Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 10/7/26: CIA Warns Civil War In Israel, Epstein Whistleblower Dead, Arctic Sea Route Battleground

Transcript

10/7/26: CIA Warns Civil War In Israel, Epstein Whistleblower Dead, Arctic Sea Route Battleground · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we
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• 0:20
  Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Turning
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: now to Israel, where obviously it's the three-year anniversary of
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: October 7th, so we wanted to look the state of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Israeli society, of what's happened to Gaza in the wake
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: of really an earth-shaking geopolitical event. We're in the middle
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: of the Iran war. I don't think it's an exaggeration
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: to say it really did change the entire region forever.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We're still just really in the midst of what that
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: change is going to mean. Let's start first of all
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: with Israel. Let's put this up here on the screen.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: This was a new report from Capital and Empire by
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Ada Chavez. I know that she previously worked with Ryan Grim,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and this was also co-published with Dropside. So she says
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: that a classified CIA current assessment warned that Israel is
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: at the risk of a civil war of state collapse
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: after years of what she says, genocide in Gaza and
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: war in Lebanon, Iran, deepened political, economic, and social fractures
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: within the country. The August report, which is titled Fracture
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: from Within, was compiled by experts within the CIA Red
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Cell And they say it is the unit responsible for providing, quote,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: alternative analysis within the agency, produce the assessment for a
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: combination of open source and U.S. intelligence. The assessment appears
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: to refer only to Israel's Jewish citizens and point to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: a volatile mix of pressures converging ahead of Israel's elections
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: on October 27th, economic crisis, soaring military spending, heavily armed
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: veterans returning from prolonged combat, many carrying serious psychological trauma,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and growing fury over ultra-Orthodox men who are exempt from
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: military service, escalating center of violence in the West Bank,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continuing to fight
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: onto power and igniting a potential constitutional crisis as he
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: himself is under a corruption investigation, Emily. And so I
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: feel like whenever you put all of that together, you
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: can see that the country and the way that it
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: reacted to October 7th clearly unleashed something in their society.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: They opened the Overton window, let's say, to the people
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: like Ben-Gavir and to Smotrich and elevated them to the
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: absolute mainstream. They also, Netanyahu had to collaborate and work
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: with these people to keep his hold on power. Obviously,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: the actions that they took in Gaza, tens of thousands,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: if not hundreds of thousands of people, either killed, injured, maimed,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: decimated the entire population of as a reaction to what
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: was obviously a disgusting, horrific terrorist attack there some three
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: years ago. But they have come and now found themselves
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: in the midst really of a crisis of their own
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: making because they won, I guess, in a certain sense
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: by killing as many of these Palestinians as they could.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: They didn't necessarily defeat, disarm Hamas, you know, in the
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: way that they claimed that they would. They certainly ignited
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of hatred against them in the rest of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the Middle East. And then even more so, they turned
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: public opinion in the United States around. against them and
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: capped it off with the Iran war. And so it's
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: basically become like this garrison state where, you know, they're
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: insular and they have their own kind of crazy-ass politics
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: heading in to this election. But the long-term vision, at
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the very least of how Israel's founders and kind of
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: the liberal Zionists and others who have ruled the country
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: for many years, it is not going to go in
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: that direction. That's the one thing that we know for
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: absolute certain.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: You know, I saw NAZA last night here in D.C.,
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: which is ruling the Israeli elections and obviously putting a
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: lot of heat on Netanyahu. And you having imbibed a
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: lot of the media coverage on it, I was a
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: bit surprised by how balanced it was, to be honest,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: because they dwell significantly on the horrors of October 7th,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: because what they do is build the case that you
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: just built, Sagar, of how that affected the kind of
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: national psyche in ways that you hear these guys from
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  Speaker 3: the intelligence units talking in ways that really, really deeply
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: affected them. And for the worse, in some of these
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: cases where you're hearing people talking about how they were
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  Speaker 3: essentially saying they have to do as much as possible
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: before they lose international legitimacy. And unfortunately, I think a
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: lot of people look back on the last three years
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: And that's why public opinion has changed here in the
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: United States. Public opinion was consistently pro-Israel in the United States,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: across the board, consistently pro-Israel in the United States, across
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: the board. And that's changed. We've covered that enormously here.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: And it hasn't just changed because the American people have
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: suddenly become pro-Hamas, as a lot of the commentary would
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: have you believe from pro-Israel folks. It has changed because
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: people didn't like what they saw. And I think it's entirely...
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  Speaker 3: fair to think back on the last three years and
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: look at the ways that things went in horrible directions
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  Speaker 3: because there was this race to do what they felt
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: needed to be done before international legitimacy was lost. And
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: that's just a really, really sad and bleak way to
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: look at the region.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, I just think it backfired tremendously.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: It wasn't what you're saying in terms of not like
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: what we saw. So we're paying for Right. And like
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: that really did make such a fundamental difference, not just
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: paying for it, but the influence in our society, our elections,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: in our business community, at the highest echelons of our culture,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: the government, you know, deporting people or prosecuting people for.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, go ahead.
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  Speaker 3: I just want to say there's another moment in Oslo
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: where one of the guys in the intelligence unit says,
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: you know, he's actually supportive of the A.I. They're talking
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: about Lavender using. AI to target Palestinians. He says, I
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: think the AI is better than a guy who just
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: lost his friend in Gaza a few weeks ago. And
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: that is an interesting insight. It was chilling, but it's
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: an interesting insight into how some of these awful targets
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: or misfires or intentional bad targeting, all of that, the
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: collateral damage, the nausea, as they would say in the film,
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: how all of that happened is because there was a
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: real righteous fury after October 7th, and it spun, because
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: it basically went unchecked, or checked in some really dubious ways. Encouraged,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, right, encouraged.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing, everybody can kind of empathize
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  Speaker 2: with that to a certain extent until it just goes...
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely insane.
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  Speaker 3: And then until you pay for it in the U.S.,
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: to your point.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right. And then let's put D2 up here on
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: the screen. So this was from Reuters where they talked
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: and published this yesterday. You know, don't forget that a
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: year ago we had this whole Gaza plan, Israeli ceasefire
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and Hamas. They had all agreed to it. This phase,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: which the 2025 in October 10th almost exactly secured the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: release of the last remaining hostages. that were seized in 2023,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: along with freedom for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian prisoners,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: detainees that were held by Israel, that was greeted, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I think with a lot of people were excited about it,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: or they were at least like, this is a beneficial direction, finally,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: that we're moving into, and this can move on. But
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  Speaker 2: as they point out, it has not stopped Israeli fire,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: as they point out, and it has not disarmed Hamas.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: And so they say the first phase, if we'll remember
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: the 20-point plan, was a suspension of all military operations
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  Speaker 2: and Israeli withdrawal from parts of the enclave. Well, instead,
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  Speaker 2: what they've said is that there's been no return yet
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  Speaker 2: to full-scale military operation, but at least 1,400 have now
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  Speaker 2: been killed just in the last year in direct combat.
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  Speaker 2: Many of them, they say, women and children, although it
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: does not disclose how many are militant casualties. There have
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: been a number of also Israeli soldiers that have now
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: been killed in the last year or so. And then
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  Speaker 2: in terms of the initial phase, the so-called yellow line,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: which we covered all this stuff extensively in October of 2025,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: that left Israel supposedly in control of 53% of Gaza,
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  Speaker 2: they have actually expanded its effective control to around two-thirds
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: of the country. And in terms of Hamas, I mean,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: it is certainly much less powerful than it was on
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: October 7th, but that doesn't mean that it is completely
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: dismantled or destroyed in the way that they had said,
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  Speaker 2: the organization itself reached this ceasefire with a political infrastructure intact,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: with at least some militant forces there, largely at the
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: behest of the civilian population who was like, hey, we
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: can't take this anymore. And that's kind of the devastation
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  Speaker 2: that they all live with right now.
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  Speaker 3: And that is a kind of tension for Netanyahu to
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  Speaker 3: deal with. On the one hand, He wants to say
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  Speaker 3: that this made Israel safer, that the last three years
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: have made Israel safer. On the other hand, he's still
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: using Hamas for a potential new Hamas attack as kind
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: of an election boost for himself to say, you need
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  Speaker 3: to vote Likud, you need to vote to keep Likud
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: in power because the threat of Hamas is still real.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, he wants to basically be able
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: to declare a victory against Hamas and say that he
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: made country safer. And that also is in conflict with
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: him saying he wants to finish the job, so to speak.
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  Speaker 3: He wants to do more. So which is it? Has
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Hamas been eradicated? The goals of the war have been completed?
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: Or that Hamas is still such a threat, it could
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: attack any day. That is a real tension for him.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really well said. You're absolutely right. Let's put
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: D3 up there just to highlight what you were saying
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: is that Netanyahu, even just a couple of days ago,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: is saying Netanyahu, Hamas will try to attack before the
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: elections precisely because Hamas is so weak it will challenge us.
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  Speaker 2: We are ready for this. He's really holding himself up
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: as Mr. Security. There's also just been, look, I mean,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: we talked about this a little bit earlier, in terms
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: of just some of the stuff that continues to dribble
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: out of Israel. Let's say here, this is the case
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: of one of their politicians, Moshe Feiglin, who says that,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: you know, their morality requires kind of the killing and
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the destruction of the children of your enemies. And these
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: are on the Jerusalem Post, you know, the stuff is
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: said on mic, really in English, so that all of
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: us can take a listen to it. And he is
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: himself a politician in the country. Let's take a listen.
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: If we would have done what I said needs to
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: be done, if we would have done in Gaza what
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: the British people did in Hamburg and what the Americans
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: did in Nagasaki, okay?
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: To blow it up, you're saying?
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: To finish that, okay? This movie, NASA, that just came out,
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: would never came. The world would have been with us
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: just as they were with us after we won the
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: Six-Day War.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: But you don't think about, you know, just blowing it up,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: let's say, as you're mentioning, like the... the children that
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: are there, the babies.
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: I'm saying again, because I'm Jewish and I guess I'm
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: a little bit weak morally, I don't want to see
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: babies killed, okay? Morally, that's what should have been done, okay?
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: Because of everything I explained so far. But because I'm
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: Jewish with soft heart, I would open the borders and
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: let them all go, but no one can stay.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: And it has to be a part of the Jewish state.
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: We should have seen now the Gush Katif villages built already.
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: We should have seen now the new Israeli international airport,
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: almost finished, done, created, okay, in the Gaza Strip. And
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: if that would have been done, the whole Middle East
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: would have calmed down. they would understand that the Jews,
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: the Israelis, are not in the Oslo concept anymore.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: You think that things would have calmed down on an
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: international level if we would have done that?
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: Because that would have sent a message to all our enemies,
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: what our enemies, what victory means to us.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: So, you know, he mentions that movie. Obviously, what he's
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: saying there is utterly repulsive in terms of morality, killing babies, etc.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: But Emily, he again name-checks that movie. And so, yeah,
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: before we end, Why do you think that that movie
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: is roiling elections? You said, if anything, you kind of
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: found it pretty sympathetic to the mind frame of what
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: they were in originally. But by and large, what was
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: your biggest takeaway since you were able to see it yesterday?
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Well, it's interviews with the intelligence officers themselves. And a
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: lot of them are still morally torn over what was
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: right and what was wrong. And I think that's why
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: it's particularly a threat to Likud and Netanyahu is that
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: you have people who are kind of probably similar to
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: the average Israeli who, because of October 7th, were just
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: horrified and so upset about what had been done to
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: hundreds and hundreds of civilians, of their own civilians. And
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: then kind of that chant was channeled in ways that
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: they were uncomfortable with. And so you see that through
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: the intelligence officers themselves explaining it. And yes, they're anonymous,
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: But they are in person, so it's not just like
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: disembodied voices. For the most case, it's human beings who
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: are talking. It's just they've made the shot really dark,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: so you can't tell who they are, and they've disguised
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: their voices a bit. So you can't really tell who
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: they are, but you see them uh drawing diagrams of
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: what they did and you hear their own moral conflicts
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: they're not all just like leftists they're not all and
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: that comes up a bit in the film you know
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: they're not just like the the leftists who are have
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: always been upset about Gaza and the West Bank they're
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: people who joined in some cases the effort because of
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: October 7th or were eager to participate in the effort
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: because of October 7th and I think that's why Likud
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: sees it as such a big threat is that it
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: kind of taps into that moral discomfort that a lot
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: of Israelis have with what occurred over the last few years.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: It's not just, you know, leftists talking about, you know,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: people have always been leftists talking about what went wrong.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: It's people who were talking about what went wrong who
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: really believed in it at first.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I do love Feiglin's, you know, theories. Like, well,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: if we'd just done what the Americans done, then no
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: one would be saying it. Instead, there are famous quotes
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: from many of the generals and people who were involved
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: not just in Nagasaki, but in the firebombing, where Curtis LeMay,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the general himself, said that if we had lost the war,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: we'd all have been hanged as war criminals. So there
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: you go.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: And we all partook in creating protocols so that Nagasaki, Hiroshima,
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Dresden wouldn't happen again after that. That was the entire point.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: As Israel was being created, this was why the United
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Nations was focused on these issues, is because everybody understood
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: we didn't want Dresden to happen again. We didn't want
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Nagasaki to happen again.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Then it did. All right, let's get to Epstein.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Well, an Epstein whistleblower has been found dead of apparent suicide.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: And we want to walk you through the details of
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: who this person is, because obviously there have been other
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: apparent suicides and Epstein-related cases, Jean-Luc Brunel being perhaps the
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: most famous one. But let's start here with a BBC
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: tear sheet. This is their report on what happened to
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Simon and Dries. So he was a former senior employee
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: of BGC Partners. And I'm going to be reading here
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: from the BBC, but this is the Financial Times mentioning
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: that the FCA in the UK is going to examine
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: how it treated this whistleblower who died by suicide back
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: in September. So the BBC reports that the treatment of
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: whistleblowers by the UK's financial watchdog, that is the FCA,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: as Financial Times notes, must be investigated following the death
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: of a British trader who exposed evidence of links between
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein, according to
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: members of Parliament, Simon Andrews, a former senior employee of
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: BGC Partners, which was a firm of brokers that was
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: founded and run by Lutnick. It was part of Cantor
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Fitzgerald before he was then appointed Commerce Secretary by Trump.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: He died last month in Thailand. So earlier this year,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Andrews raised concerns with the Financial Conduct Authority, that's the FCA,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: the FBI, and other watchdogs about evidence he had uncovered
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: of business links between Epstein and Lutnick. I'll mention right here,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: he had also been talking to the FBI as early
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: as 2020. So there's some people out there saying this
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: guy's not a whistleblower. He approached the FBI and he
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: approached the media. We're going to get to BBC's coverage
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: of him in just a moment. But as early as 2020, 2021,
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: in that time frame, saying he had evidence of wrongdoing.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: And he then, according to the BBC, quote, cast doubt
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: on Lutnick's public statements about his associations with the late
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: sex offender. A group of UK MPs have now said
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: his death raises, quote, deeply troubling questions about the way
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: whistleblowers can be treated. when they approached the FCA, the
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: financial regulator, with concerns about wrongdoing and subsequent retaliation. And Dries'
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: family says he had taken his own life on September
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: 23rd and that there was no suggestion of foul play.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: So we have all of that out there. But for
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: a little bit of background on who this guy is,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: you probably remember Howard Lutnick being caught in lies about
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: his relationship. I know you remember this, about his relationship,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. They literally
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: shared a wall So our current commerce secretary shared a
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: wall with Jeffrey Epstein. They lived at, I think it
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: was 9 East 71st Street and 11 East 71st Street.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: And so Andres, who had been trying to blow the
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: whistle on some hinky financial stuff he claimed happened at
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: the firm at BCG, also then is told by the BBC.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: He's in the Epstein files when the emails come out
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: earlier this year.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Well, because he had been talking to the FBI about
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: all of this. So BBC reported on July 14th. Just
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: for a sample here on who this guy was, he
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: was in the headlines back in July because he discovered
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: an email chain from 2018 in which Luttnick and Epstein,
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: the BBC reports, had discussed the prospects of a startup
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: business they were both involved in. Andries shared his findings
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: from the millions of released Epstein files with U.S. politicians
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: on the influential House Oversight Committee ahead of an appearance
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: there by Luttnick in May. Andries also discovered in the
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: files that one of Luttnick's firms had made plans in
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: 2013 to go into business with another figure linked to Epstein.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: The then Prince Andrew, by commercially exploiting the contacts the
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: former UK trade envoy had made, made the specific files
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: in which Andrews appeared to relate to interviews he had
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: given to the FBI while in dispute with his former employer,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: BGC Partners, a financial brokerage firm. And here's one of
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: the most important parts of the BBC article from July
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: when this man was still alive. 2016, Andrews had raised
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: concerns internally about accounting irregularities at the firm. He was
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: sacked in 2017. Some of the allegations later led to
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: BGC being ordered to pay a $ 3 million penalty by
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: the U.S. derivatives regulator for numerous supervision, reporting, and record-keeping violations.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: So what he reported was significant enough that he was
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: rewarded a— they were fined, and he was rewarded for his
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: whistleblowing efforts. And the files show that he alleged Lutnick
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: had undeclared business ties with Epstein, just to underscore that.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: As a reminder, Lutnik said on a podcast in 2025,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: he claimed he'd only ever met Epstein one time. They
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: were neighbors, he got a tour, he felt really uncomfortable
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: when he got a tour. Then the Epstein files showed
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Lutnik with Epstein at Little St. James in December of 2012.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: So Andris, because he had worked at the firm, had
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: the idea to search HWL in the files because he
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: knew people went by their initials because, again, he had
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: worked with Lutnik. He had worked in Lutnik's orbit. And
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: that is how. people found emails back and forth from
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Luttnick and Epstein back in 2018, where they talked directly
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: about a digital advertising company called Adfin, in which Epstein
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: and Luttnick's firm, then Cantor Fitzgerald, had both invested. With
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: that said, I do want to take a little bit
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: of listen here to a BBC podcast they did about
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: this whistleblower before he died. And you get to hear
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: his voice in his own words, a bit of what
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: had happened transpired in his life since he started trying
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: to blow the whistle on Epstein and Howard Lutnick. We
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: can roll E1.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: Well, it's one of those stories where you've been thinking
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: of doing it for years and years, but it's not
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: quite there. So A man named Simon Andres, who's at
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: the centre of our story, he's a British whistleblower. He
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: now lives in Cornwall. In South West England. In South
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: West England.
• 20:54
  Speaker 6: I went into a trauma crisis centre for two months
• 20:59
  Speaker 6: and did a huge amount of work on myself and
• 21:03
  Speaker 6: was able to get myself into trauma recovery.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: He's lost his career on Wall Street and he's struggling
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: with debts from legal costs. of this ongoing struggle he's had,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: and his physical and mental health has taken a real toll,
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: which he's had to do lots of work going to
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: trauma recovery centres, et cetera, to try to get better.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: So he was obviously troubled. And Sagar, just before we
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: toss to you, I want to put his own post
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: on X up on the screen from August 9th, where
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: he wrote, I am the British whistleblower who reported evidence
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: concerning Howard Letnick, his links to Jeffrey Epstein, Cantor Fitzgerald,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: and BGC to the FBI in 2020-2021. My disclosures contributed
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: to regulatory action in the U.S. and U.K., including a
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: 96 million pound tax assessment related to their partnership scheme.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: And he believes the true tax exposure is substantially higher.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: So he said that in August. He believes the true
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: tax exposure is substantially higher. And finally, you can see
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: this email for yourself. This is one of the emails
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: from the Epstein Files, E6. You can see in the
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: FBI's files, they noted that Simon and Dries was one
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: of the people who had talked to them about Epstein
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: and Howard Lutnick. So that's how he started going through
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: these files himself, because the BBC journalist told him he
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: was in the Epstein files. So that's how he got
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: the idea to search HWL. It is, Sagar, to say
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: the least, a very, very strange state of affairs. This follows,
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: as Newsweek put it back in August 2022, Stephen Hoffenberg,
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: you probably remember, who back in 2022, 77 years old, was, quote,
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: the latest of several Epstein associates found dead. There was
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: John Luke Brunel, who was actually accused of raping minors.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Then there was Mark Middleton, who was found dead in
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: May of 2022. So people will reasonably raise their eyebrows
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: when they hear this news.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, like you said, by his own admission, he
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: had trouble past trauma center.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: And all of that. And it does appear, at least
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: very much, based upon his own belief that he saw
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: things at the center, kind of at everything that was
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: going on. So just as you said, he previously had
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: supplied all of this information to multiple UK and US governments.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Up around what he saw was this tax assessment and
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: this financial chicanery that was all happening behind the scenes.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Lutnick previously said he cut ties in 2005. Lutnick acknowledges
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: visiting the island in 2012. He said that he had
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: provided BCG Cantor Fitzgerald Lutnick and to all U.S. authorities
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: information about them, including the FBI and to these congressional investigators.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: So he was specifically, and the reason why this really
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: lit both you and I up is, look, there's a
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: lot of talk around, you know, obviously what happened on
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the island and who was trafficked, et cetera. But the
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: real story for me has always been at the center
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: of the intelligence connections and then really what he was
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: doing with money. He was a financial engineer who was
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: at the center of clearly of very sketchy schemes that
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: were all happening behind the scenes with multi-billionaires, including people
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: like Lutnick, Leon Black, and others, none of whom, when
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: you scratch the surface, these stories all began to really
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: make a ton of sense. Like people will recall our
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: interview that we had with the biographer of Leon Black.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: And he was like, I'm telling you, I looked at
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the paperwork and it all seemed fine. And I was
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: just like, I don't know, man, you know, sorry, like
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: I don't really believe you, whatever it comes to. a
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: multi-billionaire who has to pay him $ 150 million or whatever
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: for tax advice. But what he was uncovering really is about,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: what he was uncovering was at the center of this
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: financial scheme. It's always about tax avoidance, it involves Swiss
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: banks and all this stuff. And the UK regulator, as
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: you said, remember, they incorrectly, they had to apologize for
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: incorrectly advising him around whistleblower protection, especially before some of
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: the information that he provided was about to become the
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: subject of congressional review and of scrutiny. So I do
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: think that we have to pay very, very close attention
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: to this story. And without being uber conspiratorial or any
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: of that, you don't have to be crazy to just
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: look at the number of people involved in this case
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: or in this story who have alleged to have died
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: by suicide. So that's, I think, really all we can
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: have on the subject so far. We will keep people updated.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Emily remains very much on top of this. So- All right,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: with all that said, we've got our guest standing by,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Rana Farore. Let's get to her. Joining us now is
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Rana Farore. She's an FT columnist, but for our purposes,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: she's the author of a fantastic new book. Let's go
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: ahead and put this up here on the screen. It
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: is called Sea Change, America's New Great Game in the
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Arctic Circle, and it details shipping routes and the change
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: in climate and how this has opened up an entire
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: new kind of great power politics scramble. for all of
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: access to this. So Ronna, thank you so much for
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: joining us. I have been fascinated by this question for
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: quite some time, been reading articles in your, in your
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: paper specifically about the ice silk road and more. So
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: I'm happy to hear more about it. But first of all,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: just why did you decide to write this book? You know,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: you were kind of ahead of the curve. Like how'd
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: you scratch this, uh, even come to find this, this topic, uh,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: long before other people were writing about it.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for that. Um, I do like to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: think I'm sort of prescient about these things. Um, You know,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the way it came to me, I had a lot
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: of friends in the Biden administration. And, you know, I
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: have for a long time in my body of work
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: been arguing that we've gotten too financialized as a country,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: as a society.
• 26:37
  Speaker 7: We don't make things anymore. This is going to come
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: back to bite us.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I think that is something post-COVID, post-war
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: in Ukraine, post-Iran that we all now have as a
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: felt experience. Eighty percent of the world's trade travels on ships.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: And I came to find out during the Biden administration
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: that America is really can't build them anymore. We build 0.2%
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of all the ships by tonnage globally. China builds most
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of them today. It now has 5,500 ocean-going vessels. America
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: has less than 200. And it's one of those facts
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that when you kind of realize that and you pull back,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh my God, if there was a blockade
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: of Taiwan, if there were a naval war, the Navy
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: gets most of its munitions and supplies from commercial ships,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: which the US just doesn't have and can't build. So
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: What do we do about that? I then found out
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: that America was cutting a bipartisan deal actually to make
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: icebreakers with Finns and Canadians. And it's like, why icebreakers?
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Why do we need to go to the Arctic? Well,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: because it's melting and there are new commerce pathways opening
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: up and China has just opened a weekly shipping route
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: across the Arctic, across Russian waters. So all this starts
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: coming together. I start hearing about more Chinese and Russian
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: military drills off the coast of Alaska. The search for
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: natural resources, rare earth minerals, natural gas in this area,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and migration, which is going to become northward, which is
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: going to become a thing as the planet warms. So
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I got interested, and I was able to get on
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: America's only icebreaker in the Arctic, the U.S. Coast Guard
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Cutter Healy, for two weeks, which was a trip, literally,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: which I can tell you about more if you'd like.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. please do. I'd be very curious to hear more
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: about that literal.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Well, it was interesting because, um, the first thing I
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: did was get a Dramamine patch because, uh, the, yeah,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the only, the only time I've ever been on a
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: long haul, uh, deep water vessel was whale watching off
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the coast of Massachusetts.
• 28:34
  Speaker 7: And I spent most of the time being sick.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Uh, so I thought, you know, I gotta, gotta make
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: sure that I can be on this icebreaker for two weeks.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: You get 20 to 40 foot waves sometimes in the Arctic.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: It's actually one of the roughest waters. Um, We were
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: doing a tremendous number of things on the ship. It
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: was an amazing experience to be, by the way, with
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: these service people who are, you know, they are there
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: for duty, for service, for adventure. They are kind of
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: completely outside the world of commerce. That was very interesting.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: We had adventures, we saw polar bears, we saw northern lights,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: but we also saw Russian ships. We did sonar mapping
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: of underwater seabed features like a methane-plumed volcano where you
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: may find natural gas. There are so many things. There
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: was surveillance going on. There were intelligence operations. There were
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: climate and environmental research tasks happening. Scientists that are measuring
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the water to see what's happening. Is there going to
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: be more extreme weather? What's this going to mean, not
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: just for people living in Alaska, but people for living
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: in New York. You know, if you think about the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: fires that we've had over the last few years that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: have come from the Canadian wildfires down and, you know,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: blanketed parts of the Midwest and Eastern seaboard, this is
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: all because the Arctic is melting. And so it is
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: really becoming one of the most important regions in the
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: world to watch for a some whispers that the next
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Homeland Security documents may actually look at the Arctic as
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a new Homeland Security issue.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Fascinating.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Let's put F2 up here on the screen from the
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Financial Times, literally just a couple of days ago, where
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: they detail some of this, how the Arctic Sea Route
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: is booming as the Gulf War and global warming are
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: diverting so much of shipping. They see transits via what
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: they say is the Northern Sea Route have quadrupled as
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: melting ice has made journey more passable and vessels avoid
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: the Middle East. You know, Rana, one of the things
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: that struck me in your comment about the destruction of
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: the American shipbuilding industry, the lack of control, is that
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: for so much of the U.S. empire, the ability to
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: project power on the high seas and really the blue
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: water navy was the reason why we all pay the
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: tax rate that we do and that we don't have
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: health care or any of these things. What level of
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: control do we have in the Arctic? Because from what
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I'm reading, this is Chinese dominated. It is not in
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: any way somewhere that the US is really projecting force.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: You combine that with the Iran war situation, the inability
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: to fully control the Strait of Hormuz. This does seem
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: like a literal geopolitical moving event.
• 31:09
  Speaker 7: It really is.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: And there's so much in what you just said. Let
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: me try and break it into two or three pieces here.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: On For starters, the headlines, which the FT has been
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: covering wonderfully, really show that choke points matter. So you
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: may not think the Arctic has anything to do with
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Iran or the Strait of Hormuz.
• 31:26
  Speaker 7: It has everything to do with it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons that the Chinese have started shipping,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and the Russians as well, exponentially more natural gas across
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the northern sea route, which Russia interestingly declares its own
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: sovereign water, is because of things like what's happening in
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Iran and the fact that the Strait of Hormuz has
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: now become perhaps the most important geopolitical choke point, along
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: with the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, for different reasons, terrorism,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: low waters in the Panama Canal due to global warming,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: These are all becoming areas that you can't necessarily safely transit.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: So where can you safely transit? Well, the Arctic, because
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit of the Wild West. It's still unclaimed.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: It's only 15% mapped. So you have the Chinese working
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: with the Russians as, I think, a vassal state, albeit
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: one with the most territory. Actually, if you look at
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: a map from the north down of the world, you
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: see Russia's about two-thirds of it. So it suddenly becomes
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: very important. So you've got this great game already happening there.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: The Chinese have been trying to launch what they call
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: officially a polar silk.
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: Road in the region.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Chinese and Russians together have about 60 icebreakers
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: in the Arctic.
• 32:34
  Speaker 7: America has three.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: When I got on board the Healy, we had one,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: which by the way, it had some mechanical problems recently, and.
• 32:40
  Speaker 7: It's now out of out of service.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Now, we have at the same time in this country
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: alienated the Canadians, which is about the stupidest, you know,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: foreign policy move around. They have a huge amount of territory.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: They have more icebreakers.
• 32:55
  Speaker 7: Fortunately, the U.S. is working with the Finns to build more.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: But this gets back, you know, your point about why
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: do we have a huge navy, which, by the way,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: can't produce ships well or efficiently or cheaply anymore. And
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: why don't we have healthcare? Because we did stupid things
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: like breaking apart military and commercial operations. In China, everything
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: is connected. You build ships for commercial, you build ships
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: for military, there are economies of scale. The US can
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and should get back to that, not just in shipbuilding,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: but in many industries. And this is part of actually
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: a much bigger, and I think the most important story
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: of our lifetime, really, which is a pendulum shift away
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: from the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, away from neoliberalism, away from the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: markets know best and know everything ethos to a, we
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: have a public that needs certain public resources. How are
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: we going to get them? If the markets aren't doing that,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: how is government going to do that? And, you know,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: there's a bipartisan coalition, I think, to start doing more
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: in that area, not just around ships, but chips, biotech, pharma,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: rare earths, many things.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: I know Sagar wanted to ask about the Scientific American report,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: but we can pop it up on the screen. I
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: have some questions about it, too. The headline was How
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Melting Arctic Ice Has Created a New Silk Road. And
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: they talk about whether these vessels warm the polar ice
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: in this article. And I wanted to ask you about that,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: if you could help us understand a bit about the
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: environmental concerns with just the traffic period, the question of
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: whether or not that's actually contributing to the problems here.
• 34:25
  Speaker 7: It's such a great question.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: You know, I spent a lot of time in Finland
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: writing this book and reporting for the FT. The Finns
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: are the sort of lords of icebreakers. They design 80%
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: of them and build 60. And I asked the designers,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I said, for starters, if the Arctic is melting, why
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: do we need more icebreakers? And it's quite interesting because
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: actually you do need more when the ice is breaking
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: apart because wind and waves can very quickly trap.
• 34:52
  Speaker 7: Ships in ice.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: You know, if you kind of think back to the Endurance, Shackleton,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: you know, you can imagine that's old fashioned ships caught
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: in ice.
• 34:59
  Speaker 7: That's what can happen.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Because there is more transit in a route where there
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: is ice. If it was just solid, we wouldn't even
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: be having this conversation. Now, to your question, is it
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: bad to be having more commerce, more icebreakers in this area? Yeah,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: it's not great for the environment. It does create more
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: fragility in the ice. But like everything else these days,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: it has become a bit of a tragedy of the
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: commons problem where you have many nations that are trying
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: to stake claims in this area. You have the Chinese
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: and Russians already exponentially increasing shipping in the area. One
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: of the things I'm arguing in the book is that
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the U.S. and its allies have an opportunity here to
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: band together to create more institutional frameworks, more certainty about
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: how things work in the Arctic. You know, this is
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: something that would be a great sell for people in Greenland,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: for Native people who are worried about this environment that
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: they depend on.
• 35:53
  Speaker 7: We need to have more governance and more collaboration.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: The U.S.
• 35:56
  Speaker 7: Cannot go it alone in this or anything else, I
• 35:59
  Speaker 7: don't think.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Last question for you, Rana, is a lot of
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: the discussion around climate change and rising global temperature has
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: talked about this shifting balance in migration. But it's actually
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: kind of fascinating. You're like, well, actually, this is opening
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: up an entire new area of land. So we might
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: go from middle to top or middle to bottom, depending
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: on which way you're looking at the globe. So you've
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: taken a look at the Arctic. Have you ever thought
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: about the Antarctic? and what that's going to be like
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: down there.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I was also offered by
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the Coast Guard a trip to the Antarctic. It was
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: going to be three months, though, and I had to
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: draw a line. It's a lot to be on a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: boat in a 300-square-foot cabin for a couple weeks. The
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Antarctic is actually rougher, and from a geostrategic point, somewhat
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: less interesting. The Arctic, because it is literally in America's backyard, is,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I think, where the action is going to be. Also,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: you have Canada, which is a thriving economy.
• 36:56
  Speaker 7: The Antarctic is very different.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: You don't have that same kind of connection to real
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: functional economies, geostrategic conflict. And so the Arctic is more interesting.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: I do think that you are already starting to see
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: migration north. I think there's going to be more of that.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: And it presents challenges, but it also presents opportunities. I
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: actually spoke, there was a native observer from the Yupik
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: and Inuit tribes on the boat while I was with
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the Coast Guard. And I asked her about this. Her
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: job was to basically relay information from the Coast Guard
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: to her tribes and back and forth because these tribes
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: actually have long-term oral history about the region that is
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: very useful to climate scientists and actually to the military
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: as well. And she was saying, look, there are going
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: to be huge challenges, but there are also going to
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: be opportunities. There could be more farming in these areas.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: There could be the possibility of opening up new settlements.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: But it has to be managed and there has to
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: be collaboration. Otherwise, it's going to end badly. That's an
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: important point.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very well said. Everybody go buy the book. I'm
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: fascinated by it. I would love to go both to
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the Arctic and the Antarctic. I've probably read like 50
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: books of the original explorers.
• 38:08
  Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, right?
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: I want to go see it myself. Okay, we'll get
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: a very heavy jacket. That's all I can tell you. Yeah,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: I know. I have one of those, some of those
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: old maps that they would draw of like the Yukon
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: and all of that. So anyway, it's been a pleasure
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: to talk to you. Thank you very much for joining us.
• 38:22
  Speaker 7: Thank you.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: enjoyed it. Ryan Grimm is going to have a great
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: time at Fish. You had to put up with the
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: two of us, but I didn't think it was so bad.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't think it was so bad.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: I don't think we did anything wrong. I think we
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: were okay. I think, well, our leftist viewers will let
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: us know if we did anything wrong. I'm sure they
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: have thoughts.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. They're bitching always.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: Ryan's back tomorrow.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: No, Crystal's back.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, Crystal's back tomorrow. Ryan will still be in the aura,
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: the fish aura.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: He'll be emerging from his acid trip and his marijuana-induced psychosis.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: So hopefully he comes back.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Fog rips for Sagar, prayers for Ryan.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't acknowledge that phrase here officially
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: on the show. Okay, with all that said, we hope
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: you had a great time watching the show. And Crystal
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: and I will see you tomorrow.