National Security and the Deep State: VDH Interviews Adam Lovinger

Summary

Summary of "National Security and the Deep State: VDH Interviews Adam Loevinger"
The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Release Date: January 18, 2025
Guests: Adam Loevinger

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Victor Davis Hanson Show, host Victor Davis Hanson engages in an in-depth conversation with Adam Loevinger, the author of The Insider Threat: How the Deep State Undermines America From Within. Loevinger, drawing from his extensive experience within the U.S. security apparatus, offers a critical examination of the internal challenges facing American national security.

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Background and Motivation

Victor Hansen [02:42]:
Adam Loevinger serves over twelve years in the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon, an elite strategy office dedicated to ensuring American preeminence in global strategic competitions. The Office of Net Assessment was established post-Vietnam War to prevent strategic missteps in future conflicts.

Loevinger recounts his tenure under the mentorship of Andy Marshall, a legendary figure who pioneered the discipline of Net Assessment within the federal bureaucracy. During the Obama administration, Loevinger observed significant shifts within the Office, including attempts to shut it down and replace its leadership to align with what he terms the "Obama doctrine" of U.S. diminishment.

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The Deep State and Internal Threats

Adam Loevinger [07:41]:
Loevinger discusses the rise of anti-American sentiment within influential institutions, particularly on Ivy League campuses. He argues that this internal anti-nationalism has permeated government agencies, leading to policies that inadvertently strengthen America's adversaries—China, Russia, and Iran—by advocating for a balance of power that, in his view, diminishes American influence.

Notable Quote [10:17]:
"If you adopt the balance of power view, it's like it's really cutting America's power down and raising that of our adversaries. And that's something that is very dangerous."

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Impact of the Obama and Trump Administrations

Loevinger critiques the Obama administration for policies he believes undermined U.S. strategic interests, particularly in the Middle East. He highlights the Iran nuclear deal's sunset clauses as a means to balance nuclear capabilities between Iran and Israel, suggesting that it was designed to normalize Iran at Israel's expense.

Transitioning to the Trump administration, Loevinger expresses cautious optimism. He recounts initial efforts by National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and himself to realign the Office of Net Assessment with genuine strategic objectives. However, Loevinger faced intense opposition, including five investigations launched against him, which he attributes to deep-seated bureaucratic resistance against reform.

Notable Quote [19:06]:
"The very pathology that the office was created to stop was running rampant. And there was nothing this office is really doing."

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Weaponization of Federal Processes

Loevinger details how federal investigative processes were weaponized against him, particularly by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, leading to baseless investigations. He emphasizes the destructive impact of such actions on individual careers and the broader implications for accountability within the government.

Notable Quote [26:32]:
"If the law could be ignored, it's just, you know, all for naught, and it's a very sad commentary. This should not happen in America."

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Current Administration's Approach and Future Prospects

Discussing the incoming Trump administration's potential to address the deep state's influence, Loevinger expresses hope that genuine outsiders with fresh perspectives will be appointed to key positions. He underscores the necessity of dismantling corrupt elements within the national security bureaucracy to restore effective governance and strategic prowess.

Notable Quote [31:19]:
"Trump is bringing in, you know, genuine outsiders who have a fresh perspective... But he's mixing that in with insiders who have experience."

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Foreign Adversaries and Internal Corruption

Loevinger warns of the severe threats posed by foreign adversaries infiltrating American institutions. He cites the FBI Director's recent statements on Chinese infiltration as indicative of broader security vulnerabilities. Loevinger connects internal corruption with external manipulation, arguing that adversaries exploit internal weaknesses to influence U.S. policies and decisions adversely.

Notable Quote [45:29]:
"If you have this worldview that America is bad... you're allowing our enemies to come in and destroy us."

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Reception and Controversy

Upon releasing his book, Loevinger anticipated significant backlash due to his explosive claims, including allegations of collaboration between national security officials and foreign adversaries. Surprisingly, he encountered considerable silence, though he maintains that his documented assertions demand accountability and transparency within the government.

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Conclusion

Adam Loevinger's The Insider Threat serves as a critical exposé on the internal challenges undermining American national security. Through his firsthand experiences and incisive analysis, Loevinger calls for a reinvigoration of strategic oversight and a purge of corrupt elements within the deep state to preserve U.S. preeminence on the global stage.

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For More Information:
The Insider Threat is available on Amazon, Encounter Books website, Barnes & Noble, and other major platforms. Adam Loevinger is associated with the Gold Institute for International Strategy and can be reached via LinkedIn for further discussions.

Transcript

[Victoria]

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[Victor Hansen]

Hello, this is Victor Hansen for the Victor Davis Hanson show and I'm here alone today. Jack's not with us, nor is Sammy, but we're doing one of our often scheduled interviews with authors and today we're going to talk to Adam Loevinger. And he's got this book that came out from Encounter Press, another one of Roger Kimball's brilliant edited and selected books, how the Deep State Undermines American From When, from within. And that's the subtitle and the main one is the Insider Threat. And I read this in November and I've read it since. It's a fascinating book from Mr. Lovinger's experience within the security apparatus of the United States. And we're going to have him just for, oh, five minutes, give us some idea of what made him write the book and what he saw when he was working for government. And Adam, why don't you go ahead, introduce yourself to us and then give us a brief synopsis.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity, Victor. So I served for over a dozen years in the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon and the Office of Net Assessment. It's really, I would call it the highest level strategy office in the U.S. department of Defense and the office that emerged out of the Vietnam War and the recognition that America really didn't have an understanding of the strategic context of that war. You know, what were we fighting for? How did, how did the Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese see America? How did we see them? How did it fit into the greater Cold War? There's now quite a recognition that we didn't really understand what we were doing in that war. And so the office of necessity emerged out of that to ensure that we never really entered wars in the future without an understanding of the strategic context. And the real purpose of this office is to ensure American preeminence. The whole idea is to keep America in a position where we can shape the long term strategic competition with our adversaries. What happened, what I saw, Victor, particularly during the Obama years, I was a civil servant in this office. So I saw the office change hands. I was appointed during the Bush administration. I was in the office for eight years of the Obama administration. And what I saw during that time, there were two attempts to shut the office down by the Obama Pentagon. And then when the office, when there was so much resistance to shutting the office down, there was an attempt to sort of decapitate the leadership and put in place somewhere who was more in line with the Obama doctrine, which is something I describe in the book as more of like a policy, a strategy of US Diminishment. So I wrote this book to answer your question, because when I was detailed over to the National Security Council and the Trump administration, General Michael Flynn made it very clear to me that this office had gone off the rails. It was no longer producing net assessments, it was no longer doing what America needed to ensure that we were the preeminent power in the world so we could shape the strategic competition with our adversaries. And my job was to put this office back on track, but from the National Security Council. And that's when I experienced what I called the Deep State attacking me. Something I didn't like the word at the time. And I didn't even think that something as lawless as the Deep State could exist. But. But I encountered it and.

[Victor Hansen]

I was a visiting professor at the U.S. naval Academy from 2002 and 3. And I went, I think it was every two months to office of Net Assessment when Andy Marshall ran it right, and he was quite unique in that the time everybody was worried about the lead up to the Iraq War, but most of his interest was on China even then. And a lot of people thought that was kind of eccentric, but it was actually prescient. And when he would visit the Hoover Institution on occasion, I would, I really liked him. But did you come in, in the post Andy Marshall era or were you there when he was still in the last years of his tenure? Yeah.

[Adam Loevinger]

So for a decade, Andy Marshall was my mentor and I worked directly under him in the Office of Net Assessment. Andy Marshall is a legendary figure. He was brought over by Henry Kissinger from the rand Corporation in 1971 to the National Security Council. And then when his friend Jim Schlesinger became the Secretary of defense in 1973, he brought Marshall over to set up the Office of Net Assessment and really create the discipline of Net Assessment, which to my knowledge is the only real discipline to have been created in a federal bureaucracy. There may be others, but this is, this is the one, the only one I know.

[Victor Hansen]

One of the questions I had about your book is that you not only suggest that in the Obama years in particular, that there was a naivete or even sort of a nihilism about the threat of China, Russia and Iran, but there were even people that, within the apparatus of government that either were sympathetic to these particular adversaries of the United States or they might have had business concessions with them. Why don't you elaborate on that a little bit? That, yeah, it wasn't just the external threat. It was people within this administrative state that were either too naive to understand it or they knew it very well, but they were ambiguous about what their, their loyalties were.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah. So a lot of Americans, I mean, have been watching with some surprise and I think even horror at a lot of these protests that have been taking place on Ivy League university campuses, up at Columbia, for example, other schools. And I've been shocked with the degree of anti Americanism that is exhibited in these protests. And I did not write my book anticipating these protests. However, this view that America is a imperialist oppressor, or as Barack Obama has called America a racist country, this self flagellation, this view that America is too preeminent, is too powerful, is imperialist, is subjugating other non Western countries. As this view percolates throughout institutions, it's inevitable that it ends up being held by government officials in high office in the national security bureaucracy. And if you assume, if you take the position that America is a bad country, the next sort of logical thing to do when you're a policymaker is to hurt America, to knock it down a bit. And so what I saw, Victor, during the Obama administration was this adoption of A view that America needed to be restrained and it needed to have its wings clipped. And the sort of the prevailing, you know, euphemism at the time was we needed more of a balance of power in the world. And you know, the balance of power, this is a very old concept. You know, Kissinger talks a lot about this historically but it's a preposterous notion as a policy objective when America's position, you know, particularly after the Cold War and you know, you know, I would say even up to this day, but were more contested by China when the power differential is so, so large between America and our adversaries. If you adopt the balance of power view, it's like it's really cutting America powers power down and raising that of our adversaries. And that's something that is very dangerous. It might sound good to various people that oh there's balance. Balance is a wonderful word. We all like balance. But you know, if you permit America's adversaries, strategic adversaries, namely the Chinese, Iranians or Russians to, to shape the global security environment, that's a, that's a pretty bad situation for, for freedom loving democracies.

[Victor Hansen]

Let me break down in a synopsis of some of your chapters. So how that breaks down is, and maybe we could take maybe the most notorious attempt at balancing power in the Middle east vis a vis Iran. So you're in the office of Net Assessment. This new administration comes in with sort of a vague, it's not very explicit of what its real intentions are for the first couple. But it becomes clear to you and others that they feel in the Middle east the United States has been maybe a bully or one sided and that we need sort of strategic tension. That's a euphemism. So we're going to almost favor Shia theocratic Iran on the principle that, and I'm just outlining from your book and what I think was covered in the media pretty well, that the Tehran, Damascus, Beirut, West Bank, Hamas, Houthi axis was kind of the underdogs in a community organizers mindset of Obama, that they were the minority of Muslims and Persia rather than Arab. And maybe, just maybe if you tilted toward them and against democratic Israel and maybe the moderate Arabs and you would have a balance of power in the Middle East. And during that process people became aware of it and in the various government agencies they were now overt or they flocked to these agencies because they themselves, while they weren't strategic thinkers in the sense of an abstract balance of power, they were pro Iranian or and they had really Iranian sympathies to the detriment of our own country. And they were empowered by this kind of idiotic Obama creative tension in the Middle east, of which we're still dealing with the results today. That's what I got from your chapter. Is that pretty much a synopsis of your argument?

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, no, I think you, you really outline it well, Victor, and I'm glad you mentioned this sort of the Shia crescent, the, the Iran, Damascus, Alawite, you know, Hezbollah crescent, and then of course, that influence, you know, going into, into Hamas, which is, which is not Shia, but has looked to Iran at least, you know, in the past, you know, decade, decade and a half for support. This, this policy was really an anti Israel policy. That, that's, that's what was very clear to me from inside the Pentagon, was that Obama really, Israel, he had this irrational, unbalanced view of Israel, that it was somehow the embodiment of Western imperialism or something else. But his fixation, a monomaniacal fixation on Israel was really governing so much of Obama's Middle east policy. And it's clear to me that the Iran deal was genuinely about balancing a nuclear Israel with a nuclear Iran. That Iran deal had these sunset clauses that just like the sun sets over the horizon, once these clauses expired, Iran would have a real clear pathway to developing nuclear weapons, and this would be internationally sanctioned. And these sunset clauses were downplayed and, and sort of sloughed off as not being so important by the Obama administration. But those were really critical. And it was clear that he wanted to normalize Iran and undermine Israel's primacy, frankly, in that region of the world.

[Victor Hansen]

Yes, we're talking today with Adam Lovinger, and he's got this new book. I urge you all to read it, the Insider Threat, about his experience in the Office of Netics Assessment and elsewhere in Washington in general. And we're going to take a brief break and we'll be right back.

[Victoria]

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[Victor Hansen]

And we're back with the Insider Threat. It's authored by Adam Loevinger. And Adam, let me just turn for a moment. So Donald Trump was elected in 2016. He's a newcomer. He's sort of overwhelmed with the uniparty. Everybody is his friend. He's getting people from all across the spectrum that are both sincere and insincere about their devotion to the maga. You're at this point in office of net assessment, Mike Flynn, who had been relieved, I think he posed a threat to the Obama administration. Now, as an outsider and he's inside, he understands what your worries are and he is reaching from, as his designated national security advisor during the transition, he's interested and then he's in the first few days of the Trump administration, he's, he's on your side is what I'm saying. He's trying. And then all hell breaks loose, as we know, and Comey and the whole FBI and Andrew McCabe and the frame up and then he's taken out, so to speak, at that point, did things radically change for you when Flynn was gone or from. Or would it have made any difference?

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, I really don't think it would have made much difference. So Mike Flynn and I, we had been collaborating somewhat informally for about a decade before the Trump administration. And you know, in our ongoing dialogue, Victor, one of the things that both of us observed, Flynn and battlefield intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan and myself in this high level strategy office, we really saw a similar pathology. And that was that there didn't seem to be much effort in actually winning our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but more to really keep the wars going, to keep the money flowing, to keep the defense contractors happ and to build these sort of these bureaucratic empires that would allow various military officers, but also civilian bureaucrats to aggrandize, you know, their careers. And this was something that troubled us both deeply because, you know, you know, Flynn, of course, you know, he had many, many soldiers and military personnel under his command who were being killed. And, you know, he would see that firsthand. And this is a horrible thing. But then myself, here I am in an office that was created out of the ashes of the Vietnam War to ensure that we were never directionless when it came to fighting wars and to engaging in strategic competition. And the very pathology that the office was created to stop this pathology was running rampant. And there was nothing this office is really doing. And so the election of Donald Trump and Flynn becoming the National Security Advisor, this we both saw as a great opportunity to put America's strategic prowess back on track and to ensuring that we were not blind going into these wars and competitions. I had had a spotless career, Victor, for a dozen years in the Pentagon. No high performance ratings, no security issues whatsoever. Within a couple of months, I had five investigations against me, you know, two administrative, three criminal. They attacked me as pretty much as soon as Flynn called over to the Office of Net Assessment and requested me to be detailed to the National Security Council. I think Flynn was really, he was the existential threat to this, this, this, this bureaucratic cronyism and, and corruption. And I think that anyone that he brought in to address this issue with him was going to be, suffer a.

[Victor Hansen]

Similar fate as, and at this point, the Office of Nest Assessment being in the Department of Defense, you were subject to the deputy. Ultimately, could the Deputy Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Defense, were they aware of this or did they want to, or they were just. It's too, it's somebody else's concern. Yeah.

[Adam Loevinger]

I mean, one of the things that, you know, showed me just how concerned these Obama holdovers were about me going to work for Mike Flynn was that Bob Work, who was Deputy Secretary of Defense, this is Obama's Deputy Secretary of Defense. For some reason I don't understand to this day, he was held over during the Trump administration, at least for several months. And the very first investigation that was launched against me was an entirely illegal investigation because it had no legal predicate under law. And this was actually run by Bob Work. And so it's a real subversion of federal process, weaponization of the federal investigative process. Bob Work was behind this. I didn't really know him very well, but my sense is that I was one of these people that Flynn had confidence in and that was serious about trying to clean up this corruption that had, you know, really hobbled us in so many of our wars and that for some reason, Bob Works saw this as a real threat.

[Victor Hansen]

This was similar we had on our podcast Mark Moyer, who had, you know, he was in usaid and he was, he had fought all of the same thing. And what was striking about your two books, and I don't want to get in the merits of Marx, but is that there's these unelected people who have high positions of power in the federal government and they claim they're bipartisan and they have expertise in their narrow areas of concern. So they're almost immune from the, the change in government. They're a kingdom under their own. And once they decide that someone is not on the same team or someone. I'll put it this way from reading rereading your book again, if someone might bring controversy from the current administration that is in power, although they tend to be more left than conservative, then they have all of these contacts they've developed over a lifetime of GS service that they can bring to bear in things like they have a conflict of interest. In case of Marx, he, he wrote a book and he didn't Clear it, enough with it. But they can find things to use against the person, and then that creates a deterrent effect. So that in your case, when you're trying to make changes or you're trying to work with Flynn, and for whatever reasons, they're against this, then by going after you with the facilities of the administrative state, they can also deter other people from speaking out on your behalf, it seemed to me.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, well, on that particular issue, they do try to divide and conquer. And a senior Trump administration official went around to a bunch of people that I was working with at the time and asking, well, Adam Loeffinger was just taken out based upon all these apparently bogus investigations. Why didn't you help him? And this official came back to me and said, everyone was so afraid that if they stuck their neck out to help you, what happened to you would happen to them. And this is. I think it's a big problem because it's not that the laws and the facts are what matter. It's that this unaccountable, you know, deep state, for lack of a better word, really can go after and destroy the careers of people in entirely lawless processes and do it with impunity. And this is.

[Victor Hansen]

This is.

[Adam Loevinger]

This is a real problem because, you know, once. Once these facts and laws. No, Matt. Don't matter. And the federal investigative process can be weaponized this way. You. You just get the. The rot just spreads.

[Victor Hansen]

Did you have to seek legal counsel?

[Adam Loevinger]

Oh, yes, I.

[Victor Hansen]

So the idea is that we're going to go after someone and we have all the resources, the federal government at our disposal. But if we draw this out in Washington at $1,000 an hour or whatever it is, we can force this person to concede because of the sheer expense in the legal world.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, well, my, my legal counsel, Victor, after fighting my case for. For three years, he actually shut his legal practice. And he said, adam, I can't represent federal whistleblowers anymore because I'm a lawyer. And as a lawyer, my tools are the facts in the law. But in your case, neither the facts. The facts didn't matter, and the law was ignored. And so just like a surgeon needs a scalpel to do his trade, a lawyer needs the law to do his trade. If the law could be ignored, it's just, you know, all for naught, and it's a very sad commentary. This should not happen in America.

[Victor Hansen]

How long have you been out of government, Adam?

[Adam Loevinger]

I've been out half a decade. I was removed in 2018.

[Victor Hansen]

So let me ask you a question. So we had this election. The Trump administration is back in power. This time allegedly they are not relying on the recommendations of the administrative state people. So this is what we're told, although it's very hard not to. And they're bringing in people to government sort of like your experience and that if you're really worried about what you're talking about being evident in the National Institute of Health, then you get somebody like my colleague Jay Bacharia who was targeted by the nih. If you're interested in what the abuses of the FBI have been by career is, then you get Cash Patel, who's a maverick within a non orthodox resume. Very competent, but he's been targeted. If you want some. Tulsi Gabbard was put on a, basically a watch list. She's now same thing with Pete Hexa throw it. Very critical. Do you, have you been, have people in this transition reached out to you to see if you would be willing to come back into government?

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, I have and I would be honored to serve in this government. Nothing is set in stone, but there have been some discussions and I'll really have to leave it at that. I think there's a lot of wisdom in bringing in people who have seen the dark underbelly of our administrative state just because it has gotten so corrupt, it's gotten so compromised by America's adversaries. You know, you wrote a great piece last, last month, Victor, Are the years of madness ending? This was an American greatness. And you talk about really all these divisions in America and a lot of these divisions, as we know, you know, this is, this has been what, you know, the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians as well have been trying to sow in our country for so many years. And I think that, you know, they have made inroads into our national security bureaucracy. I do lay some of that out in my book, but it's a real problem. And I think that Trump rightly recognizes that this time around he can't rely upon normal processes, longstanding policies. He has to make his own judgment as to who has the competence and the knowledge and who's been through, you know, the, you know, the, you know, fought these fights with the administrative state and, and to recognize that, you know, a lot of this long standing policy and these, you know, processes are corrupt and just don't work.

[Victor Hansen]

And so I think that's true and I think some of the people that I've seen that are, have, it's still very preliminary and many of the positions or most have been on field. But some of the people have been mentioned or who have accepted jobs with national security areas. It's funny, people call me about them for. But they're not. I mean, one of the first questions they're, they're asked is, are you committed to changing and are you on the agenda? Almost with the implicit idea that given that you've worked for government before, we have to have. You have to prove to us that you are willing to go in there and change things, whereas before it was, well, he's recommended and he's done this and he's done this and both, you know, John Bolton really likes him or this kind of stuff. But it does seem that they're deliberately trying to get people, to the extent anybody can, against the grain or who have suffered from this, the administrative state, or who are unorthodox. That's my impression. Yeah, yeah. And that would be.

[Adam Loevinger]

And I'm seeing a healthy balance on one hand. I mean, Trump is bringing in, you know, genuine outsiders who have a fresh perspective, who have not worked in the administrative state before. But he's, he's mixing that in. He's leavening it with, I think so, been in there. So you have the benefit of both, you know, the freshness, the new ideas, the fresh way of looking at things which, you know, played, you know, paid great dividends in the first Trump administration, for example, you know, leading to the Abraham Accords. You know, this was a very fresh approach. It was not the work of insiders. It was, it was doing things from the outside. But, yeah, I mean, he, I believe that Trump does recognize you also need insiders.

[Victor Hansen]

There's, there must be a whole cadre. And I, I've had Cash Patel on. I know I've known him, but there must be a whole cadre of mid-50s or early 60s FBI people who left and discussed or were forced out by the Comey McKay Ray and, and have that expertise to help outsiders make changes. And the same thing is true in the National Security Council and their people. So I hope that people can consult you about that, because that's what we need. We need outsiders who are. Don't have anything to lose, but they have to have the expertise to understand what the, this, these agencies, how they work and what they're capable of doing to people if they're abused, it seems to me. And that came across, I think, as well in your book. We're going to take a brief break. I'm with Adam Lovinger, and this book is the Insider Threat. It's published by Encounter Books you can Amazon, Adam, where do you, where do.

[Adam Loevinger]

You, you can get it on Amazon. You can get on the Encounter books website Barnes and Noble. Really? Really all, all of the major platforms platform.

[Victor Hansen]

Do you have a website you're associated with?

[Adam Loevinger]

I, I'm a, I work at a think tank called the Gold Institute for International Strategy. And so I, you know, my, some of my work is, is on that website and you know, certainly viewers can reach out to me on LinkedIn, but I keep a kind of a low social media profile just because I was advised early on by some national security people to do that. So I.

[Victor Hansen]

We'll be right back after a minute from our sponsors.

[Adam Loevinger]

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[Victor Hansen]

And we're back with Adam Lovinger. Again, let me ask you right now, and I don't want to put it seems like it came up in the news just to apply your expertise. So we have a new administration and Israel is in this existential fight. It's taken out in brilliant fashion some of most of the hierarchy of Hamas and Hezbollah. It's in a series of exchanges. It suffered 500 projectiles launched, but very few got in and it pretty much devastated the Iranian air defenses. It has this brief period, a brief window of opportunity if it will because the Assad government is gone. There's Syria's in turmoil. One of the conduits of Iranian weaponry, Hamas, as I said, the Houthis to a lesser extent but somewhat attrited. Same with Hezbollah. Internal dissension in Iran. And then, of course, a new administration comes in. Do you, I don't, I don't want to ask you what you would do, but do you see things developing? There's going to be an attitude by the United States quite different than the Biden. Maybe it would be something along the lines that while we have a MAGA agenda, that we don't get involved, we don't go look to slay dragons abroad, or we, we don't get in ground wars in the Middle east like Afghanistan, Iraq, or we don't have these forever wars. Nonetheless, we have to restore deterrence because we've lost it during the Biden administration. And last time he did it by taking out Soleimani Baghdadi. ISIS being really tough. Do you think that this administration, with all the things I outlined, will more or less say to Israel, well, we're not going to go preempt Iran. It's under a lot of tension. The government is on. But we will prevent the China, Russia, Axis, North Korean from strategically interfering with your range of choices. And we will put sanctions on the maximum pressure campaign of the past, which brought really Iran almost to its knees. And whatever you need to do what you think is necessary for your existential survival, what, whether it's being strategic cover or munitions support, we're here to help you. Is that sort of characterizing where you think the Trump administration is going?

[Adam Loevinger]

Yes, I do. Victor, you said it. You and I have a mind meld. I think that that is where the Trump administration's going. There's a lot of interest. And I think that, you know, with America as, as the only superpower in the world, and that our attention really should be focused more on China and East Asia and that the Israelis. One of the great lessons I think, that the American people have come away with from the past four years is that here you have the Biden administration consistently telling the Israelis what to do. And the Israelis rightly have not followed this very poor advice, and they've achieved great strategic ends. And I think that there's a lot of respect, frankly, of the Israelis, of Israel's leadership, by Trump himself and by the leadership in the new administration that Israel knows what it's doing. Israel has more to lose and to gain from whatever new dynamics emerge from the Middle East. And it has a very, it has a proven track record. So, so why, why break something? Why meddle with something that that isn't broken, is actually, you know, on the right path? And so What I see is, I see, you know, Trump doing what he said he would do, which was to continue to support Israel's, you know, fight for, you know, ensuring its peace and stability. And, and, and, and as you say, to keep the Chinese and the Russians at bay and to, you know, those are the, those strategic issues. And, you know, but, but it, but now it's very clear that this, the no daylight policy, which is meaning that, you know, the United States and Israel are very closely aligned. History shows that this is the best policy, that as soon as you start twisting Israel's arm, you know, Blink. Secretary of State Blinken himself just admitted that by twisting Israel's army, this actually emboldened Hamas hold on to the hostages, including American citizens, longer. And, you know, this was a mistake. And so the no daylight policy between Israel and the United States sends the message of deterrence, that they can't divide and conquer us and that. And that, you know, that's really the best hope for peace. So I think that you nailed it, Victoria.

[Victor Hansen]

Yeah, I think I'm a little worried, Adam. As this administration leaves, everybody wants the hostages no more than any of us home. And there are a lot of them, to the shame of the Biden administration, were neglected as American citizens. But some of the negotiations by the Biden administration, I think Brett McGurk is also counseling the special envoy from the Trump administration that doesn't have legal authority yet, but probably de facto, a lot of influence. I was reading news accounts today that they are pressuring the Israelis to let out hundreds, if not thousands of prisoners. And then Israel felt that it unwisely had not gone into all of the territory in Gaza where the remnants of Hamas are, but to end the war and then have a pull out. And then there would be iterations of release of hostages, of which Hamas refuses to tell us how many are still alive. But it just seems to me that given what the Biden administration has done and given what Blinken has admitted to, it might be really unwise for Trump to start out whether, if this process is in the middle of things, to go in there and really pressure the Israeli government to declare an end of the war, get out and at any cost, get the hostage, no matter how many terrorists they have to release.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, I don't know as far as the actual. The tactics of the hostage negotiations as to what the right approach is, just because so much of the variables are just not really known to the public. I. So, you know, what capabilities the Israelis have where the hostages are, you know, whether they can rescue Them, you know, without negotiations. These are things that I just don't have clear, clear sense of.

[Victor Hansen]

I don't either. I just. I'm just kind of worried that as this administration is leaving, I know it'd be great thing. Trump would be very proud to come in and with all the American hostages, indeed, all the hostages exchanged. But from what I've seen of this administration, Joe Biden, for example, gave a speech, I think it was yesterday, in which he said that under his tenure that Iran had been weakened, that no, no president will ever have to come following him and have troops in Afghanistan. I guess he thinks the best way to. To end a war is to lose it. But it was incredible that. And then he took credit for the, the diminishment of Hezbollah and the overthrowing of Assad and Hamas. It was pretty much the subtext of the whole speech was, I'm glad that Israel didn't listen to what I tried to do because they accomplished some amazing things for which I'm going to take credit for now.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, no, it is amazing. It seems that Biden's foreign policy legacy is a legacy of spin and really putting lipstick on a pig. And it's. It's one of these things that I've been really disappointed that a lot of mainstream media has been trying to really going out of its way to try to find some silver lining to these great foreign policy failures of the Biden administration. And it's dishonest. I think ordinary Americans see through it. The ignominious retreat from Afghanistan with, you know, those, those Marines being killed. And, I mean, it was just. It was just a disaster. You don't have to be a foreign policy expert to recognize that it's humiliating. A great power like the United States should never be in a situation like that and have the Taliban, you know, be able to, you know, do what they did under our watch. And, you know, it's. It's a shame. And mainstream media will continue to have its market share eroded, you know, by so dishonestly reporting it as something that it isn't. So it's.

[Victor Hansen]

It was a. It was a humiliating loss. One of the things I wanted to ask you, because your title is Insider Threat, and if you all buy the book, and I hope you will, you'll see that a lot of the chapters deal with people within the United States or people within the administrative states that have enabled some of our adversaries. But what do you make of Christopher Ray, that the director of the FBI, with this kind of Parthian shot, as he leaves office. He now tells us that there are people from the Chinese that have affiliations with the Chinese government enclaves within the United States, he said. And that brought up the question of the Chinese balloon's trajectory was whether people were communicating it from the ground. Why are they buying up strategic acreage near military facilities or bases? What's the role of maybe 1% of these 300,000 plus Chinese students as far as espionage? What do you make of what Ray was trying to talk about, the internal threat that China poses?

[Adam Loevinger]

I think it's perhaps one of the most serious threats we face, frankly. And stepping back a little bit, I believe our adversaries learned a long time ago that taking America on head on is not a very smart thing to do just because you really awaken the dragon and fill it with furious rage. And the smarter thing to do is to really infiltrate American institutions because we're a very open country and the Chinese have been excellent at this. They learned this from the Russians, from the Soviets, who, who were very successful in infiltrating a lot of American institutions, including our national security bureaucracy, our intelligence agencies, recruiting assets. And this is a real problem. What I try to do in my book is to show really sort of the collaboration that's been emerging over time in that if you have this worldview that, for example, what I call the Obama doctrine, that America is bad and you know, really trying to, you know, balance America with strengthening our adversaries. Where this sort of leads to in a natural competitive political environment is those parties that are, that see America as bad, allying themselves, you know, really teaming up with America's foreign adversaries, the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, teaming up with our foreign adversaries against their domestic political rivals. And this is something that we are seeing increasingly. We know, for example, that the Steele dossier that Hillary Clinton and the DNC commissioned, that this is something that was filled with Russian disinformation. I have in my book some collaboration between the Office of Net Assessment led by James H. Baker, you know, really, you know, tearing down one of our, one of our allies, the Japanese government, you know, colluding with a suspected Chinese agent and sharing class of information with that individual. This, these sorts of things are sort of the inevitable byproduct. And we really have to ask ourselves as Americans, you know, if we're adopting this worldview that you see on Ivy League campuses of, you know, anti Americanism, you know, how far are we prepared? Are we willing to let this take us? Are we really going to be so self hating as A nation that we will allow our enemies to come in and destroy us. And it seems that there are quite a few individuals now who are very willing to do that, even if it's for their own sort of short political gains, short term political gains, because they can somehow get advantage in the here and now against their political adversaries. Or like the Biden family, as three U.S. house of Representatives committees have determined that they took in tens of millions of dollars from the Chinese, just enriching themselves. And one of the troubling things is as this becomes more normalized, I kind of fear that Americans will just accept this as something, that this is just the way things are and we will disintegrate as a country. But it's, but it's an outrageous state of affairs. And I don't know how we can bring more outrage and concern about this sort of internal corruption.

[Victor Hansen]

You know, it's hard to know. I mean, we had Joe Biden, when you put your son, who's had these problems on Air Force Two when he was vice president, and then this money comes in and then he says things while as president that China is not really a rival of the United States. You don't know to which, to what degree that's an insidious that he's subconsciously trying to think, you know, this is. Hunter knew this person and this person and I did this person and I. And in our case, they were friendly or whatever. And we had Robert Malley, the former journalist who was a freelancer that was pretty much overtly pro Iranian and very critical in his writings when he was out of office of the United States. We had a high Pentagon official who was pretty much an Iranian expatriate. That is the same. And I don't know what we do about it. I don't know whether Congress will say there's areas around military bases that foreign entities cannot own, or we're going to have to cut back on the number of foreign students or we have to have them admitted under different auspices or we have to close the border. 20,000 in the last four years, 20,000 single unaccompanied males from China came in. I don't know why they would. Maybe, maybe some of them are legit, legit legitimate dissidents. But it seems that the last four years, it's, everything goes. No one's no one. And the, the sheer effort and money and time and media abuse that's going to be necessary to correct it is going to be amazing. It's going to be formidable, I think, because we've got inured to this kind of, how dare you suggest this person's working for China? Or how dare you say you should deport someone. It's going to be very difficult, but it has to be done. It seems to me this correction and thinking.

[Adam Loevinger]

Yeah, no, I agree, and I really do try to highlight that in the book is that there's genuine collaboration between our national security state and America's adversaries. And this is something I think that more people need to talk about. It's not just business as usual, politics as usual. Do we really want our leaders, as you say, Joe Biden taking all these millions of dollars from the Chinese. Do we really want our leaders doing business relations using their official office to enrich themselves with our enemies? It's a horrible state of affairs and it's inevitable. And we know this from the writings of both the Russians and the Chinese that they are genuinely seeking to achieve policy decisions, policy outcomes by this corruption. The whole reason why they're trying to generate this blackmail material on the Bidens and get cozy with American officials is that this creates blackmail material and that blackmail can be used to coerce policies that are favorable to America's enemies. And it's a horrendous state of affairs. And I think it's, you know, it's important that, you know, more Americans see it as, you know, not just politics as usual, but a general national security threat.

[Victor Hansen]

Let me ask you, we're almost out of time, Adam. Let me ask you a final question. So the book has been out say 60 days, two months. Where have you encountered either informal criticism or formal criticism or who doesn't like your book or who's afraid of your book or is it too soon yet to be digested?

[Adam Loevinger]

Well, I do have some pretty explosive things in the book, including, for example, that's my point. Yeah, it is covering a murder that's been covered up to date as a suicide. You know, pretty serious thing. But it's really been a lot of silence, Victor, which has sort of surprised me, frankly. I have not received, you know, too much, you know, head on criticism. So it's, it's. I was expecting more because I do name names in this book, which is something that, you know, when I, working so carefully with encounter, you know, we really made sure that every single thing I said that was attributed to an individual, you know, there was a government evidence basis for this claim. And so we went through it, you know, very, you know, through, in a very detailed process to make sure that all these claims that I'm making are truthful and that there's evidentiary record for it. But the decision to name names is that we do need accountability, and the American people are just craving accountability, that malfeasures inside the national security bureaucracy will actually be held to account for, frankly, crimes knowingly and willfully doing things that they know are illegal and doing it with impunity. And this state of affairs is. It's reached a boiling point. Polling shows that Americans are just, you know, you know, really fed up with it and are craving politicians to actually hold. Hold individuals to account. And that's something that I'm. It seems like the incoming Trump administration will do that, and I hope and pray that's true.

[Victor Hansen]

Well, I hope everybody reads Adam Lovinger's book. It's the Insider Threat. I hope people who are listening from the Trump administration transition take heart as well, because Adam has a lot of talent that would be vital, especially at this time. And I really appreciate you coming on, and I'll try to do my best to let people know of your work. We didn't get into the specifics of names, but believe me, everybody, the. The book is explicit. It's not generalities. It. It. And that's what's scary about it. It talks about case studies where people were culpable, people knew they were culpable, and yet it's very hard to bring them to account. So thank you for coming, Adam, and I really appreciate it.

[Adam Loevinger]

Thank you, Victor.

[Victoria]

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