#323 - Man Who Survived 16 Wars Explains the Battlefield in Ukraine | Scott Anderson

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Scott Anderson is a writer, novelist, non-fiction author, and war correspondent. He has authored non-fiction books including Lawrence in Arabia, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, and War Zones. His newest book, 'King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution' is available now. SPONSORS https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS Scott's new book: https://a.co/d/0A9kGwt FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Chechnya: the world's most terrifying war 07:21 - What's happening in Ukraine right now 14:19 - America's mistake in bombing Iran 22:10 - Is America the "bad guy"? 27:50 - Why sanctions don't work 35:44 - What is Russia's motive for war? 41:59 - Likelihood of nuclear war 53:26 - How technology is making war more savage 01:03:30 - The "industrial revolution" of war 01:10:47 - Drugs on the battlefield 01:14:50 - How CIA participates in the battlefield 01:20:10 - The CIA, the Shah & Khomeini 01:30:29 - How Russia & China feel about Iran today 01:36:20 - China vs. Taiwan 01:44:16 - Georgia's surveillance state 01:47:43 - The Israel & Iran proxy war 01:57:22 - Trump's war on the Epstein files Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Danny Jones?

  You've been covering, reporting on hot wars.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:11Danny Jones?

  Your whole life. How many, how many wars have you been embedded in, reporting?

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Sixteen, I believe. I think sixteen.

• 1:19Danny Jones?

  Sixteen.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  I think sixteen at this point.

• 1:21Danny Jones?

  Out of all the wars you've been in, what was the most dangerous one?

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Chechnya.

• 1:25Danny Jones?

  Chechnya.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Chechnya. Chechnya was horrifying. I went, it was, uh, 1995.

• 1:32Danny Jones?

  There was two of those, right?

• 1:33Speaker 02

  There was two. I was in there in the first one. And I went for the, it was the first or second story I did for the New York Times Magazine. And I went to try to find out what had happened with a, a rather prominent American disaster relief expert who had, he had been to 50 war zones. And he had, he had gone to Chechnya and he'd called Chechnya the scariest place he'd ever been. He went back and within 24 hours of him going back, he disappeared. He vanished. So I, I went to try to find out what had happened to him, which was kind of foolhardy.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  And it was, it was really, really terrifying. The, the, the one way I just described how kind of terrifying it was, um, I was only there for three weeks and, but it, it, we were camping out in burnt out buildings. I didn't shower for three weeks. I got back to Moscow and I took the first, my first shower in three weeks. I looked in the mirror afterwards and I had this little shock of white hair. It was much more impressive when I was younger because that was all the white hair I had. I'd never had a white hair before or, and for years afterwards it happened. It came up in three weeks. Um, just horrifying. It's if, I've never felt in any other war zone quite that any, any horrible thing could happen any moment.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  And that was, that was Chechnya from, on both sides. The, the Chechen rebels and the, and the Russian army.

• 2:59Danny Jones?

  Chechnya is tiny, right?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Tiny, yeah. It's, um,

• 3:02Danny Jones?

  Isn't it like smaller than New Jersey?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I think so. Yeah. I think it's like the size of Connecticut or something. Yeah. But both sides just absolutely brutal. Um, and it was a really savage war.

• 3:15Danny Jones?

  So what is the history of the conflict between Chechnya and Russia?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  So Chechnya sits on the, the, the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains and they're, they're Muslim. Uh, they're darker complected. They're darker skinned than most ethnic Russians. They've all, so the, the czar had a, I'm going back to the 1860s. Tolstoy actually fought in, in Chechnya, try, under, under the czars, trying to control the, um, the Chechens. They've always had a reputation of being incredibly tough, um, gangsters. They, they, the Chechen mafia really kind of controlled a lot of the organized crime in, in, in the Soviet Union. And Russians have always been simultaneously terrified of them and hate them. They've always

• 4:04Speaker 02

  been treated as second-class citizens, as a lot of the kind of smaller ethnic groups in Russia have been, the, the Asian groups, the Muslim groups. Um, so when the Soviet Union collapsed,

• 4:17Speaker 02

  The Chechens thought this was their moment to finally get their independence. And so the Soviet Union, they'd already lost all the republics, the other 14 republics, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. And so when Chechnya was trying to break away, this was, this was the first internal rot of Russia itself. And that's when the Russians decided to put a, to put a stop to it. And it was a really vicious war.

• 4:42Danny Jones?

  Wow. Yeah. So the, was the second time they went to war was when Putin had just gotten to power and they did a false flag on the apartment building?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. And yeah, so I actually wrote an article for, for GQ magazine about the false flag operation of, of the apartment bombings.

• 5:04Danny Jones?

  And I had another gentleman in here a couple of years ago, who was a big reporter during that time over there. Huh. Uh, his name's David Satter.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. I know David Satter.

• 5:15Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:15Danny Jones?

  Great guy.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So he's, so you know about the, the false flag operation?

• 5:19Danny Jones?

  And it's been a while. I'm a little, I'm a little rusty on the whole story, but from what I can recall is they did an investigation and they found out it was actual FSB agents that were there planting the bombs, right?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah. Basically Putin had ju, so Chechnya had de facto independence at that point. It was right around 2000.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Putin came in as the first, as Zelensky's fifth prime minister or something in a year. And right away, these apartment buildings, uh, whole apartment buildings in Moscow started blowing up and, and collapsed, pancaking and killing dozens, scores of people. Putin was a former FSB, KGB agent and it was, what never made any sense, I'm sure David Satter explained this to you, is that what never made any sense is, so it was immediately blamed on the Chechens and that provoked the second Chechen war. Putin goes in, he, he flattens Chechnya. He rides the, this is a rallying around the flag moment for Russia. He becomes this, the savior of Russia and he never looks back. What never made any sense though was

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Why the Chechens would have done these apartment bombings?

• 6:29Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  They had independence. They had everything they wanted. Why would they do this? So that's the thing that never made any sense. And the more you kind of delved into it, as I did, as David Satter did, it became very clear that it was it was an FSB operation.

• 6:44Danny Jones?

  And what was Putin's goal with that? Was he was he just just trying to bring back the Soviet Union?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, I think he was. I think he first saw this as the what he could use to to bring the country around him to establish his own power.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  And it worked. It worked. Within a very short time, Yeltsin, who was the president, was out of the picture. And Putin had had absolute control. And and it's very popular in Russia because he he was able to crush the Chechens in a way that Yeltsin hadn't been able to. And frankly, he's still very popular for for that and for other things he has done.

• 7:24Danny Jones?

  Putin?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Putin, yeah.

• 7:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I find it. I find it super difficult to find any sort of it difficult to find figure out just using the media what's going on with the the Russia-Ukraine thing, right? Because there's so many different lines of thought and there's so many different narratives. And there's so much propaganda on so many sides revolving these wars, all these wars that are happening all over the world.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:53Danny Jones?

  And everyone's got a dog in the fight and and everyone wants to promote some sort of idea on it or, you know, whatever, if it supports their political beliefs or supports their ideology or their religion or whatever it is. So like,

• 8:09Danny Jones?

  it's interesting hearing from someone like you who's like spent a lot of time on the ground doing this stuff. And especially before the rise of like social media.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:17Danny Jones?

  And, you know, all of this information overload we're dealing with right now.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:21Danny Jones?

  How do you? How do you view like the evolution of all of this stuff and like the the propaganda that? Lives around and surrounds these wars.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. It's it has fundamentally changed the way wars is covered because, you know, this is not an original thought, but people tend now with with social media and with the Internet to to just go to those sites that that reconfirm what they already believe.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  The Russians are very sophisticated at at at running false propaganda of what what not only what happens in Ukraine, but what's happening in in in Russia itself and throughout Eastern Europe.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  I I I feel it's become much more difficult to get your voice heard because there's just so many different outlets. There's so much silos of information now. It's also become much more dangerous to to do the kind of of work I've done in the past. Because people know where you are all the time. I've known journalists who who were targeted to be to be killed just by by people following their like their their cellphone.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  So it's become much more. I think it's just become much more dangerous. There's there's not the funding to do this or, you know, what in the past, when I was covering a war, I would go and spend a month on the ground. And, you know, I was on somebody's dime, usually the New York Times Magazine. And it's with the collapse of magazines and and kind of traditional media, it's more and more difficult to to be supported to do that kind of work.

• 10:03Danny Jones?

  I have a friend. I've I've told this story ad nauseam. So if you've already heard me say this, I'm sorry. I have a really good friend who was on the podcast before. He his name is Jack Murphy, and he wrote a piece on the Ukraine Russia war about a year and a half ago. Have you heard of it? Have you heard of him?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Yes, I've heard of him, but I don't know the piece.

• 10:21Danny Jones?

  He's got the the Team House podcast. And and he was working on a story basically about how CIA used a NATO ally intelligence service to conduct sabotage operations inside Russia. And he had. Over a dozen sources in the intelligence community inside the US to do this article. And he was working with one of the, he didn't name the actual publication, but it was like one of the top three or four publications in the US. Worked on it for about a year, maybe more than a year with an editor at this publication. And by the, at the time they were ready to publish it and like press go and release it, I think this was around December, the December after the war started, maybe.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:04Danny Jones?

  They said, the editor at the magazine said, okay, we gotta call up the deputy director and get his sign off on the, on the article or whatever. And he's like, okay, great. So they got him on three way. And he said, no, we categorically deny all this, all of this thing, everything that is in here. And you're actually putting lives at risk by putting this out there. And he said, okay, we'll add that to the bottom of the article that you guys said this. And he's like, and then he hangs up and then he's like, all right, let's do it. And she goes, uh, no, he, they have an off the record agreement with the CIA, with this publication has an off the record agreement with CIA. So if they say this, we don't, we don't publish the article. So wasted a year of his life and he, he published it, published it on his own. But that, hearing stories like that really make me wonder.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so there's some empirical evidence when you look at Ukraine. I have, I have not been to Ukraine yet. I'm, I'm probably going to be going in a few months, but you know, this war's been going on for over two years and at a typical war zone, you would have had dozens of, of foreign correspondents dead or wounded by now, considering the kind of war it is. But in Ukraine, going in on the Ukrainian side, you cannot, you're, you are shepherded around by the Ukrainian government. You cannot travel anywhere as a foreign journalist without permission from the Ukrainian government. Now, why is that? Do they really care that much about the, the safety of foreign journalists?

• 12:26Speaker 02

  The, the, the theory and the, of most journalists is that they, they're highly controlled because they don't want to see who is actually on the ground in the front lines, um, helping them.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  The probability or the theory being that there are American and British troops in the front lines, helping the Ukrainians fight the Russians. And that's why journalists are kept in very close quarantine there. I've never seen anything like it in a war zone, where I mean, literally, you have to have permission, written permission to go anywhere, and they keep track.

• 13:01Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the supposition is that's because of the other actors that are in the battlefield. Ukraine, if for nothing else, has been a wonderful lab school for weaponry for the West. I mean, drone warfare has now utterly changed the face of of modern war. And so the Pentagon, the CIA, the SAS, they've been able to try out all their toys. And it's been sort of a great gift to them.

• 13:35Danny Jones?

  Hey, guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video. Back to the show. I saw something this morning saying that as Trump just like released this new thing about giving them a bunch of more weapons or whatever.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:50Danny Jones?

  Somebody told him, I forget who it was, somebody in the Defense Department basically said, we don't have enough weapons to give them. Like, we're running really low.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 13:58Danny Jones?

  So they're doing some sort of pause or whatever?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, to the degree, I mean, what is remarkable, and you know, I've thought about this a lot, not just in relation to Ukraine, but in relation to September 11th, and to a lot of things is what the modern world has created over and over again are these sort of David and Goliath situations. You know, all this security now, that's the security state that's been built up since September 11th. People seem to forget that those guys did with accomplished what they did with box cutters, with $2 box cutters. It was not sophisticated stuff. And the same way in Ukraine, they're blowing up, you know, multimillion dollar tanks with $400 drones. And in some cases, not even like losing that

• 14:45Speaker 02

  $400 drone. They could actually program now to to drop its load and then to come Back. So there's this, there's this very disproportionate thing. With conventional weapons, with, with, you know, with defense weapons, maybe the, the, maybe the Americans are running low on them. But, you know, time and again, the Ukrainians have done this very low tech thing that nobody saw coming. And have been able to at least hold their own with it.

• 15:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it is, uh, it's interesting to see how it all plays out. And as well with the, with everything going on in Iran.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:20Danny Jones?

  The Iran thing, this 12 day. War that just happened, it seems like, uh. It was, we got out of there so quick because they were doing, they were threatening to do something with the. That little strait there, they were threatening to mine it or something like that. And we were terrified they were going to do that.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:38Danny Jones?

  Do you know, do you know the ins and outs of how that works?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the Straits of Hormuz. It's the little choke point at the, at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. That's, I believe it's about 15, 16 miles wide and all the tankers from, from Saudi Arabia, from, from Iraq, from Iran. They all have to go through there.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  I actually have a, I actually have a different theory of, of, of that, of what happened in, in Iran with the, with the Americans bombing the nuclear sites. My, my next book, by the way, it's coming out, it's about the Iranian revolution. So I've been, I've been really kind of focused on Iran lately.

• 16:14Danny Jones?

  King of Kings.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  King of Kings, yeah. This is coming out in a few weeks, but, um.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  I've talked to a few people inside Iran who were, uh, since, since the American bombing.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  People who are on the opposition to the regime. And what almost all of them have said was that this is the greatest gift, the American bombing, the nuclear sites. This is the greatest gift to the regime that they've ever had because now. They can tar all the opposition with, oh, if you're against us, then you're lackeys of the Americans. So it plays right into the regime's hands. And so one of the, one of the kind of conspiracy theories, and Iranians love conspiracy.

• 16:56Danny Jones?

  Oh, do they really?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, yeah, they, they have conspiracy theories about everything.

• 17:01Danny Jones?

  I know. What is the sentiment of Iranians towards America? Because I know a lot of them are actually like Israel, which is shocking.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Right. Well, there's always been a large Iranian Jewish community that, that was never, that was never kicked out. It's still there. A lot, a lot of the prominent Iranian Jews left after when the Shah was overthrown. They're like in Los Angeles and stuff now. But they, they, yeah, they just love conspiracy theories. Well, and also, the Shah was always very close to Israel. And part of that, they're not Arabs, Iranians. They see themselves as a part from the Arab world. And they're also Shia Muslims, which is different from all the Sunni Muslims that kind of control all the other, all the other religions. So they've always seen themselves as a part. They, they, they actually get offended if you, if, if people think that they're Arabs, that they're very proud of the fact that

• 17:50Speaker 02

  they're, they're not. So there is this kind of natural affinity that they've often have with Israel. But the, so the conspiracy theory is that, or one of the conspiracy theories is that the regime actually, you know, they had a chance to kind of cut a deal with Israel when Israel's, just Israel was bombing them. And they were asked to come to the negotiating table, and they resisted. And then the Americans bombed the nuclear sites. And the, the conspiracy theory is that that's exactly what they wanted to happen. They knew that they were never going to be able to develop a nuclear weapon, that they could, they would never, they'll never be able to get away with it with the West.

• 18:26Danny Jones?

  Who knew?

• 18:27Speaker 02

  The regime, the Iranian regime. So we'll sacrifice our nuclear program. But in return, now we have, once again, we have America bombing us, killing civilians. And that's a way to, to rally the country around the flag, which has happened. And to gut our domestic opposition. Because now we can say, oh, you're in bed with, you're in bed with the Americans. You're, you're supporters of the people who attacked our own country. So, so the Iranian opposition people I've talked to in the last two weeks, they're, they're really despondent over what happened. And they feel that it set the, it set the move against the regime back at least five, 10 years.

• 19:08Danny Jones?

  Did you see that interview that the president of Iran did with Tucker Carlson?

• 19:13Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. I was probably in Turkey when that-

• 19:16Danny Jones?

  It was like a 30-minute interview.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 19:18Danny Jones?

  And it seemed like his sentiment was like, I don't want to fight.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:23Danny Jones?

  You know, it seemed like we don't, we don't harbor, like, of course, you know, our slogan is death to America, but, you know, everyone needs a slogan. That we don't, we don't want to fight you guys.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:33Danny Jones?

  You know, and then y'all has been trying to get you guys to bomb us since the early 90s.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Right. Right. I think that's, I think it's true, you know, and I've, I've never, I've never bought into this idea that the Iranians could develop a nuclear weapon and somehow launch it against Israel or against anybody. I know, I was embedded with Israeli army. I know the kind of spies, spy imagery they have of drones and satellites. The Americans have it too. The minute, the instant, you know, a missile was pushed out into a launch pad in Iran, it would be blown up. The idea that they could somehow bring it out, you know, set it up, launch it, and somehow it hit Israel is just, is a fantasy.

• 20:14Danny Jones?

  They wouldn't even be able to get it off the ground.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  They wouldn't even be able to get it off the ground.

• 20:16Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  They wouldn't even be able to get it to, you know, to the launch pad. It would just, as it was coming out the tunnel, no. It'd be instantaneous.

• 20:23Danny Jones?

  Not just drones, I'm sure there's satellites.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Right, right. Yeah, there's, there's, there's constant satellites and, and, and drones. I, you know, I'll tell you, I was in, it was with the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. This was 20 years ago in Gaza. And I was in one of their, their command centers and they had drones then looking, looking down into Gaza. I distinctly remember them focusing on a guy who was reading a newspaper on a bench. And they said, so we can tell he's reading a newspaper. The American drones can read the newspaper. And that was 20 years ago. So, you know, the idea that they, that anything can happen in places like Iran without them absolutely knowing is absurd.

• 21:09Danny Jones?

  And I also read that Israel actually published, I think the Israeli government came out recently and said that 60% of their uranium survived the bombings.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 21:21Danny Jones?

  So, so what? I mean, I just, I was hearing everything all over the news saying that this was the most successful bombing campaign ever.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 21:29Danny Jones?

  But it's, but 60% survived. Now what?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you know, who knows? Who knows?

• 21:34Danny Jones?

  What were you doing in Israel 20 years ago with the IDF?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  I was reporting. It was actually at a time when, you know, this was even before they, this was in, God, it was more than 20 years ago. It was 2002.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  And it was even before the whole term of embed had come along. And I, I and my photographer I've always worked with,

• 21:59Speaker 02

  were, we wanted to go on a mission with the IDF into the West Bank. And so just by, and we, we got clearance to do it. And just by chance, while we were there, there was a huge suicide bombing that killed about 24 people. And so the Israelis did this big offensive into the West Bank. So we, Apollo, Apollo, Pellegrini and I were embedded with this, this, this forward kind of commando group and the Israeli army.

• 22:28Danny Jones?

  How do you go about doing that? Like getting there and getting them to just bring you in? Sure.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like this kind of persistence, you know, it's, it's, the one thing I remember about that trip in particulars is that we got with this commando group and, and the, the head of it said, okay, you know, you gotta, here's two uniforms for you. And I said, man, I'm a journalist. I, I can't wear an army uniform. And he goes, goes, okay, well, wherever we go, there's a dusted on curfew and, and we, we do all our operations at night. And so if you're not in a uniform, we're probably going to shoot you. And I went, okay, I'll put on the uniform.

• 23:06Danny Jones?

  Sold, baby.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 23:11Danny Jones?

  It seems like. It seems like all sorts of countries are doing everything they can right now to distance themselves from the United States.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:20Danny Jones?

  You know, with our foreign policies, with like the tariffs and the sanctions and all the wars and stuff like this. It doesn't seem like, you know, it's, sometimes it's hard to, when you're an American and you haven't been to all the places you've been to, to give yourself a perspective on what it really means to be an American, right? Like, you don't really know that until you've been to some of these places and had that perspective. And I've been thinking more and more in the recent months, you know, like, is it possible we are the bad guys?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  We are two huge swaths of the world now. Certainly, we are in the Middle East, in the, in the Arab world. I think there's a lot of animosity in throughout Latin America because of the immigration policy and which seems to have kind of a racialist component to it. What I, what I think is kind of remarkable, and I think this is for, if not of resentment, it's a mystification in Europe of, in one area after another, it's almost like America's unilaterally disarming. We're, we're losing our edge in science because of cuts. We're losing our edge in technology.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  This idea that we're going back to coal when, you know, at a time when the world's getting hotter, it seems like by the minute. Even from an economic standpoint, it's, you know, it's obvious that the countries that are going to be at the head of, of whatever green revolution comes, you know, that against climate change, they're going to make out like bandits economically. And, you know, the countries that, that... Have have don't have the means or the willingness to to try to, you know, foster this this technology, you're gonna be left out in the cold. And it just seems we, I mean, I sense this over and over with with Europeans I talk to. It's like, why is America just, you know, and everything you can think of biomedical research, you know, green

• 25:24Speaker 02

  technology, scientific research, education, you know, higher graduate school education that, you know, limiting people coming. It's just, it's a bizarre thing that I don't know that anyone would have predicted was gonna happen. It's gonna be interesting what happens, say, you know, this next year with, you know, America has the best kind of graduate school programs in STEM research in the world. And everybody in China and Europe, you know, the best and the brightest all want to come to MIT or Cal Poly, Stanford. Those numbers

• 26:05Speaker 02

  are gonna be way down next year of applications from from foreign students because they don't know if, you know, okay, may I get in this year? What happens? Am I gonna get kicked out the year following? So I, I mean, I think that so much damage has already been done to this. So, you know, in some places, America, yes, to your question, we are seen as the bad guy. And in other parts of the world, I think they just are mystified by what's happening. This, and you know, an isolationism seems to be setting in that's just self defeating.

• 26:40Danny Jones?

  Yeah, no, there, I mean, it's not black and white when it comes to foreign policy. Like, I'm, I don't want to be us to be like interventionists as we have been since Bush and probably before that. Like, you know, I don't see myself just the same way Jews in Israel don't see themselves as part of Netanyahu. Most of them are against Netanyahu and his government. I don't see, I don't want to be associated with Dick Cheney and George Bush anymore than those people want to be associated with Netanyahu and some of the stuff he's doing. But at the same, on the other hand, like, I don't think it's right to be a complete isolationist either. I think you have to be practical with things. But when I say like,

• 27:24Danny Jones?

  You know, when I say like other countries are kind of like seeing us as the unreasonable ones, you know, when, when we are doing intervening in all these wars, stoking all, all of these conflicts around the world. And at the same time, like as you were just explaining about like some of the domestic stuff that's happening, you have people being deported for, for protesting this other country in the Middle East, Israel, and they also seem to control a majority of our, of our congress leaders.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:59Danny Jones?

  Um, so like, it's, it's hard to be optimistic about the direction the country's going. And then like with like the BRICS and the things like this, and like with putting the sanctions on Russia, and people realizing like, oh, maybe these sanctions aren't, you know, maybe, maybe we don't want to be under the thumb of America. Maybe we should start this BRICS alliance, you know, and start to diversify our way ourselves off of this American imperialism idea.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:29Danny Jones?

  I don't know. It seems like, it seems like there's, there's a shift happening. It's definitely not, you know, it's not a unipolar America world anymore.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:40Danny Jones?

  And it seems like it's, the pendulum is swinging strongly in the other direction.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  No, I think that's right. I think, I think, I think it's very much swinging in the, in the other direction. And the other thing about, you know, you mentioned sanctions. Sanctions very rarely work. What sanctions do is especially in a dictatorship, which it's almost all by America almost always uses only against dictatorships. It just consolidates hand, the power in the hands of the dictator. It gives them even more control over society. If you, if you sanction food, if you sanction weaponry, if you sanction medicine, that just, that just then gives the dictator life and death control over the population. Secret

• 29:28Speaker 02

  police never go hungry. Armies never go hungry. It's, it's, it's the poor people. So.

• 29:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Sanctions are just, I've always felt it's just a cheap and easy way of, of, of making it look like you're doing something. But in fact, just empower the, you know, who you're against. Castro has kept in power in Cuba for, for 50 years by sanctions. He wouldn't have lasted a decade if, if, if not for American sanctions. Sanctions, American sanctions gave Castro absolute control over that island.

• 30:01Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  And it was the best thing that ever happened to him. You know, I'm sure every day he was like, you know, got down, well, he was, he probably didn't pray, but you know, he's so thankful that the American sanctions.

• 30:13Danny Jones?

  Do you think we knew about this or have learned anything from this?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  No, no, because I don't think we've learned anything because it's, again, it's a way to look like you're doing something without, without committing troops on the ground, without going to war. And both Democrat and, and Republican presidents have done it all the time. Clinton did it with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. You know, by, people are dying in, in, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq because they didn't have insulin, they're diabetics and stuff because of the American embargo. So he just gave Saddam Hussein, again, life and death control over his people. It hardly ever works.

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• 31:57Danny Jones?

  Yeah, the idea of soft power, you know, it's being used in many ways with tariffs and then these sanctions. And I think they just recently announced they're going to double sanction Russia somehow. They already have Russia sanctioned. Now they're going to sanction the people that trade with them, I think. Somehow that's going to work. I don't know. Is that going to strengthen the BRICS alliance?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  No, it's what it's going to do is is going to make the the 20 to 50 oligarchs around Putin that's that much richer. I mean, I that's what I think is going to happen. So.

• 32:30Danny Jones?

  Where do you see this this Russia conflict going with Ukraine?

• 32:36Danny Jones?

  Think it's going to freeze? Do you think it's do you think they're going to win? It seems like they're winning pretty hard right now.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  It does. It seems like the Russians are winning.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  You know, I remember when when Trump was elected the first time this group of of psychologists did a profile of Trump. And what one thing they all seemed to sort of agree on was that he has such a personalized approach to power that if if under his watch, say, September 11 happened, that he would see it as a personal attack on him. He wouldn't see it as so much as an attack on the country, but because everything is about him.

• 33:14Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  So similarly, take, you know, extrapolating that to what's happening now in Russia. Now Putin's kind of shamed him. You know, he had this idea that he could that he understood Putin and Putin would would that they were kind of buddies or whatever. And I think Putin is has kind of played him for a fool over and over again about Ukraine. And now he's finally gotten this back up. He's going to ramp up, you know, armed shipments to Ukraine. He's going to put these sanctions in place.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  I my suspicion will be that Putin is gonna is gonna play for time.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  The one wildcard in the whole Russia-Ukraine thing is because Putin is a dictator and because he controls information in his own country, he always has the prerogative of declaring victory and going home, right? He can say, okay, mission accomplished, we're out of here. If the Americans are smart, they will set up a situation where he's able to do that. I don't see it happening with more sanctions, though.

• 34:25Danny Jones?

  We had an off-ramp a month into the war.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:28Danny Jones?

  Literally in March.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:29Danny Jones?

  They were, I think it was Naftali Bennett, was hosting a, some sort of a negotiation with Trump and Zelensky.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:38Danny Jones?

  And Putin was trying to negotiate an end to this war.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:42Danny Jones?

  And I think it was the Biden administration who basically said, no, we're not gonna, we're not gonna let this happen.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Right. It's, yeah.

• 34:48Danny Jones?

  So what is his goal? What are his goals? Like, why? Why? Why would Putin be wanting to negotiate an end to the war one month into it?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Right. Well, they weren't accomplishing what they had set out to do.

• 35:01Danny Jones?

  Because I think, I think Ukraine had just won like a strategic battle or something, right? When that happened, and we had them on their heels.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:08Danny Jones?

  And one of the top generals in the US military was like publicly stating like, this is what needs to happen, now is the time.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Right. That's right. No, it's right. It was probably about, yeah, it's probably about two months in when they failed to take Kiev and they were getting pushed back. And what Putin had been trying to do up until then, it's a classic Russian tactic, is you use your conscripts, you lose the grunts, you use the grunts. They were not Russia's best soldiers.

• 35:36Danny Jones?

  They weren't using prisoners yet, though, were they?

• 35:37Speaker 02

  They were not using prisoners at that point. But the frontline troops were from Asian Russia, and they were conscripts. So in the Russian military mindset, both groups of people who are very expendable. But the problem is they're not, they were not very well-trained and they were getting their asses kicked. And so that, that all kind of changed. What is not gonna happen is you cannot get a Ukrainian president, Zelensky or anybody else, to agree to the loss of Crimea and the loss of the eastern provinces. That's what's gonna be the de facto. Situation on the ground, they're not going to get them back.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  But you can never ask them to formally cede it to Russia. So. I mean, and I remember when Zelensky was meeting with Trump in the office, they were saying that this is a deal. You have to to to kind of realize you're never going to get those back.

• 36:35Danny Jones?

  Give it up.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  He just can't, you know, but the reality, yeah, but the reality on the ground is they've lost.

• 36:41Danny Jones?

  What are they going to do if they don't have our help?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Well, that's true. Then, then the whole, yeah, no, it's, yeah. But he, I don't think he could ever, ever manage to formally cede that, you know, it could be in dispute.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Kind of like the way Germany during the Cold War was divided. We never recognized the annexation of East Germany, but it was a, you know, it was, it was a fact. And so he kind of lived with it.

• 37:07Danny Jones?

  Right. So, yeah, that's, that's like me telling John Jones that I'm not going to let him punch me in the face.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:12Danny Jones?

  It's like, he's going to punch me in the face if he wants to.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:15Danny Jones?

  Like, I'm not going to let John Jones take my lunch from me.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, that's right.

• 37:18Danny Jones?

  I have no choice, really.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:20Danny Jones?

  Unless I have like 10 Mike Tysons behind me, like helping me.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Right. That's right. Yeah.

• 37:24Danny Jones?

  But if Mike Tyson's tell me like, hey, give him half your sandwich.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 37:29Danny Jones?

  And we'll be done. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Right. But he'll, if you just, he can take half your sandwich and you just, you know, you say, you know, I'm not giving you permission to take half this.

• 37:38Danny Jones?

  Right, right, right. Just know I'm not happy about this.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:43Danny Jones?

  And also, like in the beginning of the war, I think, I think Putin only had a couple hundred thousand troops, maybe less than 200,000 troops, right?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah.

• 37:52Danny Jones?

  To invade, to invade Ukraine, which is, you, he would at least, you would think he would need in the millions.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:57Danny Jones?

  Right. If he actually wanted to do something serious.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:00Danny Jones?

  And, and since then, he did, he did the July 12th, 2021 essay, right? Where he talks about how he was, you know, ashamed by the breakup of the Soviet Union.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:12Danny Jones?

  And, uh, you know, basically he thought that like the Donbass region and Crimea, you know, needed to be a part of Greater Russia.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:21Danny Jones?

  Ukraine needed to let. Russia be like an official language. It was a long essay.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:27Danny Jones?

  The sentiment of the essay was not that we want to make Ukraine part of the Soviet Union, essentially.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Right, although he did, he said again and again that he is never.

• 38:35Danny Jones?

  No NATO.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Right, that's no NATO and that Ukraine is not, is not really a real country.

• 38:41Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  He said that over and over again.

• 38:42Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  The, but the tool he's used over and over again, and he's done it in the Baltic countries, is this idea that the ethnic Russians are being discriminated against and I'm, we're going in in order to protect the ethnic Russians. And that was the idea with Luhansk and Donetsk and Crimea, Crimea.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  It's a very, it's a, having seen the Chech, the Russian army in Chechnya, I think it's, it's probably gotten somewhat better on the ground now. I mean, more professional. But the, the first days of, the first months of Ukraine reminded me very much of, of Chechnya and that it's a, it's a, it's a really disorganized army. Generals could care less about the welfare, the, or the, the livelihood of their soldiers.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  I remember, and I remember when, when I was in Chechnya and Grozny, that there was, the Russians did this, Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, the Russians did this crazy thing of just going, doing a headlong march into Grozny. And being slaughtered, something like 600 Russian troops were killed in about 45 minutes. And the next day, the, the Chechens offered them a ceasefire, temporary ceasefire, so they could come and collect the bodies that were all over the streets of Grozny. And the Russians have said no. And it was really interesting to me that, that this came up again and again with the Chechen rebels that I talked with, is that it's, we are fighting an enemy that doesn't even care

• 40:20Speaker 02

  about getting back the bodies of their own dead soldiers. And so these. These bodies were left in the streets to be eaten by dogs. And that's what happened. And that's been happening in Ukraine also. And I've, I've, I've heard this again and again. It's like, how, you know, what kind of army? The American army will suffer casualties. Well, it will lose people to recover the bodies of dead soldiers. And they've done that all through history. But to, to not even care about collecting the bodies of your own debt is, is just something that's quite bizarre. But it is, it is, they're, they're brutal.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  I've, I've never seen an army quite like it. I, I would compare the Russian army. And again, I'm talking about the army I've seen, which were not the elite units. But I would compare the Russian army that I've seen in action to sort of a

• 41:13Speaker 02

  a militia guerrilla group you'd find in Sub-Saharan Africa, you know?

• 41:19Danny Jones?

  Yeah. It's hard to, it's hard, it's, it's hard to get a grip on, on what it's really like. You know, being especially, I've never been to Russia. I'm no, I haven't spent, I've spent a little time in Europe, but not, not enough to know anything about like the type of trauma those people have been through. And, you know, you know, even Russia, they've been through, what, Napoleon? World War II? I mean, I'm guessing a lot, but they've been through countless atrocities.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:45Danny Jones?

  Right? And, and have their populations been starved and decimated?

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:51Danny Jones?

  So, uh, I, I just, it's, I can't put myself in the shoes of those people, you know? And I wish I could.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  It's, it's, I actually, on a personal level, I, I, as much as I'm bad mouthing the Russians, I actually liked them on, on a personal level. I think one of the keys to understand about Russia and the Russian psyche is that they're

• 42:14Danny Jones?

  Evil.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  They're caught between east and west.

• 42:18Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  They're, they, they are European wannabes. And if you look at their leaders through history, they've, they've, they've wanted to be a part of Europe. They've, they've, they consider, they, they've had leaders who kind of considers themselves Europeans, but they're also, there's something from the east. And so there are this strange kind of hybrid people, a hybrid culture. I think that there's a deep seated inferiority complexes as a result in, in, among Russians.

• 42:50Danny Jones?

  Didn't, uh, didn't Putin ask Clinton to be, if he would be able to join NATO?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, apparently it's, yeah, apparently it was, uh, that's right. Was it, was, I'm trying to remember, was it Clinton?

• 43:02Danny Jones?

  I think it might've been Clinton. Steve, maybe you can confirm this for us.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:08Danny Jones?

  But, um, yeah, no, it seems just like they're so, like, it seems like Ukraine specifically has been in just like this tug of war contest between the, between Russia and the West.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:20Danny Jones?

  You know, going back as, you know, since World War II, after World War II, the Cold War. And, um, you know, it seems to me like a reasonable middle ground there would just to leave Ukraine, be to leave Ukraine out of NATO, right?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:36Danny Jones?

  Leave a buffer.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Right, that's right, that's right.

• 43:39Danny Jones?

  Putin says he discussed Russia's possible NATO membership with Bill Clinton. That's what it was. Look at that. Wow, look at, look at Putin. He looks like skinny there.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, he does. He does. It's before his face looks.

• 43:49Danny Jones?

  And Clinton looks 50 years younger.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  At least.

• 43:54Danny Jones?

  Maybe a hundred years younger.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Funny.

• 43:58Danny Jones?

  What, um, what, what are your thoughts on the possibility of another nuclear war between these two, these two states? Do you think it's likely that, that nukes ever get used again on this globe?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  I think, I think it's really likely they're used again, but I don't believe between Russia and America and China. I mean, I think it's if it happens, it's likely to be one of the second tier countries that they're kind of off the radar, like Pakistan or India.

• 44:32Danny Jones?

  There's nine nuclear, nuclear armed countries.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  That's right. Israel, France, I think South Africa, oh no, South Africa gave them up.

• 44:40Danny Jones?

  They gave them up. Yeah. India, Pakistan.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  North Korea.

• 44:43Danny Jones?

  North Korea, China, America, Russia. What's the ninth?

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Do we, you said Israel?

• 44:51Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Here we go. United States, China, oh, UK.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would.

• 45:03Danny Jones?

  We only have 5,000 nuclear warheads?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, we gave so many up during the assault.

• 45:07Danny Jones?

  That's incredible because we had like upwards of 20,000.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 45:14Danny Jones?

  That's a, that's a, that's a, a great thing to see. The fact that we've been able to reduce the, the nuclear stockpile that much and convince Russia to do the same thing.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Right. Right.

• 45:25Danny Jones?

  Well, on record, right? Yeah, on record. Well, I mean, technically, Israel's not even supposed to have nukes, right? But they do.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Right. That's right. Yeah. Actually, it's funny that on this topic, the great story that has never been told, I don't think ever will be told, is that one of the great successes of the Clinton administration was the roundup of the rogue nukes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were dozens. It's an amazing story and I don't think it will ever be written, but there was CIA, NSA, the Brits MI6 were in there and they were, they were literally going up and, you know, buying, buying nuclear warheads for people. And it's incredible. So much was, was missing.

• 46:11Danny Jones?

  I saw an amazing documentary about this, about some Russian dude who was like slinging submarines to drug dealers. And they were sitting in a, there's a great, I forget the name of it. Steve, you should probably try to find this documentary, but there's a scene when they're in Russia and this big Russian dude's in the sauna with these, with these drug dealers, these like cartel guys. And he's like, guys want a nuke?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  It was a crazy time.

• 46:37Danny Jones?

  Throw in a nuke to spice up the submarine deal.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's amazing that they managed to corral that.

• 46:44Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Yeah, the idea of just like the nuclear deterrents, the idea that all these nations in the world just have a gun pointed at each other's heads. It's just a circle of nations and everyone's got a gun pointed at the other guy's head.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  I know.

• 46:58Danny Jones?

  And that we haven't launched anything.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:00Danny Jones?

  Is fascinating. And then like I had a guy on here the other day who was, he's a naval guy. He was like a Navy submarine commander and he was explaining to me how all the, all these submarines, there's thousands and thousands of nuclear submarines littered throughout the oceans at all times.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:17Danny Jones?

  Like from every nation that are even circling our coasts.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:20Danny Jones?

  Both sides of our coasts.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:21Danny Jones?

  And each one of these subs have like dozens and dozens of merved IBC, ICBMs on them.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, if you think about it too much, it's, it's pretty terrifying.

• 47:31Danny Jones?

  It really is. I mean. Just world enders.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:33Danny Jones?

  This, this, there's just these, these things that are circulating the oceans and probably in space.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:40Danny Jones?

  That just are, could end the world in a matter of seconds.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:43Danny Jones?

  Minutes. I think it's like, I think it's like 30 minutes if a, if a nuke, an ICBM was launched from Pyongyang to take 30 minutes for it to hit Washington DC.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 47:53Danny Jones?

  30 minutes.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:54Danny Jones?

  Can you imagine the amount of decisions that have to be made in 30 minutes?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, I mean, again, again, going back to when we were talking about the, the before, I mean, I, I gotta believe, and maybe it's just wishful thinking that with, you know, spy satellites and, and, and drone, drone technology that you see this stuff coming.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Submarine, you know, nuclear submarines, maybe not that, but you know, on the ground at least, I, I mean, I gotta believe that you could see this stuff before it was ever launched.

• 48:23Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I think, I think the satellites, like the SIBR system that we have can detect, it can detect the, the rocket blast, the burners, the burners on the rockets, like the second they launch.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:34Danny Jones?

  Right. So like as soon as the rocket launches, we have satellite systems that know that it launches. And we also have interceptor missiles. We have like 44 of them, I think, and they only have 40% accuracy.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Oh, we, yeah, I heard about that. Yeah.

• 48:46Danny Jones?

  So like it's like, that's like shooting a bullet out of the sky, right?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:48Danny Jones?

  Shooting a warhead out of the sky with another bullet.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:50Danny Jones?

  Another rocket, which is crazy.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

• 48:54Danny Jones?

  Right, but like, I think one of the biggest fear, I agree with you, I don't think one of the major uh, nation states would do this. I don't think that, you know, Russia, China, or the US, or even if Iran had a nuke, I don't think they're suicidal.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:08Danny Jones?

  Right, because the second you do that, you know it's all out nuclear war, you know you're dead.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:12Danny Jones?

  Um, and that's why, that's why Russia, I think, and the US, we both have the um, the dead man switches.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:20Danny Jones?

  You know, so if like, if, if everyone dies in Russia and are a nuke, or like, if 20 nukes hit Russia and like, takes out everybody, there's like a, a switch, there's sensors that go off, that, that unleashed every single nuke they have back to America.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 49:34Danny Jones?

  So even if they're all dead.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:35Danny Jones?

  America's done for.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 49:37Danny Jones?

  Um, but uh, my biggest fear is that like a rogue, sort of a cartel, or like a rogue military, gets their hands on something like this and sets it off, and then like, it gets attributed to the wrong people, or no one knows like, where to attribute it to, like, like even if, like uh, imagine if a, a nuke ended up on like a, on like a train, or a, a, somewhere it got shuttled to like the middle of Ukraine, and maybe it came from Russia, maybe it came from somewhere else, that's what it was, Operation, or uh, Operation Odessa, that's the documentary I was talking about.

• 50:17Danny Jones?

  And like, it maybe it's like a small tactical nuke, or like a suitcase nuke or something like this, and like, it was just like a faction of a military, or like a, like ISIS, or something like this, and then detonated it.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:26Danny Jones?

  And now all of a sudden, the world's on fire, freaking out, like, a nuke went off, where do we, how do we know who did this? Do we have to retaliate? And that's, that's what I'm scared of the most.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I'll, I'll tell you something else, it's scary that somebody told me years ago, um, in the military, that what, and it was, actually, this was, this was right, when I just came back from Chechnya, I was talking to this, uh, military guy, um.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  There was so much H U highly enriched uranium that was still missing. And what he was worried about was somebody just getting a tin of H U, just a powder, put attaching it to a helium balloon, sending it up, say, 2,000 feet over Manhattan, and then having an altimeter bomb that just blows up the balloon. I mean, this is not even a nuke.

• 51:13Danny Jones?

  It's like a dirty bomb.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  It's a dirty bomb. And then that uranium just spreads over the city. And within, you're not going to wipe out millions, but you're going to kill thousands. And it'll just be, there's no way to stop it.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Because it's undetectable. Again, it's that low, you know, low, it's box cutters. It's, it's, it's this low tech thing that there's nothing to, to, to, you know, prevent it from happening.

• 51:39Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  So.

• 51:40Danny Jones?

  Or, or even like drug cartels, you know, like cartel wars. Like imagine if the Sinaloa cartel or one of these cartels got their hands on a nuke somehow. And they fricking blew it up in Mexico or somewhere else, you know?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Not gonna be able to sleep tonight.

• 51:55Danny Jones?

  Yeah, no, it's a, it's definitely a terrifying thought, man. And, uh, and I don't, I don't know where it goes, but like,

• 52:05Danny Jones?

  this, uh, I heard this story the other day, and I think Andy Jacobson was telling this story about how like, the countries with the nuclear bombs are the ones that America doesn't fuck with. Like, look at, look at North Korea.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:19Danny Jones?

  Kim Jong Il, uh, made that agreement with, I think it was Clinton. Clinton tried to get him to stop his nuclear program. And he shook his hand, but he had his fingers crossed behind his back. They did the nukes, they, they, they started their nuclear program. And now they have like, I think it's 80. They have 80 ICBMs, nuclear warheads. And, um, because of that, Kim Jong Un is probably going to die of natural, a natural death in his bed at night.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yep, that's right. That's right.

• 52:45Danny Jones?

  So why wouldn't Iran want to nuke now? They probably want to nuke now more than ever.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, probably do. Probably do. Yeah, and it's, no, you're right. I mean, it's, it's, it's an amazing kind of. It increases the longevity of your regime if you have it.

• 53:02Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  And the idea that North Korea has it is really pretty terrifying. I mean, I that I find more terrifying than Iran has it or Pakistan or anything. I mean, he, you know, that's, that's just a crazy, crazy regime.

• 53:15Danny Jones?

  Crazy. Yeah, totally unhinged.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:17Danny Jones?

  But I know I would hope they're not suicidal.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:20Danny Jones?

  Because, you know, again, like the scary thing about them launching a nuke is obviously we would know the second it gets launched. And again, we have 30 minutes, according to Andrew Jacobson's new book, Nuclear War, to get from Pyongyang to DC. And within that 30 minutes, so many decisions have to get made by the president who has the ultimate control. And he like walks around with a Denny's menu.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:43Danny Jones?

  And the nuclear football, which is like scenario one, scenario two, scenario three, scenario four. And each one of those scenarios has like this, this key code or whatever, encryption code that you give to like strategic command.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:58Danny Jones?

  And then they have to, you know, go through all these processes and then like turn the keys to do it.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:03Danny Jones?

  And like then you have to get on the phone with Russia because you have to shoot those nukes back. So within that 30 minutes to get here, right? So there's like 12 minutes before we have to release our Minutemen missiles. Because they're stationary and we have to imagine like it's use it or lose it with those. Like those are going to be destroyed if we wait 30 minutes, right? Because they could potentially target those to try to like take us, take out, you know, castrate us. So within 12 minutes, we have to say, okay, are we going to launch back? Let's get on the phone with Russia. Let's let them know that these missiles got to overfly Russia to get to Pyongyang or to get to North Korea.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:39Danny Jones?

  When's the last time that the president was able to get Putin on the phone in less than 10 minutes? Or, you know what I mean, that quick?

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:44Danny Jones?

  I don't think, I don't know, but I don't think it's been, I don't think it's ever happened.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:49Danny Jones?

  So, and then they're going to see nukes flying over Russia. They're going to probably launch nukes. And before you know it, it's just the end of the world. Nuclear winter.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:58Danny Jones?

  This guy Andrew Bustamante is this former CIA officer. He was in the air force, then he went into the CIA. He worked in the nuclear command with the air force. And he said, in his training, he said, if a nuke ever goes off like anywhere near you in, in, in American, on American soil, he's like, if the one thing you're going to want to do is run towards the mushroom cloud because the death will be a lot quicker.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 55:27Danny Jones?

  Going back to like war and media and propaganda and all this stuff, and especially with like the evolution of war, like now it's more drone stuff, um, more AI is being used, um, biological weapons, these kinds of things. There's like so many more, and not only that, but like, these guys are wearing GoPros out in the battlefield.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 55:52Danny Jones?

  And like killing each other.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:53Danny Jones?

  And, and then executing people, their prisoners, and then like broadcasting that on Reddit, or whatever these like little chat apps are. Like, it's just hard to imagine where, where this goes and how that actually changes war. Do you think it's possible that the idea you can broadcast this stuff live is gonna change things when it comes to being able to like, maybe analyze it somehow, maybe exploit it somehow, especially when you, it's, it's uploaded instant, instantaneously versus back in the eighties and nineties, I'm sure it took weeks to get stuff published, right?

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 56:35Danny Jones?

  Do you think that's gonna, what, what kind of effect do you, do you think like modern media is gonna have on, on these conflicts?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Well, I think increasingly, technology is out of, you know, mainstream media's hands, right? As he, as you talk about like, you know, GoPro, and, you know, that's just somebody he can, he can film himself executing a prisoner and, and within a few minutes, it's online. What I've seen over my career is that being a journalist, being a war, war reporter,

• 57:03Speaker 02

  has just become steadily more dangerous as war has become more savage. Um, people who commit war crimes don't want witnesses, and I think war increasingly, uh, it's all about war crimes. I'll give you an example, in Central America, in the mid nineteen eighties, and, you know, in the, those were vicious wars, the death squad, you know, death squads in, in El Salvador and Guatemala. But foreign journalists could, by taping their cars with say, with black tape saying TV or prints, uh, press, they could actually cross between enemy lines, go, they, they could cross over. Um, when the wars in Bosnia, in Yugoslavia,

• 57:46Speaker 02

  the former Yugoslavia started in Bosnia and Croatia, the foreign journalists tried to do the same thing. And they're actually being targeted. And so in just less than 10 years, everything had changed. And now you put TV on your car and you're being targeted.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  So what, you know, I talked briefly about Chechnya. Chechnya was, I've been in a lot of situations in war zones where I'm stopped at a checkpoint or roadblock.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  I walk up to a group of gunmen and I don't know who they are. They don't know who I am. And there'll be an argument and that argument is about whether to kill you or not. Chechnya was the first place I was at where I, there were several times where I saw that argument going on in a language I didn't speak. And it sounds like, it sounds like maybe a semantic difference, but it's actually a huge difference. The argument is whether there's any reason to let you live. The default position is they're going to kill you. So it's, it's, it's, and that was what was so terrifying in, in, in Chechnya. I and my photographer got into a number of situations, actually twice with the Russians, twice with the Chechens where

• 59:02Speaker 02

  we thought for sure we were going to be executed. And this was in a, this was in a three week period.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  So because war has gotten so vicious, you don't want, you don't want a journalist showing up and, and, you know, photographing what you're doing or filming what you're doing. So in that way, it's become much more dangerous. It would seem though, like these people would want more attention from journalists. Sometimes, sometimes they do. I would say in general, government soldiers don't want you to because, you know, if they have any sort of code of conduct in, in war, they don't want you, you know, they don't want you to be seeing them executing prisoners or, or shooting civilians and stuff.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:45Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's it's a it's not a job I would want to do. I can tell you that.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:52Danny Jones?

  And you know, and I've also heard stories of this one guy who used to be a war reporter for Vice. And he was explaining how he was in Afghanistan in the middle of like a firefight. And he was filming this firefight and he was like right in the middle of it. And he was like, this weird thing takes over where like you're so focused on getting that shot. And you're trying to get the perfect shot and you know, you're in like a life or death situation. And all the fear just dissipates. And you're and and you just go into this weird little bubble silo of a world where where you're not afraid, the bullets are zipping by your head, but you're getting the fucking best shot. That's going to make your career. And then like meanwhile, like you wake up, like the ringing goes away and you wake up and like, what the fuck are you doing? Get out of here, whatever.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. I think that's I think it's true often in in a combat situation, there's there's kind of a air of unreality about it.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  And I mean, I remember the first time I was in a firefight, it was in or around shooting was in Beirut in 1983. I was a kid.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  And it was almost like I was inside a movie.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  That's what it felt like. Later, when I was a little smarter and stuff, it didn't feel like that anymore. But the first time I saw it, it was like, wow, this is this is a lot like a like a war movie.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  But it's not, it's it's a it's it's it's pretty, it's pretty different.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  You know, talking about the the difficulty of of this job now, the other thing that's very different now is, and this is not danger, but

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  I most places I've gone, I do not go in as a journalist. I just get a normal visa and go in and try to stay under the radar because that's the kind of journalism I do. I go to a place, I stay for a long time. I'm usually trying to interview just, you know, individuals, I'm going to a village and building a story around that.

• 1:01:53Danny Jones?

  Interviewing civilians?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, often or or I'll be with a, you know, a You know, a rebel group or an army group, but but the idea is to kind of stay under the radar of the government. And that's increasingly difficult to do.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  And governments will just, you know, there's a lot of governments out there. I'll use the example of Egypt. I did a, in Egypt, you have to, if you're a journalist, you have to get a press visa to go in. If you don't, the secret police are going to stop you within 10 minutes of, if you go outside of the touristic zones, not 10 minutes, 10 seconds. If you start photographing or talking to Egyptians outside of the main tourist zones, they're, the secret police will be on you in a flash and then you'll get kicked out of the country. They're not going to kill you, they'll kick you out of the country. So I did a story that was quite hostile to the dictatorship in Egypt. Now, I'll never get a journalist visa to go back to Egypt.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  At Burn Apparel, we've been outfitting tradespeople since 1915. We believe in hard work, honesty, and taking care of our own. We make gear for the everyday worker. Our gear is built to last and priced so you can afford it. For over a century, we've had your back. Burn Apparel, durable, affordable workwear since 1915. They would never give me one. And there's probably a few countries like that. I've never been, I've never been able to get into Saudi Arabia. Always wanted to go, but

• 1:03:28Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, give me a visa.

• 1:03:30Danny Jones?

  Why do you think that is?

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  I might be able to go now as a tourist because now they're kind of, the royal family is doing this whole thing of, you know, they want to become this like tourist destination. But for journalists, you know, they, you know, it's, it's an oligarchy. It's all ruled by one family. And they don't, you know, they don't, traditionally, they've never wanted like journalists to go in there.

• 1:03:53Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Danny Jones?

  Yeah, the rules of war has always been something that's so perplexing to me, right?

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Danny Jones?

  Like, you're allowed to shoot and kill people, blow people up from like,

• 1:04:08Danny Jones?

  Eight AM to nine PM, but like the idea of like sneaking into a another the enemy soldier's tent and cutting his throat at night is like a war crime.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:04:20Danny Jones?

  You know, I never really understood that.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  And dropping napalm on a village is, that's fine.

• 1:04:26Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, there's a lot of like inconsistencies to the whole thing. Yeah.

• 1:04:32Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I always thought that like, you know, when it comes to war, I think that it's better, I think the idea of like,

• 1:04:43Danny Jones?

  the problem is the veil of secrecy, but like covert covert operations and sending out assassins to take out leaders, right, to slip into their bedrooms at night and cut their throats. It's, you don't have the collateral damage, you don't kill innocent people, you don't have to carpet bomb villages.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:01Danny Jones?

  Right, you can take out these, and the guys that are doing that, they want to do that.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:06Danny Jones?

  These are the guys that are lining up in front of the CIA's deputy director's office saying, send me now, like the Billy Woz of the world.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:05:15Danny Jones?

  And then, and then you don't have to deal with these kids who are like, you know, don't really know what they want to do with their lives, should go to college, should I join the coast guard, should I join the Marines, whatever, and they just like, maybe they have some sort of influence in their life that's pushing them in this direction to do military, and they end up going there and they're like, their world is just fucking blown and blown out in front of their eyes, they come back and they're dealing with all this trauma and this PTSD when they, you know, it probably wasn't the best idea for them to go out and do that stuff, right?

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:05:43Danny Jones?

  So,

• 1:05:46Danny Jones?

  yeah, it's a, it's kind of like a, it's a weird moral thing to say like, I think it's better to go cut throats, cut people's throats. At night, but like, you know, what's, what's worse, right? Innocent people dying? I don't think so. I mean, I think, yeah, I think that is, I think that is worse.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  And again, it kind of goes to the thing about drones. I mean, now, with most people in the world, you could program a drone to go over and shoot somebody in the head. So, you know, very few people are safe from that. I mean, the president and a few other people, but not the rest of us.

• 1:06:16Danny Jones?

  Yeah, the prob, the problem with having the covert assassins and the covert ops stuff is they're shrouded in a veil of secrecy.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:26Danny Jones?

  So now you're giving the Pentagon or the CIA basically like a get out of jail free card to do anything they want around the world.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:06:34Danny Jones?

  And.

• 1:06:36Danny Jones?

  What, what does a veil of invisibility, a cloak of invisibility do? Does it promote better behavior or worse behavior? Usually worse.

• 1:06:47Danny Jones?

  Yeah, on both a national level and a personal level. Right. That's true, yeah. That's so crazy. And, uh, you know, now you have like, oh God, like this Palantir stuff where they're, they're doing these, we just watched a commercial the other day about how they're doing these drone swarms. Oh, yeah. And they have these, it's like called spreadsheet warfare, apparently where they have like really cheap drones and they can have thousands of them and they can go swarm a battleship. Right. And like basically destroy all the capabilities of the battleship. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You can't stop them all. Yeah. And, uh, you know, a lot of them can become autonomous too, where like, I don't know if the drone swarms can do this, but like certain drones, if they get disconnected,

• 1:07:31Danny Jones?

  like they, the idea is to make them so where they're not dependent on a remote operator. Right. So if they get hit by one of these guns, these, uh, what are those guns called? Where you shoot the drones and shoot, they fall out of the sky because you're like blasting the signal? Oh, yeah. Jamers, the jammers. Yeah. The signal jammers. So like it's not, they're not affected by signal jammers because the AI basically gives them an objective of what they have to do. Um, oh yeah, this is the Palantir commercial.

• 1:07:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Oh, wow. How crazy is that?

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  It looks like a video game.

• 1:08:03Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it does. It looks totally like Starlings. Yep.

• 1:08:07Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:08:10Danny Jones?

  So, yeah, it seems like, I would guess with the way technology and AI is evolving and the way Palantir is exploding right now, I imagine like the next 10 years are gonna be crazy with the evolution of warfare. Yeah. And, and, um, We're probably not going to hear as much about it.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:35Danny Jones?

  I would imagine. There's not going to be like, whoa, that was crazy thunder.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:08:40Danny Jones?

  There's not going to be planes dropping missiles as much anymore.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:45Danny Jones?

  It's going to be much more of this like covert style AI autonomous warfare.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I think we're in a, we're in a new watershed moment when it comes to weaponry. Like, like the machine gun was, you know, in World War I.

• 1:09:01Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  A machine gun and barbed wire, you know, utterly changed the face of war. And we're clearly at another moment like that.

• 1:09:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah, DARPA, DARPA had, they created, was it the M16 during the Vietnam War?

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah. And some of the stuff that they were working on back then was like 20 years ahead of its time.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Danny Jones?

  Like some of this, I heard that they were working on stuff like Neuralink in the 90s.

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:09:26Danny Jones?

  They had, they were trying to work on brain chips to create super soldiers to where they would not fatigue. They would not get hungry and they wouldn't feel pain.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, this, isn't the story that that's what the Nazis used, right? They used some version of that in World War II, the guys, when they went into, during the invasion of Russia, they were all like whacked out on.

• 1:09:49Danny Jones?

  Oh, they were on Pervitin.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:52Danny Jones?

  Meth.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  And, and I know that in, like in Syria, they, everyone was taking this drug called Captagon.

• 1:09:58Danny Jones?

  Captagon is like another version of that.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Danny Jones?

  That they're actually, the Russians are using Captagon.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, they are. Yeah.

• 1:10:04Danny Jones?

  And there is allegedly a lot of folks, there's a, of movement of people who are trying to get Ibogaine to the Ukrainian troops.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:10:15Danny Jones?

  Huh. Which is a psychedelic.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:10:18Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:19Danny Jones?

  Which apparently is being used to, I think it could be used for two reasons. I think one of the, the main reasons they're using the Ibogaine in Ukraine is to like, get them through some of the trauma.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:10:31Danny Jones?

  And to get them back out in the battlefield, like process this trauma and get back out there.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:10:36Danny Jones?

  Ukrainian military is, this is the intercept. The Ukrainian military is experimenting with psychedelic drug Ibogaine to treat traumatic, oh yeah, and TBIs, wow.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:10:47Danny Jones?

  So, and another thing that DARPA just funded the University of North Carolina to figure out how to take the psychedelic trip. Out of, um, I think it's either ibogame or psilocybin. But they're basically trying to figure out how to use psychedelics for soldiers. Without having the psychedelic experience.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:09Danny Jones?

  Right? So they can, so they can use that to treat stuff like this, like TBIs or PTSD.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, I've, I've, I know they're doing clinical trials with MDMA for, for PTSD.

• 1:11:20Danny Jones?

  Totally. Oh, I've heard, I've heard it works great as well as ibogame.

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Danny Jones?

  But, but one of the things I also think they're using it for, which is not reported on as much.

• 1:11:31Danny Jones?

  Is to optimize soldiers on the battlefield.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:11:35Danny Jones?

  Because when you take psychedelics, it can increase things like visual acuity.

• 1:11:40Danny Jones?

  Your hearing gets better.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:11:42Danny Jones?

  Edge detection gets better.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:11:44Danny Jones?

  It does something to the brain and there's, there's, um, there's lots of like famous athletes that have famously used psilocybin and stuff.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:11:53Danny Jones?

  During sports like MMA fighters and.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:11:56Danny Jones?

  Basketball players, I think. So, uh, yeah. What is this? Oh yeah. This is a story about removing the hallucin, hallucinations from psychedelics.

• 1:12:07Danny Jones?

  So yeah, this is all, this is all, oh, okay. This is what, so DARPA, the solution according to DARPA is to develop, down, down, down, down, right there. Develop new drugs that work on the same, uh, neurochemical channels as LSD, MDMA and psilocybin. But won't create visual auditory or otherwise delusional hallucinations. Yeah. You don't want them all like hugging and singing kumbaya. Like, why are we here? We need to leave. War is bad.

• 1:12:35Danny Jones?

  We need to keep fighting.

• 1:12:41Danny Jones?

  Yeah. It's crazy, man. I don't know what to think of all this. I don't know what to think of all the, um, the, just like the companies like DARPA and, um, and Palantir.

• 1:12:53Danny Jones?

  That are also Palantir is like a new AI and they just got like 800 billion or 800 million dollars a couple of weeks ago from the Pentagon.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:13:00Danny Jones?

  You know, all that money that's going into this stuff for defense.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Danny Jones?

  Wild.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  It really is crazy stuff.

• 1:13:06Danny Jones?

  I imagine like all of that, you know, the trillions of dollars that have gone missing from the Pentagon budget have probably gone to like covert.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, could be.

• 1:13:13Danny Jones?

  Weapons, stuff like this, you know?

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Danny Jones?

  Like, I wonder what they have that we don't know about. Have you ever seen drugs on the battlefield?

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Drugs?

• 1:13:21Danny Jones?

  Yeah, being used on the battlefield.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, and, and again, in Chechnya with the Russians. I mean, they, they were, they were.

• 1:13:27Danny Jones?

  Oh, they were on the, the Captagon?

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  They were on Captagon. They were, um, on heroin. I'll tell you a crazy, it, it, I mean, and this kind of illustrates just how insane Chechnya was. I, I was, um, I was with a Chechen unit, um, rebel unit and, um, kind of on this elevated farm road near the front lines and, and the Russian helicopter gunships were blowing up this, just wiping out this town, village about two miles away. Using what they call puff the magic dragon. It's this, this grid of bullets where that go, and it's the size of a soccer field. Really, anything like larger than a worm in a size of a soccer field, just like it disappears. They're just using this against this village.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  And there was a line of trees, you know, tree line in a, in a field. And then on the other side of that was this farmhouse. And I saw a couple of guys on the tree line, you know, armed. And, um, I asked the commander, I did, you know, something, I said, oh, how, how long do you keep your guys out there before you rotate them? And he goes, oh, those aren't, those aren't my guys. Those are Russian soldiers. And, uh, and we're completely visible on this thing. And it turns out that the farmhouse I was seeing, it was maybe 200 yards away, was a Russian base. The guys were, the, they, the, the Russian soldiers in the fire line were waiting to come over to sell their weapons to the rebels. And they didn't know who I was, so they're waiting for me to leave.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  And they're going to come over and they're going to sell their weapons to the to the Chechens for heroin or vodka. And the Chechens were going to use those weapons to try to kill them that night. And this was happening all over Chechnya. So you had this bizarre situation of village two miles out is getting wiped out. And here Russians are selling their weapons to the rebels that they're then going to use to kill them. The way you could usually tell in Chechnya, what was a Russian checkpoint or a rebel checkpoint was that the they both were wearing Russian army uniforms, but the rebels had the better uniforms. They had the ones that were coming right out of the crates because all the best stuff was being sold to the rebels by the Russian soldiers. It was just insane. It was just insane.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  It was there's kind of a Mad Max quality to the whole place. I'll tell you, it's kind of not a funny story. I mean, it's it's a well, within the within the context of Chechnya, it's kind of funny. There was a really notorious Russian firebase that was on the main road. And they're killing people there all the time and then just leaving the bodies in the ditches and stuff. And a Washington, Washington Post reporter came through and this guy named Lee Hochstatter and they pulled him out of his car and they were about they put him in the ditch, they were about to shoot him. And and his last thought was they're all they're all just up like Rambo. They have red bandanas on, they do the bullets or other thing.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  So his last words that he thought was he said, he said to the guy who was about to shoot him in Russian, I'm personal friends with Sylvester Stallone. So the guy went, pulled him out of the ditch and he and he had to go into the firebase and for the next day and a half had to make up Sylvester Stallone stories to keep them occupied until they all sort of passed out from, you know, like drug induced comas and stuff and he was able to leave.

• 1:16:56Danny Jones?

  Holy shit.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Isn't that amazing? I mean, it's kind of funny. It's kind of the key, actually, those are your last words on earth.

• 1:17:03Danny Jones?

  A personal friend with Sylvester Stallone, let me live.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Hold on. Put down your weapons.

• 1:17:11Danny Jones?

  Crazy. Oh, man. That really is crazy.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Danny Jones?

  Hold that thought, I'm going to take a leak real quick.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:19Danny Jones?

  We'll be right back.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:17:21Danny Jones?

  In all of your. Reporting that you've done all over the world, how much interaction have you had with sort of like covert intelligence operations happening? Because I know you've talked a lot about this stuff in your books.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:36Danny Jones?

  But like, how much on the ground interaction have you had with this stuff, if any?

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  Virtually, virtually none. I think the primary places where you would have seen that, or you could have crossed paths were in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early days of the, of the American invasions. I've tended, where I've tended to go is really kind of off the radar of places. And what I, what I've found is kind of the, is, I mean, I've certainly been cross paths with CIA officers in the field and stuff, but what, what I've found increasingly is that they're kind of clueless as to what's happening. And I'll give an example.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  I was in Darfur in, in Western Sudan during the, the civil war there and in oh four, oh five. And I came back to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and I wanted to get an interview with the deputy chief of mission, the DCM of, of the American embassy, who usually it's the DCM who knows more about what's happening in the country than the ambassador often. Getting into the American embassy in Khartoum at that time was, it was like, it was like getting into Fort Knox. The entire building was encased in bomb proof chicken wire, heavy, heavy metal.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Five, six layers of, of security you had to go through, body scans, and then, you know, met with the DCM and a couple of guys in there who I assumed were CIA. And instead of me interviewing them, they interviewed me about what was going on. And I really felt that.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  I mean, if they were playing dumb, they were really, really good actors. And I think the point to this is that, okay, so what you have now increasing in, you know, in American footprint abroad is you have these, you know, say, special force units operating in Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever. But elsewhere, they're so quarantined off that it's almost a question of why they're there in the first place. Their American embassies now all around the world are like fortresses. It's almost impossible to get into them. In Sudan, everybody lived on that compound.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  And if they ever left the compound, if they, you know, if the ambassador was going to go meet the president or whatever, they went in armored convoys. So what happens again and again is, so Sudan is, you know, raided as, at the time was raided to, you know, a terrorist populated country. So the embassy people and even the CIA would not leave the compound. So what are they, what are they doing there? And so I find over and over again that the Americans, the American government knows less and less of what's happening around the world. You know, even, I mean, I was in Oslo for the Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize about 10 years ago.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  And the American embassy in Norway is like a fortress. I mean, obviously they have more freedom of movement they do in Sudan, but, but, you know, this whole idea of, of that you have to be so safe that you can't venture out is, so why are people even there? I mean, that's, that's what I've found over and over again.

• 1:21:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Well, I think it's the people, the people are there like the analysis people, right?

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:21:15Danny Jones?

  The analysts.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:21:17Danny Jones?

  There's, there's probably a lot of guys that are on the ground embedded, maybe in the other side.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Could be.

• 1:21:22Danny Jones?

  Or.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, could be.

• 1:21:24Danny Jones?

  In different places. They're probably not going to be in like actual war zones.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:21:27Danny Jones?

  In most places like, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure we have a lot of foreign agents that are embedded in our intelligence community and here in the US that are like trying to spy on things that are being, you know, analysis, analysis and intelligence that's coming in, in the US side, like at Langley or whatever.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:21:47Danny Jones?

  And I'm sure we have people, you know, in other foreign countries.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Danny Jones?

  Like. Possibly Russia.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 1:21:55Danny Jones?

  That are doing the same exact thing. But I heard, I recently, I had an intelligence officer, a former intelligence officer in here the other day, John Karyaku, and he was saying that the US probably has a few hundred Mossad undeclared agents or officers.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:22:17Danny Jones?

  In the US, undeclared, meaning they haven't let anybody know. They're basically like spying. And he says, beyond a shadow of the doubt, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the US has zero undeclared CIA officers in Israel.

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  I'm sure that's true. I'm absolutely sure. You know, it's funny, it's, this is, in my, my book, it's coming about the Iranian revolution, it, this was, so the CIA in Iran, under the Shah, Shah was one of America's most important foreign allies outside of Europe, probably the most important foreign ally outside of Europe in the 1970s. The CIA had a huge station in Tehran, the capital. The only thing the station did there was to, to spy on Russia, to figure out what the, what the Soviet Union was doing in Iran or along that, along the Iran's northern frontier. They did no domestic intelligence at all.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  The only source of their information of what was happening internally in Iran was the Shah's secret police, Savak, it was a great name, an intelligence agency. They would give the Americans like what they thought was going on. And because Savak was, was loyal to the Shah, everything they, everything they told the CIA was just good news about, you know, how everybody loved the Shah. They never did any domestic intelligence at all. And so had no clue of what was coming when the revolution started.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  An amazing statistic I found was, well, not a statistic, but anecdote is, so one thing that Ayatollah Khomeini was doing to stir up the masses in Iran, he was, he was giving these sermons and smuggling them into Iran on tape cassettes. And so people were listening to these tape cassettes everywhere. Finally, somebody in the CIA thought, you know, we should get a, we should get a copy of these tape cassettes and find out what's going on. It's like, what's he saying to, what's he saying to the people? So they went out, the CIA went out to the bazaar and bought a bunch of these tape cassettes. But none of them spoke Farsi. And they, they, of course, they had, you know, local workers for it.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  They never bothered to transcribe the tapes. So when, a year later, when the, after the revolution was over, the American embassy is overrun, everyone's taken hostage, the, the students who came into the embassy opened up all these drawers and found all these tape cassettes from Khomeini that had never been listened to. And Khomeini was very direct in what he was saying, you know, we need to overthrow the Shah, we need to get rid of the Americans, Israel is the great Satan, America is also the great Satan, and the Americans had no clue this was going on. It's just phenomenal. So, so, so this, but the idea that the CIA was just not doing any domestic intelligence at all. Anyway,

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  to go to your point about in Israel, I'm sure that's absolutely true. I'm sure we have nobody in Israel on a, you know, a deep cover basis.

• 1:25:30Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Yeah. Your intelligence has to be, if you're living over there, if your country is in that part of the world, your foreign intelligence and your domestic intelligence has to be top notch.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:25:41Danny Jones?

  Right? Because everything's an existential threat when you're over there.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:25:44Danny Jones?

  We're surrounded by two massive oceans. Like, we don't.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:46Danny Jones?

  We're kind of comfortable. We're fat and happy over here.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah.

• 1:25:50Danny Jones?

  Explain to me, so, so that, when that happened, when Khomeini overthrew the Shah.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:57Danny Jones?

  We had no idea. We had no idea this was, this was bubbling up under the, behind the scenes.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:26:02Danny Jones?

  When we should have.

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, it was, the Shah was becoming increasingly unpopular for probably the three, four, five years prior to the revolution. When the revolution started.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  I mean, to the Carter administration's defense, we had never, the world had never seen a counter-revolution before. A revolution that was not progressive ideas, or communism, or socialism, or, but, you know, a revolution about, let's go back to the 14th century. Right. You know, that had never happened before. Plus, the students in the streets, all the demonstrations you saw, these were guys in bell bottoms, jean jackets, long hair. They looked like, they looked like American college students. So, really, the American college students want to go back to the 14th century? Why was that? Well, because there were a lot of different factions to, you know, so many different groups were opposed to the Shah.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  So, it was kind of this umbrella of opposition that happened. And Khomeini and the fundamentalists basically were able to take over. The idea at first was, okay, here's this spiritual leader who's, he can serve as our kind of symbolic head. But, you know, Iran was the most college-educated country in the Middle East. Women had not worn the veil for 50 years. But I think, so I think there was this collective idea, it's like, okay, Khomeini is, he's the symbol. And so, we have everybody from communists to real conservatives, fundamentalists, but

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  he will, you know, he's this old guy in exile, but he's what's the rallying cry for the people. But in fact, Khomeini was very, very clever, and he managed to kind of take over, take over the revolution. One interesting thing about the American reaction was, once they realized, once Carter and people around him realized that there was a really good chance the Shah was going to be overthrown, and Khomeini was...

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  Seem to be kind of in charge of things. You got to remember, the Cold War is still going on. So even Carter, just about his liberalism and this idea of a, you know, of a new foreign policy approach, they're still very obsessed with the Soviet Union. So the first thought was during the Cold War, everything was a zero sum game, right? And if we lose, it means the Soviets have won and vice versa. So at first, when the Shah looked he was in trouble, the administration started to panic. But also what they thought is what, well, Khomeini is like a right wing fundamentalist. He's certainly not a communist. So maybe it's not so bad if he comes to power because, you know, he's certainly not going to hand over the country to the Soviets.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  So there was this kind of acceptance in the late days of the revolution that, okay, okay. You know, the Shah, you know, our relations may, you know, drop back a little bit, but at least it's not going to become a communist state. And so there's this acceptance even before Khomeini took over that, yeah, not such a bad thing. It's kind of remarkable now and looking in hindsight and very quickly afterwards that, you know, what kind of work thinking that was. But at the time, it was like they were, they were really focused on the Soviet Union. And Soviets had no idea what was happening there either. And it was, and it played no role in the revolution.

• 1:29:31Danny Jones?

  And a lot to do with, a big part of the uprising was that a majority of the population detested the United States for installing the Shah in the first place, right?

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. What made the revolution so volatile was it was, it was both this religious fundamentalism, which had kind of been percolating up in many religions at, in the mid seventies throughout the world. It was the rise of the Christian fundamentalist movement in the States, in Israel, the Jewish settlers on the, in the West Bank. But in, so there was a, there was this kind of resurgence of religious feeling throughout the world. So there was that, but there is also this, you'd almost call it an anti-colonial, kind of a less anti-colonial revolution.

• 1:30:22Speaker 02

  The Shah was so identified with the United States and he was so seen as the, as the lackey of the United States that it played, so it was a double whammy. And the more the Shah kind of The Shah was so clueless that even while the revolution was going on, he was appealing to the Carter administration, hey, come out and say how much you support me, you know, say that I'm, you know, I'm, I'm your guy.

• 1:30:47Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  It was like the worst possible thing that the Americans could have done.

• 1:30:51Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  This is, and he just didn't get it. And I think probably that was, that was the biggest, the biggest thing that overthrew him, that led to his overthrow.

• 1:31:01Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Uh, this war, this, this conflict between Iran and Israel over the last year has been like, you have, it's been strange because you had, you have the government and the, like the traditional media painting Israel as this, these just like unhinged maniacs, right? But it seems like every single thing they do is very strategic, thought out and rational, like warning, giving, giving warnings before they're sending strikes.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:31:32Danny Jones?

  Or whatever.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:31:33Danny Jones?

  And they're like, they're, they seem to be very calculated in their retaliations to all of the bombardments they've been getting from Israel and the US.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  Right. No, that's right. And I think that, um, yeah, I mean, and what, you know, after the, was it after the Americans bombed or the last big bombing by the Israelis? They did this very, oh, it was after the American bombing. They did this just completely pro forma bombardment of American base in Qatar, I think, or maybe it was Kuwait. Uh, but, but just complete, you know, theater.

• 1:32:04Danny Jones?

  And they gave him a warning.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  And they gave him a warning ahead of time. So it, and I'm sure that the Iranian people don't know that they gave him a warning.

• 1:32:11Danny Jones?

  Right. They probably called him up, like, look, we gotta do this or else it's gonna look like.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly right. Yeah. I think that's exactly what happened.

• 1:32:18Danny Jones?

  Get everyone out.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Right. Nobody was hurt.

• 1:32:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  I think they hit a, a latrine or something.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that they they they didn't want to mess with them. But as I was saying earlier, I do think that there's there's a strong argument we made that they welcomed the attack by the Americans because now they can now they can tarnish their opposition by by now they're American lackeys, right? So you if you stand in opposition to what the Iranian government's doing, then you're in bed with the Americans. And I think that might be what they really care about at this point is is is keeping, you know, keeping your hold on power.

• 1:33:00Danny Jones?

  And what do you think like, what is Russia and China's relationship with them now? Because I don't I don't I don't remember seeing any sort of rhetoric coming out of China or Russia in support for them during this whole conflict. There was maybe one really benign statement from Russia, I think.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:19Danny Jones?

  Other than that, nothing.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  It's very strange. I mean, China, I yeah, I don't think I didn't. I don't think I saw anything from China and Russia. You're right. It was very, very tepid.

• 1:33:31Danny Jones?

  And they get all their oil from Iran, right?

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  They get a lot of their oil.

• 1:33:33Danny Jones?

  A lot of it.

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they were and they were getting a lot of the drones from.

• 1:33:37Danny Jones?

  Yes, right.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Iran.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  The game Russia has played recently is really a hard one to figure out because not just with Iran, but you know, they were backing Syria, they were backing Assad in Syria, and they just kind of let Syria let Assad collapse. They did nothing to help him.

• 1:33:57Danny Jones?

  He in Moscow now?

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  He's in Moscow. Yeah. And I think soon to have to fall out a window because he's no, he's not of any use anymore. So he's I think he's he's headed for an accident.

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  But why did they just let him, you know, fall like that and not try to rescue him? I mean, was it some sort of idea that they thought? Or was there a deal that's like, OK, we lose Syria, we don't come to Iran's aid, in return, you let us do what we want to do in Ukraine? I mean, some people have that theory.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  It's, it is odd to me that, that Putin just stood by and, and watched Assad fall because Syria was, you know, in the, in the Arab world is, it was, they're ma, they had, they had a new Navy base there.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  Strange. I don't know. I don't know what that was about.

• 1:34:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah. This, this global chessboard is.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a very strange one though.

• 1:34:56Danny Jones?

  Very complicated.

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Danny Jones?

  Especially when it gets into Syria and Turkey and all that stuff.

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:00Danny Jones?

  And it starts to get into there and like all the relationships and the trade partnerships and all this stuff. It gets so confusing to me.

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  It's really weird. It's, it's really czar. Yeah.

• 1:35:11Danny Jones?

  What is, like, what, what is the relationship between

• 1:35:16Danny Jones?

  like ISIS and the Taliban when it comes to Syria?

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  So ISIS is now isolated in a few kind of spots in eastern Syria and maybe a few little enclaves in, in western Iraq. But then they also have an offshoot now in Afghanistan. They, they, they are targeting Taliban because they're not extreme enough. They.

• 1:35:49Danny Jones?

  ISIS is?

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  ISIS is. Yeah. Taliban just passed a law that a woman is not allowed to speak in public.

• 1:35:56Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  It literally, they're not allowed to speak in public. But they're, you know, to ISIS, like, yeah, that's the start.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they've, they've targeted the Taliban. So definitely not any, it seemed, it doesn't seem to be any kind of connection between the two of them. Other than fighting each other.

• 1:36:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah. And there were some reports that were coming out a couple of months ago about how we have been giving the Taliban like tens and tens of millions of dollars every single week for something. I don't know what it's for, but Steve, I don't know if you can find anything on this, like if it's still relevant. But we were basically shipping cash to the Taliban every single week and.

• 1:36:43Danny Jones?

  People, you know, a lot of people were kind of like getting pissed off about this. But then I saw a report saying how what, you know, one of the strategic reasons we might may have been doing this was to like break some sort of supply chain with the Taliban in China.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Oh, huh.

• 1:37:04Danny Jones?

  Oh, my gosh. What is this? Is that it? I don't know. What does it say? This is, uh, May, March, May of 2024. Uh, da, da, da, da, da. Since the Biden administration disasters withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the United States government has provided over 2.8 billion to address the humanitarian crisis created by the Taliban takeover. Last year, uh, I requested that cigar report to, uh,

• 1:37:35Danny Jones?

  they found that at least 10.9 million of US taxpayer dollars has been provided to the Taliban in an unacceptable. It is unacceptable for any US funding to benefit the Taliban. The Biden administration must take immediate. I don't know if this is what it was. This was something more about like, we were sending it every single week to them for something. Wait, what does that say? East Asia and Pacific. Oh, no, this is just something different. But yeah, no, I, I thought there was some sort of, um, some sort of like

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  Like channel thing?

• 1:38:05Danny Jones?

  A channel, like, uh, like the Taliban was some somehow like has something to do with supplying food to China or something like this. And that might've been why, why we were giving the Taliban money. Or, no, no, no, I'm sorry. It was somebody else was supplying. It was a, a route, like a food route to China that they were paying the Taliban to like sabotage it or something. Or like to try to destroy it.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  Huh. Yeah, similar article.

• 1:38:30Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I don't know. I can't read that, Steve. It's way too small and it's too much. Um, yeah, so, yeah, I don't know what that was, but like, uh, they, they haven't really, we've kind of forgotten about them recently.

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, I know. It's just like, it's completely off the, off the radar now.

• 1:38:44Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Yeah, there's too much other stuff going on. But, um,

• 1:38:51Danny Jones?

  The other part of the world that's interesting that we haven't talked about is the whole China Taiwan.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:38:57Danny Jones?

  Situation.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:38:59Danny Jones?

  And how much attention do you pay to that?

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  You know, ironically enough, I actually spent six years of my childhood in Taiwan.

• 1:39:07Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  In the 1960s. And what I remember back then was, well, it was during the time of the Chiang Kai-shek and there was this constant drumbeat that the, his regime in Taiwan was, we're going to go back and take over the mainland. You know, didn't happen.

• 1:39:31Speaker 02

  I have to believe that the Chinese, you know, the Chinese are very, it's a cliche to say, they're just very smart and they think long term. And I think that they, you know, just like they got Hong Kong back, they played it, they played a long game and, and, you know, they promised democracy in Hong Kong, it was going to be the special enclave and everything. And now they've just chipped away at, you know, at the democratic rights in Hong Kong. I think there's all kinds of economic ties between Taiwan and mainland China. People go back and forth. So I think it's just going to be this slow absorption. I don't think, I don't think it's going to come to.

• 1:40:14Danny Jones?

  Kinetic.

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think also, what I was starting to say is I think that what the Chinese watching, what the problems Russia has had in Ukraine has probably had an effect with any kind of idea of a military adventure against Taiwan. Because Taiwan is far better defensively equipped than Ukraine was. And I mean, I think that Chinese would not get their ass kicked maybe, but they would suffer a lot in taking over Taiwan militarily.

• 1:40:45Danny Jones?

  Well, they have the parliament now, right? I think China does.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Danny Jones?

  They lost the presidency, but the parliament is very pro-China.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:51Danny Jones?

  The president can't get anything done there.

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  Right, right. But yeah, I just think that, I just think that the Chinese especially just play the long game. And, and Americans are notorious for not playing the long game. So you just kind of wait things out.

• 1:41:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, yeah, it's funny. I've never done any reporting and I've wanted to in.

• 1:41:16Danny Jones?

  Have you ever been to China?

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  I have.

• 1:41:18Danny Jones?

  You have?

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  I have.

• 1:41:19Danny Jones?

  What, what year?

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Uh, it was about 12 years ago.

• 1:41:22Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  I went to do a kind of a weird travel piece on um, the Chinese built this uh, train to Lhasa, Tibet, all the way from Beijing, um, and cutting across the permafrost of the Tibetan Plateau. The idea that it was gonna melt and it was all gonna fall apart. Um, but anyway, so I, I went for National Geographic to, to, to take this train and spend some time in, uh, in Tibet. Um, one thing I remember really distinctly, I got to Lhasa and I hadn't taken a computer with me, so I go to an internet cafe, which was everywhere. And I was just, you know, writing to friends back in, in the States saying, oh, you know, I've gotten to Tibet. And every time I started to type Tibet, the computer would crash.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  And it turned out that Tibet is a banned word in mainland China. You cannot, yeah, yeah. And it was just every time I tried to type it, the, the computer would shut down. Uh, and at that time, I'm sure now it's, it's, you know, it's moved on technology, but at that time, there was supposed to be a half million Chinese just monitoring the internet in China, you know, like what everybody was doing. And it, yeah, so.

• 1:42:37Danny Jones?

  They, they didn't have the WeChat back then, when you, when you were there.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  I don't, no, they didn't, they didn't. Um, and uh, yeah, and, and, you know, and Tibet was very militarized. You saw an army everywhere. Um, but Tibet was fascinating. It was, it was really pretty incredible.

• 1:42:55Danny Jones?

  I just had a lady on recently who was from China and uh, she was explaining to me, she has a, a great YouTube channel where she kind of like goes deep into like all the different things that China is doing all the time, like the history of China, like what it's like to live there and her family's still there. And um, she was explaining to me like.

• 1:43:13Danny Jones?

  You're not allowed to be religious or like be like participate in any sort of like religious faith. Unless you devote your loyalty to the supreme leader first.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:43:25Danny Jones?

  That has to be your primary like worship. Like he has to be number one and then your god can be number two.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:43:31Danny Jones?

  But like they really frowned upon like organized religion there. Like it's just it's the CCP.

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:37Danny Jones?

  Is above all.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Danny Jones?

  That is god.

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  And I think it's become much more repressive under you taking pain than when I was there. I I was I think I was still there just kind of during the last days of liberalization kind of. But it's I think it's really gotten clamped down since then.

• 1:43:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah. And you know, it's funny seeing like the like how they run that country with that. You know, it's a total surveillance state, right?

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:44:02Danny Jones?

  With AI and surveillance cameras everywhere. They have their banking and their social media and their communication is all tethered to one app. One centralized app that the government can monitor at all times and control at all times. Like they can turn off your money in certain parts of the world, a certain parts of the country.

• 1:44:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:44:18Danny Jones?

  Where they want you to stay and only let it work in a part where they want you to be.

• 1:44:24Danny Jones?

  You know, it's terrifying.

• 1:44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:25Danny Jones?

  And and you know, if you look at, you know, some of the stuff that's happening now in the United States. You could make the case that that's where we're headed.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Danny Jones?

  When you like with the everything that has been going on with Elon sucking all the info out of like the HHS.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:44:41Danny Jones?

  IRS.

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  Astonishing.

• 1:44:43Danny Jones?

  And all this stuff with Doge and then and then him partnering with Palantir AI.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:48Danny Jones?

  And if you combine all that stuff with with AI, you could easily create some sort of like a digital control grid.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:44:54Danny Jones?

  And now they just passed that that genius act where they want to bring in stable coins. So if you want to you want to throw in the kitchen sink, put the cherry on top. You just bring in stable coins and now you get people on this digital currency. And you have, you know, giving Palantir eight hundred million dollars every six months for their AI.

• 1:45:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:45:13Danny Jones?

  And you know, who knows what the hell they're doing? I know the CIA is using Palantir.

• 1:45:18Danny Jones?

  I don't know what I don't know if they're I don't know. I know they use it overseas, right? For war stuff. I don't know anything about what they're doing here with Palantir. But I I bet it's not nothing.

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:45:30Danny Jones?

  But you know, the other thing which makes me skeptical about that.

• 1:45:35Danny Jones?

  Like it on paper, like the technology is heading in the same direction that like the technology surveillance in China, it seems to be like we're heading in that direction. But the weird thing about it is like Peter Thiel is super religious now. You know, like he's doing this, this, he's promoting Christianity in Silicon Valley and trying to get people in Silicon Valley to map everything they're doing and make their purpose about God and about Jesus. You know what I mean?

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46:08Danny Jones?

  Which is, which is very interesting. I'm really curious, really curious, you know, what his, what his ideas are behind that and like what, you know, the guy who, who is the CEO of Palantir is like one of the richest dudes in the world, who is getting billions of dollars from the military industrial complex, is, you know, a gay Christian billionaire.

• 1:46:33Danny Jones?

  Who's trying to map Christianity on this stuff.

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  That's so.

• 1:46:37Danny Jones?

  Have you seen any of this?

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:46:39Danny Jones?

  No, it's been in the report of the New York Times.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:46:42Danny Jones?

  Recently, I just read an article.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  Well, I've been out of the country lately, so yeah, but yeah.

• 1:46:47Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's funny when you talk about like facial recognition stuff. I was just in Georgia, the country, and the government is gradually turning into a dictatorship and it's going into Russia's pocket.

• 1:47:00Danny Jones?

  Is Georgia, sorry to interrupt you.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:47:03Danny Jones?

  Is Georgia the country that has the leader who's getting paid by the US?

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:47:11Danny Jones?

  I watched an Oliver Stone documentary.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  I wonder who.

• 1:47:14Danny Jones?

  And it was in the documentary where the leader of Georgia was making like, he was basically making more than the governor of Connecticut.

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  It might've been the previous.

• 1:47:23Danny Jones?

  Maybe the previous.

• 1:47:24Speaker 02

  It might've been because he was, the previous was very pro-American.

• 1:47:27Danny Jones?

  And he was getting paid by the US.

• 1:47:28Speaker 02

  I believe that's.

• 1:47:29Danny Jones?

  A few hundred thousand dollars a month or something.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  Does not surprise me at all. Yeah. And that guy's now in prison.

• 1:47:34Danny Jones?

  Oh, is he really?

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's becoming more and more sort of in Moscow's pocket. And so there's day daily demonstrations in front of the parliament that have been going on for eight months, nine months. But what recently happened is that they put up facial recognition cameras all in front of the in front of parliament. And so there the government is using so that people are wearing masks now to try to hide their faces and stuff. But with the cameras, they're able to even with your the bottom of your face covered, I guess they can tell who you are. Wow. So they're not arresting them. They're sending them through the mail, these massive fines that no one

• 1:48:15Danny Jones?

  For wearing a mask.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, for for wearing a mask in public, which is also illegal, and for I don't know, obstructing traffic or whatever by being in front of parliament. So this is just a really subtle way that they again, it's kind of the Chinese model of how you destroy your opposition. You don't have to arrest them. You don't have to shoot them. You just you just club them over the head and and, you know, find them, find them. And it was about $2,000 that people are being fined on on this, and which is more than the person makes in four months.

• 1:48:47Danny Jones?

  Who is the leader of Georgia right now?

• 1:48:48Speaker 02

  This guy named, well, it's a billionaire, reclusive billionaire. He's the real power behind the throne, a guy named Ivan Shvili, and Budzina Ivanashvili. It's a but he has got some figurehead president standing in front of him. But he is this multi billionaire, made his fortune in Moscow, is apparently worth about $8 billion, which is more than the I think the Georgia's GDP in six months. But this kind of reclusive guy raises flamingos or peacocks, peacocks on this his private estates. He's got it's, yeah, it's a weird.

• 1:49:28Danny Jones?

  And you were saying that they're more in favor with Russia?

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  He's kind of steering the country more and more into Russia's pocket. Yeah. And they're all they've also in Georgia. With their banks, they've used, that's one cutaway that Putin and the oligarchs have in Russia. They've been funneling money through Georgia to keep it away from the sanctions.

• 1:49:51Danny Jones?

  Oh, interesting. What are we gonna do about that? We have to, we have to figure that out. We gotta get in there.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  Great country, by the way.

• 1:50:01Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I imagine. I've seen some of the documentaries I've seen. Look, the landscapes.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  It's gorgeous.

• 1:50:05Danny Jones?

  Amazing.

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  Gorgeous, yeah. And great food.

• 1:50:08Danny Jones?

  Wow. So, so we're in this tug of war between Israel, the United States, and going back to Iran. This is basically a proxy war, right?

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Danny Jones?

  So, so it's, it's Israel is the one who really wants to fight Iran. They're the ones that really want to take out Iran, right? They want to do regime change or expand, make that a part of Greater Israel. I don't know exactly what that is. And, and we want to sell them weapons to do it, or give them money to do it. It's a little bit different. It's a different proxy war than like Russia, Ukraine.

• 1:50:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:50:53Danny Jones?

  Right? Because we're the ones that want Russia neutralized more than I would say Ukraine does.

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:01Danny Jones?

  But in this situation, it's like, it's like, it seems like Israel really wants them neutralized more than we do.

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:07Danny Jones?

  Do you get the same sense?

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think that Netanyahu understood right after the October 7th attacks by Hamas.

• 1:51:21Danny Jones?

  Which seems like it was a false flag. Or not, not a false flag, but it seems like he kind of let that happen.

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Oh, it was just a, just a massive screw up by the Israeli intelligence.

• 1:51:30Danny Jones?

  Because he was funneling money to them forever, right? Tons of money.

• 1:51:33Speaker 02

  No, that's right. I mean, he created.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Israel created Hamas as a counterweight and with and it was really under Netanyahu's administration as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat's group. Because he wanted to polarize the argument, right? Where the Palestinian Authority, which is corrupt and ineffectual and everything, but were willing to make an accommodation with Israel. Netanyahu very clearly wanted the extremists to take over because then there's no, there's no, there's no room for dialogue, right? So, yes, tons of money went to Hamas from, from Israel. They created Hamas to a large degree.

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  What also happened with October 7th is that through sheer arrogance on the Israelis' part, they, they were caught with their pants down. You know, they've, they've never, in having spent time with IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, they've never had any respect for the Palestinians as fighters. They've always kind of thought of them as monkeys, frankly. So they were, they were completely situated to, to be caught out and they were. And, you know, quite brilliantly, what Hamas did, nothing, you know, the, the border, the Israelis had all this super sophisticated intelligence. Hamas never used phones to take, send messages back and forth.

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  Everything was on pieces of paper, word of mouth. And again, going back to the, it's, it's the box cutter way of war, right? You, you go low tech, so low tech that you're under the radar. It was such a fuck up by the Israeli army under Netanyahu's watch that October 7th happened, that, you know, you can, you go back at that, to that time and, and, you know, people were predicting that Netanyahu was going to be out of office in two to three weeks. I mean, and, and what he's realized is the longer he keeps the war going, the war front.

• 1:53:39Danny Jones?

  Do you think it's impossible? He had intelligence that they were planning this and decided to ignore it for an excuse to start the war?

• 1:53:49Speaker 02

  I think it's possible that they had intelligence and didn't act on it because they thought, again, I mean, my personal feeling is that the sheer arrogance of the Israelis, the hubris they have in looking at the Palestinians, if they got warnings, they just didn't take them seriously. They thought these clowns can't really pull anything off. That's, that's, that would be my thing. But I think he knows, Netanyahu knows, as long as he keeps this thing going, the war and just expanding it into Lebanon, into Syria, into Iran.

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  The minute all that stops, then the questions start. And I think he's, and I think he's out.

• 1:54:34Speaker 02

  So he, he's just gonna keep it going.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  Iran-

• 1:54:39Danny Jones?

  Funny, he's been here three times since January.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  I know. It's amazing. And then, you know, that embarrassing thing where he shows Trump he's nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  And of course-

• 1:54:53Danny Jones?

  This is the fucking Twilight Zone.

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  I know, and it really is. It really is.

• 1:54:59Speaker 02

  So yeah, I think that, you know, he just needs to keep the ball spinning, the plate spinning or whatever, that, you know, and as soon as it stops, he's, he's, he's in trouble.

• 1:55:09Danny Jones?

  For, for a country that has probably the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in the world.

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:17Danny Jones?

  And some of the most advanced weaponry and technology, I mean, they're like a little Silicon Valley in the Middle East.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:26Danny Jones?

  It's astonishing to me how bad their PR has been over this whole, this whole thing. You know, because it's like, wow, just the sentiment of folks in the US about this whole conflict-

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:40Danny Jones?

  Has been astonishing to watch.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:43Danny Jones?

  Right? To see like, you know, not just the way our government has been, you know, putting in these, you know, the, um, the governor of Florida, DeSantis, he went to Israel to sign a affirmative action law for Florida-

• 1:55:58Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:55:59Danny Jones?

  To where you can't talk, you can't talk negatively about Jewish people, or else it's a felony. You know, I mean, this is like, this is like the same, the last 10 years or the last however many years it's been with Trump during this first administration of like, fuck your feelings, all these snowflakes, stuff like this.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:56:15Danny Jones?

  Now you have the opposite side, Ron DeSantis, going and signing these affirmative action laws in Florida, saying, no, you can't talk, you know, say anything negative about Israel in Florida.

• 1:56:23Speaker 02

  So amazing.

• 1:56:23Danny Jones?

  Like, what is happening?

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:56:25Danny Jones?

  And people are calling it out, and there's like a huge uprising, like on places like X and YouTube and, and, and everywhere. And I don't know how much of this is like bot campaigns, or how much of this is Iranian bot campaign farms, like doing this, and how much of it's real or fake, but it seems like it's genuine. It seems like a lot of people, a lot of the pundits, a lot of the big, even like the, the people that were promoting Trump during his present, during his campaign this time, right? Some of the biggest people who are promoting him, some of the biggest pundits are like slamming on the brakes, saying, whoa, what the fuck? This is not what we signed up for. This is not what we voted for.

• 1:57:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:57:05Danny Jones?

  And they're really, they're like calling out the hypocrisy with this stuff, like, like, why, like, how the hell are, are, is A, we are giving them billions of dollars, every, of taxpayer dollars, every single year? Why won't, uh, we let them, why, why can't we get them to, uh, make their lobby a foreign agent, register as a foreign agent lobby? And, um, like, why can't we get them to stop blackmailing our politicians?

• 1:57:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:57:35Danny Jones?

  Like, there's so many things here.

• 1:57:37Speaker 02

  I know. And it's both parties, you know, it's, it's both the Democrats and Republicans.

• 1:57:40Danny Jones?

  It is.

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:41Danny Jones?

  It's crazy.

• 1:57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Danny Jones?

  It's a uniparty.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:45Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's astonishing and, and.

• 1:57:47Danny Jones?

  And there's two cults on each side. You got MAGA on one side, and you got like the far left on the other side, and they're just like fighting just so everyone under the radar can get their stuff done.

• 1:57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Danny Jones?

  It's astonishing.

• 1:57:56Speaker 02

  No, and it's, and you know, the idea that they've killed, they've killed at least 60,000 people in Gaza, and that's 3% of the population. And, and if, if that was America, that's 9 million people are dead, at least. And, uh, the vast majority of them civilians, um.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  And the reason, you know, there's not been a Western journalist in Gaza because they there's they'd be they'd be killed, they'd be targeted and killed by the IDF. And all the coverage you've seen out of inside Gaza has been by Arab or Palestinian journalists, and they've killed, the IDF has killed at least 130 journalists. Seventy-five percent of the journalists killed around the world last year were killed in Gaza by the by the Israeli army.

• 1:58:41Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:58:42Speaker 02

  And again, that's a statistic.

• 1:58:44Danny Jones?

  From what countries?

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  Again, mostly Palestinians, because because anybody coming in from outside, they've killed a few Al Jazeera people there, but no, no Western journalist has gotten into Gaza because they know it's a death sentence. I know it's a death sentence.

• 1:58:59Danny Jones?

  And then you have the finance minister who's bragging about like not letting one crumb of food get into Gaza and let as soon as as soon as some food gets there, you have like women and children and families running to get the food and the IDF people shooting them in the streets.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  No, it's it's a, I mean, if this was.

• 1:59:15Speaker 02

  Look, I I'm I my my ex-wife was Jewish. I'm not anti-Semitic, but I am anti-Zionist.

• 1:59:22Danny Jones?

  It has nothing to do with being Jewish.

• 1:59:23Speaker 02

  I know. It really doesn't. But but again, I almost feel like you have to say that as a defense.

• 1:59:28Danny Jones?

  It's disgusting because these people use that as a frickin' argument.

• 1:59:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Danny Jones?

  Like, it's a, it's so, it's so dumb, it makes my brain hurt.

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And if there's any other country in the world, any other country, this would be, I mean, imagine.

• 1:59:42Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  I mean, the Russians have been bad enough in Ukraine, but imagine if if they had been doing this in Ukraine.

• 1:59:47Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, it's it's it's it's really pretty amazing.

• 1:59:53Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I don't know how it's gonna change, man. I don't know. I've really lost a lot of hope over the past couple of weeks with everything that's been happening in our country.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I know.

• 2:00:03Danny Jones?

  And how we've been, you know, he's like, I don't understand how Trump's rolling over on these Epstein files like this. I mean, I kinda do know. I hope it's not true, but I mean, the writing's on the wall. It kind of is. There's, I mean, there's, there's more photos of and videos of him hanging out with Epstein than anyone, right? And it's like, again, like you have, people just wanna like use Epstein as their political football. Like, oh, it's the Democrats are lobbying to get him, get him, uh, the files released so, or to, the Democrats are getting lobbying to get the files suppressed, so they're not, uh, made public to be files. And, uh, now that those guys, Dan Bongino, Cash Patel are in power. Right. They're, they've done a 180. Right, of course. The Epstein files do not exist. He killed himself.

• 2:00:48Danny Jones?

  Right. But like, I mean, there's. I don't think MAGA's, I don't think they're gonna let him get away with it. I, I mean, I think there's gonna be a long burn on this thing. I don't think this, I, I don't think they can change the subject. Well, the funny thing is Donald Trump, he's, if there's one thing he knows how to do, is he knows how to read the room. And he knows how to take the, the public's temperature on what their feelings are on certain topics and, uh, adjust his, his messaging accordingly. With this, it's like he's blind. He like, he like, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't see it. Right. Like, you can't, I mean, it seems like now, though, he's finally said something recently, like, okay, we're gonna release something. Oh, really? I think I saw that this morning. Now he's kinda like changed his stance, like, okay, like, it's overwhelming, everyone's turning on me. I gotta do something. Right.

• 2:01:32Danny Jones?

  But, I mean, it's like, what are, even like, the other thing is like, what are the Epstein files? Right? Like, the black book's been out for what, 10 years? Right. We all seen all the addresses he has. Right. He's got, you know, he's got like 12 phone numbers for RFK. He's got a handful of them for Trump and Clinton, and all these people. All they're, they're all implicated in this stuff. The question is, not the files, where's the hard drive? Right. And the hard drive, I think, is probably sitting in Tel Aviv. Huh. Wow. Like, why else would Trump be doing all this stuff? Right. Yeah. If Epstein was, I mean, the consensus seems to be that Epstein was an Israeli access agent. Right. Huh. You know, with, with his connection to Robert Maxwell, being Ghislaine Maxwell's father. He was Mossad, he was murdered right after that came out, fell off, fell off his yacht while he was taking a pee.

• 2:02:15Danny Jones?

  Um, you know, getting his money from Leslie Wexner. Right. He, Ahud Barak was at his house every day, you know? People think that, that was probably his handler. Wow. There's an overwhelming amount of evidence connecting him to Israeli intelligence.

• 2:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just don't think this goes away. I mean, I Trump, you know, trumpeted this for so long, you know, the and and then come back to Biden.

• 2:02:42Danny Jones?

  Have you seen the Michael Wolff podcast, documentary or podcast? Where he's interviewing Epstein and he says, basically Epstein literally says it's on on audio recording. He's like, yeah, Donald Trump was my best friend for 10 years.

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  Wow. Well, so you know, all these other, everyone else has had contact with him. I mean, you know, a lot of this stuff was probably innocent, too, you know, sure, probably. He's inviting people out to his island, doing these fundraisers, inviting all these tech people and people like Stephen Hawking, whatever, like all these other brilliant people and billionaires are going there. Of course, I want to go rub shoulders with them. There can't be anything bad about that. Right? Right. So.

• 2:03:20Danny Jones?

  It may be different in Trump's case. We'll probably never find out. It probably is different in Trump's case. I mean, we'll probably never know.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:03:27Danny Jones?

  But um, if you can read the or the writing on the wall, it doesn't look good for him.

• 2:03:33Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't. It doesn't. And what happens if the, you know, if the Democrats take control of Congress in in midterms, that can't they? Well, what can they? Can they force the release of Epstein files?

• 2:03:45Danny Jones?

  I don't know. They just. When are the midterms?

• 2:03:48Speaker 02

  Uh, November of 26.

• 2:03:50Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:03:51Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:03:53Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 2:03:55Danny Jones?

  I'm not hopeful.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:03:57Danny Jones?

  I mean, I am hopeful, but I'm not, I'm not getting my hopes up because I'm just, I have a feeling they're going to be let down.

• 2:04:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're probably right.

• 2:04:07Danny Jones?

  But thanks for doing this, man. I really, I really appreciate you coming here to talk to me.

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Danny Jones?

  Tell us about your new book and where people can find your stuff.

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks. And thanks so much for having me on, Danny. I really appreciate it. Yeah, the new book is called King of Kings. It's published by Double Day coming out August 5th or 6th. And it's about the Iranian revolution. And what I took a very intimate look at it. And kind of the idea is to kind of explore the central mysteries of the Iranian revolution because it's it's such a such a strange I feel like the dice could be thrown a thousand times with the Iranian revolution and it would never come up the same way it played last time and there's there's kind of like mysteries to it of

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  like why did the Shah take so long to realize he was in trouble why did the Americans take so long to realize it and I also I'm fascinated by the figure of Khomeini is like was he was he an accident of history was he was he happened to be in the right place in the right time to take over or was he actually very calculating and cunning and at least on and I feel like I've kind of arrived at answers to all three and then on that last one clearly Khomeini was cunning and calculating his whole life kind of speaks of it so yeah I spent four or five years on it I interviewed the Shah's widow talked I wasn't able to go into Iran but I

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  talked to a lot of people in Iran had access to declassified recently declassified documents that show what was going on in the American government but I'm taking it's a very kind of intimate look I chose about five or six people to kind of tell the story and they're really kind of the last people alive like the Shah's widow National Security Council guy who was in the room with Carter when all this stuff was going on a guy who was very close to the Shah is former Peace Corps volunteer who worked for the US Embassy there and kind of saw saw what was happening and tried to give a warning and was not only not

• 2:06:20Speaker 02

  listened to but reprimanded for saying anything that you know that the Shah was in trouble so yeah so that's that's that's book other than that I've mainly write in articles for the National for the New York Times Magazine got a couple of articles coming out with them hopefully in the near future so

• 2:06:40Danny Jones?

  Fantastic man yeah I'll make sure I link all this stuff below and thanks again for your time and I really enjoyed

• 2:06:45Speaker 02

  Thank you my pleasure

• 2:06:46Danny Jones?

  What's this Steve oh this is King of Kings oh sweet we'll link it below

• 2:06:49Speaker 02

  Okay

• 2:06:51Danny Jones?

  Pre-order

• 2:06:54Danny Jones?

  Comes out in August, right? Comes out early August. Perfect. Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks again. Hey, thank you. Good night, everybody.

• 2:07:01Speaker 00

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