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This episode is sponsored in part by the Defender. Most of us like to think we're adventurous, but real life is usually school runs, errands, maybe a weekend hike if we're lucky. That's why I like the Defender. It fits both versions of you. Defender is engineered for exploration. It's got that tough, purposeful look because it's built with robust materials and a rigid body design that's made to handle real world challenges. Inside, it's comfortable and functional and the kind of cabin you actually want to spend time in. There's a whole defender family, the two door Defender 90, the Defender 110 and the Defender 130. If you're ready to bring a little more adventure into your day to day, the Defender is ready too. Your defender@land roverusa.com this podcast is brought.
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When you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could be hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional rocket scientist, astronaut, hacker or special operator. And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a way to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our Episode Starter Packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, social engineering, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today, another out of the loop episode on Venezuela, Little Venice, Big oil, bigger mess. You probably heard the headlines and thought alright, socialism, corruption, oil. Got it. But that's kind of like saying hey Titanic boat hits thing. The real story here is how a country with some of the largest Oil reserves on earth, turned that resource into a regime atm, hollowed out its institutions, banned civilian firearms, and then watched normal people get crushed between politics, cronies, and criminals to the point where folks were literally staying in bed to avoid burning calories. And now it matters to Americans because Venezuela is not just a tragedy. It's energy, migration, transnational crime, and great power chess sitting uncomfortably close to the Panama Canal with China and Russia sniffing around like it's an open house. Or as I like to say, little old Taiwanese ladies at the buffet in Vegas. If you know, you know. Today, my friend Ryan Macbeth joins me once again, and we're doing a short history of how Venezuela got here, what their former leader, Hugo Chavez actually got right early on. What when the revolution stopped being about reform and started becoming about extraction. Why Maduro, the guy we kidnapped, was less supreme leader and more traffic cop for competing mafias. And what happens next, from the best case managed transition to worst case Libya. Vibes, here we go with Ryan macbeth out of the loop on Venezuela. Ryan Macbeth, thanks for coming back on the show, man. Now that I think about it, every time you're on the show, there's a major world event or disaster. Coincidence? I think not.
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Yeah, I'd like to know why I'm always out of the loop. I don't get my own show with a little picture of my face, a little painting.
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I'll give you some show art at some point. Don't worry.
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Now we got to talk about Venezuela.
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Let's talk about Venezuela, because I think people, they're like, venezuela, this Maduro guy, there's a lot of oil, the yen. People don't know that Venezuela essentially was part of a federation that was essentially Gran Colombia back in the day, led by Bolivar. Can we do a little bit of that? The 19th century kind of stuff?
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It's actually a really fascinating story. These are very proud people. So Venezuela was home to numerous Native American tribes until 1522, when Spanish colonizers claimed the region. And Venezuela actually means little Venice, because the Spanish saw, like, these houses on stilts in the water, and it reminded them of Venice. Then in the 1800s, this whole independence movement gained traction in South America. Back then, Venezuela was part of Gran Colombia, led by Simon Bolivar, and Gran Colombia was Panama and Venezuela. Venezuela became a republic in 1830, I believe. So you mainly saw during, like, the 19th century were these chieftains, caidos, I think they're called, who dominated, like, politics.
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Caudillos, I think. Caudillos, where everyone's cringing at our Spanish.
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B
You know what? I can speak Arabic a lot better than I could speak Spanish.
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Well, just say caudillos and it'll be good enough, gringo style.
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Oil was discovered and production started to kick off in like 1922, and the country became like a pretty wealthy and prosperous democracy in Latin America. Okay?
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And then Cold War changed that, or.
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It was actually fairly stable during the Cold War. What changed? It was a coup in 1992. So Hugo Chavez, who at the time was a colonel in the Venezuelan army, he started a coup against the government and the coup failed. And he was actually thrown in jail. And then he was released, I believe two, three years later. And then he ran for president. So you can actually imagine that happening, like in America, right? You go to jail for trying to overthrow the government and then you become president. And Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998, and he immediately started rewriting the constitution. And a lot of people liked this guy because, like, he promised to redistribute the oil wealth. And he challenged the old elite rulers of the country. And he started what they call the Bolivaran Revolution, which was kind of like a combination of social welfare, state control of key industries like oil, and anti establishment rhetoric. And for a lot of people it brought tangible benefits. Until one day it kind of didn't.
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Is this kind of president that runs for election and goes, we don't need those pesky elections anymore. You got the right guy in charge. We're not doing that again until I die?
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Not initially. You know, Hitler was voted in as well. People like this guy. And there were some benefits with social programs, but. Have you ever heard the term Dutch disease?
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Yeah, but I don't know what it means.
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Okay.
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Sounds like an std.
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Absolutely right. Dutch disease is this concept where when you suddenly discover oil, or really any kind of mineral, right? Any country that extracts minerals as their primary income, when they get this sudden influx of cash, a lot of times they start spreading it around and they start all these social programs. And that is great, until the price of that commodity suddenly collapses. And that's kind of what we saw in 2010, where you had all these social programs. The economy suddenly collapsed because oil prices fell, investment dried up and corruption started to spread. This led to hyperinflation, medicine shortages, crime, and mass migration. And this was only exacerbated by Maduro when he eventually came into power. But I bet you're going to ask me to get to that.
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Yeah, exactly. Good call. I think a lot of people are probably wondering, okay, but I'm working in Michigan or Ohio or Nebraska. Why should I care about Venezuela at all right now?
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So the short answer is oil, right? That's the answer a lot of people understand. Oh, Venezuela has oil. But Venezuela is actually a very strategic region for the United States. And that is because we are looking out at a time horizon of 2027 and 2028 when we are likely to be at war with China over Taiwan. China is likely to invade Taiwan in 2027 or 2028. Xi Jinping has told his army to be ready by 2027. My estimate is it'll be in May or October of 2028, because those are the two windows where the sea state is calm enough to allow for an invasion. And it's also during a presidential election. And America can be very indecisive during a presidential election. But if Venezuela, who has been leaning towards China, been leaning toward Russia, been leaning toward Iran, is filled up with Chinese weapons, then it becomes a very strategic location because they can launch those weapons at ships that are trying to transit the Panama Canal. I see. So if we're trying to move ships from the Atlantic over to the Pacific, we're going to transit the Panama Canal. And Venezuela could launch Chinese anti ship missiles at those ships. They could also host things like Chinese container ships. There are Chinese container ships that open up, the tops open up and there are missiles inside those shipping containers.
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So they could become like the Houthis of the Panama Canal, right?
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Absolutely. That's an excellent way of putting. They could become the Houthis of the Panama Canal. And a good portion of our oil refining is done on the Gulf Coast. I don't know whether it's the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America, but we're just going to call the Gulf Coast Galveston, New Orleans, Houston. So if you're close enough with long range cruise missiles and long range precision fires, you could fire missiles at America and hit some of those oil plants. That's why I said it's about oil. But it's not necessarily about Venezuela oil, it's about our oil because we have so many refineries on the Gulf coast that are within striking range of intermediate range missiles or even cruise missiles or long range drones from Venezuela or from ships operating out of Venezuela.
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A
Okay, so this is like Cuban Missile crisis stuff, right? You can't just have weapons, military bases, resources in our own backyard.
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You're absolutely correct. It's long term thinking. A lot of people criticize President Trump. And don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things to criticize him about. But this, believe it or not, is actually not one of those things he said in his speech, we're going to take the oil, we're going to make sure the oil is ok. But before he said that, he said we need to have good neighbors. And that's the part that you need to remember, we need to have good neighbors is we're trying to make sure that South America is essentially an American lake, Caribbean is an American lake, and we want Chinese influence and Russian influence and Iranian influence the heck out of there, so we don't have our back door open when this war in Taiwan comes.
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I see. Yeah. So Venezuela is like energy migration, maybe some other transnational crime, depending on the drug stuff, if that exists or not. And great power competition, basically in one box.
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Yeah, you're absolutely correct. There is drug stuff going on. For the longest time, Venezuela actually allowed the farc, which was a Colombian terrorist organization, to kind of hang out inside of Venezuela. I think in 2021 and 2022, there were clashes on the border because the FARC wanted to run this drug route. And I guess they didn't pay off the local Venezuelan commander. And so there were clashes and Venezuela went in with their army and they got their butts handed to them by the farc.
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Wow.
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That didn't work out too well for Venezuela. But that's kind of the issues you have when you have a military. That's what's called a palace guard or internal security military. They're not an offensive military. That's one of the reasons people ask me, oh, do a video on Venezuela maybe invading Guyana. There's no way in heck they would ever invade Guyana. They don't have the calories to physically march across all that jungle, to actually occupy the logistical base or any combat experience, really, to undertake an operation like that.
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Right. Because their job is just to keep Maduro in power. And that's all they are trained to do.
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You're absolutely correct. I've often said there's four kinds of armies in the world. There's expeditionary armies, of which there's really only four and a half. The us, the uk, France, Russia, and to a lesser extent China, they're the half. There's defensive armies. Most of the armies of Europe are defensive. Then you have internal security armies. Most of the army is South America is internal security, and they mainly fight rebels. And then you have your palace guard armies. And a lot of the militaries of the Middle east, our palace guard armies, they're there to make sure the leader stays in Power. And in Venezuela's case, it's kind of a hybrid between the internal security army and a palace guard arm.
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Gotcha. Okay. Does China get a lot of oil from Venezuela?
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Only about 4%. It's not a lot, but it's not a little either. And if we essentially turn that off, it actually gives us a lot of negotiating leverage when negotiating trade with China. We can turn that oil on anytime we want. They have to go out on the open market and find that 4%. They're not going to get it from Russia. Russia is pumping as much oil as they physically can because they need the hard currency. Russia is maxed out and more and more of their derricks keep breaking every single day.
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And so it's 4% of Chinese oil is from Venezuela. But how much of Venezuela's oil goes to China? Does that question make sense?
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Roughly between 80 and 90%.
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So most of the Venezuelan oil goes to China and that's where they get most of their money from. But China, it's not going to be an existential crisis for China if they can't get Venezuelan oil.
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It's not great. Right. Like if I have to go and find 4% of anything. Right. If you assume you're running at 100% capacity right now when it comes to fuel and factories and energy and I have to go find that 4%, that's not great. What are you going to turn off until you find that? And it's going to make things more expensive on the open market for everybody. In the short term, you might see slight price rises, but over the long term, I think it'll kind of stabilize.
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What about Cuba? I assume Cuba probably had a robust business with Venezuela because they don't have that many neighbors that think that you should have a dictator forever.
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Cuba's in a lot of trouble. Venezuela exported most of Cuba's oil, about 90% of Cuba's oil. And they're at the point now where they have brownouts. The power is only on for a couple hours a day. Turning off that spigot to Cuba is a major problem for Cuba because they don't have a lot of places they can go for oil and they don't have any hard currency. One of the reasons Cuban cigars are so horrible is that they are pumping anything, whatever they can manufacture, cigar wise, whatever crap they can manufacture, they're throwing that out the door because they need that hard currency. That's one of the few things they can produce that the world will buy.
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A
I see. Because I remember Cuban cigars are Supposed to be amazing. Wasn't that what they were famous for?
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They were at one point. And here's the other funny thing. This is when you look at something like communism, American cigars. I know a little bit about cigars. I have a humidor right behind me. A lot of cigars are made in Miami, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua. Sometimes those cigars are draw tested. They put them on a machine, they make sure that you can actually suck through the cigar before they ship it. So there's a machine that actually sucks on the cigar for you before they cap it and put it in a box.
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We're gonna have to talk about that after the show. I might need one of those. My friend might need one of those for reasons.
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So what's fascinating is that when you choose not to innovate and invest back into your company because you're trying to grab all the hard currency you can, you tend to fall by the wayside. And that's why Dominican and Honduran and Nicaraguan cigars are now superior to what Cuba is putting out, even though they have some of the best soil in the world for growing cigars.
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What do people consistently misunderstand about Venezuela? Because people will see the words oil and socialism or communism, whatever in a headline and just lose their mind. And a lot of people, let's say on Reddit, are like, oh, America hated it because they were distributing all the oil wealth to the people. And I'm like, last I checked, people were literally starving to death in Venezuela. So where's that oil money going again? Come on.
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It's basically going into the pockets of the regime now. Venezuela is actually one of the largest producers of bitcoin, believe it or not. And that's because the government subsidizes electricity. So it's very cheap to mine for bitcoin inside of Venezuela. But for a while, I want to say it was in the 2010s. It was never the kind of famine that you might see in Ethiopia, but there were people who were choosing to lay in bed all day, so they didn't expend any calories getting up and moving around. It was literally that hard to find food. The security situation there is pretty bleak. People don't really have any right to assemble. There's these units, and I'm probably going to pronounce it wrong in Spanish. Colectivos.
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Nailed it.
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Which are. These are motorcycle gangs with guns that are sponsored by the Maduro government. And these collectivos will drive around intimidating people so they don't protest or if There's a vote. They might intimidate people to not vote for the opposition. Yeah, the situation there is pretty darn bleak.
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We've got listeners down there and they've said to me that the colectivos, they'll just shoot you if you're out in the street and you're holding a Venezuelan flag and they think, like, you're celebrating Maduro getting kidnapped, they'll just shoot you. They're not going to ask you anything. They'll shoot you and all your friends, they don't care. And I was like, what do these people do? And he said, day to day, they're just criminal gangsters that sell drugs or do human trafficking, but they'll take a check from the police or the government as well. And they have zero accountability. And some of them probably just do it for the love of the game. If you're enough of a psychopath, just go around killing teenagers that you don't like. Why not if you're a crazy fool?
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I mean, it's easy money. I know when people were leaving Venezuela, traveling over Colombia, Maduro sent all these collectivos over to the border to just steal from them as they cross the border, right? Just take from them. And Cuba did the same thing. When people left Cuba, you know, people packed their suitcases. Packed their bags, and the Cubans would just take everyone's suitcases as they left. The Cuban government did that as people fled the country. So, yeah, the collectivos are some pretty bad news.
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So Venezuela's collapse, this is multifactorial, right? This is corruption up to the gills. There's few solid institutions, for example, there's no courts keeping the government honest or anything like that. In fact, I think during the election that was stolen, he basically took out any judge that said, hey, this might not be right. It was like, we know that you're fired, right? There's sanctions, there's mismanagement, there's brain drain, mass immigration just all stacked together. And the fact that Maduro was still in power was only because he was shooting anybody who decided that maybe they should say something about that. And I find it crazy. I mean, the amount of immigration, something like 24% of the population has left since the late 90s. That is just nuts.
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It is absolute madness. And a lot of those people, they would try to go somewhere and send money home. But in a lot of ways, I think Maduro saw this as a safety valve. Let those people leave, they can send money back home. That makes me even less accountable to make sure that My people are being treated well or they have the education, power and needs met.
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If it gets bad enough, your nephew will leave and he'll go get a job at Texas and send you all of his money. What do I care if he's starved? Now that's a good thing. It encourages him to leave. Right? So it's actually almost like an economic engine on. Look, I don't want to dwell too much on Hugo Chavez, but this guy was military colonel, really. He was super charismatic. Do you know about this TV show he had?
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B
I actually do not. You should tell me about this because apparently you do. I mainly do weapons, so this sounds fascinating.
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I think every Saturday he had a TV show that was literally like five hours long sometimes. And he would go on and chat with people and sing songs and dance and chat about whatever and he just performed and he just entertained people. This is the president of the country.
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Ok, this is Chavez or Maduro.
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A
This is Chavez. Hugo Chavez TV show Hugo Chavez Alo Presidente. So like, hello President 1999-2012. It was a long running unscripted talk show hosted by Hugo Chavez, former president of Venezuela. It was broadcast on Venezuelan state television and radio channels on Sundays from 11am until mid to late afternoon. The show is used to promote Chavista socialist principles to supporters in Venezuela and beyond. Many editions were filmed outdoors before large audiences, featuring a local farm, factory, school, hospital, housing project or other public investment. Chavez typically appeared on television several times a week, but this was his opportunity to reach most families on their day off. The show is criticized for his lack of seriousness due to low production values, spontaneous announcements, random contributions from audience members, colorful informality and outright tedium.
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He died in 2012.
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A
Yeah. The reason the show is not on anymore is because he died. That was the only thing that got the show off the air, was that he died. And I remember watching some of this out of curiosity a long time ago and it's silly, it's ridiculous, especially given that it's the president of the country. Anyway, I don't know why even brought that up, but basically this guy was like this charismatic military leader who was also just like a total goofball, which makes him endearing until he kills your family for dissent or something like that.
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B
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, FDR had fireside chats, right? I don't know how long they were. I don't know if they were five hours long. I don't think he was doing any dancing.
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Chavez in 99 rewrites the Constitution. He's granting powers or Authority, basically to issue laws by decree. And I think he did a bunch of these. He did like one round in 2000 or something, and he did 50 decree laws. He basically just said, I don't need this national assembly thing anymore. I'm just going to make the laws myself.
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They still have the national assembly, but he has a lot more power to grant decrees. I believe between 2000, 2001, there were 49 decree laws. And then in 2004, 2005, he started packing the Supreme Court with supporters, which allowed him to appoint judges that would be more favorable of Chavez. So I think it was in 2008, another thing Chavez started doing was he started implementing new gun restrictions. There was an assassination, I believe, two years earlier, an attempted assassination. And he was deathly afraid of civilians with firearms because he did not want to get taken out. So he implemented, I want to say it was in 2008, 8. They started gun registration and creating a master list. And then by 2012, all civilian firearms ownership was banned, which the beginning of the end for any kind of ability for a mass civilian uprising.
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A
That is what Second amendment guys in the United States talk about all the time. This is what authoritarian regimes do. They make sure nobody else has any guns because they're scared.
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B
That was the playbook in Cuba. You know Armapua, right? Armapua. Am I saying that correctly? That I don't know. Supposedly one lieutenant asked Castro, what will we be allowed to keep our firearms? And Castro said, arma pqua. Guns for what?
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Oh, so you're mixing French with Spanish now? All right, okay, got it. I was like, what on earth? I think it's probably arma porque Arma parquet.
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B
Yeah, I. Sorry. I like yo quiero Taco Bell.
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You're the guy. Spanish. At least that was Spanish. Yeah. How did Maduro come to play? Look, I know Chavez died, but Maduro was a bus driver. And I know that it's a socialism thing, like, oh, I'm going to pick a worker, okay, but maybe a worker who knows how to run an administrative office instead of just a bus driver. Not there's anything wrong with bus drivers, but they don't have a lot of political experience generally.
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B
So you're in the right area here. Maduro started out as a bus driver, and then he became like a union storage, like a shop stored. And then he was the leader of the transportation workers Union, and then he got elected to Congress, to their assembly. So he did know a little bit about labor and organizing and all that. And Chavez really liked the guy. In fact, Maduro's father was like a socialist labor organizer as well. So there were some synergies there. And Maduro became vice president. He moved in into the presidential office when Chavez died.
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A
So who is Maduro loyal to? I mean, he's not loyal to the people of Venezuela because he's not given them most of the benefits here. Is he like an ideological socialism is a real deal, or is he kind of like, look, I'm the leader now, I'm going to become a billionaire, I don't really care what happens to everybody else.
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B
That's an excellent question. I mean, I can't see into the man's heart. I'm sure that if you're espousing beliefs as a socialist and you started out as a labor union organizer, you do tend to believe in socialist principles. I'm sure that's still there. But I think maybe he kind of forgot about the whole distributing the wealth to the people thing, and he basically enriched himself and enriched his cronies and enriched certain people in the army and the security forces. One of the things you have to understand is that in any kind of authoritarian state, you have to essentially satisfy three factions. You have to satisfy the ruling elite, the military, and you have to satisfy the police intelligence services, because any of those three organizations can bring you down. So I'm sure that he started out as genuinely believing in socialism, but at some point, when you see all of that oil money, billions of dollars in oil money ripe for the taking, I can certainly see how that might push someone's beliefs more toward kleptocracy.
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Y' all know what time it is. I gotta go kidnap another dictator. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Tonal. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want a habit to stick, you gotta remove the friction. That's why tonal is so good. It gives you the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer right at home on a sleek system mounted to your wall. There's no driving, there's no waiting for machines. There's no I'll do it tomorrow. And what I really love is that tonal takes the thinking out of training. Because honestly, half the battle is figuring out what to do and whether you're even doing it correctly. With tonal, you don't have to plan anything. You just show up, hit play, and go. It also gives you real time coaching cues to dial in your form. And after a quick assessment, it sets the right weight for Every move then adjusts in 1 pound increments as you get stronger. So you're always challenged, but not in that let's blow out your shoulder kind of way. And the variety is really legit. Expert led workouts from strength to arrow hit to yoga and mobility so it doesn't get stale after two weeks. Best part, you can actually see your progress with every workout and that's what keeps you coming back. Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your tonal purchase with promo code jordan. That's t o n a l dot com and use promo code jordan for $200 off your purchase. That's tonal.com promo code jordan for $200off. This episode is also sponsored by Quince. It's cold season and this is when your winter wardrobe has to actually show up. And if you're doing a winter reset, don't waste it on stuff that looks great for two weeks and then starts pilling, stretching and falling apart. And that's why we keep buying from Quints. They make staples with premium materials, thoughtful design and the quality that holds up so you stay warm, you look sharp, and you're not replacing the same basics every season. Quince has everything you need. Men's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, wool coats, leather and suede outerwear that can handle real life and still look good. And their outerwear is especially impressive. Down jackets, wool coats, Italian leather that actually keeps you warm when it's freezing out, not just, you know, kind of chilly out there. And it's not just the materials. They work with trusted factories that meet high standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. Plus, because they cut out the middlemen and the traditional retail markups, you're getting the same quality you'd see from luxury brands at a fraction of the price. I'll put it this way, the wool coat I picked up from Quints, it's holding up way better than the coats I bought in the past that cost way more. It looks great, it keeps me warm and I didn't have to drop a fortune. And the cashmere is crazy soft. It actually holds up in the wash. Refresh your winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to Quince.com Jordan for free shipping on your order and three 65 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Jordan free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Jordan don't forget about our newsletter, y'. All. Wee Bitwiser. It comes out every Wednesday. It's a short message from us to you. It's about a two minute read, maximum. It's actionable, it's specific, it's practical. You can apply it right out of the box. Again, it comes out every Wednesday. Jordanharbinger.com News is where you can find it. I would love to know a little bit about everyday life for normal Venezuelans under Chavez and Maduro, because my best friend was Venezuelan when I was growing up as a kid. This is like the 80s and early 90s. His dad was like a wealthy dude and he said back home things were pretty normal. His mom, of course, had been to Venezuela. She wasn't Venezuelan, but she'd been there. She was like, I was nice and like very modern and clean and things were running well. This is like the 80s. It was like a wealthy, normal place to go. People were not starving in the streets and lighting things on fire. Widening inequality clearly happened at some point.
- [29:05]
B
Yeah, absolutely. The inequality slowly began because there was a difference between people who were connected and people who weren't connected. And a big portion of that was hyperinflation. So hyperinflation hit in like 2016, and this hyperinflation was over 800%. And you can just imagine if you think that something is going to cost more tomorrow than it does today, you're probably going to buy that thing today. And what does that lead to? At least the shortages. Remember when during COVID there's no toilet paper on the shelves, so why are people buying toilet paper? Oh, there's toilet paper there. I better buy it because there might not be any the next time I'm in the store. And in a situation like that where there's all this hyperinflation, you have somebody in power, such as a police officer or even just someone who might grant a permit, like a driver's license. The corruption doesn't become someone stole money. A lot of corruption in the US is of the someone stole money, pay to play kind of thing or I'm going to steal money from this organization. Corruption in Venezuela was more like, the system won't function unless you grease my hand a little bit. I think in some ways a lot of that is intentional because Iran is a similar example. I know a woman who's Iranian and she has been trying to get a passport for years now because she has a piece of property in Iran and she can't sell it unless she gets a passport and goes to Iran and is able to complete this transaction. But in order to do that, she needs a birth Certificate. In order to do that, she has to send away for it and then go to the consulate. And I think a lot of those runarounds, that bureaucracy does two things. The first is it staffs the government with people who will support the government, because at least it's a job. And the second thing is that job becomes an excellent opportunity for graft. Oh, you want your birth certificate? You have to pay me. I can expedite it if you pay me. There was a factory owner and this guy, he couldn't find toilet paper. And the union contract that he had with his workers required that he provide toilet paper in all the bathrooms. So now you got a guy running around the city trying to find toilet paper instead of actually running his business, because if he goes into breach of contract with the union, the government can take his business.
- [31:23]
A
Oh, my God.
- [31:24]
B
And if you have someone running around just constantly doing busy work all the time to satisfy these little tiny bureaucratic states, then it makes it a lot harder to go protest or fight against the government. Like, I can't protest against the government. I gotta freaking wait in line for food. I can't protest against the government. I need to renew my driver's license, and that takes two days. So I think a lot of this is intentional. So the average life of a person in Venezuela is just dealing with all this BS and dealing with people who are in the government who want a payment just to do their jobs.
- [32:00]
A
Yeah, yeah, okay. Venezuela, man, they got 300 billion barrels of oil or something like that. How does having massive oil reserves, how does that make the problems worse? Because a lot of people are like, there's so much money there. This place should be paradise. But the problem is all these oil states, except for Norway, it's a curse, basically.
- [32:22]
B
Yeah. Any country that primarily relies on pulling minerals out of the ground tends to become corrupt, because then there's no incentive to be accountable to taxpayers. You and I, we pay money to the federal government, or in some cases, the state government. And for the most part, if the government doesn't do what we want them to do with that money, we unelect them. I complain a lot that I get taxed 6% where I live in Maryland, but I can go online. I can renew my driver's license online. Right. I don't have to go into the DMV because I do actually get a lot of services. But if there's no incentive to be accountable to the taxpayer, and you have things like foreign contractors providing a lot of the expertise for mineral extraction, then all you really need to do is provide the labor, which is mostly unskilled or semi skilled labor. So you don't necessarily need to make sure your people are educated. You don't necessarily need to have hospitals other than maybe maternity hospitals. Right. Because you still need to keep that birth rate up to keep creating those semi skilled or low skilled workers. You need those people and then you need a small group of people who are the elite, the doctors, the lawyers, the technocrats that help the country run. But you don't necessarily need that big middle class that's well educated because those are the people that can go protest or might get upset if things go wrong. So mineral revenue is basically the prize that makes corruption worth it.
- [33:52]
A
I've done shows about this. I remember talking with. Oh man, his name is Alistair. He wrote the dictator's handbook. Remember that guy?
- [33:58]
B
Yeah. I've been quoting stuff from there. Yeah. When I said the three people that you need to satisfy. Exactly.
- [34:03]
A
This is like straight out of the dictator's handbook. And the reason that. So I went in depth on like why oil and mineral extractive regimes are usually authoritarian shite holes where people get shot in the street. Just generally it's the default. Unless you really have a lot of momentum going in the other direction. Like you're Norway in one of the most sort of progressive societies in the world and you have oil. And then like you mentioned before, Dutch disease, high oil prices, Good times. Everybody gets a government program so that they don't have any problem with the government. But then the party stops because the game of musical chairs goes to shit because the oil price falls. And it's not only are you not getting free education, you aren't getting food because there's no diversified economy and you got major problems. And other businesses can't even get talent because it's all going to the oil company.
- [34:53]
B
The other issue is businesses, they have a hard time competing with oil or mineral extraction. Right. So if I have a factory and I make widgets and I can pay you $10 an hour, but the oil fields pay $12 an hour. Or where are you going to work? Some people will work in the widget factory because maybe it's easier work, but eventually that widget factory is going to have to raise their wages.
- [35:20]
A
Yeah. This is the problem that Russia's having right now. I've got friends there. And basically everybody works at a defense contractor. Like everybody. Yeah, they still have teachers and doctors, but yeah.
- [35:31]
B
And the defense contractors are competing with the army. So the army raises wages or they raise the bonus so the defense contractors have to raise their bonus. And that's why you see 20% inflation inside of Russia.
- [35:42]
A
Yeah, I don't mean like defense contractors per se, but defense related industries, I should say so. Like, everybody's doing something because that's where all the money is. Like, all of it. Okay. Oil production. I was shocked by this. They have the. What is it, first or second largest oil reserves in the world?
- [35:58]
B
I think they have the largest oil.
- [35:59]
A
Reserves, but they produce less than a million barrels a day, which makes no sense to me until you read that those oil derricks are rusty. Right. They haven't been cleaned out since chavez, which is what, 1997.
- [36:12]
B
They have had a lot of reinvestment. Right. You're trying to steal as much as you can before you retire. I'm going to use the Dukes of Hazard analogy. Did you ever watch the Dukes of Hazzard? That TV show?
- [36:24]
A
Hell, yeah, of course.
- [36:25]
B
So Roscoe Coltrane, the sheriff, he was actually a fairly honest sheriff, and then a bond issue failed that would pay for his pension, and he had three years before he was going to retire. So he had three years to make all the money you could steal. And so with something like this, when you're a dictator, the clock on the wall is ticking, right? Are you going to die? Are you going to get deposed? So you have to make as much money as you can steal for that clock hit zero. So why would you reinvest into repairing your oil rigs or buying new stuff or finding new fields when you could take that money? Because one of two things is going to happen, right? You're either going to get deposed and you get killed. You're going to die in your sleep. Or maybe three things. You might get deposed and be able to get on a plane and go to Russia and. And play Fortnite with Assad for the rest of your life.
- [37:18]
A
I was going to say, Putin is collecting dictators. Like my grandma used to collect those matryushka dolls, the nesting dolls. And I was thinking, man, Maduro, he got kidnapped. But if he had gotten to his safe room or whatever and the army started closing in, the special forces would have had to leave without him. But, man, I could just picture Putin screaming, assad, clean your room. Maduro might be coming over and he's definitely sleeping with you. Clean your room anyway, though, because Khomeini might be coming over and he's not slee. Sleep with me. If you run an authoritarian state. Right now, someone in Putin's palace is sweeping the floors and tucking the Sheets in and giving you your Star wars betting all set up. They are ready for your arrival.
- [37:59]
B
Yeah, I mean you're absolutely correct. What really surprises me is that Maduro didn't take the off ramp. There was a theory that maybe this was something we used to do in Iraq where someone was going to self surrender or someone was going to inform on a terrorist organization, Iraq. And instead of them walking to our Ford operating base, we would tell them, just don't worry about it, we'll come to you. And then one night we kick in their door and we grab and we put a bag over their head. He knows it's all for show, but the neighbors don't. And so that was one thing that people said. Oh, maybe Maduro actually self surrendered and they had to do it in a certain way.
- [38:40]
A
I don't think so.
- [38:41]
B
I don't believe that's the case.
- [38:44]
A
Nah, if he was going to do it that way, they would have done something where like his plane took off and the Air Force escorted it to Florida with very little expense, little fanfare, not a big deal. Like it was over international waters. Oh my gosh. They wouldn't send special forces into Caracas after bombing the crap out of the air defenses and do this super risky thing to get him and his wife out of there. There's no way that I do not believe that.
- [39:09]
B
Yeah, you're absolutely correct.
- [39:10]
A
They did give him an off ramp to, I believe it was Turkey. And he basically said, go fly a kite. That's not happening. And then he went on TV and started mocking and dancing and like laughing about it. And I think that just pissed off Trump and his buddies enough where they were like kick this door in extra hard.
- [39:26]
B
I said it was going to happen. A couple days before the events, I actually came out with a Ryan Macbeth 2026 bingo card. I saw that, you know, I had Venezuela as the free space Maduro. He was done. The President cannot drive an aircraft carrier into the Caribbean and put all those ships. I think we have about 20 Navy ships there, plus Coast Guard vessels. Without looking weak in front of Russia and China, if the President backs down. Maduro was going one way or the other. I knew it was only a matter of time.
- [39:56]
A
I think you and I talked over the holidays and you were like, eh, it won't happen before January. I can't remember because Congress isn't in session and it needs to get congressional approval to do anything like this. And then that's not what happened, is it?
- [40:09]
B
It's not our president roles. One of the things we probably should have done was get a general authorization for use of military force just for that area. But unfortunately, I am not a lawyer. I am not a congressman. I'm not on the Supreme Court. So I can't say whether this particular act. You're the lawyer, you should be able to tell me whether this was legal.
- [40:28]
A
I'm only one of those things. And I can tell you that this was definitely not legal. But it doesn't matter because nobody's enforcing anything. That's the bigger problem.
- [40:36]
B
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the thing. There's what is legal or illegal, and then there's what you can get punished for.
- [40:43]
A
Exactly.
- [40:44]
B
Speeding is illegal, but I can speed as long as I don't get caught.
- [40:49]
A
That's right. I want to talk about the Venezuelan military because one of the things I thought was, wow, that happened was this is a massive operation. 40 people were killed. Somehow, 32 of them were Cubans, according to Cuba. So I want to hear about that. But then also we had to repaint one of the helicopters because it had a bullet hole on it. And everybody else was totally fine. We absolutely smoked this mission. The Venezuelan military, are they competent at all? I mean, clearly they don't stand a chance against American soldiers or Marines or Special Forces at all. But is it just. They just do internal security. But isn't internal security, I don't know, controlling your airspace? They have all these Chinese or Russian air defense units. Hey, you might want to plug those in, guys.
- [41:35]
B
Yeah, I mean, so war is hard, right there. There's that war is hard to start with the air defenses. One of the air defense units they have is the Russian S300. It's an older system, not the best system. Ukraine still uses that system, Russia still uses that system. But we have ways of not only jamming that system, but with electronic countermeasures. Aircraft like the growler, the EF18 growler, which effectively jam these systems so that either they can't lock on to aircraft, or once they fire, that missile goes someplace else. We also have something called seed or suppression of enemy air defenses, where when we notice that the enemy radar is emitting, we fire a missile toward that enemy radar. And that missile is called a harm anti radiation missile. That missile goes after the radar signal, so it homes in on the actual radar dish that is sending out radio waves tracking a jet. Now, they have two choices. They can turn the set off and hopefully move. If they do turn it off, the missile remembers where it is and goes there anyway. They can turn the set off or they can keep it on in the hopes that they can either shoot down the incoming missile or still shoot down some of the jets. It is doing anti aircraft work. It's an art, not necessarily a science because you can have different units where they turn on their radar and then turn it off really quick and have another one turn on their radar and turn it off really quick. But when you're facing massed forces, over 150 aircraft, I would imagine quite a few of those were suppression of enemy air defense aircraft. I think they had 18 surface air missile launchers. So 18 of those dealing with all those suppression of enemy air defense aircraft, that's going to be a major problem.
- [43:23]
A
So they were prepared for an invasion from Curaca or Turks and Caicos, not an invasion from the United States.
- [43:30]
B
It can certainly give you a false sense of security. And that's not saying they can't get lucky. During the war in Serbia, Serbians shot down an American F117 Nighthawk with an anti aircraft system. The guy who was doing the air defense, he was just really good and he was able to wait until the stealth fighter opened up its bomb bays. When that happened, the stealth characteristics were gone and he was able to shoot during that time. Took a lot of patience, but he was able to do it.
- [44:01]
A
My buddy's army unit captured the pilot from the United States. It was this guy, Lieutenant Colonel Dale Zelko. In 1999, this FF117 Nighthawk was down. This is the Yugoslav slash Serbian army. And my friend was like, we felt so bad for that guy.
- [44:20]
B
The proximity warhead on a missile doesn't care if you're invisible. Right.
- [44:25]
A
The guy I lived with in Serbia went up on a billboard and they spray painted in Serbian. Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible.
- [44:34]
B
That's pretty funny.
- [44:35]
A
Yeah, they're pretty snarky. It was kind of funny. Yeah. Serbians are good. It's a good time. If they're not shooting at you and maybe even if they are, I don't.
- [44:41]
B
Know, they actually have some really good military equipment, the Serbs, in a lot of ways, because almost kind of like the South Africans because nobody would sell to them. Right. So the Serbians had to develop a lot of their own military equipment like the Lazar, which is an armored personnel carrier. But I know we're here to talk about Venezuela. Yeah. You had mentioned the troops and you know, for the most part, if the troops are essentially just being used to put down protesters, they're not very skillful. You have special forces Guys, they built a compound, they built Maduro's compound and they practiced again and again in order to execute this mission flawlessly. So when you're going up against operators who practice for four months to kill you and they know every single corner, you might be able to get a lucky shot in. But these guys really are the best of the best.
- [45:31]
A
I read about this and they said that Maduro, when this was all going down, they knew exactly where he was, they knew what he had for breakfast, they knew all the places he was going, they knew what kind of pets he had, they knew his night schedule, his morning routine, everything. Of course, because the CIA was on the ground. They said that when they caught him finally, he was already in a safe room trying to close the door. So, like that was a close call. Also, what was their plan if he got in that room and shut the door? Because it sounds like they had 30 second basically window that they almost didn't get him. Were they just going to drop a bunker buster on that thing and then they didn't arrest him, he just turned into pink mist or whatever.
- [46:07]
B
They have charges with them. You blow that door, there'd be ways to get through that door. Look, any safe is really a time delay, right? The question is, how much time do we have in order to penetrate this room? One of the things that I had mentioned in a video I had done was that President Trump, it was on October 15, he said, we have CIA assets in Venezuela. And everyone went, oh my God. Why would he say we have CIA assets in Venezuela? What an idiot. He didn't say it for Americans. He didn't say it to brag. He did it to let the Venezuelans know we are coming. And you can open the door for us or you can be under it when we kick it in.
- [46:50]
A
Now, next time he says there's CIA on the ground in Iran. Now when he utters that phrase, it means I'm getting arrested. At best in 90 days.
- [47:00]
B
It's probably a little bit easier to put CIA on the ground in Venezuela. I don't know how many Persian special operators or CIA agents we have.
- [47:09]
A
We for sure have that. Are you kidding me? Go to la, you can find a few guys there. Just go to the ones that aren't selling necklaces. I love my Persian friends. You go to find one that's not a dermatologist, first we arrest him, then.
- [47:21]
B
We sell on the carpet.
- [47:22]
A
We have Persians. Come on, man. And if we didn't just talk to Israel, the Mossad is probably half Persian or Persian passing Guys, I gotta tell.
- [47:31]
B
You, when I was in Israel, there were quite a few of the guards at the Knesset. I was there with a news channel I work for, and quite a few of the guards, you could tell they weren't Ashkenazi, right? So I would assume they're either Christian or Arabs and they look like straight up killers.
- [47:49]
A
There's a unit that I used to know some guys in Israel, and the name is something like Mishta Ar Ravim, and it basically means living among the Arabs. And they're Sephardic Jews, so Arabic Jews. You ever see Fouda? Remember that show?
- [48:03]
B
Yeah, excellent show.
- [48:04]
A
You know how the guy speaks fluent Arabic and he convinces everybody he's a Paladin Palestinian from the west bank or something like that. It's flawless. These are guys that, like, grew up in Yemen and their families from Yemen, and they are Yemeni culture. They happen to be Jewish. They could go into Yemen and people would be like, oh, yeah, you're one of us. Of course, you got the local accent from our town. It's just completely amazing how well these guys can infiltrate stuff. It's absolutely bananas. Anyway, that's a tangent. All right, we got Maduro. What's going to happen to that guy? Is he sharing a cell with Diddy? Exchanging petroleum for baby oil?
- [48:37]
B
Yeah, I mean, I guess we took both of their oil.
- [48:40]
A
That's right. That's right. They're having their own oil party in Rikers island. Ok, we left the vp, Rodriguez, Delsey Rodriguez, I believe is her name. She's still in charge. So a lot of people are saying, like, hey, what good does this do? The whole regime is still in place. The armed forces are still in place, the VP's still in place. Are we just thinking they're going to be more amenable to getting bribed or whatever, or to the carrot or the stick to do what the United States wants?
- [49:07]
B
Now, I think that the idea is Delsey Rodriguez is mainly a technocrat. She did run the oil side of the oil exploitation side of Venezuela for quite a few years. And she was the vice president, so she manages a lot of that stuff. She knows where all the bodies are buried and how the oil extraction process works in the country. One of the issues that we had in Iraq and I guess in Afghanistan as well, we listened to people like Nouriel Maliki in Iraq and Hamid Karzai, and these people said, oh, the people love me, the people want me back, the people want me here. And what happens when we arrive in Iraq? The people don't know who Nouriel Maliki is? He hasn't been here. And Hamid Karzai was basically the mayor of Kabul. So the thing is, in 2024, Edmundo Gonzalez, he won Venezuela's last election and Maduro essentially said, no, you didn't. And he was a stand in for a woman named Maria Carina Machado. And both of those people left the country. And Maria Carino Machado, she was one who won the Nobel Peace Prize and thanked President Trump thinking, o, he's the guy who's going to bring me in. The problem is that if either Gonzalez and Machado, if they walk off the C17 escorted by Marines, the Venezuelan army and the Venezuelan police are not going to respect them. They're going to consider them to be American puppets.
- [50:44]
A
It's going to look bad if we put our own people in charge after arresting the leader.
- [50:48]
B
Especially people who've been out of the country have been risking their butts like everybody else in Venezuela. Like I said, Ahmed Karzai and Nouriel Maliki, who, oh, yes, I'm going to go in and they're going to be throwing roses at me. And that didn't work out. So I think we, for once we learned our lessons. And actually, I will tell you this, going back to military stuff for a second, we fought an insurgency for 20 some years. One of the things we're really good at is finding where a bad guy is, kicking in the door and grabbing him. That's something we essentially practiced for 20 years. This was absolutely inevitable. And that's one thing we learned from the global war on terror, along with maybe we shouldn't take the outsider and put them in a position of power.
- [51:37]
A
Nothing says, we'd love to work with you in a mutually beneficial relationship quite like Delta Force blasting down your steel reinforced doors at 4 o'clock in the morning. Fighter jets and crack commandos don't come cheap, though. So let's prop up our economy by supporting the amazing sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Simplisafe. When it comes to home security, you want to feel like you picked the system that actually keeps trouble away, not one that just sends you a notification after something bad already happens. That's why I like Simplisafe. It isn't just another alarm. It's designed to help stop crime before it starts. SimpliSafe uses AI powered cameras outside your home that can spot real threats and instantly alert live monitoring agents. So if somebody's creeping around your property, the agent can talk to them through the camera. Basically, hey, we see you. Police are on the way. And if that person doesn't get the hint, Simplisafe can blast a siren and light them up with a spotlight. That's the kind of deterrent that makes most people decide very quickly to go find an easier target. It's not just record and hope. It's detect, respond, deter. Simplisafe's monitoring agents have your back. Even when you're busy, you're asleep, you're on a plane somewhere. They're protecting over 5 million Americans and they've been named the best home security systems by U.S. news & World Report for five years in a row. So if you've been meaning to level up your home security or you just want that peace of mind that somebody's actively watching out for your place, Simplisafe is the move. And right now you can get 50% off any new system this month.
- [52:55]
B
Only. It's a great time to upgrade.
- [52:57]
A
To security that actually helps stop crime before it starts. Go to SimpliSafe.com Jordan right now to claim your discount. That's SimpliSafe.com Jordan this episode is also sponsored by Progressive. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. I've got homes.com as a sponsor for this episode. Homes.com knows what when it comes to home shopping, it's never just about the house or the condo. It's about the homes. And what makes a home is more than just the house or property. It's the location. It's the neighborhood. If you got kids, it's also schools, nearby, parks, transportation options. That's why homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in depth information they need to find the right home. It's so hard not to say home every single time. And when I say in depth information, I'm talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood, complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings, student teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with the sales history of each agent. So when it comes to finding A home, not just a house. This is everything you need to know all in1place.homes.com We've done your homework. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and Clickable over@jordanharbinger.com deals and if you can't remember the name of a code or you can't find a code or you're not sure if there is a code, feel free to email us jordanordanharbinger.com we are happy to surface codes for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of our out of the loop here with Ryan Macbeth. One thing that's interesting is they did indict him, right, for drug trafficking, narco terrorism related charges. And they're also hitting him with this possession of a machine gun essentially, which is funny because so the way this charge works, this is like some stupid lawyer thing, but whatever. Maybe nobody else thinks this is funny, but in order to get this charge, you don't have to have a machine gun. If I get hit with that charge, it's not like I have the machine gun in my hands or in my kitchen. It's that somebody associated with me in whatever crime I was doing, whatever criminal organization, they had a machine gun that they were using in the crime of drug trafficking or narco terrorism. So you're taking this guy who controls a literal army with a navy and air force anti aircraft missiles and like thousands of weapons and rockets and everything and you're like, hey man, I know you had a machine gun when you were doing those crimes and you're like a machine. Yes, I, yes, I had a machine gun. I have thousands of them and grenades and missiles and everything in a boat that launches them. So it's this sort of funny add on charge that you see when you, you hit like a crip with this or a guy in the bloods when he's dealing drugs and possession of a machine gun. Damn. There's three extra years on the sentence and we're adding that to Maduro. It's kind of like charging somebody. You have done capital murder and you're a serial killer and we found a bag of weed in your car. So you're getting life plus two and a half months. It's just a silly, stupid add on charge that kind of looks funny even in the indictment, you're like, what? Why bother with that? I don't. It's just.
- [56:23]
B
Silly. That's a good one. I know that the charges were actually filed in 2020. One of the last things that the Biden administration did was increase the reward for Maduro's capture to $25 million. That was kind of interesting when Vice President Harris went on Twitter and said, how dare Trump grab Maduro? Wait a minute. Wasn't one of the last things your government did increase the reward by $25 million? That's one of the issues I can kind of see with this country now. Even if, you know, we should take the win on this one, everyone in America should go like, good job, Special Forces. We got a bad guy out of power. We have the potential for degrading China's influence in our hemisphere. Yeah. This should be something both Republicans and Democrats should agree on, was a good thing. And honestly, Biden probably would have done it if he had thought of it first. Yeah, he's the guy who raised the.
- [57:19]
A
Reward.
- [57:19]
B
Yeah. I think we need to stop sharpshooting each other and come together as Americans for the.
- [57:24]
A
Win. Can we sort of steel, man, what people are saying, like, this is really terrible. This is bad. We shouldn't have done this. Because I'm with you, where I'm like, I love a good bad guy takedown, but I'm also like, okay, people who say this is terrible and an escalation, they have a.
- [57:40]
B
Point. Well, I think what's terrible is that we didn't get an authorization for use of military.
- [57:45]
A
Force. Yeah, I agree with.
- [57:46]
B
That. That sets a really bad precedent because President Trump won't be in office forever. And the next guy who is in office who decides, you know what, I want to invade this country over here without authorization of Congress, he might actually do that. He or she might actually do that. And that authorization for use of military force is necessary because then the president has to go to Congress and make the case. I said in a couple of my videos, I don't mind doing this because of the China connection, but the president needs to make the case. The president needs to get the authorization for use of military force, and Congress has not done its job. They've been asleep at the wheel when it comes to the checks and balances that our nation depends.
- [58:28]
A
On. Yeah, I completely agree. There's certainly a portion of this, I'm thinking that basically wanted to signal to China, hey, we don't care if you have influence in our backyard. We're not going to allow that. And also to Russia, you have influence in our backyard. We don't like that. And by the way, your weapons are.
- [58:46]
B
Trash. Yeah, I mean, if there was a nail in the coffin, it would certainly be this. At least when it comes to surface to air missile systems, because the Iranians are using Russian made surface to air missile systems as well. If Russia ever recovers from their war in Ukraine, nobody is going to buy their stuff. If I were in a democracy or even like a semi democratic country where people really are accountable in the legislature and someone said, hey, we should buy these Russian T72 tanks, I know that if I agree to that, the next time I'm up for election, people are going to be showing footage of Russian tanks blown up with their turrets popped off in Ukraine and they're going to go, senator Bongo wants to buy this horrible Russian equipment. Vote for this other senator. So when you look at the performance of Russian equipment in Venezuela, that doesn't really bode well for the Russian arms industry and that Russia can ever recover and actually export arms again because right now everything is going towards Ukraine. They essentially can't export.
- [59:53]
A
Anything. I do think Russia actually took a bit of a win here because they can now go, yeah, we invaded Ukraine, but look, they went and arrested Maduro. They're no better than us. I see key differences in these two things, but they're going to say, hey, the international law that you guys talk about all the time, you clearly don't care about that.
- [60:12]
B
Either. You're absolutely right. There is a woman, she's a Russian American. Her name's Ksenia Tarakova. I've worked with her on various projects before. And Ksenia keeps an eye on the Russian news media. And she said that Russia has already been showing their citizens, look, this is what America does now on the world stage. I don't really think it matters because it's not like other countries are going to go, oh, look, America did it, so Russia can do it too. Kind of like that Tyler Perry movie. I can do bad all by myself. Russia doesn't need an excuse. Russia can do bad all by themselves. So can China. Doesn't need an excuse to take over Taiwan. But from an internal standpoint, this really is a win for Russia because they can say to their people, look, America is no.
- [60:59]
A
Different. Exactly. Although ignore the part about how they didn't lose anybody and it took three hours and we're in Ukraine for three years and we're on 500,000 dead or whatever the heck it is at this.
- [61:09]
B
Point. Not just that, but look at when Russia tried to take over Hostomel Airport. They performed an air assault really similar to what we did in Caracas. And they flew into Hostile Airport, which is a little bit northwest of Kyiv. And they had to do it at dawn because they didn't have enough night vision goggles for their pilots and their men. And they didn't have enough training flying at night. Whereas the 60th soar, which is the Night Stalkers, the unit that flew these operators in, that's all they do is fly it. These guys fly at night all the time. Imagine looking through two rolled up magazine tubes that are tinted green, you know, and trying to fly a helicopter. I've flown a helicopter before. It is very hard. It's very hard. And these guys, they're the kinds of guys that can hover inches off the ground and keep it steady while their operators jump out because they don't want to land because they don't know if the roof will collapse or there might be a mine on top of the ground or whatever. And these guys are really that good. And Russia, look, you get what you pay for. If you're not constantly training like the 1/60th does, you're just not going to see that level of performance out of your.
- [62:22]
A
Pilots. I would love to counter the people who say this is just about oil, because yes, we do need the grade of oil that Venezuela pumps. It's the kind we are set up to refine in the United States. But it's going to take eight years to get that stuff back up online. This infrastructure is just trashed right now. And digging wells, especially offshore stuff, and deep enough in pipelines and infrastructure to the ports and the containers, I mean, this is not something even if you work 24, 7, at rapid pace, as fast as you can, you're talking about half a decade before you've really ramping this stuff up. It's going to be crazy. It's going to take.
- [62:57]
B
Forever. You're absolutely correct. When you look at it. You have companies like Exxon, and I'm sure it would be great to go down to Venezuela, but we got plenty of capacity coming from fracking in North Dakota, right? So why would we go down to Venezuela and invest money in something? It's going to take five to seven years to get any kind of return on investment and it might get.
- [63:24]
A
Seized again by the next guy who gets elected in Venezuela, which they've done.
- [63:28]
B
Before. That could theoretically happen. And in five years, assuming there's no third President Trump term, which I don't think is going to happen. But let's say the White House flips and you have a person who enters the White House who doesn't feel like we need to have the same sort of Dun Roe doctrine. Those oil companies might be out of luck. So there's going to have to be some incentives for them to go down there and pump some oil, as well as some security guarantees as.
- [63:55]
A
Well. It still seems like this chess move makes sense even if Venezuela was exporting.
- [64:01]
B
Avocados. Strawberries. Absolutely. And that's something a lot of people don't seem to understand because people go, oh, the oil. And again, President Trump didn't help when he goes off script and goes, we're going to take the oil and we're going to. Oh, God. Why did you say that? It's just the fact that we're cleaning house in our own hemisphere and denying China and Russia and Iran access to that. There were Iranians who are coming to Venezuela. They get that diplomatic passport. Now you have Hezbollah guys who can travel all around the world on a diplomatic passport issued by Venezuela. That is not a situation that we want going on in our own.
- [64:40]
A
Backyard. What happens next, man? A little bit of oil volatility maybe, but probably not too much of that. What about opposition parties in Venezuela? Is the era of socialism over? I know Iranians are like, hey, we're protesting over here, too. You want to drop in with your night stalkers and help a brother out? I mean, I see that kind of talk online as.
- [64:59]
B
Well. That would be a little bit harder. You know, Iran is fairly mountainous. I can tell you that probably the most realistic outcome is a managed transition where you have security forces mostly staying intact because they honestly want the paycheck and eventually some sort of negotiated political settlement where they hold free and fair elections. Maybe even with American observers. You have free and fair elections, and those people who are elected can then move toward weaning Venezuela off whatever socialist experiment they were in. That is the most realistic, best.
- [65:38]
A
Outcome. Yeah, I was going to say that's the good outcome. What else could happen? What's the worst case.
- [65:42]
B
Scenario? Oh, boy. The bad outcome is, let's say, in a power vacuum. So Maduro is gone and maybe oil revenue isn't going out like it was, or maybe different people have to get paid off. Now you have these motorcycle gangs and these guys essentially become free agents. And now you don't see Venezuela turn into Iraq, because in Iraq, there was a lot of secretarian violence, Sunni and Shia. The Sunnis were a minority, but they were in Power. The Shia were a majority. They were not in power and they were. Iraq was essentially a civil war for probably about six years. That you're not going to see that in Venezuela. You're not going to see a civil war because there's really no secretarian divide there. But I can easily see it turning into Libya with all of these fiefdoms run by warlords, most likely narco warlords. Right. Because they're getting their funding somehow. And then you have this legitimacy crisis where you have the president who is essentially the mayor of Caracas. Everyone is afraid to go out into the jungle because that's where all the gangs are. I can see that as a possible worst.
- [66:55]
A
Outcome. Jeez. Oh, my gosh. I hope it works out better than that. The reaction from Venezuelans has been interesting. There's people in Venezuela celebrating. There's Venezuelans in United States celebrating. And there's no polling data on this or anything, but like the majority of people are doing. Do they see this as a liberation chaos, foreign power meddling that they'd rather not deal with? Because if you're suffering and you've been starving and stuff like that, and you have no medical care, you might feel a little bit hopeful. But if you're an older person who is just thinking you have five more years and maybe you can survive it, this might not be a shock to the system that you really.
- [67:29]
B
Needed. I think you're seeing a wide range of possibilities here. For 25 years, Venezuela has been socialist, right? You have people who've never seen democracy. Maybe some of the older people might be cautiously optimistic about what might happen. The younger people might kind of wonder, what is this whole democracy thing? How does that actually change? I've got my TikTok, I've got my friends, I never get in trouble with the police. What's the big deal? Maybe it's not a big deal until you want a family or you want a stable job, you want a good job after you get an education. I think if you're risk sensitive, like you're an elderly pensioner or something, you're probably going to fear any kind of instability, especially if consumer goods start flooding back into the country, sanctions get lifted, consumer goods start flooding into the country. Now you might see prices rise because now you have money chasing, you know, more oil, money gets produced, more money chases those new consumer goods. I think you might be able to see prices rise and so pensioners might go crap. It might not be as bad as 800% hyperinflation, but if you have a Certain dollar value to your pension. There's not a lot of elasticity there if you're in the regime. That's a good question. Because one big problem that we had in Iraq was what we called de Baathification. The Baath Party was Saddam Hussein's party. And Paul Bremer, the genius that he was, and I said that sarcastically after the. On the third day of the occupation, he said, if you're in the bath party, you're fired. And essentially everybody who knew how the water treatment plant worked walked off the job. So if you're in the regime, you're probably going to be thinking, like, I need to play along no matter what happens. You don't want to rock the boat too much. I don't really see people grabbing their AK100 ones and going and fighting for Maduro because Maduro wasn't really fighting for.
- [69:31]
A
Venezuela.
- [69:32]
B
AK101. Yeah. I believe that's their assault rifle that they use in the Venezuelan army.
- [69:38]
A
Huh. I know there's 47 and I know there's 74 because I play Call of Duty. I never heard of the.
- [69:42]
B
101. So for belongs to the AK100 family. It's kind of a new rifle, floating barrel developed in 1994. Uses.556 by 45. So, yeah, it's a smaller cartridge, intermediate cartridge. And I believe Venezuela bought or I think they have a licensed manufacturer and they manufactured like a million of these. So there's a heck of a lot of these things floating around South America or at least floating around.
- [70:11]
A
Venezuela. You can probably get one real cheap right now if you want one for your collection. I didn't mean to derail you. This is an interesting and very sort of frankly fascinating developing situation. Do you think we're going to continue to drone boats coming out of there, or is that kind of.
- [70:25]
B
Over? I don't really know. That is a really good.
- [70:31]
A
Question. I guess we'll see. But it seems like the point of that might have been to, like, rattle Maduro a little bit. Now he's already. He's.
- [70:37]
B
Gone. Yeah. Honestly, that's a tough one. It might have been to rattle Maduro. I could see us not striking these boats anymore because our objective has been realized. Maybe that won't happen anymore. I don't know what kind of debt we put in the actual drug market by destroying 20.
- [70:55]
A
Boats. Oh, none. No. I read up on the narco traffic from Venezuela. It's a drop in the bucket. It's not a real.
- [71:02]
B
Player. I would imagine it would be more Colombia for the processing. I know it is a fact that the FARC engages in cocaine production and trafficking in some of the jungles near the Colombian border. That is 100% obvious. I often thought those boats that we were hitting, they might have been going out to a mothership. Right. There's an oil tanker that's headed over to Europe. I'm going to carry a bunch of bales of drugs. Pull up next. This mothership. We're going to throw these bales onto the mothership. The Filipinos are operating the ship. They don't care as long as they get paid. Bring whatever you want. And they put that stuff in the hold and it goes over to Europe. So I'm not sure how much of a dent we really made in the drugs being imported into the US but it could have been done to rattle Maduro. You're absolutely right. That was actually one of the big issues that I had with this whole venture, was that we never really explained why this was.
- [71:58]
A
Necessary. Yeah. All right, last question. When Trump said, something's got to be done about Cuba, what do we think is happening here? Are we actually going to do something about it? Or is it just, like, I got a chance to scare the shit out of Fidel Castro and his cronies, like, I'm going to do.
- [72:12]
B
It? Yeah. We saw that movie, the Bay of.
- [72:15]
A
Pigs.
- [72:16]
B
Yeah. I could see us perhaps giving Cuba a little push right now. We're coming off a high. Right. That raid was so amazing. Then two days later, the President's talking about invading Greenland.
- [72:30]
A
Yeah. Take the win, take the W. Right.
- [72:33]
B
Yeah. Now we're talking about Greenland. It's certainly possible that we could give Cuba a little bit of a push, but I don't know how ready the Cuban people might be to accept any kind of Yankee imperialism. They might know that their lives aren't that great, but they've had to deal with the U.S. sanctioning their country since, I believe, 1963 was it. Since the early 1960s. Right. We've sanctioned Cuba. And in fact, I think one of John F. Kennedy's last things he did was he bought a thousand cigars from Cuba before he signed the order sanctioning Cuba. So he was good, at least for the rest of his.
- [73:17]
A
Life. Yeah. It's interesting. The Cuban people might not be ready for Yankee imperialism with the Venezuelans ready for Yankee imperialism. Or you just think it's a different situation.
- [73:25]
B
Because. I think it's a different situation because they've experienced wealth and.
- [73:29]
A
Democracy. That's true. Nobody alive in Cuba has experienced any sort of prosperity at any point, really, that's probably.
- [73:36]
B
Accurate. I guess as Americans, we have this conceptualization that everyone wants to be free and people are imagining like, oh, wouldn't it be great if I could speak my mind? And that's one of those things that sounds good to us. But for the average Cuban who just. They need to get to work and they need to find food and they need to do this, oh, it's democracy now. Okay, does this mean I get food? There could be that whole situation where democracy comes and you have winners and you have losers, and you look at Russia, right? I mean, there were some real winners and some real losers. In fact, there were a couple of winners and the rest of the country was the loser when all those pyramid schemes came out after the fall of the Soviet Union. I would certainly imagine that if we push Cuba over into some sort of fall of the Cuban regime, It's the Pottery Barn rule that Colin Powell mentioned. You break it, you buy it. You break it, you own it. And Venezuela might be able to take care of themselves, but Cuba is a freaking basket.
- [74:39]
A
Case. It is. My God, I went there, and I'll never forget the things that they told us versus the things that we saw with our own lying eyes. It was just like, everyone has free health care and you get free clothing and you get free school. All right, we're going to stop at this bathroom over here and bring pencils because the kids here don't have any. Why is everyone naked? They don't really have clothing. What the hell.
- [75:00]
B
Man? Yeah, I've heard when you run the Havana Marathon, it's tradition to give your shoes to somebody at the.
- [75:06]
A
End. That doesn't surprise me at all, the things I saw there. And then our tour guide was like, you don't understand. You don't understand. And I was like, maybe I don't understand, but I don't know. This is what I'm seeing. And then three years later, he escaped to the United States. I emailed him, and I was like, so mostly bullshit. And he's like, what do you want me to do? I'm a tour guide for the government of Cuba. Anyway, Miami's nice these days. I'm happy to be here. That was really, really crazy to see. Ryan. Thank you so much, man. This is fascinating. I'm so curious what is going to happen next with this? And I just. I really hope that the positive outcomes that we outlined are more on the menu than the disasters that could come out of this. We'll.
- [75:42]
B
See. I'M going to use my Arabic and say, inshallah.
- [75:45]
A
Mm. There we go. Thank you very.
- [75:47]
B
Much. Thank.
- [75:47]
A
You. You're about to hear a preview with Ken Burns, who says the real American Revolution wasn't a clean break from Britain, but a messy, violent civil war whose contradictions we are still debuggin 250 years later. A good story neutralizes the binary yes and no. You know, you're bad. Left, right, young, old, rich, poor. Whatever the dialectic is you're involved in, a good story can sort of neutralize it and go, oh, wow, I didn't know that. There's no test we'd share with you our process of discovery. So all the stuff I've said about the revolution, I had no idea going in. And I. I am so overwhelmed with the joy of acquiring it that giving it away feels even better. The ideas are really, really powerful at the heart of this, the idea that you could be a citizen, that you could have a say in your government after your family has worked the land for a thousand years for somebody else, and all of a sudden you come here and you own some land and farm and you can do this, and you're literate. Democracy. Democracy is a really messy form of government, but it's better than all the other forms because the other forms involve a kind of tyranny or authoritarian certainty. Democracy is messy because you actually have to listen to people that you disagree with and you have to compromise. When that breaks down, then you lose the possibility of having it. America comes out of violence. It's born in violence. What would you guys do? What would I do? Would I be a loyalist? Would I be a patriot? What would I be willing to fight against? Fight for what? Would I be willing to give my life and all that I've accumulated in my life, my fortune? Would I do that? We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. For more on what else we've been getting wrong about our own origin story, check out episode 1238 with Ken Burns. This episode forces you to confront the version of America you didn't learn in school. All right, if there's one takeaway here, it's that Venezuela didn't collapse because of one villain or one policy. It collapsed because oil rents replaced accountability. Institutions got hollowed out. Competence got replaced with loyalty. And once the money dried up, the regime compensated with control. And for Americans, Venezuela isn't a distant cautionary tale. It's a pressure point. Energy markets, migration flows, criminal networks, and a strategic backyard problem right next to critical shipping lanes and the Gulf coast refining complex. That mix doesn't stay contained just because we want it to. As always, we'll keep watching what happens next. Whether this turns into a managed transition with an off ramp for the people who currently hold the guns and the keys, or whether the vacuum turns into a gray zone, free for all, where ordinary people get squeezed between politics and criminals. Show Notes on the website Advertisers Deals Discount codes Ways to support the show on the website as well@jordanharbinger.com deals please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee BitWiser and our six minute networking course as well. I'm ordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or connect me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in geopolitics, Venezuela, South America, oil dictators, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps.
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B
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