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- [00:01]
Justin
What's new? Anything?
- [00:03]
Brian
Well, it looks like the, the President is about to frederick the Great Max by seizing Kharg island to then compel the Iranians to open the Strait of Hormuz. It is very much like the war of Austrian secession where if you seize Silesia and then the British fleet take Menorca and a couple of minor principalities in the Americas, you can compel the Austrians to give up their holdings.
- [00:30]
Eric
It's.
- [00:31]
Brian
It's 20, 26.
- [00:32]
Justin
Yeah, I think we're going to realize forget who's the hostage here. We're going to take Carg island hostage. Oh, wait a minute. No. Now we're the hostages. Hold on.
- [00:39]
Tony
What is the extraction plan for those marines that are going to be like two miles off of Iran?
- [00:44]
Eric
It's not what they signed up for. That. That's exactly what they'll say is they know what they sign up for and it's just going to be the James Bond.
- [00:51]
Jordan
Did you not play the battlefield map?
- [00:54]
Eric
Okay, look, the Russians start on the west end of the island, the Americans start on the east.
- [01:02]
Jordan
90 seconds per capture point. The tanks materialize out of the sky.
- [01:09]
Tony
It's going to be a group of 22 year old just camping spawn points going, why are they not popping up right here? Like this is where they always show up in the game.
- [01:18]
Brian
I think it's closer to Hearts of Iron where you just have to point your naval invasion across to the other side of the Persian Gulf. If you've got naval supremacy and air superiority and Pete Hegg says 50% lethality max, then everything's going to work out.
- [01:36]
Tony
I mean, maybe the hope is we'll put them there as bait and then all of the Iranians will poke up out of the ground. And what do you mean exactly?
- [01:43]
Justin
I mean. Well, it's either that or shipping. I mean if you restore shipping, then that's the bait. Just don't tell the shipping companies that. But that is the, that is the lesson of the tanker war.
- [01:54]
Tony
Yeah.
- [01:55]
Jordan
Can we, can we have some like inflatable tankers just like decoy their way
- [02:00]
Tony
through Patton's army, only it's a whale tank. The Patton leading Exxon Valdez.
- [02:06]
Eric
No, because then you'll have the literal ghost fleet and we're not.
- [02:11]
Brian
What's Saildrone up to? Are those vessels doing much? Can we put some plywood around them?
- [02:15]
Eric
Six months ago and they're still halfway to the battlefield, so.
- [02:19]
Justin
Okay.
- [02:20]
Tony
Hey, I did see the last four combined.
- [02:23]
Brian
Three knots every day, every hour. That's impressive. Over time, it's like one of those people who tries to swim to Cuba.
- [02:33]
Tony
Does anybody swim to Cuba or do they swim from Cuba?
- [02:37]
Brian
Does it happen in revolution? Depends on their political range.
- [02:39]
Jordan
We're starting that. If we lose all our boats in the. In the Strait of Hormuz thing, how else are we going to invade?
- [02:50]
Brian
So the reason we're just for any listeners awareness, the reason we're joking about this is that there has been a fairly dense set of reporting in the media about additional units being moved into the region. And the administration has first and second tier lackeys sort of saying, hey, we're thinking about seizing this island in the Persian Gulf as a means of compelling Iranian capitulation. This island is significant because it's holds a substantial portion of Iran's hydrocarbon infrastructure. It is difficult for Iran to protect given American naval mastery. But I think that statement.
- [03:31]
Tony
Naval mastery.
- [03:32]
Brian
Yeah, but I think that statement of truth is being evaluated as it is easy for Americans to take and hold. And that is a non sequitur.
- [03:41]
Tony
Yeah, well, dense was the proper word. But I want to hear Brian's thoughts on that because, like, the idea that it'll be easy because of our naval superiority seems to be challenged by this entire thing that is going on right now.
- [03:54]
Brian
Right?
- [03:55]
Justin
Yeah. Because if you want to try to take Carg island, the first thing I got is get some ships into the Persian Gulf, because right now you've got one ship inside the Persian Gulf and it's been trapped over by rain for this entire fight and desperately attempting to avoid getting shot at. So they'd have to bring in. We have to bring in at least dozen ships or more into the Strait of Hormuz. And the administration's been reticent to do that because they don't want to have images of US Ships burning when they get hit by shahed drones. So even though they're not gonna. Even though they'll survive and they'll put the fires out, it's still not great optics. I think that's the thing that they're looking to try and do now is hit as many possible targets ashore as they can, because as you guys know, there's all those hidey holes along the cliffs of the strait, and then all the way up towards Carg island, there's nothing but little canyons and caves and all kinds of places you can hide missiles and drones. So they're just hammering that day after day in the hopes they finally kind of tried it enough to where they might feel safe enough to put some ships in there. But right now, the Iranians are probably. I'm sure they're laughing because they're like, well, how are you going to take Khark Island? You have no ships in the Persian Gulf. And if you're going to do it by air, that's going to take a while. And that's going to put a lot of those guys at risk, too. Yeah. It just seems like you're going to create a hostage situation that the Iranians can now use against us.
- [05:13]
Eric
Yeah, I know. I've seen people say that the 82nd would be involved. And I've looked at the island. I don't see a good DZ that doesn't end with a bunch of equipment slamming into, you know, fuel containers. It's not. It's not.
- [05:25]
Brian
It's very. The 82nd has done it before. Grenada, Panama. It is possible to jump on a Runway. It. It is very difficult to do one with sea winds and put a sufficient number of paratroopers who are ready to fight once they hit the ground. It would be extraordinarily hazardous to do that.
- [05:47]
Eric
What's the limitations on an air assault here? Is it just range?
- [05:51]
Tony
I mean. Yeah, I mean, like, where would you stage them from? Bahrain, I guess, maybe. And then the range from Bahrain would be. I mean, it'd be. That'd be a lot of Kuwait.
- [06:01]
Brian
Yeah, you need three brigades of. You'd need three brigades of army aviation to do the lift and then to sustain. Those assets aren't in theater.
- [06:13]
Tony
Yeah. Then again, like, getting them in theater is either a bunch of C5s flying, like, constant flights in. Again, it's the reason we did the buildup. Right. Why did we do the build up to 2003? Why did it take. Why did Special Forces and CIA go in first? Afghanistan, you know, from. From the north and stuff like that. And the reason is because you have your small units that can be very expeditionary, that can get out and live in tents relatively rapidly, and then the big lift ticket comes in later on because it just. It takes time to move that amount of mass. You know, a C5 can carry, what, a hundred thousand pounds worth of equipment or something like that, Like. So that's a lot of flights of C5s to the area. And again, it's just. It all signals the buildup. And at this point where we've already started the conflict, then signaling the buildup, that just becomes targets, that becomes what the shaheeds start getting shot at.
- [07:02]
Eric
Right.
- [07:03]
Tony
You know, like. So I think it is kind of one of those things, like, if you were going to make this move, you would have wanted a lot of this staging to already have been completed. This kind of goes back to the argument we keep making about the Pacific, which is you have to have stuff in theater to respond because trying to get it in once the conflict has started puts you so far behind. Because everything that comes in is. Has to be able to stand on its own, has to be able to survive that wave of attacks. The exact same thing here. I think, like we're just. It would take such an amount of mass that we just don't have it.
- [07:37]
Brian
And right now I don't think. And if you wanted to conduct this operation in a coup de men in the interest of overcoming Iranian national will to resist, you would have done this in the first six hours of conflict. Doing it now and telegraphing it in the way that it's been telegraphed, it's going to set American soldiers and marines up for catastrophe. And while we can talk through the tactical in and outs, I think that's why people probably listen. You also have to cage this within. Like a focus on a gunfight is why we're in this strategic mess to begin with.
- [08:10]
Justin
Correct.
- [08:10]
Brian
Is that there's no amount of successful engagements with an opposition that will become strategically meaningful if you don't have a vision of victory. And the team that is directing this haven't really even attempted to do so. They are, and I'm falling back on this term because it's absurd. It's like lethality maxim. They think that you can effectively capitulate a will to resist by conducting a sufficient density of strikes, by removing a sufficient number of regime affiliated or regimental officials. And the Iranians will just effectively capitulate because they are overwhelmed with a sense of American military prowess. And that just seems to be a flawed gambit.
- [08:57]
Justin
It also seems to be their theory on how the Strait of Hormuz would stay open during this entire conflict was that the Iranians would capitulate and not mount this or that. They're going to eventually, even at this point, stop trying to close the strait or trying to attack shipping in the strait because they're going to give up because they're not really making the kind of effort you would need to make in order to clear the strait or keep it open. We're not sending many ships into escort. We didn't have any ships in there to start to be able to escort. We don't have really the mine clearing capabilities that we would need. The systems are there, but no ships are there to carry them. So we really didn't make any of the preparations necessary to keep the Strait of Hormuz open because I think they just thought that the Iranians were going to back down and not mount this, which was obviously their ace in the hole is the Strait of Hormuz. And at this point, even today, there's people writing that somehow in a few weeks of bombing, then this thing's going to resolve itself. Because the Iranians, I guess, are just going to sort of back down because nobody's talking about the fact that really keeping the strait open is going to be a months long effort of escorting shipping and playing whack a ball with anything that comes out in the, along the coast side.
- [10:04]
Brian
And if the Iranians, and I was just going to say, and if the Iranians were prepared to signal that they were ready to de escalate or to capitulate, they would not be conducting precision targeting against Qatari natural gas facilities. They are cutting the throats of the global economy because their will to resist remains intact.
- [10:25]
Eric
Yeah, at this point it's an economic suicide pact. There's no one, let's take away the part of, well, do we take Carg island, do we decapitate the Iranian leadership? It's very clear that it's who can withstand the most economic pain. And one, this is dangerous because it's quite clear that we probably can't. And two, just their treats.
- [10:49]
Brian
Yes, we must have our treats.
- [10:51]
Eric
Yes. I like my traits, Eric. Two, this validates every theory the PRC has about US and global resilience to whatever pressure they might put on the Taiwan Strait and global shipping. Right. Nowhere in Beijing are they like, oh man, like, you know, all of our theories are invalidated. No, they stocked up on oil, they started building land pipelines, they bought the Russian LNG and oil assets and now they know that the world freaks out when you turn off the treats.
- [11:23]
Jordan
If you're Iran, like the deal that you are going to want to take to say, okay, all the boats can go through. I mean, I don't, I don't think you're, I don't think you're going to like, you know, just walk, wash your hands about this and go like your leverage is real. It's not going away and say, okay, so, so what are the US escalatory pathways? We have like taking Cargill and we have blowing up like Iranian oil fields and refineries. But okay, say you blow up the refineries, like then what is that going to make them more likely to want to open the Strait of Formulas or okay, so we in the past week they like killed two more super senior guys. Like, say you kill another two, say you kill 10, say you kill 20. I mean, okay, like, I guess the theory is just like no one wants to show up at work anymore because they're worried they'll die. But is that a, does that like lead to the straight of Hormuz being open?
- [12:22]
Tony
No, I mean that's the, that's the, that's the problem, right? Is that. So Larry Johnny gets killed. Larry Johnny, you know, 30% Poly Market had him 30% to be the next ayatollah. Obviously he didn't become the ayatollah, but he's right hand man, basically acting president. You know, probably the power. What gets forgotten, and I think we've talked about it a good bit, is that this is an irregular warfare military and government. This is a government that understands irregular warfare. The idea that they did not already have some form of shadow government in place and ready to continue carrying out orders, it is asinine. Like, if that wasn't already in our calculus, then I don't know what we were doing because like, that's all very clearly telegraphed. Even if you were to knock out everything, just the vastness of the Iranian desert and the Iranian plateau near the strait opens up the opportunity for the lone terrorist to fire a shaheed or you know, throw a mine into the water or whatever that disrupts global trade. Again, I go back to this and I think I said it right when this first happened. Like, if with everything we have in the strait or in the region right now, we cannot force open the Strait of Hormuz. We have just handed Iran a global economic weapon. They have no reason. They have even. No. Unless they get everything they want, they have no reason to even make a deal.
- [13:55]
Brian
And also not to go back to very basic game theory. The Iranians know that if they enter into a negotiation with the United States, the United States is always going to defect, that they cannot rely on the United States to uphold a bargain. They certainly won't rely on the Netanyahu government to do that. So what they know for certain is that global energy prices are increasing and that global governments do not like that because inflation is a running challenge for the last six years and nobody's ever liked inflation. So they know that. And they also know for certain that the Trump administration cannot come to a deal that will be upheld. So it almost simplifies their negotiation position.
- [14:41]
Justin
I'm surprised that we haven't seen more countries sort of defect, if you will that not there's a coalition in the first place. But more countries seek these side agreements with Iran. The Indians have done it, The Chinese have sort of done it. The Pakistanis have done it.
- [14:54]
Jordan
Why give anyone a side agreement that.
- [14:56]
Justin
Because they'll get. Because you can. You can extort them for various concessions. Right. So if Japan and Korea and Taiwan want to get oil or gas. Gas, more likely.
- [15:06]
Eric
Like, those countries become the go betweens for Iran to sell that oil elsewhere. Right. Like, you don't need to kind of deal with everybody. It's just a couple key market players. And then, you know, what goes to India ends up in Canada, and you
- [15:19]
Justin
start to do that.
- [15:20]
Brian
But I don't think so, though.
- [15:21]
Jordan
I think you.
- [15:21]
Brian
You keep.
- [15:22]
Jordan
I mean, yeah, maybe a month or two from now, once you've really shown how far you're willing to go. This is kind of the off ramp is they turn on the spigot like 10 or 20%. But what this all really leads me back to is America needing a new answer. The best one clearly is the new canal. New canal? No, Strait of Hormuz. I mean, it's already Newt approved. Like, we've got. We've got a budding Coalition here, Dr.
- [15:52]
Brian
Won't take that long, Dr. Newt Gingrich approves.
- [15:56]
Justin
That's right.
- [15:57]
Eric
So I did see somebody do the math on this. And it would be two thirds of our strategic arsenal to actually punch.
- [16:03]
Jordan
That sounds fake. That sounds. Yeah. Just dial it up to 11, okay? We'll be fine.
- [16:10]
Justin
I mean, don't they have dial yield?
- [16:12]
Tony
I think it was very, very wise.
- [16:14]
Brian
Dial it up. Let's get some. We'll call it the Edward Teller Canal. Let's test out those designs.
- [16:20]
Tony
The. An unused weapon is a useless weapon.
- [16:24]
Justin
Tony, come on.
- [16:25]
Tony
Like, if we're not going to use it.
- [16:26]
Jordan
These are ancient platforms, okay?
- [16:29]
Justin
Exactly.
- [16:30]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [16:30]
Eric
Nukes are ancient platforms. I don't know why we have them.
- [16:33]
Brian
Hey, don't. Ms. Alieers say theirs are the only weapons that are used every single day?
- [16:37]
Justin
That's right. They do. They do.
- [16:39]
Brian
Yeah.
- [16:39]
Tony
That's.
- [16:39]
Eric
Well, you know, they do.
- [16:40]
Tony
They do say that. They. They say that in their dark cave that still runs off floppy floppy drugs.
- [16:46]
Brian
Well, they're playing Doom for 18 hours. A. Yeah.
- [16:50]
Eric
Eric, over the Edward Teller Canal, we can put the Rose Einstein Bridge.
- [16:56]
Tony
I think it's. Yeah, it's again, like, there was very clearly the. The thought process was, we'll drop some bombs, we'll show some force, they'll back down. I don't know what in the Iranian history Midnight Hammer dating dating back to the Greeks. I don't know what in the Iranian history.
- [17:19]
Jordan
That's not fair, Justin. I mean they killed Soleimani and they kind of chilled out and then they killed and they, they, they did 12 days of bombing and they kind of chilled out. Yeah.
- [17:29]
Eric
The actual failure here on the, on the US G part is actually understanding that there's a difference between those strikes, those very targeted strikes against certain things and then all out war and not understanding that escalation threshold.
- [17:43]
Tony
Yeah, no, that's. Sorry, I should qualify. Yes. The Iranians were very careful, were very good about like, you killed Soleimani, we're going to launch some missiles. We've had our escalation, we're good. We don't want to continue up the, up the escalation tree. Those were also things that caught them off guard. That's very important to say as well. Like they were caught off guard by Soleimani being killed or else he wouldn't have flown kind of in the open to Baghdad. Right. Like we knew where he was going to be. It wasn't like it was the biggest secret in the world. Kind of the same thing with the 12 Day War. Like that kind of caught him flat footed. We were telegraphing this shit for six months that we were going to do this. Like they had time to make a plan this time and it again, like
- [18:30]
Eric
just to like not make too many parallels here. Right. But so 2021, summer of 21, the Russians do this massive large scale exercise right on the Ukrainian border. Everyone thinks like, is this going to be the thing? But. And then six months later they come back and you're like, all right, well you know, maybe it's a little bit different. We did the same thing. We said, all right, maybe we're going to do it this time. Did Midnight Hammer, six months came back. Oh, who can tell? Who knows what we're going to do? I don't know, man.
- [18:59]
Brian
No, I put myself, I try to empathize with international intelligence services or hostile intelligence services because American indicators and warnings right now are very difficult. There are, it is not a normal presidential administration. Normal being the way that decisions typically are rendered through Deputies Committee meetings and Principals Committee meetings, going up to nscs and then the President signs out a memo and then the departments and agencies go and execute. It is nothing like that. There are different circles of influence. It is closer to a royal court. There are different avenues of approach to the President that you can hit him up at Mar a Lago, you can get on his phone. You can go to Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff and sort of formally captures attention. You can go see the kids. Like if you are a American strategic analyst and you're working for Iranian Mois or if you for the Saudi General intelligence presidency or for Russian svr, you have to monitor all of this that you're watching who the President is playing golf with. You're trying to go up on his personal cell, which I'm sure is done. You're seeing who is calling him, what are the lengths of the calls, who is in proximity to those calls. You can hear it. You are monitoring the celebrities who go on Fox and Friends in the morning. You're watching the rollout of people who go on Fox News Primetime. And you're trying to assemble through all of these different points of contact, like what is the act actual decision point. It is, it's difficult. Like you don't just cultivate placement and access to like an Anna Montes, who was this Cuban intelligence asset at the Defense Intelligence Agency and gave Cuba like the crown jewels of American defense intelligence for a while, like that. You don't just have that because if you just have one person, unless it's somebody like Stephen Miller or Marco Rubio, it doesn't give you the complete picture. You have to watch this mosaic that's always changing. And ultimately the President is the decision maker that we witnessed a sort of secular third tier government official, the director of the National Counterterrorism center this week resign his post in frustration because the perfidious Jews had gotten into Donald Trump's decision cycle and did a bunch of Jewish magic and made Donald Trump make all these bad decisions. It's probably one of the most anti Semitic letters I've ever seen. Certainly the the ugliest statement of anti Semitism I've ever seen put on an American official letterhead. But it is illustrating how even technical officialdom around the Trump administration struggles to understand how these decisions happen. Because there is not a formal vote where the director of the National Counterterrorism center, similar to when I was at NCTC in like 2013, 2014, the director would go up to a deputies meeting or principals meeting and make like a formal presentation. That stuff just doesn't happen anymore. So to wrap up this statement about American indicators watch and warning, it is difficult for the Iranians to recognize what is happening. They can see the C17s and the C5s moving, but they don't have a good read on strategic intent until the bombs start to fall.
- [22:20]
Justin
Let's Talk a little bit about true inside the department too.
- [22:24]
Jordan
Let's talk a little bit about the NCTC for a second. I mean the, the indicators have to be, the lights have to be breaking that they have been blinking so much over the past few weeks. I mean we literally had terrorists attempted terrorist attacks. I mean a, like, I cannot imagine resigning. Well, like you resign that job today if you don't want to be the one who gets blamed for the terrorist attack that's about to happen. But I'm also curious, sort of what is the, like, how does the strategic dynamic between the US and Iran change? Like if and when they kill an official or kill, you know, 50 or 100Americans?
- [23:07]
Brian
Well, be the not to hold the floor. Like when I was at nctc, a big part of my responsibilities were looking at Iranian retaliatory capacity. This is now 13 years ago, around the time of the Syrian red line discussion. And the Obama administration wanted to know, hey, if we go to war against Bashar Al Assad and the Syrian Ba'ath party, how do the Iranians turn up the heat against us? Like how do they do it regionally, how do they do it internationally and can they strike domestically? And these are difficult, complicated questions. And there is an operating assumption, and this is spilled out into the press, I don't think that it's particularly surprising, but there's an operating assumption that the Iranians, through Mois, their formal intelligence service, through Quds Force, their sort of special operations directorate, or through their partners and proxies, whether that be Lebanese Hezbollah or maybe a couple of other groups, that the Iranians had the ability to actually reach out into the United States and commit direct violence. And we know that the Iranians have sourced this before. There's an attempt to kill the Saudi ambassador in 2012 at Cafe Milano in Washington D.C. the Iranians have tried to cultivate this. We know this. So there for former intelligence professionals like me who had this book and it was my responsibility and I was among very serious intelligence professionals looking at this, the fact that the dog hasn't barked yet is. It leads me to two thoughts, not a conclusion. One, did we build a titanium golem that was really a clay monster? Did we dramatically overestimate this operational capacity or is there still latent capacity that just like the trigger has not been pulled yet because there is a internally Iranian red line that has not been triggered and we are not witting to what that actual decision point might be.
- [24:51]
Eric
So there was that thing about the whole number stations going off after the war kicked off, right And I think there was the analysis, the open source analysis was like, oh, it's aimed at Southern and Eastern Europe. So maybe the capacity really just wasn't there. Or maybe they rounded them up like the Brits did in World War II, or maybe they all just got scared, shit like this, who knows?
- [25:15]
Tony
Yeah, I, I mean like, yeah, as far as like, you know, there's been some one offs. There were some attacks in the early 2000s, especially in South America, mainly leveled against Jewish communities that were Iranian fronted and Hezbollah backed. I mean Israel did do a very good job of kind of breaking down some of the, the global networks. I'm sure the US did too. I, I wonder though going forward, because what you're gonna see is radicalization theory, right? The people that survived this are most likely gonna be the most radical, the hardest, the ones that were hardest to reach, the ones that weren't necessarily on the watch list. Cause they didn't communicate with people that were on the outside. What does that look like? Since we have the FBI that has dismantled their counter, their Iranian counterterrorism unit basically over the last year. And then you've got NCTC who seems to be in a little bit of disarray right now at a minimum, seems like they maybe weren't as focused on this or have a very different opinion about what the capabilities were. Or again then like to Eric's point and Tony's point, maybe it was all oversold or you know, years of Syrian escapades and trying to work around the Middle east denuded them of their strength in Europe and the United States. All possibilities, I guess.
- [26:34]
Brian
And there's also that NCTC has been substantially retasked. Like when I got there towards the end of 2011, it was like all Al Qaeda all the time. And that was sort of the original mission. And as the Islamic State came up and as the Syrian civil war developed, NCTC moved with it. And in the first Trump administration there were initial moves to have it start looking at a greater variety of domestic groups. And there was also some Russian aligned paramilitary activity started to fall into the writ of National Counterterrorism Center. Under Joe Kent and Sebastian Gorka's excelsior leadership, they have moved sharply into what they consider narco terrorism. So a institution that was designed to fix the leaks that gave rise to 9, 11 and Central Intelligence agencies staffed with like really extraordinary analytic capacity started chasing like the Sinalo cartel. So to Justin's point, there's a little bit like the, the Iranian threat network was always a concern. It was Never the principal mission at nctc because the Sunnis were just much more numerous and they, they tended to be much more violent against the United States. But in the last few years there's been a retask of NCTC and they've adopted some additional missions. And NCTC is also suffering the indignities of Elon Musk's reign at the head of the American government in that they could not hire. They were compelled to force people out. And who wants to take a GS13 salary as a probational hire if you're just going to be dosed.
- [28:27]
Jordan
Wait, are we missing the Trump Iran assassination attempt? Do we forget that one?
- [28:32]
Tony
Is that fake? It happened? Yes, apparently. But like it wasn't,
- [28:42]
Justin
it didn't, didn't get far enough as, as far along as the, you know, homegrown assassination.
- [28:47]
Tony
Yeah, exactly. I mean like when we weigh that against like the home. Yeah, the home terrorism threats and things like that. Again, like, I'm sure it's not the first person who's tried. Actually we know for a fact it's not. And you know, this guy got captured or you know, whatever, killed. And again like there's also just the whole, like how much of that ISIS radicalization. Like ISIS's attacks in the United States, unlike their attacks in like Paris at the Balacatan or not Balacatan, that's in the Philippines. I can't remember the name of the nightclub shooting now in Paris, but the, that. There you go. Thank you. But unlike those, I will say that terrorist groups have seem to have a harder time reaching into the United States and having actions take place than they have had. Yeah, than they have had in Europe, South America, places like that.
- [29:43]
Brian
And I think it worked.
- [29:45]
Justin
Yep.
- [29:47]
Brian
Yeah. And NCTC was a substantial portion of that. It's sort of mundane. NCTC is a weird amalgamation. There's a really excellent analytic wing that was really. CIA will tell you this, that they just got like 800 extra billets so they could train more CIA intelligence professionals. And they were wonderful. Really, really good. There's an operations center and like a current ops portion of nctc, which was interesting. Sort of. That's where I started. Probably not all that essential. There's a strategic planning office, which is where I finished Disaster. We can talk about that later. But the real glue of NCTC was the Directorate of Terrorist Identities that prior to 911 there were literal three by five cards with identities written on them that were stored in the intelligence community and law enforcement. And NCTC became the data manager for literal millions of terrorist Identities up to ts level. And if you were Osama bin Laden or Ahmed Al Zahiri, you would have like these mountains of evidence about why you're a terrorist. And that would be great because it would be just this database that you could go query and see every bit of reporting about them. But if you were just rumored to be mobbed up with Al Shabaab or Boko Haram or Asaba Haq, you could have an analyst just immediately query you. So like me being a line analyst, I was the director's briefer at the time. But during like the Boston Marathon bombing, after the initial attacks, when there was literally no chatter about what was happening, the international groups were as confused as we were. We were like doing terrorist in New England queries and starting from there, like we, we built a I, I'm getting
- [31:35]
Eric
t party searches back.
- [31:37]
Brian
Yeah, I am serious. I am serious as a hard time. If there was a grad student who had worked in Nigeria and was bumped by Boko, like, and they got into our list, like we were looking at them because there was just no analytic leads at the time. And the reason we were able to do that is because NCTC solved a data management problem for the intelligence community. So while NCTC has diminished in its role in the American intelligence community, as in terrorism writ large is less of a point of focus. It was a problem solver and to Justin's point, large international conspiracies to move operatives domestically into the United States to commit violence. It's vastly harder to do that now than in the summer of 2001.
- [32:24]
Tony
Yeah, I mean, you think about it like just if the NCTC framework had existed just as Eric described it in 1999, the. I forget which pilot it was or which terrorist it was, that was fine. But he had flown to the Philippines, met with Al Qaeda, flown back to the United States, and was being watched by the FBI, but he's being watched by the FBI for something different. But if the FBI analyst had just punched in his name, it would have popped up and been like, oh shit, this dude is connected to Al Qaeda. We should probably let somebody know. Just little simple things like that. That's where it became.
- [33:02]
Brian
I went to a very mundane meeting. Like, I would brief the Director and then I would go and meet with the head of two different counterterrorism sections for the FBI. And I would just be like, hey, this is what the Director of NCTC did. This is what we're thinking, do you got anything for us? And it was just like this informal briefing. You Go around the room. It takes 10 minutes. And it's just like this rapid fire information exchange that happens five or six days a week. And it doesn't sound particularly compelling. But in 1999, that did not happen. And there were active attempts to prevent it from happening. Like if you read Richard Clark's book that came out really around like the, the time of the Iraq invasion, he describes just how broken it was, but then it became, it all trickled down to like, sort of like second third tier talent, like me who was just like a dude. It's like, hey, I'm gonna go coordinate with the FBI right now. We're gonna make sure that, like, nothing bad happens. So it, it, it is better. And it is sort of sad to see NCTC sort of like accomplish its mission. And now the muscle memory is there. I don't know what the future holds, but I think it is important to recognize that as we walk through this question of Iranian retaliation domestically, it is harder for them to do it now because we got pretty sharp around Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
- [34:20]
Justin
Yeah, I mean, also the immigration enforcement's gotten, you know, obviously crazy. So there's probably just by second, just by accident, catching a lot of people that otherwise might have been problematic, not because they're super smart about it, but just because the net is so dense right now.
- [34:36]
Brian
If I recall correctly, the Cafe Milano plot was busted by like Agent ASAC Hank Schrader, like a DAA guy working in Mexican cartels because the Iranians were like, hello, I am now in Guadalajara and I'm going north. I'm not interested in running drugs. I'm here to avenge Iran. Like, he was like the biggest goober in the planet and like the Sakari
- [35:02]
Justin
that you're worried about the drug problem. I am not going to create another drug problem. I'm not contributing to that.
- [35:06]
Brian
Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, they got the world's worst case officer to try and run this operation. And he was like walking across the border, like, not trying to fit in.
- [35:17]
Jordan
Yeah, I mean, coming back to the straight, like, I think the reason, I don't know if I'm Iran, the reason I don't do the terrorist attack is like, you got a pretty good hand right now. Like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure what more you want out of a negotiating position than this. And the problem with doing the terrorist attack is it might, you know, it might get the allies a little more into. Would Galvanize America. That $200 billion supplemental flies through and there's just a sort of level of resolve which you may end up provoking out of the American system, which, like, I mean, people just want this to be over now. But once it's like, it's not this like, abstract, oh, they were eminently going to have Nuclear weapons, question mark. It's like, oh, they killed 100 people and like three Congress. Three Congress people. Then you know, it's, it's a, it's an entirely different dynamic which you can't necessarily predict.
- [36:22]
Tony
Yeah, I think, I mean, that's also, I think, very true. There is a galvanizing. Terrorism is somewhat off limits. Right. We say, of course. Then again, like, that was kind of the, the whole thing was
- [36:37]
Jordan
assassination.
- [36:37]
Brian
You could have said the same way.
- [36:38]
Justin
Yeah, it's so passe.
- [36:41]
Tony
There is a little bit of the. I wonder. There has to be. At least in their minds they're thinking about it because martyrdom, revenge is a thing as part of the Shia like tradition, obviously from Hussein and all the way through avenging Karbala and all that. I do wonder, like with the Ayatollah being killed and then it being gloated about if that's not going to lead eventually to someone trying to get close to him. But again, like, they do a fucking
- [37:14]
Jordan
like Wii Sports emote.
- [37:17]
Tony
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [37:19]
Brian
And here's a, here's a problem with cultivating partners and proxies. Like, it is not a agent responsive to tasking situation that if you radicalize someone, if you give them proximity to a target, if you brew them in a toxic stew of resentment and you tell them that they can avenge on behalf of a religion or persecuted people or behalf of dead Palestinians, like, these people are just going to go off book and they're going to conduct their own violence.
- [37:51]
Justin
You can't turn them off.
- [37:52]
Brian
Yes.
- [37:53]
Eric
And I mean, there was one attack, right. There was the ODU lieutenant colonel who was unfortunately killed. And then the attacker was ides of marched by the entire ROTC class.
- [38:05]
Tony
So I'm pretty sure way more people participated than the people like, you know, the.
- [38:11]
Brian
And he had been jammed up for Islamic State support previously. Like he had done his sentence. And you know, there's an attack at Gracie Mansion directed against Mayor Mamdani. You know, the, the ODU professor of military science was a close friend of my wife's. They were in the captain's career course together. They small group partners using a Apache pilot decorated with valor. And this is one of those circumstances where, you know, I, I'm not super sentimental, but he's, he was killed in a terrorist attack. And I do hope that the Department of Defense gets him a Purple Heart for that.
- [38:55]
Tony
I. I think, again, I think the homegrown radicalization would be the thing that's going to be the most difficult to. It's obviously the most difficult to stop the lone wolfs, whatever we want to call it. But I do think it's also the thing that is the most likely, because I still think it's hard. Even with the dismantling of the FBI's counterterrorism unit that was mainly focused on Iran and stuff like that, there's too much infrastructure focused on counterterrorism within the United States.
- [39:22]
Justin
I'm also thinking that, I mean, separate from that, I think there's a challenge also that we're going to have, because now the Houthis that the Iranians have empowered and equipped and trained are now experts in drone warfare in a way that almost nobody else is, and they're bringing that skill back to Iran. And they're so good at it, they're teaching the IRGC how to do it. But now they're free agents, right? They can go out and start training other groups. Like, they're down talking apparently to Al Shabaab down in Somalia about, oh, hey, how do you do drone warfare? Because you guys have been so experienced at doing both that and then these homegrown missile attacks against shipping. So I think we can start to see these groups start to take advantage of the same technologies that the Houthis did. And the Houthis are going to be the. The free agents that provide that consulting service, no doubt for a cost.
- [40:07]
Eric
Well, and not to jump to another war, Right. But that was the announcement when the afpac, the most recent AFPAK war, kicked off a couple weeks ago, where there were Pakistani airstrikes against Taliban positions, and then the Taliban announced, oh, we're going to launch our suicide bomber brigades. To which I think the joke was that it's doing suicide bombers in an age of drones is just for the love of the game. No, I mean, it's true. Like, it's. It is, I think, to Eric's point of, why are things different now than when he was at nctc? Right. One, drones exist. Right. So it would be interesting to see the internal opinions of those organizations of, like, are just drones more effective than these other types of attacks? Right. Do they generate different responses than they want? And two, like, I would say, for homegrown stuff, like, is Islamic radicalization the most popular form of radicalization in the country? And does that have an impact on talent pools?
- [41:03]
Tony
We'll say yeah, there seems to be. The manosphere definitely is competing with, with that for most radicalization.
- [41:12]
Brian
American counterterrorism professionalism always recognized that the, the principal threat of radicalization was not Sumist or Shia. It is the January 6th types because of the sheer number of them, the comfort in which they move in culturally and politically, and their ready availability of guns. But Tony, you elevated an interesting point about is a suicide vest sort of out of fashion. And there was sort of a fulcrum point in American military history that I think was sort of skipped over, similar to the way that the Turing Test has sort of been skipped over with the way that we interact with artificial intelligence at this point. That the Turing test, if you aren't familiar with it, it's sort of like the shorthand that if you could communicate with computing system and they could fool you into being a human, that there was a sufficient demonstration of intelligence. The mathematician Alan Turing sort of coins that in the late 1940s and we are well past that now. And it was sort of non momentous. But in 2016, 2017, three years after Lloyd Austin announced the Mosul Counteroffensive, the Mosul counteroffensive started. And what this was was the Iraqi state finally coiled itself around the second city in Iraq to extricate it from the hands of the Islamic State. And it was the Iraqi army, it was bracketed by Shia paramilitaries. And there was a substantial international and American presence there. Like the, the French were heavily involved, the Marine Corps was there, American Special Operations forces. And there was a multi layered air campaign in support of this camp offensive to reclaim the city. But if you look at the way that the Islamic State was fighting, there was one of these train test moments. And what it was is for the first time since the Korean War, a manned guided enemy aircraft appeared over American forces. Now it was not a MiG 29, it was a quadcopter with grenades. But still it represented sort of a sea change in the way that the United States is facing contemporary warfare. And I remember General Tony Thomas, who was my JSOC commander, went on to run Special Operations Command. He's now Lux Capital talking about, hey, we now have aircraft overhead for the first time since Korea. This is important, you have to note this. And the Islamic State used it as a form of combined arms that they had riflemen, they had machine gun nests, they had suicide bombers, they had car bombs, VBIEDs. And they integrated it into a layered, intelligent, extraordinarily lethal defense and the the future for paramilitary activity. I don't want to fall back and say it's going to be a binary between using a UAS or using a suicide bomber or using a vbid. It's that that for American Marines and soldiers in Carg island or if they go into Bandar Al Abbas, it's like the future is all of the above.
- [44:29]
Justin
You might start one way and it's going to quickly change to a different concept and a different combination of systems. I mean, just like we're seeing in Ukraine, this adaptation competition is really where the heart of the military advantage comes from.
- [44:44]
Jordan
Can we come back to the Iran strategic question? I mean, you've seen Trump and Netanyahu start to talk about how the war is going to end in a few weeks. How do you actually make that happen if you want the war to end and you want the strait to be clear and you're America.
- [45:05]
Tony
So to take one step back from that, I think today and this week will be interesting in Iran. So generally, at least in the past, today is the first day of Nowruz, which is the Iranian New Year, Persian New Year. It's an old Zoroastrian tradition. They jump over fire. There's a bunch of other things that they do eat. There's the seven S's that you put on your table, all kinds of things like that. But, but generally because it was old Persian and it comes from Zoroastrianism, it was frowned upon by the Revolutionary Guard and frowned upon by the imams because it's pre Islamic traditions. It was also a time when you would see people go into the streets and you would see people kind of protesting the government because it was a way for them to like register their dissatisfaction with the government. I wonder what we're going to see this year. If we're going to see any of that, if we're going to see any of those protests and groundswells or has that dial been turned? Because that to me would have been again, we kind of talked about it when the killings first started and the protests really picked up steam in Iran before we decided to start bombing them in that. Like, hey, there's probably a tipping point where the right amount of pressure could be, could be placed against the regime and it could have toppled internally. I don't know, short of it toppling and it being a semi friendly or friendly government that stands up underneath it. I don't know what the victory clause is for Israel and the United States right now.
- [46:55]
Brian
I think the. Sorry, but my Answer is very brief. I think the United States forces through a sort of obscure rider. Congress approves it. It takes the Development Finance Corporation's political risk insurance balance sheet limit from 60 billion to like a half trillion. The United States takes it upon itself to underwrite maritime insurance. And then ships start transiting the state straight again because the force majeure contracts are no longer threatening the livelihoods of the insurers or the operators. And I think there is a wonky solution that gets advanced and it settles down into a slow stupid standoff and everybody goes home and claims victory. It's going to feel a little bit like the 73 war.
- [47:47]
Eric
There's a big problem with that, which is that if they are starting to escalate by striking each other's production facilities, keeping the strait open becomes less and less important because there's nothing for to go through it. Right. So that is probably going to be the threshold of like how much of the energy production do you have to destroy for the strait to become less important? Like, you know, I think it was the, the energy minister or corporation of Qatar or whatever it is. You know, it was like 20 billion. It wasn't just they lost 20 billion in infrastructure, they lost 20 billion in annual revenue probably for the next five years based upon what they said and that they're going to have to force majeure several contracts with countries including China for lng. So I don't know if this really goes away or if everyone just kind of quietly backs off and we just like. Because there's been some substantial damage that I don't think the admin has taken into account as it being like real life. To quote an old NCO of mine. Oh, this is real life. Dangerous.
- [48:57]
Justin
Yeah. But I think the. Even if you take so Qatar, their LNG production may be off the table for the near term, but you still got Saudi and Kuwait needing to get oil and gas out, UAE obviously. So, you know, there's still energy that needs to get out of the strait. And I think to Eric's point, the first thing you got to do is underwrite that financially. But I think also you got to underwrite it militarily or else the operators are going to not really want to take their ships in and out because they're afraid of getting shot at. So there's going to have to be some kind of escort mission a la Operation Earnest Will. We're going to have to have combat air patrols with drones probably continually hovering above the coastline and plinking anything that pops out of a cave. Or a canyon and doing that for months until it finally settles down. But I think you have to do both. You have to do the financial underwriting as well as the military underwriting and you're sort of stuck there. And eventually it sort of just fades. Like Eric's saying, eventually it just becomes background noise and then Iran just sort of stops doing it. But in the mean term, you got this real big problem with production facilities not being online. So I think we get the immediate oil and gas out, but then I think the next set of oil and gas production is going to be delayed. And now we're into impacts on the oil and gas market for the rest of the year at least.
- [50:23]
Eric
So Brian, that's an interesting question on the military underwriting part of, I mean this is going to require significant assets for a long period of time. Like at what point does that start to impact, you know, real Pacific deterrence as opposed to just pulling, you know, one CSG away for a bit? And I know, I think it was DNI came out this week and said the PLA is not going to invade 27. As if, you know, anyone in the know was pretending that that was the actual date to invade. Like, no, no shit. So made against basically saying, oh, there's no threat because they're not going to invade in 27. So we can just burn a bunch of assets doing this. I'm concerned.
- [51:11]
Justin
Yeah, I think, well, if you, if you do this escort operation, it's going to take every available destroyer on the east coast and in Europe for the duration. So you have no. They're all consumed and there's not going to be any presence anywhere else except doing this escort mission in the Persian Gulf. And you'll probably have to do some backfilling from a few of the west coast ships. So in the western Pacific you're going to have basically what's in the fdnf, the Forward Deployed Naval Force. So what's in Japan? Nine destroyers and then a carrier and an amphibious ready group in theory will be able to remain in that theater. But you're not getting anything from the west coast probably because anything that comes from the west coast is probably going to go backfill forces that will inevitably have to come offline in the Persian Gulf. So that's pretty much going to be the surface fleet's deployment is going to be Persian Gulf escort missions for the remainder of the year because the Iranians can keep this up indefinitely. They've got plenty of weapons and plenty of places to hide them. It's Just going to be the game of whack a mole, which they can stretch out by titrating the level of lethality that they employ against the. The shipping campaign or the shipping.
- [52:28]
Eric
Go ahead.
- [52:29]
Tony
I was just gonna ask, like, so what is the. What is the logistics look like for a escort mission? Like, is that coming out of Bahrain and it does the. Do the. Like. Yeah, yeah.
- [52:42]
Justin
So they. So you would. You'd probably, you know, ideally you would do it from both ends. Right. So you're going to have forces coming around and being supported at sea, no doubt, because Djibouti really can't support this kind of mission. So you'll have forces coming in from sea to escort ships coming in in groups. So you'll probably have two or three ships, probably just two ships, cargo ships or oil tankers or LNG carriers. And then you'll probably have a ship on either side escorting them in. And then you'll either have them turn around or you'll have a couple of ships inside bringing them out. But Bahrain really doesn't have the capacity to support a very large naval deployment. There's not very much fuel stored there. The wharf can only really support the three or four ships that are normally based there and not really the shore power that you need for a destroyer and all that. So they do pull in there periodically to get gas, but they're not going to. It's not going to be able to support this kind of sustained operation. So you'll probably do most of the support out in the nag.
- [53:46]
Jordan
So no one sees a deal like this ends in two weeks.
- [53:54]
Tony
Do you think Donald Trump could announce a deal and save face at this point?
- [54:01]
Justin
I think the problem is who's controlling the guys on the coast that are attacking the shipping. Because if those are IRG C forces and they've decided that they're going to continue the fight even after people in Tehran might have decided to reach an agreement. I mean, is this rump force going to be able to. They're motivated to continue doing this because the IRGC wants to remain influential and in power.
- [54:25]
Brian
Yeah. If you shatter state capacity and if ordering discipline in your paramilitaries, your special operations, the Artesh, the Iranian navy is just not there. Pulling them back is going to be very difficult. It's the old Godfather model of, hey, Sonny Corleone's mad. Nobody can tell him not to go to war, that the Iranians are going to have that. And if you ventilate the top two to three layers of national command authority, you're going to have pockets of continual resistance. So, Jordan, to your question, I think there's no, like the Iranians who are able to exert a degree of sovereignty, know that the president is going to defect. There's no deal that he's going to agree to and uphold. And also, can they speak as a national entity and have it stick? Can they silence the guns without it being a civil war?
- [55:19]
Jordan
But can you actually do the thing, Brian, unless you also do the. We're evacuating southern Lebanon for like, you know, 75 miles of like Iranian coastline.
- [55:33]
Justin
Well, you probably. I mean, if you were able to do that, then you could protect the shipping lane, right? I mean, if you can. But how are you going to do that? You're going to. I guess because right now they're trying to do that with airstrikes and they've been unsuccessful at eliminating the Iranian missile and drone launchers. I don't know how that.
- [55:52]
Jordan
There's like, cities there. There's like hundreds of thousands of people who live on that is right there.
- [55:57]
Tony
Like, it's one of the largest. They were talking about moving Tehran to Bendar Abbas. That's how big Bender Abbas is. Because during the, during the drought. So you have a massive city. It's not just like a little bitty outpost.
- [56:09]
Justin
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you would drive up and down the Persian Gulf and the Strait. I mean, there's just thousands of places you can hide weapons along there and there's really no way to eliminate it short of, I mean, you'd have to do a ground invasion and do house by house searches. It's, you know, 1, 1 MU is not going to cut it.
- [56:30]
Jordan
So, so the escort mission is actually like, is actually a, a smokescreen. Like, it, it doesn't, it doesn't exist. Even if you're giving a half a billion dollars in insurance.
- [56:43]
Brian
I think it's a necessary condition. Like it, it doesn't mean it's perfect and there's going to. Some ordinance is probably going to get through, but you're going to need to put Arleigh Burts in that gap in order to ensure safe transit.
- [56:57]
Justin
But you'll have to do that long enough to your point, Jordan, I mean, you'll eventually have to reach some kind of agreement to get everybody to stop shooting at everybody else because Iran is going to want to have freer access to the Strait of Hormuz at some future point if they can retain control of Kharg Island. But for the months it takes to reach that point until everybody's just, just kind of run up against their limits. You're going to probably have to do this escort mission, the indemnification that Eric's talking about, and then this combat air patrol where you just start attacking anything that comes out of a hidey hole along the coast.
- [57:33]
Tony
What a fucking mess.
- [57:34]
Jordan
Oh, my God.
- [57:35]
Brian
You heard it here first.
- [57:36]
Jordan
Buy some oil futures. This is not investment advice. Oh, my God.
- [57:41]
Brian
It's time to put those solar panels on your roof.
- [57:43]
Eric
Yeah, well, so there's one more issue here, which is that it's not just the price of. Of gasoline, right? Like, it's, I think, polyethylene, the fertilizer. CEO of. Of either Dow or Dupont, I can't remember which one said this week. Yeah, like, I mean, we can only handle. We can only control what we control, which is not what you want to ever hear from a CEO, but like, that's. You're going to start to see these reverberations throughout the global economy of not just about gas prices, although, yes, that does dictate a lot. Polyethylene, anything plastic, like anything that comes from hydrocarbons, which is the backbone of a large part of the world's economy for production. Everything else is going to start to hit, and you've probably only got a couple more weeks until that really starts to. That's irreversible. Right. And you have that global recession that hits and then all the other things, you know, when we, as my Wall street friends like to say, when he touches the money and other things start to hit, like, you're going to start to see this. This really bad cascading effect.
- [58:47]
Jordan
That's the thing like is. Does Iran really want to starve 500 million people because we can't, like, grow corn anymore?
- [58:55]
Brian
Yeah, I read a year, ladies and
- [58:58]
Jordan
gentlemen,
- [59:02]
Brian
I can't personally validate it, but apparently Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic country, and half the population travels for eat al fatir, and that is going to effectively exhaust their existing supply of gasoline. That.
- [59:22]
Tony
I mean, like, we're talking about this
- [59:24]
Brian
from like, an American perspective because we're Americans and they. We started this war for. For reasons. But there are. It's not just Iranians caught in the crossfire or Bahrainis. It's people who are just trying to go see their family who are now going to have their lives upended because of this foul. What are the interesting features in the last week? And this isn't just Joe Kent and his conspiratorial mindset. We're seeing, I think, a more sophisticated pattern of official leaks about the decisions to go back to war coming out of the White House. And the reveal is effectively that they put it all on the table and the President is the decider. This is his constitutional responsibility. He rejected all of it. He said, no, I know this better. And he went to war. And people like General Kaine sort of forecasted elements of this. He doesn't really have intelligence professionals around him. Secretary of Defense doesn't know what he's doing. But General Kaine does know the shot. And apparently the President was armed with information. And our Constitution gives the President the ability to reject that.
- [60:33]
Eric
Yeah, I mean, he's eight months from being a lame or nine months from being a lame duck for the last two years of his term. You're already seeing it from admin officials. If they're starting to think about their futures in their space and nobody wants to be responsible for probably what is going to be a massive midterm swing, one not seen in decades, probably. So I think right now, if this is not wrapped up in two weeks, you are going to see it. The knives are really going to come out politically.
- [61:10]
Jordan
I mean, you've already started with stories of like, only five people were involved in the decision making. And like. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there was a story like General Kane told him about the straight of horror movies. I think it was Washington Post or something like, I mean, it is. It is. It is insane to think that those words were not said many, many times over the course of discussing what would happen here. And I mean, it come like, he rolled. He rolled some double. He rolled a pheromone. And here is not a double. Snake Eyes. We're in like.
- [61:49]
Shashank
I don't know.
- [61:49]
Jordan
I feel like this is like a. This is like. This is like a. Like a center point distribution. Like a lot of the things that you would have. Yeah, this seems to be like in the center of the distribution of how this could have all played out.
- [62:02]
Brian
Yeah. This is not an alpha.
- [62:03]
Justin
This is the fat part of the curve.
- [62:04]
Brian
Right. It's not like the Iranians didn't reach out and knock down three AWACS aircraft or put a bunch of holes in an Arleigh Burke or in a carrier. And they have not killed a bunch of members of Congress. Yes.
- [62:18]
Justin
Or killed or killed a bunch of
- [62:19]
Jordan
service members, for that matter. I mean, it's like we're under 20
- [62:23]
Brian
at this point with 100.
- [62:25]
Justin
We're definitely doing this at a standoff distance. Right. So, yeah, yeah.
- [62:30]
Tony
I mean, we go seize Kharg island. That. That has A potential to be different.
- [62:34]
Justin
And even the escort mission has the potential for creating a lot of, I mean, if not casualties, but certainly a lot of damage. And that's, I think, part. Part of why they're not yet doing it. And they're trying to do the suppression campaign and soften up the coastline as much as they can before they're forced to. To put escort ships in there. Yeah.
- [62:50]
Tony
I mean, like, look, the USS Cole allowed for Fat Leonard to basically grift off of the Navy for 20 years. Which, by the way, at some point, we gotta talk about why the Navy punished about three people for that. And then was like, but we don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, but we can talk about that at a later date. That's a different show. Maybe when Brian is.
- [63:12]
Justin
Yeah, we should dig into that.
- [63:14]
Jordan
The selling Qatari drone interceptors grift is going to be truly one for the ages. If they're willing. If, you know, the Saudis are willing to build a glass cigarette of a city, then who knows what you'll be able to sell them?
- [63:33]
Tony
I mean, if I. Like, that's the other thing, too. If I was the brave one people. I know they were in D.C. like, a week ago, maybe a week and a half ago. If I was the brave one people, I would have been like, hey, dc, this has been fun. I gotta be in Riyadh. I got places to go, and I
- [63:45]
Justin
gotta do some business, too.
- [63:47]
Tony
Yeah. Like, because again, who's gonna win in this is gonna be not us. I don't know.
- [63:54]
Brian
It's good.
- [63:54]
Jordan
It's now. Now we're off the hook for the Ukrainian RE rebuilding fund.
- [64:00]
Tony
Yeah.
- [64:01]
Jordan
Take it over to the Saudis.
- [64:02]
Eric
Ukraine becomes one of the richest countries in the world because they bought. They sell a trillion dollars worth of drone interceptors to the Saudi.
- [64:08]
Justin
Unforeseen circumstance, unforeseen outcomes.
- [64:11]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [64:12]
Tony
Oh, man.
- [64:13]
Jordan
All right. Oh, my God. I mean, I feel like next week we're just going to be talking unless they do the carg island.
- [64:19]
Tony
Like.
- [64:20]
Jordan
Like, what is this situation? Like, it's not going to change.
- [64:23]
Eric
Well, so the one.
- [64:24]
Tony
We can't say anything. We have briefed too much of this shit into existence already. Let's not do anything.
- [64:30]
Eric
Which is that Desantis went public this week and said, hey, he's starting to be worried about refugees coming ashore from Cuba because we've been blockading the island of fuel, and most of the island is blacked out at night, it seems now. So at some point, we're going to have Another, you know, maritime Caribbean crisis.
- [64:51]
Brian
Yep.
- [64:51]
Eric
Struggle with Cuba, while DHS is in the middle of a shutdown because another boat left.
- [64:57]
Brian
Well, thankfully, DHS is about to get bold, aspirational leadership. He's going to teach karate.
- [65:04]
Tony
I don't know if he. I don't know if he's going to. Yeah, the hearing has not gone well for. I don't remember which of his first names.
- [65:14]
Brian
Yeah, he got voted out of committee. He's gonna be fine.
- [65:17]
Jordan
Well, it was one. I mean. I mean, Fetterman could have sunk him.
- [65:20]
Brian
Yeah. But did you see, simultaneously with Senator Mullen's elevation and Senator Mullen's national security advisor is one of the best Army Rangers I've ever worked with. Like, he's somebody that I have a ton of confidence in. Really, really sharp guy. But concurrent to Senator Mullen moving up and getting the nomination through another series of excruciatingly bad criminal reporting about the tenure of Secretary Noem at dhs, with contracting fraud and her special senior advisor, Corey Leandowski, getting involved in hundreds of millions of dollars of cash distribution to friends of the family. So I think some of these characters are going to remain in our conscience, even if we remain focused on the wars.
- [66:08]
Jordan
Eric, does anyone get to go to jail? I mean, can, like, is there some state liability that Trump can't pardon away or something? Or are we just.
- [66:16]
Brian
Yeah, like, contract fraud. Like, depends on the nature of the contracts. Like, if the contracts are governed under, like, New York law and there's articulable fraud in certain jurisdictions, you can theoretically go after people for that. Do you aggressive ags want to spend their time going after federal officials in that? Right. I mean, it is difficult to. To do that. You sort of need them to be conducting criminal activity outside the scope of their personal responsibilities. So Lewandowski theoretically has opened himself up to all manner of criminal accountability or civil. If it's just sort of bad action from point to point between counterparties, Secretary Noem probably gets to ride off into the sunset, shooting dogs as she goes.
- [67:07]
Tony
Do you think. Do you think Lewandowski is going to enjoy South Dakota?
- [67:12]
Brian
Who doesn't?
- [67:13]
Eric
I hear it's lovely. No time of year.
- [67:19]
Tony
Oh, but the Black Hills, they're. They're there.
- [67:22]
Brian
But, yeah, I think the hundreds of millions of dollars that are going out through, like, direct, like, pure, obvious, just friends of the family grift, I don't think it clicks. I don't think it gets clawed back. I just think it's just the new way of American business. I don't like saying that out loud because I don't want to will it into existence but, but I just.
- [67:50]
Tony
Too late. We already did our.
- [67:52]
Eric
Too late.
- [67:54]
Brian
Our Department of Justice is just not interested. It's friends of the family. This is just all cost to do in business. They are not going to do anything about it. And if we've got a House of Representatives that's like House Armed Services Committee, House Homeland Security, are they going to be chasing contract issuances? Are they going to be going after loans to friends of the President's family? Like, like when we're at war with Iran, it hasn't been declared. We're in like this post constitutional environment and they've got two years to try and advance an affirmative agenda that helps set conditions for the 2028 election. How much of this are they going to go after? I mean, I would love it. Like, I think corruption is this sucking chest wound on the American Republic. But I'm not in the House of Representatives either. And if you are a political winner,
- [68:43]
Jordan
I mean, I hope, I hope it is, it'll really end up spinning up. I mean it's just like, like it's so much money too. I mean it's, it's, it's not like a hundred thousand dollars here, a hundred thousand dollars there. I think that. No, it's like 200 million brazenness how widespread it is. Like there's really a story you can tell across the entire administration, the entire party really.
- [69:07]
Eric
It's like a teapot dome scandal per department. And like that's the fundamental problem is like money is bad. Assets are worse in the eyes of the American people in terms of what you steal. And I think that there is knowing like the vibes of the Dem Ags. I think when they all run for governor or Senate in 2028, they're going to want this on their record that I dragged so and so from the admin in front of court and prosecuted them.
- [69:36]
Jordan
I got a piece at some point.
- [69:39]
Brian
Sorry, yeah, I was going to say what Tony just said. Best case scenario.
- [69:43]
Jordan
I got a piece coming out at some point comparing Chinese and American corruption. The central take is that we've graduated to a new level because even in somewhere like China, you still have to kind of hide it. You can't just be tweeting out the deals that you're making to make yourself billions of dollars. And I, it just, it, it, it feels unsustainable that a democracy could like completely kind of accustom itself to such kind of upfront horrific.
- [70:19]
Eric
Well, And I think that was the first. Let's make this the final thought. But I saw a lot of right wing influencers where they'd be like, I just came back from D.C. and what is this corruption like? They like that's the thing is that I think as, as what appears to be a GOP civil war that is, is brewing. Perhaps not between all the best people, but one that is brewing. And I think that the corruption is going to be one of the things that makes them eat themselves. Because the problem with populist corruption is to Eric's point or to really everyone's point, is that you have to kind of hide it. It has to kind of be in your favor. And it has to be like, oh, it's like small dollar. This is not any of that. This is you made off with the crown jewels. And I think that that's. It's just not going to go away.
- [71:09]
Brian
Yeah, it's like all the cabinet officials moving to Fort McNair and like selling their homes. It's like, you know, if they picked up a quarter million dollars because they flipped a house in Alexandria, nobody's going to care. What we're seeing is like the Assistant Secretary for public affairs at DHS and her husband getting a $200 million no bid contract like that. That is beyond the pale. It is way outside the norm of the American cultural experience.
- [71:37]
Jordan
All right, so you know how in the primaries, the presidential primaries like Guam and the Virgin Islands, they all get votes. What are the odds of Carg island having a little stand, someone holding up the banner, the 2028 convention.
- [71:58]
Eric
I need the mail in ballots from Kog Island. I need, I need Wolf Blitzer on the ground with the big board being like, that trench over there is six to one. And that trench over there,
- [72:16]
Brian
It's like the. In the 1864 election, Abraham Lincoln took a personal stake in making sure that regiments of Illinois infantry were able to get their ballots back to state officials. There's a long, often sordid history of ensuring that the right people were voting in these circumstances. I don't know.
- [72:39]
Jordan
It's going to be JD Pulling for that one. I don't think the Marines are going to be cheering on Rubio in year three of the Carg island siege.
- [72:47]
Brian
Right? It depends on the how the regularity of Zion Distribution RIP its Copenhagen pornography stuff. The Marines need keep the fighting boys moving.
- [73:04]
Jordan
Hope you all got what you paid for here at second breakfast.
- [73:08]
Tony
Wait, we're charging now? You guys are getting paid?
- [73:15]
Jordan
Oh, my God. It just, it's darker by the week. You know, when we started this I was like there can't be that much
- [73:22]
Tony
war can there Again if we keep willing into existence the wrong people are listening. Newt read your reads your sub sack and goes like this dude's a genius.
- [73:36]
Eric
Yeah, I'm. I'm really curious who reached out to Shashank and was like spooked him?
- [73:44]
Tony
You guys, you guys, you guys got a good following. Oh people listen to us.
- [73:52]
Jordan
All right enough.
- [73:54]
Tony
Yep.
- [74:12]
Shashank
Him tell the guardian back there I go in and take it Same man, same island, same plan again Lindsay bon him coach type in simple f said oh I done if we seize it he says instead of marines don't count as boots Just a tropical visit don't take that island don't take that island now you grab the hostage then you re realize where you are a hostage now you hold a pipeline but the speed run through t on the other side 15 miles from the mainland brother there is nowhere left to hide Ryan say first thing brend you need ships inside and go right now you got one do in sh by Ross al ka by itself they won't send the destroyers true burning warships make bad television so how you going to take an island when your neigh can't make the decision no good drop zone on the coral nothing down there but the fuel power troopers falling into crude oil tanks who made this man a general Eric say you needed this at hour six a lightning strike array not week three punch you social every move already displayed don't take that island don't take that island now you grab the hostage then you realize where you are the hostage now you hold a pipeline but the speaker run through town on the other side 15 miles from the mainland brother there is nowhere left to hide oh. There is nowhere left to hide oh if them ready for surrender why them caught in Qatarias them slashing throats are the global economy the will to fight will last fishing stock up island build up pipeline by the Russian LNG know the whole world know what happened when somebody turn off the trees Every theory China about Taiwan just got proven free it's hearts of iron logic draw the arrow cross the gulf and click headset set lethality to max and tink the war over quick Justin say the boys them camping spawn points waiting for the pop this is where they show up in the game somebody press stop the China trip postponed a new canal lock on the table now wolf lips are broadcasting live from Khagin 28 working the board somehow that trench six to one this trench lean advanced democracy Ponder reef here Triad siege, the marines run out to rip it Copenhagen and don't take that island. Don't take that island. Now Carter looked at it in 79 and said nowhere no how in mom 90 sites and saying bomb it back a few more times for fun. But a hostage crisis you create yourself is the dumbest kind to run the altar. Admiral say just escort the tankers, destroy us through the straight like a normal country. But I guess that don't play on true social. And if all else fail, there's always the Edward Teller Canal 2 3rd of the strategic arsenal and you got yourself a shortcut with fake.
- [78:22]
Jordan
Bad day. Watch this. TikTok is full of funny pets and heart melting moments.
- [78:28]
Eric
Laugh more, stress less and share your own furry star.
- [78:32]
Brian
Download TikTok now.