966: Patrick Winn | Wa State: When a Drug Cartel Becomes a Country

26:24But as a nation state, yes, it is pretty highly functioning. Anarchic is not a way that I would describe it at all. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Patrick Nguyen. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by 1-800-CONTACTS. You know that last pair of contacts panic? My wife, Jen, knows it way too well. She's had these mornings where she's out of contacts and stuck wearing these old glasses she's got to keep wiping clean with her sleeve. But now, she makes sure to load up ahead of time because her next set is always on the way from 1-800-CONTACTS. They're the only major retailer that lets you renew your prescription online, so Jen gets her same doctor prescribed contacts fast with free shipping without leaving the house.

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29:28And many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So hey, come on in. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course at sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to Patrick Nguyen. Earlier, and I'm reading the book, and it's like if you wander outside your village, someone pounces and cuts your head off and then puts it on a spike and fertilizes their garden with it, with your magical spirit that comes out of your brain or whatever. This certainly sounds more like a, what's the right word? Is it more like an oligarchy where just rich drug lords have the power?

30:00And are we talking about a lot of corruption? And it seems like at least the wealth gap is quite large. But what did you feel? I mean, you went there, and we'll talk about that in a second, but you went there. Does it feel safe or does it feel chaotic? This will blow people's minds. It's probably the most stable place inside the country right now. Inside of Burma, yeah. Yeah, inside of Burma and Myanmar. They're undergoing a raging revolution. Some call it a civil war. Waa state, because it's autonomous, stands apart from that. And there are no battles there. There is no war there. We don't have a perfect vision or insight into everything happening there.

30:41So I'm not saying it's free of violence. It's far from utopian. I would never say anything like that. But it's stable. And this has been a people who have been isolated, in part by choice, for quite a long time. That's becoming less and less true. So the Chinese version of TikTok is called Douyin. Yeah, Douyin. Yeah, I don't speak Chinese. Yeah, it's okay. So you see like wah soldiers, I'm talking about men and women, posting like dreamy montages on TikTok and trying to look cute and doing like TikTok style dances. That's funny. Or just like hanging out and drinking beer. It really pierces this idea that they're this dark people locked away.

31:28It's like, no, they're not seeking the outside world's attention, But hey, they're on they're on social media, break dancing and doing all sorts of stuff. I mean, that's got to be kind of interesting to be surfing Dojin. And then you see like a, I don't know, a wah narco thirst trap post. Just like, what's going on here? What's up with the beret? Oh, I see. Oh, what's at the kilo of meth or whatever behind this woman in the photo? Oh, I see. She's flexing. Like, it's just kind of a funny mental image. The United Wa State Army has a lot of female soldiers, a lot. And so you see them on there just as much as the guys.

32:07Really? It really, yeah, when you think of narco, picture like a narco, a narco warrior or whatever, few people are going to imagine - A small Asian woman, yeah. That's not the first thing that pops into your mind. Right. And to be honest, Jordan, like the 30 ,000 troops in the United Wa State Army primarily are not involved in the narco trafficking trade specifically. It's really kind of this division. So you have the army, which is there to uphold the state. And I mean, because everyone's scared of them, they don't have anyone to fight. So a lot of times you see them like gardening or patching up potholes on the road and things like that.

32:48Then you have separately a ministry of finance that orchestrates the drug trafficking. And these days, I mean, they used to produce it all in-house, but these days, they've kind of gotten more sophisticated. Often they'll invite an outside, usually Chinese, criminal syndicate onto their territory and say, so this would be a good place to build a meth lab. It's next to a stream. Meth labs need a lot of water. You guys build it. You go find the chemists. We may play a role in helping source the chemicals because the chemicals to make meth come from the same general Chinese pharmaceutical chemical industry that produces the chemicals that are made into fentanyl and sold to Americans.

33:29It's a whole other story. But we'll play a limited role in this. Why don't you guys do all the hard work and we'll just collect rent. We'll just tax the operation. Wow. This is a smarter, more corporate way to be involved in the drug trade. You don't have to do it all yourself. Right, so they're basically then acting as like the administrators of a special economic zone instead of trying to be state-run industries with little education and resources. Like bring in the pros. Bring in the pros, let them run here. We run security. They pay us taxes slash rent and we're good. You're right, that is pretty, it seems like a better division of labor.

34:06And it's also, it probably keeps things a little bit more calm at home too. Just the political kind of, and it ties them further with China. I mean, it's all kind of good things for them that come from that. How big is the drug trade then with Wastate? Do we have a dollar figure at all? Sort of. So the UN will say that the Asian meth trade, this is the largest meth trade in the world, the overall economy is about$60 billion. So just to put that into perspective, like most countries' GDPs aren't$60 billion. There are countries in Southeast Asia that have smaller economies than that. But that's looking at the Asian meth trade from top to bottom.

34:49That is counting the value of the trucks that carry the meth and the street dealers in Australia who might be selling meth produced in Wastate somewhere in Sydney. So that's a giant number. I've had people ask me like, oh, so Wastate has a GDP of$60 billion? No, I don't know what the GDP of Wastate is. I'm not sure that the leaders know either. That's really hard to put a dollar amount on. I would imagine it's in the billions, but it's not quite that large. A lot of the money is really flushing into the syndicates that move it across borders. So the Wah might have a role moving it into Thailand, but then from there, it goes to one of Thailand's ports and it could go all the way to Japan or Taiwan or Australia.

35:38Every time a kilo of meth or heroin or anything jumps a border, it jumps up in value. And so I think it's actually those international syndicates that are soaking up the really big profits. Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. Do you think that the drug trade in Wastate is bigger than the GDP of Burma, or is that a ridiculous idea? I don't trust the GDP figure for Burma from Myanmar. It's somewhere in the 50 billion range. It says 65, but if they're self-reporting, Okay. Yeah, who knows? I mean, I don't trust that at all. There's so many things that are sold illegally in Burma, from gyms to timber, there's human trafficking, there's an arms trade.

36:22It's just a highly unstable figure. So no, I mean, I wouldn't imagine that it's bigger. The GDP for Wastate is bigger than Myanmar, just because Myanmar is a much bigger country. Obviously, Wastate sort of nests inside of it. But I'll put it this way, Jordan. They're bringing in a lot of money. They're primarily producing crystal meth, which is like the stuff you see on Breaking Bad. But they have a different type of meth that was pioneered by WA State's premier drug lord. His name is Wei Shikang. This is a little pink pill called Yaba. And it's got about 20 % meth in it. The rest is caffeine and other fillers.

37:03It smells like Oreos, like the vanilla cream filling of Oreos. They scent it. Oh, they sent it. It's not just a coincidence. That's probably a good idea because it probably smells disgusting if you don't do that. I've been in the room where large bags of this have been cut open and it smells like you're in like a candy store or something. And this stuff, I tried to compare it to something that Westerners would understand, like Big Macs, right? So the best data I could find on Big Macs was that somewhere in the neighborhood of like half a billion are sold a year. It could be more than that. But according again to the UN, two to six billion of these pink meth pills are being produced every year.

37:45Not entirely in Wastate, but a lot of them are. I mean, they also sell for about$2. I've been away from the US a long time. I don't know how much Big Macs are going for. Yeah, I don't either. We're in similar price point. Just a massive, massive, massive, massively popular product here in Asia. And you take meth, especially a pill that only has 20 % meth, you might perform better at your job if you're doing really repetitive labor. So if I'm cutting up pineapples that are going to be sold in Walmart somewhere, or I'm stitching up sneakers that are going to be sold in the mall somewhere, I'm doing something over and over and over and over.

38:25And if you're on meth, that repetition becomes kind of pleasurable. So it actually has a role to play in the economy. No one's doing fentanyl here in Southeast Asia. Even heroin is not very popular anymore. It's all about meth. It's really shocking that it outsells this Yabba, outsells Starbucks or McDonald's in these places. Do they stamp a logo on the pills like they do with ecstasy in Europe and the United States or so I've heard? Oh yeah, they do. Every meth pill or many meth pills are stamped with the letters W-Y. I have been asked many, many times, and I've tried to find the answer as to why those two letters are the logo.

39:09I mean, it's as recognizable to Asian drug users as the Nike swoosh, as I say in my book. I don't know exactly what the W-Y is all about, but I do know this. Originally, in, say, the middle of the last century, amphetamine tablets were sold here, and they were sold by Burroughs Welcome, a huge pharmaceutical company. Those pills had, I believe, a unicorn stamped on them. And so Thai people called them Yama. Yama means medicine, and Ma means horse. At some point, when the DEA came and created a huge base of operations in Thailand. Those things became illegal. Nobody sold them anymore except on the black market.

39:53So you had all these guys making up what they called horse pills, amphetamine pills, in back alleys and things like that. It was really the Wah who seized the initiative to produce those at scale. And then they became called Yaba. Ba means crazy. So crazy meds or insanity pills. So that's a quick potted history of the Yaba meth pills that are super popular. Yes, they are branded. One other thing, it's interesting about branding, when they produce crystal methamphetamine, you can't stamp a logo on a crystalline shard of meth. So they put them in tea pouches. They're shiny foil pouches that say this certain brand of tea.

40:37Well, that brand of tea doesn't exist. It's just a way to show traffickers down the chain. This was produced in a solid facility. This is going to be upwards of 95 % pure. When you see this tea brand, you know it's good stuff. Wow. That's quite interesting. The idea that they have like brand loyalty, branding, almost like a marketing department kind of thing here with the stamping and the wrapping. It's really, I mean, that's partly a real business. And you can just see how far they've come, so to speak, with this stuff. Back in the day, they were making a third of global opium or something like that, right on brand for Cold War CIA times.

41:17Opium becomes heroin trade. Heroin smuggled through Thailand to Bangkok, sold to Chinese gangsters, makes its way, I think, to Vietnam, right into the veins of the American troops there. And then why the switch to meth? Is it just easier to transport and make or what? Is heroin less popular now? I don't even really know. I'll give credit to the principal trafficker in chief of Wastate is, again, same as Wei Xikang. I give him credit as a visionary here. He went all synthetic before any of the Mexican cartels did. He saw the writing on the wall. When you have to rely on a crop like coca or the opium poppy, it kind of sucks.

41:58I mean, you have to rely on this army of peasant laborers to produce it? Oh, what if there's a big cold snap and the crop turns out to be not so great? And oh my God, you have to control a lot of land that can't be growing food on that land. It's kind of a pain. So he realized and he convinced the WA government to go along with this to wholesale shift to methamphetamine for two reasons. One, it was understood that methamphetamine could be a more popular drug in Southeast Asia as heroin was sort of phasing out. And two, if you're primarily producing methamphetamine, which is what the Southeast Asian market wants, you can sell it within Asia.

42:42At this point, they did this in the late 90s, early 2000s. So at that point, Southeast Asia had a vibrant enough working class, they could afford drugs. Back in the day, Vietnam era, Vietnam War era, you want to sell narcotics at scale, you have to sell to Americans. I mean, we are the most ravenous consumers of narcotics in the world. We still are. And only Americans and Europeans and others, but only more developed countries could afford to just gobble up a lot of drugs. If you're taking your heroin into the fields and valleys of Southeast Asia, you're going to find a lot of people who grow rice, don't have much money, probably don't even handle that much money.

43:25These are not very good consumers of drugs that can't afford it. That's why it was such a godsend when the United States sent so many GIs into Vietnam. You had these young American guys who had a stipend from the military and you had a base, but they were also very traumatized because they were in a war and they could afford heroin. So after you got used to selling it to them, then you think, all right, well, we got to sell it to them when they go back home as well. And it wasn't until the early 2000s when Southeast Asia was rich enough to buy its own drugs. And methamphetamine is what they want.

44:04You focus on them. And by not selling heroin to the United States anymore, it helps the DEA stay off your back. I mean, the DEA is still going to come after you, but they can't justify a massive, expensive paramilitary style war against your territory. You mentioned earlier the division in Wastate. Some people wanted drugs and money. Other people, I guess, thought, hey, we're never going to develop further if we can't get assistance and join the legitimate world. So does that division still exist? I know you mentioned there's Christian groups in Wastate. So I assume missionaries got in there at some point if there are Christians.

44:40or have they kind of squashed that and now they're all rolling in the same direction? Yeah, I should probably back up and explain how I would even know about this because like Jordan, for the past 10 years, I've been trying to like peer into the inner circle of law leadership. Most of these guys are indicted by the DEA. So it is kind of like trying to get an interview with El Chapo or something like that. It's a mission impossible. It was about five years ago when I was becoming friendly with a Wah guy in Myanmar in a city close to Wah State town. And he knew I was trying to interview the leadership.

45:20And he had met them. He was pretty high up in the United Wah State Army. And he said, okay, I'm ready to introduce you to my father-in-law. You wanna interview a leader? Let's go meet my father-in-law. So who the hell is your father-in-law? It's like, all right, we'll see. So we walk up the street to this compound with security cameras on all the awnings, big cement compound, and we're let inside. I go through the gates. We're sitting in this very sort of austere living room. And I look around and I see two things that are really interesting. One is a portrait of Mr. Father-in-law in a WA uniform in his younger days, looking very debonair.

46:04I was like, oh, this guy was really high up. I mean, I'm used to seeing like, you think of law leaders or DEA indicted guys, you think of mugshots, right? But this guy was, you know. The other thing I noticed on the other wall is a portrait of Jesus with like blonde Jesus. Blonde Jesus or blind Jesus? I don't know if he could see, but he was definitely blonde. Okay, that is, I guess, an interesting choice. Okay. So I said, okay, this guy is Christian, which is unusual for a law leader because most of them are not just anti-American, but anti-West in general. So in walks a former top three leader of WA state.

46:45And at this point, he's in his 70s. He flops down. He asks who I am. I tell him, look, I'm American. I also said I was a journalist. I figure this is the part where I get thrown out. Yeah, feel lucky. All right, you know, what do you want to know? and it's like a figure from the Old Testament. He looks you right in the eyes because he's like dark, compelling eyes. He has this kind of sandpapery voice. He's just a very severe person. He had been a top DEA asset. And as I went and continued to visit with him and visit with him, he eventually revealed this to me. He said that he was one of the most important informants for the DEA in Southeast Asia ever.

47:30So I had to check that out. I asked him for the names of his DEA handlers, tracked a few of them down, and they said, oh yeah, that guy's legit. We called him Superstar. That was his code name. So look, being a journalist, I have to check out everyone's story. So I go back to this man, his name is Saul Liu, and I say, Saul Liu, just try to check everything out here. What was your code name? And he goes, oh yeah, Superstar. So this is the guy who is trying to take Wastate in a different direction. This is the guy who, because his family was Christianized by missionaries, he believes in America and he believes America is this great Christian nation that can save his people from the darkness, which is, in his mind, drugs.

48:15So he worked with the DEA to team up, like the DEA teaming up with the drug cartel to have them wind down their operation in exchange for American aid. So he was the principal driver of this movement to unite the law with the Americans, which is pretty extraordinary. Yeah, that must have been, I mean, that was kind of your 10 years to a lucky break situation from the sound of it. It felt like a lucky break, but when you're obsessed with something for 10 years and you keep beating your head against the law, I guess eventually the door opens. Yeah, that's kind of how a lot of this stuff works, eh?

48:46It must have still been so hard to get into WA state. How did you end up getting into the territory? Because when you met this guy, this was in what, Rangoon or something like that? in Burma or was he living in Wa State when you met him? If so, how did you get there? Yeah, he was living in a Burmese town called Lashio, which is about 50 miles from Wa State. Okay. When you're a top level leader and also a DEA informant that has a way of bringing you into conflict with the other Wa leaders. And at that point, he had been driven out. So yeah, I did not meet him in Wa State. So how did you get into Wa State?

49:25I assume you didn't get smuggled in because you're still alive and your head is not rotting on a spike. And I don't care if they don't do that anymore. No, my head is firmly attached, maybe not firmly. But I had been asking to go to their capital and to interview their current leaders, DEA indicted leaders for a long time. Once I forged this relationship with Saul Liu, this former leader who at that point was on the outs with them, I became a known quantity to the WA government. And that certainly hurt my chances of going to the Capitol and sitting in the boardroom with one of the leaders, which, hey, maybe that never would have happened anyway.

50:09Also, COVID happened and the WA state went into lockdown. So I had to get creative. What I did is I went to the perimeter of WA state, which also touches Northern Thailand. If anyone's ever been backpacking in Thailand, And if you were to keep going north and north and north, you would go into Myanmar. It's what it will say on Google Maps. But if you go over at the right part, you're actually going into Wa State. So I went across the border into the fringes of Wa State into a village that was still in the process of being dominated by the United Wa State Army. And so from this village, I mean, you could see Wa Fortresses up on the hill looking down on it.

50:56At that point, the Wau State government was dictating terms to this village, which was not ethnically Wau. Most of the people there were from a different indigenous group, but they were being swallowed up by Wau State, which is still expanding as best it can today. Oh, wow. So is it kind of colonizing other parts of Burma? Yeah, actually, its territory just expanded two weeks ago. It is still actively expanding. It has other revolutionary militias around its territory that do its bidding, or maybe that's putting it too strong, but it funds them, it gives them weapons, it supports them. It's a growing nation state.

51:37I mean, it's a young country. It's only existed for 35 years, and it would like to expand as best it can. So yeah, if anybody has listened to this and thought that I was describing WA state as this great noble enterprise. I think it's a legitimate enterprise to want their own nation state, but they've done ethnic cleansing. I mean, a lot of nations in their founding stages engage in ethnic cleansing and the WA government has done that too. So when I was in this village, you know, with the WA fortress looming, looming above us, I had villagers telling me pretty horrific stories about people being hurt and maimed and driven out of their homes and, you know, trying to farm rice very recently and having law officers come down and be like, nope, you can't do that, kind of starving them out.

52:27So it was the other side of the coin. Yeah. Yeah. Yikes. So who is the leader of WA State now? Or is it sort of a group? Do you have a council of people or do they have a president, a dictator? How does it work? I said they're highly organized. They're not quite organized enough to have a dictator. It ain't North Korea. It's not an Orwellian state or anything like that. Yeah, they do have a leader. His name is Bao, Bao Yuxiang. This was a man who, according to my research, had actually participated in some headhunting when he was a young man, possibly a teenager. But you can hear that and think, oh my God, what a psycho or something like that.

53:05Nah, that's not how it is. I mean, these guys, to maintain a rogue nation state with the CIA bearing down on you and the Chinese Communist Party bearing down on you and others. Well, the Hunten Burma. Gotta be pretty smart. The Hunten Burma. He's kept them out, too. So you can't write this guy off as a simpleton. I think the ruling council, the ruling Politburo of law state are playing a political game that is far more sophisticated than any played by anyone in U.S. Congress. I think if you went into U.S. Congress and grabbed someone from either party and had them play like 40 chess at the level that the war playing, they wouldn't last two weeks.

53:49these guys are very sophisticated operators. I mean, it's not easy. In most scenarios, if we were to look into the multiverse, in most scenarios, this thing flops, right? They're an indigenous people. There's only half a million to a million of them. They are hated by their neighbors. It's not going to work out. But it did work out. And that's kind of what I want to put across in my book. This is a serious nation state. You might want to take it seriously.

54:26This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Patrick Wynn. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by the GIST podcast. If you're looking for a news podcast that is smart, unfiltered, and doesn't just echo whatever side you already agree with, check out the GIST with my friend, Mike Peska. Mike's been doing this longer than just about anyone. It's actually the longest running daily news podcast. It's earned that spot on Apple's top charts for a reason. Each episode's around 30 minutes, so it's perfect for your commute or while you're making breakfast. It's always packed with sharp, thought-provoking takes.

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55:54I am more than happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Patrick Wynn. Is the leader that you mentioned, is he also the chief drug trafficker or is he kind of more civilian administrator of the territory? He's the strong man. Okay. Yeah. A lot of Wa people don't like this, but it's sometimes said about them that in Wa state, you have the muscle and the brains. So the muscle is Bao. He's the guy who runs the army. He's the guy who runs really the nation. Then you have Wei. He's the financial mastermind.

56:33He happens to be half Chinese and speaks Chinese fluently. So he's more able to plug into the international narcotics trade. So Wei would be the real figurehead for running the drug operation. Wei Shikang, again, I think he is the most successful drug lord perhaps ever because after all, he's not caught. But this is a guy who, I mean, if you were to look at, he dresses like he's like, the manager of a radio shack or something. He doesn't wear a bunch of gold rings. He doesn't wear a bunch of jade. He doesn't have a big harem. He's a germaphobe. I think he could fairly diagnose him with OCD. He's really smart though.

57:18And he's incredible at his job. He loves to make money. I don't even think he likes to spend it. He just loves to generate profit. So he's not a leader of men. I mean, there's very few photos of him in existence. He doesn't want to be anyone's great leader. He doesn't want everyone's adoration. So he's handling the financial side, but you got to have a face on things, and that's Bao. So muscle and the brains. How do they launder and transfer money, right? Because if they're dealing in essentially a cash business with Chinese gangsters, what good is the money if they hike it up a mountain? How do they handle the logistics here?

57:55Do you know? Yeah, I do know a little bit about that. And the DEA has targeted their shell companies as well. Yeah, WA leaders have quite a number of shell companies. They, at one point, were big stakeholders in an airline in Burma. Everything from banks to casinos. Back in the day, they were producing CDs. I mean, or they had a stake in like just this very promiscuous portfolio of things from cement factories to chemical factories to making CDs to loan sharking. So they spread it all around. There is sort of a law ink out there that controls a lot of money. Again, my argument is that I wish that they would, if you're gonna make money from the drug trade, I wish that you would build more schools and hospitals with that.

58:43But that's just my personal critique. Yeah, I get it. I mean, that's kind of the problem, right? Is once you get a taste of that, you're like, why should I share this with other people when I could buy a villa in France and nobody can do anything about it? I mean, that's the problem with crime and not having rule of law in many ways. By the way, is this area where King's Roman Casino is? We did a show about cyber slavery in that area and also wildlife trafficking, which episode 545, and the guest on that show, Rachel Newer, she went undercover and went to King's Roman Casino. And I want to say it was on the border of Thailand and Burma or something like that, but I'm not sure.

59:19Is this the same kind of lawless area? Kings Roman Casino is also under sanctions from the U.S. government, in part because the U.S. alleges that it's been sort of a way station for methamphetamine flowing out of law state to the international market. So yeah, it's in the constellation of this underworld. I've spent some time there myself. Fascinating place. I mean, if you want to buy methamphetamine or ketamine in King's Roman, very easy, and no one's gonna give you any trouble for it. Look, if you go out here on the streets of Bangkok and smoke meth in public, you'll probably get arrested. At King's Roman, it's just highly available, and yeah, it's kind of plugged into that general underworld, for sure.

1:00:07What is that casino like? The only kind of casinos I've been into are in Vegas, essentially, or like a small, tiny one in some European city, or like Monte Carlo. I'm imagining these are a little bit like a Motel 6 to the Ritz-Carlton in comparing a King's Roman's Casino to, I don't know, Caesar's Palace, maybe. It seems like it's a pretty gnarly place. Wildlife trafficking, underage prostitution, meth trade, human slavery, eh, you know, seedy doesn't quite do it. I like gambling myself, and nothing is more fun than like a hot craps table. No, in this casino, it's all baccarat, which I find an extremely boring game.

1:00:50But the King's Roman complex in general is catering to mainland Chinese visitors primarily. So baccarat is their game of choice. It's what they like. In general, like a Chinese casino is less wild weekend with the boys and a little more like, I'm going to sit here and smoke cigarettes and drink milk tea and focus on my baccarat game. It's a different gambling culture. The casino in general is just a weird place. I mean, you walk up to it and there are these giant statues of, I think they're like Roman gods or something like that, or they're supposed to be. It's hard to tell. These Corinthian pillars.

1:01:30I mean, it looks like a Jersey mob boss is having a psychotic fever dream. And this is what got spat out. It's an odd place. Yeah, stopping the smuggling of this stuff. It's got to be very difficult, right? because the wah seem super loyal to one another. You mentioned in the book, they often hang themselves in the jail cell if they get captured and they almost never talk. That is something like straight out of a movie, like a ninja movie, like who kills themselves when they get caught? It's like something KGB spies did in the Cold War. It's crazy. Yeah, that was a story told to me by a Thai anti-narcotics agent who when this yaba, these meth pills started really flooding into Thailand, they had orders to catch Wah people and flip them.

1:02:14So a team of like, let's say, usually they would travel with 10 guys and eight of them have on big heavy backpacks full of meth. And there's one guy in the front of the column and one guy in the back with automatic rifles. And they would come across the border into Thailand, drop it off and zip it back across the border. So what the Thai military was trying to do is catch one of these Wah guys and flip them and turn them into CIs, confidential informants, and send them back into the drug trafficking operation to snitch. Massive failure, massive failure. They wouldn't talk, according to what this soldier told me, wouldn't talk at all.

1:02:55He was massively frustrated. So he would put them in a cement cell. And at one point, as he told me, they figured out if they left a length of rope in there that a lot of the people they caught would kill themselves rather than facing the judicial system. And this guy was so bitter about it, I think he was perfectly happy with that outcome. But there's all types, just like in any culture, there's all types of people. And I've met some of the most sensitive, loving, caring, Wah people you could ever imagine. So giving, so trusting. But when you do hear stories like that, it makes you think there is another side, this like warrior ethos that also still exists in the culture.

1:03:33What's the capital city of Wah State? And what is that place like? Like in the book, you kind of talk about it briefly. You say it has everything Rangoon has, but what does that mean? That's kind of like saying, oh, this place is everything Pyongyang has in North Korea. It's like, well, okay, so no electricity half the time and nothing works. What is it really like there? Most people would look at it and it would remind them of a second or third tier Chinese city. So it's up in the mountains. It's right on the border with China to facilitate trade coming over very easily. Paved streets. They had got some casinos, a lot of like administrative buildings.

1:04:08You know, all around it is very pastoral, but the city itself, somewhere between a town and a city and streetlights, police. If you're picturing like a hideout with skulls on the walls, it's certainly not that. And from my understanding, the electricity is 24 hours a day. Hey, they got a bowling alley. If you were to go to the capital of Myanmar, Yangon or Rangoon, they call it, It's going to be a much more tense environment, especially because the revolution, the civil war is underway. Power does go out a lot. There's a lot of poverty. I'm not saying that the Wa capital is a paradise by any means, but compared to the reputation, it's surprisingly developed.

1:04:52I know Chinese people call Wa state Shanjai Zhongguo, which means like knockoff China. And it's actually a really clever play on words, right? Because it also means mountain fortress China. because Shanjai means mountain fortress, but it also means, somehow it also means knockoff, like counterfeit goods. And I was pretty damn proud of my Mandarin that I understood that play on words when you wrote about it, but I assume that they don't like being called that. No, they don't. Yeah, it's kind of like the Chinese slur on Waste would be like, picture like a Rolex watch that says like Rolex and it's got like one letter off.

1:05:26Like, oh, ha ha, it's like a bootleg imitation of China. No, Waste people hate that. And right now there's a new crop of leaders coming up who are in their, most of them in their 40s and 50s. And they have a decision to make. So are they gonna continue being more or less a client state of China? Because let's face it, the whole experiment with allying with the US didn't work out thanks to the CIA. So they've got to have a strong relationship with China. There's no way around it. But could they push back more? Are they in a position where they could say, if Beijing makes a request that they don't want to honor, could they say, nah, next?

1:06:10And at the moment, they do their best to kind of ride that wave to make sure Beijing is happy and to maintain their autonomy. I mean, I don't think I have to remind people that if you're an indigenous minority on the borderlands of China, like Tibetan or Uyghur, you will come under heavy suppression from the Chinese state. The Wa have faced that threat as well. This is one reason why, even though they're buddy-buddy with China, because they have to be, it's one reason they need their own nation state. So they're not totally swallowed by China. It's a really difficult equilibrium to maintain. So where are we now then, the West now with the WA?

1:06:50Are we trying to stop them from selling drugs? Have we given up on trying to stop them from selling drugs? Are we helping them somehow do something, develop, et cetera? Or are we just kind of like, well, can't get in there, hands off? More the latter. So, I mean, I talked to many DEA agents, former DEA agents for this book, as well as a lot of WA figures as well, lots of anti-narcotics folks. I got the story from them. But when I went to the DEA headquarters and just asked for some participation in this, they seem happy to talk about Mexican cartels, right? They kind of brushed me off. And all right, look, they have no obligation to talk to me, right?

1:07:29But I'm pretty sure the reason is because they don't have a positive story to tell here. The strategy of the DEA is to build up some figure that you've never heard of, some drug trafficker into a big monster, and then they go slay him or lock him up, right? And there have been some efforts to make sort of a villain character out of WA figures, namely this drug trafficker Wei Shikang. But you have to slay him or lock him up to reap the rewards. And they just can't. I mean, the only way that they could stop him is by invading, and they're just not going to do that. So I think it's a bit of an embarrassment for the DEA.

1:08:13And it's another indictment of the drug war in general. I will just add that, you know, I'm pretty critical of the drug war in the book. However, I did meet some DEA agents along the way who I respected greatly, who I found to be, you know, moral driven people. And so I don't want people to think this is a bash the US government book either. I'm just trying to tell reality as it is. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Are they shifting at all the WA to maybe some cybercrime now? Because I heard, again, at King's Roma Casino, extortion, scams, crypto scams, online gambling, or is that mostly the Chinese gangsters running that stuff?

1:08:52Recently, the WA have hosted some of that stuff. As it turns out, this is a red line for Beijing. This is something that China did come in and say, you're not doing this because a lot of it, I mean, we hear about it targeting people all over the world, but originally, these scam compounds, they were scamming Chinese people. It's a lot easier because they speak the same language. Wah people tend to speak Chinese and ruining people's lives left and right. And so Beijing stepped in and said, no, no, no. They actually even put out arrest warrants for some like mid-tier Wah leaders. And as I understand it, so far, the WA government is participating in bringing justice to these guys.

1:09:37So this is one area where I think the WA will lay off. It's not worth it. You don't want Beijing to be pissed off at you. No. Interesting that they're able to enforce their will out there. Well, it seems like the WA are not going anywhere. I wonder, is the junta in Burma trying to take them out at all? Or are they just kind of like, yep, there's another country inside our country. Can't do anything about that. Good luck. They know better. They know better. The Wah government is the most stable government in Myanmar. It's one of the most peaceful places in Myanmar. Why? The junta can't go in there.

1:10:12I mean, I don't think they could defeat the Wah. For one thing, you're talking about heavy mountain biting. That's something that highlanders are better at than lowlanders, which is where most of the Burmese troops are going to come from. Right now, the regime is getting its ass kicked by much smaller players. So to take on the Wah, forget about it. And then they have to wonder about what happens if they wage war on the Wah and China steps in and says, these guys are our little buddies, our protectorate, hands off. China is supplying a lot of the weaponry to Myanmar's regime. Even though the regime is really on the outs with China, China's getting increasingly fed up with them as they crumble.

1:10:57But I don't know. I'm almost willing to predict that WA state will outlast the Myanmar government as it currently exists. I think WA state will be there in 100 years. I'm not so sure about Myanmar's regime. Check in with me next year. I'm not sure they'll still be there. Sure, interesting. What about other groups or other clans? Because whenever there's this much money involved, you make enemies of people who just want to steal your business and steal your market shares. Or is there just nobody in a position to do so with the WA? There's other smaller sort of crime families with their own territories all throughout Myanmar's mountains.

1:11:30They also invite international Chinese criminal syndicates to come and run meth labs on their turf. They just don't have as much turf. The Wah seem to understand that it's all about geography. You want to control territory. If you can control the territory that is adjacent to the international market, which in this case is Thailand, And you're king. Like I said before, you can just invite outsiders to come in, run the meth labs and charge 20%. So yeah, the smaller operators, they don't have the weapons to take on the WA, but they also just don't have the turf. And if you want to maintain that much turf long term, you do need kind of a nationalist ideal.

1:12:14I mean, how many people want to fight and die and serve some crime boss? Well, not many. But how many people are willing to uphold and serve a nation that is protecting their indigenous homeland? I think quite a lot. And so the WA have every advantage in that category. Well, it sounds like you're a pretty adventurous person, man. I'm wondering what the next project is for you now that you've cracked WA state. Are you going deeper into that? Are you going to pick something else? I think I'm going to breathe for a while. This one really took it out of me, man. And like five years of really grinding before that, 10 years of like nipping around at the edges.

1:12:54Honestly, dude, like I think there's a bigger story to tell that maybe I can't access. I think somebody who speaks Chinese, which is the lingua franca of the drug trade in Asia, and who can blend in better, they might have better luck getting another side of the story or getting deeper than I did. but you got to come to this region. You got to stick around. I've been here 16 years and reporting on crime for 10 of those years. Like I'm around. In Spanish, there's this word. I don't speak Spanish, but as I understand this word, narco periodista. Yeah. Which means like narco journalist. Yeah. And I would like some more narco periodistas here.

1:13:36Hey, come blow the roof off this thing. Do a better job than I did even. I mean, I hope this sparks greater interest in this world and a more nuanced take on it, not this good versus evil drug war stuff. Well, thanks for coming on the show, man. It's really an interesting look at something that most of us have never even heard of and won't hear about anywhere else for that matter. So thanks for indulging us here. Great question, Jordan. Thanks so much. If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer for another episode that I think you might enjoy.

1:14:11There was a meeting where people can come and see how North Korea is, the propaganda way. It was like three hours praising Kim Il-sung by what he did for the country. When people ask me, how is it to go to North Korea? Well, it's quite difficult to describe because it's like your whole body is on overtime. You know you are being followed, and what do I say, and what do I do? How do I react to things? I'm going to the U.S. to meet up with the CIA, and I was like, wow. And I find out how my agent thinks. One of the most important things he taught me was to be a perfect mole or undercover agent is that you have to be 95 % yourself and then 5 % mole.

1:14:55The last 5 % is the one who observe and I was really good to networking with people. Without people actually know I was networking with them. Everything was recorded. So I just literally took the pants down on a whole regime exposing their women's program. It's a never-ending story. For more on how Ulrich the Mole, a Danish chef and family man, wound up working undercover in North Korea to expose its illicit arms trade, check out episode 527 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. All things Patrick Nguyen will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com or ask the AI chatbot also on the website. transcripts in the show notes as well.

1:15:36Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter every week, the team and I dig into an older episode of the show, dissect the lessons from it. So if you are a fan of the show, you want a recap of important highlights and takeaways, or you just want to know what to listen to next, the newsletter is a great place to do just that. jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. 6MinuteNetworking over at 6MinuteNetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or go ahead and connect with me right there on LinkedIn.

1:16:07This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in these wild tales, may be interested in crime in Asia. I don't know. That's oddly specific. Share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

1:16:37And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Conspirituality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation. Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis. Basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspirituality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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