Trump's CIA Director Issues Stark Warning on National Security

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3:26Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump's CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has been throwing Donald Trump under the bus. This as Donald Trump blamed the intelligence community during his first administration for covering up what Donald Trump claimed was foreign election interference. Of course, everything that Donald Trump said was completely false and debunked. But when Donald Trump blamed his intelligence community from his first term, guess who was the director of national intelligence in his first term? John Ratcliffe, who is Donald Trump's current CIA director. So Ratcliffe obviously knew what Donald Trump was going to do.

4:08Ben Meiselas:So when Donald Trump then declassified a few hundred documents following that disastrous speech Donald Trump gave at the end of last week, there were some interesting documents that referenced how China would leak information about Donald Trump regarding, and then it's all redacted, a la the Epstein files, if they thought that Donald Trump was going to engage in any behavior that might harm the Chinese government. And so actually what Donald Trump revealed by declassifying certain documents was that apparently China has dirt on Donald Trump, although it's all redacted. And some of the documents that Donald Trump released talked about how Russia, of course, was trying to interfere with the 2020 election to help Donald Trump and to set up former President Biden and Hunter Biden with various lies about Burisma.

5:08Ben Meiselas:And I think John Ratcliffe knew exactly what those documents said. And so when Donald Trump tried to attack the intelligence community, which was Ratcliffe, Ratcliffe made sure those documents were included in the batch of documents that were released. But it wasn't just that. I mean, Ratcliffe just gave an interview, public interview over here, as part of the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, which, by the way, I mean, Trump was speaking at events like this as well. And Ratcliffe said very publicly that one of the big things we have to be very careful of is he says that the Chinese steal technology.

5:52Ben Meiselas:They replicate it. The state subsidizes it. And that's their model of success. They're very good at it. So we should not be giving them additional information and technology from the United States. Interesting. Because that's Donald Trump's Xi Jinping policy. Recall back on December 8th, 2025, Donald Trump posted, I have informed President Xi of China that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approve customers in China and other countries under conditions that allow continued strong national security. She responded positively. 25 % will be paid to the United States of America.

6:37Ben Meiselas:This policy will support American jobs. Well, definitely support it at that time a little bit. Some positive movement in NVIDIA's stock. Not quite sure about national security, as Reuters reported at the time. U.S. to allow NVIDIA H-200 shipments to China. The United States will allow the H-200 processors, its second best artificial intelligence ships, to be exported to China and collect 25 % fees on such sales. And when Donald Trump was in China this past May, what did Donald Trump do? he solidified that deal and Ratcliffe spoke out about it. Now, I'll show you that in a moment, but this also comes at a time where we also learned how the U.S.

7:24Ben Meiselas:Commerce Department eased all of its export controls on the United Arab Emirates from accessing AI chips and other very highly sensitive technology that I think the CIA would prefer be very closely guarded. And what leaked yesterday? Do you remember? I wonder who the source is from CNN here. The Trump regime tentatively agreed to let Saudi Arabia enrich uranium under a draft civilian nuclear deal that would not require the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to adopt the IAEA. It's the International Atomic Energy Agency's Enhanced Safeguard Protocols. CNN reports this deal, negotiated in October of 2025, remains unsigned by Donald Trump, and nuclear experts warn it could give Riyadh a path toward weapons capability for enriched uranium, while lawmakers have not yet received the agreement for mandatory congressional review.

8:34Ben Meiselas:I wonder who knew about the Saudi Arabia deal that the lawmakers have not yet received to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium and potentially bring it to weapons grade. Especially as Donald Trump flails and is completely and utterly desperate right now as his escalation against Iran backfires. fires. So I find it very, very interesting that all of that is out there, not to mention, y 'all have seen the document, right? That Donald Trump, I'm not sure if Donald Trump knew he was releasing this document, but take a look at what the document was about China. Seems like China has some dirt on Donald Trump, which came from that document done from the intelligence community.

9:21Ben Meiselas:This is what it says. Redacted, redacted, we judge that China will redacted. Evaluate the implications of various electoral outcomes on its interests, if Beijing were to assess that the increasingly downward trajectory in US-China relations threatens China's rise and cannot be dealt with using existing tools, it might attempt more directly to thwart the president's re-election, this is about Trump in 2020, including by leaking information, redacted, redacted, or through online redacted influence networks. Then it shows what it was going to leak about Donald Trump. Redacted, redacted, redacted.

10:03Ben Meiselas:That brings me to what Ratcliffe just said at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit. Here's what he says about the Chinese stealing technology. Trump is handing it to them. Here, play this clip. and Western companies develop. And then the state, you know, and they're very good at it. They steal it. They replicate it. The state subsidizes it. And that's their model of success. And so what I would say from my standpoint at CIA and my approach is, and it's always been this way, whatever organization, I think this applies to whatever organization or company you're... You know, I never realized how much my shower water was affecting my skin and hair until I switched to Jolie.

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11:47Ben Meiselas:Then you had Ratcliffe saying that if China gets a technological advantage over us, that's a real problem. He says, we can't let that happen. It's already happened. Here, play this clip. To use your examples of things that are important, if China gets a technological advantage of us, and I'll just use 5G as an example, the problems that Huawei created in that space, that's a real problem. We can't let that happen. So when we talk about things now, like frontier AI models and the fact that Western technology is ahead, we need to make sure that we're taking advantage of that. And from the CIA's perspective, that means that we have to have the ability to make sure that we're deploying that and our officers are able to use that.

12:36Ben Meiselas:Now, one of the things that Ratcliffe also said at this time, and I think this was also a message directed to Trump, is Ratcliffe said, you know, right now in Russia, a new Russian assault troop who is recruited and put on the front lines, once that Russian soldier is on the front lines, on average, the lifespan, according to the CIA of that Russian soldier, whether it's true or not, this is what he said, is 20 to 30 minutes on average, because AI drones have become specialized killing machines. And I think that part of this also is a warning to Donald Trump about invading Keshem Island or about invading the coast of Iran, because Iran has these capabilities as well right now.

13:27Ben Meiselas:And you would see, I think, a mass slaughter of US troops if Trump went forward with his invasion of Keshem. Here, let's play this clip. you may have seen in Ukraine. So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit right now arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes. 20 and 30 minutes. And that's because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines. Now, it's not just my read. I mean, you saw the analysis right after the speech, that disastrous speech Donald Trump gave on MS Now. Here's what one of their hosts, one of their panelists, Rode, had to say.

14:26Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip. If any of this is true, the person biggest, who's in the most trouble here should be John Ratcliffe, President Trump's - Who oversaw the intelligence community at the time and wrote the report and oversaw the report. So during Donald Trump's first term, John Ratcliffe allowed China to get, you know,$200 million voter records. Those voter records are public. Again, I'm hearing that there's one, you know, two senior officials I'm talking to, I don't want to describe them more, who were like, this is all public. This all occurred under John Ratcliffe. And right here I have, this is the dissent that John Ratcliffe submitted in 2021 to the analysis that was done about foreign influence operations in 2020.

15:11And his only complaint in this document is that the effort by China to influence public opinion, you know, disinformation, bots, that kind of thing is larger. He thought that the effort China made was larger than the main assessment. This was also made public that this this should have been a bigger topic that they made this effort. There is nothing in John Ratcliffe's dissent about votes being switched in any state by China. nothing. In fact, in the 2020 report, they make clear that there were not votes changed,

15:46Ben Meiselas:right? The one that was his report. Yeah, because Ratcliffe was the director of national intelligence at that time. Also, it should be noted that after Donald Trump's speech, Ratcliffe put out a statement, but Ratcliffe did not agree with Donald Trump that there was election interference or that there was anything to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That's all phony. And Ratcliffe just talks about, to support Trump's transparency initiatives, the CIA has taken significant steps, including providing declassified documents for public release. Well, the declassified documents were the document about China that I was telling you about, and also confirming that Russia spread false claims about Biden and engaged in criminal activity vis-a-vis Burisma.

16:41Ben Meiselas:And it advanced these narratives with U.S. officials, people close to Trump, and planned a high-profile corruption scandal against Joe Biden under Biden at the peak of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Now, there's one other piece of this that I think that perhaps Ratcliffe was doing alongside J.D. Vance. You know, this story came out about how Whitcoff and Kushner, according to what it said, that the Iranian negotiators who were at Switzerland and Islamabad when the MOU was being negotiated, which no longer exists, And apparently they told J.D. Vance that Wyckoff and Kushner were solely there in order to gain inside information to manipulate the markets.

17:34Ben Meiselas:And that's what they were there. They were going to look over the shoulder of Vance and their whole goal was to, one, report back to Netanyahu what was happening and to manipulate the markets. That was what the story was out there. J.D. Vance responded to the Hormuz letter. And J.D. Vance said, that's completely bogus. I never received a message like that. Steve and Jared are trusted members of the team. I see a lot of BS flying around there. But to me, it's notable that J.D. Vance was highlighting that to begin with. At the same time, you have all this other, you have everything else going on.

18:15Ben Meiselas:And so, I mean, I think that J.D. Vance was highlighting it for a reason. and it was a denial, but I think it was JD Vance pointing people to it. Why else would you repost the Hormuz letter like that? My view. Let me know what you think. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Thank you for watching.

18:52You