Is America's Influence Eroding? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

We break down Russia’s use of gig-economy recruits and online networks for espionage and violence, the growing damage to U. S. bases across the Middle East, and what Iran may be gaining strategically from the conflict. We also discuss the Houthis’ leverage over another maritime choke point, the messy legacy of U. S. proxy warfare in Syria, and how Saudi, Emirati, Omani, and other regional actors are hedging as American influence erodes. Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Jack's news outlet:⬇️ https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️ Jon's Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Jon's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Check out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ Lobo Institute ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ Twitter ⬇️ https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCA LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ Whitefish security summit ⬇️ https://whitefishsecuritysummit.com Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations 00:00 – Start 01:05 – Russia’s New Gig-Economy Espionage Model 02:36 – Foreign Governments Hiring Proxies for Assassinations 03:18 – Russian Online Networks & Recruitment for Violence 05:00 – The KGB’s History of Using Terrorist Proxies 06:11 – Is Russia Directing Online Chaos? 07:24 – Chinese Influence, Ghost Guns & Suspicious Networks in the U. S. 09:20 – Accelerationism & Using Chaos as a Weapon 10:14 – Recruiting Vulnerable People Online 11:20 – How Intelligence Services Slowly Escalate Recruits 12:27 – Iran Recruiting Israelis Through Fake Relationships 14:03 – The Damage to U. S. Bases Across the Middle East 15:06 – Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain Is Effectively Abandoned 15:59 – Losing America’s Foothold Inside the Strait of Hormuz 16:41 – Did the Pentagon Expect Its Gulf Bases to Get Hit? 18:34 – Why Deterrence Against Iran Failed 19:32 – Has Iran Strategically Defeated the U. S.? 20:50 – What Would It Actually Take to Defeat Iran? 21:21 – Iran’s Likely Endgame in the Strait of Hormuz 23:19 – Gulf States Are Beginning to Hedge Away From Washington 24:47 – Houthis Threaten a Second Maritime Choke Point 25:39 – Why the U. S. Is Now Talking Directly to the Houthis 27:23 – Houthis Say Saudi Shipping Is the Target 27:58 – The Mecca Agreement Is Already Being Tested 28:56 – Who Actually Struck Mecca? 30:08 – Saudi Arabia’s Secret Counter-Iran Programs 31:26 – The Gig Economy of Proxy Warfare 32:35 – Timber Sycamore & the Chaos of the Syrian War 34:45 – The Myth of the “Moderate Rebels” 36:30 – When the U. S. Bought Syrian Rebels Xboxes 37:05 – Trying to Get U. S. TOW Missiles Back From Warlords 37:43 – Did the TOW Missile Program Actually Work? 39:21 – Assad’s Intelligence Services & Fear as a Weapon 40:52 – Why the Houthis Aren’t Simply Iranian Proxies 42:11 – Who Was Operating the Captured Saudi Equipment? 43:32 – Saudi vs. Emirati Proxy Forces in Yemen 43:59 – Oman’s Role in the Yemen & Hormuz Crisis 45:50 – JSOC Operations in Eastern Yemen 46:32 – The Failed U. S. Strike in Yemen During the Soleimani Operation 47:24 – Could Yemen’s Rival Factions Be Turned Against Each Other? 47:30 – UAE Mercenaries & Covert Operations in Yemen 48:14 – The UAE’s Huge Paydays for Former U. S. Intelligence Personnel 48:45 – Foreign Officers Running Emirati Elite Units 49:00 – Training the UAE Presidential Guard 50:36 – Closing Thoughts 51:02 – American Insurgent & Final Plug 51:29 – End Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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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• 1:01Speaker 06

  What's up, everybody? We're back. Eyes on geopolitics, midweek episode. I'm here with Jack and John. Jack Murphy, of course, Jonathan Hackett. A lot happening as usual. What do you guys want to hit on first? Want to hit on the Russians being indicted? Kind of in absentia because none of them are in the United States. So I told you guys this on our, in our group chat that I was a little, I don't know, it sounds a little sketch to me. Obviously, it's, it's fucking crazy and the Russians are dirty bastards, but uh, you know, that these guys are basically not in the States and this comes out of nowhere. Basically, I don't know if they're trying to change, change the subject on something, change the story on something, but they've indicted five Russians and a kid from Brooklyn.

• 1:41Jack Murphy?

  Two Russians, two Cubans and one Venezuelan.

• 1:44Speaker 06

  Okay, so it's a mixed bag. Are any of them here?

• 1:47Jack Murphy?

  I don't believe so.

• 1:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49Jack Murphy?

  One of them's a fucking salsa dancer instructor.

• 1:52Speaker 06

  That's what I've always told my, I used to tell my ex-girlfriend about worrying about the salsa dancer instructors. Not because they were Russian like saboteurs, but because she was having an affair with him. But anyway.

• 2:04Jack Murphy?

  This is, this is really interesting, I think. And we talked about this, we had actually some academics on the show. We, we spoke to Rory Cormick and Magda Long, and she was saying like, one of the big changes in espionage in this century is that it's happening on the gig economy. And I first ran into this in investigating Havana syndrome and the harassment that Havana victims had stateside after they came back. And victims, these, these guys, former CIA, former State Department people, they're being followed around and photographed by people. And, you know, because some of these people have, you know, counter surveillance training and so on, they picked up on it pretty,

• 2:47Jack Murphy?

  I mean, it wasn't even being hidden really, it was harassing surveillance.

• 2:52Jack Murphy?

  And some of the people were found to have connections to Venezuela, connections to Cuba. But a lot of times they were also using like Bangladeshi DoorDash guy, you know, who has, he's unwitting in a sense, you know, he just knows he's being paid a hundred dollars to go and take some pictures and then, okay, cool. So it's sort of this relatively new phenomenon, but you're also seeing it like I've heard reporting about, you know, allegedly people who are conducting acts of sabotage in Russia being recruited on Telegram channels. So it, it's kind of going both ways. And I, I think that's a very interesting dynamic and something that's maybe very difficult to defend against.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually, the Masa Amini, the outspoken Iranian woman living in New York City was, they tried to kill her with.

• 3:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Or Masha Alina Judd, I'm sorry. They tried to kill her with Chechens multiple times. And of course, the, the plan was to move her to Cuba on a speedboat. So there is the Cuban connection there as well, just like this story. Which is kind of interesting because, you know, you can hire these people, like you said, and also Hell's Angels was involved in a similar attempt where they're actually illegal immigrants from Canada coming over here, Hell's Angels guys who, one of them overstated his visa and the other two illegally entered the country to go do an assassination just like this.

• 4:15Jack Murphy?

  And here's something else I'd like to draw people's attention to. Okay.

• 4:22Jack Murphy?

  United by Chaos, examining the Russian nexus to online networks of nihilistic violence. Now, this is talking about a number of different groups, 764 and others, you know, predominantly Russian speaking groups. And, you know, they make the point here, it cautions, their report cautions against portraying the comm, this sort of conglomerate organization as a Kremlin directed project, suggesting instead that potentially state linked actors are attempting to hijack an otherwise organic youth driven network as a recruitment pool for violence. So these are the guys that you've probably heard some pretty disturbing reports over the last couple of years

• 5:03Jack Murphy?

  about these networks and how they essentially groom children online and get them to commit acts of self harm and, and other terrible stuff and blackmail them, you know, have them produce, you know, compromising videos of themselves. These are young people, you know, they don't know how to respond or react, you know, they're vulnerable people. And so I bring people's attention to this article and this dynamic because some of these groups are coming out of Russia. And some of the main players are in Russia and they're targeting people in America and inspiring them to commit acts of violence.

• 5:42Jack Murphy?

  And yeah, it's notes that they may not be Kremlin directed, maybe not. But here's the next thing I would point towards. So here we have Wali Hadad. He was a terrorist back in the 1970s, worked with the Palestinian Liberation Front. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB files were opened, we had access to them. And this guy was a directed KGB asset. He was working as a proxy to commit acts of terrorism against the West and to drag the West down strategically to occupy our resources, run around fighting Palestinian aircraft hijackings.

• 6:24Jack Murphy?

  So this one was directed, but the other more famous terrorist, if you will, that people know about is Abu Nidal. And Abu Nidal was probably, I would say definitely not KGB directed, but he was influenced. Was the kind of guy that the KGB would meet with in East Germany and they would give him information and just let him do what he's gonna do, right? So it's, it's influence as well as direction, depending on how they handle that person. So I just bring this stuff up to, you know, maybe make people a little bit more aware of what's going on in the background of, you know, the headlines.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Now, Jack, do you think this is like a directed chaos agent thing from the Russian government? Or is it more organic people in Russia who are disaffected and angry at the world and just trying to make other people do harm?

• 7:13Jack Murphy?

  I, I think that it has some government direction behind it. I mean, it probably does, and that report is probably correct that it's largely organic, so to speak, that it's, you know, just nihilistic assholes that want to spread the hate. But that at some point it becomes hijacked and, and used by the Russian government as well. And I mean, this is a little bit more controversial actually, but I believe the Chinese have agents of chaos here in the United States as well. And there's a few things that I, conversations I've had with law enforcement folks where they pick up somebody. So like one instance was a guy who was ethnically Chinese, but he worked here in the United States.

• 7:52Jack Murphy?

  He had advanced degrees, but this guy was living out of his minivan and he was selling ghost guns in New York City.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  Wasn't he a doctor?

• 8:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:03Jack Murphy?

  He worked for a governmental agency, had the ID card and everything and.

• 8:06Speaker 06

  Living out of your van. That's unbelievable.

• 8:09Jack Murphy?

  And, and selling ghosts, the way, the way the ghost gun thing works is you go into Pennsylvania, you buy a kit. It's like an AR-15 kit, like you have, it's like the pieces of the rifle. And then you transport it, sell it in New York, person constructs the rifle and now you have a rifle without a serial number on it. And which is, and by the way, this is completely illegal to do. And so the police will follow these smugglers from Penns, all the way from Pennsylvania into New York City. And once they come within city lines, arrest them.

• 8:38Speaker 06

  So I had a friend directly who was arrested and went to prison for a couple of years for doing this, not because he was selling them, but because he, he just loved guns and stuff and he's an idiot.

• 8:48Jack Murphy?

  And New York City has like a whole task force, like I think it's the Queens District Attorney's Office actually ran that task force. So it, it's one of these things that I couldn't prove to you that this guy was a Chinese agent. But he may be more along the lines of like these young kids you hear about, young Chinese kids that try to jump the fence onto a military base in the United States and take pictures. But they're not necessarily like directed assets of the Chinese MSS or something like that. It's more like they want to do something to impress, you know, the government when they, you know, like, look what I did, you know, look, look, you know, how prominent I am. I did a good thing. Or they maybe even be pressured in some cases where they get a phone call from someone from like, you know, their aunt who's like,

• 9:33Jack Murphy?

  yeah, yeah, I got a visit from, you know, party representative in, in our town. And he was asking, you know, what our son studying in America has done to support the party lately. And they get the message when they hear that. So I, I think this is something that suffice to say is warrants further investigation.

• 9:52Speaker 06

  You know what it kind of like, a little bit reminds me of, it has some like kind of threads that like it parallels between is accelerationists?

• 10:00Jack Murphy?

  Yes, it's closely related.

• 10:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Cause once you start like just doing it just to fucking cause chaos, it's like, really does like it's, the light bulb went on my head in terms of like accelerationists.

• 10:12Jack Murphy?

  The, the thing with the, the guy living in the van though, that, that, that rings some bells for me because I've heard stories about Chinese spies that have been captured by the, arrested by the FBI. Um, one case, it was a husband and wife couple and they both had like good paying government jobs, but they lived like poor people, like they ate off of newspapers. So they didn't even have plates. And that was because they were hardcore Maoists. They were hardcore committed ideologues. Um, who, you know, all the money went back to the party.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Well, even with these youths, you know, like you find some male 15 year old kid who's been, you know, online a lot and already has tendencies that once identified could be easily manipulated to achieve some kind of outcome across the internet in the United States.

• 10:59Jack Murphy?

  Exactly. You know, you, yeah, you find somebody who's like a borderline school shooter and then just push them over the edge. And, and that's, we've seen that with like, you know, back in the day, it was like 4chan, you know, where they encourage people to go and do that. And, and it continues like on dark web and Discord forums and things like that.

• 11:19Speaker 06

  Can't these kids just like beat off like I did when I was 15? You know what I mean? Like, sorry, bad joke. But uh, the interesting thing, like you, you were talking about it, how like they start off slow, where they're like, yeah, just take some pictures. And then they're like, you know, make a grand 1500 bucks. And then it's like, would you mind, you mind killing this guy for like 40 grand? Is that in like, is that in your wheelhouse? Like, because like the story that just came out, the about the charges, that's literally what happened. And then the Venezuelan kid from Brooklyn was like, I don't really want to do it, but I could probably find somebody that can do it.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Um, that's the whole thing with like recruiting assets in the intelligence community. We don't give them a task right away. That's going to be the task that we recruited them for in the first place. We give them small little things that slowly create a dependency that they have on us. And they also prove to us that they're willing to do things under certain time pressures, within certain requirements. We also correct their behaviors. You know, we create this whole structures. So that when they do get to that moment, when you ask them to do that thing, that's a little bit more than they should be doing. They almost feel so committed to you that they're, they had this problem in their brain, but they're like, well, I have to do it because that's my friend, or that's my whatever, however they rationalize it. And they'll do it for that reason, even though reason is in their brain saying, don't do that.

• 12:33Jack Murphy?

  See, I mean, there's example after example like this of people being recruited over the internet and, you know, directed to go and do things.

• 12:45Speaker 06

  This is the UK?

• 12:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  We saw the same thing in Israel. Actually, there was a older Jewish man who was recruited online by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence, Rvajah, who basically created like a romantic relationship that was fake and convinced the guy to go take pictures of military installations and other sensitive things and so on. And then they gave him other tasks as well. But the Israeli intelligence services thwarted it and then publicized it. Uh, it's kind of an interesting operation as well.

• 13:15Jack Murphy?

  Weren't they like escalating him up to conducting violent attacks? And that's when the authorities moved in.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Yep, they were doing exactly what we just described. They gave him small little things at first, slowly building him up. And of course, you know, sitting there in your chair, you're like, I shouldn't do that. That's wrong. Like, I shouldn't be going on to a base I'm not allowed on, but I like talking to this person. I want to please them, you know?

• 13:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, and it's a, it's a, again, somewhat vulnerable person. They're lonely.

• 13:40Speaker 06

  Weren't they, wasn't Iranians also, weren't they getting Israeli like teenagers to go do BDA?

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Yes, they were. And these weren't like Palestinians. These were Jewish Israeli kids.

• 13:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 06

  Wow. Yeah, it's interesting out there. So be careful, kids, if you're online. You know what I mean? If some weird guy or your, your fake girlfriend is asking you to go and step on a military installation and take pictures.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Or some elf in World of Warcraft dressed scantily, asked you to go observe a military installation and give you gold in exchange. Be careful.

• 14:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:12Jack Murphy?

  You gotta have that conversation with like your seven year old, like, yeah, uh, don't talk to neo Nazis on Roblox, okay?

• 14:23Speaker 06

  You guys, let's talk about what's going on. Like, we really haven't touched on it. Obviously, like, we've talked about it like

• 14:30Speaker 06

  slightly, but like what's happened to like our bases in and around the Middle East. Uh,

• 14:35Jack Murphy?

  Oh yeah, I got one for that too, dude.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, so CBS reported something. And I think also, didn't the inspector general come out with something too in terms of like, well, how much and, and what the damage was? Like, they really didn't get super specific, but that was only up until June. It took me like another three months.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  The Office of the Inspector General, which was on the DOD side, and the Congressional Research Service, which is on the legislative side. So two different branches of government just put out two reports. Which you have to take with a grain of salt, but also appreciate they at least put the reports out. So you at least have some data to work with. But the OIG one, I would, I would definitely scrutinize that one quite a bit because there, they fired all the inspectors general last year. And so the ones who remain are the ones that were considered worth keeping. Right. So definitely put some question marks when you see the conclusions they reached in that report.

• 15:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I, we really don't talk about it, like our Bahrain, like the fifth fleet HQ is essentially abandoned and probably destroyed. And all the other, you know, Prince Sultan Air Force Base, like you see that, that.

• 15:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's a Boeing E3 century, four engine aircraft, torched.

• 15:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. And that's an extremely expensive and rare aircraft, right? That's the one with the big dome on top of it. That's like early warning radar.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And actually, the vice admiral that was the fifth fleet commander was asked this week. You know, our PR sailors able to go back to Bahrain and pick up their personal items because they're, they're staying at different bases. They're not in Bahrain. The fifth fleet is like evacuated from Bahrain, which is crazy. And the admiral said, no, and for the foreseeable future, they won't be going back.

• 16:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. So forget your, your belongings. Like forget, you buy another vibrator.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that means we just lost our toehold inside the Straits of Hormuz. Like, that means we have to go operate out of Diego Garcia or Jordan. As we can see, Jordan is not safe, uh, from the way it was before the war. And Diego Garcia is thousands of kilometers away. And Iran did fire a missile there at the beginning of the war. If people remember this, the very beginning of the war, Iran fired two hypersonic, or two, two very fast missiles, essentially, let's say. One of them almost struck. Correct.

• 16:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah, one of my friends was there when it happened.

• 16:47Speaker 06

  We're, we're like, you know, like the war planners and stuff like that, were they, did they think that like, oh, the fifth fleet HQ in Bahrain will be have a massive target on its back, essentially?

• 16:58Jack Murphy?

  Like if these bases were going to get schwacked if we went to war.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  I'm assuming, right? Cause like Bahrain is pretty, it's pretty close. It's not that far from Iranian.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  Well, one of the things we used to do for like preparation, the environment is set up these things called, uh, continuity of operations sites, coop sites, which are basically either fallback positions or alternative positions in exactly these scenarios. So like all these bases have coop sites that have been set up somewhere else so that they can move troops out of there and put them somewhere else. And it's exactly what you said, Jack. Like, we, we have to make the military assumption that these will be attacked. You just cannot plan without that assumption in there. It has to be part of the assumption. Uh, the problem is like, how far away can you get? Because this was a big problem with like China deterrents, like the weapons engagement zone concept where like there's these, the rings of weapons engagement where you look at, okay, how far can whatever weapon reach? But now with ICBMs and even the Houthis having ICBMs, like

• 17:49Speaker 03

  there is nowhere outside the weapons engagement zone. The whole world is inside the weapons engagement zone. Especially if we're talking about space based weapons, which the US just admitted, we have weapons in space, which is a violation of a treaty. And those, those weapons are up there publicly now. Russia has had them for a while. China has had them since the early 2000s. That's why we have about 90% of the debris in space is because of a single Chinese weapons test in space that blew up a satellite and spread millions of pieces of debris around. So the problem now is like, how far away can you get to still be safe from the adversary that you're fighting? Well, fifth fleet was right on the cusp of the territory of the adversary, you know? So it's kind of crazy. You'd put that, same thing with Qatar. That's where Air Force's Central Command is at. So it's like the equivalent of the Navy for Central Command.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Both of those are now like inoperable, essentially.

• 18:40Speaker 06

  Uh, like the, the Qatar one too. I mean, I guess that at the time when we were really using these bases, Iran wasn't the, the primary, you know, threat, I, you know, but at the same time.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  The, the thing is, we always thought that deterrence would be enough. So like the bases themselves were part of our deterrence of Iran. And in the last six months, we've seen that that was a facade. And that we were not actually capable of fighting an offensive war for a sustained period of time sufficient to actually defeat them. So we, we started it that way. You know, we ramped up and, but then we dropped off. And then every time we restarted, it was below the amount of intensity we had at the opening of the, the conflict. And those bases are not designed to sustain inside of such a low intensity exchange with an adversary who actually has medium range ballistic missiles and other asymmetric capabilities, like we see with the Houthis modifying anti chip weapons to launch them at Saudi Arabia and things like that.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  I mean, what do you, Jack, what do you make of this? Like, obviously, see, this is, this isn't really talked about a lot, like in American, Western kind of news until like recently. You know, we, we kind of mentioned it, but like not really gone into it.

• 19:49Jack Murphy?

  Well, I mean, I would skip straight to the end game here. We're talking about the, the tit for tat, the back and forth. Obviously is important, but the end game, I think, is that Iran has soundly defeated us at a strategic level. And that's the conversation that people don't want to have.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, because it goes to admitting defeat, which Americans don't want to do. I mean, nobody, no, no person wants to admit defeat, you know? But it's like when Rome was conquered by the Gauls and the, the Gauls roll into Rome and the, the Romans are complaining because they asked for some gold. And then the conqueror, I think it was Brennus, comes in there and he's like, now give me a thousand pounds of gold, a thousand pounds of cinnamon and a thousand pounds of silver. And the, the Romans like, no, no, it's too much. And he's like, well, woe to the vanquished. And he throws his sword on the scale two and makes it even heavier. It's like, what are we doing?

• 20:41Speaker 06

  Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, uh, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad free episodes that come out early. And you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad free and early. And you can also watch it live as we interview our guests.

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• 22:28Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 22:30Speaker 06

  It's a homicide detective doing here.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. Oh, since swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 22:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I think, well, I mean, there's, there's the cognitive dissonance is real, but I mean, I think most people at this point have to admit that this war is not going well. It's not going as the administration planned. And I mean, I don't know, John, I mean, I've opined on it, but I mean, how do you see this like playing out over the next like six to 12 months?

• 23:16Speaker 03

  The only way it could actually succeed is if we had ground troops at this point. And we restarted the air campaign. I mean, like, I hate to say that and I don't support that, but like, if you're asking like, what's the way to win? That's it. So that that means, because we're not going to do that, that means we're going to be in a war of attrition. And part of the war of attrition from the Iranian viewpoint, like from the regime's viewpoint, is political attrition. It's not just a military activity, whereas we're just, we like to look at things as this foreign military operation. And they're looking at, some would even call it a special military operation. Looking at it as like this political, military, economic war against a huge enemy that's existential to their existence, which is a very different way than how we're looking at it. And so what's probably going to happen is there will be a lot of fait accompli that will be set up.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  For example, Iran will gain control over at least half the straits. They're going to set up a treaty with Oman. I almost guarantee that. The GCC states will agree to that treaty and start paying taxes or some kind of toll to Iran to pass through safely. And there will be a lot of these things that people have been saying like, well, they might do this, they might do that. Iran's going to do that because it's in their interest to do it. And it's in the interest of the GCC states to accept it. Because right now, oil exports are so low, it just cannot sustain for their economies. I mean, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have been trying for a very long time to set up alternatives to a single commodity economy. The Emirates in particular, especially with tourism and other things. But with the way that sanctions are working on, let's say Dubai, for example, that's not really tenable right now unless the conflict ends. So they need this conflict to end ASAP.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  And the way to do that is to make agreements with Iran. And it's not like this is an alien concept. Saudi Arabia already had agreements with Iran in the past. Turkey already had agreements and I could list off many of the other countries in the region have had their own unilateral and bilateral agreements and multilateral agreements with Iran on security cooperation, on mutual defense, on economic policy. So this is not like an alien concept for them, although it is to us in the West. Like, how could you, how dare you go meet in, in Salala, which is what they're doing this week, to go meet with the foreign minister of Iran? Well, I mean, it's their waterway and their economy is right there. Like, you gotta, you gotta understand this. So that's the most likely outcome is that we will basically lose control of the maritime waterway there that we, for the last 50 years, have controlled in one way or the other, which

• 25:31Speaker 03

  is a huge sacrifice to think about because a lot of the conflict that we've, we've justified the conflicts in the Middle East in many ways as, you know, freedom of navigation, freedom for governments, like freedom, freedom, freedom, and we just lost it.

• 25:45Speaker 06

  By choice.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  We gave it up, yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  We gave it up, yeah. It wasn't like a stronger power came in and took care of it. Like, it's, there's an interesting, like, parallel, I'm going to say again, with like, what's going on with like the GCC countries and the Gulf countries. And a little bit, you see it happening with like South Korea and China, right? Like, they're kind of seeing that America is like, they're not going to be here for us, we don't think. And we gotta make, at least we need to make sure, like, have an insurance policy, like, where we make nice with the powers in the region and kind of like manifest our own destiny, rather than like have the US kind of dictate us what goes where and how things work, really, right? I can see it decoupling. And we're not doing a great job either with like Europe too and our NATO partners, right? Like.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Well, even more regionally with South Korea, for example, I mean, they're looking over their northern border at North Korea and they're like, well, who, who has the ability to tell North Korea not to attack us? China. It's so it's in, it's in South Korea's interest to at least develop some more deeper ties with China, even if that's the only reason why. But the economic reason is also very important, especially when we're looking at microchips, AI development, the actual like physical infrastructure for AI that South Korea is a part of that supply chain and China is a consumer of that supply chain. So there, there are people in South Korea that stand.

• 27:01Jack Murphy?

  Here's a, another one that is worth at least mentioning, John. The Houthis have been on the move and potentially it looks like closing off another maritime choke point on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula at the Red Sea. And they, you know, are, I don't know if you want to use the term Iranian proxies, but, you know, they're working with each other. And that would give Iran control of both of these choke points.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the thing with the Houthis is like, as we've talked about in the show before, like, they're not under direct control of Iran in the way that Hezbollah was.

• 27:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  They have a lot of their own unique things and their interests really align right now with Iran's interests. But as we've seen, the Houthis are not always responsive. Sometimes they do the opposite of what the regime wants. Sometimes, like, for example, today, the Houthis had a direct discussion with the United States. I don't know if people saw that in the news.

• 27:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  Which is kind of crazy because MBS called Trump twice and Trump would not help the Saudis defend themselves against the Houthis, but then we took a phone call from the Houthis. So that's kind of an interesting thing, probably because the US is concerned that they're, that the West is about to lose control over another strait. So they're probably trying to do some negotiations with the Houthis to get around that, but it may be too late because just like happened in Iran, the Iranians didn't understand exactly how valuable the Straits of Hormuz were, but they knew they were worth something. Now they know they're this like critical piece, just like a nuclear weapon. The Houthis now are like, hey, look, the US, the biggest superpower on the planet, just called us to talk to us about something they want to negotiate. The Houthis haven't really fired many shots yet, especially relative to what it took for the Iran war for the US to start talking to Iran to negotiate.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  So the Houthis are probably feeling pretty strong right now. And they, they, I mean, they have every right to be, look, the US just called them on the phone to negotiate.

• 28:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  A tribal group that's got like very small arsenal of weapons relative to the other powers that the US is designed to fight against at the negotiating table as if they were equals.

• 28:57Speaker 06

  Not bad for a militia full of guys chewing cotton.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. Living up in the mountains. I mean, and they don't even live down in the area that they're about to control, like the Tahama Plain area and the little islands that they've just occupied are like not part of the Houthi traditional homeland. So like, they're, they're basically expanding the territory beyond what even the Yemeni government controlled before, right? So it's kind of amazing. And they haven't really fought that much of the United States. They've done some, you know, small things here and there, but they haven't really sacrificed too much against the US and they're about to probably get something pretty big. I would not be surprised if there was some big US announcement about what the Houthis are about to get in exchange for whatever they ask for.

• 29:36Speaker 06

  So I saw, I read today that, that conversation with the Houthis, the Houthis basically said like, we're not going to attack American shipping or even Israeli shipping, we're specifically targets Saudi. And couple that with the Iraqi militias hitting the pipeline, which put that out of commission. And there was some, I saw a couple, like a couple tweets about like showing that Saudi Arabia is like sending a ton of like oil to the east. That I'm assuming go through the Strait of Hormuz, hopefully, like fingers crossed, maybe?

• 30:11Speaker 03

  Well, this exactly illustrates like the weakness of that tripartite agreement, the Mecca agreement that Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia recently signed, where it's supposed to be like a, like an Article Five like mutual defense treaty. And like, it just got invoked and nobody's helping, you know? I mean, it just kind of shows like who was the junior partner in this agreement. And of course, Saudi Arabia being weakened is positive for Turkey. This is like a great opportunity for Turkey to expand, because we've talked about this before, like Turkey sees Saudi Arabia as like, they're not necessarily an adversary, but a competitor in exactly the area that we're talking about, Western Iraq, like Anbar area, Syria, the desert, the Badiya desert, and then all the way down to those pipelines that in Erdogan's mind, Saudi Arabia used to be part of the Ottoman Empire and Erdogan is the Ottoman Emperor, right?

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Like in his mind, and he's like, well, I'll just let them get attacked because the weaker they are, the better it is for Turkey.

• 31:02Jack Murphy?

  And John, you had mentioned earlier that, that Mecca had been hit recently.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was the first time in 10 years, actually, that Mecca was hit in any significant way and it was the Houthis. So it's interesting because the Saudi government said the Houthis did it and the Houthis said that they would never hit Mecca or touch the holy sites. So there's something, of course, going on here, not sure. So I wonder if perhaps it was Qataib Hezbollah or another group, maybe? Or a group of Yemenis that in, inside of Ansarallah, which is the Houthis.

• 31:29Jack Murphy?

  Was this a car bombing or something?

• 31:31Speaker 03

  It's unclear. So that's why I've got some question marks about like what's going on here. It could be a way to, some would say maybe a false flag perhaps, to have Saudi assistance more readily available from other Muslim countries who would see this as a direct affront to the Muslim world. It could also very much be the Houthis launching something and, you know, and the Saudis exploiting that. I think we definitely need to see some more because if you remember a few years ago, I think it was seven years ago, six years ago, the Saudi intelligence headquarters was hit by a drone. Do you remember this? Which was like a really big deal because how did the Saudi head court intelligence had like their CIA got hit by a drone, right? So like it's these kind of actions that there's a lot going on behind it that the public is not seeing. That is certainly very substantive and without that, we can't really analyze it too thoroughly.

• 32:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, it's also, you know, worth pointing out, maybe that like the Saudis are, you know, knee deep in all sort of like counter Iran programs with us. And, you know, if you, you know, folks out there, remember that movie Charlie Wilson's War where like, you know, we would donate X amount of arms or X amount of money into a program. And the Arabs would meet it. They would meet whatever it was that we were putting into it. Well, that kind of relationship continues with Saudi Arabia to this day where I actually know somebody who was in the room where the CIA was putting like, I think it was like $300 million into a counter Iran program. And the Saudi, you know, Amir or whoever was sitting in the room was like six.

• 32:57Jack Murphy?

  They were all like, six, what? What are you talking about? It's like six million, $600 million into the program. I mean, there's yeah, definitely stuff going on behind the scenes as John says.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Same thing happened in Syria during Timbersycamore when we were, uh, you know, trying to overthrow the Assad government. And then ISIS came up and there was a lot of Gulf participation in that, which ended up actually being a bit of a mistake in how it was organized or disorganized. Um, and the Saudis, the Emiratis and the Qataris were all playing separately in that game.

• 33:28Jack Murphy?

  And that, that kind of like, in a strange way dovetails with what we were talking about earlier about, you know, how the gig economy interfaces with espionage during the Syrian war. You saw these militias and these terror groups even form up like, you know, one person described it as being like dot com LLCs that they'd come together mission to mission, then kind of like dissolve and then reform and reconfigure in different ways for the next battle. And it's fascinating to see how that works. And one part of me thinks, you know, maybe this is like how it was in medieval Italy, when there were just mercenary bands roaming around the countryside. But at least in our lifetimes, it seems like, you know, sort of a new phenomenon.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, it actually reminds me of the Hessians coming from Hess in Germany to America to fight in the Revolutionary War. Yeah. And they were, they were like pretty vicious.

• 34:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And we were Francis proxy force.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  That's right. We won.

• 34:23Speaker 06

  So you like that stuff that was going on in Syria, was it like just money talks and like?

• 34:29Jack Murphy?

  A lot of it. I mean, it was just mayhem.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  It was a poorly planned covert action. Like the, the political outcome was not well defined for how it should be structured. Like, once we reached certain benchmarks and within the first year, we'd already spent a billion dollars and we didn't know where many of the weapons ended up. And actually for years after that, we were still trying to track down some of the weapons, like the tow missiles. I was part of that track down operation. It was really interesting to try to get the weapons back from these warlords who were like, I'm not giving you my tow missiles back. And we'd say like, okay, well, can you just verify that you have them? Please just show them to me. So I know that like that they're here and not in this other guy's camp over there that we don't like. And that kept going on. And actually the very last remnant of that just ended this year when a ton of garrison ATG was closed. Um, that was like for a long time, like the last vestige of this program.

• 35:14Jack Murphy?

  What happened was we, we got involved in the conflict too late. And the FSA, the, the Free Syrian Army, the so-called moderate rebels had lost so much power that they were subservient to the Islamist groups, Al-Nusra and others. And so when we gave them those tow missiles, we were giving tow missiles to the FSA, but they were influenced. I mean, they couldn't really do anything that Nusra didn't want them to do. So yeah, the guy that fires the tow missile is in the FSA, but really whose agenda is being served there. And, and then, yeah, so the problem that we came in kind of late in the conflict with those programs and with the moderate rebels either being irrelevant or nonexistent was we were recruiting whoever was left.

• 35:58Jack Murphy?

  And some of them were Islamists. Some of them were just losers, you know, that like the Syrian army wouldn't even want those guys. And, but you know, these guys, they, they, you know, are very shrewd and they figure out how to milk the United States for as much money as possible. And there's also just incoherence. I think, I don't know what you saw, John, but I, I think all the way up to the National Security Council level, where I knew guys that were working on programs in Turkey and Jordan also, and where we were training these so-called moderate rebels. And those programs were being flipped on and off, like weekly, monthly, like it was really crazy.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's tough too. Cause like these, these rebels, I always just laugh whenever people say moderate rebels. Cause like, if you knew who these people were, you'd also laugh too. But, uh, I mean, there's one of them leading Syria right now that used to hold two severed heads in his hand in a photograph. I mean, like these guys are.

• 36:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Not, not good guys.

• 36:50Speaker 06

  We had a $10 million bounty on him. Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Well, that went away in a week. Remember in late December that went away. Uh, he's a good, he's a good man. Now he's a statesman wearing a Rolex. But the problem is like, we would promise them cash or weapons and like the stuff would be on the way and it would be arriving and then it'd be cut off. And then they're like, well, what are we going to do with this? Or they'd be in battle and we'd be like, well, we don't have enough ammunition to give you guys. Or like, oh, you gotta wait. Cause the ammunition is coming through this other pathway or channel because the other one's not available or something like that. It's like, it wasn't like regular resupply. So they would feel betrayed all the time or that they can't trust us. Or Turkey is saying like Turkey wants this outcome. And the US is like, no, no, we want this like slightly different outcome. And then the guys on the ground are like, well, who's giving me my ammo? Okay. I'm going to do what Turkey said, cause Turkey's getting me the ammo.

• 37:31Jack Murphy?

  Oh, and, and these weird scenarios played out where there'd be like American soldiers and Turkish soldiers in the talk. And the Americans are having to pretend like, we don't know that the Turks are supporting ISIS. And the Turks are having to pretend like they don't know that we're supporting the Kurds. And it's like, what the fuck is going on here?

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I remember when, uh, we were in Syria and that one of the team guys was wearing his YPG little patch and it got on the news. And it was like, it was the Kurdish news, but then it immediately got up national news and like, there was a big hoo-ha about that. And it's so controversial and like, we're not allowed to call them the peacock. We have to call them the YPG and then we have to call them the SDF only. And we cannot refer to the subgroups. Cause if we name the subgroups, that's a problem.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  Oh my God.

• 38:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah. It was totally out of control. There's one, one story I heard, one of the camps where we, we had these rebels, we were supposed to be training in Turkey. And because the training kept getting turned on and off, the, the supplies is, as you mentioned, John, kept getting turned on and off. And our rebels started getting antsy in their pansy out there in the camps. So the US military came in and we bought them all Xboxes and flat screen TVs, uh, so that they could get their, you know, rocks off playing Call of Duty all day.

• 38:45Speaker 06

  John, let me ask you, when you were trying to get those tow missiles back from like whatever warlord, you guys were offering them money and they still said no?

• 38:53Speaker 03

  In some cases, yeah. Because the problem is, so first the question was, do you have the tow missiles? And of course they would say, oh, yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 06

  Maybe. Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Well, we're like, okay, show us. They're like, oh, well, they're like in this other area, like, you know, whatever. But the truth is they had sold them on the black market. So like, they don't want to say that because then they get in trouble. So like, they're trying to like, talk around it. And like, we need to verify the serial numbers of these things to make sure like they, where are they? But you know, like you can keep them, but like, you can't use them or you can't sell them. And even you can use them, just don't sell them. Right. But like they had already sold them.

• 39:23Jack Murphy?

  A big, big picture, John. I mean, how would you assess the tow missile programs effectiveness? Like, I know there's all these complications around it, but did it accomplish the thing we wanted it to accomplish? And what was that? I, I assume it was, you know, hitting the regime.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. My thought is that we were trying to replicate Operation Cyclone, which is the arming, in particular the Stinger missile component, because it was a very public thing that could be clearly communicated outside to show the world, like these are objectives we're achieving. Cause it's a lot harder to do that with small unit tactics, like with automatic weapons and small engagements and things like that. So if you can blow up a tank and then videotape that, photograph that, share that, that's a, that's an information operation win, right? I think that was the true reason for the tow missiles, because if you look at the mechanized forces of the Syrian Arab army, like there is no way you were going to defeat them with a couple of tow missiles. These aren't like the Hind helicopters that the Russians were flying around doing vertical envelopment in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Like these are massive divisions, multiple divisions of highly trained, very, you know,

• 40:24Speaker 03

  carefully conscripted forces that are believers of what the Assad family was pushing, which was basically sovereignty of Syria, which is actually an easy idea to push. When you see that there's all kinds of actors trying to come into Syria and do stuff and have been for a long time. And so I don't think the tow missiles were actually for a discreet military objective. I think it was more of an information objective.

• 40:43Jack Murphy?

  I will not, I want to say we, but between the tow missiles and everything else going on in Syria. I mean, tons and tons of armored vehicles were destroyed and, and, uh, you know,

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:52Jack Murphy?

  That's from belonging to the Syrian military were destroyed.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  But the thing is what, what the Syrian military would do, you know, they have something called air force intelligence, AFI, which is not actually the air force. It's just the name of an intelligence entity in the military, which was like highly feared. I mean, there, that was where the Assad family came from, like the coup that overthrew the Syrian government was from air force intelligence and so on. There's this huge like deep legacy with it. They also conducted the Hama massacre in Hama in the, in 1982, like killed tens of thousands of Syrians at that time. So the air force intelligence guys would roll around and just like execute people. And so.

• 41:24Jack Murphy?

  You're talking about like the, the death squads, the Shahida.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  Exactly. Exactly. So like they were using fear as a weapon. So it didn't really matter if they had their armored vehicles blown up. Cause like, let's say you blew up an armored vehicle from the second armored division. Well, then air force intelligence is coming to your village and they're going to execute a hundred of you and capture the rest. So like, you're just, you're just going to be super careful about what you strike and you're not going to strike anything actually significant. Not only that, but each village had their own loyalties to their villages and to their provinces, especially down south, like Dura and Sueda. Like those guys, some of them are drews, which is not part of the other religious groups around there. They're defending their own place, especially Sueda from everybody, literally every other entity in the area is trying to attack Sueda. And the Syrian civil war started in Dura when the, the two kids went out there and started protesting and then people got slaughtered in the town.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  So like Dura had its own view. So like, even if you arm them, they're not defending future Syria. They're defending their, their town or their city or their province.

• 42:21Speaker 06

  Primary royalties.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Right. And that goes back to the Houthis exactly because that's what the Houthis are defending. Like ju- just because Iran is there right now saying like, hey, here's some weapons and money. If Russia came in or if the United States came in, I offered the same thing. The Houthis would accept that because they don't really care about the beliefs in Iran. I mean, they're, they're not even 12 or Shia Islam. They're a different branch of Islam that believes in only nine imams. And like, they have a whole different religious system than the Shia in Iran. So like, it's not about Shia Islam as this like arc, the Shia arc of, of danger, or whatever people describe it as for the Houthis. The Houthis care about their mountain terrain area that they've controlled since the 10th century. This is a super important area for them. They, they actually have a different way of electing imams. They have these people called daees, which is like uncle in this area.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  That, that's kind of like a spiritual leader, like the Mera Batun in West Africa also has a very similar thing, where they like select a spiritual leader from just a small, let's say 500 people village. That's the guy they get their orders from. So they don't look beyond that to like some foreign country telling them like, go fight Saudi Arabia or something like that. They're seeing it as like an existential defense of their soil.

• 43:27Speaker 06

  How do you even try and corral that?

• 43:30Speaker 03

  You offer them incentives that align with your own interests and then you get the outcome that you want.

• 43:35Speaker 06

  And hopefully somebody doesn't outbid you.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  It looks like that might be happening.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Geez Louise. Oh my God. Let me ask you guys, we also like the shots of like the Houthis, the Houthis rebels, like grabbing all the armored vehicles and stuff like that. And there were memes everywhere like saying to America, this is why you don't have free healthcare and stuff like that, because you keep losing all your military equipment in different countries. Who's, who's operating that military equipment that was abandoned?

• 44:00Speaker 03

  You're talking about in Yemen?

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. In Yemen, when the Houthis like, it was like a few days back. Remember like the videos and stuff, they're grabbing, they're jumping on these big grabbies.

• 44:07Jack Murphy?

  Saudis, you know, Saudi, what is it actually Saudi National Guard? Or is it just their proxy forces?

• 44:13Speaker 03

  It's a proxy force. It's not actually like Saudi Armed Forces.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  But this has been the story with the Houthis since the 2014 conflict started, when like the government collapsed in Sanaa and the Houthis and other groups raided all the arsenal. That's like where all their equipment came from and still is a lot of it from there. Um, and they got like divisions worth of equipment overnight, you know, amazing amounts of ammunition and weapons and things like that. And that's kind of like as old as war is, like, you know, one side like leaves their stuff behind and you go take it.

• 44:45Speaker 06

  So that, so the Saudis had proxies in Sanaa.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  They had proxies all over, especially Western and Northern Yemen. Because that's what the Emirati split was with the Saudis, like the Southern Transition Council was the southeastern part of Yemen, which was South Yemen during the Cold War. And that was aligned with the Emiratis and still is aligned with the Emiratis. Those were like Yemeni fighters working for the Emirates. And then now you've got Yemeni fighters working for the Saudis that have a different view than the Emirati guys and also oppose the Zaidis up in the mountains, which are the Houthis.

• 45:13Jack Murphy?

  If we're to, you know, the other player that we haven't really talked about, you mentioned very briefly, John Oman is over there on the peninsula as well. How do you see them playing into this?

• 45:25Speaker 03

  And it's interesting because the Omanis, it's a very small population. Uh, it's a few hundred thousand people in the country of Oman. And if you look at a map of the, the border between Oman and Yemen, it's like a straight line, but it's actually like a blurry line because there's no border at all. I mean, you just, it's the Hadramout is like, that's actually where Anwar al-Awlaki was from. You remember the US citizen we killed without due process in 2013? He's from the Hadramout area, which is eastern Yemen, right? And, uh, that area has just been like ungoverned forever because it's a tough piece of terrain. So the Omanis are looking coastal. They're like, we want to protect Salala, Dukem, which is another port that they have as well. And they kind of want to keep that maritime route that they have on the north secure. So their interests have to do with economics and security. That's, that's their interest. And I mentioned interest because like, if you're looking at how do you make a partner do what you want,

• 46:10Speaker 03

  your interests have to align. So for the Omanis right now, they're acting as kind of a mediator because they have to, because their interests are stability. So they're, they're facilitating talks in Salala with Iran, bringing Iran in and the GCC countries in there to talk, because that's in their interest to do that. If the US was helping those things happen, they would probably come to those meetings. The Omanis would, right? And the Omanis have also a very different type of Islam than Iran does. And then the Sunnis do also. And actually women's rights in Oman are separately governed than they are in the rest of the Muslim world. Women have like certain marriage rights that other Muslims don't have. So I just highlight the cultural thing because like, if you're an Omane, you don't see people in the Emirates as similar to you. They're very different than you, you know? So when you're sitting at a table negotiating, you're negotiating with others, not with like a like-minded person,

• 46:55Speaker 03

  because you don't have the same interests in mind.

• 46:58Speaker 06

  My God, busy-ing dude. And Jack, let me ask you, like, John mentioned the eastern Yemen. That's kind of where like JSOC got busy, right? For a while?

• 47:09Jack Murphy?

  I mean, continues to be active over there.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  That's where al-Qaeda is based.

• 47:13Jack Murphy?

  There's a lot of untold stories about various ops that happened in Yemen and things that didn't quite go as planned. Yeah, and we've, we've been there.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a recent one.

• 47:23Jack Murphy?

  What was the more recent one? I was thinking about the one where the SEALs got ambushed in the armored vehicle. Like full, da, da, da, da, da, da, across the windshield.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  The day Qassem Soleimani was assassinated, we also tried to kill someone in Yemen and it didn't go well.

• 47:37Jack Murphy?

  I remember that. Yeah, we, we missed them, right?

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And that's the thing with Yemen, you know, you've got Sunnis in the east, in the desert. That's why the Emiratis work with them quite a bit. In the west, you've got some Shia and you also have some of these Zaidis, which is the religious system that the Houthis follow. Then it's called the nine Imam type of Islam, right? But in the east, you have al-Qaeda. So al-Qaeda is not friends with Iran. They're not friends with, you know, the Zaidis. Sometimes in the past, they had been lined up with what Saudis were doing. I'll just put it that way. But so you have like different groups of, of these guys that are bad guys, that are like all living in the same area and they don't like each other. You know, like the Zaidis and al-Qaeda do not, like they have an existential reason to kill each other. So it's like, maybe that would be an opportunity for one of them to be co-opted against the other one.

• 48:22Speaker 06

  I was just gonna say that, John, I was gonna say that, like, why not do what you need to do and have them fight each other? So they're not bombing other places.

• 48:30Jack Murphy?

  This is also where the UAE was sponsoring mercenaries. Our friends Dale Comstock and Daniel Corbett were over there.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, we have a couple of episodes on the Team House for that. You could check it out. Yeah. We're like, Dale's just openly talking about it, like, you know, I had this fucking bomb and I had to throw it in the, just absolute chaos.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  The Emiratis try to hire us out of the National Security Agency too. They have like a special recruiting system for that to come bring you over to their significant entity.

• 48:55Jack Murphy?

  You remember that big scandal came out when they hired all those people?

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:59Jack Murphy?

  And they like told them, oh yeah, this is approved by the US government, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 06

  Like, no, we're supposed to be here. It's okay. We're supposed to be here.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, your clearance will transfer. It's easy.

• 49:09Speaker 06

  Oh my God. And they were throwing around big money for like NSA guys? Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it was around 600K annual salary, housing provided. You get a driver. Um, there's some other specifics. It's like kind of crazy that they'd be giving this to like a mid-level person.

• 49:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, UAE is always, they're like very much in the business of hunting for capabilities. And like they had a former CIA NOC working for them. They hire ex-agency people to come in and teach all kinds of tradecraft that like, I'm like, how is this even legal? Like what?

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Well, even the Emirati Presidential Guard, their most elite unit they have is led by the former Australian SAS two-star. And like, that's, that's what that bill it is. It has to be an Australian SAS two-star, not an Emirati.

• 49:50Speaker 06

  It has to be like.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. And actually, when I, in my previous work, we were training them a lot in the mountains in California, doing their cold weather training. And it would be funny because we'd have, like, it would be close enough to Las Vegas that they could go on a drive to Las Vegas at some point, right? And so they would go get hotels in Las Vegas and like refuse to train. And like, this is their presidential guard, like their best, the best guys, right? And, uh, they, so then we'd eventually like convince them to go to the mountain, to the base camp and be like, all right, guys, we like, that's why you're here. And it's funny because like when we would train them as a partner force, the way the foreign military sales agreement was set up, the Emiratis would actually pay our paychecks. So they would pay money to the US Treasury and from the Treasury it would go into DFAST, which is how we get paid in the military. So that any of us like touching that program, it wasn't the US taxpayer paying our salaries, which is crazy.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  Um, and it was totally transparent to us, but this is how the case was set up, right? So like, we'd be up on the mountain telling them like, you guys got to get up on the mountain. And they'd be like, oh, it's too cold. It's too cold. Like you better get up on the mountain. Like we gotta go get one of their guys to go like beat them and tell them to get out of the tent and go up the mountain. It was pretty wild because I'm like, how are you guys going to go fight war like this?

• 50:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:53Jack Murphy?

  I love these stories, like, we, we've brought over, you know, I mean, I know like an Afghan dude that did Ranger School, graduated from Sandhurst, like super squared away guy. But then you hear other stories where we've brought Afghans over here to train them and they disappear. And then they show up like two weeks later in a strip club in Nashville. You're like, what the fuck?

• 51:13Speaker 06

  Yeah. He got someone, he got a stripper pregnant. He's like, I live here now. All right, John. I'll see you later.

• 51:20Jack Murphy?

  Take care.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  All right. Let's wrap it up. Uh, Jack, unless you got something else you want to keep gapping about? All right. I want everyone to do us a favor. I want you to go to our Patreon, patreon.com slash the Team House. You get episodes of Eyes On and Team House ad-free and early and you help support the show. Of course, all the links for all the guys, the books, Jack's, the high side, Jack's book, of course, The Most Dangerous Man that's out. Uh, all those links are in the description. So if you want to help support the guys, those links are in the description. There it is. Beautiful. Look at that cover.

• 51:55Speaker 06

  And I'm going to keep teasing it. I have a book coming out next month. October 20th, I think is the day.

• 52:01Jack Murphy?

  Oh, you have a date?

• 52:02Speaker 06

  I have a date. Yeah. Yeah. So.

• 52:05Jack Murphy?

  All right, I'm looking forward to reading it.

• 52:06Speaker 06

  It's called American Insurgent and it's, it's a fun novel that'll probably upset many people, but that's okay. Such is life. Jack, I love you. Thank you. I'll see you in a little bit because we have a Team House right after this.

• 52:18Jack Murphy?

  Yep, coming up in a couple of hours.

• 52:19Speaker 06

  Right, exciting. Later.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck?

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Brett ski, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  10 bucks for 30? I'm adding it over to spinquest.com right now.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder.

• 53:33Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 53:35Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 53:37Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 53:44Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 53:45Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 55:10Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 55:13Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 55:14Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 55:21Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 55:23Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 55:38Speaker 04

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• 56:02Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 56:47Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 56:50Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 56:52Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 56:59Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 57:00Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 57:48Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  We think they're murder warnings.

• 58:27Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 58:30Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 58:31Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 58:38Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 58:40Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 58:55Speaker 04

  Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spinquest. And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love with hundreds of slot games and real cash prizes. That's at spinquest.com. S.P.I.N.Q.U.E.S.T. com.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 59:24Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:00:06Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:00:07Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 1:00:14Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  Hey, guys. Lady Luck here. I just love the fall season. Cris mornings, pumpkin spice latte, and it's the best time to cozy up and play Spinquest. They have over 1,000 different slots and all my favorite casino-style games. And they're running a deal for all new players. A $30 coin package for just $10. So this fall, grab your favorite blanket, visit spinquest.com, and download the app today.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:01:42Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 1:01:51Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two-hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slots, live blackjack, live craps with a live dealer. New players, $30 coin packs are on sale for $10. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:03:18Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 1:03:26Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:04:13Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:04:49Speaker 05

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:04:52Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:04:58Jack Murphy?

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, Lady Luck?

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Bresky, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  10 bucks for 30? I'm heading over to spinquest.com right now.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 1:06:24Jack Murphy?

  We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:06:28Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here? Three bodies on the ground.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:06:34Jack Murphy?

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Hey guys, Lady Luck here. I just love the fall season. Cris mornings, pumpkin spice latte, and it's the best time to cozy up and play Spinquest. They have over 1,000 different slots in all my favorite casino-style games. And they're running a deal for all new players. A $30 coin package for just 10 bucks. So this fall, grab your favorite blanket, visit spinquest.com, and download the app today.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:07:23Speaker 05

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 1:07:58Speaker 05

  Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 1:08:00Jack Murphy?

  We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:08:05Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here? Three bodies on the ground.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:08:10Jack Murphy?

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, Lady Luck?

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  Bresky, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

• 1:08:47Speaker 04

  10 bucks for 30? I'm heading over to spinquest.com right now.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency?

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 1:09:35Jack Murphy?

  We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:09:40Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here? Three bodies on the ground.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:09:45Jack Murphy?

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  Hey guys, Lady Luck here. I just love the fall season. Cris mornings, pumpkin spice latte, and it's the best time to cozy up and play Spinquest. They have over 1,000 different slots in all my favorite casino-style games. And they're running a deal for all new players. A $30 coin package for just 10 bucks. So this fall, grab your favorite blanket, visit spinquest.com, and download the app today.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:10:34Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency?

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 1:11:08Jack Murphy?

  We think they're murder warnings.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:11:13Jack Murphy?

  What's a homicide detective doing here? Three bodies on the ground.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:11:18Jack Murphy?

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  Hey guys, Lady Luck here. I just love the fall season. Cris mornings, pumpkin spice latte, and it's the best time to cozy up and play Spinquest. They have over 1,000 different slots in all my favorite casino-style games. And they're running a deal for all new players. A $30 coin package for just 10 bucks. So this fall, grab your favorite blanket, visit spinquest.com, and download the app today.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

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