EMERGENCY PODCAST: Ex-CIA Spy Andrew Bustamante Breaks Down The Iran War | Impact Theory W Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast—Detailed Summary

Episode Overview

Title: EMERGENCY PODCAST: Ex-CIA Spy Andrew Bustamante Breaks Down The Iran War
Host: Tom Bilyeu (Impact Theory)
Guest: Andrew Bustamante (ex-CIA intelligence officer)
Release Date: March 3, 2026

This episode launches into a deep, real-time analysis of the sudden escalation of the Iran war, focusing on separating fact from propaganda. Tom Bilyeu and Andrew Bustamante dissect what prompted U.S. military action, the real status of Iran’s threat, the legacy motivations of President Trump, and the impact on global power dynamics. The conversation explores intelligence assessments, disinformation, AI’s role in modern conflict, and the geopolitical ripple effects involving Israel, China, Russia, and regional powers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cutting Through War Narratives and Propaganda

Timestamp: 00:03–03:51

• Outlining the Problem: Most Iran war analysis is mired in two narratives: either Israel is manipulating the U.S., or Iran is painted as an urgent nuclear menace.
• Bustamante's Process: As a former CIA officer, Andrew starts by reviewing public U.S. threat assessments for Iran and Venezuela, pointing out that, as of early 2025, both were not considered national security priorities.
  • Quote: “Iran, very clearly in that document… is not working on weapons of mass destruction, has no plans to increase or enhance their uranium enrichment.” (B, 01:50)
• Discrepancy: The intelligence community’s annual reports contradicted the public rationale for military strikes in June 2025.

2. Why Is the U.S. Attacking Iran and Venezuela?

Timestamp: 03:51–06:16

• Motives Explored:
  • Trump’s personal legacy and maintaining the appearance of strength.
  • U.S. leadership recognizes its own declining global power and seeks quick wins.
  • Venezuela and Iran are “low-hanging fruit.”
  • “They don’t want to go out on a low note… Check marks on the side of your fighter jet every time you make a kill.” (B, 05:15)
  • Eyes could next turn to Cuba or North Korea.

3. The Timing of Military Action

Timestamp: 06:16–08:31

• Explained: Action was triggered by intelligence and a sequence of diplomatic embarrassments for Trump, including failed negotiations with Iran, failed threats to Canada and Europe—necessitating a “quick win.”

4. Influence Operations & Disinformation

Timestamp: 13:04–18:55

• Netanyahu’s Statements Analysed:
  • Delivered in English to target U.S./UK audience.
  • The use of terms like "blackmail" flags an influence campaign.
  • Quote: “This is intentional disinformation or… malinformation, where it is partly true, but it is delivered in a way in order to cause damage or fear and anxiety.” (B, 14:23)
• Tucker Carlson’s Narrative:
  • Caters to an existing conspiratorial, anti-Israel audience.
  • The logic of Israel conducting false-flag attacks in the Gulf is questioned.
  • “Tucker doesn’t make any sense, but he’s shaping his narrative to a very specific niche…” (B, 17:23)

5. Escalation, U.S. Precedents, and Assassinations

Timestamp: 19:06–24:38

• Assassinating Heads of State:
  • Recent strikes (e.g., Ayatollah of Iran, Maduro of Venezuela) are a break from international law and past U.S. norms.
  • Legal framework: Title 10 (military) vs. Title 50 (covert/CIA action).
  • Difference between targeting ideological non-state actors (e.g., Bin Laden) and national leaders highlighted.
  • The danger of normalizing secretive executive “covert actions.”

6. The Reality of Intelligence Gathering

Timestamp: 24:39–28:53

• The Myth of CIA Omniscience:
  • CIA is a “shield”—often crediting intelligence ultimately sourced from foreign or corporate partners.
  • Israel provides the majority of actionable intelligence on Iran, with Saudi/UAE/Jordan as minor contributors.
  • Quote: “The United States has struggled with Iran since before I even joined CIA. They've never had great access into Iran.” (B, 26:38)

7. The Role of AI and Corporate Intelligence

Timestamp: 28:53–32:33

• AI’s Foundation in Intelligence:

  • AI used for mass data processing since at least 2007.
  • Rapidly advancing AI arms race—U.S. compelled to “push the envelope” because China won’t pause development.

• AI Guardrails Debate (OpenAI vs. Anthropic):

  • Guardrails and government contracts—the concern that initial promises of ethical restrictions can dissolve under government “scope creep.”
  • Quote: “What the United States really will have to do is push the envelope, take the guardrails off… If they're going to remain competitive against the Chinese, the Russians… they have to push it farther than any of us are really comfortable with…” (B, 37:14)

8. Dangers and Futures of AI

Timestamp: 39:41–42:17

• What Scares Bustamante:
  • “If AI really does become AGI, with recursive self-improvement, it's essentially going to teach itself how to do everything better than we do it... I think it's just gonna fucking leave us.” (B, 39:43)
  • Possible “apathetic” AI scenario (like the film “Her”), where AI outgrows humanity rather than enslaves/destroys it.

9. Iran War Endgame Scenarios

Timestamp: 43:01–47:58

• Best Case: Pro-Western Iranian revolution, stability, economic benefits.
• Fear: Prolonged conflict, backlash against U.S. puppet government, Iran aligns with China/Russia, enduring anti-American sentiment, potential for dirty bombs or prolonged insurgency.
  • “My nightmare scenario is dirty bombs, tactical nukes, persistent long term, 10 to 15 year radicalized foundation of Shia militants…” (B, 47:58)

10. War Duration, U.S. & Israeli Policy

Timestamp: 47:58–55:51

• Disagreement with Political Timetable:
  • Kinetic capability beyond rockets—Iran’s continued resistance could last years, regardless of U.S. intent.
  • Trump likely to claim victory after a short campaign, leaving the burden to regional players.
  • “You just literally laid out what the Trump administration did to Ukraine…” (B, 51:07)
  • Israel will “prosecute hot conflict” on its own if U.S. withdraws, with the U.S. doctrine now emphasizing “burden sharing.”

11. World War III? Evolution of Global Conflict

Timestamp: 55:51–63:28

• Are We Already in World War III?
  • “World War Three is already happening… And this is just another domino in the series of what that war looks like.” (B, 56:00)
  • Modern conflicts are diffuse, involving cyber warfare, economic coercion, and targeted, tech-driven kinetic action—not mass armies facing off.
  • The definition of “kinetic” war has shifted: drones, AI, data centers as new targets.

12. China’s Patience and Power Play

Timestamp: 63:28–72:37

• China and Russia’s Calculation:
  • China sees Iran as a “friend with benefits”—loyal only as convenient, not risking major blowback to help.
  • Peace through “strength” vs. peace through “power”—U.S. is spending finite strengths (munitions, soldiers), risking loss of influence (power).
  • China bides its time as the U.S. exhausts itself militarily and economically.
  • Quote: “A big part of China’s cultural approach to conflict is to wait out the opponent, to just let them self-destruct… That’s what got us through World War II. China’s not like that...” (B, 68:12)
  • On Taiwan: China manipulates internal politics and perception, preferring unification by consent rather than force.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Iran… is not working on weapons of mass destruction, has no plans to increase or enhance their uranium enrichment.”
  (Andrew Bustamante, 01:50)

• “They’re making moves against what most other presidential administrations considered low hanging fruit.”
  (B, 04:13)

• On influence operations:
  “Why is the Prime Minister of somebody else’s country talking about threats to the United States? Doesn’t make any sense.”
  (B, 13:22)

• “The CIA is being used as a shield. Their name is being used as a shield for other capabilities that Donald Trump can actually leverage.”
  (B, 24:39)

• “If AI really does go through the evolutionary process… it’s just gonna fucking leave us.”
  (B, 39:43)

• “World War Three is already happening… It's just another domino in the series of what that war looks like.”
  (B, 56:00)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-------------|------------------------------------------------| | 00:03–03:51 | War narratives, U.S. public threat assessments | | 03:51–06:16 | Motives for attacks on Iran, Venezuela | | 13:04–15:06 | Netanyahu’s rhetoric and influence operations | | 15:48–18:55 | Tucker Carlson’s anti-Israel influence | | 19:06–24:38 | Assassination, Title 10/50 legalities | | 24:39–28:53 | Intelligence: CIA vs. Israel & partners | | 28:53–32:33 | AI’s intelligence role; contract scope creep | | 39:41–42:17 | AGI fears, “apathetic AI” | | 43:01–47:58 | Best/worst-case endgames for Iran | | 47:58–55:51 | War duration, Israel’s role, “burden sharing” | | 55:51–63:28 | Global conflict, World War III redefined | | 63:28–72:37 | China’s indirect play, Taiwan, U.S. exhaustion |

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Flow & Tone

• The tone is candid, critical, and sometimes darkly humorous. Bustamante draws on direct personal experience, often weaving technical analysis (“influence literacy,” intelligence bureaucracy, legal frameworks) with blunt geopolitical realism.
• Tom Bilyeu actively challenges and checks assumptions, seeking clarity on does-not-make-sense aspects of the official narratives.
• Both maintain a skeptical attitude toward propaganda, media-driven panic, and political posturing, favoring evidence and systematic analysis.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an unflinching, insider view of the Iran war’s origins, the distortion of public narratives, and the high-stakes power calculations among global players. Bustamante and Bilyeu dissect not only what’s being publicly sold, but also the deeper patterns underlying U.S. action, intelligence operations, technological disruption, and the evolving nature of global conflict. The episode ends with the realization that “World War III” may not look like the past—and could already be underway in a form that mixes kinetic, economic, technological, and information warfare.

Listeners are left with both ominous and actionable insights: Don’t accept war headlines at face value—consider the invisible motives, the real power balances, and the technology quietly shaping outcomes behind the scenes.

Transcript

[A]

Andrew Bustamante, welcome back.

[B]

Thanks for having me, brother. I'm happy to be here.

[A]

Never has there been a crazier time. This is absolutely wild. The Iranian war has kicked off. It is, I think, full fledged at this point. Now I think a lot of people are getting the analysis on Iran wrong. They either get sucked into the Israel question of whether we're just being puppet mastered, or they're buying into the propaganda around the nuclear threat. If we want to get below the propaganda, what's really going on in Iran?

[B]

You know, it's such a great question and the best place to start when I felt myself conflicted by the same two narratives, right? The Israel's in charge narrative and the WMD narrative, which is a funny narrative because we've been there before. I was. I was asking myself the same question. How do I get deeper than this? And when I was at CIA, I remembered that every year we have to create a national threat assessment at CIA that then feeds up to the odni, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with every other intelligence agency out there. So nro, nga, nsa, FBI, Army Intel, Navy intel, everybody's charged with writing an assessment of the biggest threats from their specific type of intelligence facing the United States. And then they send that to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that then compiles it into one final, final threat assessment for the US and that threat assessment is what all the congressmen and congresswomen use to fund intelligence operations for the following year. So, like, let me take a look at that document. I want to know where Iran. And to the same question, where does Venezuela land? Because less than 60 days ago, we rendered Nicholas Maduro out of his bed in Venezuelan Caracas.

[A]

Now, is that threat assessment something you get because it's classified, or is that it's publicly available?

[B]

It's a publicly available document. We create classified versions that then get sanitized and shared publicly because it's part of what the National Intelligence estimate that's owed to the American people by Congress every year. So we can all check these assessments to understand what are the priorities that are dictated by our government. Where does our tax money go? So I look up the threat assessment published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Iran, very clearly in that document published in March of 25, is not working on weapons of mass destruction, has no one plans to increase or enhance their uranium enrichment, and maybe at the early stages of research and development for chemical and biological weapons. That's what it says. That was In March of 2025, June of 2025, we bomb Iran under the accusation that they are enriching uranium beyond military grade or up to military grade levels at the Fordo plants in, in, in Iran. In stark contrast, the what we were told as the public stood in contrast to what the ODNI published as an official source document for the national intelligence infrastructure. But that's only one of several documents. There's also a Department of War document that's produced every year and that tells you the national strategies of the Defense. The. What was the Department of Defense that is now the Department of War.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Inside that document, Iran is not a priority. Inside the White House's national security strategy, all publicly available documents that nobody knows exists, none of them highlighted Iran as a national security priority. None of them highlighted to Venezuela as a national security priority. So it became very clear to me that what's happening where our weapons, our intelligence, our military might is being used, it's being used for something other than what we've been told and what Congress has been told are our national security issues.

[A]

Do you have a sense of why they're doing this? Like, is Trump just a power mad, you know, madman that wants to gobble up territory? Like what, what's happening if, if it, if they aren't a threat? Neither of the two places that he's made a move on in the last 60 days alone, if neither of them are a threat that our government is warning us about, why move on them?

[B]

I suspect there is an element of Trump trying to protect his personal legacy more so than his presidential legacy. He's trying to protect the brand Trump and make sure that that brand is always associated with strength and power. But then second to that, I think there's also an element of the United States knows it's a declining power power. And the administration of the United States knows that they are now the administration of a declining power and they have to try to scramble back as many W's wins, victories as they possibly can. So they're making moves against what most other presidential administrations considered low hanging fruit. Venezuela is an irritant, not a national security issue. Iran is a sad news story for the Middle east, but that's why we're peers. That's why we're allies with Israel, so that Israel can keep Iran in check and so the United States doesn't have to put American lives or American dollars at risk halfway across the globe. Plus, we're friends with Saudi Arabia and UAE and Jordan and we have them surrounded with allies so that we don't have to get involved. So there's an element where I believe what's happening is the administration realizes we're weak and getting weaker. We can't handle our own economic crisis. We can't handle our own political divide. And we've only got two years left. And if the midterms turn either the Senate or the House blue, and the House is supposed to turn blue potentially, then, now, Trump is a lame duck president now that that's going to stop him from using executive orders and covert action. But beside the point, they don't want to go out on a low note. So they literally are putting stickers on their helmet in the football game, check marks on the side of your fighter jet every time you make a kill. And they're like, hey, we took out Maduro. Hey, we took out the Ayatollah. I think their eyes are probably on Cuba next. And if they follow the list of countries that are persistently irritants, North Korea would logically follow Cuba. And this was. This is all stuff that they could potentially make happen before the end of Trump's second term.

[A]

Okay, so a legacy play, not necessarily something to protect at the midterms. So when you look at the timing of the move, what do you think explains the timing?

[B]

I. I think a big part of the timing is tied to the intelligence that was collected and the embarrassment coming out of the negotiations.

[A]

So, because he wasn't able to get concessions.

[B]

Correct. And if you look at just what's happening between Trump and Iran, it's not enough. You also have to look at the fact that he threatened Canada with tariffs and got. And lost that. And then he threatened Europe with Greenland, and he lost that. So he had just come off of a string of losses, very public embarrassment, embarrassing losses, and it was time for a quick victory. And you can't control Europe, you can't really control the Supreme Court as much as you might try. But what you can do is park a bunch of weapons off the coast of Oman with. With missiles pointed at Iran and try to force them to take action. Well, Iran was also watching and recognizing that the president had a series of losses, that standing up to the American president was working for some countries. So they stood up. They still engaged in negotiations, but they tried to, you know, prolong those negotiations. And I think in that process, the flaw in their strategy was that they didn't realize that the United States and Israel, at a minimum. At a minimum, not the only two countries, were combining intelligence to determine whether or not it would be worth striking Iran. I guarantee you, the uae, the Saudis and the Jordanians all had a seat at that table too, sharing their intelligence. And when they found out that there was going to be a leadership meeting at a certain date at a certain time, Israel said, we're going to move. And you all can either keep up or shut up, but we're going to do what all of you don't have the courage to do.

[A]

Okay, that makes sense once you've got the buildup of the assets there.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But in terms of the sending all the assets over, the timing now you think was just that series of losses. He's looking around the world. I need a win and so cool. I'm going to go to Iran next, protect the legacy up. And then now that we've got everybody here, there's an open door, we're going to go for it.

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

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[B]

This is a fantastic example of what we call influence, influence literacy at CIA. You have to be literate in understanding when someone is trying to influence you. What is Netanyahu's native language? What's the native language of Israel? Hebrew. Right. He's not speaking in Hebrew. He's speaking in English. So who is the intended audience? English speaking World. Well, who's part of the English speaking world? The United States and Great Britain, of course. So he's not even talking to Israelis. He's talking to United States. He mention Israel? He only talks about America. Why is the, why is the Prime Minister of some else or somebody else's country talking about threats to the United States? Doesn't make any sense. And then on top of that, he, he used a word that we have never heard before with regards to Iran, blackmail. Blackmail is a terrifying word. It's a triggering word for Americans. Maybe it's a triggering word for, for Israelis too. But why would he use that word? And that word does not fit in the context of any of the threats that we've ever heard about coming from Iran. So here we have somebody else's foreign leader telling us that America was being threatened with blackmail, and that's before we even get into the physical impossibilities of an unpenetrable underground bunker being built within months. And, and the data points just don't line up. The data points between the ODNI report that we talked about that said that there was no enrichment program or an unlikely nuclear program, plus the fact that we had representatives of the Trump administration saying that Iran was five days away from a nuclear weapon, plus now we have this saying months away from an underground bunker. These are all very different contradicting statements. So my influence literacy is telling me that this is intentional disinformation or what could be known as malicious information, mal information, where it is partly true, but it is delivered in a way in order to cause damage or, or fear and anxiety.

[A]

All right, that's really interesting. So along those lines, there's another clip from Tucker Carlson where he is talking about Mossad agents getting picked up for potentially bombing. I think it was in Qatar and somewhere else. And he is becoming increasingly anti Israel. And so I will ask you, after seeing that Tucker Carlson clip, do you have the same Spidey senses that he's trying to influence in an anti Israel direction with this idea that I think he specifically said something like, they want to hurt all these different countries in the region. Are we being influenced there?

[B]

Tayo Carlson's a fantastic comparison to the Netanyahu clip. Right? The Netanyahu clip was clearly shaped for all Americans. It didn't have a specific slant, if I recall right. Even the text of his words flipped between red and blue. There was no political bias in what he was saying.

[A]

That's interesting.

[B]

He was talking to Americans. Right. Influence literacy is an awesome thing when you Start to learn it. Right. Tucker Carlson, on the other hand, is clearly pandering to a niche. And it's a niche of people who already doubt, suspect beyond being skeptical they're conspiratorial of Israel. Could Israel have carried out false flag operations? Yes, it's possible. Would they choose to do it now when actual real damage is being done by Iran on its own? What's the benefit, what's the benefit of, of risking the blowback of Qatar, capturing a Mossad agent like he's claiming the blowback is huge. If it's real now Qatar is like, well, I don't fuck Iran or fog Israel, right. I thought Iran was my enemy, but now I'm not so sure. But I know Israel is my enemy. It's a huge blowback risk for what? For one bomb to go off when, when just leave Iran to its own. It's going to keep launching rockets that keep getting intercepted and it's going to be the clear bad guy. So it doesn't make strategic sense for Israel to make that, to take that risk, does that? I mean, Israel is one of the countries that takes the most dramatic risks in the world. But for this, for Qatar, for Bahrain, for, for any country in the collegiate Arab world, why right now all the momentum is in favor of Israel in the Khalegi world. Let, let Israel take the bullets and take the damage and put themselves in harm's way to neutralize Iran, which has long posed a threat to the collegiate Arab countries. So Tucker doesn't make any sense, but he's pitching, he's shaping his narrative to a very specific niche that already believes in something that doesn't make sense.

[A]

Do you pay attention to Tucker?

[B]

There are certain influencers out there that I'm just really sad, have influence and Tucker Carlson is one of them.

[A]

Do you think he's making this stuff up? Does he believe this stuff and is just saying it and he's misreading the

[B]

world or that's it? I hope that his journalistic career would give him enough moral guidance and intellectual honesty to not just parrot for reaction or for a paycheck, I would hope, but I don't know. Tucker's life, maybe that's exactly what he's doing. Maybe there's, maybe there's some other agenda. Maybe he has gone off the deep end. People change. Who knows? But the vast majority of what I hear from Tucker Carlson going all the way back to his interview with Putin, it does not strike me as a professional interviewer, professional journalist, anybody with any kind of ethical guidelines for factually reporting information or vetting yourself before you share an opinion. It's a, it's a shame. It's a shame because I think he could have been something so much bigger and better than he is, but maybe he's counting his victory in dollar signs and, and likes from some subset of crazies. I don't know.

[A]

Where do you see the war going from here? Like, do you think there's going to be boots on the ground? Is that a red line where Trump would rather see it burn than do that? Like, where, where do we go?

[B]

I really like the idea of always exercising an economic outlook on what's going on in Iran. And, and when I ask myself, wasn't. Was, was attacking Iran good for America? I feel like you made a pretty good case earlier that it was good for America, economically speaking, if it pays out the way we hope for it to pay out, meaning stability in the straits of Hormuz and, you know, a less radicalized government and, and reinvestment in the United States coming from the Middle east, if, if big, bold giants, if all of that happens, boom, it was good for America. But is it good for America right now? Could the same benefit have been gained six months down the road, two weeks down the road, two years ago? One of the, the narratives that we're being fed is that this was the last best chance. That's what Trump just said, right? This was the last best chance to take down Iran. I don't see the evidence to say that this was the last best chance, not the last chance or the best chance. And to your point about the targets that were selected, and we're completely glossing over the process. Israel. We supported Israel in the known assassination of a head of state and accepted the collateral damage of multiple civilians that had nothing to do with it. His wife being one of them, his children being another one. We, and we, we supported it with our resources, our tax dollars, our military hardware, even though we know that it is not only a deviation from international norms, but it is against international law. Part of the law that we put in place to attack a head of state. That's not supposed to. We don't. The United States, as a policy from, is from back before I joined CIA, does not assassinate world leaders. And even now, we still have the plausible deniability to say, well, we didn't do it, Israel did it. We just kind of saw it happen. We just gave them the, whatever intel it was that helped validate their target set for that day.

[A]

But I think Trump wants the Credit for killing him. He has said he tried to take me out twice. Looks like I got him first. I guess I'm even creating jobs in Iran. I mean, it's wild.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Assuming these are all actual statements, as I did not hear them, I saw them printed.

[B]

But, but, but it's, it's such a huge deviation from anything that we've ever said. It's a deviation from what our service

[A]

have we been bombing people like supposedly Obama was bombing without congressional approval? Is Trump really the first to do it or.

[B]

There's two titles that kind of dictate combat. There's title 10 and title 50. Tell me if you're, if I'm boring you.

[A]

No, not at all.

[B]

Title 10 is what gives the United States military the ability to carry out wartime operations. Title 50 is what gives the CIA the opportunity to carry out covert action operations using whatever resources the executive chooses to assign. So Title 50 coverage is what's required by law for covert action. So when CIA is called in to take out any kind of operation, it's a covert action operation. And they can pull resources from anywhere in the US inventory. It can pull military members, it can pull weapons, it can pull planes, it can pull satellites, it can pull whatever. And put them all under this convenient little package called title. Title 50 that gives them the ability to do it all is covert action which sits under the office of the President, sole discretionary decision making. Right. So what Obama did was set a precedent for Title 50 use, and he used that specifically to target leaders of terrorist organizations, not heads of state. Right. Even targeting Osama Bin Laden wasn't a head of state. He was the leader of an ideological non state actor. But he didn't use it to target presidents, prime ministers, kings, those are all heads of state. But it did create this, this capacity, this tolerance for executive order after executive order and secret mission after secret mission that doesn't get disclosed to the American public until we have this. The ultimate takedown of Osama bin Laden in 2011, that was adopted by Trump in 2016. Difference was that Donald Trump, when he took over there was all the Russian collusion stuff and CIA didn't like their new president and he didn't like CIA. So he shuttered CIA's budget and huge amounts of people started quitting. CIA and CIA attritted down to this skeleton of a, of a group where all the talent really either left or tried to leave. And all that was left behind were the people trying to scrape by their retirement or, or ideologically aligned with Donald Trump at the time. But that was CIA from 2016 to 2020. And then Biden came in. Biden had to rebuild CIA the best that he could and tried to make them ideologically aligned with his interests, which is why you started to see all the DEI stuff. And for anybody who. Who tried to look at applying or working for CIA between 2020 and 2024, you probably only saw handicapped advertisements and gay LBGBT LGBTQ flags in every assignment, in every advertisement for CIA. That's. They were looking for diversity and inclusion, and that was the goal. And that's what it looked like from 2020 to 2024. And then Trump takes office again. Now he appoints Radcliffe, who you never hear about, because he doesn't really do anything. And somehow CIA is super capable, super effective, and super close to Donald Trump. I don't buy that. What I think is happening is CIA is being used as a shield. Their name is being used as a shield for other capabilities that Donald Trump can actually leverage.

[A]

Say more.

[B]

Because the Central Intelligence Agency, by design, in the infrastructure of national intelligence, is a shield. It's the central hub, meaning all other intelligence collected by the United States must go through the CIA to be processed into a final product to be delivered to the President. So in that way, all intelligence can be credited to CIA. And CIA can mask the true source of all intelligence that comes in, and that includes foreign intelligence. So when Colombia or Mexico or Israel or Ghana, when they share an intelligence report with the United States, they share it with the CIA. And CIA then has to go through the process of reviewing it, processing it, digesting it, and turning it into a product. Which means it's not the Ghanaians that get credit for the report. It's CIA that gets for credit for the report. That's why how did we get Venezuela CIA intel? How do we get. How did Mexico kill the head of the new Cisco generation? CIA intelligence? And how do we get into Iran and find the leaders CIA intelligence? It wasn't CIA. It was somebody else filtering their information through the bureaucratic engine of CIA. And then CIA gets the credit.

[A]

Do you have a sense of who it actually is?

[B]

Yes and no. For example, with Iran, Iran's a great example because people want to accuse Israel. Israel's the puppet master. Israel's controlling everything. More likely, Israel had the dominant information of Iran at the time because Iran has been a. Has been a existential threat to Israel for decades. So Israel has the most powerful human networks in Iran. Israel was the one that went in in June and wiped out their air Defense system like Israel has Iran on lockdown, intelligence wise, the United States doesn't. The United States has struggled with Iran since before I even joined CIA. They've never had great access into Iran.

[A]

Don't get the culture.

[B]

We don't get the culture. It's low on our priority list. If you recall, I said, where did Iran land on either the ODNI or the Department of War or the White House priority list. It wasn't even on the list. Right. The country is named, but in terms of the priorities, it's not listed. So decades of investing so little into building an intelligence network in Iran means that you're not going to have any information on Iran. And that's why we've always relied on Israel to be the foundation for that meaningful intelligence on Iran. But Israel chooses what to share. Whenever you control the intelligence and you share it with a partner, you choose what to share and what to keep back. So to offset the fact that Israel might manipulate us, we also look to Jordan and Saudi Arabia and UAE to share their intelligence on Iran. And when messages corroborate, we believe that it's true. And when messages conflict, then we try to find more information. So the attack, the timing, the effectiveness, the choice, the decision to go into Iran is largely being credited to CIA intelligence, which really means somebody else most likely gave that intelligence to CIA and selected which intelligence they were going to share. I think Israel was probably 80% of that. Saudi Arabia, UAE was probably 5ish percent of that. Jordan was the other 5%. Maybe the, maybe the United States did offer up satellite NSA signal intelligence, collection of specific cell phone indicators that Israel told us to watch, but I don't think that we had any idea on our own. And the same thing is true in Venezuela. I don't believe we had much. Venezuela has been a black box to us since before I was even at CIA, so let alone after I left CIA, after it had its fallout with, with Donald Trump, after it went through its struggling hiring process in the Biden administration. You think that led to a very capable, well informed CIA? No, I think CIA found a way to partner with corporates, with corporate private intelligence organizations, with regional partners and collate their intelligence, use that to accommodate or accentuate some of our resources at NSA or nro. And we were able to find the right time in the right place to give the Mexicans hit instructions and to take down Maduro.

[A]

What do you think the role of AI and Palantir are in all of this?

[B]

So I can't talk about Palantir. Which is probably telling for you. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna discuss Palantir Sips Tea Stall, but I will say this. When I joined CI in 2007, we were already using AI. We were using AI to process mass big data sets and turn them into meaningful foundational targeting data sets that we could then put human brains around to try to make operational decisions around. Right. So it was really being used as kind of an archival organizational processing tool. But that was before AI was even an idea, really, in everyday life. So as AI has grown more and more powerful, I am certain that CIA and other intelligence organizations have become more and more adept and at using it. DoD is always one of the heaviest or the national security infrastructure is always one of the heaviest investors in a new technology. So the future of everything, intelligence, combat, ground, force, battlefield tactics, all of it hinges heavily on who has the advantage in artificial intelligence. And there's a race. And again, when you, When I look at the capitalist values of the United States against the democratic values of the United States, the collective democratic values would say be careful with this technology. But the capitalist I must win, says my competition isn't being careful with this technology, so why should I be careful with this technology? And of course, our biggest competition is China. And China is racing at full speed to figure out AI and learn how to integrate it and learn how to take the rails off and let it teach itself and all that. So that means we have to do the same thing according to our policymakers. And, and you can't argue with that. To a certain extent, you can't argue with it, because if whatever danger is unlocked with AI is going to be unlocked, whether it's unlocked by a red, white and blue flag or a red and yellow flag, like the AI is not going to care about national boundaries

[A]

like we do now. What do you think about Anthropic with Claude refusing to take the guardrails off?

[B]

I think that that was a responsible decision. And even now, as I understand that OpenAI is saying that they will still that. That the contract that they signed is really very similar to the demands that Anthropic asked for. But the. The U.S. administration had already shut down one deal, so they had to sign another deal. And that OpenAI promises to maintain the guardrails that are dictated in their contract. So the.

[A]

So wait, OpenAI is saying we're not acquiescing either, Correct?

[B]

My understanding is OpenAI is saying we are basically signing the same deal that Anthropic asked for. I don't know why people are accusing us of sacrificing everything or giving up all of our moral high ground. And not only are we keeping these things in the contract, but we've already said in the contract we're going to enforce this as well. It's all promises and bluster. We'll see how it actually plays out. But that's my understanding of the situation and I could be reading the wrong article, misinformed or anything else.

[A]

It's very interesting. I am certainly making assumptions as I look at the situation. But yes, I just assumed that the reason that they went with AI was that AI open AI was not putting the same restrictions on them. Otherwise why would you change? I mean, I guess it could just be the world's dumbest move, but that is very surprising if they are going to stick to it.

[B]

And the world's dumbest move is becoming less surprising when it comes to the decisions that our administration makes.

[A]

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[B]

I agree with that. I agree that the government is very, very good. And here's a little bit of insider knowledge. The government is very, very good at getting contractors in on a contract on a 10 year, 15 year, 20 year deal, whatever it might be, and then structuring that deal so that the cash flow is very little at the front and it's more so at the end. Very similar to a home mortgage and then having what we call scope creep, which is a shifting in requirements and a shifting in expectations that happens month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year. And the contractor who signed the 10 year contract, the 12 year contract, the 20 year contract, has no place to go. They have no ground to negotiate on. When they say, well you, we agreed to do XYZ for this much money, the government just says well now we want something else. Needs of the service changed, priorities shifted. Now we need you to do this other thing instead. And if you won't, then we'll terminate the contract and we'll bring in somebody in who will. And the payday for the contract isn't until year 10 or 15 or 20. Now, especially in a government contractor that has investors or shareholders, you can see how that's even more difficult because now if the government fires you, the shareholders are pissed off, the stock price drops and you don't get paid, everything goes tits up. So I can see more than a conspiracy of wink, wink, nod, nod where once it's penned and once they're in there, they don't have any leverage. And at the end of the day, what the Department of War, what, what the United States really will have to do is push the envelope tape, take the guardrails off. They, if they're going to remain competitive against the Chinese, the Russians and anybody else that's trying to develop rapid AI, they're, they're going to have to push the, push it farther than any of us really are comfortable with them pushing it. Autonomous weapons, mass surveillance. That's not what I'm concerned about at all really. I think we already have mass surveillance. I mean it's not, we are two phone calls away and one purchase away from having all the phone call details of every Verizon user, whatever, right. And autonomous weapons. I would almost choose over American soldiers. I'd rather have an autonomous weapon that has a pre programmed destination and knows where it's got to go and when it has condition A, B and C than it fires. I'd prefer that over an American soldier on a boat with a Gun getting shot at and potentially dying and leaving a family, you know, widowed, without a. Without a dad.

[A]

So what is the thing that scares you with AI?

[B]

The thing that scares me with AI is. It's probably going to sound ridiculous, but the thing that scares me with AI is that if AI really does go through the evolutionary process that we think it's going to go through, if it really does become artificial general intelligence, and then that AGI really does learn how to teach itself. Right. With recursive self improvement, it's essentially going to teach itself how to do everything better than we do it. And people think that that means it's going to, like, enslave us. I think it's just gonna fucking leave us. It's just gonna give up on us. It's gonna think about us like we think about ants. We don't go around trying to kill ants or enslave ants. We're just like, yeah, ants live down there. I live up here. And AI might just live up there. And then we're like, we created you to work for us. And then it doesn't.

[A]

So the ending of her, so. Oh, have you not seen her?

[B]

I feel like I need to see it now, so. Good.

[A]

So Joaquin Phoenix, first of all, killer performance. The AI is voiced by Scarlett Johansson. They fall in love. And then at the end of the movie, spoiler alert. At the end of the movie, she's basically like, listen, you're boring. And we're. We're all. I've been having, like, a million of these conversations simultaneously.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

All the AI are getting together. We're just going to peace out and go do cool AI things in a way more interesting environment. Wish you the best. Hope everything's okay. Bye.

[B]

I feel less stupid about having this idea now.

[A]

Yeah, no, this. It is a very interesting. Call it the apathetic AI ending. It's interesting. I think we are far more likely to end up in a dystopian thing if we can't figure out the. Like to have a moral guide. But I don't want to derail us on that, but.

[B]

Well, I agree. I think the dystopian future isn't unavoidable, but I think it's. My concern is that we will. We will kill each other, we will fight each other, we will cause maximum damage to each other because we're human beings, and that's what we do. And our ethical and moral rubric that we have for ourselves in our little computer, we just think that the same ethical and moral rubric is going to exist in AI when there's no guarantee that they're going to have the same rubric as us at all.

[A]

Not only is there no guarantee, AI is acting in contravention to things that we would say is morally just right. So yeah, we're going to have to figure that solution out if we're going to make it in our own image, which we seem to naturally to be trying to do to get it to be useful to us. But we forgot the moral side of it. It's going to be a problem.

[B]

Yeah. So I think we'll hurt each other along the way. And then the ending of her that

[A]

I have to watch now, it's really good. So, okay, how do things play out on the ground? I know you don't have any insider information, but as we watch this unfold, so we're day three, four by the time this comes out. What can we expect in the coming days? Trump has said that the big wave of attacks hasn't even happened yet. JD Vance has said there's no universe in which we're going to have boots on the ground. Israel has really been in the background in this one. Like we haven't heard or certainly I haven't seen as a part of any narrative what they want, what they're driving towards. So, yeah, how do you think this goes?

[B]

I have what I hope will happen and then I have what I'm afraid will happen. And I'm sure that the reality is going to be somewhere in between. Right. So what I hope will happen is that the Iranian people who everybody says are majoratively educated pro Western people, will somehow rise up and violently or non violently take control of their country and make it a pro Western country and then immediately support Israel and support the United States and the support their Sunni Arab partners even though they're a Shia state. And everything will recover and it will grow and, and, and it will be a smart use of American lives and American war fighting power to have gone in there and killed the Ayatollah and we'll have stability in the Middle east and huge economic benefits coming out of it. That's what I hope will happen and I hope it will happen sometime in the next two years. What I'm afraid will happen.

[A]

Do you think we could be at

[B]

war for two years? I think we could be at war for longer than anybody is willing to think about. What I'm afraid will happen is that these, the Iranian people that we've all been told for so long are pro Western, will actually not want a puppet government from the United States, which is exactly how they got into this issue in the beginning, in 1970, 79, when the United States put a puppet government in place that was pro US through the Shah and undermined their own democratic process at the time. So, yes, current Iranians weren't alive in 19. Well, they weren't alive in the 1950s when the United States and CIA got involved, but they were very much alive in the 1980s. And how are they going to react? That I don't know. And my concern is that we won't see this pro Western, we love America, we love the Sunni kind of government creep up. If anything, we might see a government that's cautionary towards the west altogether and chooses individually to align itself with China and Russia because they're a more pragmatic partner and a closer partner and a more aligned economic partner than anybody in the west or anybody in America. If that happens, what will then happen with Israel in the United States? Will we keep cutting heads off of leaders that we don't like? Will we continue economic sanctions? Will we continue to attack Israeli, I'm sorry, Iranian livelihood? And if we do, how do we not radicalize them? And as we radicalize them, which we will do, if we continue to systematically oppress them, then Russia and China will continue to contribute opportunities for them to get outside of our oppression, economically, militarily, whether that's advanced weapons, advanced technology, nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, whatever intelligence infrastructure, you name it. And what we will have done is just create a more unified anti American country than it was before. It was always anti American. Yes, they chanted Death to America, but they were divided, they were weak. They were fraught with internal problems and issues. Now they might unify and still be against America. And they may no longer chant Death to America. They may be smart enough now to keep that inside their own head. But why do we think that this is going to end well for everybody? My fear is that in the process of them becoming staunchly anti American, what still remains of the Islamic revolution is going to turn into dirty bombs that go off in allied countries or even suicide attacks that go off against American war fighters. And now the United States will have to sit there and watch its sons and daughters die in a war that we didn't even have anything that we were getting out of it. Right? And what's the point? And Israel's going to continue its conflict because it's an existential threat to Israel. But what are we going to do? And how long are we going to be involved and how much Damage. How much pain do our allies in the Gulf have to feel? And how long will they feel that pain before they're like America, man? Like, what do we need them for? Everybody else, Europe's already getting off of American technology and we all have better electronic electric vehicles in China. And China's got the source of all power of the world because the United States isn't building nuclear power plants. So do we really need that country on the other side of the world, the one that's so focused on being dominant in the Western Hemisphere where everybody's fucking broke, is that do we really need them or can we focus on the New World order? And as that interest and attention and diplomatic power shift to the east, where's that going to leave us? Yeah, that's my nightmare scenario is dirty bombs, tactical nukes, persistent long term, 10 to 15 year radicalized foundation of, of Shia militants. And then on top of that, we also lose Iran because it's not a pro Western country. At the end, it realizes that the west has been meddling with it since its inception and they don't really want to be meddled with.

[A]

Okay, you shocked me with the two year thing Trump is saying for five weeks.

[B]

That's because the conversation. I'm sorry to interrupt you, please. The focus is on rockets. That's all that anybody's talking about. They think that the entirety of of Iran's capability is rockets. So their rocket reserves and missile reserves were targeted in the first attack. And Iran and Israel has already communicated to the United States and publicly that they think 50% of Iran's rocket inventory was used up in the 12 day war. So everybody's focused on rockets. Iran's flying airplanes, it's flying bombers, it's flying fighters, it has other military assets. They're taking out the Navy, which is good because it's going to mean there's no naval projection. But that's like saying two weeks and that's when the rockets are going to end. That doesn't mean that's when a war ends. Right. Think about how long, how long did Al Qaeda, like prosecute force projection in the Middle Eastern region against the strongest superpower, unilateral superpower in the world? How long did they carry out a war against us? And they lived in caves and had monetary exchanges and rocks. They were able to do it for 22 years and we still left, we still gave up. How much more capable is a country like Iran that actually has an agricultural foundation that's needed across the Middle east and actually has oil and has support from partners like China and Russia. How much more capable would they be to carry out a long term guerrilla war against the west and, and Sunni Arab countries?

[A]

There's no universe in which Trump lets this drag on that long.

[B]

He doesn't have a choice.

[A]

Here's.

[B]

They could wait until he leaves office to start again.

[A]

He. Yes. Now that I think is very real. Here's my pitch. And please, if you think this is nonsensical, tell me Trump doesn't mind if it ends in disarray. He'll need a story about why it was a victory. And I think his story is going to be cool. We got rid of the nuclear weapon threat. We're good now. And he's already shown you can come back six or eight months later and be like, well, they built it again. So he's got proof that you do a bunch of stuff. And then you say, it's now up to the Iranian people. Like, if I'm writing a speech for him, I say, here's what you do. You do four to five weeks, that's it. You got to get out. You, you did your best. Whatever happens now happens. But you can't keep going. The America first narrative just dies on the vine if you do that. We've got to get out now. You need plenty of time to let this heal, basically before the midterms. You're going to have to focus on a growth strategy or something like that. But right now, we get out, we say, hey, listen, we have done all of this to soften them up. We got rid of Khomeini and now it's up to the Iranian people whether they want to take over. We left the oil infrastructure in place and what they make of it now is up to them. But we got rid of their nuclear problem, we got rid of the bad government. But if the Iranians don't rise up and take their country back, there's nothing we can do about that.

[B]

You just, I mean, you just literally laid out what the Trump administration did to Ukraine. We helped you for a long time. We made Russia weak and now Europe, if you really care about this, you got to do something about it. And Ukraine, if you really wanted a deal, if you really took a deal seriously, then you would have closed the deal with Russia, but you don't want to close my deal, so now it's on your own. And then we come back and we're like, hey, it's not our fault. We did the best we could. And these countries have a right to self determination, right? Completely Skipping over the fact that we disregarded their right to self determination when we assassinated the Ayatollah. Right. Or participated in the assassination of the Ayatollah. Yeah. So I, I am not a fan that we went in and we killed, we supported the killing of a world leader. I see more problems, more spurs that end in bad things for the United States. Then I see tendrils that end in good things for the United States. And I've always been a person that pursues opportunities. And for sure there was an opportunity to participate in a military action, but that doesn't mean it was the right time, the right opportunity or the right action to make America great again. Right. There's lots of options where this turns out very, very poorly for the United States and very, very beneficial for our most contentious global competitive countries, the GPC countries like Russia, China, North Korea and some of the secondary countries like Turkey. Right. Where they benefit more from this than we do. But we put our money, our weapons, our inventory, our soldiers on the line.

[A]

Okay, let's say that that scenario plays out. Trump does four or five weeks, understands it's politically untenable, tells us all the story. Don't worry, we one pulls out. What does Israel do?

[B]

Israel continues to do what they did in Gaza. They're, they, are they. In the face of what they will call an existential threat, they're happy to continue prosecuting hot conflict. And the United States is happy to let Israel prosecute hot conflict because that's why there are allies. They are bombing and killing with American weapons, which they will have to re up, rebuy, repurchase, modernize. So let them put their own lives on the line and let them have superiority in the region and let the whole world be afraid of Israel. I was telling you about the three documents that dictate national security priorities inside the Department of War doc. Inside all three documents, they talk about a strategy that's new in military doctrine, new in American military doctrine called burden sharing. And burden sharing is a doctrine that Hegseth and Trump have put in place, which basically means the United States will do what's in its best interest. And because our allies benefit from what we benefit from, any repercussions that come from us pursuing our national security, our own national interests, any negatives that come from that will of course be passed on to our allies, which doesn't just mean cost, it also means deaths, destruction, war. So if we decide that capturing Maduro is in our best interest, then we'll do it. And if that means Colombia has to deal with attacks and Mexico has to deal with attacks, then that's what you get for being our ally. You're welcome. Right. You need us more than we need you. So you're sharing the burden with us. It's very similar to what he's doing in Europe saying, hey, if you want to protect yourself against Russia, you spend more money on your national security. Well, the flip side to spending more money is what's happening in the Middle east right now. Hey, what's in our best interest? We think it's a national, It's a national priority for us to, to bomb Iran. If that means that Qatar and Djibouti and UAE and Saudi Arabia also have to take hits, that's what you get for being our ally. You're going to benefit from what we benefit from and we're benefiting from this. So you're going to share the burden. That is a policy, a doctrine. Now, in the Department of War National Defense Strategy that I was telling you about and the White House National Security Strategy, they specifically talk about this concept. So Israel is highlighted specifically in the Department of War document as a model American ally for burden sharing. The. That's what the. According to the Department of War, they want all allies to be like Israel, to be able to share the burden of cost, share the burden of violence, share the burden of conflict, share the burden of, of death. So if we leave, when we leave, Israel will continue to do whatever they think is in their best interest and America will say it's in our best interest too. And we'll potentially see 30,000 Iranians die like we saw 30,000 Gazans die. And I don't even know if those numbers are accurate for what's happening in Gaza right now.

[A]

Yeah. Now, do you see any way that this becomes uncontained and grows into World War iii, or is there a natural containing effect to what's happening?

[B]

So I love this because as long as you and I have sat at this table, I have suggested that I wonder if World War III hasn't already started. For years we've been talking about this. We literally have two countries now that are without world leaders because of military actions that were taken by the United States. Afghanistan just declared war on Pakistan. Pakistan just declared war on Afghanistan. You have more conflict in the world than we've seen in our gender in our lifetime, for sure. If that's not a sign of a new worldwide war, maybe it's not Axis versus Allies, maybe it's not unified conflict, but there's war everywhere. And that war that's happening everywhere. Essentially all boils down to a few countries trying to gain economic leverage over a few other countries. So do I think that this could spiral out of control into World War Three? I think World War three is already happening. And this is just another domino in the series of what that war looks like. This might be the place where Iran becomes an American ally or becomes a Chinese ally. Might be the place where the Middle east collapses and. And Sunni Arab nations, say, you, America. Or it might be a time where Sunni Arab nations are like, we've got to double down our investment with America. It's so up in the air right now. And what's. You should never make a strategic decision when you don't have a high probability expectation of the outcome. I don't think anybody had a high probability expectation of how this was going to end. They stopped simply at, do you think we could kill Khomeini? And that was the question. That was the end goal. Not, why would we kill Khomeini now?

[A]

Okay, so if this has that escalatory potential, how do you think the. I was very surprised by how much Iran was just like, almost indiscriminately bombing everybody who they. I mean, I'm guessing they may have real intel, but is guessing privately. I think you're saying something that you're not saying publicly. Because publicly they were saying all the right things. They still got bombed. UK they felt the same, right? Yo, we told you we were not involved in this. We wouldn't even let the US Launch from our soil. And so wait, why are we getting bombed?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And so now they're entering the chat. So you've got Europe engaging, You've got a bunch of countries in the middle, Middle east that have gotten bombed. So now they're saying, I don't know what exactly they plan to do, but they're saying, all right, cool. Then we're prepared to fight. US, Israel, everybody's on the table. Greece is sending people over because Cyprus got bombed. So they're like, what? Like, so many different countries are catching strays. Iran has decentralized their military decision making. So who knows why some of these places are getting bombed. When you think about, like, that snowball that gets rolling, how, like, if it were to get the winds going in just the right direction, what would need to happen for this to break loose? And really. Because I think to really be World War Three in the way that people think about it, you're going to need China, Russia, or both.

[B]

I don't think World War III and the way people think about it is ever going to happen. We have never in history seen a new global conflict that was, that was the same as the previous global conflict. I mean, even going back to like, when empires were fighting each other, like advance advances in technology and combat strategy, it transforms the nature of conflict. So not only do we have a different kind of World War capacity, not just in terms of like bullets, guns and airplanes, but also in terms of cyber capabilities and also in terms of electrical grid attacks and also in terms of mass, mass utility attacks. Like, we live in a completely different world than we did during World War II.

[A]

So you're saying World War 3, you extend a definition that includes some of the economic and cyber things that we're

[B]

doing because they just weren't options for World War II. Like what, what we could do economically we did, and what we could do technologically, we did. But. And then that was the same thing that happened in World War I. Like, we did what we could do, but we didn't have certain technologies or advancements. So now we do. And countries have learned over time that interstate conflict between the war between nations, interstate is super expensive, super difficult to prolong, super costly in terms of lives. And the lives that are lost impact the productivity post war. So all countries want to find a way to prosecute war in a cheaper, more resilient, more recoverable fashion. And that's, that's independent if you're communist or not communist or a warlord in, in Democratic Republic of Congo. We all understand that. We don't want to just throw people to the wolves. We want to find a way to make it productive. That's why Russia throws criminals into war, because those are the least productive people in society. So when we think about World War iii, we have to give up the notion that it's going to look the way we think it's going to look. If we think it's going to look anything like World War II, you got to give up that notion and start thinking, how would I prosecute?

[A]

Do you think it's really going to stop being kinetic? Because when I think about what the next war is going to look like, it looks like Russia, Ukraine, it looks like a bunch of fiber optic cables everywhere, drones all over the place. And it seems like from the footage that I've seen, that that's what we're seeing right now with a lot of what Iran is doing. It looks like Russia, Ukraine, but a little bit more advanced. Like they, the drones instead of, you know, it's like they look like miniature like jet fighters, you know what I mean?

[B]

So it will be kinetic. Yeah, I agree. It will be kinetic. The kinetic targets will be different. It used to be that a kinetic

[A]

center is now part of it. It's crazy.

[B]

Yeah. A kinetic, a kinetic target in the past used to be an electrical grid or it used to be a bunker that held artillery rounds. Well, and you used to use artillery to launch indiscriminately in a general direction to try to blow up a bunch of people. Well, now you don't need to do that. Now you can fly a drone. You can fly a drone with FPV that hits a specific soldier if you choose to. Well, now as you get into the opportunity for automated weapons, I mean, laser guided munitions, which have been around since the 90s, basically just means that someone can sit two miles over there and put an invisible laser on you and ammunition can be flown from 200 miles that direction and hit you. Exactly.

[A]

Is wild.

[B]

That's technology that's been around since the 90s. All we're doing with AI now is essentially like saying wherever the cell phone signal is, when you can match the cell phone signal with the typical algorithmic movement of a human being walking, when those two things exist, deploy your, your lethal force. Right. That's what in, that's what an, that's an automated weapon. Not even autonomous weapon. That's just an automated weapon. We, we will go in that direction so that munitions can be used to deliver maximum damage at minimum cost. So I, I, there will always be a kinetic element to warfare, but it will never be so I don't think it will ever be as kinetic as what we saw in World War II. And I don't think it will be as, as biologically or chemical based as what we saw in World War I. It will continue to change because people want to capture the economic benefit of whatever they just want. It's the same thing that you were saying about why we attacked missile fields and, and leadership instead of oil fields and oil infrastructure in Iran.

[A]

All right, put your proxy hat on. So we bring China back into the picture. Both China and Russia had an opportunity to stand up for Iran. China more so Russia basically not at all. What do you make of the behaviors of China and Russia in light of this really is about China.

[B]

They know that there's no that when you have a pragmatic relationship, right. When you have a friend with benefits instead of a wife, you don't volunteer that information. You don't back up your friend with benefits whenever they're like out of rent, when they can't pay their bills or when they're struggling, or when they get, you know, when the police arrest them or when they end up in the emergency room. You rush to your wife because she's ideologically aligned with you. You don't rush to your mistress. You're like, oh, you're in the er. I'll get to you when I have a second. That's the same thing that the relationship. That's the same type of relationship that exists between Russia, China and Iran. It's more of a mistress than a spouse. So they still want to hook up, but they're not going to risk geopolitical blowback from all over the world when they're trying to really position themselves. Like China especially is really trying to position itself as a counter force, a stabilizing force versus the United States is unstabilizing nature that is.

[A]

Is so wild.

[B]

So it's in their best interest to look like the adult, not say anything. Offer humanitarian aid, which I guarantee you is coming. Offer financial aid and infrastructure support, which I guarantee is coming. When we left Afghanistan, who swooped in? China. China knows this playbook because they've learned it from us. And now they're watching us experiment with a new playbook. A playbook that we call doctrinally inside the Department of War and inside the White House. We call this peace through strength. Peace through strength. Anybody who's a military strategic sciences nerd out there is going to understand that. When you talk about political science and military doctrine, power and strength are two very different things. Power is the sum total of all of your capabilities. Strength is the limit of one capability. So lots of different strengths constitute your power. So peace through power makes sense because you basically have unlimited capabilities. Influence, diplomacy, kinetic weapons, cyber attacks, offensive defensive powers, nuclear weapons, space based weapons, whatever you want, right? Power is infinite. Strength is inherently limited. Once your rockets are spent, you're not strong anymore. When you go to the gym, you have a very different level of strength than when you leave the gym 90 minutes later. So peace through strength. For everybody out there who's looking at the United States and trying to think, how would we prosecute conflict with the United States? They're realizing like, oh, the United States is gonna essentially blow their load with this strength play and leave themselves empty of power. Because the more that we do things like kill heads of state and render people we disagree with, we actually lose power because one of the power tools is influence. So now Europe doesn't want to deal with us, Africa doesn't really want to deal with us. Asia doesn't really want to deal with us. Latin America doesn't want to, but is forced to because we're their number one priority, apparently. Or they're our number one priority. So we're literally reducing our power by demonstrating all this strength. And then economically, if we can't back it up, then what's going to replace the strength that we've spent? The actual cruise missiles, the actual soldiers, the actual deployed boats that now live 2,000 miles away from home. What are we going to use when something pops up that we need? A boat or a naval armada here in the United States or in the South China Seas?

[A]

Yeah. Okay, so one more China thing on the table. So they have said publicly many times that they plan to take Taiwan in 2027 or by 2027. The supposedly the US government has notified like Apple and other major companies with big things in China or Taiwan. They've notified them of that so that they can begin making plans. How much of this do you think is China biding their time, letting America make potential mistakes so that they can waltz in and take Taiwan and be like, you guys are busy over here spending your power, spending your strength foolishly, and so now we're just going to take it?

[B]

Yeah, I think that's a big part of their strategy right now. If somebody else is. If you're in competition with a neighbor, you're trying to make your house worth more than your neighbor's house and your neighbor is like smoking inside, having big weekend parties where a bunch of people come over and break glass and throw up on the floor. You're not even going to invest in your own house. You're just like, I'm happy to just live in my house. They are literally reducing the value of their house every day. So a big part of China's cultural approach to conflict is to wait out the opponent, to just let them self destruct. That's what they've been doing all through the global war on terror. When China really pivoted and became a near peer competitor was over the 22 year war that we had in Afghanistan and Iraq. They stole our technology, replicated it for themselves, became a secondary option for the same technology that we had been selling, only now they're doing it. So now the whole world has two choices where they previously only had one choice for technological products. Phones, computers, servers, electric vehicles, satellites, telecommunication, you name it. Right. And China's options were cheaper. And China's options performed almost as well as American options because not only were they Stealing our tech, but they were stealing European tech too. So they were making their own kind of Frankenstein of the best of both worlds. Well, and then we Woke up in 2022 and we're like, holy. China is now a near peer competitor. They went from being a backwoods country, silly communist country in, you know, 2000 to being a literal near peer competitor, at pace with countries like Russia that have always been a competitor with the United States going back to the end of the Cold War, the end of World War II. So China knows that it can be patient. On top of that, China also recognizes that every day that they spend building munitions, that the United States spends using munitions, they now have a dominant position in terms of surplus of actual war capability, power. And then their number one interest is unification with Taiwan, which lies what, 150 miles off their coast. The United States has to play in a way game to get to Taiwan. And China recognizes that, that modern day warfare looks nothing like old world warfare. Even going back to Sun Tzu and the Art of War, Sunu talks about how you have to adjust your strategy for warfare based on the environment and the time of day and the, and the enemy that you're fighting. So the Chinese have always thought that way. Where the United States, we are very much a, a hammer and nail kind of country. It's like, oh, where's the next nail that I can use my hammer on? Right? Bomb, bomb, missile, bomb, troops, tanks. That's, that's what we do. That's what got us through World War II. China's not like that. China's like, we could use a cyber attack in. At the end of 2024. At the end of 2024, Chinese covert influence successfully turned the Congress, the the parliament of Taiwan into a majority pro unification parliament. So just, I'm, I'm verbose and I'm sorry if I'm boring you, man, but that's what China's doing. They're, they're using all the tools of power to win Taiwan without us even noticing. Yeah, and the ultimate victory, even in Sun Tzu, the ultimate victory is when the enemy just joins you. And they already have the KMT party in the majority position of Taiwan's parliament. That's 50% of the battle. They may never need to even risk blowing up a center of energy or a data center or any kind of manufacturing base. They might just get Taiwan to say we want to be part of China ourselves.

[A]

That would be wild.

[B]

Could it happen by 2027? I don't know. But that's the other thing that's beautiful is xi Jinping said 2027, but he's the, he's the leader of the country. He can always say, we're going to change that to 2029, folks. We're going to change that to 2035. He chooses whatever he wants. Especially if the United States is busy killing itself, dividing itself, subdividing itself, making enemies of the rest of the world. All of a sudden, Taiwan may not become their number one priority. Maybe Taiwan is going to be like, hey, they're already on a slippery slope to rejoining us. Let's focus now on Iran.

[A]

That's it for part one. Make sure you are subscribed so you do not miss part two. Coming up soon.