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- [00:00]
Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Public Ad Announcer
Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.com Ever wonder
- [01:06]
Martha Stewart
how to make hosting look effortless? Here's a secret when prepping for cooking and baking, get ahead of the mess with new Reynolds Kitchens countertop prep paper. Just lightly wet the counter so the paper grips. Lay it down and drips and spills stay on the paper, not on your counter. Cleanup is as simple as lifting it away to reveal clean counters. Effortless it is thanks to Reynolds Kitchen's countertop prep paper. Wet it, set it, prep it done. Available in the Reynolds wrap aisle at Walmart, Target, Amazon and Costco, summer adventures
- [01:47]
Host
are better with Minky Couture. From road trips to ball games, beach
- [01:51]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
nights to backyard movies, Minky has you covered.
- [01:55]
Host
Don't miss the Everywhere blanket.
- [01:57]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Water resistant, ultra soft and made for life on the go.
- [02:01]
Host
Wherever summer takes you, bring comfort along.
- [02:04]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Minky couture.com the original best blanket Ever.
- [02:41]
Frank Afney
Welcome to Securing America with me, Frank Afney. The program that's a kind of owner's manual for protecting the country we love against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the glory of God and His kingdom. Well, we are going to be talking about enemies foreign initially, and we're going to talk about them in the context of momentous developments at the moment in several parts of the world, but specifically those that are shaping and leading up to a, well, I think quite portentous trip that the president of the United States has in mind making to Communist China. I'm going to give you some comments of my own and get to our guest who will respond to them. Would Franklin Roosevelt have contemplated traveling to Berlin to meet Adolf Hitler at the height of World War II? The proposition is, of course, absurd. Among other reasons would be concerns about the president's personal safety. Yet Donald Trump is set on visiting Beijing next week to meet with a man who has killed more Americans in what some call World War III than Hitler did, namely Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. China expert Colonel Grant Newson confirmed on this program yesterday that Xi's regime is, quote, at war with America and has used fentanyl to kill 800,000 of us, roughly the equivalent of four divisions. In addition, Xi keeps sending Iran chemicals for ballistic missiles to attack U.S. military personnel. The question occurs, might he have Trump killed? 2? President Trump has already postponed their summit once. It would be advisable to do it indefinitely. Well, those are my thoughts. For more of them, follow me at x rank afne is also@usfuture.org, the website of our Institute for the American Future. It makes this program possible. I hope you will do, too, by joining us@usfuture.org, hit the Donate button. We're going to turn to a woman who has been studying these matters closely for quite some time, has been a leading voice, in fact, in trying to raise an alarm about what the Chinese Communist Party is up to. She's a member of our committee on the Present Danger China. She has also, in her capacity as president of the American Freedom alliance, been organizing various programs, both in Los Angeles, where the alliance is headquartered, and also around the country, notably in the run up to the 2024 election, a roadshow that we did together with some of our best experts focused on China, among other challenges. Karen Sigemond is her name, and Dr. Sigemund is a faithful and very, very valued contributor to this program. We've caught her on rather short notice, and we're very pleased to have done so. Thank you, Karen, for coming back on. It's great to have you with us, Frank.
- [06:01]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Great to be with you. And always. And this topic, as you note, is one that we've been addressing assiduously over the last many, many years.
- [06:11]
Frank Afney
Yeah. And where we keep coming back to, Karen is we've documented in countless webinars and your programs and others is we may not think we're at war with China.
- [06:22]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
That's right.
- [06:22]
Frank Afney
But China thinks they're at war with us. You have a wonderful metaphor about all that, remind us what it is, Right.
- [06:30]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Every day I'm reminded more and more of the truth of it. I had come up with this parallel we all are familiar with. If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? We all know the answer to that. And it had dawned on me during the course of our many conferences that we took on the road. As you say, if you're in a war and nobody will acknowledge it, can you still lose? And I was directly addressing the issue of the Chinese Communist Party Communism, generally, the incursions that they have made into this country. And every day I'm reminded, as I said, more and more, the ways in which they have been at war with us. Not only will nobody acknowledge it, but it's very stealthy, it's very well concealed, it's very well covered up by complicit media, by complicit Democrats, by various entities who want nothing more than to see us ignore and be ignorant of the fact that we are on the receiving end of an assiduously dedicated war against us.
- [07:35]
Frank Afney
Yeah, and a lot of that, as you say, has taken the form of what they call unrestricted warfare. Not the kinetic kind, but everything, basically, that they can think of and what they've been able to accomplish with it. I mean, it's impossible to overstate the example that I mentioned a moment ago, Karen. When Grant Newsom was with us yesterday, he said, look, it's 800,000, and that's just the number that have been killed, the number that have been harmed in various ways, and the devastation of families and communities and so on is affecting, I think he said, you know, 10 times as many others. That's a staggering measure of the kind of warfare these guys have been waging. So I don't want to put you on the spot on this, but I'm concerned, I have to say, that the President of the United States, being the unique historical figure, that he is going to the enemy capital in the midst of a war like this, when the Chinese are clearly anxious to have him out of the way, what are the chances that something, a mishap, of course, it wouldn't be an assassination, I don't imagine, but just something bad would happen. And, you know, a thing or two about this inside China, you know, the best Secret Service detail in the world is not going to be able to save him. If something like that is pulled off, should we be worried about it? And at the very minimum, should there be real pause about going to China in the midst of this war,
- [09:39]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
knowing the extent to which they value human life, that is pretty much zero. We're hosting Janje Kellogg next week about his book Killed to order or forced organ harvesting just by the Chinese Communist Party against their own citizens. We know exactly how they feel about the value of human life. That's number one. We've, we've been under attack with fentanyl. That's number two. But the bigger picture, as, as you point out, what is the biggest impediment to everything that communism requires to be a global totalitarian force? Without impediment? We are the impediment. Judeo Christian, independent minded, freedom loving Americans, we are the biggest impediment to their global dominance. And who is the biggest, the greatest, most powerful representative. Exactly. That more than any president we've seen. That would be Donald Trump. So he is the flag waving general. Representative of everything that we stand for, everything that we hold dear, which is everything that they need to take down. So to take down the United States of America is a requirement and that would be much easy, more easily done on their part with Donald Trump out, as you point out, I imagine Roosevelt having gone to Germany to meet with Hitler. Completely preposterous idea. We also know how cunning they are with the very notion of unrestricted warfare. We talk about this in terms of Democrats generally, but Communists overall, by any means necessary. And if global dominance they believe is the right thing, then they will stop at nothing. And we've also seen, just right here on our own soil, the vulnerability of this president and the, it's, it's not entirely clear how professional, how, how well conducted our own secret service and our own protective services are. Obviously he, he wasn't shot. He, the, the perpetrator was stopped.
- [11:59]
Frank Afney
But it gets way in that most recent attack.
- [12:02]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Yeah, just, just most recently. It's much too close. We saw what happened in, in, in New Jersey or the, the other, the July 13 attack a few years ago in Pennsylvania. Right.
- [12:18]
Frank Afney
So we, so Karen, I mean the, the point is, and that's on our own home ground.
- [12:23]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
It's on our own home.
- [12:23]
Frank Afney
That's where we're, we're dealing with the best possible circumstances. This is a very different thing. And I, I don't, you know, want to sound hysterical about this. I just want to say I, I think when you look at what the, to date, whether it's fentanyl, whether it's a bio warfare attack on that president's first term and the devastation that it caused, by some estimates a million Americans lost their lives in that exercise and the full magnitude. And by the way folks, if you haven't been tuning into them, I hope you will take a look at these incredible webinars. Karen has contributed to many of them on the issue of Chinese unrestricted warfare. You can find all of them@presentdangerchina.org I believe that we are about out of time and Karen Sigeman. Hold this thought. We're gonna come right back with much more with Karen Sigamund on the other side of a break, including about cultural Marxism in our educational system. Stay tuned. Foreign
- [13:37]
Public Ad Announcer
for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this
- [14:38]
Martha Stewart
is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Ever wonder how to make hosting look effortless? Here's a secret Getting ahead of the Mess with New Reynolds Kitchens Countertop Prep Paper Just lightly wet the counter beforehand so the paper grips and stays in place. Then lay down the Reynolds Kitchen's countertop prep paper so drips and spills stay on the paper, not all over your kitchen counter. You can roll out dough, prep a party spread or cook alongside family. When you're done, cleanup is as simple as lifting the paper and revealing that clean counter underneath. Effortless. You can use it for cooking and baking, prep and even crafting, especially when you need extra working space. Because when the mess is already handled, you can focus on what matters the food, the people and the moment. It may look effortless, but now you know it's Reynolds Kitchen's countertop prep paper. Take a tip from me. Wet it, set it, prep it, done. Make it easy, make it with Reynolds Kitchens countertop prep paper. Available now in the Reynolds Wrap aisle in Walmart, Target, Amazon and Costco.
- [15:53]
Host
Summer adventures are better with Minky Couture. From road trips to ball games, beach
- [15:59]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
nights to backyard movies, Minky has you covered.
- [16:02]
Host
Don't miss the Everywhere blanket.
- [16:04]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Water resistant, ultra soft and made for life. On the go.
- [16:08]
Host
Go wherever summer takes you. Bring comfort along.
- [16:11]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Minky couture.com the original best blanket ever.
- [16:34]
Frank Afney
Back and we're talking about China only we're going to talk about China here, not over there. The threat that we face from China, as we've been discussing with Dr. Karen Sigeman, is intense. It is growing, it is comprehensive, and it is increasingly manifesting itself in a variety of ways inside the United States, notably in our educational system. And this happens to be an area of great expertise for Dr. Sigelman. She has a PhD in education, no less. She has taught at every level. And she is in the process of writing a book about education and national security, which is very much on our mind at the moment. Karen, you've been co hosting with me on a couple of programs in which we've been teasing out some information about that. We've got another one coming up shortly. But I wanted to talk to you about specifically this idea that the Chinese, patient as they are, have used the communists in America in their long march through the institutions, as I think it was Gramsci who called it, to weaponize our schools for the purposes of alienating our kids from our country from, you know, patriotism, from a sense of, you know, well, a willingness to serve, to assure its survival, all of which has profound implications. Talk a little bit about this particular aspect of China's unrestricted warfare against us and the success that it's enjoyed.
- [18:27]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
It has enjoyed, indeed. It really is one of the more terrifying aspects of all of this because of how pernicious it is, how invisible it is and how it's cloaked in this idea of don't you want your kids to learn Mandarin? Because it's just, it's going to be great. They're economic powerhouse, so they invest huge amounts of money in our universities, but also our high schools and our middle schools. Lots of money being spent on Confucius
- [18:59]
Frank Afney
Institutes and academies and the like and
- [19:02]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
classrooms that have been called out. And President Trump has said, you can't have Confucius Institutes and universities anymore because of the damage that they can do. And we've got allegiances made to another country. So China says, okay, that's fine. And then they continue to do it. Just call it something else. So masters at shapeshifters, because the mission is still the mission and they will continue to do it. The classrooms are at lower levels and again, it's just. Don't you want your kids to be global citizens? And Mandarin is the number one language in the universe. In the universe, basically, yes, but on the globe. And so people get brought into that. And then don't you want to learn about, you know, all these lovely ideologies and the philosophy and all this is lovely. And Confucius just in particular. Except that is not their purpose, as you cite. The long march through the institutions is how the Communists attempted to wage and have been successful in bringing about revolution. Not in the ways, not in the kinetic ways that we are used to seeing, but in the ways of going through one institution after another, particularly the ideas ones, the media, education, entertainment and so on. But now it's absolutely everything gutting them of their actual purpose and replacing it with revolution, Marxist revolution, Communist revolution. Education is of course one of the most impactful and that is what China has been doing. We see this, the money being spent, we see the institutions being brought over, we see the ties between our universities and theirs, which generally speaking is our institutions with some military agency in China because it's the Chinese Communist Party really pulling all the strings and deciding where the money goes and where it's used then in China. I'm talking to people of various ilks telling me that the percentage of students that are Chinese in our institutions is extremely high. We know this. So it's a two way street.
- [21:17]
Frank Afney
Well, on that, on that. Let me tie back to what we were discussing before the break. The President has in the past, and there's some concern that he may do it again. It signaled to Xi that he's more than happy to double the number of Chinese students in our country from about 300,000, as I recall, to maybe 600,000 at one point. He's actually said, if they're, you know, studying the so called science, technology, engineering, I guess, and math, stem, they will, they will get a green card stapled to their diploma when they come over here. I mean, again, looking at this from the mindset of somebody whose experience in national security, which you do going back to the Cold War, is there anything wrong with that picture?
- [22:15]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
There's everything wrong with that picture. For them to come over and learn here, bring it There just to first order is horrifying. We also know that they're coming here and they're influencing us. But having a green card here in these United States without there was a time during the Cold War being one of them where we understood that people coming here needed to not seek our downfall. And giving a green card to Communists was definitely something that we were absolutely not going to do. It's hard to know if Donald Trump is doing this because he believes it or is it part of the whole package of deal making. I don't know. But to say that it's okay to give them green cards, it's okay to say that it's okay. We want them here. We're already so profoundly undermined by China, by Communist ideology, by the left that's marched through even during the Soviet times. We are deeply compromised at every level. And to then welcome them in with open arms, as you say, the 300 to 600,000. And that's just the students, let alone everybody else who's here.
- [23:30]
Frank Afney
The numbers are the researchers and the businessmen. Yeah. Karen, I'm going to throw at something that you may not have come across yet. I hope it's going to be the focus of our webinar Friday afternoon. We're still finishing the details on it, but typically those Committee on the Present Danger China webinars are 1 o' clock Eastern Time on Fridays. We're shooting for that. To discuss this whole proposition of the summit and what may come of it. And one of the things that, again, it's just astonishing, but a backdrop to all of this is Xi Jinping has apparently issued recently two regulations which are both, you know, gobsmacking. One is that the Americans companies that are operating in China will not be permitted to conform to US Laws with respect to sanctions on their interactions with the Chinese. They will, in other words, have to conform to the Chinese laws. And the risk is that if they don't behave themselves in accordance with those regulations, the Chinese companies that are partnering with them can sue them in Chinese courts and take everything they've got if they win, which of course, they do in Chinese courts. And then secondly, there's this whole issue of American companies that are actually trying to get out of China, and particularly, apparently American and maybe other employees are being well, prevented from doing so, or at least, you know, under certain restrictions. Both of these would seem to, again, be things that President Trump would not want to dignify, let alone in any way seem to countenance. Quickly your thoughts. 30 seconds or so.
- [25:33]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
Yeah. No, we're a nation of laws. Our laws apply to who we are as people and a nation and corporations and that it's just an absolutely terrible idea which leads into, as you say, please. President Trump going to China is ill advised for all the all these reasons. It is compl. It does imply complicity unless there's overt standing up to it. And I'm not so sure we're going to see that in the further.
- [26:03]
Frank Afney
Even if it's not, even if it's not complicity, I fear that it will be seen as seen so supplicant status. And you don't want to be doing that with the Chinese. We have to leave it that. Karen, come back to us with more soon, if you would. We'll be right back, folks. We're back and I'm always thrilled to be able to say so is Kenneth Abramowitz, a man who we turn to not for reasons having to do with his day job, which is a world class financial advisor in the healthcare sector, but for his avocation, his deep study of and often witty, insightful comments about the nature of the world we're in. He characterizes it as the multi front war and has written about it extensively on his web platform, savethewest.com and also with his wonderful group in Florida, Citizens for National Security. Ken, it's good to have you back. Welcome.
- [27:27]
Ken O'Brien
Great to be with you. Thank you.
- [27:30]
Frank Afney
A couple of things on my mind that I wanted to pick your brains about. One is that we have had in the past 24 hours or so the unveiling of a major new American initiative to try to help extricate mariners and vessels that have been essentially bottled up in the Persian Gulf due to the war there. It had about a day's half life, I guess one might say. There is talk that it was suspended because the Pakistanis are evidently brokering some sort of deal that is making real progress, according to the president. First of all, talk a little bit about the humanitarian crisis that is represented by these vessels and their sailors and what to make of this on again, off again exercise specifically as it relates to whether we are ultimately going to bring down the regime in Tehran.
- [28:41]
Ken O'Brien
Okay. Well, it sounds like, well, five different questions. So let me try, let me try
- [28:46]
Dr. Karen Sigemund
to,
- [28:49]
Ken O'Brien
so let me try to uncomplicate the issues. So President Trump, as we discussed before, I call him a slalom skier because he goes left and right and left and right and he confuses you whether you're good or evil at the same time. So here we had a 40 day physical war Kinetic war. It was going to go another two weeks. And then he pivoted, he slalom to the other side, and all of a sudden it's negotiation time. And that went on for around 20 days. And part of that, we're going to escort the thou. The thousands of ships, or let's say, I don't know, thousand ship. 20,000. Yeah, 20,000 sailors to get them out of harm's way and get them on their way to wherever they're going, as long as they're not carrying Iranian oil to China or anywhere else. And that was going along fine with some attempts by Iran to complicate things. And then our navy took care of those complications. And then all of a sudden, we're not going to escort, we're going to pause the escorting of the ships because we're talking to Iran. And I said to myself, what was that a precondition for talking? Because if you have a precondition for talking and you give up something, you just lost the negotiation. It doesn't matter what's coming next, you lost the negotiations. Just as when President Trump ordered Israel to stop blowing up Hezbollah as a precondition for talking to Iran again, he lost the negotiations before they even started.
- [30:40]
Frank Afney
Well, and on this point, a Western mistake.
- [30:42]
Ken O'Brien
Western mistake, yeah.
- [30:44]
Frank Afney
Well, and we've got Marco Rubio saying that, you know, the combat operations have ceased, have been terminated, I think is the word for it. And while the blockade is continuing, it's, I think, increasingly problematic to, aside from the natty problem of the Congress in all of this, and whether they're being kept apprised adequately about the nature of the war, but that going back into it, which is threatened, is really an option if you've essentially told everybody you're. You're standing down permanently. Your thoughts?
- [31:23]
Ken O'Brien
Well, President Trump and his team are wonderful negotiators when you're dealing with people within Western civilization, in other words, democracies, but when you're dealing with people outside of Western civilization, in other words dictatorships, you have to use different techniques to negotiate. And there, there's no compromise, you know, there's no preconditions, and we're going to keep up our operations. And you can decide to agree to something that we told you to agree to, but we're not going to stop shooting, we're not going to stop escorting both ships, and you can make a decision whenever you want. Have a nice day. Here's my phone number. Now, President Trump did some of that, but when it was a huge mistake to stop moving the ships escorted through the Strait of Hormuz in return for closer negotiations. As you know, when you negotiate, particularly with bad guys, you haven't agreed to anything till you agree to everything. And even after you agree to everything, it's still their signature, which isn't worth anything. And you have to have teeth, you have to have a mechanism to guarantee the results of that piece of paper. So they're making a number of amateurish mistakes, which, my guess, will cause the negotiations to fail or they'll end up sign. America will sign a bad deal. I don't think President Trump wants to sign a bad deal. So I'm hoping he comes to his senses when he sees the bad deal placed in front of his eyes.
- [33:00]
Frank Afney
Yeah. Amen to all of that. Let me just ask you, can the president his expressed some frustration, I think it's fair to say, with our European allies in all of this business with the Strait of Hormuz in particular, that has now been carried over into a reduction in the size of our force in Germany. A little unclear where those forces are headed next, but what are your thoughts on the state of the NATO alliance and the advisability of the sorts of adjustments in force structure that we're seeing there?
- [33:40]
Ken O'Brien
Well, I certainly can see why President Trump's pretty upset with NATO. As he says, many times we were there for NATO and NATO wasn't there for us. And that's inexcusable since we're supplying most of the muscle behind NATO. So NATO should be punished and he's going to punish him by reducing soldiers. Unfortunately, the Russians are like jumping up and down, you know, drinking vodka. They'd love to watch NATO disappear and watch our soldiers disappear. And so he's giving Russia a win that it doesn't deserve. So I, I, I would only, if it were me, I would only symbolically cut back some American soldiers. That's point number one. Point number two, it's not NATO that's evil. It's, it's the people within NATO that are evil. In other words, it's the out of control, terrible prime ministers in the Western European countries that are doing a bad job. I would want to punish them rather than punish NATO, because NATO's ultimately important. But we have to. I'm calling for a regime change. You know, in all these Western European countries, I would like President Trump to say, and I would pick on the UK Keir Starmer as the first example and say we no longer recognize him as the government of England. We demand a new election and bring in a real leader, not A Communist Chinese Communist agent.
- [35:16]
Frank Afney
Wow. Well, there's a Trumpian kind of response. Not a small thing, Ken. Speaking of the United Kingdom, the king of that nation and his wife were in the United States last week. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance, as one would expect. The King made a speech to the Congress and so on, but some things were not addressed, it seems, at least in public, about what is happening to his country. Keir Starmer, of course, being very much a contributor to some of the things that are happening to his country, and very worryingly at that. What are your thoughts about the extent to which we're watching essentially the unraveling of that special relationship? I think the President has suggested that may well be the upshot of all of this and not least the fact that it is undergoing what I guess Barack Obama would have called a fundamental transformation, demographically and now politically as well.
- [36:34]
Ken O'Brien
Yes, well, point number one, I enjoyed the pageantry, I enjoyed the speeches. They were very entertaining. All the public displays were wonderful. Now, on the private side, I have no special information about anything that they said in public. So all I can guess as to what I would have discussed in private, rather. So I guessed at what I would have wanted to discuss in private, but I have no idea whether that's the case. But just to give you an example, in private, I would have said to the King, look, I know you're the King, you're not the Prime Minister, you're not running the government, you represent the government. But please convey a message to the Prime Minister that we want borders closed in the UK starting now. Number two, we want deportation of any members of what I call Islamo Nazi death cults. Anyone who preaches death, genocide to Jews, genocide to Christians. They have to be deported. Number three, you're a massive human rights violator. You're violating the rights of 90% of the people who are Christian and 1% who are Jewish. We want this fixed now. And if you don't want to fix it, give us the keys to your nuclear weapons, because we're not going to sit back and watch you become a Muslim country with nuclear weapons now pointed at us in a generation.
- [38:00]
Frank Afney
And that does seem to me to be distinctly in prospect. Very ominous. Well, concern to say the least. And one that I'm anxious is, is not actually being as directly addressed as it needs to be. I mean, there are a lot of other problems, of course, with Britain becoming a, well, Sharia supremacist nation, but not least would be if they were in fact a nuclear armed one. We are, after all, thrashing about to ensure that Iran does not become such a nation. It's even more ominous that you'd have a nation with a rather full nuclear capability slipping into their ranks as well. Your, your thoughts about, you know, removing these guys is, is a bracing one. I don't know if that's a realistic prospect, but if they're going to be replaced, it seems increasingly likely that they're going to be replaced by Muslim, Muslim Brotherhood or other types.
- [39:13]
Ken O'Brien
Well, what I don't want is in a generation from today, 25 years, we declare war. Can you imagine declaring war in England and sending 50,000 Marines to get those nukes?
- [39:26]
Frank Afney
I don't, I don't want that terrifying prospect. You're absolutely right, Ken. We have to leave it at that. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk with you again next week. Thank you. Ken o'.
- [39:33]
Ken O'Brien
Brien.
- [39:34]
Frank Afney
We'll be right back, folks. Stay tuned. Welcome back. And a very special welcome to Erin o'. Loughlin. We had her on the program last week and found what she had to say about several topics to be so interesting and so timely that we invited her back for at least another brief bite to explore the work that she has been doing since she left the intelligence community in which she served with distinction for some 10 years. And that is born of about 16 years of working now in the financial sector's financial crimes compliance industry. And we're talking about what I think of as a very important and indeed quite insidious financial crime, and that would be something called Sharia compliant finance. Now, for reasons that we're going to talk about with Aaron, others may not consider it a crime just yet, but what its purpose is, make no mistake about it, is, well, seditious and that is a criminal offense. And we're going to see what we can do to make sure that people are held accountable for engaging in it. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us once again and I so appreciate your knowledge in these fields because we are in desperate need of it. Tell us again, just a level set about the nature of Sharia compliant finance. What is it and what is the magnitude of the problem as you see it, just in terms of the sheer volumes of money that are involved at the moment in places like your native state of Texas.
- [41:51]
Host
Thanks for having me back, Frank. I really appreciate it. So Sharia compliance products or financial banking itself is actually, unfortunately, it is legal here in the United States and regulators have put a current framework around it. The occ, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is a federal regulator that charters and supervises and examines national banks and federal savings associations. They have actually put out an interpretive letter called interpretive letter 806 in 1997 and as well as 867 in 1999 that addresses this issue. Sharia compliant products. Now what's important for everyone to know is that these letters, they allow certain structures because the OCC views them as functionally similar to permissible banking or secured lending activities. And the OCC's 1999 letter specifically address something called Miraba or Sorry, I mispronounced that because it's not English. Mirabaha Financing, that's for real estate, construction, inventory. So what we have here is their multi layer functions here. And what's important for regulators to understand is that they addressed this issue and said we're going to regulate via. What does the transaction actually accomplish? It doesn't matter what is said. That's a kind of a FTC issue. Yeah, FTC issue versus what it actually is doing. Now what it's doing is there, there are actually interest charges that are made, but they fall under different structures. For instance, the.
- [43:25]
Frank Afney
Just a second. The reason that's important is these products are packaged as, and presented to the public, to the consumers as something that is interest free. And that's what kind of defines the Sharia compliant element of it, does it not?
- [43:43]
Host
Yes, because they're trying to avoid what's called riba, commonly understood as interest or usury. But it does actually happen depending on the product and depending on the structure. So for instance, there's multiple different structures in a Sharia compliant institution or product. The biggest one mostly is the one I mispronounced earlier, Mirabaha. It means that the provider buys an asset and then resells it to the customer at a disclosed markup and they can pay it back over time. We've heard about that, right? That's like credit, that's like sales finance, that's mortgage finance. It's basically a wording issue, it's a semantic war that we're in and that that's what this is.
- [44:20]
Frank Afney
Well, it's about creating though, I think a parallel financial system, isn't it? And that's what makes this so problematic is as with the parallel legal system, the political system, if you will, even a military system, that Sharia would constitute Sharia compliant finances about keeping Muslims separate from, you know, the unbelievers, as they say, and kind of weaponizing all of this against us. Would that be a correct characterization of the problem as you see it, given
- [45:03]
Host
what we know about how terrorists gain their financing, then one could reasonably state that. Yes.
- [45:09]
Frank Afney
Yeah. And so what we're going to talk about after the end of this block is some of the ideas that you've come up with for corrective action. The fact that the regulators haven't really addressed this since the late 1990s when, you know, clearly there was a thing called Sharia compliant finance, but there wasn't an industry as there is today in Texas, but other places across this country as well. Can you give us some sense of the amount of money that's actually now, you know, sloshing around in these so called Sharia compliant enterprises?
- [45:53]
Host
So that's actually very difficult to, almost impossible because for instance, I'm going to give you an example on it. The UIF Corporation, which is a bank but not a financial institution that's in, that has multiple locations in Texas. They're actually a subsidiary of University bank, which is headquartered in Michigan. Yeah, this is where it gets so complicated and layered. So the UIF Corporation works as a kind of a home lending finance, also called shadow banking. They're not a financial institution per se as far as the US Government is concerned or regulators. However, they are a subsidiary of a bank that's headquartered in Michigan and have federal regulators as well as state regulators on them. However, they're actually advertising that they're not a depository financial institution with a financial institution licensing exemption. So they don't have to report anything because they sit under the title or the license of a Michigan license. And that's where it gets really legally tricky and sticky. And it's really hard to understand these types of things.
- [46:50]
Frank Afney
Is it reasonable based on your area of expertise, criminal activity, that there's opacity, shall we say? The difficulty in sorting it out and figuring out who's doing what and whether it's conforming to regulations is, well, by
- [47:10]
Host
design, I believe so. It's my personal opinion. I believe so, given what I've learned in war zones.
- [47:17]
Frank Afney
Well, this is a war zone of a fashion, an economic war zone as our friend Kevin Freeman would call it. We have to take a short break. We will be right back with Aaron o' Laughlin on what do we do about Sharia compliant finance if it is problematic, as I believe. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. We're back. And so is Aaron o', Loughlin, a woman who has served our country in the intelligence community for a decade as well as in her post government career in the private sector. She has been well developing and applying expertise as an individual, ferreting out and trying to correct financial crimes and lack of compliance with the regulations of the banking sector and financial sector more generally. So Aaron, we've set the stage for this very important follow up conversation with you by talking about the problem Sharia compliant finance represents. It's hard to say for sure the full magnitude of it, but I'm hearing that it's in the order of trillions of dollars now. A lot of it going on in your state of Texas. Talk to us a little bit about if the folks who are supposed to be regulating this haven't really been paying attention as it seems to it over the past 25 years or so, what can be done to try to assure that we're not seeing what actually is fraudulent activity, misrepresenting, you know, interest free mortgages and the like that can protect consumers and protect our country against this kind of parallel, possibly weaponized financial system?
- [49:45]
Host
Yeah, that's a good question because there are a lot of gaps. And so I'll start with Texas because that's where we are and that's what you asked about. So here in Texas there are six different Texas based state financial regulators, six of them. So there's a lot of coordination that needs to be done. A lot of better coordination and information dissemination between between all six of them. Now when it comes to state regulators writ large, they all tend to, not to the letter but they tend to follow the federal guidance because that makes sense. It's the only way to go really. So when they're talking about closing up these loopholes and gaps, federal guidance is the way to go. We gotta modernize the federal guidance right now. They haven't talked about this in a post 911 world. And when I say they I mean the OCC, that's since 1999 and that doesn't. These letters don't address modern fintech industry. That's, that's jumped up the digital asset world which is cryptocurrency, online mortgage origination. They haven't talked about stablecoins. We now have the Genius act that got passed last July 2025 to talk about regulating stablecoins. We haven't even updated the AML which is anti money laundering and the countering of finance of terrorism expectations from the occ. That is terrifying. And that needs to be done too sweet. We need to have plain language product structure disclosures. Just because it says interest free. Well of course there's no law that says that the company has to charge interest, but it's a business dealing. That's how you make your money for your business. If they're providing Islamic terms, then that has to be set out correctly. And it depends, I will say it depends on a lot of these finance institutions. They actually do say it works under the Mura Baja or the Ijara structure. And to them, if they understand that, they know what they're getting into. Therefore it's not a fraudulent thing to say that it's interest free if they understand the structure. Also these companies tend to say, and
- [51:34]
Frank Afney
just quickly, do you have any sense, I mean obviously the principal participants in these transactions are Muslims. Do you have any sense as to whether they actually are familiar with these financial structures or do you think that they may be misled into believing that, you know, it's something other than what they're professing, namely Sharia free? Sharia, excuse me, interest free, not Sharia free.
- [52:04]
Host
One would have to assume that they do considering the advertising is. And they, this is a lot, especially on the UIF Corporation. They actually say they, they basically cater to faith based customers. They actually put that out there. They cater to faith based customers. What does that mean?
- [52:25]
Frank Afney
So another, not all faith, I suspect.
- [52:27]
Host
Yeah, well, one would assume. I don't know. I'm covering my butt on this one though.
- [52:31]
Frank Afney
Though if you are being induced to come into it on the grounds that this is interest free, that could be attractive to people of other faiths and no faith at that matter. So just any specific ideas about if, if the federal government needs to take action on this and that would be mirrored by the state of Texas for example, or other states. Where would you concentrate the focus on
- [52:59]
Host
as far as the disclosures or as far as the financial institutions in general?
- [53:03]
Frank Afney
Well, corrective action, however you want to describe it.
- [53:05]
Host
Oh, I, I would propose a Sharia governance disclosure. Without government religious certification at all. The regulators should not decide theology and that's what they're doing. So the OCC letter on one hand does say we're not dictating or deciding theology. So it's allowing a lot of things to flourish. A lot of things that do mirror things that we already know. So the Mirabaja actually sounds a lot like mortgage finance. It sounds a lot like credit unions. So if you're saying you're going to outlaw Mirabaja structure, then you have to look at actual regulated credit unions. So that's the sticky part of this. And so that's why a lot of this hasn't been touched. However, we do need a better coordination between interagency coordination in Texas in all 50 states, by the way, all the
- [53:48]
Frank Afney
federal regulators with the federal government.
- [53:50]
Host
Absolutely. But where I live, I'm saying Texas. So if we can get all six of these agencies together and information share and talk about the loopholes and bring the good lawyers in to say here are the loopholes and how we can actually address them now and bring in the modern products that we have, like I mentioned, stablecoins, digital, other digital assets, online mortgage origination, there's a lot of things that need to be updated.
- [54:14]
Frank Afney
Well, and I suspect that you know about this from your previous incarnation in the intelligence business. Is there reason to believe that one of the things that is spun off of this Sharia compliant finance, as most other Sharia compliant activities, notably halal foods, is the portion of the profits that is allocated to supporting Islamic causes, one of which, it turns out, is jihad.
- [54:55]
Host
Yes. So there is a term called zakat, which is a 10% of all Muslims yearly income needs to go to zakat Z a K a T, which is to charity. And we know over the last several decades, since the dawn of time, that the charities have been fronts, not all of them, but they have been fronts for terrorist activity.
- [55:15]
Frank Afney
Yeah. Financing of which is actually illegal. And because another cause of action for these regulators and quite possibly the rest of the government as well. Aaron o', Laughlin, we're going to have you back for more on this. This is an unfolding story and we so appreciate your expertise. Thank you for sharing it with us. We'll talk with you again soon. We'll talk with the rest of you again next time. Until then, I hope you go forth and multiply. It.