Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / 56 - Ryan McBeth

Transcript

56 - Ryan McBeth · World Ablaze with George Fontes

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  You are listening to a Fonts Media Network production.
• 0:11
  Hello, World of Blaze listeners, and welcome to episode 56.
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  Today, I have the pleasure of having Ryan McBeth on the show as my guest.
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  Ryan McBeth is a wildly popular YouTuber,
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  a United States military veteran,
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  and a current member of the intelligence community.
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  Ryan is very well known for explaining current events,
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  exposing conspiracies,
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  and revealing some of the inner workings and operations of military exercises.
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  Ryan and I had an amazing conversation.
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  He's highly intelligent, very outspoken,
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  and we had a lot of fun on this show.
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  You will hear a little crinkling and whatnot in the beginning of the show,
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  and that's just me unwrapping my cigar.
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  as Ryan and I both shared some cigars and had a great time, great conversation,
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  and I think that you'll really enjoy this episode.
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  So with that being said, let's begin.
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  All right.
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  So Mr. Ryan McBeth, welcome.
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  Thanks for taking the time, man, to be here.
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  Absolutely.
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  So I was basically referred to you and said,
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  hey, you need to reach out to this guy by Curvin,
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  who I think you know that you were just on his show.
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  this week explained.
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  And he was basically like, yeah, he's a real guy.
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  He's an Intel guy.
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  He knows his stuff.
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  And so I was like, great.
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  And that's when I reached out to you.
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  And, you know, I'm glad you responded.
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  That's very good of you to do so.
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  I know you're a really busy guy and you work hard.
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  And I know that, you know,
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  we don't want to dive too much into crazy details,
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  like who you exactly serve with and all that,
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  just for the protection of others.
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  I get it.
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  But I thought we'd talk about your background a little bit
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  and maybe even bring up what's going on,
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  basically in the world now,
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  which is a crazy 2025,
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  to be quite honest.
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  Let me go ahead and cut this guy.
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  I'm going to go ahead and share a cigar with you.
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  Oh, fantastic.
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  Yeah.
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  I love these things.
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  I got this guy right here.
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  Pretty good stuff.
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  Yeah, is that Corona?
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  Yes, sir.
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  It's La Aroma de Cuba, El Jefe.
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  La Aroma de Cuba.
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  I think that's one of the Ashton cigars.
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  Yeah.
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  It is.
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  Yeah.
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  Yep.
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  Good stuff.
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  So, Ryan, sir.
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  Specifically, let's start with this.
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  Now, I'm going to get into other topics later,
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  but how long were you in the military?
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  Because your story is a little different than some other intel guys I talked to.
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  I don't think you went directly into it.
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  Is that correct?
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  You kind of fell into it later or got gravitated towards it?
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  Yeah, I fell into it.
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  So, I mean, am I an intel guy?
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  I don't know.
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  The story I often talk is, you know, I write the software.
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  So I had 20 years infantry, and while I was serving, I got a Bachelor's in Computer Science Management.
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  Later, I got a Master's in, or MSC in Cybersecurity.
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  And so I was like, when I got out, I started working for Accenture.
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  specifically Accenture Federal Services
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  doing
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  C4ISR
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  command control, communications, computers,
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  intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. We find bad guys.
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  And so
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  a lot of stuff is
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  cyber intelligence.
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  Daddy El Batty calls his mom every Friday
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  at 3 o'clock
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  and alright, let's see
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  Daddy El Batty is always in this
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  location then he goes to the his favorite falafel house and uh all right so we can hit him here on
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  the road when there's no cross traffic and we're we're all right we're 100 meters away from the
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  school over here so we want to use this kind of munition that that's like beyond what i do but
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  you know you confirm all right daddy all bad he is over here at this house gotcha you know because
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  he talks to his mom every whatever or sends you know we know emails are coming from this house so
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  that's how I kind of got into it.
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  I know what's funny is that I have
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  people who, you know, they go,
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  you're a real and tell guy because you're not,
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  you never went to the school of Fort Hachuca.
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  I'm like, look,
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  once Michael
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  Jordan was being trash-talked by Kobe Bryant.
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  You know, and Michael Jordan
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  looked down and Kobe Bryant's wearing Air Jordans.
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  And
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  Michael Jordan says to Kobe
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  Bryant, man, how you going to trash-talk me when you're wearing
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  my shoes? Right.
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  So, like, it's kind of like,
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  you got a trash talk,
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  they're using my software, right?
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  They're literally using something
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  that you designed and put together
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  and implemented and questioning you on that.
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  And, you know, and there's,
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  it is kind of funny
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  because I have enough,
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  well, I don't do targeting,
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  weapon hearing, stuff like that.
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  Like, you know, I find the people
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  and you give that information to your client
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  and then your client does whatever with it.
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  And sometimes you come back
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  and get a pat on the back,
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  like, hey, we got daddy old daddy.
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  Thanks, man.
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  Got it.
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  So.
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  That's interesting.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, I enjoyed my time at Accenture.
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  I have nothing bad to say about it.
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  It was literally like being in the military again because you, in fact, we even have an
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  alumni group, like people who are at Accenture and then left Accenture.
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  We have an alumni group that we all stay in touch with each other and stuff.
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  And a lot of it's like, it's like being in the army in a lot of ways.
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  because like there was no,
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  Accenture was like the first company I worked at
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  where there was no like, I'm in it for me.
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  It was like, we're in it for the client.
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  Okay.
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  And if the client needed a pint of blood,
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  one of us would have opened up a vein
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  to give that client a pint of blood
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  because it was all about the client.
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  And at the end of the day, it was all about the soldier.
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  Like what is the end user?
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  what is the end user's outcome going to be?
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  And so we would work really hard to get things right.
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  That's actually another reason why I get pissed off
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  when people talk about the military industrial complex.
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  We're a bunch of people just taking money from the government
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  and lighting our cigars with $100 bills.
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  No, dude, we freaking work to make sure the soldier
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  has what they need to be an effective soldier.
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  Like there's a lot of people who work for contracting companies who they put their whole career focus toward like, how can I make, how can I protect America?
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  How can I make the lives of our soldiers easier?
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  You know, and a lot of people don't understand that.
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  But I mean, I think it's necessary for some people because they have to believe in conspiracy.
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  Well, yeah, of course.
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  And we'll dive into that later.
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  So it sounds like primarily you're focused on providing the correct tools for the job that was reliable and consistently able to be used out in the field.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Define the bad guy.
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  And then there's, I mean, I am wearing this sweatshirt that says Intel, I control C, control V.
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  Because that's like, you know, that's kind of how people, they're like, oh, I'm going to meet with this source.
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  That's human intelligence.
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  That's useful.
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  But one of the things that I've often said, human intelligence, we need to know, why does intelligence exist?
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  It exists because we need to know who is doing what and why.
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  Now, who is doing what, it's actually usually fairly easy to come up with, right?
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  But the freaking why, that's the goldmine.
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  That's always the question.
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  Why?
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  Why are they doing this thing?
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  and you know in some cases human intelligence can tell you the why and sometimes people lie
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  that's the other big thing but you know what doesn't lie your browser history patterns of
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  behavior right oh i get i gotta ask you hey george do you watch pornography right and i can say no
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  say no and the next thing i can say is can i look at your browser history right and then you're like
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  And, you know, today our browsers and this thing that we keep in our pocket, this magic window, we tell our magic light box things that we wouldn't even tell our spouse.
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  True.
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  Right?
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  We ask it questions we wouldn't even ask our spouse.
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  And that's the real gold button.
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  Right?
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  That's where the real information is.
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  If I want to know who is doing what and why, I can look at their computer and I have a pretty good idea of what they're doing, especially if they think it's secure.
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  Gotcha.
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  Yeah.
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  So cyber intelligence is, I think it is a major component in figuring out what the bad guys are doing.
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  Yeah.
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  And most people don't know how to hide their tracks either.
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  No.
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  And, you know, in all honesty, hiding tracks is pretty difficult just in general.
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  um there is just so much digital exhaust that that we don't know about i know did you uh do
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  you remember hearing about the fitness trackers that exposed some of our bases yeah a while back
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  yeah it was a couple years back it was like fitbit and garmin yeah i remember the garmin
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  part of it you know if you're if your workout if your strava is public you know people can see
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  every day where you're working out what you're doing and where are guys gonna run they're gonna
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  to run on the perimeter of the base, right? Because that's the longest distance. So, all right,
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  now we have a map. Now we know here's the perimeter of the base. And things like that,
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  it is very difficult to turn that stuff. I don't want to say turn that stuff off,
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  but it's so ingrained in our digital life. I think one of the biggest issues we have with
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  the military right now is signal. The freaking signal app. It's like these phones, like you said,
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  Very few people ever do not have it on them.
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  You know, it's either on their nightstand right next to their bed,
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  or first thing they get up, they have to check their social media, whatever.
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  It's always in their pocket.
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  It's tracking you.
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  You're literally leaving breadcrumbs of what you're doing
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  and where you're at at all times.
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  And most people don't realize that.
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  No, absolutely.
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  And you have that issue.
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  And the other issue you have is you look at something like Signal.
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  The Army runs on signal.
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  There's guys, especially if you're an officer,
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  you might have five or six signal chats open, right?
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  There's one signal chat to the platoon,
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  one signal chat for the company,
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  one signal chat with the Italian commander,
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  one signal chat with the S1 shop.
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  So you have all these signal messages going
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  and things fall through the cracks, right?
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  Like, hey, we have,
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  and now it's really easy to like change things.
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  like, hey, formation time is 0.15 instead of 0.530.
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  Because now you can just send it out.
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  It used to be like, hey, you got to go get the runner.
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  You got to go to every, all right, well, let's not change the formation time.
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  Now you can change the formation time with a couple of presses of a button.
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  Right.
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  And I can't even imagine what that's like now for soldiers
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  to have to be chained to this device that you're expected to answer
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  within seconds.
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  When you get that, you can't turn an army off.
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  You don't get an excuse.
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  You have no way to shut it down.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I've actually been of the opinion
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  that one of the things the army needs to do,
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  well, the military in general maybe,
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  is I don't want to say ban cell phones,
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  but maybe create a cell phone
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  that works on a wireless mesh network
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  that's just for soldiers.
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  Okay.
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  and maybe it doesn't have video capability,
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  but now you have a messaging system
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  that maybe it does connect through GSM
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  or through whatever provider.
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  Maybe it does connect through satellite
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  or through a mesh network.
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  Maybe just a monochrome screen, right?
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  Like a Kindle.
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  So it lasts a week without having to charge it.
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  Because now soldiers go to the box,
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  they'll go to NTC,
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  National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California,
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  and they're told,
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  don't bring your cell phone
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  because that's a way for the adversary, for the OPFOR to detect you.
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  So then they don't, either one or two things happens.
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  Either they don't bring their cell phone, and now they don't know how to operate, right?
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  Because it used to be like, let me contact the S1.
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  Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, right?
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  Or they do bring their cell phone, which is against the rules,
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  and they get detected by the enemy systems by the OPFOR systems and they get blown up or and then they get in trouble right Cause they have their cell phone or they don bring their cell phone And some officer says Hey how can we didn bring your cell phone
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  We're trying to get ahold of you.
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  Well, the rules say don't bring, oh, call your officer.
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  You're supposed to have your phone on you.
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  You gotta, you gotta work within the rules to without like, so what do you do?
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  Well, maybe have a separate cell phone.
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  Damned.
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  If you do damned, if you don't.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, officer life is hard.
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  The question being, though, since you kind of mentioned
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  basically communication at your fingertips,
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  do you think having too much of it in the service
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  has been kind of prohibits a few things
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  or has been kind of a detriment to communication in general,
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  being that it's always accessible and you can never turn it off?
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  Do you think people just automatically have to feel
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  they have to communicate or just constantly be on their phone
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  and trying to message?
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  Do you think that might be a problem?
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  It could be.
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  I mean, I think that you certainly have an environment where people today, soldiers today, they've grown up with these things.
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  They've grown up with these devices.
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  Yeah.
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  So they're probably more used to having them around.
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  So it's probably less of an issue.
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  but at the same time
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  like
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  are they able to do
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  are they able to put that phone away
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  and do their job
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  that's kind of another thing too
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  that might be a general thing
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  distractions right
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  and I've had people tell me that like
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  there are soldiers who can't
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  read
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  and it's not they can't read as in
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  like you know what does this word
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  mean
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  it's more like they can't read as in like
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  Like, they can't take something and comprehend it if it's in long form.
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  Gotcha.
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  So, you have people who can read a street sign, but they have a lot of trouble actually taking a look at, like, a long manual to find the issue.
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  Like, that's just not something people do.
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  No, and they probably don't have the patience for it.
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  They're so used to instant short messages.
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  You basically got the phone version of shorthand and emojis.
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  So, yeah, I can totally see that.
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  I really do.
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  Well, that's interesting.
• 15:27
  So, militarily wise or military wise, I mean, do you think that we've improved over the years or have we kind of fallen back?
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  And if you don't want to answer that, that's great.
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  I was just wondering from your perspective.
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  You know, I have family members.
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  I've served my nephews in the Marines.
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  I think that the average, I think that soldiers today are just as capable and willing and competent as soldiers from 20 years ago.
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  And at some point, this is the other neat thing about everything being a volunteer service.
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  At some point, everybody thought that joining the Army would be a good idea.
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  You know?
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  I think soldiers are just as good as they were.
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  Things are just different.
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  You know, just the environment they grew up in is different.
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  Things are just different.
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  And so I wouldn't necessarily say they're better or worse,
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  but I would certainly say that soldiers today, they learn differently.
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  They grew up in a different environment.
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  and we need to
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  focus on the fact that
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  as our society changes,
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  what we expect from our soldiers
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  needs to remain the same, but we need to go about it in different ways.
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  I'm from the generation where
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  you didn't get tattoos. If you got a tattoo,
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  you were kind of a badass. People didn't tend to get
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  tattoos. Soldiers would tend to get tattoos, but tattoos weren't very acceptable in regular society.
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  And then what happens? Then tattoos start to become acceptable in society, right? You see
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  chefs with tattoos. So the military used to have a policy that would say like, hey, you can't have
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  any tattoos that could show below a certain part of the sleeve of the dress uniform, right? Or you
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  You couldn't have anything on your neck.
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  Yeah.
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  And now, some of those policies have changed.
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  And that doesn't mean that we're any weaker.
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  It just means that, look, society moved to a different view on tattoos.
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  We need to reflect what society feels about tattoos.
• 17:51
  Right.
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  Well, society evolves.
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  So, it's just a change in times, right?
• 17:56
  Yeah.
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  And if we don't evolve along with it, that could be a problem.
• 17:59
  Very true.
• 18:00
  Right?
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  We're not going to be able to find the recruits.
• 18:01
  It's one of the things I've talked about before, and I don't do drugs, but I can tell you that I think we need to figure out a way to allow our soldiers, allow our servicemen to consume marijuana.
• 18:15
  If you want to take a gummy and help you sleep or you want to smoke a plant because it makes you feel good, as long as you're fit for duty the next day, we'll figure it out.
• 18:26
  Like, all right, you can't do it within 12 hours of flight operations or whatever.
• 18:31
  But I think that things like marijuana use, beards, that's another thing.
• 18:39
  I think one third of all African-American men suffer from razor bumps and grown hairs.
• 18:44
  All right.
• 18:44
  Why are we making them go get a shaving profile every couple of months?
• 18:48
  Why?
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  Because we have this idea of what a soldier should look like.
• 18:52
  And you look at European armies, you look at Ukraine.
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  Those guys have beards.
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  They seem to be able to fight.
• 18:56
  And, you know, you get the argument, well, what about chemical weapons?
• 18:59
  All right.
• 18:59
  Well, then you have to shave.
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  Sorry.
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  but until that moment
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  let them have a freaking beard
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  you know
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  we could probably
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  solve recruiting
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  very quickly
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  with just allowing beards
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  and allowing soldiers
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  to partake in recreational
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  marijuana use
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  we could do that tomorrow
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  we could do beards tomorrow
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  marijuana might take longer
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  but I think you have a point there
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  It's just figuring out how that would be regulated
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  and how they'd be able to use it.
• 19:34
  But it does calm your nerves.
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  It helps you sleep.
• 19:37
  There's many benefits to it.
• 19:39
  And I agree with you in what you're saying
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  that we do have to keep up with the times.
• 19:43
  Look, things have changed.
• 19:45
  If we're going to be stickers about little things
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  such as beards,
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  and that's what's going to hold people back
• 19:48
  from serving in the armed forces,
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  that's just ridiculous.
• 19:52
  It doesn't make them less capable of a human being
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  or a service person whatsoever.
• 19:56
  So I definitely agree with you on that.
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  it's almost like we're focusing on the wrong things
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  you know and by doing so we're just making
• 20:01
  ourselves weaker because we're not allowing those who
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  want to participate and contribute
• 20:05
  what they have to offer because
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  they don't meet this you know criteria
• 20:10
  of you got to be clean shaven for example
• 20:11
  right it's just silly it doesn't make
• 20:13
  any sense and you look at Sikhs
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  you know who have to go and get
• 20:17
  a special dispensation
• 20:19
  right right in order to have
• 20:21
  in order to have a beard
• 20:24
  well it's their freaking culture
• 20:25
  It's a culture, a part of their religion.
• 20:28
  It's, you know, hence also why they wear, you know, their turban or headdress.
• 20:33
  I'm familiar because I've hung out with a lot of both people in India and who are Indian, South Indians, North Indians, and of course, you know, Sikhs in general.
• 20:42
  So I got to, I definitely have a good grasp of that culture.
• 20:47
  Spent many years providing services to them, you know.
• 20:50
  So, and the Sikhs are extremely patriotic here in America.
• 20:54
  So, yeah, I think they deserve a little respect, especially when serving in the military.
• 21:00
  You know, they definitely should ease up a bit in terms of that.
• 21:04
  So, agreed.
• 21:06
  Let's move past military, though, because here's the thing.
• 21:10
  You're an intelligent guy.
• 21:12
  You know how to find information.
• 21:13
  You have a good bullshit meter.
• 21:15
  and 2025 really started out with, you know, well, definitely,
• 21:21
  it definitely shot out the gate really quick here.
• 21:26
  And a lot of things happened.
• 21:28
  I mean, you know, I don't know how else to say it, you know,
• 21:30
  try not to use certain words, right?
• 21:33
  Yeah, right.
• 21:33
  You don't want to get demonetized.
• 21:35
  Well, whatever.
• 21:36
  So here's the thing.
• 21:40
  We can address, and I'll get your opinions.
• 21:43
  I'm not going to hold you to anything, by the way.
• 21:45
  Okay.
• 21:45
  So let's address what your thoughts are,
• 21:47
  given your history and everything that you've done
• 21:50
  and, you know, your ability to basically find
• 21:53
  and extrapolate, you know, information
• 21:55
  and decipher it accurately.
• 21:58
  What has been your position and take on what happened
• 22:01
  both in New Orleans and Las Vegas?
• 22:04
  What do you think of that?
• 22:06
  And I know there was some stuff that you had an opinion on
• 22:09
  certain things regarding letters that happened with,
• 22:12
  you know, Las Vegas, et cetera.
• 22:13
  We can get into that if you're okay with it.
• 22:15
  But what is your opinion in general on those two separate incidences?
• 22:18
  I think at some point we failed our soldiers.
• 22:22
  At some point the safety system failed.
• 22:28
  And you have two guys who have either been consuming ideology or maybe had a traumatic brain injury.
• 22:38
  and I think that one of the things we need to to work on is allowing mental health as as a as a as a
• 22:53
  we need to be able to let soldiers go see mental health right like if someone something isn't
• 22:59
  feeling right and just because you don't have a physical injury doesn't mean that you might
• 23:05
  not have a mental injury.
• 23:07
  Or something like CTE.
• 23:09
  Is it
• 23:09
  the thing that
• 23:13
  football people get?
• 23:15
  Yeah, CTE. You're right.
• 23:17
  CTE.
• 23:19
  Chronic traumatic
• 23:20
  encephalopathy.
• 23:23
  That thing that
• 23:25
  people who play football get when your head's been knocked around.
• 23:28
  CTE.
• 23:29
  So, if you have
• 23:31
  something like CTE,
• 23:32
  hey, you've been injured, but that injury is invisible.
• 23:38
  And so, all right, well, why haven't you gotten that looked at?
• 23:44
  Are you afraid that people are going to call you weak for going to see mental health
• 23:49
  when you have a genuine, honest God injury, even if that injury isn't seen, isn't visible?
• 23:54
  So I think that there is a non-zero chance that some of the participants in those events had some sort of CTE issue.
• 24:08
  It's definitely a possibility. I won't rely on it.
• 24:11
  And they just didn't get the care that they needed.
• 24:16
  Now, there's also the possibility that, at least in the New Orleans case, where you had a guy who just, you know, life wasn't going for him so well.
• 24:29
  And he finds another path and he decides to go down that path and hurt people.
• 24:38
  That's, I mean, I don't know how you fix that after they're gone.
• 24:43
  True.
• 24:44
  You know, it could be something as simple as like, you know, once you join the military, like why aren't we checking up on our veterans, right?
• 24:58
  Yeah, I agree.
• 24:59
  And I do have a friend that brings this up quite a bit because, you know, he's in and out of whatever the VA allows him to get in terms of treatment.
• 25:07
  You know, he's at their mercy, really.
• 25:09
  Yeah.
• 25:10
  And this has always been a concern for him and other people I know who served.
• 25:12
  And you're right.
• 25:14
  There's always that manly, macho.
• 25:16
  And even if you're not a man, whatever, it's just there's that level of like, I'm not a weak person.
• 25:21
  I'm not going to go ahead and submit to getting care for whatever's going on in my head, right?
• 25:27
  And I think your point about CTE is it's a valid one because it's something that is not detectable immediately.
• 25:36
  It just kind of comes on and there's no real cure for it.
• 25:39
  You just got to kind of manage it.
• 25:40
  And it gets progressively worse over time.
• 25:42
  Yeah.
• 25:43
  So I think it might be onto something there.
• 25:45
  And that could have been the case as to why, you know,
• 25:48
  these people chose to do what they did, right?
• 25:52
  New Orleans, I don't know.
• 25:54
  Look, I'm not an expert in it.
• 25:55
  I'm just, I just know what I've read.
• 25:57
  And based on the information that been released one person you know serves in the military U citizen and decides I going to go ahead and commit to Islam and to you know just extremism in general
• 26:09
  Fine.
• 26:09
  But I'm not sure what caused that.
• 26:11
  As far as Liversberger go,
• 26:13
  I can't figure that one out.
• 26:14
  You've got a career Green Beret,
• 26:15
  someone who's still, you know, serving, etc.
• 26:18
  I can't really make sense of that one either.
• 26:20
  I'm not going to say what exactly happened
• 26:22
  because I can't.
• 26:23
  You know, I really can't.
• 26:24
  Yeah.
• 26:24
  But, you know, that one's an interesting case.
• 26:27
  And the thing is, I'm not going to put you on the spot and ask what you believe, but I will ask you about the letters that were released, you know, like two emails and then the other one.
• 26:39
  What was your take on that?
• 26:40
  I mean, it kind of just came out sudden.
• 26:42
  And to me, it looked like it was almost written by three different people.
• 26:46
  And kind of what you said about CTE might have been, you know, a contributing factor to that.
• 26:51
  But who knows?
• 26:52
  What do you think of that?
• 26:52
  Yeah, that doesn't.
• 26:54
  It's a tough one.
• 26:55
  It's a tough one because there's a lot of inconsistencies.
• 26:59
  Now, I'm actually, I, breaking news, I'm actually digging deeper into that because I think I, using the email address, I actually think I found the guy's phone number.
• 27:10
  This is kind of what I do.
• 27:11
  Interesting.
• 27:12
  So, I'm sorry, yeah.
• 27:14
  And I'm going to, I need to like cross all my I's and dot all my T's.
• 27:19
  I think kind of the thing that kind of upset me with the way that was handled was that the people involved, instead of, you know, going to the FBI, you, you know, let's make a video and try to make clicks.
• 27:37
  Right.
• 27:37
  As opposed to, like, that's a little, I'm actually familiar with the person who broke that story.
• 27:45
  And there's some issues with that particular individual.
• 27:49
  Yeah, I'm familiar with it.
• 27:51
  Because I had encountered that person before.
• 27:54
  Like, there was this video or this post this person made about Fort Novosel.
• 28:01
  And I'm like, oh, we don't have any money to train our pilots at Fort Novosel.
• 28:06
  I was like, dude, I'm going down to Fort Novosel
• 28:09
  to make a video in two weeks.
• 28:11
  And I'm like,
• 28:12
  I already talked to the PAO.
• 28:15
  Wow.
• 28:15
  I get
• 28:18
  why someone who
• 28:20
  didn't want to take the COVID vaccine
• 28:23
  might be upset about
• 28:24
  their status in life.
• 28:29
  Or upset at the military
• 28:31
  that told them, go take this
• 28:33
  unproven vaccine. I get that.
• 28:34
  But at the same time, don't try to screw over other people who are still serving, number one.
• 28:42
  And number two, don't parrot Russian propaganda.
• 28:51
  There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.
• 28:55
  And I think part of the part of the issue is that that it's it's this it's the source of the message, not necessarily the nature of the message that that's kind of an issue.
• 29:08
  I think more digging needs to be done.
• 29:12
  There's also some other issues, because like if if you were a bad guy, let's say, if you're a bad guy, if you are running from the police.
• 29:25
  you probably shouldn't take a cyber truck, right?
• 29:29
  You probably shouldn't leave something that makes a paper trail unless...
• 29:33
  Something so freaking flashy and draws so much attention.
• 29:37
  I mean, why would you do that?
• 29:38
  Yeah, unless you wanted to have a paper trail.
• 29:41
  Yeah.
• 29:41
  You know, and because like in your mind,
• 29:44
  like this is the only way this thing can get any attention
• 29:47
  is if I create an electronic trail, a breadcrumb trail.
• 29:52
  um but like if you really were on the run from the police and they were trying to find you
• 29:58
  you know that guy i'm not a counterintelligence guy but like if i wanted to disappear i certainly
• 30:06
  wouldn't use a cyber truck to do it no right agreed unless i wanted to be tracked which kind of
• 30:13
  gets into another thing entirely i'm i'm on the same path you are right now i get what you're
• 30:19
  wrong with it. Yeah. Why, why would you leave such an obvious, like you said, trail of bread
• 30:25
  comes? Why would you do that? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't. And of course, without naming
• 30:29
  names, I know, you know, we'll avoid certain names. I'm personally not afraid of any of them,
• 30:34
  to be quite honest. I can care less as long as there's facts and data behind it. But, you know,
• 30:39
  I just think that this was a case of, yes, the story shouldn't have been broken how it was.
• 30:44
  should have went to the authorities first.
• 30:47
  Let them get their hands on that.
• 30:50
  Let them see what's happening with it.
• 30:52
  But no, it turned out to be a big media fiasco.
• 30:56
  Maybe it was all about likes and clicks
• 30:58
  or just trying to be,
• 30:59
  hey, I got the breaking story.
• 31:00
  I got to get this out.
• 31:01
  I think it should have been vetted more personally
• 31:03
  because it's really hard to determine
• 31:05
  all the facts involved with that.
• 31:07
  It was just kind of a sudden,
• 31:09
  oh, by the way, we found these IDs
• 31:11
  that weren't burned and whatever.
• 31:12
  Oh, and by the way, this happened.
• 31:13
  And hey, look, now we have these messages out of nowhere.
• 31:17
  So there was definitely a lot more digging to do before, you know, they really broke
• 31:21
  that story.
• 31:21
  I think they could have just said, hey, we found some communications that may have been,
• 31:26
  you know, sent or related to Matthew Laversberg.
• 31:30
  They could have done that, but they chose not to.
• 31:33
  And so I kind of had an issue with that too.
• 31:35
  And it's also a case of where, you know, let's say someone like yourself, this is what you
• 31:40
  do for a living.
• 31:41
  and you're like questioning it and you get criticized for it.
• 31:44
  And it's only because maybe, you know, the other said person just happens to be a more
• 31:50
  popular person in the media space.
• 31:52
  And so somehow that person is more credible, which happens a lot and doesn't really make
• 31:55
  much sense.
• 31:56
  So I hate that too.
• 31:59
  And I don't think that's the correct way for people to view that situation either.
• 32:04
  It's ridiculous personally, but I'm with you.
• 32:07
  I think more digging has to be done.
• 32:08
  Is that something that you're going to continue to do and eventually?
• 32:11
  Oh, yeah.
• 32:11
  Yeah, I'm actually doing it right now.
• 32:13
  Cool.
• 32:14
  I look forward to your assessment, to be quite honest.
• 32:17
  You know, I want an answer on it.
• 32:20
  It's just a really strange situation.
• 32:22
  It really is.
• 32:23
  And I think too many people are jumping to conclusions without having all the facts, personally.
• 32:26
  Yeah.
• 32:27
  So, yeah, there's that.
• 32:29
  But, yeah, well, not much more to say on that until we know more, right?
• 32:35
  Well, what do you think is going on?
• 32:37
  And, well, I know you don't want to get into politics because that's not what most intel-type people do.
• 32:41
  You want to stay more neutral, and it's understandable.
• 32:44
  But how do you think moving forward in 2025, where does America fit into the geopolitical space in the world right now once Trump actually takes the reins?
• 32:56
  We don't have to talk about Trump in general, but just how everything might be approached and handled and how the world might see us moving forward.
• 33:03
  What do you think about that?
• 33:05
  So I think that in a lot of ways, there's a new sheriff in town.
• 33:10
  Right.
• 33:12
  And I think that one of the things that President Trump has that not a lot of other people have is he certainly has his own way of doing things.
• 33:25
  Yes, he does.
• 33:26
  and and so you know what what you have now is a guy who you have world leaders who might be
• 33:36
  questioning how they're going to proceed with their way of doing business because you have a
• 33:45
  guy who is a genuine honest to god wild card right exactly uh i think that that's going to be
• 33:52
  it's certainly going to be the case with Iran where, you know, for,
• 33:57
  for the most part,
• 33:58
  what we've seen coming out of the current administration, you know,
• 34:04
  we're recording this in January 7th. Right. Is it's,
• 34:09
  it's almost like you do have a guy who's checked out, right?
• 34:13
  You have a guy who is,
• 34:17
  he's made decisions that may not have been the best decisions.
• 34:20
  one of which might have been
• 34:22
  let's slow walk
• 34:24
  ammunition to Ukraine
• 34:25
  right
• 34:26
  let's only
• 34:30
  give Ukraine enough ammunition
• 34:32
  so they don't
• 34:35
  lose
• 34:37
  but let's give them enough
• 34:38
  so that they lose slowly
• 34:40
  and that's
• 34:42
  probably not a good policy
• 34:44
  we had started the war with
• 34:46
  hey we're going to give Ukraine anything
• 34:48
  they need in order to kick the Russians out, I think we'd see a totally different situation
• 34:56
  going on in Ukraine.
• 34:58
  Yeah, there would definitely be a different outcome right now, for sure.
• 35:01
  It would be.
• 35:02
  And there's no excuse.
• 35:03
  I think we have, look, we got plenty of F-16s in the boneyard.
• 35:07
  We can refurbish those things.
• 35:09
  We have so many options and ways to help Ukraine.
• 35:13
  We sent, I think it was around 20 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
• 35:20
  I mean, like, great, but that's not a lot, right?
• 35:26
  And are those tanks in particular even applicable to modern war, like in this war in and of itself, do you think?
• 35:34
  So it seems like what Ukraine is trying to do with their forces is they're not using tanks to break through.
• 35:50
  That's traditionally what you use a tank for.
• 35:52
  Find where the bad guys are, find the weak point, break through with armor, and then run havoc in the rear.
• 35:57
  And it doesn't seem like they're doing it that way, which is how we would do it.
• 36:03
  And there's a reason why it's because they don't have air support.
• 36:06
  Gotcha.
• 36:07
  Now, originally I had said that, you know, F-16s were necessary because F-16s can fire the harm anti-radiation missile.
• 36:18
  And once you fire that harm anti-radiation missile, once you start taking out Russian surface to air missiles, that forces the Russians to pull back.
• 36:27
  And then you can use JDAMs against certain hard targets.
• 36:31
  And then you can use F-16s for air superiority.
• 36:38
  And that kind of changes what you can do on the ground with your tanks, right, once you have air superiority.
• 36:44
  The reason this war has lasted so long is partially due to the fact that neither side has really gained air superiority.
• 36:56
  And that's a huge issue.
• 36:58
  and I think one of the things that
• 37:02
  we might have learned here
• 37:04
  in our rule
• 37:06
  something to know or something to understand
• 37:08
  going forward is that
• 37:10
  if you don't have air superiority
• 37:13
  and this now includes space
• 37:15
  if you don't have air
• 37:16
  slash space superiority
• 37:18
  you're going to have long wars
• 37:21
  you're going to have wars
• 37:23
  that take a long freaking time
• 37:25
  yeah I agree with that
• 37:26
  And, you know, if you're cool with that, you know, like, okay.
• 37:32
  Do you think it's just been unnecessarily drawn out?
• 37:37
  Definitely.
• 37:38
  Yeah.
• 37:38
  And this is one of those things where it could have been a lot, I'm going to say it could have been a lot shorter.
• 37:45
  I think that if we had given Ukraine the stuff they needed, when this whole war started, you know,
• 37:53
  One of the things I said is we can't just send F-16s to Ukraine.
• 37:58
  We can't just, oh, let's send F-16s to Ukraine.
• 38:02
  We can't send them there.
• 38:04
  It takes a year-long training course.
• 38:08
  We have to worry about maintainers.
• 38:09
  There's a lot of things we have to do before we can give F-16s to Ukraine.
• 38:14
  But if we had started that process the day the war started, we would be in a different position.
• 38:20
  Do you think that may be also the concern of the NATO element in and of itself, the agreements there kind of was a contributing factor to kind of holding back a bit in the beginning?
• 38:31
  Yeah, I mean, so I think when this whole thing first started, there were a lot of people who, like, they didn't want to upset Russia.
• 38:41
  Right.
• 38:41
  Right?
• 38:41
  Well, let's not, let's not.
• 38:44
  Poke the bear.
• 38:44
  Let's not.
• 38:45
  Yeah, this could be.
• 38:48
  Yeah, let's not escalate.
• 38:49
  That's the one damn word they kept using, escalation.
• 38:52
  Yeah, they did.
• 38:53
  We don't want to escalate things.
• 38:55
  Well Russia doesn need our help with escalating anything You know like they do that naturally right This is true And I think one of the things that we discovered when Russia was or when Ukraine actually invaded Kursk
• 39:16
  was that Russia, I'm not saying they're a paper tiger,
• 39:21
  but they didn't strike back with nuclear weapons.
• 39:25
  And using nuclear weapons in Kursk, that would be a reason for using nuclear weapons.
• 39:35
  It is a valid use case in the sense of, all right, there's a bad guy invading.
• 39:44
  We can drop a bomb here.
• 39:46
  And that would have stopped the invasion cold.
• 39:48
  And I think that in some ways, Ukraine, I don't know if Ukraine, Russia would have been, I don't want to say the word justified, but there would have been less blowback if Russia fired a nuclear weapon, a tactical nuclear weapon against invading Ukrainian forces if they went into Kursk than if they used it on Ukrainian soil.
• 40:14
  Now, of course, one of the disadvantages of that is you're using it on your own soil.
• 40:20
  Exactly.
• 40:21
  And the winds, prevailing winds, if they're going west or they're going east, that's a problem for you.
• 40:26
  If they're going west, that's a problem for Europe.
• 40:28
  So Europe still would have been, could have been very upset that they did that.
• 40:35
  However, they probably would have been, I don't want to say, that probably would have been the best way of justifying using a nuclear weapon.
• 40:43
  and it would have stopped the war cold.
• 40:45
  Right.
• 40:46
  It would have, but I'm going to lean more towards a side
• 40:49
  that they would have actually been affecting their own land
• 40:53
  and also probably engaging other nations
• 40:57
  that they didn't want to be engaged with at that time.
• 41:00
  Yeah.
• 41:01
  And probably still they don't.
• 41:03
  But fast forward to their use of the hypersonic missile technologies.
• 41:08
  And they launched one, they used one.
• 41:10
  They haven't done it again that I know of.
• 41:12
  Yeah.
• 41:13
  Why do you think they might be holding back on using those, for example?
• 41:17
  Well, I mean, they're expensive.
• 41:19
  It's $10 million a missile.
• 41:21
  Fair enough.
• 41:22
  You know, like, look, when you're in Russia, you have, you know, I think the budget, I want to say it's like $120 billion a year, like $128 billion a year.
• 41:34
  I think that's what their military budget is.
• 41:37
  You know, ours is $800 billion, $826 billion, something like that.
• 41:41
  significantly different right that's actually one of the reasons when people say like you know oh my
• 41:47
  god what if russia goes nuclear like dude we spent 80 billion it was 50 50 billion dollars a year on
• 41:53
  our nuclear program right um and we have roughly the same amount of nuclear weapons as russia
• 42:01
  so what is that you know like we spend 50 billion dollars a year and russia was spending 66 billion
• 42:09
  on their entire army back in 2020.
• 42:13
  So, you know, I think that I'm certain
• 42:19
  that there are some Russian nuclear weapons
• 42:21
  that have been maintained.
• 42:22
  They have their tritium refilled.
• 42:24
  You know, they've gone through at least
• 42:25
  two and a half, I think, tritium cycles.
• 42:28
  Tritium is the booster that you use
• 42:29
  in a nuclear weapon that decays,
• 42:31
  kind of like the same tritium
• 42:32
  that's in my gun sights, right?
• 42:35
  Gotcha.
• 42:36
  So you use that as a booster for the weapon.
• 42:39
  I mean, they've been through two tritium decay cycles.
• 42:42
  Tritium's really expensive.
• 42:44
  So I could easily see Russia making sure that they have a couple of working warheads, especially on like their Bori-class submarines.
• 42:53
  But their whole arsenal, not a chance in hell that they have their whole arsenal ready.
• 42:58
  Now, granted, one nuclear weapon might be too many.
• 43:00
  But I think this whole specter of, oh, my God, what if Russia goes nuclear?
• 43:04
  I don't really see that as a realistic thing.
• 43:07
  Because if they were going to do that, Kursk would have been the place to do it.
• 43:09
  and they didn't.
• 43:11
  Gotcha.
• 43:11
  So, I think we got off on a tangent somewhere.
• 43:15
  Oh, no, no, it's fine.
• 43:17
  I mean, you're giving your opinion based on the facts and data you know about this,
• 43:21
  and it's important to point that out.
• 43:23
  And it's interesting how, you know, basically we spend more than Russia,
• 43:26
  but yet we have approximately the same amount of nuclear warheads or weapons,
• 43:31
  which is kind of telling.
• 43:33
  It's crazy, right?
• 43:35
  Yeah.
• 43:35
  And, of course, yeah, hypersonic missiles are expensive,
• 43:37
  and then Russia just lost one of their major income sources, right?
• 43:42
  They're no longer going to be supplying gas.
• 43:44
  They got cut off there.
• 43:47
  I forgot where it's coming from now,
• 43:49
  but a lot goes in the head sometimes.
• 43:52
  Sometimes it just doesn't stick there.
• 43:54
  But I know that they lost that source of income now, right?
• 43:57
  So there's money off the table for continued funding from that side,
• 44:01
  also for Russia.
• 44:05
  Interestingly, though, relationship-wise,
• 44:06
  What's, okay.
• 44:09
  You're taking what's going on with North Korea right now.
• 44:12
  How they just suddenly were a part of supporting Russia.
• 44:15
  Now, I kind of can understand the relationship with Russia and North Korea.
• 44:19
  I get it.
• 44:21
  But that being said, they've been in the war in Ukraine.
• 44:27
  And fast forward, here they are now allegedly testing their own hypersonic missiles, right?
• 44:33
  They just launched one, fell into the sea over there on its way to Japan.
• 44:37
  But we don't even know if that's confirmed.
• 44:39
  I know they've been testing them for, is it since 2020 or something like that?
• 44:43
  I think they've been trying to test those for a while.
• 44:46
  But I don't know if they really have that technology.
• 44:49
  Now, is a lot of that you think attributed possibly to the relationship they have with Russia currently?
• 44:55
  Do you think Russia's sharing technology?
• 44:58
  I think they have to.
• 44:59
  Yeah?
• 45:00
  I think they have to.
• 45:01
  That's something they absolutely have to do.
• 45:06
  The big issue with Russia, people talk about how big Russia is.
• 45:11
  They have all these troops.
• 45:12
  They also kind of don't.
• 45:14
  For the longest time, Russia had this deal with their population.
• 45:19
  The population said, listen, you can do whatever you want, have whatever wars you want, but don't touch our kids.
• 45:28
  because the second you touch our kids, that's when we're going to have a revolution.
• 45:32
  And so as long as you don't touch the kids in St. Petersburg and Moscow,
• 45:37
  then you don't have to worry about Russian people rebelling against you calling people up.
• 45:47
  Now, a couple of years ago in 2022, in the summer, we had a general, Russia had a general mobilization.
• 45:58
  And that was when you had all those problems of people showing up and like, how do you, they didn't know, they hadn't actually been to training because they had gotten a deferment, but they were still in the system that they had gone to training.
• 46:13
  Like, that's when you had all sorts of problems.
• 46:17
  So what Russia has tried to do is they've tried to just do volunteers, just do an all-volunteer army.
• 46:25
  Like, we're still going to have conscripts, but these conscripts are going to be safely in the rear lines.
• 46:32
  And the issue is that they keep having to raise the bonuses and the pay for soldiers.
• 46:41
  So now, if you are a weapons manufacturing company, and Russia, I think like 20% of their economy or so is focused on making weapons.
• 46:49
  so if you're manufacturing weapons now you have to outbid people who could get more money by
• 46:59
  joining the army so then the weapons manufacturers have to raise the wages and so the army then has
• 47:07
  to raise the wages so the weapons manufacturers raise the wages and so now you have this kind of
• 47:13
  crazy situation where you have inflation go on like crazy, right? Because everybody has a job
• 47:23
  and everybody is making money at either in the army or in doing the weapons manufacturing thing.
• 47:36
  And that creates inflation. So now you have essentially runaway inflation inside Russia
• 47:42
  And now you're at a point where Russia literally can't stop the war because the second they do, there's going to be a huge freaking problem.
• 47:52
  And that problem is like you're going to have a whole bunch of people unemployed and that's how you end up getting the Ceausescu special.
• 47:58
  Right.
• 47:59
  Okay.
• 47:59
  So you think they might be at the point that if they just suddenly stopped this war that it would just basically crash your economy or bring it to a halt?
• 48:09
  look, you've just trained
• 48:12
  hundreds of thousands of people
• 48:15
  in how to use weapon systems, right?
• 48:18
  And now all those people are out of a job.
• 48:22
  Now, granted, gun control is a little stricter
• 48:25
  in Russia than it is in the US,
• 48:29
  but men who want to start revolutions
• 48:33
  have always seemed to be able to find guns.
• 48:36
  Absolutely.
• 48:36
  And, you know, you have a bunch of people who've been, you know, who get out of the army because the war has stopped and now they can't find a job anywhere.
• 48:47
  That's a recipe for absolute disaster.
• 48:50
  Yeah, agreed.
• 48:51
  So it's almost like Russia literally can't stop this war.
• 48:56
  They have to keep it going.
• 48:57
  That's one of the reasons I don't think President Trump is going to have peace within 24 hours.
• 49:02
  like uh it's just not it doesn't work for putin no is that's he's not going to be able to stay in
• 49:09
  power and earlier earlier the uh we dropped out a bit so i might have missed uh what you were
• 49:14
  saying about why you felt they had to keep that relationship with north korea yeah so so russia
• 49:21
  they need men they can't get soldiers from the general population um through a general mobilization
• 49:30
  because the people in St. Petersburg and Moscow won't like that.
• 49:35
  There's been this deal that like, hey, do whatever you want,
• 49:39
  but don't take our kids.
• 49:40
  Take the other kids, don't take our kids.
• 49:42
  So basically, they're relying on allies to help them bolster their forces at this point.
• 49:48
  Absolutely.
• 49:48
  And so like, hey, we're going to give you weapon technology.
• 49:54
  We're going to give you maybe nuclear technology.
• 49:56
  You give us men.
• 49:58
  Got it.
• 49:58
  But why hasn't China stepped in though?
• 50:01
  So they're supposed to be one of the biggest allies to Russia.
• 50:04
  But yet China's been quiet in supporting or even electing to even step in and help Russia with their efforts.
• 50:11
  Do you think that relationship might be slowly just disintegrating?
• 50:14
  Like maybe they're just getting away from each other?
• 50:16
  I think that China's always going to do what's best for China.
• 50:19
  True.
• 50:20
  And it's just, it's not, you know, actually fighting in Ukraine just isn't what's best for China.
• 50:28
  because China wants to sell cheap consumer products
• 50:37
  to everybody in the world, right?
• 50:38
  Yep.
• 50:39
  But we don't necessarily need to buy those products, right?
• 50:42
  If tomorrow, this is actually part of my book,
• 50:46
  The Wind Machine,
• 50:48
  if tomorrow China stopped selling cheap toasters
• 50:51
  or cheap alarm clocks,
• 50:53
  someone would step in to fill that void.
• 50:55
  Might be South America, might be Mexico,
• 50:57
  But we would certainly figure out a way to use cheap labor to manufacture stuff again.
• 51:05
  Yeah, we would.
• 51:06
  That would happen.
• 51:08
  And it would almost definitely happen sooner if China decided to put boots on the ground and actually go fight in Ukraine.
• 51:18
  In other ways, it makes more sense to have a weak Russia for China.
• 51:24
  Because they're getting a hell of a deal on oil right now.
• 51:27
  right like seriously right like like why should we go help we china doesn't want this war to end
• 51:36
  because you know the the second this war ends my god one of two things could happen if the war ends
• 51:43
  and uh and putin is still in charge um there is a non-zero chance that that they might start
• 51:53
  selling oil to other countries and now the price of oil goes up.
• 51:57
  And if Putin loses
• 52:00
  and Russia either fractures into a bunch of
• 52:04
  of warlord states, which is, you know, that's certainly a non-zero possibility that Russia
• 52:10
  could fracture into a bunch of warlord states.
• 52:14
  Then they lose their oil as well.
• 52:17
  So it's actually best for China to just kind of keep this war going on as long as humanly
• 52:23
  possible because they get cheap oil out of it.
• 52:27
  All right.
• 52:28
  So why would they want this war to end?
• 52:30
  Yeah, I can see that.
• 52:31
  Look, they could have, when the Houthis were shooting missiles in the Red Sea, China could have sent ships there and got experience in actually shooting down missiles because they're going to need that for when they invade Taiwan.
• 52:49
  Well, that's where I was going to go eventually.
• 52:52
  Yeah, I was saying, look, they're essentially farming XP.
• 52:55
  Right.
• 52:56
  Right?
• 52:56
  When our forces were in the Red Sea, when the USS Kearney, the largest distributor of Iranian drone parts in the world, the USS Kearney rolled into the Red Sea.
• 53:13
  I think they had, I want to say, 56, 52, 56 engagements.
• 53:17
  They went 56 and zero, right?
• 53:20
  USS Kearney.
• 53:22
  And those people are incredible, those sailors.
• 53:25
  if I ever meet someone from the USS Karne
• 53:28
  they're never going to have to buy a drink
• 53:29
  and I'm serious
• 53:32
  they did an incredible job
• 53:33
  and
• 53:34
  what we learned
• 53:38
  from that environment
• 53:40
  where the Houthis were shooting missiles
• 53:42
  at us and we're shooting them down, we learned a lot
• 53:44
  about
• 53:46
  Aegis, about how our missiles function
• 53:47
  we got a lot of telemetry, a lot of data
• 53:50
  on all this stuff
• 53:51
  and
• 53:54
  you know
• 53:54
  China could have
• 53:56
  sent a couple of destroyers there and
• 53:58
  helped out with the mission.
• 54:00
  They have ships there for doing anti-piracy
• 54:02
  stuff.
• 54:04
  So why didn't they do that?
• 54:06
  It could be that
• 54:08
  they were afraid their missiles wouldn't
• 54:10
  work and they wouldn't want us to see that.
• 54:13
  So that might be
• 54:14
  one thing.
• 54:17
  Another thing might
• 54:18
  be that
• 54:20
  they wanted
• 54:22
  chaos in that area, that particular
• 54:25
  part of the world, because somehow that benefits
• 54:28
  China.
• 54:31
  There's quite a few reasons why they might not
• 54:34
  have wanted to participate in that.
• 54:38
  You could say the same for Ukraine.
• 54:40
  China could send troops over to Ukraine and farm XP,
• 54:43
  learn how to fight. They haven't fought a war since they fought
• 54:45
  Vietnam. I think that was
• 54:49
  in 79?
• 54:52
  maybe 77 79 i think so it's really been a long time since they've ever really been tested
• 54:58
  there is nobody i i doubt there's anybody left in the chinese military who was
• 55:05
  on active duty when china invaded vietnam right so they essentially have no more experience
• 55:13
  Now, granted, for us, all the guys who served around the global war on terror are either high-ranking sergeants, high-ranking NCOs, or high-ranking officers.
• 55:29
  Those lieutenants and captains, they've been promoted since then.
• 55:33
  The war was, God, 23, my God, 24 years ago.
• 55:39
  I'm almost 50.
• 55:41
  Me too.
• 55:42
  I'm 49.
• 55:43
  It's kind of crazy.
• 55:44
  I'm 49.
• 55:46
  It's crazy to look back at things like, man.
• 55:50
  We were in Afghanistan for so long that someone who was born the day of the terrorist attacks
• 55:59
  could have actually been in Afghanistan.
• 56:02
  Yeah.
• 56:05
  That's crazy.
• 56:06
  The guy who was serving in Afghanistan could have had a kid who joined the army and ended up serving in Afghanistan.
• 56:13
  Dang, right?
• 56:14
  Yeah, that's kind of crazy when you think about it.
• 56:17
  The war lasted that long.
• 56:19
  But all those people, at least we have some data on how we perform in combat, even though we don't have those soldiers anymore.
• 56:31
  We don't have low-ranking soldiers with combat experience.
• 56:34
  And also, you think about it, we have the wrong kind of combat experience because that was coin, that was counterinsurgency, and now it's all list-scale or large-scale combat operations.
• 56:44
  So now anybody who's remaining in the military has the right experience for the wrong war.
• 56:50
  And that could be just as detrimental as not having any experience at all.
• 56:54
  But at least, well, positive or negative, however you want to view it, you know, the American forces have been tested pretty consistently throughout the years.
• 57:04
  I think we kind of know what we're doing in the, you know, for the most part.
• 57:08
  We're not perfect, but, you know, we are a pretty battle-tested, you know, we have a pretty battle-tested American force, period.
• 57:18
  So, a lot of that is training.
• 57:21
  Yeah.
• 57:21
  You know, I think it was last year I embedded with, two years ago, I embedded with the 101st Airborne with the Rakassans.
• 57:29
  They had an air assault with those guys.
• 57:31
  And, you know, they're just as good as they were 10 years ago.
• 57:36
  Where do you think?
• 57:37
  I want to interject real quick, real quick, because I know we're going to have so much time.
• 57:42
  I want to stay on the China thing really for a minute if you're okay with that.
• 57:45
  Okay.
• 57:46
  Because it seems like they've been, again, you know, really pushing the issue about Taiwan.
• 57:53
  President Xi has already, you know, made a few statements how Taiwan will always be Chinese
• 57:58
  and no one's ever going to get between us and whatnot.
• 58:00
  And they're doing more and more exercises and maneuvers over there.
• 58:04
  And do you think we're eventually, within a few years, going to be on that?
• 58:10
  I mean, it seems like we're kind of on a collision course.
• 58:11
  Do you think that is the case?
• 58:12
  Or is it just a lot of huff and puff, so to speak?
• 58:16
  I think that President Xi has told their military that they have to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
• 58:26
  Got it.
• 58:27
  That's when they are supposed to be ready.
• 58:31
  That's a consensus I've gotten from other people too.
• 58:33
  They kind of feel like by 27, maybe even as far out as 2030, we might be in that situation where we might have to defend Taiwan or there might be a situation with Taiwan and China.
• 58:45
  the ideal time to do it
• 58:48
  would be in
• 58:50
  April of
• 58:51
  2028 or
• 58:54
  October of 2028 because that's when
• 58:56
  there's a US presidential election
• 58:58
  right the transition and nobody
• 59:00
  wants to
• 59:01
  make the wrong decision right
• 59:04
  during a presidential election so that would
• 59:06
  be you know 2027
• 59:08
  is when they're supposed to be ready
• 59:09
  and it's if you say like
• 59:12
  hey China's going to invade Taiwan 2027
• 59:14
  And that's the general consensus of when they will be ready.
• 59:18
  Now, whether China can still be deterred, that's kind of a different question, right?
• 59:26
  That is a different question, a valid question.
• 59:28
  Will we be able to deter China?
• 59:32
  And I think that that's going to come into play with, all right, how are our allies going to play into this?
• 59:44
  Because, you know, we look at America can't do it all.
• 59:49
  America is, I think it was 6,100 miles away, 6,100 miles from the U.S. to Taiwan.
• 1:00:00
  That is a heck of a long way to get supplies and missiles and such.
• 1:00:06
  And so that's why we need to rely on our allies.
• 1:00:09
  Australia, the Philippines, the UK, France, Canada, Japan, South Korea.
• 1:00:15
  All of them have a vested interest in making sure that China doesn't do stupid stuff.
• 1:00:23
  And you look at, I would say, especially the Philippines.
• 1:00:27
  Because at the Philippines, the Chinese Coast Guard will frequently roll into their territory.
• 1:00:34
  when I say the Chinese Coast Guard
• 1:00:37
  people think of the Coast Guard
• 1:00:39
  they go rescue people
• 1:00:41
  and it's not necessarily true
• 1:00:42
  the Chinese Coast Guard are a bunch of bullies
• 1:00:44
  they go around and they
• 1:00:46
  they harass fishing boats
• 1:00:49
  they shoot water cannons at fishing boats
• 1:00:51
  they do unsafe navigation
• 1:00:53
  to bully people into leaving
• 1:00:55
  so yeah
• 1:00:58
  the Philippines if anybody
• 1:01:01
  has a vested
• 1:01:03
  reason to fight China or to make sure that China doesn't expand their zone of control.
• 1:01:13
  So we have to rely on our allies. And I think if we have a strong alliance, and also if we stand
• 1:01:22
  together with Ukraine, you know, China is watching how we respond to the events going on in Ukraine.
• 1:01:31
  Oh, absolutely.
• 1:01:31
  And they're going to look at Ukraine and say, all right, well, these guys didn't support Ukraine when there's a freaking rail line connecting Ukraine and Poland.
• 1:01:44
  Why are they going to support Taiwan when Taiwan is 6,100 miles away from everything but China?
• 1:01:52
  Right.
• 1:01:53
  So I actually see China being very cognizant of what's going on in Ukraine.
• 1:02:04
  I actually view how we fund Ukraine to be directly proportional to how China is going to perceive our resolve if deterrence fails and we have to go to war in China.
• 1:02:16
  this is true and you know circling back to the original uh question a while back about how trump
• 1:02:23
  may affect things you know and i'll get into politics but just in general there's a you know
• 1:02:27
  his view of how he handles things he's a wild card i think that's what's held most things at bay
• 1:02:31
  like people are unsure like will he press the button is he really going to do that they don't
• 1:02:35
  know how he would respond he just has enough crazy to make people you know second guess themselves
• 1:02:41
  And that might be the X factor, so to speak, right?
• 1:02:45
  And it makes complete sense as to why most people are predicting that if China made any move, it might be 27, 28.
• 1:02:54
  Like, they're going to wait this period out.
• 1:02:57
  So, with that being said, though, Trump has been adamant about not funding Ukraine.
• 1:03:03
  Is that the right decision in your mind?
• 1:03:06
  So, he might have said that.
• 1:03:08
  There's things you say to get elected, and there's things you say when you actually enter power.
• 1:03:16
  And I think that, I don't recall Trump ever saying he doesn't want to fund Ukraine.
• 1:03:21
  I know that he wants Ukraine to pay for a lot of weapons systems.
• 1:03:26
  Because right now, we're sending a lot of weapons systems over that are old that we have to replace anyway.
• 1:03:31
  and it's actually cheaper for us to
• 1:03:35
  send these old
• 1:03:36
  weapon systems over
• 1:03:39
  to another country than it is
• 1:03:41
  to actually
• 1:03:41
  send them back
• 1:03:45
  to Wraithian and get them demilled.
• 1:03:47
  So we're actually
• 1:03:48
  saving money when we're sending old weapons
• 1:03:50
  to Ukraine. And some things like
• 1:03:53
  we were taking
• 1:03:54
  M113s and we were dumping them in the ocean.
• 1:03:58
  We would
• 1:03:59
  take all of the fluids
• 1:04:01
  out of them and dump them in the ocean to create artificial reefs.
• 1:04:05
  I like fish. I think fish are great.
• 1:04:09
  It's not a bad idea to have an artificial reef.
• 1:04:13
  But I also kind of think that we could also
• 1:04:16
  take these M113s and we can send them over to Ukraine and Ukraine could
• 1:04:20
  use them to kick the Russians out of their country. We get rid of them. Ukraine gets
• 1:04:25
  rid of Russia. Everybody wins except the Russians, which is kind of how it should be.
• 1:04:28
  Right? Right, right, right.
• 1:04:31
  You know, that's the ideal situation there.
• 1:04:34
  So, you know, when it comes to missiles, you know, if we don't fire them, they expire eventually.
• 1:04:40
  We need to fire these things.
• 1:04:44
  There's not enough days in the training calendar to fire all our stuff.
• 1:04:47
  So why not send them to Ukraine?
• 1:04:49
  Let Ukraine fire these rockets toward Russia.
• 1:04:51
  It saves us the disposal cost.
• 1:04:52
  So I think that at the end of the day President Trump is aware of the cost of things And you know he doesn want to look weak on the world stage and i could easily see a situation happening where uh you know he goes to putin and says hey uh we want peace and putin
• 1:05:18
  says no and the next thing he does is go okay you don't get to embarrass me and he opens up
• 1:05:26
  this checkbook and Ukraine gets whatever they want.
• 1:05:28
  Yeah, I can see that.
• 1:05:30
  I can see that.
• 1:05:31
  Yeah.
• 1:05:31
  I can see that.
• 1:05:32
  I agree with that.
• 1:05:33
  You know, you don't, you don't get, you don't get to say no to me.
• 1:05:36
  I gave you a deal.
• 1:05:37
  You chose not to accept this deal.
• 1:05:39
  So now we're going to do things the hard way.
• 1:05:41
  And that's exactly his personality.
• 1:05:43
  That's who he is.
• 1:05:44
  Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  You know, you're not going to tell him no.
• 1:05:45
  It's like, no, no, no, no.
• 1:05:46
  This is what's going to happen.
• 1:05:48
  I absolutely agree with that.
• 1:05:50
  So that was a lot, a lot going on in the world that you kind of, you know, shed a little
• 1:05:55
  light on.
• 1:05:56
  let's dive into another topic that I know you talked about before.
• 1:06:00
  And I've been interested in lately just in my talking to more people.
• 1:06:05
  But let's talk about OSINT, like open source intelligence.
• 1:06:08
  What really is it?
• 1:06:10
  Because a lot of people can always say that anyone could read the news
• 1:06:13
  and take multiple sources and glean the information
• 1:06:15
  and try to put two and two together and make their own assessments.
• 1:06:18
  But what separates people like you, for example,
• 1:06:21
  and others in your field from just the average individual
• 1:06:25
  or the normal guy like me, for example?
• 1:06:30
  So honestly, I don't want to say not much,
• 1:06:34
  but a lot of it's just attention to detail.
• 1:06:36
  So when it comes to things like open source intelligence,
• 1:06:39
  you are using available open sources
• 1:06:45
  to figure out who is doing what and why.
• 1:06:48
  So let's say you want to know how large the Russian army is.
• 1:06:53
  There's a couple of ways you can do it.
• 1:06:54
  One way is to go to the Russian army and ask, how big are you?
• 1:06:58
  Maybe they'll tell you the truth.
• 1:06:59
  Maybe they won't.
• 1:07:00
  Right?
• 1:07:01
  The only thing you do is have some spy tell you, hey, we're recruiting this many people this year.
• 1:07:09
  Maybe that's reliable.
• 1:07:10
  Maybe it isn't.
• 1:07:12
  But if you know that every Russian recruit gets two pairs of boots when they enlist,
• 1:07:16
  and Russia just put out a contract for 200,000 boots,
• 1:07:22
  then you know that Russia is bringing on 100,000 people this year.
• 1:07:26
  Right.
• 1:07:26
  Right?
• 1:07:27
  And so you have these little sources all over the place.
• 1:07:32
  And you can kind of grab that information and you can extrapolate from there.
• 1:07:36
  People had said that we don't really know the population of Russia.
• 1:07:40
  The population of Russia is actually half of what Russia claims it is.
• 1:07:43
  All right, maybe that's true.
• 1:07:44
  Maybe it's not.
• 1:07:45
  You know how I figured that out?
• 1:07:46
  see how many grocery stores do you need per square mile to feed X amount of people, right?
• 1:07:55
  Because Russia, while they're not a democracy necessarily, they are capitalist.
• 1:08:01
  And that means, you know, if there is a need to open a grocery store to serve a population,
• 1:08:07
  someone will do that.
• 1:08:08
  Someone will get the funding, they will open a grocery store.
• 1:08:11
  So one thing we could do, if we really wanted to find out the population of Russia,
• 1:08:16
  let's count all the grocery stores
• 1:08:18
  in Russia.
• 1:08:21
  If we know that one grocery store
• 1:08:22
  can serve 10,000 people,
• 1:08:24
  how many grocery stores are there?
• 1:08:25
  Okay, now we know the population.
• 1:08:28
  Right?
• 1:08:29
  So that's kind of another way of doing it.
• 1:08:32
  It's gathering this information
• 1:08:34
  by using open sources
• 1:08:35
  that can reveal all sorts of things
• 1:08:38
  you wouldn't normally expect.
• 1:08:40
  It's really paying attention,
• 1:08:41
  like you said,
• 1:08:41
  paying attention to the details
• 1:08:42
  and willing to dive deeper,
• 1:08:44
  not just saying,
• 1:08:44
  hey, I got three sources
• 1:08:45
  and now I have a conclusion.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah, and I think one of the reasons
• 1:08:49
  that I've done fairly okay in this field
• 1:08:53
  is that I was a software engineer
• 1:08:55
  and one of my specialties was finding and fixing bugs.
• 1:08:59
  So a lot of that takes persistence.
• 1:09:02
  You have to dig and dig.
• 1:09:06
  You might dig and dig and dig for weeks.
• 1:09:09
  Well, you're not weeks.
• 1:09:10
  You're taking weeks.
• 1:09:11
  It's probably too much time.
• 1:09:13
  but for days trying to find the source of a bug, right?
• 1:09:18
  All right, where did this bug come from?
• 1:09:20
  And you dig and you dig and you dig and you dig.
• 1:09:22
  And I think kind of that level of persistence
• 1:09:25
  has helped me out quite a bit.
• 1:09:28
  Gotcha.
• 1:09:28
  Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:09:29
  I have a fear that too many people trust those
• 1:09:35
  who say that they're offering their opinions
• 1:09:42
  or analysis, you know,
• 1:09:43
  calling themselves OSINT people
• 1:09:45
  that are just doing nothing
• 1:09:45
  but regurgitating headlines.
• 1:09:48
  And I've seen that.
• 1:09:48
  Yeah, if you're regurgitating
• 1:09:49
  what you found on Telegram,
• 1:09:50
  that's probably not the best way of doing it.
• 1:09:53
  But, you know, what you could do is
• 1:09:55
  you could take a look at something on Telegram
• 1:09:58
  and say, okay, does this make sense
• 1:09:59
  from a tactical perspective?
• 1:10:01
  Yeah.
• 1:10:01
  And that's what I was going to ask you, Ryan.
• 1:10:03
  How does someone,
• 1:10:04
  how is someone able to know
• 1:10:07
  they can trust that particular source, for example?
• 1:10:11
  like that OSINT person who's claiming to be, I'm the guy.
• 1:10:15
  Like, I'm going to explain everything.
• 1:10:16
  I'm going to break it down for you.
• 1:10:18
  I have the answer.
• 1:10:19
  How do we know we can trust that person, for example?
• 1:10:22
  What's the best way for us to do it?
• 1:10:23
  Why do you check to see if they're right?
• 1:10:25
  You know, you look at their score.
• 1:10:27
  What is their score of being right to being wrong?
• 1:10:31
  Yeah, okay.
• 1:10:32
  Simple but fair, yeah.
• 1:10:34
  Proof is in the pudding there, right?
• 1:10:35
  You know, you talk about how we verify OSINT people.
• 1:10:38
  It's like, yeah, proof in the pudding.
• 1:10:39
  You know, how often they're right.
• 1:10:41
  all that.
• 1:10:43
  And yeah,
• 1:10:44
  I'm not going to disagree with you.
• 1:10:46
  I just,
• 1:10:47
  I just see too many people
• 1:10:48
  clinging on to disinformation.
• 1:10:51
  What I say,
• 1:10:51
  glean the surface of information.
• 1:10:52
  They just believe the headline
• 1:10:53
  or whatever
• 1:10:54
  and whatever's regurgitating
• 1:10:55
  and say,
• 1:10:55
  okay,
• 1:10:56
  that guy's correct.
• 1:10:57
  Here it is.
• 1:10:58
  And that's what I'm going to believe.
• 1:10:59
  And that's it.
• 1:11:00
  And that's as far as I'm going to go.
• 1:11:01
  And they tend to criticize
• 1:11:02
  others who dig deeper
• 1:11:03
  and somehow call people like you
• 1:11:06
  or me conspiracy theorists
• 1:11:07
  for just asking questions
• 1:11:09
  and going a little further.
• 1:11:10
  I don't think I've ever
• 1:11:11
  been called a conspiracy theorist. I've been called a CIA shell and I've been told I don't,
• 1:11:17
  I don't know what I'm talking about. And somehow both of those things at the same time,
• 1:11:22
  you know, like, all right, either I'm a CIA shell or I don't know what I'm talking about,
• 1:11:27
  which is crazy. Given your background, which you can actually verify. It's like,
• 1:11:32
  why, why would people jump to that conclusion about you? You know, it doesn't make sense.
• 1:11:36
  Well, I think for a lot of people, so some people are bots, right?
• 1:11:42
  Yeah, that's true.
• 1:11:42
  And some people, you know, they, look, if you're the kind of guy who is, you get up every day, you go to a job that you hate, you work all day, you come home.
• 1:11:59
  it's kind of
• 1:12:02
  a conspiracy theory
• 1:12:04
  that lays it all out
• 1:12:06
  right? This is why
• 1:12:08
  things are the way they are
• 1:12:10
  it's almost like you want to believe
• 1:12:13
  right? Yeah
• 1:12:14
  you want to believe that this is true
• 1:12:17
  because
• 1:12:18
  you know it's
• 1:12:21
  it's
• 1:12:22
  imagine like Harry Potter
• 1:12:24
  why was Harry Potter so popular?
• 1:12:27
  well
• 1:12:27
  you look at Harry Potter, who's Harry Potter's target audience?
• 1:12:32
  It's kids, it's teenage, you know, young, early teens,
• 1:12:36
  something like that, right? Or these days, adults, people who grew up on it.
• 1:12:40
  Yeah. But when you're a child, you don't have any
• 1:12:43
  agency. You don't even get to decide what you put in your mouth, right?
• 1:12:48
  No. You don't even get to decide what you eat. Yeah, you're right. So, it's a very powerful
• 1:12:52
  fantasy to imagine that you're actually
• 1:12:56
  wizard and you know more than the grown-ups, you know more than the adults, you know the truth
• 1:13:01
  about how the world really works. I think that's why Harry Potter was popular. So I think in a lot
• 1:13:06
  of ways, conspiracy theories are Harry Potter for adults, right? You can have this fantasy world
• 1:13:12
  that only you know about, only you and your small group of people know about. I know the actual
• 1:13:18
  truth. The wool is being pulled over your eyes. Right. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
• 1:13:23
  It's an interesting take on that.
• 1:13:25
  Yeah.
• 1:13:25
  Yeah.
• 1:13:26
  I think that's kind of the, that's kind of the deal.
• 1:13:29
  But then you got the, you got the other people who they're not necessarily conspirators, but
• 1:13:34
  they question, like they don't stop questions.
• 1:13:36
  Like they, there's no end to, to their disbelief.
• 1:13:40
  It's like, well, you said this, but what if, and then what if that, what if this, they
• 1:13:44
  just keep going and going and going.
• 1:13:46
  And at some point it's like, well, where's the baseline for you to believe anything?
• 1:13:49
  you know and it's so it's like what do you what do you do with people like that who have
• 1:13:56
  who just don't don't trust anything whatsoever so it's like what is their truth based on what
• 1:14:01
  what do they believe is to be true at some point yeah that's a that's a good question it is there's
• 1:14:07
  no answer i'm sure it's just i just brought i thought i'd bring that up because i do experience
• 1:14:11
  that myself you know as as we both grow in this space for example um you know i'm starting to get
• 1:14:19
  out there more and more, and I'm experiencing that more and more with people as well. It's like,
• 1:14:22
  no matter what answer you give, it's never correct. Great. And then you got the other side
• 1:14:26
  where there's a conspiracy theorist who's just like, no, you're wrong because X, Y, Z, but then
• 1:14:30
  they can't prove it themselves. And it's just very interesting to be people on this side trying to
• 1:14:36
  say, look, this is what I found. And of course, most of what I do, Ryan, I'll be honest, I give,
• 1:14:40
  you know, I give opinions and whatnot based on data that's available and maybe my own life
• 1:14:43
  experiences. I'll admit that. But I try to never be the guy that's just going to tell the lie for
• 1:14:49
  the sake of telling it. I'm not, you know, if, look, if it grows, I get clicks and likes good,
• 1:14:53
  but that's not my, my focus per se. If I could turn this into a career, fine, it'll get there.
• 1:14:57
  But at the same time, I'm, I'm not looking to lie to people. And I don't think I've seen that
• 1:15:02
  from you either, from the videos I've seen and from the people I've talked to. It's just sad that,
• 1:15:07
  you know, there are those that are just out to attack others for the sake of maybe just not
• 1:15:11
  being happy with their own lives or where they're at. You know, maybe I'm going a bit far in saying
• 1:15:15
  that, but from what I've seen out there, that seems to be the case more often than not.
• 1:15:19
  I guess I'll just leave that there.
• 1:15:22
  Yeah, I've seen, it's probably one of the most interesting things I've seen is people who believe in UFOs.
• 1:15:33
  I did a whole video about how if UFOs were real, like genuinely, honest to God, real, like aliens come to the earth, we'd be dead.
• 1:15:47
  Yeah.
• 1:15:48
  We'd be dead.
• 1:15:49
  Because the most logical, likely thing to do would be to kill us.
• 1:15:56
  And in fact, I've even said this before, which was like, hey, if you are, if we ever come upon some kind of alien species, we need to kill them.
• 1:16:11
  That might seem like a little extreme, right?
• 1:16:15
  But, you know.
• 1:16:16
  I don't think it's extreme.
• 1:16:19
  It's referring to nature, I think, in and of itself.
• 1:16:23
  You know, UFOs, let's say aliens, you know, part of nature, you know.
• 1:16:29
  Nature wants to, basically, organisms want to live.
• 1:16:35
  And what they want to do is they want to conquer their environments and be, you know, the apex predator or the apex species.
• 1:16:40
  And so I don't think you're wrong in that.
• 1:16:42
  I mean, that's a great take because that very well could be what the situation would be.
• 1:16:48
  Everyone wants to believe they're just like basically these angels, benevolent beings
• 1:16:51
  who are just looking out for us, trying to guide us in the right direction.
• 1:16:56
  But yeah, I mean, if someone's going to make their way all the way over here, why would
• 1:17:00
  they do that?
• 1:17:01
  For what?
• 1:17:01
  Resources?
• 1:17:02
  If there's resources, they're going to want to take those.
• 1:17:04
  And who's in the way of that?
• 1:17:05
  It would be us.
• 1:17:06
  So yeah, maybe run something there.
• 1:17:09
  The resource thing doesn't even make that much sense.
• 1:17:12
  No, because I did a whole video on this where the universe, I actually scaled the universe down to the size of the United States.
• 1:17:24
  Okay.
• 1:17:24
  And our solar system is a grain of sand in the Wendy's parking lot of Biloxi, Mississippi.
• 1:17:34
  If we take our galaxy, our whole galaxy, the center of the galaxy is somewhere like Odin, Kansas or something.
• 1:17:41
  And then our actual solar system is three-fifths of a grain of sand in the Wendy's parking lot in Biloxi, Mississippi.
• 1:17:52
  Yeah.
• 1:17:52
  And so any group of aliens that wants us for our resources well shoot if you can get across the universe or across the galaxy you can probably have the tech to make your own resources right you don need ours you can make your own stuff now could people
• 1:18:16
  come for exploration just to say all right like hey there's there this is crazy dude there's a
• 1:18:22
  bunch of monkeys with nuclear weapons we gotta check these guys out that's fascinating let's see
• 1:18:28
  monkeys with freaking nuclear weapons we might you know you might do that but but how does that
• 1:18:35
  get funded yeah like why why did we colonize the new world well initially we're looking for a path
• 1:18:42
  to send spices you know go get spices from india right uh seriously right it was a financial there
• 1:18:49
  was a financial benefit to going and getting spices from india what's the financial benefit
• 1:18:54
  for coming to earth.
• 1:18:56
  But that's assuming that if there were aliens
• 1:18:58
  that their system is based on monetary values and gains.
• 1:19:03
  We don't know that.
• 1:19:05
  But I do agree with you.
• 1:19:06
  We're dealing with a set of one, right?
• 1:19:08
  We're dealing with a value set of one.
• 1:19:09
  I'm going to agree with you on this.
• 1:19:11
  Here's where I'm going to agree.
• 1:19:13
  Why would they go all this way to see us?
• 1:19:16
  Why us, right?
• 1:19:19
  That's the piece of puzzle that can never be explained.
• 1:19:23
  Why are we so important?
• 1:19:25
  Why would they be here?
• 1:19:26
  I don't know.
• 1:19:27
  I'm not too into that side of it.
• 1:19:30
  You know, I'm not going to dive.
• 1:19:31
  I'm no UFO expert or, you know, whatever.
• 1:19:35
  It's almost like, you know, bringing up the topic of Bigfoot, whatever.
• 1:19:41
  Is there a possibility?
• 1:19:42
  Sure, anything could be possible.
• 1:19:43
  But I mean, after all these years, I mean, can you believe that our government is that
• 1:19:48
  good in hiding or keeping the lid on something that long?
• 1:19:52
  Maybe.
• 1:19:53
  I don't know.
• 1:19:54
  I mean, like I said, I believe we would be dead.
• 1:19:58
  Fair enough.
• 1:19:58
  If there were genuine, honest-to-God aliens, we would be dead.
• 1:20:03
  It would make the most sense to kill us before we could present a threat to the galaxy.
• 1:20:09
  And that might be a universal feeling or a universal trait among all living creatures.
• 1:20:21
  because all living creatures, they do two things.
• 1:20:29
  They acquire energy and they reproduce.
• 1:20:38
  Three things.
• 1:20:39
  They acquire energy, they reproduce.
• 1:20:41
  This is Spanish Inquisition, right?
• 1:20:43
  Three things.
• 1:20:44
  They acquire energy, they reproduce, and they defend themselves.
• 1:20:48
  Yeah.
• 1:20:49
  and you know i can tell you this if every single native american murdered every single freaking
• 1:20:57
  dude coming off a boat from spain back in the 1500s like there wouldn't have been 14 1400s
• 1:21:06
  back in the 1400s uh there wouldn't have been things would have worked out a lot differently
• 1:21:12
  right if they said you know these people coming out we're just going to kill them
• 1:21:15
  They would have sent more boats. They would have killed those people too.
• 1:21:19
  I think things would have looked a lot different.
• 1:21:23
  Now you're getting colonized on your own terms or you're coming into the modern age
• 1:21:28
  on your own terms as opposed to on the terms
• 1:21:32
  of these invaders.
• 1:21:35
  It would make more sense
• 1:21:38
  if you come upon a species
• 1:21:41
  to wipe them out before they get a chance to do that to you.
• 1:21:47
  Because that's most likely what they, you know,
• 1:21:49
  because by the time, look, distances are so far.
• 1:21:54
  Yeah.
• 1:21:54
  Right?
• 1:21:54
  And it's easy to say, oh, well, warp drives.
• 1:21:57
  Well, I mean, I can't work with that.
• 1:21:59
  Right?
• 1:21:59
  But I can work with, look, if one of the things that I talked about
• 1:22:06
  is that we can use mass spectropathy to see,
• 1:22:09
  to figure out what's coming out of a planet, right?
• 1:22:15
  We point a device at a planet,
• 1:22:17
  and when that planet transits a star,
• 1:22:21
  light shines through the atmosphere of that planet.
• 1:22:23
  And if we found oxygen on that planet,
• 1:22:27
  one of the first things we'd go is,
• 1:22:29
  hold up, what the heck's making this oxygen?
• 1:22:31
  Because oxygen is super reactive.
• 1:22:34
  If all the plants died tomorrow,
• 1:22:37
  it would take about 6,000 years for all the oxygen on our planet to essentially react with other things and become rust.
• 1:22:46
  It would take about 6,000 years for no oxygen to be on this planet.
• 1:22:51
  So, 5,000, 6,000 years.
• 1:22:54
  So, if we ever saw a planet that was making oxygen, the next question is, what the heck is making all this oxygen?
• 1:23:02
  That's something we might want to go check out.
• 1:23:04
  But whether we have the actual ability to do it is another story and the funding for something like that.
• 1:23:10
  And you could say, oh, I don't know if there's a hive mind and they don't believe in money.
• 1:23:14
  Well, that's in a way that's even worse because if it's a freaking hive mind, that hive mind is probably going to decide we need to kill these people before they can kill us.
• 1:23:23
  It's like the Dark Forest, right?
• 1:23:24
  During that three-body problem movie.
• 1:23:28
  I saw a little bit of it.
• 1:23:29
  Three-body problem.
• 1:23:30
  Read the books, watch the Netflix series.
• 1:23:34
  It makes absolute sense for the aliens to come to Earth and murder all of us and take over the planet.
• 1:23:41
  Makes the best, makes the most sense.
• 1:23:44
  Kind of on that vein, circling back to Earth as of now, it kind of died down a bit.
• 1:23:50
  And I don't know whatever happened.
• 1:23:52
  I saw your video on your take on what was going on with those drones on the East Coast, New Jersey.
• 1:23:59
  Do you have any more, you know, now time has passed to add to that and what your thoughts were?
• 1:24:04
  Because you did work in that industry for a while as well.
• 1:24:07
  Yeah, I mean, my basic conclusion was that this was most likely a red team event.
• 1:24:15
  Okay.
• 1:24:15
  Where you're, you ever watch SEAL Team 6, Richard Marshenko, Red Cell?
• 1:24:23
  Yeah, and Richard Marshenko, he had the foresight to like,
• 1:24:29
  all right, let's think like a terrorist.
• 1:24:30
  Let's create a team.
• 1:24:31
  he called it SEAL Team 6
• 1:24:34
  to make everybody believe that there were
• 1:24:36
  five other SEAL teams
• 1:24:38
  so SEAL Team 6
• 1:24:42
  they would
• 1:24:43
  try to take these
• 1:24:45
  let's try to penetrate this naval base
• 1:24:48
  see what their defenses are like
• 1:24:49
  and they would tell the commander
• 1:24:50
  this exercise is going on
• 1:24:52
  but they wouldn't necessarily tell anybody else
• 1:24:54
  so I can easily see a situation
• 1:24:56
  where someone is red teaming
• 1:24:58
  and the base commander knows it
• 1:25:00
  Maybe the deputy commander knows it.
• 1:25:02
  A couple other people might know it.
• 1:25:03
  They can't say anything.
• 1:25:05
  Because then it would violate the principles of the exercise, right?
• 1:25:08
  You have to see what people are actually going to do here.
• 1:25:12
  So, yeah, I think that most likely those drones in New Jersey,
• 1:25:16
  maybe they had a red teaming event, and then everything became drones.
• 1:25:21
  Like they were seeing helicopters flying.
• 1:25:23
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:25:24
  They saw what they wanted to see at some point, right?
• 1:25:27
  Yeah, and again, it goes back to the whole conspiracy.
• 1:25:30
  theory thing of like, I know the truth. I know about drones. Here's a real story. And the,
• 1:25:37
  and you know, that was another thing that people said, Oh, they're looking for,
• 1:25:40
  they're looking for a nuclear device that was stolen from Ukraine. I'm like, dude,
• 1:25:45
  any nuclear device that was stolen from Ukraine in 1994, you know, that thing has gone through
• 1:25:52
  multiple tritium cycles.
• 1:25:54
  That thing has,
• 1:25:56
  the plutonium degrades
• 1:25:57
  over time.
• 1:26:00
  Where like, you know, plutonium decays
• 1:26:02
  the naturally decaying radioactive isotope.
• 1:26:05
  And so you have these little
• 1:26:06
  pockets of helium inside the plutonium.
• 1:26:08
  That's why you periodically have
• 1:26:10
  to remanufacture the plutonium, get all
• 1:26:12
  those helium bubbles out.
• 1:26:15
  The
• 1:26:16
  explosives that surround the
• 1:26:18
  pit, those decay
• 1:26:20
  or those have to be maintained
• 1:26:21
  the batteries have to be changed
• 1:26:25
  and you could say oh what if they took it to a
• 1:26:27
  Soviet scientist
• 1:26:28
  or a former Soviet scientist
• 1:26:30
  like look dude
• 1:26:31
  my kid would have to be
• 1:26:35
  really freaking sick
• 1:26:36
  to take money to go
• 1:26:39
  work on a nuclear device because
• 1:26:40
  they will find you
• 1:26:42
  right
• 1:26:43
  they will find you
• 1:26:45
  look how fast we found the dude who shot
• 1:26:49
  the CEO from
• 1:26:50
  UnitedHealthcare.
• 1:26:52
  Yeah, yeah, super quick.
• 1:26:54
  If that dude went and shot
• 1:26:57
  some random
• 1:26:59
  stranger,
• 1:27:00
  that's New York. What do you want?
• 1:27:04
  It's the price of living in New York.
• 1:27:06
  You go
• 1:27:07
  shoot the CEO of the healthcare
• 1:27:09
  company, they will find you.
• 1:27:12
  If you're
• 1:27:14
  a scientist who
• 1:27:15
  used the tools and materials
• 1:27:18
  plus the tools and materials
• 1:27:20
  to make this stuff, remanufacture stuff,
• 1:27:23
  they're not exactly available on the open market, right?
• 1:27:26
  You're not going to Home Depot and picking this stuff up.
• 1:27:28
  Oh, hell no. Yeah.
• 1:27:30
  So there was that.
• 1:27:31
  And there was also the fact that physics is physics.
• 1:27:34
  Like, as you get further than the inverse square law,
• 1:27:37
  double the distance, the radiation goes down by half.
• 1:27:39
  So if you're looking for something on a drone,
• 1:27:42
  trying to use a detector, looking for radioactive,
• 1:27:46
  looking for radiation,
• 1:27:48
  you're going to have to be pretty darn close to that source
• 1:27:51
  because the further you are up in the air
• 1:27:54
  the more that radiation spreads out
• 1:27:57
  the less likely you are to detect it. Now
• 1:27:59
  a lot of these weapons are shielded
• 1:28:02
  because you don't want the people handling these weapons to get sick.
• 1:28:06
  Exactly. So there is shielding in there.
• 1:28:08
  And even if it was unshielded
• 1:28:10
  like dude, the fastest way to find that weapon
• 1:28:15
  if it was unshielded would be to put police officers at all the
• 1:28:17
  hospitals because sooner or later, some dude's going to come in with radiation sickness and the
• 1:28:21
  doctors might not even know what the hell it is. Why is this dude sick like this? Because
• 1:28:25
  how many doctors have seen radiation sickness, right? Be like
• 1:28:29
  someone presenting with, I don't know, there's a term
• 1:28:33
  in medicine, horses, not zebras. When someone shows up with a condition,
• 1:28:37
  if you're in America and you hear hoofbeats behind you, are you going to
• 1:28:41
  think it's a horse or are you going to think it's a zebra? Right. Probably going to think it's a horse.
• 1:28:45
  Right.
• 1:28:46
  Exactly.
• 1:28:47
  You know, if some dude presents with radiation sickness, you might not even recognize that.
• 1:28:51
  You might say, oh, this guy, you know, that's why you ask questions.
• 1:28:55
  Have you traveled outside the country?
• 1:28:56
  Have you done this?
• 1:28:56
  Have you done that?
• 1:28:57
  So they're narrowing it down in their head what this problem could be.
• 1:29:01
  Right?
• 1:29:02
  So, yeah, there was that.
• 1:29:06
  And the other thing was someone else, and this happened at a bad time.
• 1:29:10
  someone claimed that a radioactive pin source was stolen and a pin source it's like it's a little
• 1:29:19
  thing that you use to calibrate hospital equipment like okay you know so if you're doing like barium
• 1:29:25
  treatments right and there's a radioactive detector that looks at the barium going through
• 1:29:29
  your system you'd use a radioactive pin source on that thing to make sure okay yeah this thing is
• 1:29:34
  reading correctly let's go to the the now apparently a radioactive pin source that i
• 1:29:40
  I guess it was headed to our disposal.
• 1:29:41
  Got lost.
• 1:29:43
  And now it's, oh, they're looking for this thing.
• 1:29:46
  Could this be used in a dirty bomb?
• 1:29:48
  Like, dude, it's a pen source.
• 1:29:49
  Don't eat it.
• 1:29:52
  It's fine.
• 1:29:53
  I can have it right here.
• 1:29:54
  I'll be fine.
• 1:29:55
  Right?
• 1:29:55
  Like, it's not like.
• 1:29:57
  That's funny.
• 1:29:58
  But, you know, some of that goes back to like, oh, my God, radiation.
• 1:30:02
  Like, people are afraid of radiation.
• 1:30:04
  You shouldn't be.
• 1:30:05
  If you're afraid of radiation, don't fly anywhere.
• 1:30:07
  pilots get juiced up like if the average pilot i think the the average uh
• 1:30:16
  average rad worker i think they're allowed five rem a year all right uh and
• 1:30:25
  pilots like getting a chest x-ray yeah i think that's like uh it's 5 000 millirem
• 1:30:34
  for a chest x-ray right so if you get like 25 chest x-rays it's doing the math wrong there but
• 1:30:42
  if you get a certain amount of chest x-rays like that would be you wouldn't be able to work on a
• 1:30:46
  nuclear plant gotcha right yeah so the pilots do just because they're flying you know in the
• 1:30:52
  atmosphere and they're there there's less atmosphere up there and they're getting hit with x-rays and
• 1:30:57
  they're getting hit with stuff from space um you know they get they get juiced up i'm actually
• 1:31:02
  surprised pilots don have to carry dosimeters to see how much dose they getting They get more radiation than a nuclear worker Pilots It interesting Don fly anywhere Don have granite countertops
• 1:31:13
  in your home.
• 1:31:14
  They give off radiation.
• 1:31:15
  Oh, yeah, they do.
• 1:31:16
  Don't eat a banana.
• 1:31:18
  Yeah.
• 1:31:18
  You know?
• 1:31:20
  Well, everything gives off
• 1:31:20
  a certain level of radiation.
• 1:31:22
  Well, they have potassium.
• 1:31:25
  Oh, my God.
• 1:31:25
  I forget the darn isotope.
• 1:31:27
  But, yeah, bananas are mildly radioactive,
• 1:31:30
  just naturally from the potassium in them.
• 1:31:32
  Yeah.
• 1:31:32
  what's um the drone thing the drone thing i i'm with you on this like i i don't think there's any
• 1:31:42
  i'm not sure it was anything in affairs i i just think it was our government doing testing
• 1:31:47
  for whatever reasons they need to do testing you know the people wanted to see what they
• 1:31:50
  wanted to see eventually it just got out of control what let's tie this back to matthew
• 1:31:57
  laversberger his that the alleged communication which some people say was true some don't you're
• 1:32:02
  still digging into that yourself. So what about those claims in that letter about these being
• 1:32:08
  some advanced propulsion technology that are Chinese, you know, off being launched from a
• 1:32:14
  submarine in the Atlantic? What do you think of all that? So the question is, typically in the
• 1:32:26
  intelligence world, if you have a security clearance, you only get access to stuff that
• 1:32:31
  you need to know about your job.
• 1:32:35
  Compartmentalization.
• 1:32:36
  Compartmentalization.
• 1:32:37
  I mean, the SCI in TSSCI means top secret, sensitive compartmentalized information.
• 1:32:44
  So if I'm finding bad guys in the Horn of Africa, I don't know anything about drug cartels
• 1:32:52
  in Mexico.
• 1:32:54
  That's just not, I don't need to know that.
• 1:32:56
  I'm not going to access that information.
• 1:32:58
  We'll know about it.
• 1:32:59
  So if you're a special forces dude, the email is kind of weird because he's talking about Afghanistan and he's talking about Chinese boats and launching drones.
• 1:33:10
  And, you know, I've said this before, like if there was a Chinese submarine launching drones, the Coast Guard would be all over that.
• 1:33:17
  Exactly.
• 1:33:18
  All over that.
• 1:33:19
  They love like they love finding narco submarines.
• 1:33:22
  This would be a feather in their cap.
• 1:33:23
  They'd never have to buy a drink again.
• 1:33:25
  Right.
• 1:33:26
  Right.
• 1:33:26
  and
• 1:33:27
  there was other weird stuff like it can have
• 1:33:31
  like infinite carrying capacity
• 1:33:32
  like no I can't dude
• 1:33:34
  like lift thrust
• 1:33:36
  weight and drag dude
• 1:33:37
  can't get around that
• 1:33:39
  so you know
• 1:33:41
  again you kind of have to go with
• 1:33:44
  most likely
• 1:33:45
  and you know
• 1:33:48
  it is not very likely
• 1:33:50
  that someone who was in Germany
• 1:33:52
  doing special forces
• 1:33:54
  stuff would have any knowledge
• 1:33:56
  of, especially an E-8, you know, if you're an E-8, a master sergeant in the army, even
• 1:34:06
  in special forces, you're a hitter.
• 1:34:09
  You're a door kicker.
• 1:34:10
  You're a really good door kicker.
• 1:34:13
  You might work with a targeting cell once in a while, you know, to get experience on something
• 1:34:18
  or because they need bodies or because it generally affects the outcome of an operation.
• 1:34:23
  But you're not dealing with Chinese submarines.
• 1:34:25
  It's not really an army thing, right?
• 1:34:29
  It's unlikely you'd come across that intel, correct?
• 1:34:32
  Yeah, that would be somewhat difficult to come across that information.
• 1:34:37
  So, you know, it's one of those things that kind of activates, like, this smells funny.
• 1:34:45
  Gotcha.
• 1:34:45
  Yeah, and just the idea of, you know, anybody getting that close to our coastline, like within that distance, how we would not detect that.
• 1:34:58
  Well, networks.
• 1:34:59
  Yeah, I find that hard to believe personally.
• 1:35:02
  Yeah, I know that we had a network or probably still have a network called SOSIS, which are underground sensors that go between the GI-UK gap, Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom, that gap.
• 1:35:15
  So we can detect any Russian submarines coming out of their bastions, which they rarely ever do anyway.
• 1:35:22
  Russian submarines essentially never leave the Kerasi.
• 1:35:24
  It was a big deal when Russian submarines went down to one Russian submarine went down to Cuba for training exercises.
• 1:35:32
  I'm sure the guys in NAS Jacksonville are having a hell of a time using their P-8 Poseidons tracking this submarine.
• 1:35:45
  I'm sure they had a party
• 1:35:48
  getting all sorts of data on this submarine as it traveled
• 1:35:52
  I tend to stay away from naval topics
• 1:35:57
  because I just don't know as much about them
• 1:36:00
  but I'm sure we have some sort of underground network
• 1:36:02
  that detects submarines
• 1:36:04
  or at least could detect certain kinds of contacts
• 1:36:07
  and we send something to investigate
• 1:36:08
  so the odds of a Chinese submarine
• 1:36:12
  sitting off the East Coast is near zero.
• 1:36:16
  Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
• 1:36:18
  I find it a little hard to believe that.
• 1:36:20
  We wouldn't know there was a presence.
• 1:36:22
  We wouldn't know.
• 1:36:23
  It's not, let me put that a different way.
• 1:36:25
  The odds of a Chinese submarine sitting off the East Coast
• 1:36:28
  is a roughly even chance.
• 1:36:32
  It is likely that China has the capability to do that.
• 1:36:37
  And it is open, what do you call it,
• 1:36:40
  to international waters.
• 1:36:41
  You can sail wherever you want.
• 1:36:44
  You want to park a Chinese submarine in the international waters?
• 1:36:46
  Knock yourself out.
• 1:36:47
  All right.
• 1:36:48
  Yeah, sure.
• 1:36:48
  Do it.
• 1:36:49
  We'd love to train against you.
• 1:36:51
  You know, so it's certainly possible that a Chinese submarine could be there, but we
• 1:36:57
  would almost certainly know about it.
• 1:36:59
  That's basically what was my point I was trying to make, I guess.
• 1:37:03
  We would have known.
• 1:37:05
  At some point, we would have definitely known it was there.
• 1:37:07
  It wouldn't have just gone undetected.
• 1:37:08
  so and again
• 1:37:10
  I'm with you I don't know enough
• 1:37:13
  about how the Navy works or
• 1:37:15
  you know what they use but I
• 1:37:17
  find it highly unlikely that
• 1:37:18
  such a well funded military
• 1:37:20
  such as ours would not have the capability
• 1:37:23
  to detect
• 1:37:24
  a presence out there
• 1:37:26
  oh we would be so
• 1:37:28
  we'd be so on that
• 1:37:29
  that would be
• 1:37:32
  I mean we would have so
• 1:37:35
  much fun
• 1:37:36
  seriously like
• 1:37:38
  it's such a great training opportunity.
• 1:37:41
  Right.
• 1:37:41
  And like,
• 1:37:42
  you know,
• 1:37:42
  sometimes people get bored,
• 1:37:44
  you know,
• 1:37:45
  like why not,
• 1:37:47
  you know,
• 1:37:47
  why not use this as a training opportunity?
• 1:37:51
  I mean,
• 1:37:51
  they're there,
• 1:37:52
  right?
• 1:37:54
  Let's take this opportunity.
• 1:37:55
  Well,
• 1:37:56
  I'm going to start wrapping up because I'm sure you're very busy.
• 1:38:00
  I got a few meetings and really quick though,
• 1:38:03
  I'm going to ask you,
• 1:38:04
  what is your go-to cigar these days?
• 1:38:06
  What are you into?
• 1:38:07
  Well,
• 1:38:08
  right now I'm smoking a bone
• 1:38:10
  bone shaker but
• 1:38:12
  I like the Camacho Reds
• 1:38:14
  yeah the red Camachos
• 1:38:16
  but Partica's Black Label
• 1:38:20
  Protegas Black Label
• 1:38:22
  I love these little ones
• 1:38:23
  and especially
• 1:38:26
  because you know
• 1:38:27
  I recognize like I need to smoke
• 1:38:30
  less
• 1:38:30
  I love smoking
• 1:38:33
  and you know
• 1:38:35
  Partica one of the nice parts about these
• 1:38:37
  is I can write.
• 1:38:40
  A lot of times, I spend a good
• 1:38:41
  portion of my day writing scripts.
• 1:38:44
  I'll write and I'll smoke
• 1:38:46
  and I don't even notice I'm smoking.
• 1:38:48
  I'll be done.
• 1:38:50
  I'll just keep going, going,
• 1:38:51
  going. So yeah, that's probably
• 1:38:54
  the Partagist Black Label, which I love
• 1:38:56
  the tiny ones. I actually can't get
• 1:38:58
  them in Maryland anymore.
• 1:38:59
  Really? Yeah, Maryland banned
• 1:39:02
  the sale of small cigars.
• 1:39:05
  I guess they're
• 1:39:06
  trying to do it to prevent
• 1:39:07
  like the black and milds
• 1:39:09
  being used as marijuana.
• 1:39:12
  That's ridiculous.
• 1:39:13
  But these, since these are so small,
• 1:39:15
  I guess they fall under that rule.
• 1:39:17
  They're not that small.
• 1:39:19
  And I didn't even know it until I tried to
• 1:39:21
  order on and
• 1:39:23
  I was like, oh, you can't ship these
• 1:39:25
  to Maryland. Well, thank God
• 1:39:27
  there's this girl I know on Virginia Beach.
• 1:39:30
  And once in a while, I go
• 1:39:31
  down to see her
• 1:39:32
  and I stay at her
• 1:39:35
  place. I was there for like two weeks.
• 1:39:37
  Uh, actually it's one of the reasons I came back up here.
• 1:39:40
  I was kind of overstaying my welcome.
• 1:39:41
  And it was about the snow.
• 1:39:43
  And, uh, I was like, shoot, I need to, I need to leave, but I'll order cigars.
• 1:39:49
  I'll have them sent there.
• 1:39:50
  I'll pick them up there.
• 1:39:50
  I'll order the mini tins there.
• 1:39:53
  You know, that's, that's, that's something, I guess.
• 1:39:56
  I was, uh, yeah.
• 1:39:58
  Partigas and the red Camachos.
• 1:40:00
  Bone shakers are pretty good too.
• 1:40:01
  I like those.
• 1:40:02
  Yeah.
• 1:40:02
  It's sad that, that, that they're trying to more and more limit the sales of cigars and
• 1:40:06
  enjoyment of them. I mean, I know we're going off topic here, but it's like, I don't know if you
• 1:40:10
  ever listen to Cigar Dave at all, but he has this whole thing. He always calls them the pleasure
• 1:40:16
  police, you know, how they're always going out of their way to make sure that, you know, they're
• 1:40:21
  just taking these little, you know, little pieces of enjoyment away from us. And it's not like
• 1:40:27
  they're harming anyone except, you know, maybe ourselves, if that. But yeah, I'm kind of like,
• 1:40:32
  I've been going, I've been more and more into the Olmec lately by Foundation Cigars.
• 1:40:37
  So I've been going that direction a lot more.
• 1:40:39
  And then of course I've always, always enjoy a Padron, but not always affordable, but yeah,
• 1:40:45
  I've been big on the Olmecs.
• 1:40:47
  Before we sign off though, I know you have a book, so let's, let's talk about your book.
• 1:40:51
  Let's tell people how they can get that.
• 1:40:52
  No, seriously, you know, go ahead, pitch your stuff.
• 1:40:55
  Why not?
• 1:40:55
  You're here, you know?
• 1:40:56
  Yeah.
• 1:40:56
  A couple of months ago, I guess it was last year, someone said, Ryan, you need to write a book.
• 1:41:07
  And I was like, I don't know how to write a book.
• 1:41:11
  I'm not a writer.
• 1:41:13
  So I wrote a short story called Warlock, which is about an Irish traveler who has a little bit of magic,
• 1:41:21
  but kind of like magic in the sense of he can tell who's in a house before he robs it kind of thing.
• 1:41:26
  Like, is this a good house to rob?
• 1:41:28
  And after the terrorist attacks 9-11, the FBI contacts him and asks him to help find Osama bin Laden, which he does.
• 1:41:36
  Gotcha.
• 1:41:37
  And so I wrote that short story.
• 1:41:38
  It sold really well.
• 1:41:39
  People actually bought it.
• 1:41:40
  I'm like, hmm, okay, maybe there's something here.
• 1:41:43
  So then I started writing a book called The Wind Machine, which was about, I should have it right here, but I have it over there.
• 1:41:50
  The Wind Machine, the candy cane stripe thing.
• 1:41:52
  You can find it on Amazon and Audible if you're a Marine and want to listen to it.
• 1:41:56
  And I was thinking, because I work in the AI space,
• 1:42:02
  at least I used to work in the AI space,
• 1:42:04
  I was like, wouldn't it be neat if there was a guy who had an AI computer?
• 1:42:10
  If you knew there was going to be a war, you might be able to buy stocks, right?
• 1:42:17
  And game the market, right?
• 1:42:19
  Right.
• 1:42:19
  Well, what if there was a guy who found out there was going to be a nuclear war?
• 1:42:25
  between the U.S. and China,
• 1:42:28
  would you
• 1:42:29
  try to put a limited
• 1:42:31
  nuclear exchange? Limited
• 1:42:33
  nuclear exchange in the U.S. and China,
• 1:42:35
  would you try to make money off it
• 1:42:37
  or would you try to
• 1:42:39
  warn the government?
• 1:42:40
  And then that kind of gets into,
• 1:42:42
  well, how do you warn the government?
• 1:42:45
  There's no hotline you can call
• 1:42:47
  the Pentagon.
• 1:42:48
  And plus, if you do tell the Pentagon,
• 1:42:50
  hey, I have a supercomputer that picks stocks
• 1:42:52
  almost perfectly,
• 1:42:53
  you do tell the government that the next person you speak to is the SEC,
• 1:42:58
  Securities and Exchange Commission, who will then put you out of business
• 1:43:02
  because you have an unfair advantage.
• 1:43:05
  So now what do you do? That's kind of the question of the novel.
• 1:43:09
  It's essentially the responsible use of AI.
• 1:43:12
  The plot is essentially what if
• 1:43:16
  Doctor Strange ran a hedge fund?
• 1:43:18
  but right the theme is the responsible use of ai and uh so it's crazy is uh you know people love
• 1:43:29
  the book and i i actually i ran my book through ai and what i found was like 80 of the book
• 1:43:37
  is meetings meetings meetings like like literally like people in a conference room and having a
• 1:43:45
  meeting like i somehow like i made a book about meetings and it's exciting that's funny you know
• 1:43:51
  like people love it like love a meeting but people like they freaking love this book and they i've
• 1:44:00
  had people say it's ryan is the new tom clancy ryan i have one guy's a ryan is better than clancy
• 1:44:06
  wow and uh you're making me want to read it
• 1:44:09
  In no way disparaging Jack Carr, but you read something like The Terminalist.
• 1:44:18
  It's about special forces, and everybody in The Terminalist is good at their jobs.
• 1:44:24
  They're like, I'm the best sniper.
• 1:44:26
  I'm the best pilot.
• 1:44:27
  I'm a CrossFitter, and I'm a whatever.
• 1:44:31
  I'm the best whatever.
• 1:44:33
  CrossFit ninja.
• 1:44:34
  The best whatever.
• 1:44:35
  And now it's the fifth book.
• 1:44:39
  And now, what's his name?
• 1:44:43
  Kyle Reese.
• 1:44:45
  It's like the fifth book.
• 1:44:46
  And Kyle Reese is told, that dude would be dead.
• 1:44:49
  And I know what Jack Carr is doing.
• 1:44:51
  He likes James Bond.
• 1:44:53
  And he's like, I need to do James Bond.
• 1:44:55
  James Bond can't die.
• 1:44:57
  And that's the interesting thing about these books.
• 1:44:59
  is that
• 1:45:01
  you know
• 1:45:04
  Kyle Reese is going to be fine at the end.
• 1:45:07
  Now, in the
• 1:45:08
  beginning book, you didn't know that. You thought he had a brain
• 1:45:10
  to him. It's all about the journey, right?
• 1:45:12
  It's all about the journey.
• 1:45:14
  What I
• 1:45:16
  wanted to do was a book about
• 1:45:18
  a perfectly normal dude.
• 1:45:20
  He had a bunch of heads fun,
• 1:45:22
  was in the army, but he's not
• 1:45:24
  like, you know, he was in the army
• 1:45:26
  30 years ago.
• 1:45:27
  right yeah he's not some special forces dude he's not he doesn't know anything anymore
• 1:45:35
  he was a finance officer right didn't know a damn thing but he's thrust into this situation
• 1:45:42
  he's thinking like you know i was in afghanistan it sucked to see people fall off the plane in
• 1:45:49
  afghanistan what if we could give this information to the government we can stop this war
• 1:45:54
  prevent it or win it.
• 1:45:59
  And then the scary thing becomes
• 1:46:01
  like if you had a machine that could win wars,
• 1:46:04
  what's stopping you from starting a war?
• 1:46:08
  Right?
• 1:46:09
  You're guaranteed to win.
• 1:46:11
  Right.
• 1:46:12
  So, yeah, that was kind of the path
• 1:46:14
  that I took with that book.
• 1:46:16
  And people seem to freaking love it.
• 1:46:17
  So, yeah, it's on Amazon,
• 1:46:18
  the win machine, paperback and Kindle
• 1:46:20
  and on Audible.
• 1:46:22
  and can they get it from you directly to your website oh well it's not i can't get it directly
• 1:46:27
  for me for my website i do have signed copies available uh at bunker branding okay where i have
• 1:46:33
  all my merch uh like i signed 50 of them they sold out in three days they actually sold 56 by
• 1:46:39
  accident i have to i ordered like six more books to be sent to me so i could sign them with gotcha
• 1:46:45
  like a special note for these patient people then i've sent a bunker branding i'm gonna do another
• 1:46:50
  a run of 50.
• 1:46:52
  My fans love them.
• 1:46:54
  I priced everything as
• 1:46:56
  low as the other funny thing I found out I was thinking oh I going to price this as low as possible so as many people want to read it what i found was that like if i do that like you barely
• 1:47:09
  i barely make any money like on a on a 17.99 book i make like four dollars yeah after like
• 1:47:17
  everything there's not a lot of markup or margin on these things yeah there's not uh audio it's a
• 1:47:22
  volume game right yeah and audiobooks are even worse really however audiobook sales are crazy
• 1:47:30
  like they're like with with um because i guess more people at least more men they listen to
• 1:47:39
  audiobooks than they do reading and so now it's like you put out an audiobook that thing just
• 1:47:46
  sits there and it makes money it's not a lot of money but there's a lot of volume i i think um
• 1:47:51
  I think it's the same reason podcasts got so popular.
• 1:47:54
  It's just people busy.
• 1:47:57
  A lot of people commute depending on where you live.
• 1:47:59
  There's a lot of time on the road.
• 1:48:01
  For example, salespeople.
• 1:48:03
  If you work in the trades, you're swinging hammers, whatever.
• 1:48:05
  If you're by yourself as an electrician, whatever,
• 1:48:08
  and you know what you're doing,
• 1:48:09
  you put your earbuds on and you got something going.
• 1:48:11
  You can hear the conversation, get some information.
• 1:48:14
  I think that's probably what's attributed to the popularity
• 1:48:17
  in audiobooks for sure.
• 1:48:19
  I've tried it.
• 1:48:20
  I'm more of a read.
• 1:48:22
  Like, I like reading the word.
• 1:48:24
  I like paper.
• 1:48:24
  I'm one of those people.
• 1:48:25
  You know, I don't know if I'm just nostalgic,
• 1:48:27
  but I can never pick up my iPad, for example.
• 1:48:31
  I tried this, and I'll download some books,
• 1:48:34
  and I'll try to read them, and it just puts me to sleep.
• 1:48:35
  There's something about me trying to stare at a screen.
• 1:48:37
  It doesn't have the same feel.
• 1:48:40
  Well, the Kindle, I buy everything on Kindle now.
• 1:48:43
  I very rarely buy paper books anymore.
• 1:48:46
  You know, I think what I like about the Kindle is that I can switch from,
• 1:48:50
  because I do, I know I don't look it,
• 1:48:52
  but I do two hours in the treadmill every day.
• 1:48:54
  I do five miles every day.
• 1:48:56
  All right.
• 1:48:56
  Some walking, you know, walk, run, walk.
• 1:49:00
  And I typically read while I'm on the treadmill
• 1:49:06
  because I have a Peloton and I have the Kindle app on it.
• 1:49:09
  And so people ask me like,
• 1:49:11
  how do you know so much stuff?
• 1:49:13
  Because I don't play video games and I read all the time.
• 1:49:15
  Yeah, you're consuming information all the time.
• 1:49:17
  Yeah, I'm consuming information like literally all the time.
• 1:49:20
  There isn't like a blank spot in my day.
• 1:49:23
  There's actually, there is a video I bought.
• 1:49:25
  It was two years ago.
• 1:49:26
  I bought an Xbox just to do a video about Starfield,
• 1:49:31
  like how to improve the AI in the video game Starfield.
• 1:49:34
  So I bought an Xbox.
• 1:49:35
  I got Starfield.
• 1:49:37
  I played Starfield.
• 1:49:38
  I figured out how we could actually improve the AI in Starfield
• 1:49:41
  because people were posting about Starfield,
• 1:49:43
  all the AI was bad.
• 1:49:44
  and I actually released a version
• 1:49:47
  of how to make Starfield better, how to make the
• 1:49:49
  AI better and more realistic And then I found out there a new game called Aliens Dark Descent And up there I have a picture
• 1:49:59
  of Drake and Vasquez
• 1:50:01
  from Aliens. It's like a painting
• 1:50:03
  of that scene when they were with
• 1:50:05
  the smart guns on the ship in Aliens.
• 1:50:08
  And I think I
• 1:50:09
  wanted to become a soldier because of that movie
• 1:50:11
  Aliens. I wanted to become a heavy weapons guy
• 1:50:13
  and machine gunner. I'm a big fan of that
• 1:50:15
  Alien saga, personally.
• 1:50:17
  yeah and uh like that video game is available i'm like i want to play that but i'm also like
• 1:50:24
  with what time that's my that's been my thing with video games i'm not opposed to them i just
• 1:50:31
  i get bored after a while like i'm i'm very i've always in my mind i got shit to do i got there's
• 1:50:37
  other things you know i maybe i have an attention deficit thing i have no idea but i want to move
• 1:50:42
  on after a while i'm like okay i've done this what's next you know i can't i can't sit there
• 1:50:46
  for that long.
• 1:50:47
  But I like it when I'm playing them.
• 1:50:49
  I don't do it anymore.
• 1:50:50
  I mean, I have an old Xbox 360
• 1:50:53
  that you can't even use anymore anyway.
• 1:50:54
  It's up in the closet.
• 1:50:56
  I don't even use it anymore.
• 1:50:57
  My brother and my nephew, though,
• 1:50:58
  they're big on them.
• 1:51:00
  But I just can't.
• 1:51:01
  For some reason, I just can't.
• 1:51:04
  I mean, you know, it's...
• 1:51:06
  Yeah, I don't begrudge anybody
• 1:51:08
  who likes to play video games.
• 1:51:11
  No, no, me neither.
• 1:51:12
  Yeah.
• 1:51:12
  There is a consequence
• 1:51:14
  because like if you
• 1:51:16
  and I've said this to people before
• 1:51:18
  how can I do what you do
• 1:51:20
  well stop playing video
• 1:51:22
  games and start reading books
• 1:51:24
  I need to read books about every single
• 1:51:26
  subject because like I've
• 1:51:28
  there are times when I've
• 1:51:30
  like someone has said something and went
• 1:51:32
  wait a minute that isn't correct I remember the
• 1:51:34
  book I read it from right
• 1:51:36
  and I'm like I go make a video
• 1:51:38
  like no this person's wrong that's not how this
• 1:51:40
  works because I read this thing
• 1:51:42
  back in whatever and
• 1:51:44
  And yeah, we had a friend of the family, my dad's friend, when he was working at this
• 1:51:50
  company, his boss, he was a World War II vet.
• 1:51:53
  And I remember him.
• 1:51:54
  We used to go to his house all the time as kids.
• 1:51:56
  It's almost like a, pretty much like a family member.
• 1:51:58
  And he had this huge library, like huge library.
• 1:52:02
  And somehow I gravitated towards that.
• 1:52:05
  And he had all these books on strategy and war and generals and you name it, everything.
• 1:52:11
  I just soaked all that stuff up.
• 1:52:13
  And when he passed away, he left me his library.
• 1:52:15
  I ended up with all of that.
• 1:52:16
  It was tons of books, tons of books.
• 1:52:19
  It was amazing.
• 1:52:20
  And you know what's crazy is what I found through the years, though.
• 1:52:23
  There was some publications that he had from way back that when I revisited,
• 1:52:29
  let's say, the revised versions or whatever,
• 1:52:31
  some of the information was changed or taken out.
• 1:52:33
  I never thought that was a thing.
• 1:52:34
  I always thought that was just like, eh, that was bullshit, conspiracy.
• 1:52:37
  But over time, some of this information was rewritten.
• 1:52:40
  And it was not the same And I noticed that It was really really weird And you know this could be another rabbit hole we could dive down later but I just I I I personally saw that and I was I was really I was really shocked I didn I was like wow why why would they change that
• 1:52:54
  Why would they want to, you know, alter that information? Yeah. I have no idea why, but it
• 1:53:00
  does happen. It does happen. So it's like over time, how, how can we always rely on that,
• 1:53:05
  that information, you know, as it gets revised and rewritten after a while.
• 1:53:10
  There's a book I'm listening to right now about the Apollo program.
• 1:53:14
  Yeah.
• 1:53:15
  And I think the book was originally written in the 1980s.
• 1:53:19
  And they said right up front in the,
• 1:53:22
  in the audio book that we changed this stuff because like everybody has a
• 1:53:27
  computer now.
• 1:53:27
  So we no longer have to explain what a computer is.
• 1:53:30
  Right.
• 1:53:30
  So we cut that out.
• 1:53:31
  We also,
• 1:53:32
  you know,
• 1:53:33
  there,
• 1:53:33
  there were things that,
• 1:53:34
  that it was weird just seeing like,
• 1:53:38
  you know,
• 1:53:38
  I'm old enough to remember smoking on an airplane.
• 1:53:40
  Yeah.
• 1:53:40
  Right? Like, that was, and it is kind of weird when you watch something like Apollo 13. I wonder if Apollo 13 could even get made today.
• 1:53:52
  Hmm.
• 1:53:53
  Accurately.
• 1:53:54
  I don't know.
• 1:53:54
  Because the second you light up a cigarette, you get an R rating.
• 1:53:59
  True.
• 1:54:00
  Right?
• 1:54:00
  True.
• 1:54:02
  So, like, could you even make Apollo 13 today? That's a pretty interesting question.
• 1:54:07
  Probably not.
• 1:54:07
  So, we do rewrite history to modern sensibilities.
• 1:54:10
  Yeah, we do, unfortunately.
• 1:54:12
  I mean, I think we should just let it be how it is.
• 1:54:13
  I mean, it's a way to, you know, you're just,
• 1:54:16
  it's a way to look back at how things were
• 1:54:18
  and you can learn from that.
• 1:54:19
  Not saying you have to repeat it,
• 1:54:20
  but hey, this is how it was.
• 1:54:22
  Deal with it.
• 1:54:23
  That's all there is to it.
• 1:54:24
  That's what I think.
• 1:54:26
  It's ridiculous.
• 1:54:27
  You know what?
• 1:54:29
  I'm going to have to end it.
• 1:54:30
  I'm sorry, Ryan.
• 1:54:31
  I got to go.
• 1:54:32
  I like talking to you, man.
• 1:54:33
  You're great.
• 1:54:34
  This is fun.
• 1:54:35
  Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:54:37
  Yeah, no, seriously.
• 1:54:38
  But thank you for your patience.
• 1:54:39
  I really apologize about that technical BS.
• 1:54:41
  I don't know what happened there.
• 1:54:44
  I'll do my best pieces together.
• 1:54:46
  I want people to support you.
• 1:54:47
  Go to our YouTube channel.
• 1:54:49
  Appreciate your time.
• 1:54:50
  Hopefully I can do this with you again.
• 1:54:51
  Some, you know, down the road.
• 1:54:52
  I'm sure, you know, you're busy,
• 1:54:53
  but let's stay connected, please.
• 1:54:56
  That'd be awesome.
• 1:54:57
  And yeah.
• 1:54:58
  Hey, have a great day, man.
• 1:55:00
  Appreciate it.
• 1:55:01
  You got to go.
• 1:55:02
  I know I do.
• 1:55:02
  I'm sorry.
• 1:55:03
  I'm not trying to cut you off.
• 1:55:04
  I just literally do have multiple meetings.
• 1:55:05
  I'm sorry about this.
• 1:55:07
  I want to keep going.
• 1:55:07
  I do.
• 1:55:08
  but yeah thank you really
• 1:55:10
  I appreciate it alright thank you for having me on
• 1:55:12
  alright Ryan bye buddy
• 1:55:14
  alright everybody that's the end of the show
• 1:55:16
  thanks for hanging in there with me
• 1:55:18
  I hope you enjoyed it
• 1:55:20
  and remember everybody please like
• 1:55:23
  follow and share the show
• 1:55:25
  and you can connect with me on X
• 1:55:26
  my handle is at
• 1:55:28
  Fonsablaze that's at F-O-N-T-E-S
• 1:55:31
  Ablaze
• 1:55:32
  have a great day and see you
• 1:55:35
  on the next one
• 1:55:38
  you