CIA Analyst: Are China & Russia Behind an Imminent Terrorist Attack on America?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Louder with Crowder - "CIA Analyst: Are China & Russia Behind an Imminent Terrorist Attack on America?"

Release Date: February 7, 2025
Host: Louder with Crowder
Guest: Sarah Adams, Former CIA Analyst and Author

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Introduction

In this gripping episode of Louder with Crowder, host Steven Crowder engages in a profound discussion with Sarah Adams, a former CIA analyst, author of the Know Thy Enemy series, and senior advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi. Adams sheds light on alarming security threats, suggesting that China and Russia may be orchestrating an imminent terrorist attack on the United States.

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Current Security Landscape

Louder with Crowder opens with Adams expressing grave concerns about America's national security:

"Americans aren't secure. The main reason is obviously because of the open border policy. Right. And a lot of nefarious actors came in, not just terrorists. So we are at our least secure point since 9/11, in my opinion."
— Sarah Adams [02:51]

Adams emphasizes that the U.S. is facing its most vulnerable security period since the September 11 attacks, primarily due to lax border policies that have allowed terrorists and other malicious actors to infiltrate the country.

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Administration’s Security Measures

The conversation delves into the impact of recent U.S. administrations on national security. Adams comments on the Trump administration's cabinet appointments, suggesting a shift towards more transparency regarding threats:

"I think we're going to be in a better position because I think they're being a little more honest about the threats. But as you can imagine, when you ignore something for four years, it's festered and now it's a much bigger problem."
— Sarah Adams [03:33]

However, she acknowledges that previous neglect has exacerbated current challenges, making it difficult for the administration to implement swift solutions.

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The Taliban and Al Qaeda Nexus

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the intertwined relationships between the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups. Adams reveals unsettling developments post-Afghanistan withdrawal:

"The Taliban isn't a normal actor on the world stage. By November of 2021, they were issuing passports to terrorists. They met with Iran and started planning major attacks."
— Sarah Adams [07:48]

Adams details how the Taliban, in collaboration with Al Qaeda and Iran, orchestrated significant attacks, including the notorious October 7th terrorist event. She underscores the failure of diplomatic efforts like the Doha deal, which inadvertently empowered these extremist groups.

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U.S. Funding to the Taliban

Addressing the paradox of U.S. taxpayer money inadvertently supporting terrorist activities, Adams highlights the misallocation of funds:

"We throw money at a problem. We even throw money at our enemy. Humanitarian aid meant to help Afghans is funneling to the Taliban, and counterterrorism dollars are supporting their illusory fight against ISIS."
— Sarah Adams [09:23]

She critiques the Department of Defense and CIA for misleading narratives that present the Taliban as key allies against ISIS, despite evidence to the contrary.

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Imminent Terrorist Threats

Adams presents a chilling forecast of a coordinated terrorist attack, potentially in 2025, with backing from China and Russia:

"We do believe the intent is for the attack to occur in 2025 and they are ready to do it and they're well trained."
— Sarah Adams [02:51]

She outlines the sophisticated logistics involved, including suicide bombers, vests, and weapons already present within the United States, facilitated by pipelines through Mexico controlled by Chinese and Russian interests.

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Russia’s Involvement

The discussion shifts to Russia's strategic maneuvers, indicating their manipulation of terrorist groups to weaken the U.S.:

"Russia ended up getting more involved than when they gave their blessing to attack. They fixed equipment, set up labs with scientists from multiple countries, and are fostering a collaborative enemy network in Afghanistan."
— Sarah Adams [32:13]

Adams explains how Russia leverages its relationships with Taliban and Al Qaeda to foster instability, aiding in the preparation of large-scale attacks against American soil.

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China’s Strategic Positioning

China's role is portrayed as a long-term strategic threat, systematically undermining U.S. infrastructure and influencing public perception:

"China wants to slowly take us over and make us a piece of their kingdom. They’re deploying influence operations to control information and weaken American resilience."
— Sarah Adams [43:05]

She warns of China's covert operations, including infiltration into U.S. military sectors and data manipulation through platforms like TikTok, which could be leveraged in the event of a conflict.

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Intelligence Failures and Media Control

Adams criticizes the U.S. intelligence community for failing to adequately monitor and report threats, partly due to internal conflicts and media suppression:

"The CIA is not being honest. Hamza bin Laden is very much alive, leading attacks, but the U.S. media won't report it without CIA approval."
— Sarah Adams [14:56]

She accuses U.S. intelligence agencies of prioritizing operational secrecy over transparency, thus hindering public awareness and preparedness.

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Preparation and Community Resilience

In closing, Adams urges individuals to take proactive measures to prepare for potential attacks, as government response may be sluggish:

"Prepare yourself and your community. Have emergency plans, medical readiness, and be a force multiplier to save lives until help can arrive."
— Sarah Adams [55:37]

She emphasizes the importance of community-level resilience and emergency preparedness to mitigate the impact of large-scale terrorist events.

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Conclusion

This episode of Louder with Crowder presents a dire warning from Sarah Adams about the confluence of threats posed by extremist groups backed by China and Russia. Through incisive analysis and compelling evidence, Adams argues that America's national security is under unprecedented threat, urging immediate action and community preparedness to counteract these impending dangers.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Americans aren't secure. The main reason is obviously because of the open border policy."
  — Sarah Adams [02:51]

• "We throw money at a problem. We even throw money at our enemy."
  — Sarah Adams [09:23]

• "China wants to slowly take us over and make us a piece of their kingdom."
  — Sarah Adams [43:05]

• "Hamza bin Laden is very much alive, leading attacks, but the U.S. media won't report it without CIA approval."
  — Sarah Adams [14:56]

• "Prepare yourself and your community. Have emergency plans, medical readiness, and be a force multiplier to save lives until help can arrive."
  — Sarah Adams [55:37]

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Disclaimer: The views and statements expressed in this summary are attributed to the podcast guest, Sarah Adams, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Louder with Crowder or its host.

Transcript

[Sarah Adams]

He really tried to damage the United States and our national security. And he is a traitor. And he's lucky he's not in the United States because I would think he deserves a death penalty. It's not even Osint war. There's basically a war between the MI5 and the CIA over Hamza bin Laden. And the CIA is not being honest. He's alive in the future in their dream world, a part of the caliphate, that means they're going to take us over. You know, they're going to change the way our government works, the way our system works, so we can become an Islamic society. And people need to understand that is the goal. The attackers are in country to include the suicide bombers, the suicide vests are in country, and the weapons are in country. Just to maintain terrorists in the United States for that long, not get them caught or thwarted, is complicated. It's expensive. So we do believe still the intent is for the attack to occur in 2025 and they are ready to do it and they're well trained. There are pipelines up through Mexico, so they're actually mostly run by China and Russia that Al Qaeda is using through Mexico.

[Interviewer]

Sarah Adams is a former C intelligence analyst and targeter, senior Advisor to the U.S. house of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi and co author of the Know Thy Enemy series, which offers in depth investigations into the infamous Benghazi, Abby Gate and October 7th terror attacks. Now Sarah is issuing an entirely new warning. A warning of the most perilous security environment the world has seen since 9 11. An imminent attack on the United States homeland and how America's enemies, ranging from terror groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban to great powers like China and Russia, are coordinating to bring it all to fruition. The only question is, is anyone going to listen before it's too late? Today we have Sarah Adams. She needs no introduction but to get started, if you don't mind. I've become quite a fan of your X account recently and I want to read one of your recent posts because I think it really encompasses a lot that's going on that people might not be fully aware of. On your X you posted, both Al Qaeda and ISIS are fully operational. Afghanistan, Pakistan border region and pose a greater threat now than at any time in the last 20 years. The idea that the ISIS fight is primarily inside Syria is outdated. Most of ISIS's senior leadership relocated to Afghanistan and Pakistan three years ago. Meanwhile, the US is funding a fake ISIS fight in Syria through the DoD while also pretending there is a joint counter ISKP effort with the Taliban. It's time for honesty. Our current strategy ignores the real threat. So with that in mind, I just want to start with one simple question. Are Americans today secure?

[Sarah Adams]

Well, I mean, Americans aren't secure. The main reason is obviously because of the open border policy. Right. And a lot of nefarious actors came in, not just terrorists. So we are at our least secure point since 9 11, in my opinion.

[Interviewer]

Okay, then let me back that up a little bit and make it more specific. Since January 20th and the inauguration of Donald Trump, do you feel that Americans are more secure or less secure, especially when you consider his cabinet picks like Hegseth at the DOD or Rubio at State Ratcliffe for the CIA. Are these decisions that are going to put Americans in a better position in your belief, or are we backsliding?

[Sarah Adams]

I think we're going to be in a better position because I think they're being a little more honest about the threats. But as you can imagine, when you ignore something for four years, it's festered and now it's a much bigger problem. So they can't fix everything quick enough.

[Interviewer]

And what are the biggest challenges that this administration is going to have to face? What are the fixes that need to be made? Kind of from ones they can do quickly to ones that are going to take more long term strategic planning?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, I mean, quick fixes are tough. Right. I think the near term issue is going to be a major terrorist attack because as you can imagine, when that happens, it throws your whole agenda off. So I think that needs to be a near term focus. Obviously, the biggest issue is the border, but that's a long term, you know, that's going to take 30 years to fix at this point. So we have a lot of issues going on and then we still have our near peer problems. Right. We have the Russia problem and the China problem that we have to deal with, but we've done a bad job of dealing with all the threats simultaneously. Right. We're kind of like a dog chasing this toy and that toy and that toy. And we need a better strategy to counter all of it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I agree. And you brought up a lot of different points that I definitely want to touch on throughout this interview, especially Russia, China, the border. I think they all kind of sort of interlocated a certain position. You can't really separate one from the other. But on the note of the inauguration and obviously Trump taking over the Biden administration, I want to go back a few years to another sort of nexus in the Biden Trump Crossover, which would have been the Afghanistan withdrawal. So I remember sitting there watching that on tv thinking, I don't really know what, but it feels like something's drastically changing here. Sort of the same feeling that I have when I was watching 911 when I was a kid, although obviously, viscerally it was a little bit different. So there's a bunch of arguments over what actually happened and what the effects of that will be. So from your expert, you know, sort of viewpoint, where does the fault lie in our failed withdraw. And given that we can all sort of agree that it was a failed withdraw, how has that event changed the security outlook for everyday Americans?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, so there's multiple faults. Obviously, we really shouldn't have done the Doha deal and made it solely with the Taliban and cut out the rest of the Afghan government. But in the Doha deal, we had red lines, right? And if Taliban crossed those red lines, the deal would be ended and we would keep troops in Afghanistan. And even in the deal, it wasn't clear we would pull out a Bagram. There was still going to be a number of troops that stayed in Bagram. So the deal wasn't even followed to the T. The Biden administration quickly wanted to pull everyone out. They set an arbitrary date of 9 11, and they didn't even start planning an actual withdrawal of people until August 15th. So think about that. They gave themselves less than a month to even do it. The attack happened at Abbey Gate, and then they basically closed down within days. So the withdrawal, as you can imagine, shifted the balance of power to the enemy. Now in Afghanistan, it shifted the power to the enemy, to the terrorists. But Russia saw this as weakness, and it's why they thought now is an opportune time to do Ukraine. And then the terrorists in general, especially Iran, saw this as a weakness. And that's why they pushed forward really strong, using Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Taliban to do the attacks in Israel, you know, in 2023. Right. So this has been a continued catalyst of failure. And then we had the Syrian blitzkrieg, obviously, in November, another aftermath of the fall of Kabul.

[Interviewer]

So when I was reading some of your work, it continuously shocked me how interrelated all of these different groups were. But I want to start with the Taliban, because I remember when they took over, there was this false promise that they're going to normalize, they're going to institute, you know, reforms that make them more of a normal actor on the world stage. And of course, we learned very quickly that that was all one big lie. I think most of US realized that from the beginning. But what was the goal or what was the realistic idea that the Taliban would normalize or was there ever one? And what has the Taliban done since they've actually taken power in Afghanistan?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, I mean all that was short sighted. It was Taliban in our government's opinion was the most powerful entity in the country. We want to get, we'll just hand the country to the Taliban. They'll leave us alone, we'll leave them alone and we can move on. Right. That was the belief. Obviously that's not true. Now what the Taliban then did, as we've talked about. So you know, it fell in August of 2021. By November of 2021 they were already issuing passports to terrorists. You could come on Thursday, be a terrorist from any group and get passports. That November they also met for the first time with Jelani and started planning the Syrian blitzkrieg. In March of 2022 is when they sat down and started planning the Hamas attacks with Iran, Al Qaeda and Hamas. Right. It moved that quickly. Within six months they planned those two huge events and look what happened when they actually went to fruition.

[Interviewer]

Right. So you're telling me and other, it's not just you making these claims very clearly. It's well understood that the Taliban is working with all these other groups and clearly they're not going to be a normal actor on the world stage. So why, from what I can tell, is so much American taxpayer money going to fund the Taliban? And we know this because you can finally see some senators trying to do something. Right. Senator Sheehy and Tuberville proposed a bill to stop it. And the West Virginia senator Shelley Moore Capito also just recently introduced legislation that would stop American taxpayer funds from going to the Taliban and then going to other terrorist groups. Why is this still happening?

[Sarah Adams]

You know, we do this everywhere, which is really unfortunate. Right. We throw money at a problem. We even throw money at our enemy. And with Afghanistan, there's two pots of money that are a problem. We send humanitarian aid that we say is going to help the people who aren't being taken care of by the Taliban, but it's going to the Taliban. And then we sent counterterrorism dollars to the Taliban for this fake ISIS fight. The CIA and the DOD have the Taliban to them is their key counterterrorism ally against isis. It's the biggest joke. ISIS has grown fold in the last three years, but they're lying and saying it's their key ally.

[Interviewer]

So you're saying that the Taliban is funding groups Like Al Qaeda and also Hamas, but then they're also claiming to help us on the counterterrorism fight with isis. Isn't it very well believable that some of that money from that we're giving to the Taliban is ending up directly in ISIS's pockets as well?

[Sarah Adams]

It is. We actually followed some of the money and it went straight from the Ministry of Interior building in Kabul to ISIS training king camps in Afghanistan. And even our government is lying and saying there are no ISIS training camps anymore in Afghanistan. They were closed down. Actually the biggest camp. It's really funny, do you remember when we dropped that big moab, that huge bomb? So they built a camp there and it's an ISIS al Qaeda Taliban camp. It's gigantic. It's one of the biggest camps in Afghanistan.

[Interviewer]

Isis, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, they.

[Sarah Adams]

All share the same camp. It's gigantic. And then we have our government saying, oh yeah, yeah, they're fighting ISIS and there's no more ISIS in Afghanistan. It's like this, this insane world we've now lived in when you can see these things on imagery.

[Interviewer]

Now, is this just the government dealing with sunk costs that, oh, we spent this much money, you know, furthering this delusion, or do they really believe that the Taliban is helping us in any way, shape or form?

[Sarah Adams]

At first it was just to get out. Now I do think we have had people, I think it's a counterintelligence problem that have drank the juice and believe Taliban's intelligence and they've now convinced policymakers and there are people who will at you straight in the face and say we're fighting ISKP with the Taliban and they honestly believe it, which is scary.

[Interviewer]

Well, I would hope that we're going to see a little bit of a change with that, with the new intelligence apparatus that's hopefully being formed. But I want to get to one specific group and I know for people in your world and after reading a lot of your work, I have so much more respect for Middle east intelligence gathering because just keeping the web of names straight seems like a full time job. But again and again Al Qaeda comes up. Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda. I think most Americans, when Osama Bin Laden was killed by the seals, kind of stopped thinking about Al Qaeda at all. So what is the current status of Al Qaeda and what, what are their goals considering their, their jihad or their views for America?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, well, it's not just that Americans stopped thinking about Al Qaeda. You know, there was actually a media push at the time from the administration to make us think Al Qaeda is done. Al Qaeda's over. We defeated Al Qaeda, and that's what the administration was putting out and that's what the press was putting out. So, you know, like when Benghazi happened in 2012, for example, you know, soon after his death, about a year after, nobody was honest. That was an Al Qaeda attack. So Al Qaeda has been involved in all these things over the years. They've been involved in some big attacks in Afghanistan. Like they did an attack against, like, the Emirati diplomats there. You'll never see Al Qaeda's name on it. Right. Like the last 10 plus years, our own government and our own media covered up Al Qaeda's involvement. So that's why Americans think Al Qaeda is done, because nobody's been giving them correct information. It's almost like not their fault.

[Interviewer]

So is our government, or at least I guess government writ large on purpose pulling the wool over the eyes of the American people? Or like you said, is it just their intelligence gathering apparatus is so bad that they don't know what's going on?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, it's twofold. Right. They're lacking collection on Al Qaeda. And instead of just being honest and saying, we don't have a collection, they're just saying al Qaeda is not doing anything and they want the counterterrorism fight to focus solely on isis. And so they say that's the only goal, that's the purpose, that's the enemy, and they're not even being honest. Then Al Qaeda and ISIS are working together. Right. So the enemy is beating us on the narrative, and then we're not actioning the enemy in the way we should or going after the senior leader. Leaders or terrorists. We should even. Like I told you, our operations right now against ISIS are in Syria. But ISIS's central Shura is based in Pakistan, Afghanistan. They left Syria years ago. Right. So we're not even taking out the key leaders. It's like cannon fodder.

[Interviewer]

Well, I'm glad that you used the term key leader, because there seems to be another major disconnect between US Intelligence and, I guess, European intelligence and just kind of the. The OSINT community, which is. And again, so many things about your work blew my mind. But Hamza bin Laden, I had not heard that in American mainstream media since the administration declared him dead during Trump's first term. Yet the British Intelligence and the Mirror are reporting that he's alive. Your work is telling me he's alive. And moreover, your work is telling me he was intricately involved in the planning for October 7th. How can both of these things exist at the same time? I'm so confused.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, as you pointed out, there's almost, it's not even Osint war. There's basically a war between the MI5 and the CIA over Hamza Bin Laden. And the CIA is not being honest. He's alive. And the Brits got frustrated by it and they leaked it to the press. That's how it actually got in the press. We tried to put in the press for a year plus in the US and no one would touch it. They said, nope. We went to the CIA, they said he's dead, we won't print it. So the US press was controlled and would only print it with CIA's approval, which is crazy. So the British intelligence released it themselves. So Hamza bin Laden is very much alive. He actually him and his brother Abdullah were leading a lot of the fight when Kabul fell. Like people call that the Taliban fighting the Afghan government. That was actually led a lot by Al Qaeda and it was Al Qaeda taking down the Afghan. Been honest about that. And then yes, Hamza bin Laden was one of the key plotters of the Hamas attacks. And he's the one that actually basically allowed the Hamas terrorists, a third of them trained in Afghanistan for that attack. And Hamas, I mean Hamza oversaw it and his brother Abdullah is in charge of all the Al Qaeda training camps. So he chose which training camps the Hamas terrorists would fight in. So the Bin Laden's are very involved in the Hamas attack.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So if you search on Google right Now, the first 10 results outside of that Mirror article are Hamza bin Laden dead and they're years old. So does the CIA have that much of a grip over the American media apparatus that they can control the narrative to that degree?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, they don't have just a control over the media apparatus. If you go to other branches of the intelligence community, they'll say we can't talk about Hamza. We get pushback from CIA. If you go to Hip C, same thing they say, we get pushback from CIA not just on Hamza bin Laden, but on the fake ISKP operations with the Taliban. So CIA has kind of a grip on these Afghan narratives and their information is wrong. And collecting information from the Taliban, they're putting it in classified channels and they're basically compromising our intelligence collection on terrorism. And I keep saying it should be a whole counterintelligence investigation. You know, if this was China or if this is Russia and we allowed this to happen, that's how it would be handled. Why are we not handling that way when terrorists are compromising our collection?

[Interviewer]

Well, especially since we spent the last year and a half supporting Israel. Well, to whatever degree you want to argue, we've supported Israel's fight against Hamas in Gaza. I think that's debatable. But it seems to me not debatable that we know Hamas did not plan this on their own. They don't have the capabilities to do so. We know the IRGC was involved. That's always been out there and, you know, part of the mainstream narrative. But when you look into it and the work that you've done makes it quite clear that there were other scrupulous actors involved, including the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban who were funding. And then Al Qaeda, who is apparently led by Osama bin Laden's son. How does that escape the. And forgive me if I'm feigning ignorance here, I don't know. But how does that escape the narrative in America that that is going on?

[Sarah Adams]

I think it's the fact that our government does control a lot of the narrative. Right. So if they're not giving this to media outlets, if they're not giving it to New York Times, they're not giving it to Washington Post, it's not going out. When it doesn't go out on those large publications, it doesn't go out on the small local news as well. Right. So it's not proliferating down to everyday Americans. So they don't know these things. I mean, just if you talk about our money going into Afghanistan, some of that money we give to the Taliban actually gets brought over and is given to the IRG DC too. Like we're even funding the Iranian terrorists through Afghanistan. Right. And just nobody actually is paying any attention to where the money is going. And Americans need to be more involved in where their taxpayer dollars are going.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, like I said, hopefully a couple of these bills that have been suggested actually make it through Congress and we can get something done about that. Because it seems ridiculous to me. And backing up just a little bit, you obviously have made quite a name for yourself with your work on Benghazi. That was fantastic. Know thy enemy. Benghazi was great. But I also just finished reading and I bring it up here because I recommend a lot of people to read the October 7th report that you worked on. And it would take forever to kind of break that whole thing down. But just for people that might not be aware, what role did the Taliban and Al Qaeda have along with the IRGC and actually planning that Event.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, they decided to actually plan the event in Afghanistan because it was a safe haven. They knew we gave up collection there. And the Taliban knew they control, controlled the information that went to the U.S. government. Right. So they knew they'd be safe planning it in Afghanistan. So they did much of the planning there. The initial meeting was there, kind of the second strategy meeting was there. A lot of the planning actually was over. Telegram. The US really should have intercepted that. They didn't. Right. And then I told you a third of the attackers came to Afghanistan and trained. Also, the Taliban provided weapons. They shipped weapons from Baram Chah kind of down in Helmand to Gaza in advance of the attacks. Right. So they were very integral. And now what a lot of people don't understand is, so Israel's been fighting Hamas since that time, and they have killed a lot of Hamas members. But instead of the five to six camps the Taliban allowed Hamas to use to prepare for the tax, they opened it up to a dozen. So now a dozen Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan train Hamas fighters. So when you kill one in Israel, they train three. So they. They have now made more Hamas terrorists than were killed in Israel. And because we're not bombing the camps, we're allowing Hamas to basically be reconstituted in Afghanistan.

[Interviewer]

So what is the interest of these groups to work together? Because obviously, if you look at it from the outside, you have different sects of Islam involved, you have different ideologies, you have different worldviews. What is the interest of a group like the Taliban or Al Qaeda working with Hamas? What do they get from this?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, well, this actually happened. A lot of people don't know. So Hamas and like Al Qaeda fought together at times in Syria, actually in the Syrian government banned Hamas. Al Qaeda and Hamas actually also fought together in the Libyan. The second Libyan civil war. That was 2014 to 2017. So it's just this wasn't reported out. They were actually doing joint efforts together against the mutual enemy, Assad and then of course, General Haftar in Libya. Now. Now the big catalyst, though, is Hamza bin Laden. His father wanted to bring all the groups together. Hamza made it a goal and he's done a ton of negotiations, compromises, as you can imagine, to bring the groups together. They brought them together under something. It's got a lot of different names. I call it the Islamic army, they call it the army of Imam Mahdi. But the goal is we work together. Sunni or Shia, doesn't matter, because our goal is to recreate the Islamic caliphates, right. So the last one ended, you know, whatever it was 70 years ago. Now they want to bring the caliphates back. Afghanistan was a start. Syria was number two. Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso are kind of like the next wave to create the caliphate. So they have a joint goal now, and they're all working together on that goal.

[Interviewer]

So this brings me to an interesting kind of crux in the road, because if you talk to a lot of everyday Americans that, you know, they work at a car dealership or they're teaching school, you'll tell them about this and they'll say, okay, but that's their business in the Middle East. Let whatever happens happens over there if we stay out of it. Really, the only reason they're mad at us is because we intervened and we bombed them and we're creating the terrorists. Let's let them do their own thing. Is that true? Are we making ourselves enemies, or do they have kind of a larger ideology that really supersedes anything that we might do?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, I mean, if you go off the most basic thing, they say, hey, if you get off Muslim lands, we'll leave you alone. But that's actually not true. The caliphate exists and the US Becomes a piece of the caliphate. It's really interesting. So the caliphate actually exists with China, so China can have his empire and its world. And then there is the Islamic Caliphate. But in the Islamic Caliphate, the US Is a piece of the Islamic Caliphate. We don't leave the Middle east and they leave us alone, they'll leave China alone. But we are going to become in the future, in their dream world, a part of the caliphate. That means they're going to take us over, they're going to change the way our government works, the way our system works so we can become an Islamic society. And people need to understand that is the goal.

[Interviewer]

So why is a. Is this Quranic teachings or is it something that's evolved? How does China become exempt from this caliphate where America and I assume Europe falls squarely within the borders of that.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, I mean, obviously Spain is the biggest piece they want to retake as the caliphate once they finish off North Africa and they go up to Spain. Right. So Europe is a huge piece of it. It's really the Western beliefs they want to kind of mute. So they think it's kind of the Western view of the world. Right. Who helped create Israel in all those issues? Right. If they don't get rid of the Western view and the Western belief that comes from the US government, the British government, the Israeli government, they'll Keep having that problem. Right. So they need to eliminate us. They don't get those issues from China. They don't view China in that same way. They view them as someone they can coexist with in the future.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I guess that reminds me of something that you mentioned a couple times before is the, the historical lens that they view the west through is very interesting because you pointed out that the October 7th date was chosen for a specific reason and that has a lot to do with, you know, Western behavior in the Middle east or around Israel. Could you just explain why October 7th was picked in the first place?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah. So it was picked by Saraf Al Oddl, who's basically the head of Al Qaeda's external operations right now and he's also the mastermind of Al Qaeda's homeland attack in the US that's coming up. So he chose October 7th because that's the day at the time President Bush called and made the announcement of the air bombing campaign in Afghanistan and it was primarily in Kandahar, which was Al Qaeda's stronghold. And that's when we basically carpet bombed Kandahar. And, and that day is very important to them. And so that is why they chose that date to get at us. So a lot of Americans don't understand like the attacks in Israel were the dress rehearsal and the dress rehearsal for the US attack. Right. So they did the attack in Israel. They were learning from it, they're growing from it. They're going to attack us and it's going to be bigger and better in their mind than what they did in Israel.

[Interviewer]

So when I hear you say that, it brings kind of two emotions to me. It brings confidence because we have someone, you know, on our side that knows this so well. But also the assurity with which you say the attack is going to happen is quite frightening, to be honest with you. What, what, what, what makes you so sure that this attack on the homeland from Islamic terrorists is going to happen?

[Sarah Adams]

So there's multiple reasons. Number one, it's kind of what Al Qaeda says. So Al Qaeda says the attackers got here, the attack is across multiple cities, as you can imagine it' multiple modes on transportation, using suicide bombers, on airlines, et cetera. Well, in all these years that they've been sending these attackers here since 2021, the US has yet to catch one of these attackers. Right. So we haven't thwarted anything. So let's say we even get 10 of the attackers. Right. Well, there's huge pieces of this plot we're failing to disrupt. Right. So the attack is going to happen because we haven't thwarted it in the past. Some of the big plots, like the big airliner plot in 2000, thanks to British intelligence, we thwarted that. Right. We don't have the intelligence collection anymore in Afghanistan or the ally to thwart these attacks over there. So now we have to deal with them on US soil. So they planned the attack for 2025. They could shift it. You've read our Israel report. They shifted that a year. So it could be 2026. They could wait. But from what we know, the attackers are in country. To include the suicide bombers, the suicide vests are incompetent in country, and the weapons are in country. Just to maintain terrorists in the United States for that long, not get them caught or thwarted, is complicated. It's expensive. So we do believe still the intent is for the attack to occur in 2025, and they are ready to do it and they're well trained.

[Interviewer]

And what'd you say the number is, you think that are here currently?

[Sarah Adams]

So there's different estimates. You know, al Qaeda says they sent a thousand. I think it could be slightly exaggerated. But as you know, it was 1400 for the Hamas attacks. So the number isn't off. I care less about the exact number of attackers. I do believe 10% is going to be suicide bombers, and I feel strong. So I think suicide bombers are between 75 and 100. I think that number is pretty accurate. So I do think we just need to deal with the fact there's going to be an attack. You know, I don't care if it's 200 terrorists or 400 terrorists. Right. Our community has never even have attacks where there's like more than five. So it's going to be a whole different scenario we need to deal with. And these teams did train in groups of five to seven. So communities at the very least have to to plan for an attack using five to seven terrorists.

[Interviewer]

Well, yeah, I guess if you look at places like Mumbai, it doesn't take an overwhelming amount of people to cause vast amounts of damage. But you see what happened with ISIS in Russia or Moscow, and you see in Mumbai and you see places in Africa quite frequently and you think, okay, well, after 9, 11, we kind of got a handle on this. But then you remember, oh, ten years later we had the Boston Marathon bombings. Those were a little bit of a lone wolf, but still the same ideology. So what, what is being done now? That obviously people at higher levels are aware of this and we have a new administration. Is there anything going on to Prepare and, you know, arm the public to, to better respond to what sounds like would be a tragedy.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, we haven't seen anything pushed down. I mean, you know, it was publicly known. I went Talk to Like Governor DeSantis, I live in Florida, and he wasn't giving anything from the federal government on terrorist threats at all. So we've been trying to push ground up, as you can imagine. Now, luckily, because there's this big initiative to deal with the border and to move people out of this country who shouldn't be here, we do hope some of the terrorists will get wrapped up in some of these kind of like ICE raids. Right. But do they even know that these are the terrorists? Right. Because they're not. Most of them aren't going to be on watch list. Right. These are new attackers. This will be the first big event. Right. So we do have to do a lot of educating and we do have to get people involved in the community level because it's going to be communities likely that help thwart this.

[Interviewer]

And I guess in America, we don't have to deal with the direct effects of groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban on a daily basis, but one that we do. You know, a newly minted terrorist group that we have to deal with is the cartel. So do they have any role in funneling these terrorists over, funneling weapons over? Is there a place in the puzzle for the cartel at this point? Point?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah. The interesting part is so there are pipelines up through Mexico. So they're actually mostly run by China and Russia that Al Qaeda is using through Mexico. And then Surajiddin Haqqani from the Taliban has one, he runs with China too. And then it was it's China and Russia who make the relationships and have those long standing kind of financial ties to the cartels. So, you know, when we talk about all these threats, they really are all at the border. Right. The terrorists are working, the cartels are working, Russia and China are working. It's kind of being ignored that this is being enabled by China in Russia. And I think that piece of it is being lost. So they're the connector between the terrorists and the cartels. And it is good now to see the cartels being looked at as terrorist groups. But there's still not this come togetherness of all these parties that people are understanding or working. Think about it. It someone works cartel, someone works terrorists. They don't even work terrorist groups together. I'm Al Qaeda, I'm isis. Someone works China, someone works Russia. None of them all cross collaborate so we don't have anyone tackling this problem the way it needs to be looked at.

[Interviewer]

Well, that's a good chance to get into the Russia and China discussion, because this falls a little bit more in my background. So our near peer competitors, Russia, China, those are the two main ones. I want to start with Russia, though, though. So, again, another thing that I could not believe is you said the initial attack on October 7th was actually supposed to happen in 2022, but for a myriad of logistical reasons and deaths of key leadership, that was pushed off. But Moscow was actually pushing Hamas to carry forward on October 7, 2022. What was. Why does Russia have such a vested interest in the Hamas attacks on Israel?

[Sarah Adams]

Well, the interesting part is when they decided to plan the Hamas attacks, it was March, right after Russia invaded Ukraine, and the terrorists, especially Iran, said, this is the time to do it because the US Is going to be focused on Ukraine. With Russia. At that time is when they reached out to Russia and said, hey, are you okay with this? And they're like, go forth and conquer. And they're like, okay, we're going to shoot for October. And then, as you know, it started to get pushed. Well, that's when Russia kind of circled back and like, hey, hey, my, my war in Ukraine didn't go as fast as I thought it would. Right. We're losing lots of bodies, et cetera. And as you saw, they didn't just lose lots of bodies. They had problems with Wagner. And Wagner felt, hey, you're using us as cannon fodder. And there's almost like a moral injury between Wagner, the military in Russia, and then Prigozhin. And that was a disaster in the end. So Russia then started pushing, no, no, no, do it in 22, 22, 22, because it helps us. So, yeah, so Russia ended up getting more involved than when. Yeah, now you have our blessing. Go forth and conquer. Now, since Russia has gotten extremely involved within Afghanistan, they're fixing a lot of the equipment we left damage or weren't working. They got like the C130s up and running again. Al Qaeda set up all these labs. Like, some are chemical, biological. There's pieces working on uranium, etc. In these labs. There's Russian scientists, Chinese scientists, scientists, North Korean scientists, Pakistani scientists, and Iranian scientists. So if we don't understand that all of our enemies are coming together within Afghanistan, we're missing the boat. And they know they can because they know we gave up collection there. So they know we're missing it.

[Interviewer]

Well, yeah, I read somewhere that was 97 to 98% of all intelligence gathering was lost after the. After the pullout, which is insane. And it seems like that has formed the perfect hotbed for all of our enemies to, you know, hang out in, like, the group of Doom and plot our demise, for lack of a better phrase.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, and that figure comes from the general running centcom, Right? That's just not a number someone pulled out of their butt. Right. He saw and watched all the collection we lost.

[Interviewer]

So how has Russia work with or manipulate or be manipulated by these groups? Because as recently as prior to this interview, I checked and the Taliban is still listed listed as a terrorist organization by the Russian government. Yet the Russian government invites them to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and is trying to legitimize them as a state actor. So is this just all a charade? What is. How does Russia manipulate these groups?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, multiple pieces are at play here. They actually are taking the Taliban off the list in Russia. I don't know why it hasn't gone through yet, but. But Putin has announced it, numerous things. They obviously want just the access in Afghanistan, as you can imagine, they saw the role Iran plays. Iran's very valuable to Russia, besides being a big piece of its drone program for Ukraine. So we focus on Afghanistan, but a big piece of this is the Russia, Iran relationship. And then when the Moscow attacks happen, Russia got forced to work with the Taliban like we do to go after iskp. Right. So that was then who they had to ally with, you know, in their mind to. To deal with the ISKP threat, even though, as we know, the Taliban's playing both sides and they were enablers of the attack in Moscow.

[Interviewer]

Correct. So the Russians were fighting with everybody in Syria, I guess, and then they're supporting the Taliban, who was supporting their enemies in Syria, but now they're working with the Taliban to fight against ISIS to prevent attacks on their homeland. So I don't. Forgive me if this web seems a little complicated.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah. And then when you talk about Syria, right, The Russians got pushed out of Syria. They basically pick up their main base, they move it to Libya, and that's its own mess. Right. So, yeah, it's. At some point, the Russia terrorist relationship has to implode, just like the US Relationship with Taliban and Giuliani and Syria has to implode. Right. Because these actors and these beliefs don't exist in the same world. And now that Russia is down in Libya where they fight Al Qaeda and ISIS from, right. It's. Everything's going to implode with all this reliance on these terrorist proxies.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, one would think so. But I guess what they're just trying to do, right, is use whatever chess piece they can as part of their larger gambit against the United States. Correct.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah. Terrorists have always been used, short term strategic gains by us, by Russia, by whomever is playing the game, Pakistan, India, whoever it is, Right. Short term fix to their big problem. But then no one deals with, obviously the after effects of now, you made that enemy or that terrorist group stronger, more legitimate, you gave them advanced weaponry, et cetera.

[Interviewer]

Well, on that note, if the terrorists are kind of a chess piece for the Russians, then at least as far as I can tell, and from everything that I know in my time in Asia, Russia is almost a chess piece for the Chinese because they are the big brother in the relationship now. They have the purse strings, they have the growing military, they have the better economy. I mean, I guess you could debate that on a couple fronts, but they're big brother now. So where does China fit into all this? Obviously, Afghanistan fell. They occupied that vacuum. What was that like? What did they see in Afghanistan when we withdrew?

[Sarah Adams]

Well, the interesting part is China has always had the relationship, you know, with the Taliban. And when we negotiated the Doha deal, we would negotiate it with a terrorist named Mullah Abdulah Ghani Barada. His goal, I mean, his role in the Taliban, he was number two, he ran the operations. But a role he has that nobody's honest about is he was the Taliban's liaison to China. So we made a peace deal with the Taliban's liaison to China. So China didn't have to do anything to get in the door when the Taliban took over. They have fostered this relationship since like 2008, 2009. It was well cemented, right? So then they just moved in their supplies. The funny part is China kept trying to get inside Afghanistan and the Afghan government would like bomb their equipment when they brought it in, keep pushing back. And then when the Taliban came in, they rolled in, they took all the mines they wanted to take, et cetera. They started doing a lot of things like getting the biometrics working for the Taliban so they could hunt down our allies, putting CCTV all over Kabul so a woman couldn't walk around. So China leaned in and did all the things to the Taliban need. Because China's really good at meeting your needs, right? They don't care. They don't care about human rights. You know, they don't have that vested interest like you need to protect the women, right? So they go in and they deliver what you want and then they get what they want. And obviously they have access to the uranium mines, the lithium mines. So many different things now in Afghanistan that we really never brought to the level it needed to be. You know, Afghanistan could be a very wealthy country. The US didn't actually invest, invest into those industries and really establish it, which is a very strange thing. You know, a lot of money went to Afghanistan and it really went to corrupt entities and persons.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it doesn't seem like we had a very long term strategic vision for why we were over there. And it seems like China might be playing a little bit of a longer game and have at least kind of outflanked us on that position. But how does Xinjiang and like China's activities in the Xinjiang region, region and Afghanistan, Is there a relationship there?

[Sarah Adams]

Like, are you talking about like when they're dealing with their own terrorists?

[Interviewer]

Correct. Yeah. Because, I mean all ostensibly that's why all the repression in Xinjiang happened was because of domestic terror threats to Beijing. But I just didn't know if the Afghanistan and Xinjiang or if there even was a relationship there.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, there's actually not. So even when China years ago, 15 plus years ago, created the relationship with the Taliban, it was only to collect on the Uyghurs and the terrorist threat of the Islamists in China. So Taliban was never aligned with them. The funny part is though, Taliban is aligned with Al Qaeda and over the years Taliban and Al Qaeda have come together and Al Qaeda is very close to etim, the East Turkmenistan Islamic Movement. That's basically the main terrorist group China is fighting. So the head of the group. Yeah, the head of the group is, and you saw it in our paper, he's based in Kabul. He's in the safe house where one of the Hamas meetings was. So there is now this constant fight between China, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Like, hey, you're fostering them in Afghanistan. So the interesting part is the head of the Taliban went to Surajidin Hakhani and he's like, you gotta fix this. I'm so sick of the Chinese showing up once a month and complaining about this. So what Surajah Deen Haqqani did was like, oh, fine, I'll tell Eatim they have to go and be ready and support the Syrian blitzkrieg. So the funny part is that's why in Syria you're seeing all these like, rigors and people like, why are these guys in Syria? It's because Surajuddin's like, you Gotta go to Syria and not be in Afghanistan for a bit. So we don't have China complaining about us. But that's why everyone's like, why is E. Tim in Syria? But that's why they're sent by Sarajuddin Haqqani. So there's also these, all these little chess moves and games going on to appease China. Just like they're appeasing our intelligence community by like fake killing some ISIS guys.

[Interviewer]

So I guess both sides are sort of getting what they want out of the relationship, at least in the short term.

[Sarah Adams]

Well, they think they're getting what they want, right. China thinks the Taliban are pushing out eat him, which they're not. They're just like go fight here for a month or two and come back to Afghanistan. The US thinks the Taliban's killing isis. They're killing random people and calling it isis. So ISIS is growing and we're not killing any of these people. So we're really not getting what we want either. We're actually helping grow.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's fun. I'm glad that our tax dollars are being put to good use. So on the China note, more specifically, the direct competition between China and the United States, I want to ask you a question that might come off as controversial, but I guess I don't really think so. But considering the hacks and the invasion of our critical infrastructure like water plants and power plants and the information campaigns, online, economic subterfuge, IP theft, would it be fair to say that the United States and China are already at war?

[Sarah Adams]

In a sense we are, we are at least in a position where everybody is doing like the left of, left of launch for war. Right. So China's putting everything in place, so taking like you said, over parts of our power grid, land ports. So when we do go to war, they just shut it all down. They shut the power down, they shut the port down. Right. They take control of these things so our military candy even deploy. Right. So we're at this pre war stage and we're like failing and we're kind of basically giving up territory to China and it's not being viewed in that way. Right. Nobody's really taking it serious and it's getting to be dangerous. I don't know if you saw it was like outside of Fort Bragg and those weird like Chechens or at the special operators house. Well, the really interesting thing I learned after the fact is they worked for a Chinese, Chinese telecommunications company. And when that was given to the US government saying you need to look into this this is a bigger problem. It was ignored and no one cared. Nobody wanted to work it. Everyone's like, well that's not really my job. I don't really look at China's ownership of this, etc. And so stuff like that should be very concerning because now they're kind of like impacting our war fighter on US soil. Like what are they doing? This is dangerous. A lot of our war fighters are overseas, right? Like now they're there and your family's there and you're overseas and you don't know what's going on. So I think there's a lot of things we need to start paying attention to what China is doing. We don't exactly understand what they're all doing.

[Interviewer]

Well, yeah, I mean, as far as the, the pressure or the terror that, you know, terror groups could bring to bear on the United States and it is a huge deal, don't make no mistake about that. But what China could do, their capabilities and power and economic power, power are so far beyond anything that a terrorist group could do it. And we seem to just be shoving our heads in the sand with it.

[Sarah Adams]

Well, we're just letting China do what they want, right? China wants to slowly take us over, over time and then make us like a piece of their kingdom. Right? And they are slowly doing it and they make no mistake.

[Interviewer]

The thing. Sorry to interrupt you, but what drives me crazy is people are like, why is China our enemy? You know, what have they ever done to us? The PLA documents make very clear and Xi Jinping Ping's worldview, he, they say it over and over and over. They want to dominate the region. And if they dominate the region, they dominate how the United States conducts day to day life. I don't understand why that is difficult to understand. But X propaganda is a powerful thing, I suppose.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah. I mean, and China does do a lot of influence operations, right? Especially to our younger generation. So they don't, it's sometimes if your enemy isn't pointing a gun at you, it's hard to view them that way. I mean, I know I'm in the government and trying to stole my data all the time, right? So I don't trust them at all. It's like, you have my Social Security. I'm on the black web, you assholes. But, but you know what I mean? Like it's, it's, it's like it's hard to get people to the influence side of things and to know there's different ways to fight wars. I mean, China's famous for fighting wars in these ways, but we're not. We view war as, like, dropping the troops. Right. Bring in the heavy equipment. And not everybody views war that way.

[Interviewer]

No, gray zone tactics are a real thing. And pretty soon, gray zone turns into a real conflict. And if it does turn into a conflict, probably over, you know, a Taiwan invasion attempt, it feels like they've occupied so much of our information dissemination process that they could. Well, like, for instance, TikTok. Right. You saw how TikTok turned, and you saw how the younger generation could give a. For lack of a better phrase about their data. Sure, China, take my data, but we know it's not about that. And now with something like Deep Seek, I read that Pentagon employees were downloading Deep Seek and using it onto the computer for days before they were instructed not to. How?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, on their government computers. Fire them.

[Interviewer]

Like today, they have to be like, that's got to. I mean, I'm not calling for anybody's job, because I don't know, but it seems like that would be a fireable offense.

[Sarah Adams]

No, that's 100% a fireable offense. So if we go hot saying that.

[Interviewer]

If we go hot with China, how can they use this information manipulation to kind of win that war?

[Sarah Adams]

Well, remember, we have full recruitment centers in the United States in California, and they're in Chinese. You go and you go to the recruiter to get in the US Military, and it's fully in Chinese. Right. So it's so much beyond these apps, the control and influence. We have the Chinese government running and controlling lots of our chambers of commerce, for example. Right. Different large land holding and investment firms, for example, like, they know how to take in all this information and control it and influence you. The app is just another benefit and bonus to them because they can pull you in in different ways and get your information and just even know how you think. That's the greatest thing about artificial intelligence. Right. They get to learn from you when you're on these apps and saying things. And then they know how to target you and influence you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The thing that worries me, and tell me if this is unfounded, is if there, you know, there is an invasion of Taiwan, and, you know, most in the military and strategic planning, international relations would agree that we do not want China to take over Taiwan, but could they not use these influence operations to launch an invasion? And by that time, they've already convinced most of younger Americans that they're actually not the bad guy, they're actually the good guy guy. And so they prevent us from even Helping. Because the public sentiment is so against it.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, because it's the whole imperialism thing or, you know, the west shouldn't dictate what other countries do if they make you believe the Taiwanese want to be a part of China, especially as China slowly trying to put people into their political system. And over time, eventually the politicians in Taiwan will likely be pro Chinese just because China's spending so much time and effort on it. Right. So yeah, if you educate people saying, hey, all these problems happen because of British influence or US influence, then you do lose the support. We're having a lot of this information problem, you know, in the Gaza region. Right. So it shows how easy and simple this is to do to influence people.

[Interviewer]

Well, yeah, I don't know if you've heard, but China is actually a bustling democracy with tall buildings that light up at night and everyone's having a great time there.

[Sarah Adams]

So yeah, it's odd because they're always tearing like blowing the buildings up because they made all these buildings and, and they ran out of money and the people in the country don't have the money. Like, oh, we just did the full apartment buildings because we actually, our people aren't making the money to even occupy them. I mean, there's so many things that people aren't understanding of what's really happening in China. And life is difficult.

[Interviewer]

People will pay mortgage on a house for five years and the house will never be built and then all of a sudden they default, like, oh, sorry, I guess that money's gone now. But yeah, it's just, it's. It's an insane place and some insane things are happening over there. But do you. I don't know. I know Middle east is more your go to zone, but would you say the likelihood of conflict with China, like real physical conflict is something that America needs to be prepared for in the near future?

[Sarah Adams]

I think we need to be prepared for it because I feel we're actually pushing it a little more than China because I feel China's like, we can wait 100 years and slowly take this over and slowly influence it. But then the US war machine is pushing a little harder. Like, oh, Chinese going over these red lines. China's doing this. And the problem is China's advancing faster than us. Right. I mean, the hypersonic weapon test proved it, and it's making our government very nervous and very scared. And sometimes when that happens, they go on the offense. Right. And so I do think we're pushing a little bit more of a war with China as our enemy because like, it's going to happen anyway. Let's do this to stop their innovation and stop their growth. So we do have to watch. Both sides are playing this in interesting ways, and they're playing the same game, but differently, and that's dangerous, too.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The one thing that does worry me is just Xi Jinping's shelf life. He is a human and will die. And it seems like he does have specific ambitions for his legacy, you know, to surpass Mao. And just the headwinds that are going in towards, like, Chinese development with their birth rates and their economics, it's. It just. It seems like there's a powder keg. And I don't want to predict what will happen, but I just. I would hope that our Defense Department and intelligence agencies are ready to. To handle whatever's coming. I hope.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, I hope. I mean, they've had a hard problem competing with China in multiple places. Right. And China has won in Africa, in Latin America, et cetera. So we do have to change the way we handle China. No matter what the future holds, if it's going to be war or if it just continues to be strategic confrontation, we have to do it better. Better.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And real quick, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it about, I don't know, 2012, 2014? Didn't we basically lose all human asset collection abilities in China? Didn't the CIA have, like a huge purge?

[Sarah Adams]

There was a. There was a huge, like, it was like a leak, and then it was tradecraft.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Sarah Adams]

And it wasn't just the CIA. I believe DOD had a big tradecraft issue, too, and China was able to identify, like, undercover officers and some of their operations, too. We have a hard problem with tradecraft. Multiple reasons. One, people go in an assumed name, and that's almost impossible now, as you can imagine, with technology. Even if I went in a fake name, around the world now, people know me. I've traveled personally to these locations, Right. In my true name, et cetera. And it's getting harder and harder to put people undercover. Right. So that is a difficult thing. We're also grappling with, like, what's the future of undercover operations if you can't actually make a person undercover?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I do not envy, especially with the advances in artificial intelligence, to kind of weed those things out. And I don't know, I feel like maybe good tradecraft is going to be more important than ever moving forward, because there's some things that you just can't replace with, you know, with stuff that's not on the ground and look at it.

[Sarah Adams]

Israel has masked guy, a Hamas guy can wear a mask and you only see his and Israel's identifying them. So, you know, the technology is so much getting even beyond tradecraft that, yeah, we're going to have to find new ways to do things.

[Interviewer]

We're going to need some Mission Impossible masks here pretty soon.

[Sarah Adams]

Yes, that'd be awesome.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Kind of the last thing I wanted to touch on. It's sort of taking an offshoot, but it's been dominating the discussion on Twitter recently, mostly because of Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation hearing when Edward Snowden was brought up. And so I just wanted to know, from your perspective as someone in intelligence, is Edward Snowden a hero? Is he a traitor or is he something else entirely?

[Sarah Adams]

I think he's a traitor. I don't think we should ever let him back into the country. And I think he is where he belongs in Russia and he landed where he belongs. Now, a lot of people only know Snowden from the movie, right? And boy, the movie painted him in this great light in this hero and this person who's under, you know, getting rid of showing all this US Government corruption. Now the US Government has actual processes. Right. Snowden didn't try to go to any inspector general office. Right. He did not try to take any path. He just stole all the data, released whatever he felt like. And if people actually paid attention to what he released, he actually even told the terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan how we collect on them, ended our collection. They all changed their tradecraft. Right. That is not a man who's trying to help everyday Americans not be spied on by their government. Right. He really tried to damage the United States and our national security. And he is a traitor. And he's lucky he's not in the United States, because I would think he deserves a death penalty.

[Interviewer]

Well, yeah, and I didn't want to tip my hand on my opinion on this, but he sat with the South China Morning Post and basically revealed our data collection methods to them. So I wouldn't say that's really a patriotic American thing to do, but, you know, I am just a simple man. So I'll let the Internet decide.

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay. You've given us tons of time, but I want to give you the chance to leave. On what is, what do you think is the most important thing for just the American public to know? If an attack is coming, what is that going to look like? And what can individuals do if the government is not going to do? So what can individuals do to prepare themselves for something like that?

[Sarah Adams]

Yeah, I think really what we saw in the, you know, in North Carolina, you know, during. In the aftermath of the hurricane is such a good example of what you should expect. Right. Paralysis by our government. Right. Maybe a whole week before somebody gets to you. Right. I feel if we start emergency planning off of something like a crisis like that, you can be more prepared if something happens. Now, the majority of Americans, even if a big attack happens in the United States, they're not going to be impacted directly by the attack, but the telecommunications are going to go down. There's going to be misinformation, there's going to be fear. Right. Is it going to continue to happen? There could even be potentially a period of martial law. There's going to be a lot of confusion. So the more resilient you can get now and prepare yourself, the better. Right. Family, emergency plans, medical. If you are in a situation, something happens, first responders are not coming anytime soon. At least that's Al Qaeda's goal. Right. So if you can be a force multiplier and save someone's life or give them care until they can get to something at a higher level like that, that's what you need to be doing for your community and your neighbors. And you hope there's people that do it for your family if you're not in the area to help them. And so I think we need to get to the community level and really become more resilient and prepared. And then if other things happen, hurricanes happen, active shooters at a school happen, you're now 10 steps ahead. Like, preparing has never hurt anybody.

[Interviewer]

Well, I think that's great advice and I really do that. Just the treasure trove of information and insight that you've given today. I really, really appreciate you taking the time with us.

[Sarah Adams]

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, thank you so much. And hopefully we can work together in the future too, and appreciate everything you do.

[Sarah Adams]

Perfect. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

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[Interviewer]

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