#759 - Mike Baker - The Hidden Secrets Threatening National Security

25:40And yeah, auto -tuned. And so there are some companies out there that are working to do that to prevent deep fakes. But it's very difficult because you're relying on people's curiosity and And them having the interest right to pursue to make sure that what they're saying and most people don't either They don't have the time or they don't have the patience or the interest well the point with Chat GPT and these LLMs and AI and search engines is to reduce the friction from getting where you are to where you want to be in terms of understanding in terms of whatever it is that you're searching for right right and the fact that it's frictionless is precisely where the attraction lies.

26:20It's convenience and all the rest of the stuff. And if you could imagine a world in which the most convenient route also bakes in lack of accuracy. So it goes, look, you can find this out in three seconds, but there's a accuracy. A margin of error. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Precisely. You could be a little bit wrong either way. Or you can do your own research. It's gonna take you a day and a half and you're gonna know what actually happened. But where are people gonna go? Oh, what is going on? Get into that. Of course, and the thing is, you have the opportunity, it is more effortful to not portray the truth.

26:55It takes more effort to do that. Now it's less convenient, but it takes more effort to lie than it does to tell the truth. Well, yeah, but that gap, that difference between lying and telling the truth is shrinking, right? Because of the technology, because of the access to be able to do this. So, you know, and, but you're right. I mean, if you just, if you pair it back to just sort of the human nature, right? If you're, you know, that's why if you're being interrogated, you know, you gotta stick to the truth to the most part, right? You wanna stay as close to the truth as possible, obviously without very often to something that's gonna get your ass kicked, but the idea being, because otherwise, if you're lying, you gotta keep building on that, and you gotta keep remembering, and then you spend all your time thinking, okay, where was, okay, what did I say there?

27:44I said that and then I said that. And if you're dealing in an interrogation situation, and that's what you're counting on, you're counting on if that person's lying to me, at some point, they're gonna get confused, right? And they're gonna start mixing up that story. And particularly if you, you know, in the old days you've got the ability for sleep deprivation or whatever it is, right? You can start messing with their mind a little bit. Then yes, that's what you're counting on. But so you're absolutely right in the sense that lying is much more typical, aside from the fact that, You know, usually if you make a mistake, right, the best thing, we were taught this at the agency, right, as as as being on the field and operations.

28:23I remember one of my first bosses told me when I landed on site before I went and off to do whatever I was doing. He said, you know, if anything happens, if you make a mistake, just come tell me we'll sort it out. But just tell me, smartest thing, right? You can do it to empower young people with responsibility, who are giving responsibility to know that if they make a mistake, come forward with it. Tell them and cheer it off, because of operations in the agency out in the field sometimes things happen. So, and he was good to his word, right? We had a bit of a goat rope and it worked out. But you gotta be able to do that and you gotta be able to show, it's not enough to say, Hey, hey, you make a mistake, I'm telling me we'll fix it.

29:07You know, if you kick their ass when they come in a mistake, then you've - This incentive, I think. Yeah, exactly. So you gotta follow through. But you're, so you're writing a sentence, yeah, telling, it's always the truth. You know, telling the truth is always the easiest path, right? But I guess my point being is, in the world of disinformation now, if your job is propaganda or misinformation or disinformation, it's becoming a lot easier, right? And a lot quicker, a lot more efficient, right? to create that. Then, and the old days, if you were gonna do a prop again, the campaign, right, change hearts and minds in some country, right, that you're trying to sway the people.

29:45Yeah, I'm not talking about overthrown the government. You know, that was good old days ago. So, I'm sorry, that's not true. I mean, never did that sort of thing. Come on. But the point being is that you had, that was a lot of work, right? Because what we were doing, you were using old media technology, right? you were finding journalists who might be inclined for whatever reason to write articles in a certain tone, and you create a network of them, and you'd kind of pepper the country with this narrative, and you'd build on that and hope that you're having in the impact. Bullshit, much easier now.

30:18You're getting me. Think about, you remember Cambridge Analytica? Yes, remember that. So, you know, targeted memes and ads that were are tronched into cohorts. And we have the, maybe Hillary is a non -US citizen, maybe Hillary is a, you know, all of the different ways that this gets split up. You had all of these different vulnerabilities and vectors of attack. But there was still a person making a meme or making an advert or whatever. So there was still human labor getting in the way of the rapidity of this. Whereas now you have both the ability for AI to deliver it in a targeted manner and also to create it.

31:03So you can have Mike Baker profile on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever and it's who you want that. No one wants that at all. But it's just you that it's targeted at. So yeah, I think yet increasingly we're going to see real information, original sources, you know, maybe there'll be a way where being an actual person on social media will be a rarity in the next five years. Maybe humans are going to be 99 % of content will be created by bots. Every so often you'll see a tweet from you or someone else that's real. Yeah and it's look if you're if you're talking about a state right if you're talking about creating something that's going to get past scrutiny of Chinese intel or Russian intel, something.

31:52Yeah, then you're working your ass off, right? You're creating a very hard backstopped elaborate cover, and it's a lot of work. But for the average person out there, if what you're trying to do is influence a campaign or you're trying to do, creating 10 ,000 fictional characters, saying interesting things out there, who then, let's say it's like the old concentric circles who then get 5 ,000 followers each and it's, I guess, but again, it all comes down to the same problem, right? We can talk about all the, you know, the things you can do, but it's individuals, right? It comes down to each person saying to themselves, is what I'm reading or hearing or watching true, you know?

32:37And I don't know how you impact that, right? Because human nature being what it is, we're just, you know, we're consuming shit and then moving on. I've least resisted. Yeah, path of least resistance. And to be fair, most people are just trying to put food on the table or take care of their kids or whatever they're doing. And so you can't ask them to spend a lot of time scrutinizing. I don't have time to be my own personal snopes everything that's been, and I see. Warro is not gonna happen. I think that there's always going to be this problem. And not to say that it hasn't always existed, right?

33:11But I do think the acceleration is pretty impressive, right? the speed of which you can create this fake, right? This deep fake or this persona that pushes information out there or whatever it may be. And the speed with which people are willing to consume it and pass it along, right? So that's something we're gonna be battling, I think, for a while. And will it impact this upcoming election? Of course it will, and future elections, right? Why wouldn't you? If I'm Russian intelligence or Chinese intelligence or the Iranians or anybody who's got the resources, He just says, why wouldn't I try to fuck with the US?

33:45Or the UK or really it's not, I get it, it's not just a US -centric problem. Yes. What do you think we learned from the Putin Tucker interview speaking of Russia?

33:58Well Putin's a douchebag. I think I took that away, but I'd say I had a preconceived notion. Those are your priorities. Yeah, that was, I was something I walked into the interview with. But like, I don't know. I think I understand why Tucker wanted to do it aside from just 160 million views however many got, right? I mean, that was sure to be a winner in just the ratings. I don't think it revealed anything clever or new about Putin's mindset. He's a smart cat, right? So he knew what he was going to say, how he was going to act, what he was gonna look like, like, you know, every minute, he's a very calculating individual, right?

34:40He survived Russian politics, right? For this long, at the top, right? You don't do that by being a moron, right? Or stumbling into an interview with Tucker Carlson, right? Who's not exactly Lex Luthore, right? I mean, so that, you know, again, that's not, and that's not peddling to Tucker. He's a smart guy. I'm just saying that it's not like it was it was not like some Marvel, you know, movie where the two evil minds got together Putin's a very calculating clever individual. So I don't think we I'm at least from my perspective. I didn't learn anything new about him Look this idea that Somehow we have no interest in Ukraine and we should just you know close the curtains on it Yeah, Ukraine, great courage for two years.

35:30We all loved it. I'll keep my bumper sticker on the car for Ukraine. And now we walk away because we don't care anymore because we're tired of it and we want to do something and we spend that money back. Of course we should spend the fucking money at home, right? We got a lot of infrastructure problems in the resource we should do, but we also have concerns over there. And so I think, I'm amazed at the speed with which it happened, but you could argue you that about a lot of things. Yeah, I'm just me to which the support fell off. Yes, I mean, look, again, I don't mean to jump all over the place, but Hamas rolls into Southern Israel.

36:04Slotters, 1200 people and probably the most medieval display of brutality that we've seen in our lifetimes, right? Which everybody agreed was incredibly brutal. And in record time, it's Israel's fault, right? Because they've gone into Gaza to try to destroy the Hamas, which has been doing this, which has always been in existence to destroy Israel. And so, yeah, and of course you don't want civilians to die, but Hamas has spent, you know, going on a couple decades now, embedding themselves inside that population, knowing that every time that there is a conflict, civilians are going to die, knowing that that's going to drive the narrative, that's what they do.

36:47So the speed with which that happened, the speed with which we've gotten fatigued in Ukraine, You know, it all kind of comes back around again to this this whole idea of novelty for something new. Yeah, I am, you know, I knew that the Putin Tucker interview was going to be a big deal and I'd sort of prepared myself. Yeah, this like cataclysmic meeting of, you know, like West and Soviet and then I don't know, I came away from it, kind of just being like, oh, Yeah. It's just very un -enlightened, kind of unimpressed. I think, you know, you have this 30 -minute treatise monologue, sililiquy, at the start about this is the history and this is why we feel this way and so on and so forth.

37:32And you know, Tucker's a very competent interviewer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually. And I don't know how difficult it must have been, and this is something that people are never really going to see, the intermediary of a translator between the two adds a degree of complexity that can really, it's like fighting a South Pole or something. It throws you off your step a little bit. And that sounds silly, but you know, no, they use that to that. I mean, that's always been the case. You always use a translator to your advantage. It gives him more chance to say something back to do whatever I, you're very interesting.

38:09But no, I just, it was a bit, and now, Navalny's dead. Yeah. And that's the next, and that happens what a week maybe, 10 days after he sits down with Tucker. Yeah. No, it, and he doesn't care, right? I mean, we imagine that Russia cares what we think about them, how they're portrayed. And we imagine that G worries about how China, you mean like they've got a brand equity dashboard? Yeah, exactly. And they're like, what's our current rating? Oh, we're at 4 .4 stars on TripAdvisor. Yeah, what is that? The old Q rating or the Q factor? How popular are we? Yeah, they really don't care. In part, not so much Russia, but more China because they've got the longer view, right?

38:53They look way down the road compared to how the West tends to do it. but I think the parameters of what they were allowed to do, Carlson and his crew, when they went in, were pretty hard and fast, right? And there's all, yeah, as you can imagine, there's a lot of back and forth that goes into that. It goes into that. Yeah, I was too, I was late, which, yeah. Apparently he's like, Paul for the course with him. He was riding a tiger. He was doing something. He was fighting a bear. Fighting a bear. Yeah, yeah. A couple of them. But yeah, if Carlson had like born in on, or born in on, on Gershkovitz, right?

39:26Evan Gershkovitz, who's sitting in jail or Paul Wheeler, you know, and in a more aggressive fashion, said, okay, well, where's your evidence with Evan that he's been engaged in SB Nage? How about that? You know, when you're actually going to do something about an actual, you know, open transparent effort to discuss his case, you know, if you had gone in on that more, But that wouldn't have been allowed to happen, right? That wasn't that wasn't part of the the agreed upon, you know playing field. So I just I didn't think we were gonna get anything new and I didn't feel like we did. I'm again, I understand why he did it.

40:12I had the interview. But anyway, but the Navalny situation. sudden death syndrome. You're in a false labor camp. Like just above the Arctic Circle, being alive, being alive is a surprise. Like the death isn't the surprise. Like my god, he lasted two and a half years. He went for a walk and then he didn't feel well. That was their original comment. You know, he went for a walk and then he didn't feel well. Because that's what you do above the Arctic Circle. You know, go for a walk. And then, you know, there was some comment he had bruising around his head and his chest. And their response was, well, he hit his head when he fell.

40:55Apparently repeatedly. And then the chest was when they were trying to revive him. So from a Russian perspective, it was exactly what you would expect. And whether he was poisoned or whether they, you know, they, they, as blunt force trauma or whatever, the outcome was probably always inevitable with Navalny because he was always a threat. And what's the, give the 30 ,000 -foot view for the people who don't know his background, Navalny? He was a... I'm trying to remember the year that he kind of really first surfaced. I'm drawn to blank, but he, not most recently, but he became sort of a critic of Chechnya.

41:42He became a critic of some of the governance in Chechnya and the corruption. He started being more vocal about, primarily about corruption issues, right? and then he fed off of that. I'm really oversimplifying it, but he had to be careful about how he was doing that, obviously, because you get sideways with the Russian regime pretty quickly, but he started gaining a following because he was one of the few people who was actually getting out and talking about things that people, you know, I suppose in the back of their minds are thinking, yeah, there's probably some corruption going on here in the Russian government and around the region.

42:19And eventually he went to run for mayor. And that didn't end well, right? He got convicted or charged with business corruption. Now it was kind of the first salvo that Putin fired at him. I think in an effort to say, hey, look, just shut up because I think, you know, you're gonna find this is not gonna go well for you. So it was business corruption. You see that in China too. Anytime somebody gets sideways, was she, usually it's a corruption charge. It's a it's some type of mouth feces of a business side. Yeah, so And then they disappear. So Navalny made a bid for for mayor of Moscow feeling like that's where you could make a change Right, I think his real mindset was if you if you could get that post then He really could Perhaps longer term Influence change in Russia.

43:09I mean, he was he's a proponent of democracy You see, then disinformation started getting there was a lot of movement from the Putin regime painting him in a lot of different ways, right? Saying, okay, you're far right, you're an extremist, you're all sorts of things started to come through. And then it kind of all went sideways. He eventually ended up, I think it was 2019 -2020. He was on a flight, got sick. You know, Nova Chalk was the nerve agent that they used, which is serious shit. Serious shit, vended by the Soviets. And so he almost died from that. He's out of the country. And then to his credit after he recovered, okay, I'm gonna come back.

43:56Straight back. Yeah. So he flew back, he got arrested, before even really got anywhere near, you know, passport control, they just picked him up. And that was pretty much it. But during this period, he had started to do YouTube and he was flying drones, not him. His team were flying drones over the top of Putin's billion dollar compound, releasing stories that he's just got like an army of hookers and pole dancers and stuff, just cycling their way through this place and looking all of the money and this is where it's been spent. but the, you know, full on, like, in order to be able to go as far as they did, it looks like pretty high grade technology to be able to capture this sort of stuff.

44:40Yeah, I mean, you can, it's, you know, again, drones being what they are nowadays. Yes. I don't know what I'm saying. I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really, no character, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, the drone technology has changed everything, right? And it's so accessible, right? You don't need much. And if you want to box, we'll get you a drone with a camera that you can, you know, get some really good footage of. So, but you're right. You know, talking about his is is a lavish lifestyle and his spending. That irked Putin on a on a personal level, right? And Putin only cares about one thing, right?

45:13Which is maintaining power, same with she. And you maintain power by keeping the people under control, right? So social unrest is the one thing that these guys all fear the most, right? Including the mullets in Iran and, and, you know, Kim Jong Un, although he lives in kind of a fantasy world on North Korea. But so Navalny, you know, at a certain point, you know, for him it was inevitable, I think, that this is where it was going. I mean, I remember watching it unfold at the time after this guy's been popped with nerve agent and then slowly recovers and then starts doing his YouTube stuff again.

45:51And this is getting in days, tens of millions of plates. And it's not even, it's only in Russian, right? is maybe translated into British subtitles, or English subtitles, or whatever. And then he's like, I'm not scared of you. Like, you should be. Yeah, yeah. You should be scared. And as soon as you got on that plane, right, to go back to the motherland, that was at some point within the next five years, you're probably going to be dead. Yeah, and I think that I could see the calculation that he and his wife, I'm sure, and probably as close cadre made that the most impact he can have will be in country, right?

46:29I mean, it's one thing to be a dissident outside the country. You know, China's got a number of those, even though the series even tries to track them down and changes their minds. But I think Navalny probably spent a fair amount of time, who knows, but it's speculation, but I suspect he spent a lot of time on that calculation. Can I have more impact outside the country or inside the country? And to his credit, he flew back knowing, I think exactly what was going to happen. And so that, if you get any idea what these labor camps are like, what he, where it is and what it's like that, do we have any information about that?

47:07This was the, what's known as the polar wolf, it's the IK -3, a penal colony up above the Arctic Circle and I personally haven't spent time there. But it's reported to be one of the most brutal camps that they've got, right? Which tells you, and it's completely isolated, and that's really what they were looking to do. It was just to put them away somewhere where people would forget about them. To his wife's credit, to his lawyer's credit, right? And to a small circle of supporters, they were able to keep some attention, see, keep some focus on it and his mother as well. But, you know, the idea being would just out of sight out of mind, right?

47:53And look, people talked about when he died, you know, the headlines were all, you know, Putin's most prominent critic. Well, well, prominent implies that there's a bunch of others, right? Only. Yeah, basically, only critic at this point. Yeah. I mean, there's some brave people who will get on the street and, you know, who are a lot of protests, but then those people were being rounded up and arrested. Yeah, preemptively. Preemptively. Some of them were picked up before there was even an opportunity to have a, not even so much a protest as a memorial service out in public, right? And then they refused to give the body bank for a little while as well.

48:31They did. You know, there was some talk about, well, they're letting the boys anticipate. Honestly, you know, at this point, you know, what gives a fuck? Yeah, would put with Putin's team think to themselves, you know, we're gonna waste some poison on him up here. We're just gonna, you know, let him stop and yeah, I who knows how he actually ended up going, but his wife is, you know, promised to carry on and you know, there were lots of headlines saying, what does this mean for Russia? It doesn't mean shit for Russia, unfortunately, right? We will not be talking about this, unfortunately, in six months' time.

49:07I know they laid some more sanctions on Russia. There are 500 new sanctions, largely against Russia's financial and military sectors. The round of sanctions are the most at one time since Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, and a lot of criticism that this isn't enough. This isn't sufficient. Biden basically made a threat, I suppose, a deal, that if Navalny died, that there would be more sanctions. We've deposited half a thousand and it seems like it was kind of like it. Yeah. How about this? How about we did those sanctions two years ago when Russian faded. If we had additional sanctions we could lay on to fuck with their ability to make money, to fund their military adventurism into Ukraine.

49:51Why didn't we do that before? What are we half -assing sanctions for? So they came up with sort of this bullshit price cap on oil. right? The only way Putin affords what he's doing in Ukraine is through energy revenues, right? So, you know, the sanctions up to this point have been like, well, okay, well, you know, we're going to cap Russian oil at $60 a barrel. Can't buy it at a higher price. Well, you know, the world's not going to do what are we talking about, right? So they've created this whole shadow fleet of merchant ships. They've sold $35 billion worth of oil to India, which turns around and refines a lot of that oil sells a lot of that product to the US and the EU, right?

50:34It's just bullshit. The idea that they've got more cash in their account now in Russia than they've had in quite some time. Really? Certainly more than before the war even started because they've, the sanctions have been ineffective, haven't been aggressive enough and we should be doing more. You could argue the same for Iran, but you know, again, that's, I don't want to disappear on other rabbit holes, but yeah, when they talked about, they came out and they, you know, they, they, they blow the eight about, we're going to lay out in sanctions now because of Navalny. Well, you should have fucking done those sanctions two years ago, right?

51:08Squeeze them, made it so he couldn't afford this, right? And maybe we wouldn't have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine because Putin couldn't afford to do what he's doing. But that's, you know, I don't know. I'm not president. In other news this episode is brought to you by... Element. Stop having coffee first thing in the morning, your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't working for the first 90 minutes of the day. So your morning coffee that you have upon waking is completely pointless, but salt acts on your adrenal system and that is what is active. So taking element first thing in the morning will help you to feel more awake, have less caffeine throughout the day, and be more energized.

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52:14Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink LMNT .com slash modern wisdom. That's drink LMNT .com slash modern wisdom. What I've heard you say before that Putin's goal is to rebuild the Soviet Union. Is that is that that's just the synopsis of what he wants to do? Well, he said it numerous times himself. He said that I mean, this is most direct quote was the the collapse of Soviet Union was the greatest crisis of the 20th century. And so I guess my point is that he spent the past 30 plus years trying to figure out how to rebuild it in some fashion.

52:59I don't mean the entire Soviet Union, but he certainly wants to get back to something more than what he's got. He's very keen on sort of the glory of the motherland. And I'm okay, everybody, you know, you can argue, Everybody's nationalistic, but he's ambitious in a land grab sort of way. So when he says that and when he talks about the threat of NATO on his border, he's not bullshit, right? He means that, right? So the idea that he's going to take Ukraine, and if we stop aid, you know, again, this I, you know, Washington's gonna do what they do. But if they don't provide resources to Ukraine, going forward, if we say, ah, that's enough, let's focus on ourselves, it's not important.

53:51And people rationalize that by thinking that it's just Ukraine, you know, why do we care? It's one country. If they imagine that that's where he's gonna stop, he's gonna end up with Kiev, and then go, yeah, okay, I'm good. It's all fine now. I don't care. I'm gonna now focus on improving myself and the homeland. Yeah, that's not his track record. I'm not sure where people get that belief or optimism from. I think it's a rationalization because they don't want to spend any more money on Ukraine because they don't see the value in trying to prevent Putin from invading and taking over. Just seems a separate country.

54:35Yeah. How much truth is there in the... Russia's got declining birth rates. This is close to the highest that their population is ever going to be. Therefore, their armed forces are... This is kind of a last chance attempt to be able to have the manpower to go into Ukraine. Is there any truth in that? It's a story I've seen pushed around online. Yeah. Look, they've got a three to one manpower advantage over Ukraine. and more importantly, they've got an ability to suffer and put up with pain that I don't think the West really understands and go back and look at their history in World War II and their losses that they were willing to sustain.

55:26Is the culture still the same as then though? I think I think it's pretty well embedded in the culture. I mean, you can argue that it's more modern society and they've got access to information. But at the end of the day, I think Putin and his cohorts, I think they read the people pretty well. And you would imagine that there must be populations just rising up into streets and it's not happening. Look, in party was smart and how he was conscripting a lot of people. He took them from sort of the Netherlands, they outer regions. You know, he wasn't recruiting a lot of soldiers off the streets of St.

56:05Petersburg or Moscow or whatever. And because he doesn't want to, he doesn't necessarily want to bring the war right to Moscow and make them feel the pain, right? I mean, they went through that in Afghanistan to some degree when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. And eventually, you know, sort of the popular unrest at home, mothers of dead soldiers, you know, they all started to, And so he could start to feel that, right? I think they do have the appetite to wear a lot of pain. And so I think that's what Putin counts on. You know, whether they'll have the manpower, I think, you know, Putin, you know, he, they miscalculated so much, right?

56:44The Russian military and intelligence apparatus made so many mistakes going into this invasion. But I think one calculation that he's kind of clung to is that the West will get tired of it. And that's that's kind of what's happening. You can yeah, he count on the shortness of the attention span. Yeah, and I think he imagined, I mean, look, he imagined NATO was going to was going to break, right, or splinter, or there wouldn't certainly be the cohesiveness that there is. And he certainly didn't anticipate it growing like NATO has. But so there's a lot of mistakes there, but I think he has, correctly pinned some hope on the fact that we'd get tired of it, right?

57:23And that there would sort of be this popular unrest and make no mistake. The Russian disinformation apparatus is busy feeding that, right? So again, goes back to what we're talking about with information that you read and trying to figure out what these opinions are on social media. Why wouldn't they? It's impossible to think that the Russian regime that the intel apparatus wouldn't look at the situation and go, yeah, we need to do what we can to influence the narrative in the states and the West, right? They've been doing this forever. They didn't World War II to try to keep us out of World War II, right?

57:58Before the Nazis or the Germans invaded Russia, when they were allied, you know, they spent a lot of time focused on trying to influence public opinion inside the US to keep America out of the war. So it's not something new, right? They're just using different technology. How much longer do you think Mand Wulfa has? I think there's always going to be a a place for, you know, door kickers. I don't think there's any doubt about it, right? You've gotta have some boots on the ground, but I think the pointy edge of the spear in a major, in a major global conflict, a big global, not a regional issue, that's definitely going to be, you know, taking place in cyberspace.

58:44And I think that the first, the goal will be to kill morale at home, right? Where have that happened? What will that look like? Well, I mean, you'll do the usual. That's why they're mapping out, you know, if you went to, I don't know which office it is in China, but if you went to an office, you would find a playbook that maps out the infrastructure in the US, the UK, the West, in terms of our power systems, transportation, water, treatment facilities, you know, how do you stop the financial systems, simple things. How do you keep someone from going to a cash point and pulling out money? How do you keep somebody from being able to get their medicines?

59:23How do you shut down the power grid? You want to bring the pain to the home front as quickly as possible. You do that by attacking the industry. You have to rely bombers over the top of... No, you may at a certain point. But I think that that will be the first major effort. the weaponization of space, right? You'll be looking to take out another part of the problem when people talk about knocking out GPS. Well, yes, you can target a country specific satellites, right? But, you know, some of this, like a massive EMP attack, right? We'll impact everybody, right? Some degrees. So that will be more of a targeted surgical effort, but it'll certainly play a role.

1:00:08And yeah, I think that's undoubted, but I don't think, look, we didn't imagine there would be another major land war in Europe, right? If you had said five years ago, yeah, we're gonna have a, like a World War I, like trench situation where it goes into a war of attrition, you know, they make very little movement on either side and they get, probably people would have thought that was crazy. You can go to the Imperial War Museum in London and go through the World War I exhibit, right? And you look at it and you see what placed during World War I and how it impacted food production and energy production and everything.

1:00:43And you think, well, it seems somewhat similar. So there, I think that will, there will always be a place for that. But I think what we'll see is that there will be that immediate desire to hurt the homeland as quickly as possible and try to impact morale because knowing that that's what's going to drive domestic decisions. Right. What about from a kinetic standpoint, how much She's gonna be drones, how much she's gonna be robotics, how much she's gonna be unmanned aerial vehicles and stuff like that. Yeah, well, we're seeing that in a big way, right? I mean, it's almost like we're testing the capabilities right now and seeing what are the impacts.

1:01:25Forward -looking gathering of intelligence, right? For sort of short -term strategic planning of troop movements or certainly immediate impact of targeting on targets of opportunity, drones are proving to be invaluable. And you know, give the Iranian regime credit, right? At some point, they must have seen that several years ago because they built a certain capability in production of drones. I think they understood the value there. as a variety of other, obviously, you know, the US and the UK have been in advance drone production for years, right? But it's not just delivery of weapons on target.

1:02:12It's the Intel gathering, you know, functions that drones are really changing the battlefield in a certain way. So that'll play a real important role. Unmanned capabilities, yeah. I mean, we've, but we've been seeing that for some time. There's been arguments, you know, can you take the human out of targeting and the decision making of actually green lighting. Again, it depends how discriminant you want to be with the damage and the collateral damage as well. Yeah, and I think there's a moral implication there of saying, do we take the human out of a decision to target, kill other humans? I think that's a big leap.

1:02:55I'm sure it's going to happen. I mean, I human nature being what it is. I think that the decision is going to be to drive towards whatever is most efficient and effective particularly if something kicks off, if we've got a major conflict. But for right now, you know, this, look, it's happened before the Soviets had what was called the dead hand system, which essentially for, if all their leadership was wiped out, They did have a system in place that would take over and and continue a counter response. Wow. And so they had that. So it's not unthought of or undeveloped. It's unused. And potentially suboptimal compared with what's being used at least for the time being.

1:03:42Right. Yeah. Things have advanced since the dead hand in the old Soviet Union for sure. but yeah, so I think there's what holds people back from that is again this uneasy feeling, this moral issue of, you think that the Russians, if they're prepared to put nerve agent into some dissident like rival, well, you know, that's not going to be a consideration to them. That doesn't seem like it would be a consideration for the, well, but the consideration, I think, is more of, does it mean I lose power? Right? The calculation is, okay, does this the end for me then? If I do something, if I step up with that, I make myself obsolete by just becoming an algorithm and it's a slippery slope all the way down.

1:04:24Well, that I think is part of it is that, but I guess I was looking more towards sort of pushing the button on the big one and saying, okay, we're gonna get into there. I think that's where it, you get that hard and fast. Nah, I don't, you know, I want to cling onto centralized, yes, yes. Yeah, I like my army of hookers more than I want to destroy. I also like an army of hookers. Yeah. Did you see this modified RX -9 Hel -Fi missile, this flying jinsuit thing? Have you looked at this? Yeah. This thing is a hardcore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's six samurai blades. Come out, it's three, four, five feet long, and it can target an individual car.

1:05:03And if you were stood two yards to the side of the car, I mean, there'd be a big bang and you'd know that something had happened. Right. But you would be physically, you would be fine. Yeah. It's something out of an anime or a Marvel and they got Alza Wari. They got one of the guys that supposedly was a part of 9 -11, morning coffee on a balcony. And obviously some bloke just with a little pink laser targetter and they sent two. They just engaged the first floor. Yeah, have a backup. Yeah, you always want a redundant system. People always say, yeah, redundancy, yeah. But no, you want a backup in case it to first.

1:05:41Do you imagine you step out on your balcony? I'll wake up your day. Having your morning espresso and then before you know it, you're just dust. Yeah, yeah. I know. It says, look, the lethality of that, but also other weapon systems is pretty, you know, it would shock a lot of people, I think. But the precision is also, look, I mean, people talk about this, you know, and there's a lot of focus put on that because there's, I don't think people really understand how much debate goes on before you, you know, pull the cord on a target and you think, okay, there's a lot of back and forth. What's the blowback?

1:06:24What's the, you know, potential, you know, civilian damage? What it, it's not like the movies where say, yeah, go, you know, we don't give a shit. You know, just get the target. There's a lot of back and forth. And so as a result of that, because people in the Pentagon in particular are always to asking about zero risk and we want zero collateral damage. You can't, you know, things are messy, right? So something happens and, you know, there's a potential for collateral damage. That's the way the world works. But they have worked very hard on the weapons technology side to try to create these systems.

1:06:57Yeah. Minimum collateral damage. Minimal collateral damage. And in order to, in part, yeah, in part, it's to avoid, you know, the killing is, It's important, it's also to ensure that when you got a high value target, you know, you can pull the trigger. You can pull the trigger, yeah. You can get it done. Yeah, well, if you're thinking, what's this going to do? What are the optics of this? You go, he's a bad guy. He's a bad guy and you know that he's a bad guy. You pull the trigger, but then you, well, what house is going to play in the press and all of these narratives begin to, I guess, subjugate a tactical decision with a branding decision.

1:07:32Yeah. That's very, very, yeah. I hadn't thought about that. It reduces the friction between pulling the trigger because it is less likely to cause headaches down the road. Because that's always the question. And it's become more and more of an issue is what does that collateral damage look like? And then sometimes what they'll say is they'll say, okay, we have to wait. We have to pull back, hold fire. And then maybe you lose the gun. And you lose the opportunity. Because that window opportunity on a particular target, you know, that's shut really quickly sometimes. And so then you don't know whether you get and there's a lot there can be a lot of frustration involved because you know that that target, you know, you should act on it, but you also know, okay, we got, you know, we do have this legitimate questions.

1:08:17So so the decision made at a higher level is always, you know, it's going to fall on that that side. It's going to say, okay, we have to we have to pull back. Is this a new degree of scrutiny around collateral damage in warfare. Obviously, collateral damage has been, I know that it's an obvious example, but bombing of Dresden, that type of stuff. It was done for collateral damage, whereas now it seems like war is supposed to be the most surgical, sterile, targeted, precise, ethical way. I only want the fuel for my I fucking RX 9 Helphine missile to be from renewable sources. You know, but you know the Navy, yeah, it's an EV.

1:09:07We plug it in and we have a recharge station halfway there to target. Yeah, it is, it's relatively new. And I think part of it's also we keep coming back to the same thing. Flow of information, speed of information. You can see the destruction of this. If people could watch a dress and being bombed, right? Or get photos of it. I mean, people would, I mean, look, I mean, go back to the Civil War. People had seen actual footage of what the hell was happening on the fields of Gettysburg. People were been horrified. D -Day, right? If people could have seen the film that evening of what was taking place the first day, public opinion would have shifted considerably.

1:09:44But I think so, yeah. So that's helped to drive this idea that we got to minimize that. We got to minimize that damage. You still got to have bad actors in the world. You still have to deal with them. You know, it's not a fucking community of nations where everybody's acting and everybody else's best interest. It's bullshit, right? And so you have to account for the fact that at times things are gonna be unpleasant. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. I only found out, speaking of the drone thing, we walked past a DJI store here in downtown Miami. And I didn't realize that the US had basically put so many restrictions on US drone creators.

1:10:28They said we don't want anyone who's basically able to interfere with flight paths and create this technology because we definitely don't want it at home. Right. Which left the market completely open for DJI, which I didn't know is a Chinese company. Yeah. Yeah. Go figure. And now the entire drone market is dominated by DJI. And now America are trying to play catch up and they've tried to relinquish some of these restrictions on domestic creators of drone technology and it's just, it's their way with the wind. It's already done. We've done that in a number of areas, right? What are you talking about?

1:11:00I don't know, LIDAR or anything. There's regulatory policies and domestic concerns have definitely impacted development of certain technologies. And the Chinese have no such restrictions, right? And they certainly have no such restrictions on providing information, if they spend a great deal of time hoovering up intelligence from a variety of sources overseas, and providing that to their private sector. And that's part of the Intel apparatus is, how does that work? Roll in life. Will they steal information, bring it home, and funnel it into supposedly private, but they're state owned and pseudo state operating companies.

1:11:43But I guess the point being is that their intel apparatus is primary objective, aside from keeping the population in check, is to develop a promote their commercial side of things, their economy. And so the two work. Yeah, hot to co -together. Yeah, we don't go out. As an example, the agency CIA wouldn't get a direct of a tasking order from General Electric that says, hey, we need the plans from an international competitor that they're working on some new engine component. Please go out and get that for us. That's not how it works. You can argue that would benefit our economy. I mean, if it was because it certainly benefited China's economy to have that cross -border, but we have this a firewall there.

1:12:35So, you know, you don't take, you know, tasking with the idea that, okay, we're developing information here, intelligence, collecting it from others, stealing it basically, to provide it to the private sector. So there's a, not an arbitrary line, but there is a compartmentalization between the private and the governmental sectors in the US, which means that the resources and information of both on to, yeah, that's a good way to put it. That's a really good way to put it, because I would argue just along those lines, which is that we have hampered ourselves at times by not having a more robust dialogue between the Intel community.

1:13:15And now with cyber attacks and the work that goes on in cyberspace, also with federal law enforcement, which is focused on, you know, some degree, elements of federal law enforcement focused on preventing or resolving involving cyber attacks from outside elements. So I don't think we have enough of a robust dialogue between those, between government and private companies, a commercial sector. If you wanna have a major US company protected or a British company or whomever protected from outside hostile actors in cyber terms, for instance, they need to know what's happening out there. They need to have more information about the threats and how those threats develop and who's responsible And there has to be more of that ability to say, okay, we've got a problem.

1:14:04Turn to whether it's the FBI or the agency or whomever to say, how do we resolve this? Right? And it can't just be a one -way dialogue where the commercial sector provides their information to the government and the government says, thank you very much. You know, they need to be more informed, right? And they're trying to do that to some degree now. They're trying to have more of that dialogue, but it's not seamless by any means. It's not like in China or even in Russia or other places where they don't see a need for a firewall. They don't believe that because they don't really have a free market system.

1:14:37They have a capital system. But our idea is, you can't benefit one company because it'll fuck over other companies. Yes. They don't give a shit about that. I only learned about the purpling of the armed forces recently. Can you explain what that means? What was purpling of the armed forces? You tell me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Well, so there was a particular extraction that was supposed to happen in the late 90s and a number of Navy SEALs. I think it was the highest number of Navy SEALs that had ever been lost up to that point, like maybe 20 or 30 of them because there was air force overhead and the SEALs down on the ground weren't able to communicate with them.

1:15:21and this was because each different segment of the armed forces acted independently. They didn't have, they literally didn't have the communication systems to be able to speak. And it's kind of this integration, I mean, that just seems so idiotic. How did you manage to get yourself to the stage where the Air Force and the Navy and the Army weren't talking to each other? And it feels to me not too dissimilar to this situation. And you caught purplish. I haven't heard that because if you blended all the color of the purple. Yeah, I get that make that yeah, there you go. See me in my primary color now.

1:15:55Learning something new. Yeah, that's the siloing of the military branches. Yes. And their development of of their own, whether it's protocols, communication systems, assets, right, air platforms. I mean, that's why you know, you've got in the Pentagon and DOD, you've got, you know, a competition going on for who's developing, who's getting money for the latest, you think, well, hold on a second, the Marines have their own Air Force and you think, what's going on here? Is that the most efficient way? But that was siloing of the branches, right? And to some degree, territorial pissing and protection of their own turf, development of their own internal capabilities that were, I don't say redundant necessarily, but But there was this sense that, okay, you've got spec ops, we need spec ops, we need this, you need that.

1:16:54I mean, we've got, and it's true, each branch has its own obvious functions, right? And specialties. But there wasn't this sense that, okay, is there more of an efficient way that they can all blend together? And we've got maybe one element that combines all that does a particular thing. Is there a way to certainly on the communication side? Because you'll get development of a comm system from the Air Force through a contractor. That in the old days wasn't compatible necessarily or there wasn't their driving mode of, is it compatible with what the Navy is doing or is it compatible with the Army is doing?

1:17:39And part of that was just natural, you know, territorial protection, right, of what they're doing and protection of their own budgets. And they're, you know, they're reputation and they're, you know, sort of their image. And there's a lot in there that's sort of soft science. But you could see how that would develop, right? And then you get, you know, fucked up situations, right? Because you have joint operations, and suddenly you realize, you know, whether it's just simple protocols, or it's more technical, you've got real problems, right? Because it's not seamless. This lack of coordination.

1:18:16Not a lack of coordination, but it's the same through private and public sector, it's the same through government, it's the same through everything. Yeah, well, we had a major example, obviously, it was 9 -11, when you didn't have federal, state, local law enforcement, and the Intel community all on the same page, communicating, sharing information, taking, you know, targeting and saying, okay, who's got what on this? You know, let's all put it together in the one big picture and see if it makes sense, right? And none of that was happening to you. It was, again, it was all siloed, right? Bureau was doing their thing, agency was doing their thing.

1:18:54NSA was, you know, gathering their Intel, state and local, you know, they were worried about their own issues. and yeah, there wasn't this coordinated effort. There wasn't a, and in part, yeah, that was a supreme failure, right? But it's gotten better, but it's still not there. It's a human endeavor, so it's never gonna be, you know, perfect, but still. Talking about China and the, yes, threat, and degree of rival andness, you've mentioned that China is playing an incredibly long game, But I've also heard that their birth rate decline and the potential reduction in the volume of their population could be pretty catastrophic to any plans that they have.

1:19:41How much truth do you think is in that? How much is China's plans going to be mitigated by the fact that their population might drop an awful lot over the next few years? Well, I think it's a serious concern, right? I mean, she, you know, has come out, whether it's governments come out, whether program basically says fuck more. or I think that was the actual title of their program. And create more babies. So, you know, it's a population, it's probably the most popular thing she has instructed them to do in some time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you know, as a husband, you know, great, it's not that I wanted to.

1:20:15But this is for the country. It's for the motherland. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's go. Yeah, exactly. Just lay back and think about green and country.

1:20:26So it is obviously if the government's worried about it, it's a serious concern. And they had the whole one child policy for a long time. Obviously that was gonna have a lagging impact. So I think that they're trying to get ahead of the curve to some degree, but as you can imagine, it's like anything else. You can say, okay, we've got a problem here. We can see that there's gonna be a shortfall or a gap. So let's get on it, but there's always gonna be a lag. that was done again going back to 9 -11. There was a real awareness after that that in a hot wash that said, look, we did. That's a hot wash?

1:21:07After a major go rope, you know, you tend to, after a fuck up, after something happens, I'm sorry, after something happens, then you sit down as a whomever is in charge and elements that are responsible, will sit around a table and say what the hell happened. And they've done some assessment. And so then people put out the cards on the table and say this is where we fucked up. This is what we should have done. This is how we have to improve it. This is how we mitigate the risk going forward. And so that's essentially a hot wash and you do that after every fuck up. And so after 9 -11, as part of all of that process, there was a realization that the agency, the CIA had spent, had an over focus on SIGINT.

1:21:50the signal intelligence and technology, right? And it got away from the recruitment of spies. The agency is a pretty simple organization. You steal secrets, you steal secrets that address national security concerns and protect national security interests. So that, you know, yes, you can do it through technology, but ultimately you also need human sources. You can't get away from the need for human sources, but they kind of did. They moved away from that. And so there, I guess my point being is the directive was we need more people, we need more officers who are out there in the fields, recruiting, gathering intelligence, getting human sources.

1:22:34That's where we missed a boat to some degree here. We did, we lost track of the importance of that because we got enamored with the technical side of things. And I'm sort of putting money and resources there. had fewer and fewer recruits going into traditional operations. And, but that's, there's a lack. My point being is there's a lack to that, right? There's, you got to recruit those people. That can take years, right? They got to train them. That takes years. Then you got to, they got to develop, right? And they get, so, and then you got the whole problem of the time it takes to identify, develop, recruit, you know, maintain a source, right?

1:23:09So that's a long lag time. So these things don't, don't just happen overnight. Anyway, so that's where I think with China, they probably got a problem, but I think they clearly are aware of it, so they're addressing it. I mean, could you imagine here, if we looked at our demographics, and we got a problem, could you imagine the White House saying, ah, I got a job for all you Americans. Yeah, well speaking of that, and the sort of population in the US, I'm reading more and more about the number of military age, Asian men coming over the border, Mexico. I think Hawaii as well. Kind of has a little bit of this problem.

1:23:50Yeah, a little bit. It's mostly the southern border. Okay. And it's a shocking increase, you know, like a 73 % increase year on year in folks from China crossing over the border. Now, it's, and again, as you pointed out, it's mostly single males. You don't want to see when you're in, intelligence and in that world, you don't want to get paranoid, right? You don't want to see a spook behind every corner, right? Because that'll eventually, that'll really jam up the ability to get checked on. Yes. So, but again, playing the odds and thinking about, you know, probability, does anyone imagine that the Chinese intel apparatus, which is incredibly well -resourced and motivated, would they actually look and go, yeah, I mean, maybe this makes sense.

1:24:44Maybe we want to put a handful of people here. Look, they've spent decades putting their own people from, you know, actual intel operatives to cooperative contacts through the US education system. Yes, I'd seen that. The number of kids that were at university, somewhere that turned out to be some CCP sleeper agent. Yeah, and oftentimes they don't even have to be, you know, that. I mean, we imagine that as some super spy, it doesn't have to even be that. It's a cooperative contact. It's someone who is, you know, maybe they're getting their bill footed, you know, maybe they're, you know, their family's getting a little bit extra something, you know, back home or some consideration or whatever it is.

1:25:23That's what you're hearing. Yeah. Exactly. You work with us and that's great. And then eventually you get a job at wherever, an important US company or, you know, they don't even care. They got, because again, they've got the long term view. So they'll send someone to grad school here and again you don't want to say okay, so every student is a spy That's not the fucking way we're we're talking it. It's it's just they're doing it right and we know that they're doing it And so the idea that they're not at least taking advantage of a porous border for other reasons is it would be pretty remarkable Yeah, if a Mexican family with a dude that's got a Stick with a bandana and a fucking satchel attached to the back of it Like riding the rails?

1:26:05You remember those, like it was that olden style. Yeah, sure. Like you make a coffee and a can of beans and these, yeah, hobo Joe. Yeah, just a good -hearted guy. If you're thinking that they can get across the border, yeah, but the CCP isn't going to be able to facilitate. Right, right. Or, you know, or the Iranians aren't going to look at it, right? And think to themselves, you know, I'll bet we could get some people over. And this is a real fucking problem. It's a real fucking problem. And it look, it's a real fucking problem from a national security point of view. And also from just a, just a, look, we had this incident down in Athens, Georgia, right?

1:26:44This poor student, this young 22 year old girl, just the other day, right? She went for a jog, broad day, like goes for a jog on a public trail, you know, and gets attacked, blunt force drama killed, and now they've arrested an illegal immigrant I mean, Fela's name is Ibarra from Venezuela, who crossed the border, I think with his wife and maybe a kid, young kid, I think through El Paso maybe. And then in this back in 2022, so this is his history, comes from Venezuela, crosses the border, just walks over, they release him because they don't have room in the detention facilities. So they're just releasing people, sort of a mass parole idea, right?

1:27:28And they released hundreds of thousands through this. Again, they call it parole, but we don't have room for you. So do you go his your code? And I'd like you to show up in a couple of years, right? So they go to New York, first of all. He has a run in with the law in New York. They release him on back on the streets. And he makes his way down to Athens, where I think his brother from Venezuela is residing. And then now he's banged up for murdering this 22 year old nursing student who just goes for a fucking jog. And yeah, and now the interesting thing, I don't wanna get distracted here, but the interesting thing is how it's dealt with.

1:28:10Obviously, it's going to be a political issue, right? Because it deals with an illegal immigrant and the border is such an important issue going into the election. So yes, it's going to become a political football. But the way that the White House decided to deal with it or democratic strategist, I don't know whether anybody in the White House was clever enough to do this, was basically to say, hey, you want to blame somebody for this sad death, blame the Republicans. They just blocked a bill in the Senate, you know, that would have provided funding for Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan, but also for the border.

1:28:37So it's the Republicans fault because for the past month and a half, they've been stone walling. Well, that's implying that people are stupid enough to think that somehow the millions of people who have crossed the border in the past three years just came across now, right? During the month and a half while the Republicans have been, you know, jackassin around up on Capitol Hill not doing anything. And so that's the level of stupidity that they hold for the American public. Now there are people stupid enough to believe it. Right? And there certainly are people partisan enough to buy that line of crap and go, yeah, it's a Republicans fault that this poor girl got killed because this guy came across in 2022.

1:29:11Right? During the three years at the current White House has kind of ignored for a variety of reasons, border security. But so that's on a personal level for US citizens, but on a national security level, we have no idea of the millions and millions of people who have come across unvetted and released into the country. We have no idea who they are for the most part. We have certainly have no idea how many bad actors there are. And we've caught hundreds on the terror watch list, but who knows how many others? Because we've got an unknown number of known Godaways. You got over two million as a conservative estimate over the past two years of the current administration who have got through without any contact with law enforcement.

1:29:52That's just a guess, right? And so there's like, you know, no idea how many bad actors have come across. And that's if the government's job is to protect its citizens, any government's job is protected citizens, then I don't know how you argue that they're doing a fine job because if you don't have a secure border and you know who's coming in and out, which is why you have border controls for every other country, then you know, you don't have a secure homeland. But it's not a country anymore. No, it's not a conflict. It's like an extension of what everybody else, the territory of the countries that are around you.

1:30:27Yeah. Tim Kennedy was telling me that there was this guy who appeared on the news, there was a news report going on in this guy just walks across the border and turns the camera and says something like, America will know my name and then facial recognition turned out that this guy is on some watch list. God. But obviously not clever. Yeah, not super, not super. But I mean clever enough. I'm gonna be famous one day. I mean, fuck knows where he is now. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they didn't stop him. No, because it was just a news reporter. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's he going to do? Hold him down. He doesn't know.

1:30:59But what about the trink and fentanyl root? Is that, do you know how that's getting in? Have we got idea about how those drugs are getting into the country? Well, I think to some degree, the government will argue that most of it's coming in through ports of entry, right? And that's, you know, there's truth in that, right? It's not as if the majority of narcotics, whether it's fentanyl or anything else, is coming in backpacks through border crossings outside of ports of entry. But it's both. It's all of the above. So it goes back to the same thing. If you have a tight border, it makes it more difficult.

1:31:39Why wouldn't you make it more difficult for narco -trafficers and bad actors to cross your border? It's just, I don't, again, I don't understand the rationale behind this. Yes, the immigration policies and the states can be improved. Right. And yes, immigration has always been a way that a country improves itself, right? But not by just, you know, letting in millions of people who you don't know who they are, right? No other country is going to do that, right? And yet we act as if that's okay, right? Or is that anywhere else on the planet that's doing that? No, look, we had the, I think, I'm probably going to get these numbers wrong, but I think the largest mass migration that, you know, of modern times has been in the 1880s, I think, when, you know, 10 million or so people came from Europe to the United States.

1:32:32We've had 7 million people in what the past three years come in. I'm not sure how we imagine that somehow we have things under control, right? But the problem that President Biden has is that as soon as he, you know, the Democrat strategist looked at this problem and said, yeah, we got an issue. Obviously, the poll numbers are showing. So they're acting on this because it's an election year, right? Three years they didn't do shit. In fact, they did the opposite of shit. They made it worse. The detention center's unethical and we shouldn't be and look at the separation of children from families making asylum easier, making parole easier.

1:33:14So they actually created a more porous environment. And but I think they looked and they go, God, we got to do something because the elections coming up, the poll numbers are so bad. So you know, that's that's why they're acting now as if well, look what we did. We tried to push this bill through the Senate and Republicans thought, okay, if you're going to if you're going to normalize 5 ,000 people a day before you take action, and maybe that's not quite what we're talking about here. But so they've got, and I think they all knew that they could push a bill through that the Republicans would back off of, right?

1:33:49That was the game. That's letable denial bill. Yeah, so they've got this issue. But as soon as he talked about taking some executive actions, then he got a hard push from the hard left. Right? And so all the progressives on that side said, oh, don't you think about it? Don't even think about doing anything that's Trump -like. It all comes back to this bizarre world that we're living in now, where there's people willing to imagine that President Biden, God bless him, we're all getting older. Fuck it. I forget shit all the time. But to imagine that he's not possibly the best candidate for another four years, but But we're going to vote for him because the other option is Trump.

1:34:35Right? That's the world we live in now. It's just, you know, I don't know. I don't want to get too cynical, but I think where, you know, US politics is kind of fucked right now. Yeah. I, that wasn't a rocket science statement. Wow. Did you hear what Mike said? That was a, that was revelatory. I've heard some new information. That's fucked up. Yeah. I, I, I don't know. I've been here for two years now. I don't know, obviously was observing with great interest and intrigue. More like a real life reality TV show with global consequences. The election in 2020. But I don't think that this year is going to be any better.

1:35:16I think we've seen, you know, 2012 was the last uncontested, mass uncontested election. I think that 2016 we had this pressure collusion 2020 we had stopped the steel 2024 there is no way I mean It's like you know, it's one all going into overtime. Yeah, you go back and we did have the hanging Chad debacle, you know with with Bush and Gore right. Oh, yes Yeah, and so that was that was a you know, but it was it was mild compared to So no, I agree this is not gonna be any better look Well, again, you don't want to put too much stock in polls and surveys, but it does seem like they've been consistent over the past handful of months, which is that those surveyed, none of them are particularly exciting.

1:36:09In fact, they don't want a rematch of Biden and Trump. I think people are, if given other alternatives, I think they would go for it. I think the Democrats are kind of boxed in. I think they've, you know, they've, they've, they've, they've got a problem here. They're not going to go for Newsom. Well, they got to clear the ticket, right? And so by that, I mean, if they're going to move Biden off the ticket, then how do you move Kamala Harris off the ticket? What's the optic of saying? We're going to ask Kamala Harris, a woman of color who's been the vice president to, to step aside for a white dude from California.

1:36:56I don't know that the Democrats are willing to go with that optic. You know, aside from the fact that, who am I to say, but Kamala Harris may have, Michelle Obama, may have straight swap. May have floated to the top in a spectacular way despite her abilities and competency. Well, so, and popularity. And popularity, yeah. And the laugh. And laugh, okay, I mean, everybody's got a quirk, you know, but still, Well, look, you hamper yourself. We got in this world where we're picking people because they tick certain boxes, which is a ridiculous thing to do. I think we'd all be better off if we just say we're going for competency, right?

1:37:37And who's the best person for the job? And what they could have done was done her a favor by saying we're gonna pick the best person for the job and then pick her, right? Rather than saying we're picking a woman of color if I get not right. The affirmative action thing is patronizing to the person that gets action. What? Hamper's. I mean, handicaps and because, you know, diversity high. Yeah, exactly. So, so I'd never quite understood the notion that you would say that rather than just saying, I'm gonna pick the best person and then go ahead, find, pick. Yeah, but, you know, at least you've given her some top.

1:38:06I don't think anyone was prepared to eat that lie if that had been pushed forward with Kamala Harris. So, you know, the country might be stupid, but they're not that stupid. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, I don't know. No, you're right. You're not right. No, you're right. Yeah, the remainder of this year is going to be wild. But yeah, Douglas Murray went to the streets of Philadelphia and he's seen this trink crisis that's happening there. And this is like fentanyl's fentanyl. And it's for people for whom heroin wasn't enough and then they moved onto something stronger and that wasn't enough and now they've moved onto something stronger and it causes an acroosis.

1:38:43People's limbs are falling off and the shins are eating themselves on the street. It's crazy. And it's also a fine demonstration of how that world works. You're always chasing the next product. You're always chasing because you know, you've got a shelf life on the current one. Because eventually, people are gonna be looking for the next kick. And so we worked counting narcotics in the agency for years, right, before we won the drug wars. And sorry, it's a terrible, like we didn't win the drug wars. Drugs won the drug wars. Right. Yeah, so. But we were working counter -archotics and you could take a ton of gear off the street and it never would affect the price, right?

1:39:28Because there's so much out there and there's so much demand. And yet also there's this massive product development. it's like this global production effort that they're always looking for the next product to put out there. So it's always going to be something coming down the pike, right? And that's just kind of the history of narcotics on the street is there's always the next bit of gear that's going to hit the street. And it's the iPhone 15, if the iPhone 16. He's, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of the, it's everything is working so cohesively from the synthesizers of the drugs, to the designers of the drugs, to the users of the drugs, to the people who might have a incentive for a country and it's populist to become more demoralized, less healthy, more of a burden generally on society.

1:40:31Everything spins up to be that. And people are going to take drugs for just wanting to take drugs. You don't need a big globalist conspiracy to turn America into a bunch of walking zombies. People will happily do that on their own. Yeah. I mean, I think there has been this line about China contributing to the fentanyl crisis in order to take down America. And again, look, never say never. Is there talk amongst some back room there that says, well, this is having a real negative impact on the West. How about that? Do they view that as a downside? No. But is that driving the drug trade? No, the demand out there.

1:41:13The dynamics of drugs. Yeah. Driving the drug trade. Yeah. And it's super depressing. It's one of those things that you look and I'm not smart enough to figure this out, but I've always been fascinated by the risk appetite. Right. And the, you know, it's like the kids who go to a party at somebody else's house and they open up the parents' medicine cabinet, they're willing to just like take a handful of whatever to see what happens. I've never understood that mentality, right, that says I'm willing to just give it a go and see where it leads. I think people get that one step at a time, at least with what we're talking about here.

1:41:50You know, it's, it'll be a little bit, maybe I'll start drinking and then I'll start smoking weeds and then I'll do some crack and then, you know, before I know I've lost my job in the months I've lost much. But the fact that the US doesn't have a social safety net, like we do in the UK, especially for health, if you've got a mental health problem or a physical health problem, you'll just get picked up and put into the hospital. You'll go to A &E, and the NHS isn't a bad solution to an awful problem, but it is way better than no solution. Significantly better. And this is the difference. You can tell the difference when you see homeless people in the States, they're shouting things at themselves.

1:42:30A lot of the time, sort of shuffling, they've got a brown bag with a fucking unbranded glass bottle inside of it, swinging, God knows what out of it. It's much more sort of skitsy and aggressive and forthcoming, whereas in the UK, if you get down to that level of mental health disorder or distress, you just come in, someone comes in and sweeps you up, right? And this isn't, it's not a perfect system, but you know, you will be given medication and a place to live and a fucking bed and a nurse that will say, this is what you've got, it gets friny, you've got biologists, whatever, whatever. And that's that.

1:43:04And you don't have that. And unfortunately, you see, you know, front and center, downtown of every major US city. Okay, I'd like to say on this black. Los Angeles is, you drive by some of these, I don't know which corner communities or whatever, but it's, yeah, it's shocking, but you're right, it's the complexity of the substance abuse with the mental health, with the, I see no hope, I've got no way to get off the street. I can't afford a... So what's the point in trying? So what's the point in trying? With the, I think the dysfunction of local and city and state governments that look at it and think, well, how can we just throw some money at it and solve it without saying, okay, this is a very layered, complex problem.

1:43:46We've got to solve several issues here. You can't just put somebody in a home if they got substance or mental problems. And you've got to deal with those, right? And so you're right. I mean, we, you know, we're, and it's also a much larger population. And so it's becoming increasingly visible. And so, yeah, I'm not sure if there's a, there's a lack of movement, it seems, on the part of most major cities, to try to figure out a path forward. Right? That's the Chinese coming to visit. Yes. And then, and then, then you just take a hose to the street. Sanitize everything. You got to, you got to wash all the shit off the sidewalks and it's pristine.

1:44:28To put people out. Pick up the needles. Every time it's pristine. Yeah. One of the things that I've been particularly fascinated by since, since moving to America and even beforehand, is the difference between how three letter agency operatives are seen by the general public from a brand and positioning perspective and how armed forces veterans and acting soldiers are seen. Because many people, you know, tons of my friends have been in the seals have then gone into the CIA and then phased out of that too. So it's like a single pathway for some and some people just go into one or the other. But it seems like, you know, thank you for your service, something that said to somebody that was in the armed forces.

1:45:11Your part of a globalist network of shells trying to destroy the country is said to someone from a three -letter agency. And what do you think's going on with the optics, the poor brand position? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, no idea. So, brand positioning of the people who are serving the country, but one is seen to be unequivocably, almost unequivocably in service, and the other one is not too sure. You're trying to take us down from the inside. Right. Can we even trust you? Right. Yeah, that's a bit of a sea change there in terms of how people view, certainly this CIA and the FBI, right?

1:45:48And it's very disheartening, right? But yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's a lack of trust in those organizations because this narrative that they become just political tools. And that's a very dangerous thing. What I mean is a political intel apparatus is a very dangerous thing, right? But the narrative that it came out, I think is that odds with the reality. Now, yes, you can have a senior person leading an organization who's been appointed by the president who's enjoys that top cover. You want the relationship. You want the dialogue. You always just say that you want the CIA director.

1:46:33I have a seat at the table in major discussions because that's important because you're asking this agency to go overseas and do things on behalf of national security interests. So the director should have that access and the FBI director, you know, same way. They're leading the federal government's key law enforcement organization, right? And yet the narrative over the past handful of years has really shifted to the point where, you know, there's an element of society, right, that views those agencies. And most of it's on the far right, right? That says, you know, they're very political. They're overly political.

1:47:12whether they need to be torn down and destroyed and then rebuilt, you know, by whoever I vote into office, right? Which is a fucking fourth world way of looking at things, right? Because that's what they do, you know, overseas and in some of the, you know, lesser developed nations where they just willing to say, okay, now I'm in charge, you know, I'm clearing out the intel apparatus and putting my own people in, right? And that's exactly what they do in a, in a banana republic. I don't know if I can say banana republic anymore, but. So that's not what you want. You can't do that, right? So this idea that you tear down these organizations and start over again is bullshit because the vast, vast, vast majority of these people just want to do their jobs, right?

1:47:55The FBI just wants to get out there. They want to solve a variety of problems that face the nation from law enforcement perspective. And the agencies, you tell them what their tasks are, they get out there, they do their tasks, they say, what's the next task, right? And so I'm not one of those people that sits around and goes, oh my god, these organizations have been, yeah, could you argue that some of the senior management became too enamored of political power player or administration? Sure, right? And you'd never want that to happen. And so you have to ensure that you've got enough proactive and inquisitive questioning people within the groups that are supposed to, Senate and Intel committee, congressional and Intel committees, and others who are supposed to ensure transparency of the degree possible.

1:48:46But yeah, I don't know how that narrative shifted. Very glad that we still have sort of the respect for the military that we do. I think it's incredibly important. And what's the numbers now? It's less than 1 % serving the military. That's incredible. Very few people. Very few people. That's an understatement, have skin in the game, right? And understand what it means to serve. And I think that's a problem too, right? I think if we had more people, young people who, I don't know whether an obligation or not, but somehow served, whether it's through the military or through government service or through some form of community service, if you had some skin in the game, I think you might develop with a somewhat different view on civics and the importance of the government and what's best for the country.

1:49:39And I might get outside you on a little bubble, but that's not the way it's worth them in a scenario. Yeah. There is this overbearing, nameless, faceless shadowy organization that's supposed to be a part of you, but is maybe keeping you down. and yeah, if one person from most families in one form has served, and however it is that they do it, then you think, oh, well, you know, Uncle John, he's not one of the bad guys. I know that he's not one of the bad guys. Right, right, and everybody's, you know, put a little time in. Again, not the draft, I suppose we're never gonna probably unless this is a major conflict when I go into a draft, but some fashion, some service at some level, I think would change the dynamic for the better, but for right now, look, I think the weaponization of DOJ, that's a big topic, certainly on the right.

1:50:35And I think that's the result of just this dysfunctional political nature that we've got right now, right? You can't find people living in the center anymore, right? So you've just got people screaming at each other and throwing hand grenades at each other from both sides. And so naturally you're going to attribute the other sides of doing all sorts of nefarious bullshit, getting up all sorts of things. And I, you know, again, I don't spend my days, you know, sitting staring at my naval wondering what the deal jays up to. But I have a hard time believing that they're completely a political weapon of, you know, the current administration or would be of the next administration of the previous one.

1:51:15There's again, governments are very large bureaucracy and my experience again, hey, everybody's got a different one, but mine is that most people just want to get on and do their fucking job and live their life. Yes. What is that? What most people misunderstand about the CIA? Do you think that it's just people trying to do that job? Yeah, I think

1:51:39The agency has taken heat like the FBI has. And I think, again, I think part of it is the narrative that's been driven out there in part. Look, I mean, again, it's a, well, look, we've been, the agency's taken heat for a long time. So I can't just say it's a recent thing. I can go back to the church commission and you go back to some of the other issues that the agencies had but yes The the people I worked with were Fantastic and we never sat around in some safe house and some shit hole somewhere, you know talking politics Nobody gave a shit about politics and maybe it's maybe my time is passed and maybe now the new crew does something different But I don't really think so I think that on the operation side and certainly throughout the agency, the vast majority of people know what their mission is and they do it honorably and they do it without any paths on the back.

1:52:46Right? Nobody, like you said, walks up to them and says, hey, thanks for your service. You know, because they don't know what the hell they're doing. Yes. And they can't talk about it. Yeah, and you go to your grave, you know, keeping a lot of secrets. Right? And that's the way it should be. So, yeah, people take it personally and it can impact morale, right? When you're not used to this idea that somehow, you know, you don't expect people to go out there and go, man, that CIA, that's what a great organization. But you don't expect them to walk around and go, I wish you'd tear it down. Start over again.

1:53:16What the hell is that all about? When you're making sacrifices, when you're away from your family, when you're doing things in dangerous situations, working hard late nights. Right. Right. And, you know, and not for money, by the way. When I started, I was not thinking about this the other day. I was laughing with my wife. When I started, and we were doing some crazy shit, I was making $17 ,000 a year. $17 ,000, I was not doing it to get wealthy. And I don't know anybody who does now, still to this day. It's not why you do it. You're doing it because, A, it's entertaining at times. It's very interesting, it's challenging.

1:53:53And you feel like you're doing something more important than yourself. So that's a quality of life issue, maybe. Anyway, yeah. But service, you know, yeah, service. The fact that you don't get in intelligence, you don't get the same level of positive reinforcement from the optics of what you did has to be, I mean, I think about this all the time. Let's say that there's an incident and the emergency services are called an ambulance turns up and everyone is so relieved. A fire truck turns up and everyone is so relieved. The police turn up and everyone is so angry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, exactly.

1:54:33So why were people gonna go? Yeah, phones come out. Yes, something bad's gonna happen. Here's the police. You think, I'm sorry, you know, you wanna do this job? You wanna go out there and confront situations where you have no idea what's happening, right? And you have no idea what you're gonna need encounter, right? But you're doing it, right? And look, are there bad actors? Yeah, are there folks that need, you know, need to be removed? Are there folks that need better training? Can they, they can always, that was that thing about, it drove me crazy about the defund the police movement, right?

1:55:01You want a better police force, then you need to actually fund them. You need to spend more on training, right? And on consistent training and future training. You've got, that's what you do. You don't defund the police. Now we're dealing with the aftermath of some of that in some locations. you know, that was a bizarre little point in time. With the problem that that trend created, wasn't just an encouragement of underresourcing police departments. It was the optics of what recruiting future members of police teams will be like. Who wants to go and take that job? Who wants to go and put their life on the line or their safety or work late nights or not earn a massive amount of money or do a thankless task or push papers around a desk or whatever job it is, whatever part of the big cog of the law enforcement mechanism you were a part of, who wants to go and do that?

1:55:55Everybody does that. Everyone would love to have a boss that appreciated the work that they did, right? And if you walked down the street, like this is one of the things that you're right to say, it's good that veterans, and this is something we don't have in the UK. There is no equivalent of thanks for your service. In the UK, we don't revere our veterans in the same way. You know, there's no one walking around with a Vietnam veteran cap on. I don't think I've ever heard a acting British military. Please step on the plane first. I've never heard that be called in British airports. So, you know, we don't have that.

1:56:35That's not a poppy day. And maybe that's about it where people get out. Correct. Yeah. You're paying November the 11th, remaining World War Two veterans, maybe. And I even more recent but even within that that was that was contested last year is but you know there was going to be all of these protests from Middle East and Middle East Protesters were gonna have a problem. There was going to be interruptions for the parade I don't know whether it actually came out as badly as it's all but there was you know poppy's were being ripped down because this is part of some Colonialist imperialist thing and you think God it's so boring.

1:57:08It's the same thing over and over again that there is some part of history which is unforgivable and that we are personally cursed with this. You know, you gotta take Churchill's stature down. Yes. Stature down. Yeah. I read this letter that Churchill's father sent him after he was admitted to Santos on his third attempt and it's only bits of it remain, but it's Churchill's 19 and his father says, if you do not change your ways, you will become one of the hundreds of social waste rolls having completely squandered all of your potential. And it's just, he just lambasts Churchill for like a full page and then he signs off by saying, your mother sends her regards.

1:57:51Your mother. Your mother sends her regards. And I remember thinking to myself, it made me feel so sad that there was this guy that probably, you know, defeated the Nazis, they're just rolling through Europe. They hit, they go through one country, another country, another country, another country, And then they just think that they're gonna do the same in Britain. And it's the first time that they encounter any resistance is the battle of Britain. It's the first time they actually get pushed back from anywhere. People don't know this. It's the first time they ever got pushed back from anything was the battle of Britain.

1:58:17And they go, okay, maybe this isn't, maybe the thousand year rike in the Aryan race isn't this indifatigable force that we presume. And I bet that at the end of that, that Churchill probably still didn't feel enough. You know that he'd managed to complete all of this stuff. often he carries this desire for recognition and validation and acceptance by the world into his motivation to do the things that he did. And even Chamberlain as someone who wasn't built to do what he needed to do very famously in his resignation speech says, this is the one thing that the Nazis can't see. They couldn't imagine someone putting their personal pride to one side in order for the good of the country.

1:58:57So he steps to a side, so he makes a sacrifice in a very different kind of a way. In a different way. So the Churchill can then step up and I just think, God, there's this new series on Netflix called World War II. I think it's called From the Frontlines or something. And they've used AI to make 4K and full color all of this archive footage. It's available, it's like maybe an eight episode series. It's awesome. And it's so much more immersive now and you can see it in full color. They did that with World War I. They colorized some incredible footage. wild and improved it. It was amazing. Well, it seems less.

1:59:36It makes it feel much more real to see it to see it in that way. And I'm watching this thing and thinking, you know, this, it was one of the first times in a long time that I felt really proud about some of the things that the UK had done. And then like I say, now for all of the problems that we, there is over in America, The UK doesn't, it doesn't revered the people that have served. It doesn't have even the same kinds of benefits. You can go to a fucking Denny's and probably if I showed my military service card, I'd probably get 10 % off of Denny's. Well, they still do it. I mean, you write, I mean, you pointed out the airlines, right?

2:00:13I'm on Delta all the time and one of the things they do is, you know, servicemen, active duty and retired, you know, board first, right? So. Are you included in servicemen? No. No, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't ever claim that I'm not working on it. I don't know what to do. I work for the government. So the military. Yeah, I'm sorry, military service. And so they do that yet, Churchill, so much of what he did, yeah, driven by his childhood and sort of this feeling that, you know, he was always trying to get affection from his mom and his dad was a, his dad was a bit of a hot mess but fascinating character.

2:00:53Yeah, but then they vote them out after, you know, hey, we won't work too. Oh, sorry, you're out. Yeah. And, you know, it's fascinating stories. I just reread the three book series, The Last Lion, which is a fantastic look at. It's a history of Churchill. He covers, you know, Burke to death. And it's a lot of detail, but it's very readable. And it's just, but there's a lot of it. But what did you, what was some of the things that surprised you the most learning about him? I think oddly enough, I'm excited to read a lot about World War II history, his relationship with Roosevelt. The World War II section, although probably moved the quickest, was super interesting.

2:01:40I think that the latter part, and also prior to that, his involvement with the Irish troubles, that was very interesting. I think. But then afterwards, it's getting out of World War II and how his political career kind of stagnated and then resurged. It was a very interesting look. There's also a book written by his physician, Lord Moran, I believe it was the name of the physician. and he had Churchill's okay once he passed away to write up his notes into a book, right? And he traveled with Churchill all over the place. The conferences and throughout the World War II as his personal physician.

2:02:33And it's a great book. Not very late. You read that? I have read it. I'm trying to remember the name of the book, but it's written by his doctor. and again, I think Moran was his last name. What Moran? What was he saying about Churchill's state of mind, its physical health, his mental health? Well, look, it's not, it wasn't like a Kiss and Tell book, right? So there was no shocking negative revelation in there. You only had one testicle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, four, which was really surprising. I think so. But he, so it's not like today where, you know, you, you know, the idea if you get, you know, a contract, a publisher booked in and you're expected to produce something shocking and you know based on your experience.

2:03:16I don't think that was the case. It was fairly complimentary of Churchill throughout. He obviously had a great deal of respect for him. But it did talk about his variety of things, his capacity for enjoying his own ideas and hearing himself speak, his capacity for drink. But his ability to manipulate conversation to get the result that he wanted. And he is ability to win an argument because of his ability to verbal mastery. Yes, it was a pretty remarkable. So, yeah, what was it? It was that movie, The Darkest Hour. Did you see that? Yeah, there was a good line in there about he took the English language and sent it to war, you know, during his famous speech department, you know.

2:04:14But I think, yeah, it's a fascinating character. I'd, you know, that's why I was, I'd, that original comment about like this bullshit about okay, we have to rewrite history and remove, you know, memories of Churchill because you know, oh my god, look at it, you know, he was a racist or something. Yeah. Product of time, right? I mean, things move on, right? So things happen in a time frame. We should be smart enough to understand what the context was and move on. Well, the assumption there is that people are so fragile that they can't deal with history. It's like, yeah, just like I'm not one to quote this guy, but there is a leftist stream called Hassan Abbi, who a lot of people have huge problems with and I agree with an essentially nothing.

2:04:55But he's got a phenomenal line where he says, analysis is not justification. Analysis is not justification. Looking at why something occurred doesn't mean that you agree with it. But the alternative is to just sort of plug your head in the sand and have, be completely ignorant of it, which makes you even worse off. That's putting you a real disadvantage. Speaking of Churchill, I got sent for Christmas from a friend. and I got sent some of the champagne that he drank. Oh, Paul was here. Yes, yes, I got sent a bottle of that. And I learned from him that Churchill commanded them to make a special custom -sized bottle.

2:05:31Did you know about this? No. So he found out, in his opinion, a half bottle was insufficient and a full bottle was too much. So he commanded them to make a pint bottle of that. That's fantastic. Of that champagne. Yeah. It tastes like sparkling apple juice, it's phenomenal. And yeah, a half bottle was too little and a full bottle was too much. You wanted to be able to function, but he needed it. And it was, you know, it followed him around. These special bottles would follow him around it. All of his meeting, every single lunch meeting, always have one of these things. And I thought that that was fantastic.

2:06:03That he just, you know, we'll make it a little bigger, not that big. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy. I mean, some of the things that, like World War One, I mean, he was on the front lines, right? He went to the front lines, but he took his bathtub with him, right? He had his bathtub, their head, and the front lines, so that he could bathe. So, I mean, it's a little, these little stories that are incredible about the time. It could be a heads, because anyway, there's a ton of those in, again, the last line, if people have some time on their hands, and they're looking for something as a three -pot, a three -book series, and they want to dive deep into it.

2:06:39It's well worth the read. Have you ever looked at Theodon Morrell, Hitler's physician? No, no, that's a fascinating individual. So I think it's maybe the very beginning of World War 2 or perhaps just before Hitler's suffering really badly with indigestion, some stomach and sort of good issues. And he finds theodoctertheodomarell who is this sort of quack doctor who uses all manner of chomeopathy, sort of progressive remedies, but Hitler recovers maybe by fluke or maybe actually through whatever it is. So he immediately, as all manic people do, proclaims that this is, you know, this guy is a fucking medical god.

2:07:20And now Morales is part of the inner circle, but the rest of the inner circle absolutely hated him. Himmler detested him. Gurbles detested him. He was very messy. He was a horribly loud eater. He was breath would stink. He was superbly unclean. So, you know, the clinical manner of this guy that was the personal position to the Fuhrer was just not there. There at dinner and he would be sort of shoveling food into his mouth and he was a really fat sort of guy. And by the end of the war, the concoction of drugs that Hitler was on is absolutely insane. So he's getting injected with bowl semen. He's on basically meth.

2:07:57He's on a concoction of stimulants, uppers and downers. And then there's a really famous meeting, I think, between him and Mussolini. and he just completely flies off the handle and it's supposedly due to some concoction issue or some dosage issue that had happened that day. And Morrell's writing in his diary about the furor was this way today, gave him, you know, so he's got... Who's actually tracking his... Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of the stuff. It's like in fucking Woot Band from 1945. Wow. And there's a bunch of different documentaries, just such like, Hitler's Fidgetian or Theodore Morrell, online.

2:08:35So interesting. But yeah, I wonder, I mean, if it wasn't plain enough already, this isn't me trying to excuse Hitler. Yeah, that's a just ad look. Get that out. That's too soon. But I wonder how much of the mental demise and complete insanity, you know, we're going to try and go east into Russia at the same time as we try and go north into France as we tried to defend, as we tried to south into Africa. How much of that can be attributed to this guy just being in a stupor, you know, propped up on this cocktail of drugs by this total quack? Yeah, yeah. I'm still thinking about you. I'm not trying to dismiss Hitler's actions.

2:09:17I do. Yeah, there's no way to go through there. It's just a drug addict. Yeah. He was on the streets to Philadelphia. Yeah, like it was, it wasn't, it wasn't thinking straight. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. Well, I definitely looked that up because I did enjoy this Lord Moran's small book on his experience as a physician for church. I can imagine there's, you know, it's that same kind of thought process. It's the inside of the gap. You know, the level of intimacy that you have with a physician is very high. You know, it's the things that you maybe don't even admit to yourself about the fact that I've had that pain in my knee for a while.

2:09:53You know, how much is that impacting you'll sleep, how much is that in part? You know, all of the things, not the line. But yeah, at a bad day and he just says, you know, gets a shot of bullseem and it says, let's invade Russia. Let's do it. Yeah, let's go for it. I bet this is going to work out well for us. Yes. Although he did, he did assume it was going to take very little time. You know, if it hadn't been for that winter, I think that they could have maybe continued to steamroll through. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, that certainly played the key role. I think he was getting advice against it, but that never swayed what he was doing.

2:10:29But I think that there was this lack of appreciation of size, of vastness, right? And what that would do to supply chains, yeah, and or supply lines. And then all of the trucks got stuck in the mud, trying to resupply. Who was the guy who was the dude from his inner circle that custom edited the fuel tank on a plane and flew to Scotland to try and persuade the king. It was one of his... Yeah, god damn it. It was the dude, anyway, the story, sort of 1943, 1944, and everything's kind of a stalemate, but the Germans believe that the British think they're going to be overrun and they're kind of just waiting for this.

2:11:12They really don't understand that Churchill's going to keep on pushing. So this guy gets one of the bombers to be fitted with long -range fuel tanks, custom built and then without informing anyone, him himself flies because he had once met, a printing met some Duke or some monarch, someone that was part of something and decided to fly himself from Germany to Scotland and then jumps out in a parachute thinking that he's going to be welcomed as the envoy. And you know, what's fascinating here, there's another great series on Netflix called Churchill's Inner Circle, I think. And it shows the house swayed, everyone's opinions became, because the political backbiting of wanting to be the closest to the eagle's nest and to Hitler and so on and so forth.

2:12:03And yeah, this guy was Adam and basically was driven by this sort of love for validation and this unrequited desire to be part of this inner circle and to be back in Hitler's good graces. That if I flew to Scotland and did, and obviously he just immediately gets taken to prison. and that doesn't happen. And apparently Hitler finds out about this and just, you can be waking up one morning because he wouldn't wake up. He'd have these, you know, meth -fueled diatribe until three in the morning and no one would leave. No one would be able to leave as he's there and he's shouting and screaming and doing all the rest of it.

2:12:35And everyone was just like, I'm just fucking wish he'd shut up. And then, and then, and then the next day, he'd wake up, but yeah, you wake up one day and you find out that some bloke's still in a couch and built bomber and land, and if Crash Landed it in Scotland jumped out in a parachute. Yeah, you don't hear that every day if you're Hitler. It's a bad morning. It's a bad morning, but luckily your doctor's there. What was his name, Morrell? Morrell. Morrell. I'll let you up. Yeah, get a nice line of cocaine and bulls thing. Good, God. Now, intuitive machines, first ever commercial vehicle to land on the moon that happened.

2:13:08Yeah, that did happen. That thing happened. And yeah, I guess, didn't a tip over on its side, still operational, but maybe suboptimally.

2:13:23Yeah, I mean, it is interesting when you think about where are we going with that, right? What are we thinking about? I mean, is there a thing that's going back to the moon soon? Well, yeah. And there's still that talk about, that'll fuel the desire to go to Mars. and I don't know, I mean, I lived through, I was a young, young person, but I did live through the moon landing and that whole initial Russian excitement of moon shots and what that meant and that sort of feeling like, okay, we're just putting duct tape on things and flying them to the moon and kind of was the way it was, right? Didn't have that calculation, too, right?

2:14:03You can imagine nowadays trying to get, and we can see that in terms of the bureaucracy of NASA and how NASA now relies on private sector to try to push this whole process forward. But people got fatigued pretty quickly back in the day with the moonshots. It was like, okay, here we go, we're going to the landing again. What's the point? It's a little bit like Ukraine. What's the point? Why are we spending all this money? No, no. Same concept, no novelty anymore. So I'm not sure, again, I'm definitely, nobody's turning to me for scientific insight. But I'm hopeful that if there is a vast upside to this, that the government will do a better job of explaining why it's important, right?

2:14:48But I do imagine that, you know, NASA's best days in terms of resourcing are probably behind it. And so that's this drive towards the commercial side. I think that's terrific. It invades a lot. and going back to that conversation about the sharing of information and insight between the government and private sector. It's a good example of why it's important. The agency, there was an in -cutel designed to try to foster that development of more technologies out in the private sector. So that's it. It's an ongoing process, but I looked at the moon landing here and I guess, maybe I'm like a lot of people, but I was like, oh, okay, we landed on the moon.

2:15:35Great. Okay. Now what? Right? Maybe I'm disappointed in myself for not being more fascinated. Well, I think whether we like it or not, much of what we're doing is an attention and an optics game. And, you know, for instance, do you remember Red Bull's Stratos? Do you remember when Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space? Yeah. You know, and you've got, I think it's like a biffy, chiro song, it's this like beautiful voice. And it's like a rock song and it's made into this perfect trailer. And the whole thing was tracking it was live streamed. And you know, there's drama and he's not getting into the, all this stuff.

2:16:10And I remember looking at that and going, that's, that's like, that's amazing. And he's gone nowhere near the moon. Yeah, and so much of it is not understanding how humans interpret things, not understanding the second, third, fourth order effects of, okay, and what happens if we release this and what happens if we release that and what happens downstream, defund the police. What happens if we do this? Well, it's going to damage certain communities and it's going to disincentivise police officers and which of the communities in which are going to be the most damaged by this, well, it's the ones that we're trying to save.

2:16:38I think that NASA and anyone that wants to achieve public support and interest in anything should be looking way more at advertising and human behavior and psychology more than they're looking at logistics and operations and efficiency. Because you need to get buy -in and excitement from the... I mean, dude, if you did a go fund me, like an equivalent thing to be like, do you want and you will have, this is how far you moved the rocket. You know, you're $10, moved the rocket, like, you're like one millimeter or whatever. Like, however you wanna do it, incentivizing people like that, I think would be so great and we have the opportunity to do it.

2:17:19But as you said there, how is it that we've managed to get so much more advanced and so much less efficient? From NASA being able to just put it down, whereas all of the technology in the world, you know, your smartphones more powerful than the entire room that NASA had in 1965 or whatever it was, and the fucking thing fell on it's eye. I just imagine, you know, like this character from Wall -E. Do you remember that movie? It was a fantastic movie. 45 minutes into it before they had the first piece of dialogue, right? But you were captivated by it. But anyway, it's neither in or there. But I think, yeah, it's the messaging.

2:17:58and I guess in part a good example of that would be Ukraine. I think the government, the US administration in particular has done a terrible job of messaging explaining why it's important to the public and continually explaining and talking about it, explaining why this is important to the US if they believe it is, right, then why and you know why the money's necessary and how the money's being spent. There wasn't enough transparency around. Look, Ukraine has had a very bad reputation of corruption for decades, right? Very corrupt country. Lots of problems documented. Okay, it's not. So there should have been more awareness that if we're going to throw billions and billions of dollars over there that we should also have an effort to ensure that there's some transparency, more transparency than there has been in terms of how it's being spent, right?

2:18:51Because that's also when Ukraine's best interest, right, to battle or to be seen as battling corruption to ensure they maintain this. Or extend the longevity of support. Yeah. So what do you get? You get, you know, there've been a handful of corruption charges, you know, some dismissals over there in Ukraine. I think Zelensky understands he's got to be seen as battling this problem. But the US government on its part hasn't done a good enough job of explaining to the American public why, you know, and how it's being done. And I think if they had, they could have tamped down some of this, right?

2:19:24But, you know, it's also coming from an unexpected place, right? The right, right? The Republican Party for the most part is seeming to be the, and so now you got the Democrats in the position of being the war hawks, and the Republicans being the one saying, oh, you know, let's focus on US first, you know? And again, this idea that we can't multitask, of course we can fucking mock tasks. We should be able to do all of these things, Right, border security. We're about this. You know, deal with international crises, but sometimes it seems like we're, you know, we're unable to do that. Well, we go from one problem to another problem without seeming to understand that everything's connected in a way, right?

2:20:04Is that something that unlocks at least the beginning of these problems is a potential route out of this to just improve interagency communication. Is it to be more transparent when it comes to the public? There's a lot of issues. There's a lot of problems from the political standpoint, the military standpoint, the international standpoint, the supply chain, the drugs, the immigration, all that stuff. Are these all individual targeted problems that require very specific solutions? Are there some fundamental unifying threads that are problems kind of throughout all of these, if those were unpicked at least would free up some stuff downstream.

2:20:42Yeah, I think there are some commonalities, I think, between some of the major issues that we're facing. I think one of the problems that the government, not just the administration, any administration, recently has been slowed to understand is again the access to information that the public has, right? And they've been slowed to understand what that means in terms of how they should deal with the public. Right? So I think you can sidestep some of the reluctance of the public to get behind, you know, whatever it may be, border security. Why is that important? Why do we need to have tight border security?

2:21:21Why do we need to support Ukraine and an effort against Russia's and adventurism? What's the point of that? So I think that's one element. and I think a common thread with a lot of the problems that we face in the US anyway, is from a political standpoint. And by that, I mean, I think something that would, I believe this anyway, maybe other people think it's bullshit, but I think if we had term limits, and I think that would be a really positive step for politicians, for, for, for congressman and senators. Right. Okay, yeah, because we do for the president, but we don't for right. Right. So I think if we had, you know, if we were able to figure out a way, I don't think we will to do that, then I think you take, you start to take some of the self interest out of it, right?

2:22:13You know, nobody should be sitting up on Capitol Hill as a seven or eight term senator. Does that not create the same issue that we have at the presidency though, where people just try and, they don't have enough time in office to be able to get anything done, and there's different incentives. Yeah, no, I think if you give, look, give every congressman, congressperson, I guess, two four -year terms, right now it's two -year term, two -year term is not censorical, right? That's based on, you know, when the nation was founded, and Washington DC was a swamp, and no one wanted to be there, so they had to get back to the farm.

2:22:48So I think if you gave every congressperson two four -year terms, and you give every senator two six -year terms, they currently run six -year terms. But not in perpetuity, right? So it's absurd when you look at it and you realize the self -interest involved, the wealth that some of these folks have built up over multiple terms of being in Washington DC, earning a fixed government salary. There's a fascinating, actually, there's a really interesting stock tracking system where you can invest based on what Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, and Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, and her husband Paul Pelosi, what they're investing in, right?

2:23:31Wow. And you can do remarkably well. Like the Pelosi Stock Track, a, yeah, calm us, I think. Yeah, it's fascinating. And I think, but if you take the, if you take the self interest out of it and you take some, to some degree, the special interest ability, right? Like if I know that you're going to be the head of the Ways and Means Committee for, you know, 42 years or whatever. I'm, you know, I'm going to act a certain way and I'm going to invest a lot in my relationship with you, right? If I'm dealing with somebody who's only there for two terms, right? Eight years or 12 years if you're a senator.

2:24:07Yeah, I don't have the same hook, right? I don't have the same ability to long -term influence you and push you in a certain way for regulatory concerns or whatever it might be. Again, the pushback sometimes has been, you need to be here. I think Ted Kennedy used to say, you know, you need to be up here a long time before you can understand all the intricate rules and how it works. Thinking that just sounds like someone who doesn't want to be replaced. That's like an IT director who creates a system inside the company that's so complex in the end. All he understands is that. Okay. So that's a communication to the public, term limits potentially for the people that are inside of the system.

2:24:46Yeah. Anything else. Yeah. You know, in terms of in terms of some of the common you know, problems at face, I think there are issues whether it's border security or you know, foreign policy decisions that are separate and distinct from from each other. I think so I I don't know that I clever enough to find the common thread that binds all those together, but I I think I look more at terms of how do you create a more functional government, how you create something that's more effective and with less self -interest. And, you know, I keep coming back and I'll campaign finance reform. If you need to spend $40 million to get yourself elected, I think that means the system's kind of bullshit.

2:25:31If you can't explain your position to your constituents, you know, for, okay, let's say a couple million dollars. Then there's something wrong with this system, right? We're canceling out a large number of people who could be very qualified and very well meaning, but I think most sane people look at the system the way it is now and say, I would never throw my hat in the ring for that. Yes. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense.

2:25:58So, it's kind of self limiting in it and it determines a certain type of person who goes into politics. Yes. I think so. Anyway, it's again, not probably anything new, but every now and then I like to get up on the term limit soapbox. Yes. Yeah. I was reading just this morning about Australia has built the biggest navy since World War II, or that's that plan now. The largest fleet that will have had since the end of the Second World War said Defense Minister Richard Marley on Tuesday it outlined a decade -long plan to double its fleet of major warships and boost defense spending by an additional $7 billion in the face of quickening Asia -Pacific arms races.

2:26:39Yeah, China's influence. China's been massively aggressive over the past decade in building out their military, the Navy in particular. And so that's a direct response. You look at Japan, and South Korea, it's all the same concern. It's the aggressiveness of China, particularly in the short term in the South Pacific region, which they've always viewed as theirs and they've always been irritated by the fact that, we, the West plays a role there, as far as their concern is their turf. So, but they've been expanding their military opening, you know, the first time foreign ports. Well, they've got that, they do that thing where they make bases out of little islands, right?

2:27:26And it extends the boundary of what is China. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, you just make an artificial military facilities. They're not much to look at. They're, you know, maybe it starts off as a show and then you just, you know, you just, you know, come in there and pour a bunch of debris and concrete it and, you know, tarmac it and next thing, you know, you got an air strip, you know, and then you, you know, that's part of your territory and that can impact your international waters claims. Right. Because you go whatever like to a 10 mile radius around all of these and more of these that you can claim.

2:28:02Right. And so you're I mean, there's a lot of conflict. Philippines, a Vietnam, you know, Spratly Islands is an example. There's a lot of conflict over this in that region. But most people look at it and go, right, really, it's the Philippines versus China. I think that's it. But the alliance that we have out there, the ASEAN alliance and others, very important in terms of not, you know, it's tempering China's global ambitions, right, in a sense, right? And there's a lot of nervousness there. Look, Taiwan, we haven't even touched on the issue of what's the future of Taiwan, right? I mean, like they rolled over during the pandemic, They literally put out the last little bits of democracy in Hong Kong.

2:28:53Right? Nobody gave a shit anymore because people had gotten their head around the idea that, okay, it's China. It's again, yeah. Yeah, game over. But we're all looking over here at the pandemic and there's no more remnants of democracy or democracy movement in Hong Kong. So they were successful there. Taiwan is a, you know, it's a different animal. I think it's a slow game for them. It's a soft takeover. I think it's how they're envisioning it. We always imagine there's going to be an invasion of Taiwan. I don't think, you know, Chinese military and Xi in particular, they look at that and probably go, and it's too chaotic, right?

2:29:30They don't like chaos. They don't want anything that's necessarily unpredictable. But they also look at our support for Ukraine and think, okay, So what they'd be upset with us for a couple of years, right? And then we're gonna get back to their own business. So the idea of one China policy, it's been a comfortable kick the can down the road, concept for forever. But I think that if you look at the timeline, when do they really want to bring Taiwan back back into the fold, I think you have to look at she and say, okay, is he going to leave office without doing that? Or does he want that as his key legacy?

2:30:18That's what's crowning achievement. This is crowning achievement. So I think then you look at she and you look at his health and you look at his tenure and how long is that going to last? And you think, okay, maybe some time within that period of time is when is that? It's a move. I do know. It depends on its health. It depends on, you know, not so much internal politics. He seems to have a massive grip on there. You gotta go back to Mal maybe before you find someone who had that sort of lock on things. And he's fortified the security services and he's removed kind of the concept of rule of law.

2:30:51And some folks would disagree and say, oh, it's a great place to do business. And yeah, you have to do business there. It's not, you don't decouple from China. It's not possible in today's world, but you have to be more pragmatic about it. right? And, you know, so I think we have to be aware of and companies are, I think, for the most part, nowadays it's better than it was even 10 years ago, but nowadays, you know, the companies that we deal with in the private sector, you know, they're aware of the fact that if they start to go over to China, they build a factory, they build a, you know, some sort of research facility, that intelligence, that information, that proprietary data is going to end up with the Chinese, right?

2:31:31They can't protect it. And so, you know, But 10 years ago or longer, that was a thought. Well, how do we keep our IP safe? Well, you don't, is the answer. They're going to have it. And so, and a lot of companies are happy to sign agreements that basically allow that, right? Because they want that market. And so, and China's always counted on that, right? We're the holy grail of commercialism. You want to sell here. So, they've used that to their advantage. But anyway, the Taiwan thing, I think, is more of a simple calculation, because I do believe that she doesn't want to walk off into the sunset without having that happen in his time frame.

2:32:10So, anyway, very spicy. Yeah, I don't know, man. I mean, being a citizen that even cares remotely about the future is a very, very scary and confusing, like, well, you know what I mean? Like, we've got the stuff happening in the Middle East and the stuff happening in the Northeast of Europe and then the stuff happening in the Far East as well. And then we've got things happening at home all over. Southern border crisis. And then we've got 20, 24 election. And that's happening. And then you've got the general election's gonna happen in the UK and you've got all of this stuff. The dude in El Salvador just got elected in an 85 % approval rating.

2:32:45And then put half of the country in jail. Then you've got this guy in Argentina. Afwara, you got that guy. And it's just so much upheaval and our access to it has never been more seamless and instant. And it doesn't surprise me that people are kind of checking out, losing faith in media, losing faith generally in their ability to sense make, you know, to confusing time. And you might say, well, you know, you have the opportunity to discern the information for yourself, would you rather not have access to it at all? And I'm like, well, look, more information is good, but also comes, it bears a cost.

2:33:24And the cost is that everybody now has to do their own sense making. and that's very adduous. And it's also has a mental cost, right? Because you do feel overwhelmed, right? And, you know, I don't think there's that many people who can just check out either because they don't have the means or, you know, they just don't have the ability to say, okay, I'm not gonna worry about this. They're still gonna sit and worry about things, right? And you can see that the angst that some people have on social media about shit that they can't control, right? But yet they spend time focused on, right? Or the anger that they have over certain things.

2:33:55and you think, okay, dial it back a little bit. There's one thing to be informed. There's another thing to be outraged. How do you, given that you'll need deep in all of these stories and stuff, how do you bifurcate that emotionally for yourself? How do you not get too caught up in the potential turmoil and catastrophe, Städika? Yeah, well, I think you have to know your limitations, right? I'm not impacting much other than my family, right? So I think you have to look at it from that perspective. The agency also, I learned it. I think if I had to think about it, most of what I've learned that has been really valuable to me.

2:34:41Has either come from my time with the agency or from my family. That's it dealing with my family and an understanding how best to do that Or my time with the agency and the time with the agency they they There was a lot of things that you could pick up if you know if you thought about it And I sometimes didn't realize it at the time, but One of those things is you can't you You're not there to impact you know great decision -making right you're there to do a task you're there to do something, right? And I was never one of those people who sat around and wondered to myself, I wonder how the seven floors is gonna deal with this, right?

2:35:26Or, geez, I wonder why they made that decision on this policy issue. Tell me what the fucking job is, right? What's important right now and then do it and then move on to the next job, right? And so you develop, unless you're overthinking things, you develop a certain ability to just compartmentalize shit and then move on. Do you own it? Yeah. And also you realize that there's not that many decisions on the decision tree or branches on the decision tree, right? People get very wrapped around the axle over, you know, what to do. Do I go here? Do I move right? Do I move left? Do I do? How do I deal with this problem facing it?

2:36:07And when you look at a problem, usually there's not that many options in terms of what you can do to resolve the problem, to move on, to have some resolution. And so I think the agency was very good about, you know, having you understand, here's something happening. What are my options? And you drill down very quickly and realize I got two options. Or maybe I got three, but one of them's kind of bullshit. So no, I got two again. And so you learn how to do that very quickly. And I think that proved to be really, really valuable. I mean, I got out, you had no business experience, no business going into business, right?

2:36:51I just, I, people thought I was insane to leave. And so I started it with a really great friend of mine who came out of the British teams. And we had no idea what we were doing. But because we had similar backgrounds and experience, It didn't matter, right? We just looked at it and go, okay, well, we've made this decision. Now, what are our choices? And our choices were very clear, right? And do this, do that. Okay, now we've done that, now move on. And we didn't overthink anything, right? We just kind of marched on accomplished a task and moved on to the next one. And it was all because the, at least for me anyway, the agency had kind of taught you that.

2:37:30And it also taught you to make a decision without perfect information, right? A lot of people sit around and wait to gather all the data. And people love data now because it's so readily available. And the agency taught us very early on, you know, that if you sit and wait for that happy day when you get all your information, something bad's going to happen. Lowering the action threshold a little bit. Yeah, so that window closes or, you know, next thing you know, you got to, everything's going sideways. So you learn to make decisions within perfect information, right? And just move on. And not sit around and stare at your fucking navel and wonder whether it was the right decision or not.

2:38:09And I've never been one of those people. I've never sat and angsty and thought to myself, geez, if I'd done that, I could have done, you know, because I don't see where that benefits anybody. But so that's, that's kind of it. I try to, I try to teach that to my boys that life is not as difficult as we try to make it out to be, right? You, you know, life can be fairly simple, right? And, you know, what you have to do is you have to decide you're going to work a little bit harder than everybody else, which isn't hard because there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of folks not working as hard as they could.

2:38:43And if you do that, then your results are that much bigger, right? You stand out that much more because you're willing to just put out a little bit more. If you're trying to teach that to kids, it's tough because at that age, they envision that it's going, ah, I can't do that. I mean, that's, that's I'm doing everything I can't. They have no idea what they're capable of doing. So when you say you got to work a little bit harder and then you'll realize those benefits. It can be a difficult process but that's I think one of the most important things you can you can teach your kids and also again not to not to make life more difficult than it is right and and that's that's been my primary objective with my boys you know is and and my daughter who's who's grown up now she's a terrific kid but the boys are younger and so trying to get them to understand that and to push themselves a little bit harder.

2:39:35I mean, everybody wants the same thing. You want to produce productive, good people. The world's got enough average people. My job is not to produce average adults from the kids that we've gotten. So anyway, I'm not sure I was going with that. I think there's definitely an allure of over -complicating things because it feels sophisticated to have this high threshold information and to have a very well planned out org structure and this is where we're going to go and it's so on and so forth. But yeah, you often end up being defeated by somebody who is just able to move more quickly than you within perfect information.

2:40:13Yeah. And just finding the balance between these two things because there are certain areas where I don't think that you should compromise on quality. If you're going to do your press release, don't rush it. When it comes to naming and branding and incorporating and things like that, that you should move relatively slowly to ensure that you're getting this thing done right. But knowing where the battles for perfection lie are very, very important. Right. And you have to strike the balance between speed and effectiveness and quality, obviously, particularly in the commercial sector. I mean, we've dealt with companies that go into new markets on a regular basis, right?

2:40:50And so they have to do an assessment of that environment and understand what the competitors are doing and etc. But we've dealt with some very large corporations that's where their mindset is, look, we got to get into the market. And if we make some mistakes, fine, we'll clean up. But we have to be in the market now. And so they will rush that process. And yes, they make some mistakes. Now, they're big enough as entities, as corporations to recover from that. But if you're a small operation, right? If you're starting up in particular, you can't afford to make that at mistake, game over. Brick game over, exactly.

2:41:22But so it does depend on size, but it is interesting that I remember having a conversation with one corporate, I can't really name them, but one, they're a manufacturer of a very well -known consumer product. And that was their whole point. No, we understand that it's gonna take a little more time to evaluate the environment with competitors are doing, but we don't have time. and we're going and yes, they made mistakes and it took them some time, took them a lot of money to recover, but they did. So I guess they were proven right at the end of the day. Yeah. Anyway, Mike Baker, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the hell out of you.

2:42:05Thank you for coming through. No, thank you, man. I really appreciate it. It was a great conversation. Really enjoyed it. And hopefully I didn't bore you. No, not at all. Why should people go? They want to keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing. Well, I'm on X. We call it X now. Don't we? At MB company man, you know, for all your global intelligence and security needs, of course, there's Portman Square Group. And we've got the podcast, which has turned out to be a wonderful adventure, the President's Daily Brief. And it's every morning, in about 20 minutes, you get your top stories of the day, facts and just a tiny bit of context.

2:42:38And then the afternoon version is about 10 minutes. You get updates on some of the top stories and get to move on your way, Bob's your uncle. and actually I just learned not too long ago where Bob's your uncle came from as a saying, and it's fascinating. I'll just tell people, you Google that. Google the origins of Bob's your uncle. Okay. As a saying, I don't know if people still say it, maybe they don't, but if they do, check it out. Anyways, so the president's daily brief, every day, weekdays, it's been a great experience so far. We just kicked it off. I started in September and we've been available on all your podcast platforms.

2:43:14Look at me, I'm a marketing whiz. I know you're down here in the muck in the mire with the rest of us. Making podcasts. Mike, I really appreciate it. Yes, thank you, man. Thank you.