]

Let's round up. 10%. No, 15%. If you use the promo code. Camp. Camp 15. You're gonna be getting 15 off. Yes. I think we should also do Camp 10. Just if someone doesn't want to take too much. Camp 10 or Camp 15, those are the only two that are available.

[B]

And then maybe we send a little something extra to the ones that do 10.

[A]

If you do Camp 10, maybe there's something extra. No promises, but it's an interesting experiment. I just am curious to see what you guys do. Camp 10 or Camp 15? At Camp R D? When you check out, you're gonna be getting those discounts. Thank you so much for rocking with us. And wearing the threads of Keep keeps the lights on. It keeps the fire burning.