#323 - Man Who Survived 16 Wars Explains the Battlefield in Ukraine | Scott Anderson

Summary

Podcast Summary: Danny Jones Podcast #323

Episode Title: Man Who Survived 16 Wars Explains the Battlefield in Ukraine | Scott Anderson
Date: August 15, 2025
Host: Danny Jones
Guest: Scott Anderson (War reporter, New York Times Magazine, author of “King of Kings”)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Danny Jones hosts acclaimed war correspondent and author Scott Anderson, who shares his experiences covering 16 wars across the globe. The conversation dives into the realities of front-line reporting, the evolution of modern warfare and propaganda, the current situation in Ukraine, global geopolitics, and the intersection of intelligence, technology, and power. Anderson provides firsthand perspective on the challenges and dangers of war reporting and unpacks the tangled web of motivations and misinformation underpinning today’s most pressing conflicts.
The tone remains reflective, conversational, and candid, with both host and guest probing deep ethical, practical, and political questions around war, journalism, and power.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Scott Anderson’s War Reporting Experience

[00:27–01:46]

• Anderson has covered 16 wars throughout his career, from Latin America to Chechnya and Ukraine.
• Remembers Chechnya (1995) as the most terrifying: “If I didn’t shower for three weeks, I got back to Moscow and…had this little shock of white hair…never felt in any other war zone quite [like] any horrible thing could happen at any moment.” [01:23]

2. History and Brutality of the Chechen Wars

[01:46–04:50]

• Context: Chechnya’s long, violent resistance against Russian control; embedded racism, cycles of repression, and organized crime stereotypes.
• After the Soviet collapse, Chechnya’s bid for independence led to vicious wars and “brutality on both sides.”
• The second Chechen war was set off by the infamous apartment bombings, widely believed to be a Russian FSB false flag to justify military intervention and consolidate Putin’s power.

3. Propaganda, Information Warfare, and Modern Media

[06:56–09:14 | 07:51]

• Wars today are waged not just on the ground but in the information space, with Russia and others deploying sophisticated propaganda.
• Social media enables echo chambers: “People…just go to those sites that reconfirm what they already believe.”
• Reporting is more dangerous—journalists are trackable and targeted. Funding and support for foreign reporting have collapsed, reducing independent voices from the battlefield.

4. Reporting from Ukraine

[11:14–13:04]

• Ukraine is a uniquely controlled theater: Journalists require written permission to travel and are closely monitored by the Ukrainian government.
• Theorized reason: “They don’t want to see who is actually on the ground in the front lines helping them…probability…American and British troops are [there].”

5. Changing Nature of Warfare: Low-Tech vs High-Tech

[13:30–14:41]

• Disproportionate power of inexpensive technology (drones, improvised weapons) enables underdog forces to defeat or cripple sophisticated, expensive military assets.
• Example: “Blowing up multimillion dollar tanks with $400 drones…a very disproportionate thing.”

6. Global Geopolitics—Sanctions, Isolation, and American Image

[23:27–26:44]

• Anderson observes mounting resentment, confusion, and “isolationism” regarding the US’s shifting global role, loss of edge in science, and internal divisions.
• Sanctions are often counterproductive, strengthening dictatorships rather than weakening them. Example: “Sanctions are just…a cheap and easy way of making it look like you're doing something, but in fact just empower who you’re against.” [29:31]

7. Ukraine–Russia War: Stalemate and Proxy Dynamics

[31:14–36:21]

• Discussion about the evolution of the war, missed diplomatic offramps, and the practical limitations of a “victory” for either side.
• “Putin controls information into his own country…he always has the prerogative of declaring victory and going home.” [32:09]
• Even if territory is effectively lost, Ukraine can never formally cede it—much like divided Germany in the Cold War.

8. Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Global Risk

[43:12–55:50]

• Both agree nuclear weapons are unlikely to be used by major powers, but possibility exists for accident or rogue states/actors.
• The deterrence system is terrifying: “All these nations in the world just have a gun pointed at each other’s heads.”
• Technology exists for rapid detection and response, but risks remain high (“so many decisions…in 30 minutes” if an ICBM is launched).
• Discussion of accidental launches, dirty bombs, and the risk from non-state actors or poorly secured stockpiles.

9. Evolution of Drone, AI, and Psychedelic Warfare

[66:08–71:30]

• Drone swarms, spreadsheet warfare, Palantir, and AI are transforming battlefields—making conflict more automated, decentralized, and less transparent.
• Militaries are experimenting with drugs, including psychedelics, to enhance soldier performance and cope with trauma (e.g., ibogaine for Ukrainian troops, MDMA for PTSD).
• Concern over autonomous, disconnected, or AI-powered weapons bypassing human decision-making.

10. Front-Line Reporting: Danger, Ethics, and Propaganda

[55:56–62:07]

• War reporting is increasingly perilous; journalists are often targeted as potential witnesses to war crimes.
• Media coverage is often tightly controlled by authorities; hostile regimes exclude or surveil reporters.
• “Being a journalist, being a war reporter has just become steadily more dangerous as war has become more savage.”
• Example from Chechnya: Arguing for the life of a reporter changes from “why kill him?” to “is there any reason not to kill him?”

11. Middle East: Regime Change, Intelligence, and Geopolitics

[86:00–93:58]

• In-depth discussion of US and Western intelligence failures (notably in pre-revolution Iran).
• Examination of Iran–Israel–US proxy dynamics: “Israel…wants to fight Iran…they want to do regime change or…expand…make that a part of greater Israel.”
• October 7, Hamas attack: Israeli miscalculations, the role of deliberate polarization, and continued escalation as political survival strategy for Netanyahu.
• The manipulation of public opinion, lobby power (AIPAC), and legislative pressure in the US.

12. Technology, Surveillance, and Civil Liberties

[101:41–107:51]

• China’s surveillance state and the potential for similar trends in the US (e.g., use of Palantir, digital currency).
• Example from Georgia (country): Facial recognition used to fine and discourage protesters—“the Chinese model of how you destroy your opposition.”

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “I’ve never felt in any other war zone quite [like] any horrible thing could happen at any moment. That was Chechnya from both sides.” – Scott Anderson [01:23]
• “It has fundamentally changed the way war is covered…people…just go to those sites that reconfirm what they already believe.” – Scott Anderson [08:02]
• “It just becomes much more dangerous…to do the kind of work I’ve done in the past because people know where you are, all the time.” – Scott Anderson [08:36]
• “The theory of most journalists is that [journalists in Ukraine] are highly controlled because they don’t want you to see who is actually on the ground...American and British troops on the front lines.” – Scott Anderson [12:02]
• “Sanctions are just…a cheap and easy way of making it look like you're doing something, but in fact just empower who you’re against.” – Scott Anderson [29:31]
• “Putin…always has the prerogative of declaring victory and going home.” – Scott Anderson [32:09]
• “It’s not a unipolar American world anymore…the pendulum is swinging strongly in the other direction.” – Danny Jones [28:09]
• “It increases the longevity of your regime if you have [nukes].” – Scott Anderson [52:17]
• “I would compare the Russian army…to sort of a militia, a guerrilla group you’d find in Sub Saharan Africa.” – Scott Anderson [40:34]
• “People who commit war crimes don't want witnesses. And I think war, increasingly, it’s all about war crimes.” – Scott Anderson [57:06]
• “If a nuke ever goes off…if the one thing you’re going to want to do is run towards the mushroom cloud because the death will be a lot quicker.” – Danny Jones (relaying Andrew Bustamante) [54:38]
• “I've often found, over and over again, that the American government knows less and less of what's happening around the world.” – Scott Anderson [80:06]
• “If it was any other country in the world, this would be—imagine…if the Russians had been doing this in Ukraine. It's really pretty amazing.” – Scott Anderson, on Gaza [118:41]

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------|---------------| | Chechnya: most dangerous war | 00:54–04:12 | | Chechen Wars: history, false flag | 04:12–06:54 | | Modern war & propaganda | 07:46–09:33 | | Ukraine media control, foreign troops | 11:14–13:04 | | Low-tech weapons in Ukraine | 13:30–14:41 | | US global image, loss of soft power | 23:27–26:44 | | Sanctions and dictatorships | 28:09–29:43 | | Russia–Ukraine: war’s future | 31:14–36:21 | | Nuclear risk & deterrence | 43:12–55:50 | | Drone war, AI, psychedelic fighters | 66:08–71:30 | | War reporting danger, Chechnya | 55:56–62:07 | | Iran revolution, intelligence | 80:55–88:35 | | Israel/Iran/US proxy dynamics | 109:26–114:09 | | China surveillance, US parallels | 101:41–107:51 |

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Additional Highlights

• Scott’s New Book: “King of Kings” explores the Iranian Revolution with intimate access and original research.
• Technological change: Both war and surveillance are rapidly evolving—shifting advantage, increasing opacity, and raising new ethical dilemmas.
• War’s human toll: Themes of trauma, existential anxiety, and the psychological impact on civilians and soldiers alike thread through the conversation.

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Closing Notes

This episode offers a deeply informed, personal, and unsettling look at the forces driving today’s wars and the complex, often hidden intersections between politics, technology, propaganda, and human behavior. Scott Anderson’s on-the-ground stories and incisive commentary challenge simplistic narratives and reveal the gritty reality—and uncertainty—of global conflict in the 21st century.

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Further Reading:

• Scott Anderson, “King of Kings” (release August 2025)
• New York Times Magazine articles by Scott Anderson

Connect with Danny Jones:

• [Podcast links and social info as available]

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Prepared as a comprehensive summary for those who haven’t heard the conversation but want all the key takeaways and context.

Transcript

[Danny]

Hi, I'm Kristen Bell, and if you.

[Steve]

Know my husband Dax, then you also know he loves shopping for a car. Selling a car, not so much.

[Danny]

We're really doing this, huh? Thankfully, Carvana makes it easy. Answer a few questions, put in your.

[Steve]

Van or license and done.

[Danny]

We sold ours in minutes this morning and they'll come pick it up and pay us this afternoon. Bye bye, Truckee.

[Steve]

Of course, we kept the favorite.

[Danny]

Hello, other Truckee.

[Steve]

Sell your car with Carvana today.

[Danny]

Terms and conditions apply. You've been covering. I'm reporting on hot wars.

[Steve]

Yep.

[Danny]

Your whole life. How many, how many wars have you been embedded in reporting?

[Steve]

Sixteen, I believe. I think 16. I think 16 at this point.

[Danny]

What, out of all the wars you've been in, what was the most dangerous one?

[Steve]

Chia Chia Ch was horrifying. I went. It was 1995.

[Danny]

There was two of those, right?

[Steve]

There was two. I was there in the first one and I went for. It was the first or second story I did for the New York Times Magazine. And I went to try to find out what had happened with a, a rather prominent American disaster relief expert who had. He had been to 50 war zones and he had, he had gone to Chechnya and he called Chechnya the scariest place he'd ever been. He went back and within 24 hours of him going back, he disappeared. He vanished. So I, I went to try to find out what had happened to him, which was kind of foolhardy. And it was, it was really, really terrifying. The, the one way I just described how kind of terrifying it was. I was only there for three weeks and. But we were camping out in, you know, burned out buildings. If I didn't shower for three weeks, I got back to Moscow and I took the first. My first shower in three weeks. And I looked in the mirror afterwards and I had this little shock of white hair. It was much more impressive when I was younger because that was all the white hair I had. I'd never had a white hair before or. And for years afterwards it came up in three weeks. Just horrifying. I've never felt in any other war zone quite. That any horrible thing could happen any moment. And that was. That was Chechen from on both sides. The, the Chechen rebels and the, and the Russian army.

[Danny]

Chechnya is tiny.

[Steve]

Tiny. Yeah. It's.

[Danny]

Isn't it like smaller than New Jersey?

[Steve]

I think so, Yeah. I think it's like the size of Connecticut or something. Yeah. But both sides just absolutely brutal. And it was a really savage war.

[Danny]

So what is the history of the conflict between Chechnya and Russia?

[Steve]

So Chechnya sits on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. And they're Muslim, they're darker complexed, they're darker skinned than most ethnic Russians the Tsar had. I'm going back to the 1860s. Tolstoy actually fought in Chechnya under the czars, trying to control the Chechens. They've always had a reputation of being incredibly tough gangsters. They, the, the Chechen mafia really kind of controlled a lot of the organized crime in, in, in the Soviet Union. And Russians have always been simultaneously terrified of them and hate them. They've always been treated as second class citizens as a lot of the kind of smaller ethnic groups in Russia have been the, the, the Asian groups, the Muslim groups. So when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Chechens thought this was their moment to finally get their independence. And so the Soviet Union, they'd already lost all the republics, the, the other 14 republics. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. And so when Chechen was trying to break away, this was, this was the first internal rot of Russia itself. And that's when the Russians decided to put a, to put a stop to it. And it was a really vicious war.

[Danny]

Wow. Yeah. So the, was the second time they went to war was when Putin had just gotten to power and they did a false flag on the apartment building.

[Steve]

That's right. That's right. And yeah, so I actually wrote an article for, for GQ magazine about the false flag operation of, of the apartment bombings.

[Danny]

And I had another gentleman in here a couple years ago who was a big reporter during that time over there. His name's David.

[Steve]

Oh, yes, I know. David said, okay, yeah, great guy. Yeah. So he's. So you know about the, the false flag operation and, and it's been a while.

[Danny]

I'm a little, I'm a little rusty on the whole story, but from what I can recall is they did an investigation and they found out it was actual FSB agents that were there planning the bombs.

[Steve]

Right? That's right. Yeah. Basically, Putin had just. So Chechenia had de facto independence at that point. It was right around 2000. Putin came in as the first Yeltsin's fifth prime minister or something in a year. And right away these apartment buildings, whole apartment buildings in Moscow started blowing up and, and collapse, pancaking and killing dozens, scores of people. Putin was a former FSB KGB agent. And it was what never made any sense. I'm sure David Satter explained this to you is what never made any Sense is. So it was immediately blamed on the Chechens, and that provoked the second Chechen war. Putin goes in, he flattens Chechnya. This is a rallying around the flag moment for Russia. He becomes the savior of Russia and he never looks back. What never made any sense, though, was why the Chechens would have done these apartment bombings. They had independence, they had everything they wanted. Why would they do this? So that's the thing that never made any sense. And the more you kind of delved into it, as I did, as David Satter did, it became very clear that it was in FS USB operation.

[Danny]

And what was Putin's goal with that? Was he. Was he just, just trying to bring back the Soviet Union?

[Steve]

I think, yeah, I think he was. I, I think he first saw this as the, what he could use to, to bring the country around him, to establish his own power. And it worked. It worked. Within a very short time, Yeltsin, who was the president, was out of the picture. And Putin had had absolute control and, and was very popular in. He was able to crush the Chechens in a way that Yeltsin hadn't been able to. And frankly, he's still very popular for, for that and for other things he has done.

[Danny]

Putin.

[Steve]

Putin. Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah. I find it, I find it super difficult to find any sort of. Difficult to find. Figure out just using the media, what's going on with the, the Russia, Ukraine thing, right? Because there's so many different lines of thought and there's so many different narratives and I. There's so much propaganda on so many sides. We're revolving these wars, all these wars that are happening all over the world, right. And everyone's got a dog in the fight and, and everyone wants to promote some sort of idea on it or, you know, whatever if it supports their political beliefs or supports their ideology or the religion or whatever it is. So, like, it's interesting hearing from someone like you who's like, spent a lot of time on the ground doing this stuff and especially before the rise of like, social media.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And, you know, all of this information overload we're dealing with right now.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

How do you, how do you view, like, the evolution of all of this stuff and like the, the, the propaganda that, that lives around and surrounds these wars?

[Steve]

Yeah, no, it's a great question. It's, it has fundamentally changed the way war is, is covered because, you know, this is not an original thought, but people 10 social media and with the Internet to, to just go to those sites that, that reconfirm what they already believe. The Russians are very sophisticated at, at running false propaganda. Of what, of what, not only what happens in Ukraine, but of what's happening in, in, in Russia itself and throughout Eastern Europe. I, I, I feel it's become much more difficult to get your voice heard because there's just so many different outlets. There's so much, it's also become much more dangerous to do the kind of work I've done in the past because people know where you are all the time. I've known journalists who were targeted to be killed just by people following their cell phone. So it's become much more, I think it's just become much more dangerous. There's not the funding to do this sort. In the past, when I was covering a war, I would go and spend a, on the ground and you know, I was on somebody's dime, usually the New York Times Magazine. And it's. With the collapse of magazines and, and kind of traditional media, it's more and more difficult to, to be supported, to do that kind of work.

[Danny]

I have a friend, I've told this story ad nauseam, so if you've already heard me say this, I'm sorry. I have a really good friend who was on the podcast before he, his name's Jack Murphy and he wrote a piece on the Ukraine, Russia war about a year and a half ago. You heard of it? Have you heard of him?

[Steve]

Yes, I've heard of him, but I don't know.

[Danny]

The P said he's got the, the Team House podcast and, and he was working on a story basically about how a CIA used a NATO ally intelligence service to conduct sabotage operations inside Russia. And he had over a dozen sources in the intelligence community inside the US to do this article. And he was working with one of the, he didn't name the actual publication, but it was like one of the top three or four publications in the US Worked on it for about a year, maybe more than a year with an editor at this publication. And by the time, at the time they were ready to publish it and like press go and release it. I think this was around December, the December after the war started maybe, right. They said, the editor at the magazine said, okay, we got to call up the deputy director and get his sign off on the, on the article or whatever. He's like, okay, great. So they got him on three way and he said, no, we categorically deny all this, all of this thing, everything that is in here. And you're actually putting lives at risk by putting this out There. And he said, okay, we'll add that to the bottom of the article that you guys said this. He's like. And then he hangs up. And then he's like, all right, let's do it. And she goes, no, he, they have an off the record agreement with the CIA with this collocation. Has an off the record agreement with CIA. So if they say this, we don't, we don't publish the article. So wasted a year of his life. And he published it, published it on his own. But hearing stories like that really make me wonder.

[Steve]

Yeah, so, so there's some empirical evidence. When you look at Ukraine. I, I have not been to Ukraine yet. I'm probably going to be going in a few months. But, you know, this war has been going on for over two years and at a typical war zone, you would have had dozens of, of foreign correspondents dead or wounded by now, considering the kind of war it is. But in Ukraine, going in on the Ukrainian side, you cannot, you're, you are shepherded around by the Ukrainian government. You cannot travel anywhere as a foreign journalist without permission from the Ukrainian government. Now why is that? Do they really care that much about the safety of foreign journalists? The theory of most journalists is that they're highly controlled because they don't want to see who is actually on the ground in the front lines helping them. The probability or the theory being that there are American and British troops in the front lines helping the Ukrainians fight the Russians. And that's why journalists are kept, you know, in very close quarantine there. I, I've never seen anything like it in a war zone where, I mean, you literally, you have to have permission, written permission to go anywhere and they keep track.

[Danny]

Really.

[Steve]

Yeah. So the supposition is that's because of the other actors that are in the battlefield. Ukra, for nothing else, has been a wonderful lab school for weaponry for the West. I mean, you know, drone warfare has now utterly changed the face of, of modern war. And so the Pentagon, the CIA, the sas, they've been able to try out all their toys and it's, it's been sort of a great gift to them.

[Danny]

Hey, guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video back to the show. I saw something this morning saying that as Trump just like released this new thing about giving them a bunch of more weapons or whatever.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Somebody told him, I forget who it was. Somebody in the Defense Department basically said, we don't have enough weapons. To give them like we're running really low.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

So they're doing some sort of pause or whatever.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, to the degree, I mean, what is remarkable and you know, I, I've thought about this a lot, not just in relation to Ukraine, but in relation to September 11th into a lot of things is what the modern world has created over and over again are these sort of David and Goliath situations. You know, all this security. Now that's the security state that's been built up since September 11th. People seem to forget that those guys did what, accomplished what they did with box cutters, with two dollar box cutters. It was not sophisticated stuff. And the same way in Ukraine they're blowing up, you know, multimillion dollar tanks with $400 drones and some cases not even like losing that $400 drone. They could actually program now to, to drop its, its load and then to come back. So there's this, there's this very disproportionate thing with conventional weapons, with, with, you know, with defense weapons. Maybe the, the, maybe the Americans are running low on them, but you know, time and again the Ukrainians have done this very low tech thing that nobody saw coming and have been able to at least hold their own with it.

[Danny]

Yeah, it is, it's interesting to see how it all plays out and as well with the, with everything going on in Iran. Yeah, the Iran thing, this 12 day war that just happened, it seems like it was, we got out of there so quick because they were doing, they were threatening to do something with the, that little straight there. They were threatening to mine it or something like that. And we were terrified they were going to do that.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Do you know, do you know the ins and outs of how that works?

[Steve]

Yeah, it's the Straits of Hormuz. It's a little choke point at the, at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. That's, it's, I believe it's about 15, 16 miles wide. And all the tankers from, from Saudi Arabia, from, from Iraq, from Iran, they all have to go through there. I actually have a, I actually have a different theory of, of, of that, of what happened in, in Iran with the, with the Americans bombing the nuclear sites. My, my next book, by the way it's coming out, is about the. So I've been really kind of focused on Iran lately.

[Danny]

King of Kings.

[Steve]

King of Kings. Yeah, this is coming out in a few weeks, but I've talked to a few people inside Iran who are, since the American bombing, people who are on the Opposition to the regime. And what almost all of them have said was that this is the greatest gift, the American bombing, the nuclear sites. This is the greatest gift of the regime that they've ever had. Because now they can tar all the opposition with, oh, if you're against us, then you're lackeys of the Americans. So it plays right into the regime's hands. And so one of the. One of the kind of conspiracy theories. And Iranians love conspiracy theory.

[Danny]

Oh, do they really?

[Steve]

Oh, gosh, yeah. They. They have conspiracy theories about everything.

[Danny]

I know. What is the sentiment of Iranians towards America, because I know a lot of them are actually like Israel, which is shocking.

[Steve]

Right. Well, there's always been a large Iranian Jew. Jewish community that was never kicked out. It's still there. A lot. A lot of the prominent Iranian Jews left when the Shah was overthrown. They're like, in Los Angeles and stuff now. But they. They. Yeah, they just love conspiracy theories. Well, and also, the Shah was always very close to Israel. And part of that, they're not Arabs. Iranians, they see themselves as apart from the Arab world. And they're also Shia Muslims, which is different from all the Sunni Muslims that kind of control all the other. All the other. Always seen themselves as a part. They actually get offended if people think that they're Arabs. They're very proud of the fact that they're not. So there is this kind of natural affinity that they've often have with Israel. So the conspiracy theory is that. Or one of the conspiracy theories is that the regime actually, they had a chance to kind of cut a deal with Israel when just Israel was bombing them, and they were asked to come to the negotiating table, and they resisted. And then the Americans bomb the nuclear sites. And the. The conspiracy theory is that that's exactly what they wanted to happen. They knew that they were never going to be able to develop a nuclear weapon that they could. They would never. They'll never be able to get away with it with the west, who knew the regime, the Iranian regime. So we'll sacrifice our nuclear program. But in return now we have, once again, we have America bombing us, killing civilians. And that's a way to. To rally the country around the flag, which has happened, and to gut our domestic opposition. Because now we can say, oh, you're in bed with. You're in bed with the Americans. You're supporters of the people who attacked our own country. So the Iranian opposition people I've talked to in the last two weeks, they're really despondent over what happened and they feel that it set the move against the regime back at least five, 10 years.

[Danny]

Did you see that interview that the President of Iran did with Tucker Carlson?

[Steve]

No, I didn't. I was probably in Turkey when it.

[Danny]

Was like a 30 minute interview. And it seemed like his sentiment was like, I don't want to fight.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

You know, it seemed like we don't, we, we don't harbor like, of course, you know, our slogan is death to America, but, you know, everyone needs a slogan. We don't, we don't want to fight you guys.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

You know, Netanyahu's been trying to get you guys to bomb us since the early 90s.

[Steve]

Right, right, right. I think it's true. And I've never bought into this idea that the Iranians could develop a nuclear weapon and somehow launch it against Israel or against anybody. I know I was embedded with the Israeli army. I know the kind of spy imagery they have of drones and satellites. The Americans have it too. The minute, the instant, you know, a missile was pushed out into a launch pad in Iran, it would be blown up. The idea that they could somehow bring it out, you know, set it up, launch it and somehow it hit Israel is just a, it's a fantasy.

[Danny]

They wouldn't even be able to get it off the ground.

[Steve]

They wouldn't even be able to get off the ground. Wow. They wouldn't even be able to get it, you know, to the launch pad. It would just as coming out the tunnel. No, it'd be instantaneous.

[Danny]

Not just drones. I'm sure there's satellites.

[Steve]

Right, right. Yeah, there's constant satellites and drones. I'll tell you, I was in, it was with the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. This was 20 years ago in Gaza. And I was in one of their, their command centers and they had drones then looking, looking down at Gaza. I distinctly remember them focusing on a guy who was reading a newspaper on a bench and they said, so we can tell he's reading a newspaper. The American drones can read the newspaper. And that was 20 years ago. So, you know, the idea that they, they any in places like Iran without them absolutely knowing, this is absurd.

[Danny]

And I also read that is Israel actually published, I think the Israeli government came out recently and said that 60% of their uranium survived the bombings.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

So. So what? I mean, I just, I was hearing everything all over the news saying that this was the most successful bombing campaign ever.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

But it's, but 60% survived. Now what?

[Steve]

Yeah, I mean, who, you know, who knows?

[Danny]

Who knows what were you doing in Israel 20 years ago with the IDF?

[Steve]

I was reporting. It was actually at a time when, you know, this was even before they, this was in God, it's more than 20 years ago. It was 2002 and it was even before the whole term of embed had come along. And I, I, and my photographer I've always worked with were, we wanted to go on a mission with the IDF into the West Bank. And so just by, and we got clearance to do it. And just by chance while we were there, there was a huge suicide bombing that killed about 24 people. And so the Israelis did this big offensive into the West Bank. So we, Paolo Pellegrini and I were embedded with this forward kind of commando group and the Israeli army.

[Danny]

How do you go about like getting there and getting them to just bring you in?

[Steve]

Sure, yeah, it's like just kind of persistence, you know, it's, it's the one thing I remember about that trip in particular is, is that we, we got with this commando group and, and the, the head of it said, okay, you know, you got to, here's two uniforms for you. And I said, man, I'm a journalist. I, I, I can't wear an army uniform. And he goes, goes okay, well wherever we go, there's a dusted dawn curfew and, and we, we do all our operations at night state. And so if you're not in uniform, we're probably going to shoot you. And I went, okay, I'll put on the uniform.

[Danny]

Sold, baby.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So it seems like, it seems like all sorts of countries are doing everything they can right now to distance themselves from the United States, you know, with our foreign policies, with like the tariffs and the sanctions and all the wars and stuff like this. What, it doesn't seem like it, you know, it's, sometimes it's hard to. When you're an American and you haven't been to all the places you've been to, to give yourself a perspective on what it really means to be an American. Right. Like, you don't really know that until you've been to some of these places and had that perspective. And I've been thinking more and more in the recent months, you know, like, is it possible we are the bad guys?

[Steve]

We are to huge swaths of the world now. Certainly we are in the Middle east, in the, in the Arab world. I think there's a lot of animosity in, throughout Latin America because of the immigration policy and which seems to have kind of a racialist component to it. What I think is kind of remarkable. And I think this is for, if not of resentment, it's a mystification in Europe of, in one area after another. It's almost like America's unilaterally disarming. We're losing our edge in science because of cuts. We're losing our edge in technology. This idea that we're going back to coal when you know, at a time when the world's getting hotter, it seems like by the minute, even from an economic standpoint it's, you know, it's obvious that the countries that are going to be at the head of, of whatever green revolution comes, you know, that against climate change they're going to make out like bandits economically. And you know, the countries that, that have, have, don't have the means or the, the willingness to, to try to, you know, foster this, this technology are going to be left out in the cold. And it just seems we, I mean I, I sense this over and over with, with Europeans I talk to it, you know, in everything you can think of. Biomedical research, you know, green technology, scientific research, education, you know, higher graduate school education that, you know, limiting people coming. It's just, it's a bizarre thing that I don't know that anyone would have predicted was going to happen. It's going to be interesting. What happens say, you know, this next year with, you know, America has the best kind of graduate school programs in STEM research in the world and everybody in China and Europe, you know, the best and the brightest all want to come to MIT or Cal Poly, Stanford. Those numbers are going to be way down next year of applications from foreign students because they don't know if, you know, okay, may I get in this year? What happens? Am I going to get kicked out the year following? So I, I mean I think that so much damage has already been done to, to this. So you know, in some places, America, yeah, some. To your question, we are seen as the bad guy and in other parts of the world I think they just are mystified by what's happening this and you know an isolationism seems to be setting in. That's just self defeating.

[Danny]

Yeah, no, they're, I mean and it's not black and white when it comes to foreign policy. Like I, I'm, I don't want to be us to be an like interventionist as we, as we have been since Bush and probably before that. Like, you know, I don't see myself just the same way Jews in Israel don't see themselves as part of Netanyahu. Most of them are against Netanyahu and his government. I don't see, I don't want to be associated with Dick Cheney and George Bush any more than those people want to be associated with Netanyahu and some of the stuff he's doing.

[Steve]

Doing.

[Danny]

But at the same, on the other hand, like, I don't think it's right to be a complete isolationist either. I think you have to be practical with things. But when I say like, you know, when I say like other countries are kind of like seeing us as the unreasonable ones, you know, when, when we are doing, intervening in all these wars, stoking all, all of these conflicts around the world and at the same time, like, as you were just, just explaining about like some of the domestic stuff that's happening, you have people being deported for, for protesting this other country in the Middle East, Israel, and they also seem to control a majority of our, of our Congress leaders.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So like it's, it's hard to be optimistic about the direction the country's going. And then like with like the bricks and the things like this and like with putting the sanctions on Russia and people realizing like, oh, maybe these sanctions aren't, you know, maybe, maybe we don't want to be under the thumb of America. Maybe we should start this bricks alliance, you know, and start to diversify our way ourselves off of this American imperialism idea.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

I don't know. It seems like, it seems like there's a, there's a shift happening. It's definitely not, not, you know, it's not a unipolar America world anymore.

[Steve]

No.

[Danny]

And it seems like it's. The pendulum is swinging strongly in the other direction.

[Steve]

No, I think that's right. I think it's very much swinging in the other direction. And the other thing about you mentioned sanctions, Sanctions very rarely work. What sanctions do is especially in a dictatorship, which it's almost all by America almost always uses dictatorships. It just consolidates hand power in the hands of the dictator. It gives them even more control over the society. If you, if you sanction food, if you sanction weaponry, if you sanction medicine, that just, that just then gives the dictator life and death control over the population. Secret police never go hungry, armies never go hungry. It's, it's, it's the poor people. So sanctions are just, I've always felt it's just a cheap and easy way of making it look like you're doing something, but in fact just empower who you're against. Castro has kept in power in Cuba for 50 years by sanctions. If he wouldn't have lasted a decade if not for American sanctions. American sanctions gave Castro absolute control over that island.

[Danny]

Interesting.

[Steve]

And it was the best thing that ever happened to him. You know, I mean I'm sure every day he was like, you know, got down. Well, he was, he probably didn't pray, but you know, he's so thankful that American sanctions.

[Danny]

Do you think we knew about this or have learned anything from this?

[Steve]

No, no, because I don't think we've learned anything because it's again, it's a way to look like you're doing something without, without committing troops on the ground, without going to war. And both Democrat and, and Rep. Presidents have done it all the time. Clinton did it with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. You know, by the people were dying in, in, in Iraq, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq because they didn't have insulin of the diabetics and stuff because of the American embargo. So who just gave Saddam Hussein again life and death control over his people? It, it hardly ever works.

[Danny]

You say you'll never join the Navy, never climb Mount Fuji on a port.

[Steve]

Visit or break this down barrier.

[Danny]

Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Learn [e-mail], america's Navy forged by the sea.

[Steve]

You say you'll never join the Navy, that living on a submarine would be too hard. You'd never power a whole ship with.

[Danny]

Nuclear energy, never bring a patient back.

[Steve]

To life.

[Danny]

Or play the national anthem.

[Steve]

For a sold out shroud. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your [e-mail] America's Navy forged by the sea.

[Danny]

Yeah, this, the idea of soft power.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And the, you know, it's being used in, in many ways with tariffs and then these sanctions and I think they just recently announced they're going to double sanction Russia somehow.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

They already have Russia sanctioned now they're going to sanction the people to trade with them, I think.

[Steve]

Right, right, right.

[Danny]

Somehow that's going to work. I don't know. Is that going to strengthen the bricks alliance?

[Steve]

No, it's, what it's going to do is, is going to make the, the 20 to 50 oligarchs around Putin that much richer. I, I mean I, I, that's what I think's going to happen.

[Danny]

So where do you see this, this Russia conflict going with Ukraine? Do you think it's going to freeze? Do you think it's, do you think they're going to win? It seems like they're winning pretty, pretty.

[Steve]

Pretty hard right now. It does, it seems like the Russians are winning. You know, I remember when, when Trump was elected the first time this group of, of psychologists did a profile of Trump and what one thing they all seem to sort of agree on was that he has such a personalized approach to power that if, if under his watch, say September 11 happened, that he would see it as a personal attack on him. He wouldn't see so much as attack on the country, but because everything is about him.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Steve]

So similarly, take, you know, extrapolating that to what's happening now in Russia now. Putin's kind of shamed him. You know, he had this idea that he could, that he understood Putin and Putin would, would that they were kind of buddies or whatever. And I think Putin is, has kind of played him for a fool over and over again about Ukraine and now he's finally gotten this back up. He's going to ramp up, you know, armed shipments to Ukraine, he's going to put these sanctions in place. I, I, my suspicion will be that Putin is gonna, is gonna play for time. The one, the one wild card in the whole Russia, Ukraine thing is because Putin is a dictator and because he controls information into his own country, he always has the prerogative of declaring victory and going home. Right. He can say, okay, mission accomplished, we're out of here. If, if, if the Americans are smart that they will set up a situation where he is able to do that. I don't see it happening with, with more sanctions though.

[Danny]

We had an off ramp a month into the war, right. Literally in March.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

They were, I think it was Naftali Bennett was hosting a, a, some sort of a negotiation with Trump and Zelensky.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And Putin was trying to negotiate an end of this war.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And I think it was the Biden administration who basically said, no, we're not going to, we're not going to let this happen.

[Steve]

Right. It's, yeah.

[Danny]

So what, what is his goal? What are his goals? Like why, why what, why would Putin be wanting to negotiate an end to the war one month into it?

[Steve]

Right? Well, they weren't, they weren't accomplishing what they had set out to do do.

[Danny]

Because I think, I think Ukraine had just won like a strategic battle or something.

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

And that happened and like we had them on their heels.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And one of the top generals in the U. S. Military was like publicly stating like this is what needs to happen, now is the time.

[Steve]

Right, that's right. No, that's right. It was probably about, yeah, it's probably about two months in when they, they failed to take Kiev and. And they were getting pushed back. And what Putin had been trying to do up, up until then. It's a classic Russian tactic, is you use your conscripts, you use the grunts. They were not Russia's best soldiers.

[Danny]

They weren't using prisoners yet, though, were they?

[Steve]

They were not using prisoners at that point, but the frontline troops were from Asian Russia and they were conscripts. So in the Russian military mindset, both groups of people who are very expendable, but the problem is they're not. They were not very well trained, and they were getting their asses kicked. And so they. That. That all kind of changed. What is not going to happen is you cannot get a Ukrainian President, Zelensky, or anybody else to agree to the loss of Crimea and the loss of the eastern provinces. That's what's going to be the de facto situation on the ground. They're not going to get them back, but you can never ask them to formally cede it. It to. To Russia. So, I mean, and, And I, I remember when, When Zelinsky was meeting with Trump in the office, they were saying that this is a deal. You have to. To. To kind of realize you're never going up. He just can't, you know. But the reality. Yeah, but the reality on the ground is they've lost.

[Danny]

What are they going to do if they don't have our help?

[Steve]

Well, that's true. Then, Then the whole. Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, but he. I don't think he could ever, Ever manage to. To formally cede. Need that. You know, it could be in dispute. Kind of like the way Germany during the Cold War was divided. No, we never recognized the annexation of East Germany, but it was a, you know, it was, it was a fact. And so he kind of lived with it.

[Danny]

Right. So, yeah, that's like me telling Jon Jones that I'm not going to let him punch me in the face.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

It's like he's going to punch me in the face if he wants to.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

Like, I'm not gonna let Jon Jones take my lunch from me.

[Steve]

That's. Yeah, that's right.

[Danny]

I have no choice, really.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Unless I have, like, 10 Mike Tysons behind me, like, helping me.

[Steve]

Right. That's.

[Danny]

Yeah, but if Mike Tysons tell me, like, hey, give him half your sandwich.

[Steve]

Right? Yeah.

[Danny]

And we'll be done. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that.

[Steve]

Right. But he'll. If you just. He could take half your sandwich. And you just said, you Know, you say, you know, I'm not giving you permission to take half this.

[Danny]

Right, right, right. Just know I'm not happy about this.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

And also, like, in the beginning of the war, I think. I think Putin only had a couple hundred thousand troops, maybe less than 200,000 troops. Right.

[Steve]

It's right, right, yeah.

[Danny]

To. To invade. To invade Ukraine, which is you. He would. At least you would think you would need in the millions. Right, right. If he actually wanted to do something serious. Right. And. And since then, he did. He did the July 12, 2021 essay. Right. Where he talks about how he was, you know, ashamed by the breakup of the Soviet Union.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And, you know, basically he thought that, like, the Donbas region in Crimea, you know, needed to be a part of greater Russia.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Ukraine needed to let Russia be like, an official language. It was a long essay.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

The sentiment of the essay was not that we want to make Ukraine part of the Soviet Union, essentially.

[Steve]

Right. Although he did. He said again and again that he's no NATO. Right. That's no NATO, and that Ukraine is not. Is not really a real country. I mean, he said that over and over again.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Steve]

But the tool he's used over and over again, and he's done it in the Baltic countries, is this idea that the ethnic Russians are being discriminated against and we're going in in order to protect the ethnic Russians. And that was the idea with Luhansk and Donetsk and Crimea. Crimea. It's a very. It's a. Having seen the Chech. The Russian army in Chechnya, I think it's probably gotten somewhat better on the ground now. I mean, more professional. But the first days of the first months of Ukraine reminded me very much of Chechnya and that it's a really disorganized army. Generals could care less about the welfare or the livelihood of their soldiers. I remember, and I remember when. When I was in Chechnya, Grozny, that there was. The Russians did this. Grozny, the capital of. Of Chechnya. The Russians did this crazy thing of just going. Doing a headlong march into Grozny and being slaughtered. Something like 600 Russian troops were killed in about 45 minutes. And the next day, the. The. The Chechens offered them a ceasefire, temporary ceasefire, so they could come and collect the bodies that were all over the streets of Grozny. And the Russians just said no. And it was really interesting to me that. That this came up again and again with the Chechen rebels that. That I talked with is that it's, we are fighting an enemy that doesn't even care about getting back the bodies of their own dead soldiers. And so these, these bodies were left in the streets to be eaten by dogs. And that's what happened. And that's been happening in Ukraine also. And I've, I've, I've heard this again and again. It's like how, you know, know what kind of army it, the American army will suffer casualties, will, it will lose people to recover the bodies of dead soldiers and they've done that all through history. But to, to not even care about collecting the bodies of your own debt is, is just something that's quite bizarre. But it is, it is a. They're, they're brutal. I mean, I've never seen an army quite like it. I would compare the Russian army and again, I, I'm, I'm talking about the army I've seen which were not the elite units, but I would compare the Russian army that I've seen in action to sort of a, a militia, a guerrilla group you'd find in Sub Saharan Africa, you know.

[Danny]

Yeah, it's hard to, it's hard, it's, it's hard to get a grip on, on what it's really like, you know, being, especially. I've never been to Russia. I'm a, I haven't spent, I've spent a little time in Europe, but not, not enough to know anything about like the type of trauma those people have been through and you know, you know, even Russia, they've been through what, Napoleon, World War II. I mean, I'm missing a lot. But they've been through countless atrocities. Yeah, right. And, and have their populations been starved and decimated?

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So I, I just, it's, it's, I can't put myself in the shoes of those people, you know, and I wish I could.

[Steve]

It's, it's. I actually, on a personal level, I, I, as much as I'm badmouthing the Russians, I actually like them on, on a personal level. I think one of the keys to understand about Russia and the Russian psyche is that they're evil. They're caught between east and West.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[Steve]

They are European wannabes. And if you look at their leaders through history, they've wanted to be a part of Europe. They've had leaders who kind of consider themselves Europeans, but there's something from the East. And so there are this strange kind of hybrid people, hybrid culture. I think that there's a deep seated inferiority complex as a result among Russians.

[Danny]

Didn'T Didn't Putin ask Clinton to be. If he would be able to join NATO?

[Steve]

Yeah, apparently it's. Yeah, apparently it was. That's right. Was. It was. I'm trying to remember, was it Clinton?

[Danny]

I think it might have been Clinton. Steve, maybe you can confirm this for us. Yeah, but, yeah, no, it, it seems just like there's so, like, it seems like Ukraine specifically has been in just like this tug of war contest between the, between Russia and the West.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

You know, back as, you know, since World War II, after World War II, the Cold War. And you know, it seems to me like a reasonable middle ground there would just to leave Ukraine at.

[Steve]

Be.

[Danny]

Leave Ukraine out of NATO.

[Steve]

Right, right. Yeah.

[Danny]

Leave a buffer.

[Steve]

Right? That's right, that's right.

[Danny]

Putin says he discussed Russia's possible NATO membership of Bill Clinton. That's what it was. Look at that. Wow. Look at, look at Putin. He looks like skinny there.

[Steve]

Yeah, he does. He does. It's before his face looks.

[Danny]

And Clinton looks 50 years young at least. Maybe 100 years younger.

[Steve]

It's funny.

[Danny]

What, what, what are your thoughts on the possibility of another nuclear war between these two, these two states? Do you think it's likely that, that nukes ever get used again on this globe?

[Steve]

I think, I think it's really likely they're used again, but I don't believe between Russia and America and China. I mean, I think it's. If, if it happens, it's likely to be one of the second tier countries that they're kind of off the radar, like Pakistan or India.

[Danny]

There's nine nuclear, nuclear armed countries.

[Steve]

That's right. Israel, France, I think South Africa. Oh, no, South Africa gave them up.

[Danny]

They gave them up, yeah. India, Pakistan, North Korea, North Korea, China, America, Russia.

[Steve]

What's, what's the knife do We. You said Israel.

[Danny]

Yeah, here we go. United States, China. Oh, uk.

[Steve]

Oh, that's right, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would.

[Danny]

We only have 5,000 nuclear warheads.

[Steve]

Yeah. We gave so many up during the salt.

[Danny]

That's incredible because we had like upwards of 20,000.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

That's a, that's a, that's a, a great thing to see. The fact that we've been able to reduce the, the nuclear stockpile that much and convince Russia to do the same thing.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

Well, on record. Right, yeah, on record. Well, I mean, technically, Israel's not even supposed to have nukes, Right. But they do, right?

[Steve]

That's right. Yeah. Actually, it's funny that on this topic, Great, great story. That has never been told. I don't think ever will be told, is that one of the great successes of the Clinton administration was the roundup of the rogue nukes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. I mean, there were dozens. Oh, yeah, it's an amazing story. And, and I don't think it'll ever be written, but there are, there's, you know, CIA, NSA, the Brits, MI6 were in there and they were. They were literally going up and, you know, buying. Buying nuclear warheads for people. And it's an incredible. Because so much was missing.

[Danny]

I saw an amazing documentary about this, about some Russian dude who was like, slinging submarines to drug dealers and they were sitting in a. There's a great. I forget the name of it, Steve. You should probably try to find this documentary, but. And there's a scene when they're in Russia and this big Russian dude's in the sauna with these, with these drug dealers, these like, cartel guys, and he's like. Like, guys want a nuke? Throw in a nuke to spice up the submarine deal.

[Steve]

Yeah. No, it's amazing that they managed to corral that. Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

The idea of just like the nuclear deterrence, the idea that all these nations in the world just have a gun pointed at each other's heads. It's just a circle of nations and everyone's got a gun point at the other guy's head.

[Steve]

I know.

[Danny]

And that we haven't launched anything.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Is. Is fascinating. And then like, I had a guy on here the other day who was. He's a. A naval guy who was like a Navy submarine commander, and he was explaining to me how all the, all these submarines. There's thousands and thousands of. Of nuclear submarines littered throughout the oceans at all times.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Like from every nation that are even circling our coasts. Right. Both sides of our coasts.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And each one of these subs have like dozens and dozens of merved IBC ICBMs on them.

[Steve]

Yeah, no, it's. It's. If you think about it too much, it's. It's pretty terrifying. It really is.

[Danny]

I mean, world enders.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

This, this. There's just these, these things that are circulating the. The oceans and probably in space.

[Steve]

Oh, yeah.

[Danny]

That just are. Could end the world in a matter of seconds.

[Steve]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Danny]

Minutes. I think it's like. I think it's like 30 minutes. If a, If a nuke, an ICBM was launched from Pyongyang to. It would take 30 minutes for it to hit Washington D.C. see? Wow, 30 minutes.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Can you imagine the amount of decisions that have to be made in 30 minutes.

[Steve]

Yeah, that's, I mean, again, you know, going back to when we were talking about the before, I mean, I, I gotta believe, and maybe it's just wishful thinking that with, you know, spy satellites and, and, and drone, drone technology, that you see this stuff coming. Submarine, you know, nuclear submarines, maybe not that, that, but you know, on the ground at least. I, I, I, I got to believe that you could see this stuff before it was ever launched.

[Danny]

Yeah. I think, I think the satellites, like the CBERS system that we have, can detect it, can detect the, the, the rocket blast, the burners, the burners on the rockets, like, the second they launch. Right. So like, as soon as a rocket launches, we have satellite systems that know that it launches. And we also have interceptor missiles. We have like 44 of them, I think, and they only have 40% accuracy.

[Steve]

Oh, we, Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah.

[Danny]

So, like, it's a, that's like shooting a bullet out of the sky.

[Steve]

Right, Right.

[Danny]

Shooting a warhead out of the sky with another bullet, with another rocket, which is crazy.

[Steve]

Yeah. What could possibly go wrong?

[Danny]

Right. But like, I think one of the biggest fear. I agree with you. I don't think one of the major nation states would do this. I don't think that, you know, Russia, China or the US or even if Iran had a nuke, I don't think they're suicidal.

[Steve]

Right, Right.

[Danny]

Because the second you do that, you know, it's all out. Nuclear war, you know, you're dead.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And that's why, why, that's why Russia, I think, and the US we both have the, the dead man switches.

[Steve]

Oh, yeah.

[Danny]

You know, so if, like, if, if everyone dies in Russia and a nuke or like, if 20 nukes hit Russia and like, takes out everybody, there's like a switch, there's sensors that go off that, that unleashed every single nuke they have back to America.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

So even if they're all dead, right. America's done for. Well, but my biggest fear here is that like a rogue, sort of a cartel or like a rogue military gets their hands on something like this and sets it off and then like, it gets attributed to the wrong people or no one knows, like, where to attribute it to. Like, like, even if, like a, imagine if a, a nuke ended up on like a, on like a train or a, somewhere got shuttled to like, the middle of Ukraine and, and maybe it came from Russia, maybe it came from somewhere else. That's what it was. Operation Or Operation Odessa. That's the documentary I was telling you about. And like it maybe it's like a small tactical news or a suitcase nuke or something like this. And like it was just like a faction of a military or like a, like ISIS or something like this, and then detonated it.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And now all of a sudden the world's on fire, freaking out. Like a nuke went off. Where do we, how do we know who did this? Do we have to retaliate? And that's, that's what I'm scared of the most.

[Steve]

So. Yeah, I'll tell you something else. It's scary that somebody told me years ago in the military that what? And it was actually, this was, this was right when I just came back from Chechen. I was talking to this military guy. There was so much hu. Highly enriched uranium that was still missing. And what he was worried about was somebody just getting a tin of heu. Just a pouch put, attaching it to a helium balloon, sending it up say 2000ft over Manhattan and then having an altimeter bomb that just blows up the, the balloon. I mean, this is not even a nuke.

[Danny]

This is a dirty bomb.

[Steve]

It's a dirty bomb. And then that, that uranium just spreads over the city and within. You're not going to wipe out millions, but you're going to kill thousands. And it'll just be. There's no way to stop it because it's undetectable again, it's that low. You know, low. It's box cutters. It's, it's, it's this low tech thing that there's nothing to, to, to, you know, prevent it from happening.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Steve]

So.

[Danny]

Or, or even like drug cartels, you know, like cartel wars. Like imagine if the Caloa cartel or one of these cartels got their hands on a nuke somehow and they freaking blew it up in Mexico or somewhere else, you know.

[Steve]

Not going to be able to sleep tonight.

[Danny]

Yeah, no, it's a, it's definitely a terrifying thought, man.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And, and I don't, I don't know where it goes, but like this, I heard this story the other day and I think Annie Jacobson was telling this story about how like the countries with the nuclear bombs are the ones that America doesn't with. Like look at new look at North Korea.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Kim Jong Il made that agreement with, I think it was Clinton. Clinton tried to get him to stop his nuclear program.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And he shook his hand, but he had his fingers crossed behind his back. They did the nukes they, they create, they started their nuclear program and now they have like, I think it's 80.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Have 80 ICBMs, nuclear warheads. And because of that, Kim Jong Un is probably going to die of natural. A natural death in his bed at night.

[Steve]

Yep, that's right. That's right.

[Danny]

So why wouldn't Iran want to nuke now? They probably want to nuke now more than ever.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah, probably do. Probably do, yeah. And it's. No, you're right. I mean, it's. It's a. It's an amazing kind of. It increases the longevity of your regime if. If you have it.

[Danny]

Yeah, right.

[Steve]

And the idea that North Korea has it is really pretty terrifying. I mean, I, That I find more terrifying than Iran has it or. Oh, yeah, Pakistan or anything. I mean, he, you know, that's. That's just a crazy, crazy regime.

[Danny]

Crazy, yeah. Totally unhinged.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

But I know I would hope they're not suicidal.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Because, you know, again, like, the scary thing about them launching a nuke is obviously we would know this. I can get launched. And again, we have 30 minutes, according to Andy Jacobson's new book, Nuclear War, to get from Pyongyang to D.C. and within that 30 minutes, so many decisions have to get made by the President who has the ultimate control. And he, like, walks around with a Denny's menu, right? And the nuclear football, which is like scenario one, scenario two, scenario three, scenario, scenario four. And each one of those scenarios has, like, this. This key code or whatever or encryption code that you give to, like, strategic command, right? And then they have to, you know, go through all these processes and then, like, turn the keys to do it, right? And like, then you have to get on the phone with Russia because you have to shoot those nukes back. So within that 30 minutes to get here, right? So there's like 12 minutes, minutes before we have to release our Minutemen missiles because they're. They're stationary. And we have to imagine, like, it's use it or lose it with those. Like, those are going to be destroyed if we wait 30 minutes.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Because they could potentially target those to try to, like, take us, take out, you know, castrate us. So within 12 minutes, we have to say, okay, are we going to launch back? Let's get on the phone with Russia, let's let them know that these missiles have to overfly Russia to get to Pyongyang or to get to North Korea.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

When's the last time, time that the President was able to get Putin on the phone in less than 10 minutes? Or, you know what I mean? That quick. I don't think. I don't know, but I don't.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Think it's been. I don't think it's ever happened.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

So. And then they're going to see nukes flying over Russia. They're going to probably launch nukes, and before you know it, it's just the end of the world, you know. Nuclear winner.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

This guy, Andrew Bustamante was this former CIA officer. He was in the Air Force, then he went to the CIA. He worked in the nuclear command with the Air Force course. And he said in his training, he said if a nuke ever goes off, like anywhere near you in, in American, on American soil, he's like, if the one thing you're going to want to do is run towards the mushroom cloud because the death will be a lot quicker.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

Going back to like, war and media and propaganda and all this stuff, and especially with like, the evolution of war, like now it's more drone stuff.

[Steve]

More.

[Danny]

AI is being used, biological weapons, these kinds of things. There's like so many more. And not only that, but like, these guys are wearing GoPros out in the battlefield.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

And like killing each other.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And. And then executing people, their prisoners, and then like broadcasting that on Reddit or.

[Steve]

Yeah, whatever.

[Danny]

These like little chat apps are like. It's just hard to imagine where, where this goes and how that actually changes war. Do you think it's possible that the idea you can broadcast this stuff live is gonna change things when it comes to being able to like, maybe analyze it somehow, maybe exploit it somehow? Especially when you.

[Steve]

It's.

[Danny]

It's uploaded instant, instantaneously, versus back in the 80s and 90s. I'm sure it took weeks to get stuff published.

[Steve]

Right, right. Sure.

[Danny]

Do you think that's gonna, what kind of effect do you. Do you think like, modern media is going to have on. On these conflicts?

[Steve]

Well, I think increasingly technology is out of, you know, mainstream media's hands. Right. As he, as you talk about, like GoPro and, you know, that's just somebody he can, he can film himself executing a prisoner and, and within a few minutes it's online. What I've seen over my career is that, that being a journalist, being a war war reporter has just become steadily more dangerous as war has become more savage. People who commit war crimes don't want witnesses. And I think war, increasingly, it's all about war crimes. I'll give you an example. In Central America in the mid-1980s, and you know, in the, those were vicious wars, the death squad, you know, death squads in, in El Salvador and Guatemala. But foreign journalists could, by taping their cars, would say it with black tape saying TV or prince press. They could actually cross between enemy lines, go. They, they could cross over. When the wars in Bosnia, in Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia started in Bosnia and Croatia, the foreign journalists tried to do the same thing. And they're actually being targeted. And just. So in just less than 10 years, everything had changed. Now you put TV on your car and you're, you're being targeted. So what. You know, I talked briefly about Chechnya. Chechnya was. I've been in a lot of situations in war zones where I'm stopped at a checkpoint or roadblock, I walk up to a group of gunmen and I don't know who they are, they don't know who I am. And, and there'll be an argument. And that argument is about whether to kill you or not. Chechnya was the first place I was at where there were several times where I saw that argument going on in a language I didn't speak. And it sounds like maybe a semantic difference, but it's actually a huge difference. The argument is whether there's any reason to let you live. The default position is they're going to kill you. So it's, it's, it's a. And that was what was so terrifying in, in, in Chechnya, I and my photographer got into a number of situations, actually, twice with the Russians, twice with the Chechens, where we thought for sure we were going to be executed. And this was in a, this was in a three week period. So because war has gotten so vicious, you don't want, you don't want a journalist showing up and, and you know, photographing what you're doing or filming what you're doing. So in that way it's become much more dangerous.

[Danny]

It would seem, though, like these people would want more attention from journalists.

[Steve]

Sometimes, sometimes they do. I would say in general, government soldiers don't want you to because, you know, if they have any sort of code of conduct in war, they don't want you, you know, they don't want you to be seeing them executing prisoners or shooting civilians and stuff.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. I, I don't know. It's, it's, it's not a job I would want to do, I can tell you that.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, and I've also heard stories of this one guy who used to be a war reporter for Vice, and he was explaining how he was In Afghanistan, in the middle of, like, a firefight. And he was filming this firefight, and he was, like, right in the middle of it, and he was like. This weird thing takes over where, like, you're so focused on getting that shot and you're trying to get the perfect shot. And, you know, you're in, like, a life or death situation and all the fear just dissipates and you're. And. And you just go into this weird little bubble silo of a world where. Where you're not afraid, the bolts are zipping by your head, but you're getting the best shot that's gonna make your career. And then, like, mean, like, you wake up. Like, the ringing goes away and you wake up and like, what the are you doing? Get out of here.

[Steve]

Or whatever. Right? Yeah. Yeah, I. I think that's. I think it's true. Often in. In a combat situation, there's. There's kind of a air of unreality about it. And I mean, I remember the first time I was in a firefight. It was in or around shooting was in Beirut in 1983. I was a kid, and it was almost like I was inside a movie. That's what it felt like. Later, when I was a little smarter and stuff, it didn't feel like that anymore. But the first time I saw it, it was like, wow, this is. This is a lot like a. Like a war movie. But it's not. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's pretty. It's pretty different. You know, talking about the. The difficulty of. Of this job now, the other thing that's very different now is. And this is not danger, but most places I've gone, I do not go in as a journalist. I just get a normal visa and go in and try to stay under the radar, because that's the kind of journalism I do. I go to a place I stay for a long time. I'm usually trying to interview just individuals. I'm going to a village and building a story around that.

[Danny]

Interviewing civilians?

[Steve]

Yeah, often. Or I'll be with a rebel group or an army group. But the idea is to kind of stay under the radar of the government. Government. And that's increasingly difficult to do. And governments will just. You know, there's a lot of governments out there. I'll use the example of Egypt. I. I did a. I. In Egypt. You have to. If you're a journalist, you have to get a press visa to go in. If you don't, the secret police are going to stop you within 10 minutes of, of if, if you go outside of the touristic zones. Not, not 10 minutes, 10 seconds. If you start photographing or talking to Egyptians outside of the main tourist zones, they're. The secret police will be on you in a flash and then you'll get kicked out of the country. They're not going to kill you. They'll kick you out of the country. So I did a story that was quite hostile to the dictatorship in Egypt. Now I'll never get a journalist visa to go back to Egypt. Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy.

[Danny]

The Navy offers new graduates, hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine. Plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grads start their career.

[Steve]

[e-mail] they would never give me one and there's probably a few countries like that. I've never been, I've never been able to get into Saudi Arabia. I've always wanted to go, but.

[Danny]

Really?

[Steve]

Yeah. Well, give me a visa.

[Danny]

Why do you think that is?

[Steve]

I might be able to go now as a tourist because now they're kind of their, the royal family is doing this whole thing of, you know, they want to become this like tourist destination. But for journalists. No, they, they, you know, it's, it's an oligarchy. It's all ruled by one family and they don't, you know, they don't traditionally, they've never wanted like journalists to go in there, so.

[Danny]

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. The, the rules of war has always been something that's so perplexing to me. Right.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Like you're allowed to shoot and kill people, blow people up from like 8am to, to 9pm but like the idea of like sneaking into a, another, the enemy soldier's tent and cutting his throat at night is like a war crime.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

You know I never really understood and.

[Steve]

And dropping napalm on a village is, that's fine.

[Danny]

Right?

[Steve]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. There's a lot of like inconsistencies to the whole thing. It's. Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

I always thought that like, you know, when it comes to war for I think that it's better. I think the idea of like the problem is the veil of secrecy but like covert, covert operations and sending out assassins to take out leaders.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

To slip into their bedrooms at night and cut their throats. It's. You don't have the collateral damage. You don't kill innocent people. You don't have to carpet bomb villages. Right, right. You can take out these and the guys that are doing that, that they want to do that.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

These are the guys that are lining up in front of the CIA's deputy director's office saying, send me now, like the Billy Waz of the world.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

You know, and. And then you don't have to deal with these kids who are like, you know, don't really know what they want to do with their life. Should go to college. Should I join the Coast Guard, Should I join the Marines, whatever. And they just, like, maybe they have some sort of influence in their life that's pushing them in this direction to do military, and they end up going there and they like, their world is just blown. Blown out in front of their eyes. They come back and they're dealing with all this trauma and this PTSD when they, you know, it probably wasn't the best idea for them to go out and do that stuff. Right, that's right.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

So, yeah, it's a. It's kind of like a. It's a weird moral thing to say. Like, I think it's better to go cutthroats, cut people's throats at night. But, like, you know, what's. What's worse, right? Innocent people dying? I don't think so. So, I mean, I think. Yeah, I think that is. I think that is worse.

[Steve]

Yeah. And again, it kind of goes to the thing about drones. I mean, now with most people in the world, you could program a drone to go over and shoot somebody, you know, so why, you know, very few people are safe from that. I mean, the President and few other people, but not the rest of us.

[Danny]

Yeah, the pro. The. The problem with having the COVID assassins and the COVID ops stuff is they're shrouded in a veil of secrecy.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

So now you're giving the Pentagon or the CIA basically like a get out of jail free card to do anything they want around the world. That's right. And what. What does a veil of invisible, a cloak of invisibility do? Does it promote better behavior or worse behavior?

[Steve]

Usually worse.

[Danny]

Usually.

[Steve]

Yeah. On both. A national level at a personal level. Right. It's true. Yeah.

[Danny]

That's so crazy. And, you know, now you have like. Oh, God, like this Palantir stuff where they're. They're doing these. We just watched a commercial the other day about how they're doing these drone swarms.

[Steve]

Oh, yeah.

[Danny]

And they have these. It's like, called spreadsheet warfare, apparently, where they have, like, really cheap drones and they can have thousands of them and they can go swarm a battleship.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And like basically destroy all the capabilities of the battleship.

[Steve]

Right? Yeah, yeah. You can't stop them all. All. Yeah.

[Danny]

And you know, a lot of them can become autonomous too where like, I don't know if the drone swarms can do this, but like certain drones, if they get disconnected, like they, they, the idea is to make them so where they're not dependent on a remote operator. Right. So if they get hit by one of these guns, these, what are those guns called? Where you shoot the drones and shoot. They fall out of the sky cuz you're like blasting the signal.

[Steve]

Oh yeah. Jammers jammer.

[Danny]

The jammers. Yeah, the signal jammers. So like it's not, they're not affected by signal jam jammer because the AI basically gives them an objective of what they have to do. Oh yeah, this is the volunteer commercial. Yeah.

[Steve]

Oh wow.

[Danny]

How crazy is that? It looks like a video game.

[Steve]

It does. It looks totally like Starlings.

[Danny]

Yep.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

So yeah, it seems like, I would guess with the way, way technology and AI is evolving and the way Palantir is exploding right now, I, I imagine like the next 10 years are gonna be crazy with the evolution of warfare and, and we're probably not going to hear as much about it.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

I would imagine there's not going to be like, whoa, that was crazy thunder.

[Steve]

Yeah, it is.

[Danny]

There's not going to be planes dropping missiles as much anymore. It's going to be much more of this like covert style AI, autonomous warfare.

[Steve]

Yeah, no, I think we're at, we're at a new watershed moment when it comes to weaponry. Like, like the machine gun was, you know, at the turn in World War I. Right. A machine gun and barbed wire, you know, utterly changed the face of war. And we're clearly at another moment like that.

[Danny]

Yeah. DARPA. DARPA. DARPA. Had they created it, was it the M16 during the Vietnam War?

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

And some of the stuff that they were working on back then was like 20 years ahead of its time.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Like some of this. I heard that they were working on stuff like neuralink in the 90s.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

They had, they were trying to work on brain chips to create super soldiers to where they would not fatigue, they would not get hungry and they wouldn't feel paid pain.

[Steve]

Well, I mean this isn't a story that that's what the, the Nazis used. Right. They used some version of that in World War II. The guys, when they went into, during the invasion of Russia, they were all like whacked out on.

[Danny]

Oh, they're on per.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

Meth.

[Steve]

And. And I know that in, like, in Syria, all everyone was taking this drug called Captagon.

[Danny]

Captagon is like another version of that.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

That they're actually. The Russians are using Captagon.

[Steve]

Yeah, they are, yeah.

[Danny]

And there is allegedly a lot of folks, there's a. Of movement of people who are trying to get ibogaine to the Ukrainian troops.

[Steve]

Huh. Huh.

[Danny]

Which is a psychedelic.

[Steve]

Oh, really?

[Danny]

Yeah. Well, which apparently is being used to. I think it could be used for two reasons. I think one of the. The main reasons they're using the ibogaine in Ukraine is to, like, get them through some of the trauma.

[Steve]

Oh.

[Danny]

And to get them back out in the battlefield, like, process this trauma and get back out there.

[Steve]

Huh.

[Danny]

Ukrainian military is. This is the intercept the Ukrainian military. Tbis experimenting with psychedelic drug. I would gain to treat traumatic. Oh, yeah. And tbis. Wow.

[Steve]

Huh.

[Danny]

So, and another thing that DARPA just funded the University of North Carolina to figure out how to take the psychedelic trip out of. I think it's either ibogaine or psilocybin. But they're basically trying to figure out how to use psychedelics for soldiers without having the psychedelic experience.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

So they can. So they can use that to treat stuff like this, like TBIs or PTSD.

[Steve]

Right. Yeah, I've. I know they're doing clinical trials with MDMA for. For ptsd.

[Danny]

Totally. Oh, I've heard. I've heard it works great as well as ibogaine.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

But. But one of the things I also think they're using it for, which is not reported on as much, is to optimize soldiers on the battlefield.

[Steve]

Huh.

[Danny]

Because when you take psychedelics, it can increase things like visual acuity, your hearing gets better, edge detection gets better.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

It does something to the brain. And there's. There's. There's lots of, like, famous athletes that have famously used psilocybin and stuff during sports, like MMA fighters and, well, basketball players. I think so. Yeah. What is this? Oh, yeah, this is the story about removing the hallucin. Hallucinations from psychedelics. So, yeah. This is all. This is all. Oh, okay. This is what? So darpa. The solution, according to darpa, is to develop up, down, down down. Right there. Develop new drugs that work on the same neurochemical channels as lsd, mdna, and psilocybin vibing, but won't create visual, auditory, or otherwise delusional hallucinations.

[Steve]

Huh.

[Danny]

Yeah. You don't want them all, like hugging and singing Kumbaya, like, why are we here? We need to leave. War is bad.

[Steve]

We need to keep fighting. Yeah. Funny.

[Danny]

Yeah. It's crazy, man. I don't know what to think of all this. I don't know what to think of all the, the. Just like the companies like DARPA and, and Palantir that are also. Palantir is like a new AI and they just got like 800 billion or $800 million a couple weeks ago from the Pentagon.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

You know all that money that's going into this stuff for defense.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Wild.

[Steve]

It really is crazy stuff.

[Danny]

I imagine like all that, you know, the trillions of dollars that have gone missing from the Pentagon budget have probably gone to like co covert.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Could be weapons, stuff like this, you know.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Like, I wonder what they have that we don't know about. Have you ever seen drugs on the battlefield?

[Steve]

Drugs?

[Danny]

Yeah. Being used on the battlefield.

[Steve]

Yeah. In. In again in Chechnya with the Russians. I mean, they, they were, they were.

[Danny]

Oh, they were on the, the Captagon.

[Steve]

They were on Captagon. They were on heroin. I'll tell you a crazy. I mean, and this kind of illustrates just how insane Chechnya was. I, I was. I was with a Chechen unit, rebel unit, and kind of on this elevated farm road near the front lines and, and the Russian helicopter gunships were blowing up this. Just wiping out this town village about two miles away using what they call Puff the Magic Dragon. It's this grid of bullets where that go. It's the size of a soccer field. Field, really? Anything like larger than a worm in a size of a soccer field, just like it disappears. They're just using us against this village. And there was a line of trees, you know, tree line in a field. And then on the other side of that was this farmhouse. And I saw a couple of guys on the tree line, you know, armed. And I asked the commander, I did you know something new? I said, oh, how, how long do you keep your guys out there before you rotate them? And he goes, oh, those aren't, those aren't my guys. Those are Russian soldiers. And, and we're completely visible on this thing. And it turns out that the farmhouse I was seeing, it was maybe 200 yards away, was a Russian base. The guys were. The, the Russian soldiers in the fire line were waiting to come over to sell their weapons to the rebels there. And they didn't know who I was. So they're waiting for me to leave and they're going to come over and they're going to sell their weapons to, to the, to the Chechens for heroin or vodka. And the Chechens were going to use those weapons to try to kill them that night. And this was happening all over Chechnya. So you had this bizarre situation of village 2 miles that way is getting wiped out. And here Russians are selling their weapons to the rebels that they're then going to use to kill them. The way you could usually tell in Chechnya what was a Russian checkpoint or a rebel checkpoint was that the, the, they both were wearing Russian army uniforms. But the, the rebels had the better uniforms. They had the ones that were coming right out of the crates because all the best stuff was being sold to the rebels by this, by the Russian soldiers. It was just insane. It was just insane. It was. There's kind of a Mad Max quality to the whole place. I'll tell you. It's kind of a, not a funny story. I mean it's, it's a. Well within the, within the, within the context of Cheshire was kind of funny. There was a really notorious Russian fire base that was on, on the main road and they're killing people there all the time and then just leaving the bodies in the ditches and stuff. And a Washington, Washington Post reporter came through and this guy named Lee Hockstetter and, and they pulled him out of his car and they were about, they put him in a ditch, they're about to shoot him. And, and his last thought was they're all, they're all just up like Rambo. They have red bandanas on. They, they do the bullets around the thing. So his last words that he thought was, he said, he said to. The guy was about to shoot him in Russian. I'm personal friends with Sylvester Stallone. So the guy went, pulled him out of the ditch and he, and he had to go into the fire base and for the next day and a half had to make up Sylvester Stallone stories to keep them occupied until they all sort of passed out from him, you know, like drug induced comas and stuff. And he was able to leave. Holy. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? I mean, it's kind of funny. It's kind of. But you imagine those are your last.

[Danny]

Words on earth, you know, Personal friends with Sylvester Stallone. Let me live. Like, hold on.

[Steve]

Put down your weapons. It's crazy.

[Danny]

Oh man, that really is crazy. Yeah, hold that thought. I got a leak real quick. Yeah, we'll be right back.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Danny]

In all of your reporting that you've done all over the world, how Much interaction have you had with sort of like covert intelligence operations happening?

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

I know you've talked a lot about this stuff in your books.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

But like how much on the ground interaction have you had with this stuff, if any?

[Steve]

Virtually, virtually none. I think the, the primary places where you would have seen that or there there you could have crossed paths were In Iraq and Afghans, in the early days of the, of the American invasions. I've tended, where I've tended to go. It's really kind of off the radar of places. And what I, what I've found is kind of the, is, I mean I, I've certainly been crossed paths with CIA officers in, in the field and stuff. But what, what I found increasingly is that they're kind of clueless as to what's happening. And I'll give an example. I was in Darfur in Western Sudan during the civil war there in 0405. And I came back to Khartoum, the capital Sudan. And I wanted to get an interview with the Deputy Chief of Mission, the DCM of the American Embassy, who usually it's the DCM who knows more about what's happening in the country than the ambassador. Ambassador. Often getting into the American Embassy in Khartoum at that time was, it was like, it was like getting into Fort Knox. The entire building was encased in bomb proof chicken wire, heavy, heavy metal, five, six layers of, of security. Had to go through body scans and then you know, met with the DCM and a couple of guys in there who I assumed were CIA and instead of me interviewing them, they interviewed me about what was going on. And I really felt that, I mean if they were playing dumb, they were really, really good actors. And I think the point to this is that, okay, so what you have now increasingly in American footprint abroad, abroad as you have these, you know, say special Force units operating in, in Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever, but elsewhere they're so quarantined off that it's almost a question of why they're there in the first place. American embassies now all around the world are like fortresses. It's almost impossible to get into them. In, in Sudan everybody lived on that compound. And if they ever left the compound, if they, you know, if the ambassador was going to go meet the President or whatever, they went in armored convoys. So what hap. What happens again and again is. So Sudan is, you know, rated as at the time was rated, you know, a terrorist populated country. So the embassy people and even the CIA would not leave the compound. So what are they, what are they doing there? And so I find over and over again that the American, the American government knows less and less of what's happening around the world. You know, even, I mean, I was in Oslo for the Norway, for the Nobel peace Prize about 10 years ago. And the American Embassy in Norway is like a fortress. I mean, obviously they have more freedom of movement. They do in Sudan. But, but, you know, this whole idea of, of that you have to be so safe that you can't venture out is. So why are people even there? I mean, that's, that's what I found over and over again.

[Danny]

Yeah, well, I think it's the people, the people are there. Like the analysis people.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

The analysts.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Yeah, there's probably a lot of guys that are on the ground embedded maybe in the other side.

[Steve]

Could be or. Yeah, could be in different places.

[Danny]

They're probably not going to be in like actual war zones.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

In most places is like, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure we have a lot of foreign agents that are embedded in our intelligence community in here in the US that are like trying to spy on things that are being, you know, analysis, analysis and intelligence that's coming in in the US Side like at Langley or whatever.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And I'm sure we have people, you know, in other foreign countries.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Like possibly Russia.

[Steve]

Oh sure.

[Danny]

That are doing the same exact thing. But I heard, I recently, I had an intelligence officer, former intelligence officer in here the other day, John Karaku, and he was saying that the US probably has a few hundred Mossad undeclared agents or, or officers.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

In the US Undeclared, meaning they haven't let anybody know. They're basically like buying. And he says beyond a shadow of the doubt, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the US has zero undeclared CIA officers in, in Israel.

[Steve]

I'm sure that's true. I'm, I'm absolutely sure. You know, it's, it's funny. It's, it's. This is in my, my book is Coming about the Iranian Revolution. It, this was exact. So the CIA in Iran under the Shah Shaw was one of America's most important important foreign allies outside of Europe, probably the most important for ally outside of Europe. In the 1970s, the CIA had a huge station in Tehran, the capital. The only thing this station did there was to, to spy on Russia to figure out what the, what the Soviet Union was doing in Iran or along that, along the, the Iran's northern frontier. They did no domestic intelligence at all. The Only source of their information, what was happening internally in Iran was the Shah's secret police, savak. It was a great name intelligence agency. They would give the Americans, like, what they thought was going on. And because SAVAK was loyal to the Shah, everything they told the CIA was just good news. I mean, about how everybody loved the Shah. They never did any domestic intelligence at all and so had no clue of what was coming when the revolution started. An amazing statistic I found was, well, not a statistic, but an anecdote is. So one thing that Ayatollah Khomeini was doing to stir up the masses in Iran, he was giving these sermons and smuggling them into Iran on tape. Cassandra. Cassettes. And so people are listing these tape cassettes everywhere. Finally, somebody in the CIA thought, you know, we should get a, we should get a copy of these tape cassettes and find out what's going on. It's like, what's he saying to, what's he saying to the people? So they went out, the CIA went out to the bazaar and bought a bunch of these tape cassettes, but none of them spoke Farsi. And they, they, of course they had, you know, local workers for, they never bothered to, to transcribe the tapes. So when a year later, when the, after the revolution was over, the American embassy is overrun, everyone's taken hostage, the students who came into the embassy opened up all these doors and found all these tape cassettes from Khomeini that had never been listened to. And Khomeini was very direct in what he was saying. We need to overthrow the Shah. We need to get rid of the Americans. Israel is the Great Satan. America is also the great Satan. And the Americans had no clue this was going on. This is phenomenal. So, so, so this. But the idea that the CIA was just not doing any domestic intelligence at all anyway, to go to your point about in Israel, I'm sure that's absolutely true. I'm sure we have nobody in Israel on a, you know, deep cover basis.

[Danny]

Yes. Yeah. Your intelligence has to be. If you're living over there, if your country is in that part of the world, your, your foreign intelligence and your domestic intelligence has to be top notch.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

Right. Because everything's an existential threat when you're over there.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

We're surrounded by two massive oceans. Like, we don't.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

That's kind of comfortable. We're fat and happy over here.

[Steve]

That's right. Yeah.

[Danny]

Explain to me so, so that when that happened, when Khomeini overthrew the Shah.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

We had no idea. We had no idea. This was bo. This was bubbling up under the scene behind the scenes.

[Steve]

That's right.

[Danny]

When we should have.

[Steve]

That's right. I mean it was. The Shaw was becoming increasingly unpopular for probably the three, four, five years prior to the revolution. When the revolution started, I mean, to the, to the Carter administration's defense, we had never, the world had never seen a counter revolution before. A revolution that was not progressive ideas or communism or socialism or. But a revolution about, let's go back to the 14th century that had never happened before. Plus the students in the streets, all the demonstrations you saw these were guys in bell bottoms, jean jackets, long hair. They look, look like, they look like American college students. So really American college students want to go back to the 14th century.

[Danny]

Why was that?

[Steve]

Well, because there were a lot of different factions to, you know, so many different groups were opposed to the Shah. And so it was kind of this umbrella of opposition that happened. And Khomeini and the fundamentalists basically were able to take over to, to, to. The idea at first was, okay, here's this spiritual leader who's, he can serve as our kind of symbolic head. But you know, Iran was the most college educated country in the Middle East. You know, women had not worn the veil for 50 years. But I think, so I think there was this collective idea is like, okay, Khomeini is, he's the symbol. So we have everybody from communists to real conservatives, fundamentalists, but he will, you know, he's this old guy in exile, but he's. What's the rallying cry for the people? But in fact, Khomeini was very, very clever and he managed to kind of take over, take over the revolution. One interesting thing about the American reaction was once they realized, once Carter and people around him realized that there was a really good chance that Shaw's going to be overthrown and Khomeini was, seem to be kind of in charge of things. You got to remember the Cold War is still going on. So even Carter, despite his liberalism and, and this idea of a, you know, new foreign policy approach, they're still very obsessed with the Soviet Union. So the first thought was during the Cold War, everything was a zero sum game, right? If we lose, it means the Soviets have won and vice versa. So at first when the Shah looked, he was in trouble. Trouble. The administration started to panic. But also what they thought is what? Well, Khomeini is like a right wing fundamentalist, he's certainly not a communist. So Maybe it's not so bad if he comes to power because he's certainly not going to hand over the country to the Soviets. So there was this kind of acceptance in the late days of the revolution that okay, okay, our relations may drop back a little bit bit, but at least it's not going to become a communist state. And so there's this acceptance even before Khomeini took over that yeah, not such a bad thing. It's kind of remarkable now in looking in hindsight and very quickly afterwards that you know what kind of warp thinking that was. But at the time it was like they were, they were really focused on the Soviet Union and Soviets had no idea what was happening there either. And it was, and it played no role in the revolution. Revolution.

[Danny]

And a lot to do with a big part of the uprising was that a majority of the population detested the United States for installing the shot in the first place.

[Steve]

Right? That's right. That's right. What made the revolution so volatile was it was, it was about this religious fundamentalism which had kind of been percolating up in many religions in the mid-70s throughout the world. It was the rise of the Christian fundamentalist movement in the States, in, in Israel, the, the, the Jewish settlers in the, in the west bank, but in religion. So there was a, there was this kind of resurgence of religious feeling throughout the world. So there was that. But there was also this, you'd almost call it an anti colonial kind of the last anti colonial revolution. The Shah was so identified with the United States and he was so seen as, as the, as the lackey of the United States that it played. So it was a double whammy. And the more the Shaw kind of. The Shah was so clueless that even while the revolution was going on, he was appealing to the Carter administration. Hey, come out and say how much you support me. You know, say that I'm, you know, I'm, I'm your guy.

[Danny]

Right.

[Steve]

It was like the worst possible thing that the Americans could have done. Right. He just didn't get, get it. And I, I think probably that was, that was the biggest, the biggest thing that overthrew him that led to his overthrow.

[Danny]

Yeah. This war, this, this conflict between Iran and Israel over the last year has been like, you have, it's been strange because you had, you have like the government and the, like the traditional media painting Israel as this, these just like unhinged maniacs attacks. Right. But it seems like every single thing they do is very strategic, thought out and rational like warning, giving, giving Warnings before they're sending strikes.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Or whatever. And they're like, they're. They seem to be very calculated in their retaliations to all of the bombardments they've been getting from Israel in the U. S. Right.

[Steve]

No, that's right. And I think that. Yeah. I mean, and what, you know, after the. Was it after the Americans bombed or the last big bombing by the Israelis, they did this very. Oh, after the American bombing, they did this just completely pro forma bombardment of American base in Qatar, I think, or maybe it was Kuwait, but. But just complete, you know, theater.

[Danny]

Did they give him a warning?

[Steve]

They gave him a warning ahead of time, so. And I'm sure that the Iranian people don't know that they gave him a warning.

[Danny]

Right.

[Steve]

But I mean, they probably called him.

[Danny]

Up like, look, we got to do this or else. Look like.

[Steve]

Yes, exactly. Right. Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened.

[Danny]

Get everyone out.

[Steve]

Right. Nobody was hurt.

[Danny]

Right.

[Steve]

I think they hit a latrine or something. Yeah. I think that they didn't want to mess with them. But as I was saying earlier, I do think that there's a strong argument to be made that they welcome the attack by the Americans because now they can tarnish their opposition. Now they're American lackeys. Right. So if you stand in opposition to what the Iranian government's doing, then you're in bed with the Americans. And I think that might be what they really care about at this point is. Is. Is keeping, you know, keeping your hold on power.

[Danny]

And what do you think? Like, what is Russia and China's relationship with them now? Because I don't. I don't. I don't remember seeing any sort of rhetoric coming out of China or Russia and support for them during this whole conflict. There was maybe one really benign statement from Russia, I think.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah. But other than that, it's very strange. I mean, China, I. Yeah, I don't think. I don't. I don't think I saw anything from China and. And Russia. You're right. It's. It was very, very tepid.

[Danny]

And they get all their oil from Iran, right?

[Steve]

They get a lot of their oil.

[Danny]

A lot of it.

[Steve]

Yeah. And they were. And they were getting a lot of the drones from. Yes, yes.

[Danny]

Right.

[Steve]

Iran. The game Russia has played recently is really a hard one to figure out because not just with Iran, but, you know, they were backing Syria. They were backing Assad in Syria, and they just kind of let Syria let Assad collapse. They did nothing to help him. Isn't he in Moscow now he's in Moscow. Yeah. And I think soon to have to fall out a window because he's. No, he's not of any use anymore. So he's. I think he's. He's headed for an accident. But why did they just let him, you know, fall like that and not try to rescue him? I mean, was it some sort of idea that they thought or was there a deal that's like, okay, we lose Syria, we don't come to Iran's aid. In return, you let us do what we want to do in Ukraine. I mean, some people have that theory. It's. It is odd to me that. That Putin just stood by and watched Assad fall because Syria was, you know, in the. In the Arab world is. It was their. Me. They had. They had a new Navy base there. Strange. I don't know. I don't know what that was about.

[Danny]

Yeah, this. This global chessboard is.

[Steve]

Yeah, it's a very strange one now.

[Danny]

Very complicated.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Especially when it gets into Syria and Turkey. Turkey and all that stuff and it starts to get into there and like, all the relationships and the trade partnerships and all this stuff, it gets so confusing.

[Steve]

It's really weird. It's. It's really sar. Yeah.

[Danny]

What is, like, what. What is the relationship between, like, ISIS and the Taliban when it comes to Syria?

[Steve]

So ISIS is now isolated in a few kind of spots in eastern Syria and maybe a few little enclaves in. In western Iraq. But then they also have an offshoot now in Afghanistan. They, they. They are targeting Taliban because they're not extreme enough. They.

[Danny]

Isis.

[Steve]

ISIS is. Yeah, yeah. Taliban just passed a law that a woman is not allowed to speak in public.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Steve]

Literally, they're not allowed to speak in public, but they're, you know, to isis, like. Yeah, that's the start. Yeah. So they've. They've targeted the Taliban, so definitely not any. Seemed. It doesn't seem to be any kind of connection between the two of them other than fighting each other. Other.

[Danny]

Yeah. And there were some reports that were coming out a couple months ago about how we have been giving the Taliban like, tens and tens of millions of dollars every single week for something. I don't know what it's for. But, Steve, I don't know if you can find anything on this, like, if it's still relevant, but we were basically shipping cash to the Taliban every single week.

[Steve]

And. Huh.

[Danny]

People, you know, a lot of people were kind of like, getting pissed off about this, but then I saw a report saying how. What, you know, one of the strategic reasons we might. May have been doing this was to like, break some sort of supply chain with the Taliban in China.

[Steve]

Oh. Huh.

[Danny]

Oh, my gosh. What is this? Is that it?

[Steve]

I don't know. Know.

[Danny]

What does it say? This is May. March. May of 2024. Since the Biden administration disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the United States government has provided over 2.8 billion to address the humanitarian crisis created by the Taliban takeover. Last year I requested that search. They found that at least 10.9 million of US taxpayer dollars has been provided to the Taliban in an unaccept. In. It is unacceptable for any US Funding to benefit the Taliban. The Biden administration must take immediate. I don't know if this is what it was. This was something more about like we were sending it every single week to them for something. Wait, what is that on the. Say, East Asia and Pacific? Oh, no, this is something different. But yeah, no, I, I thought there was some sort of.

[Steve]

Some sort of like, channel thing.

[Danny]

A channel like a. Like the Taliban was some. Somehow like, has something to do with supplying food to China or something like this.

[Steve]

Huh.

[Danny]

And that might have been why. Why we were giving the Taliban or. No, no, no, I'm sorry. It was. Somebody else was supplying. It was a. A route, like a. A food route to China that they were paying the Taliban to like, sabotage it or something or blood or like just try to destroy it.

[Steve]

Huh. Yes. Similar article.

[Danny]

Yeah, I don't know. I can't read that, Steve. It's way too small and it's too much. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know what that was, but like, they, they haven't really. We've kind of forgotten about them recently.

[Steve]

Right. Yeah, I know. It's just like, it's completely off the, off the radar now.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. There's too much other stuff going on, but the other part of the world that's interesting. Interesting that we haven't talked about is the whole China, Taiwan.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Situation.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And how much attention do you pay to that?

[Steve]

You know, I. It's ironically enough, I actually spent six years my childhood in Taiwan.

[Danny]

Really?

[Steve]

Yeah, in the 1960s. And what I remember back then was, well, it was during the time of Chiang Kai Shek and. And there was this constant drum beat that the. His regime and Taiwan was. Were going to go back and take over the mainland, which, you know, didn't happen. I have to believe that the Chinese, you know, the Chinese are very. It's a cliche to say they're just very smart and they think long term. And I think that they, you know, just like, they got Hong Kong back, they played it, they played a long game, came and, and, you know, they promised democracy in Hong Kong. It was gonna be this special enclave and everything. And now they've just chipped away at, you know, at the democratic rights in Hong Kong. I think there's all kinds of economic ties between Taiwan and mainland China. People go back and forth. So I think it's just going to be this slow absorption. I don't think, don't think it's going to come to, to kinetic. Yeah. And I think also what I was starting to say is I think that what the Chinese watching, what the problems Russia has had in Ukraine has probably had an effect with any kind of idea of a military adventure against Taiwan, because Taiwan is far better defensively equipped than Ukraine was. And I mean, I think the Chinese would not get their ass kicked, maybe, but they would suffer a lot in taking over Taiwan militarily.

[Danny]

Well, they have the parliament now, right? I think China does, yeah. They lost the presidency, but the, the parliament is very pro China.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

The president can't get anything done there.

[Steve]

Right, right. But I, yeah, I just think that I, I, I just think that the Chinese especially just play the long game, and, and Americans are notorious for not playing the long game. So you just kind of wait things out. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't. Yeah. It's funny, I've never done any reporting, and I've, I've wanted to in.

[Danny]

Have you ever been to China?

[Steve]

I have.

[Danny]

You have?

[Steve]

I have.

[Danny]

What, what year?

[Steve]

It was about 12 years ago.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Steve]

I went to do a kind of a weird travel piece on the. The Chinese built this train to Lhasa and Tibet all the way from Beijing and cutting across the permafrost of the Tibetan plateau. The idea that it was going to melt, all going to fall apart. But anyway, so I, I went for National Geographic to, to, to take this train and spend some time in, in Tibet. One thing I remember really distinctly, I got to Lhasa and I, I hadn't taken a computer with me, so I got to go to an Internet cafe, which was everywhere. And I was just, you know, writing to friends back in, in the state saying, oh, you know, I've gotten to Tibet. And every time I started to type Tibetan, the computer would crash. And it turned out that Tibet is a banned word in mainland China. You cannot. And it was just, every time I tried to type it, the computer would shut down. And at that time, I'M sure now it's moved on technology. But at that time, there was supposed to be a half million Chinese just monitoring the Internet at. In China. You know, like, what everybody was doing. And it. Yeah. So they.

[Danny]

They didn't have the WeChat back then when you. When you were there.

[Steve]

I don't. No, they didn't. They didn't. And. Yeah. And, you know, and Tibet was very militarized. You saw army everywhere. But Tibet was fascinating. It was. It was. It was really pretty incredible.

[Danny]

I just had a lady on recently who was from China. China. And she was explaining to me she has a great YouTube channel where she kind of like, goes deep into, like, all the different things that China is doing all the time, like the history of China and what it's like to live there, and her family's still there. And she was explaining to me, like, you're not allowed to be religious or like, be, like, participate in any sort of, like, religious faith unless you devout your loyalty to the Supreme Leader first.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

That has to be your primary, like, worship. Like, he has to be number one, and then your God can be number two.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

But, like, they really frown upon, like, organized religion there, huh? Like, it's just. It's the ccp.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Is above all.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

That is God.

[Steve]

And I think it's become much more repressive under teaching. Ping that. When I was there, I. I was. I think I was still there just kind of during the last days of liberalization, kind of. But it's. I think it's really gotten clamped down since then.

[Danny]

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny seeing like this, the, like how they run that country with that. You know, it's a total surveillance state.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Like with AI and surveillance cameras everywhere. They have their banking and their social media and their communication is all tethered to one app, one centralized app that the government can monitor at all times and control at all times. Like, they can turn off your money in certain parts of the world, certain parts of the country.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Where they want you to stay and only let it work in c. Part where they want you to be. You know, it's terrifying.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And. And it. And, you know, if you look at, you know, some of the stuff that's happening now in the United States, you could make the case that that's where we are headed.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

When you, like with the. Everything that has been going on with Elon sucking all the info out of, like, the HHS IRS and all this stuff with Doge and then. And then him partnering with Palantir AI.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And if you combine all that stuff, stuff with, with AI, you could easily create some sort of like a digital control grid.

[Steve]

Sure.

[Danny]

And now they just pass that, that genius act where they want to bring in stable coins. So if you want to, you want to throw in the kitchen sink, put the cherry on top, you just bring in stable coins. And now you get people on this digital currency and you have, you know, giving Palantir $800 million every six months for their AI.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And, you know, who knows what the hell they're doing. I know the CIA is using Palant. Palantir. I don't know what, I don't know if they're, I don't know. I know they use it overseas, Right. For war stuff. I don't know anything about what they're doing here with Palantir, but I, I bet it's not nothing.

[Steve]

Right? Right.

[Danny]

But you know the other thing which makes me skeptical about that, like, it on paper, like, the technology is heading in the same direction that, like, the technology surveillance in China seems to be be, like we're heading in that direction. But the weird thing about it is, like, Peter Thiel is super religious now. You know, like, he's doing this, this, he's promoting Christianity in Silicon Valley and trying to get people in, in Silicon Valley to map everything they're doing and, and make their purpose about God and about Jesus. You know what I mean?

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Which is, which is very interesting. I'm really curious.

[Steve]

Curious, huh?

[Danny]

Really curious, you know, what his, what his ideas are behind that and like, what, you know, the guy who, who is the CEO of Palantir is like one of the richest dudes in the world who is getting billions of dollars from the military industrial complex, is, you know, a gay Christian billionaire who's trying to map Christianity on this, on this stuff.

[Steve]

That's so.

[Danny]

Have you seen any of this?

[Steve]

No, no, no, no.

[Danny]

It's been in the report of the New York Times.

[Steve]

Huh.

[Danny]

Recently. I just read an article.

[Steve]

Huh. Well, I've been out of the country lately, so. Yeah. But yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Steve]

You know, it's, it's funny when you talk about this, like, facial recognition stuff. I, I, I was just in Georgia, the country and the government is, is gradually turning into a dictatorship and, and it's going into Russia's pocket.

[Danny]

Georgia. Sorry to interrupt you. Is Georgia the country that has the, the leader who's getting paid aid by the U.S.

[Steve]

No.

[Danny]

I watched an Oliver Stone documentary.

[Steve]

Huh. I wonder who.

[Danny]

And it was in the documentary where the leader of Georgia was making like he was basically making more than the governor of Connecticut.

[Steve]

It might have been the previous. Maybe the previous. It might have been because he was. The previous was very pro American and.

[Danny]

He was getting paid by the U.S. i believe $200,000 a month or something.

[Steve]

Does not surprise me at all. Yeah. And that guy's now in prison.

[Danny]

Oh, is he really?

[Steve]

Yeah. So it's becoming more and more sort of in Moscow's pocket. And so there's daily demonstrations in front of the parliament that have been going on for eight months, nine months. But what recently happened is that they put up facial recognition cameras all in front of the. In front of parliament. And so they're. The government is using. So the people are wearing masks now to try to hide their faces and stuff. But with the cameras, they're able to. Even with your. The bottom of your face covered, I guess they can tell who you are.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Steve]

So they're not arresting them, they're sending them through the mail. These massive fines that nobody wearing a mask. Yeah. For. For wearing a mask in public, which is also illegal. And for, I don't know, obstructing traffic or whatever by being in front of parliament. So this is just a really subtle way that they. Again, it's kind of the Chinese model of how you destroy your opposition. You don't have to arrest, you don't have to shoot them. You just. You just club them over the head and. And you know, find them. Find them. And it was, it's. It was about $2,000 that people were being fined on. On this and which is more than person makes in four months.

[Danny]

Who is the leader of Georgia right now?

[Steve]

This guy named. Well, it's a billionaire, reclusive billionaire. Who's the real power behind the throne? A guy named Ivanishvili and Budzina Ivanishvili. So. But he has got some figurehead president standing in front of him. But he's this multi billionaire, made his fortune in Moscow. He's apparently worth about $8 billion, which is more than the. I think the George's GDP in six months. But this kind of reclusive guy who raises flamingos or peacocks. Peacocks on this. His private estates. He's got. It's. Yeah, it's a weird.

[Danny]

And you were saying that they're more in favor with Russia.

[Steve]

He's kind of steering the country more and more into Russia's pocket. Yeah. And they're all. They've Also in Georgia with their banks. They've used. That's one cutaway that the that Putin and the oligarchs have in Russia. They've been funneling money through Georgia to keep it away from the sanctions, so. Oh, interesting, interesting.

[Danny]

So, well, what are we going to do about that? We have to, we have to figure that out.

[Steve]

I know.

[Danny]

We got to get in there.

[Steve]

Great country, by the way.

[Danny]

Yeah, I imagine. I've seen some of the documentaries. I've seen. Look the landscapes.

[Steve]

Gorgeous.

[Danny]

Amazing.

[Steve]

Gorgeous. Yeah. And great food.

[Danny]

Wow. So, so where in this tug of war between Israel, United States and going back to Iran.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

This is basically a proxy war, right?

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So. So it's, it's, Israel is the one who really wants to fight Iran. They're, they're the ones that really want to take out Iran. Right. They want to do regime change or expand, make, make that a part of greater Israel. I don't know.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Exactly what that is. And, and we want to, to sell them weapons to do it or, or give them money to do it. It's a little bit different. It's a different proxy war than like Russia, Ukraine.

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

Because we're the ones that want Russia neutralized more than I would say Ukraine does.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

But in this situation, it's like, it's like, it seems like Israel really wants them neutralized more than we do.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Do you get the same sense?

[Steve]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think, think that Netanyahu understood right after the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

[Danny]

Which seems like it was a false flag or not, not a false flag, but it seems like he kind of let that happen.

[Steve]

Oh, it was just a, just a massive screw up by the Israeli intelligence.

[Danny]

Because he was funneling money to them forever. Right? Tons of money.

[Steve]

No, that's right. I mean, he created Israel, created Hamas as a counterweight and with, and it was really under Netanyahu's administration as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat's group, because he wanted to polarize the argument. Right, right. Where the Palestinian Authority, which is corrupt and ineffectual and everything, but we're willing to make an accommodation with Israel. Netanyahu very clearly wanted the extremists to take, take over because then there's no, there's no, there's no room for dialogue. Right. So yes, tons of money went to Hamas from, from Israel. They created Hamas to, to a large degree. What also happened with October 7th is that through sheer arrogance on the Israeli's part, they, they were caught with their pants down. You know, they've, they've never is in having spent time with the idf, the Israel Defense Forces, they've never had any respect for the Palestinians as fighters. They've always kind of thought of them as monkeys, frankly. So they were, they were completely situated to, to be caught out. And they were. And you know, quite brilliantly what Hamas did nothing. You know, the, the, the border. The Israelis had all this super sophisticated intelligence. Hamas never used phones to take, send messages back and forth. Everything was on pieces of paper. Paper, word of mouth. And again, going back to the, it's, it's the box cutter way of war, right? You, you go low tech. So low tech that you're under the radar. It was such a up by the Israeli army under Netanyahu's watch that October 7th happened that you know, you can go back to that time and, and you know, people were predicting Netanyahu was going to be out of office in two to three weeks. I mean, and, and what he' realizes the longer he keeps the war going. Your front.

[Danny]

Do you think it's impossible he had intelligence that they were planning this and decided to ignore it for an excuse to start the war?

[Steve]

I, I think it's possible that they had intelligence and didn't act on it because they thought again. I mean my personal feeling is that the sheer arrogance of the Israelis, the hubris they have in looking at the, at the Palestinians, if they got warnings, they just didn't take them seriously. They thought these clowns can't really pull anything off. That would be my thing. But I think he knows that Netanyahu knows as long as he keeps this thing going, the war and just expanding it into Lebanon, into Syria, into Iran, the minute all that stops, then the questions start. And I think he says out. So he, he's just going to keep it going. Iran.

[Danny]

It's funny. He's been here three times since January.

[Steve]

I know, it's, it's amazing. And then, you know that embarrassing thing where he, he, he shows Trump he's nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and of course this is the Twilight Zone. I know. And it really is, it really is. So yeah, I, I think that, you know, he just needs to keep the balls spinning, the plate spinning or whatever that.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Steve]

You know, and as soon as it stops, he's, he's, he's in trouble for.

[Danny]

For a country that has probably the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in the world.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And some of the most advanced weaponry and technology. I mean, they're like a little Silicon Valley in the middle the of East.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

It's Astonishing to me how bad their PR has been over this whole, this whole thing, you know, because it's like, wow, just this sentiment of folks in the US to, about this whole conflict.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

Has been astonishing to watch.

[Steve]

Right, Right.

[Danny]

To see, like, you know, not just the way our government has been, you know, putting in these, you know, the, the, the Governor of Florida, DeSantis, he went to Israel to sign a, a, a, a affirmative action law for Florida.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

To where you can't talk. You can't talk negatively about Jewish people or else it's a felony. You know, I mean, this is like, this is like the same. The last 10 years or the last however many years it's been with Trump during this first administration of like, your feelings, all these snowflakes, stuff like this. Right now you have, have the opposite side, Ron DeSantis going and signing these affirmative action laws in Florida saying, no, you can't talk any, you know, say anything negative about Israel in Florida. Like, what is happening.

[Steve]

I know.

[Danny]

And people are calling it out and there's like a huge uprising like on places like X and YouTube and, and, and everywhere. And I don't know how much of this is like bot campaigns or how much of this is Iranian bot campaign farms, like, doing this and how much of it's real or fake, but it seems like it's genuine. It seems like a lot of people, a lot of the pundits, a lot of the big. Even like the, the people that were promoting Trump during his pres. During his campaign this time.

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

Some of the biggest people who are promoting him, some of the biggest pundits are like, slamming on the brakes saying, whoa, what the. This is not what we signed up for. This is not what we voted for.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

And they're really, they're like, calling out the hypocrisy with this stuff like, like, why, like, how the hell are are. Is a. We are giving them billions of dollars every. Of taxpayer dollars every single year. Why won't we let them. Why can't we get them to make their lobby, a foreign agent, register as a foreign agent lobby?

[Steve]

And.

[Danny]

Like, why can't we get them to stop black blackmailing our politicians?

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

Like, there's so many things here.

[Steve]

I know. And it's both parties, you know, it's both the Democrats and Republicans. Yeah.

[Danny]

It's crazy.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

It's a unit party.

[Steve]

Yeah. No, it's, it's astonishing.

[Danny]

And there's two cults on each side.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

MAGA on one side. And you got like the far left on the other side and they're just like fighting just so everyone under the radar can get their stuff done.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

It's just astonishing.

[Steve]

No, and it's, you know, the idea that they've killed it, They've killed at least 60,000 people. And you Gaza, and that's 3% of the population. And, and if, if that was America, that's 9 million people, they're dead at least. And the vast majority of them civilians. And the reason, you know, there's not been a Western journalist in Gaza because they, they, there's a, they'd be, they'd be killed, they'd be targeted and killed by the idf. And all the coverage you've seen out of inside Gaza has been by, by Arab or Palestinian journalists and they've killed. The IDF has killed at least 130 journalists. 75% of the journalists killed around the world last year were killed in Gaza by the, by the Israeli army.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Steve]

And again, that's a, from what countries again? For mostly Palestinians, because, because anybody coming in from outside, they've killed a few aler people there. But no, no Western journalist has gotten into Gaza because they know it's a death sentence. I know it's a death sentence.

[Danny]

And then you have the finance minister who's bragging about like not letting one crumb of food get into Gaza and let alone, as soon as, as soon as some food gets there, you have like women and children and families running to get the food and the idea of people shooting them in the streets.

[Steve]

No, it's, it's a, I mean if this was, Look, I, I'm, I, I, my, my ex wife was Jewish. I, I'm, I'm not anti Semitic, but I am, it has nothing to do with being Jewish. I know, it really doesn't. But, but again, I almost feel like you have to say that as a.

[Danny]

Disgusting because these people use that as a freaking argument.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Like it's a, it's so, it's so dumb, it makes my brain hurt.

[Steve]

Yeah. And if it was any other country in the world, any other country, this would be, I mean, imagine, right. I mean the Russians have been bad enough in Ukraine, but imagine if, if they had been doing this in Ukraine. Ukraine, right. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's a, it's really pretty amazing.

[Danny]

Yeah. I don't know how it's going to change, man. I, I don't know. I, I've really lost a lot of hope over the past couple weeks with everything that's been happening in our country.

[Steve]

Yeah, no, I know.

[Danny]

And how we've been, you know, he's like, I don't understand how Trump's rolling over on these Epstein files like this. I mean, I kind of do know. I hope it's not true, but, I mean, the writing's on the wall. There's kind of is. There's. I mean, there's. There's more photos of. And videos of him hanging out with Epstein than anyone.

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

And it's like, again, like, you have people just want to, like, use Epstein as their political football. Like, oh, it's. The Democrats are lobbying to get him. Get him the files released, so. Or to. The Democrats are getting. Lobbying to get the files suppressed so they're not made public to be files. And now that those guys, Dan Bongino, Cash Patel are in power, right?

[Steve]

They're.

[Danny]

They've done a 180. The Epstein files do not exist. He killed himself.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

But, like, I mean, there's.

[Steve]

I don't think Magus. I don't think they're gonna let him get away with it. I mean, I think there's going to be a long burn on this thing. I don't think this. I don't think they can change the subject.

[Danny]

Well, the funny thing is Donald Trump, he's. If there's one thing he knows how to do, it's. He knows how to read the room and he knows how to take the public's temperature on what their feelings are on certain topics and adjust his. His messaging accordingly. With this, it's like he's blind.

[Steve]

He does.

[Danny]

He, like, doesn't. Does. Doesn't. Doesn't see it.

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

Like, you can't. I mean, it seems like now, though, he's finally said something recently like, okay, we're gonna release something.

[Steve]

Oh, really?

[Danny]

I think I saw that this morning. Now he's kind of, like, changed his stance. Like, okay, like, it's overwhelming. Everyone's turning on me. I gotta do something.

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

But I mean, it's like, what are even. Like, the other thing is, like, what are the Epstein files? Right? Like, the black book's been out for what, 10 years?

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Danny]

Like, we all have seen all the addresses he has, right? He's got, you know, he's got like 12 phone numbers for RFK. He's got a handful of them for Trump and Clinton. These people, they're all implicated in this stuff. The question is, not the files. Where's the hard drive?

[Steve]

Right?

[Danny]

And the hard drive, I think, is probably sitting in Tel Aviv.

[Steve]

Huh? Wow.

[Danny]

Like, why else would Trump Be doing all this stuff.

[Steve]

Right? Yeah.

[Danny]

If Epstein was. I mean, the consensus seems to be that Epstein was an Israeli access agent.

[Steve]

Right. Huh.

[Danny]

You know, with his connection to Robert Maxwell being Maxwell's father. He was Assad. He was murdered right after that. Came out. Fell off or fell off his yacht while he was taking a pee, you know, getting his money from Leslie Wexner.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

He who Barack was at his house every day. You know, people think that that was probably his handler.

[Steve]

Wow.

[Danny]

There's an overwhelming amount of evidence connecting him to Israeli intelligence.

[Steve]

Yeah. I just don't think this goes away. I. I mean, I. Trump. You know, Trump trumpeted this for so long, you know, the. The whole. And. And then come back to bite him.

[Danny]

Have you seen the Michael Wolf Pod documentary or podcast where he's interviewing Epstein and he says, bas. Epstein literally says. It's on. On audio recording. He's like, yeah, Donald Trump's my best friend for 10 years.

[Steve]

Wow. Wow.

[Danny]

So, you know, all these other. Everyone else has had contact with him and, you know, a lot of this stuff was probably innocent, too. You know, probably. He's inviting people out to his island, doing these fundraisers, inviting all these tech people and people like Stephen Hawking, whatever. Like. Like all these. These other brilliant people and billionaires are going there. Of course I want to go rub shoulders with them. There can't be anything bad about that.

[Steve]

Right. Right. So it may be different in Trump's case.

[Danny]

We'll probably never find out. It probably is different in Trump's case. I mean, we'll probably never know.

[Steve]

Right.

[Danny]

But if you can read the. The writing on the wall, it doesn't look good for him.

[Steve]

No, it doesn't. It doesn't. And what happens if the, you know, if the Democrats take control of Congress and in. In midterms, that can't they. Well, what can they. Can they force the release of Epstein files?

[Danny]

I don't know. When are the midterms?

[Steve]

November of 26.

[Danny]

Oh, okay. So, yeah, I don't know.

[Steve]

I don't know.

[Danny]

I'm not hopeful. No, I mean, I. I am hopeful, but I'm. I'm not. I'm not getting my hopes up because I'm just. I have a feeling they're going to be like that down.

[Steve]

Yeah, you're probably right.

[Danny]

But thanks for doing this, man. I really. I really appreciate coming to talk to me.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Tell us about your new book and where people can find your stuff.

[Steve]

All right, well, thanks. No, and thanks so much for having me on, Danny. I really appreciate it. Yeah. A new book is called King of Kings. It's published by doubleday, coming out August 5th or 6th. And it's about the Iranian revolution and what, what I, I took a very intimate look at, at it and kind of the idea is to kind of explore the central mysteries of, of the Iranian revolution because it's, it's such a, such a strange. I, I, I feel like the dice could be thrown a thousand times with the Iranian revolution and it would never come up the same way it played last time. And there's, there's kind of like mysteries to it of like, why did the Shah take so long to realize he was in trouble? Why did the Americans take so long to realize it? And I also am fascinated by the figure of Khomeini. It's like, was he, was he an accident of history? Was he, was he happened to be in the right place at the right time to take over? Or was he actually very calculating and cunning and at least on, and I feel like I've kind of arrived at answers to all three on that, on that last one, Cliff, clearly Khomeini was cunning and calculating his whole life kind of speaks of it. So, yeah, I spent four or five years on it. I interviewed the Shah's widow, talked to, I wasn't able to go into Iran, but I talked to a lot of people in Iran, had access to declassified, recently declassified documents that show what was going on in the American government. But I'm taking, it's a very kind of intimate look. I'm, I, I chose about five or six people to kind of tell the story and they're really kind of the last people alive, like the Shah's widow, National Security Council guy who was in the room with Carter when all this stuff was going on. A guy who was very close to the Shah, is former Peace Corps volunteer who worked for the US Embassy there and, and kind of saw, saw what was happening happening and, and tried to, to give a warning and was not only not listened to but reprimanded for saying anything that, you know, that Shaw was in trouble. So yeah, so that's, that's, that's book. Other than that, I've, I've, I mainly write in articles for the national, for the New York Times Magazine. Got a couple of articles coming out with them, hopefully in the near future. So.

[Danny]

Fantastic, man. Yeah, I'll make sure I link all this stuff below. And thanks again for your time, man. I really enjoyed you.

[Steve]

My pleasure.

[Danny]

What's this, Steve? Oh, this is King of Kings. Oh, sweet we'll link it below.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Danny]

Pre order, comes out in August, right?

[Steve]

Comes out early August.

[Danny]

Perfect.

[Steve]

Yeah. All right. Yeah.

[Danny]

All right, man. Thanks again.

[Steve]

Hey, thank you.

[Danny]

Good night, everybody.