Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 8/27/26: Putin Escalates War In Ukraine, CIA Secret Cartel War in Mexico, Recovered UFOs?

Transcript

8/27/26: Putin Escalates War In Ukraine, CIA Secret Cartel War in Mexico, Recovered UFOs? · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.
• 0:01
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• 0:33
  Speaker 4: So as Ukrainian drone attacks continue to pummel Russia's oil industry,
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: the CIA director traveled to Moscow to warn Putin against
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: an attack on NATO interests in Europe, while Bloomberg is reporting,
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: put this first element up on the screen, that Putin
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: is considering ways to escalate the war against Ukraine with
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: a lot of people kind of around him starting to
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: talk about the actual use of tactical nuclear weapons. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: so this Bloomberg report doesn't say that anybody close to
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: Putin is saying, that anybody in Putin's inner circle is
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: saying this. What they're saying is that kind of the
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: hardliners who are influential in, in Putin's world are increasingly
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: talking about the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Right, which Professor Mearsheimer has been saying here for months
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: on the show and has been warning about this.
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: Now, the reason that a lot of other analysts think
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: that that's not an immediate concern is... something else that
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: Bloomberg alludes to, that Russia has significant escalatory options at
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: its disposal that it has not used yet. And that
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: the thinking is that before you take the political hit
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: from breaking the taboo and becoming the first country to
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: use nuclear weapons since the United States in 1945, you
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: would do these other things. And the other things include
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: major ballistic missile attacks, particularly on the downtown Kyiv, as
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: well as striking infrastructure targets throughout Ukraine and other major cities.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Putin has said in.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: Recent days that Russia is going to attack the kind
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: of beating heart of the Ukrainian economy. And it comes
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: as Ukraine is effectively out of ballistic missile interceptors.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: Partly as a result of this war going on for
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: four years, partly as a result of the United States
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: launching a war against Iran and using the ballistic missile
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: interceptors to defend its positions in the region as well
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: as to defend Israel. And so now when there is
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: a ballistic missile attack, even with conventional ballistic missiles, you
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: often are seeing dozens or scores of casualties in Kyiv.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: And that's before, you know, they've kind of climbed up
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: this this escalatory ladder. There seems to be in the
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: in the U.S. there seems to be very little focus
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: on what's going on. It's like all that Trump said
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: was going to end the war.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: He didn't end the war.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, there isn't just focus. Let's be honest. Like, they
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: support this. The security establishment in Washington. And frankly, most
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: of the Democratic voters, they're like, oh, this is good.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Ukraine's taking the war to Russia.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And Republican voters, now that Trump has flipped, are even flipping.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You're right. Yeah, good point.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: You know, I have to update my briars when it
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: comes to the cult. But you're exactly right. And of course, everybody's, oh,
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Putin shill. No, I'm a humanity shill. Like, I don't
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: want to see the normalization of tactical nuclear weapons. And
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: this is actually exactly fulfilling the exact prophecy which we
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: saw from the destruction of weapons stockpiles in Iran. Because
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: let's put D5 up here on the screen. This really
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: colors in the lines of what we knew about this
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: shady meeting, which everybody knew had taken place, but we
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: didn't know the exact details. So the CIA director, John Ratcliffe,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: flew to Moscow in a surprise trip, was, quote, to
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: warn Russia not to attack NATO. Now, the reason why
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: I think we should all take this very seriously is
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: the last time that a CIA director flew to Russia
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: was right before.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: The invasion of Ukraine. To warn them not to attack Ukraine.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, where the, I forget, Bill Burns, I think was
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: his name. Bill Burns sat across from Putin. He's like,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: we know you're going to attack Ukraine. Please do not
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: do that. And Trump actually tried to downplay this as, quote,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: a routine, a semi-routine visit.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Sorry to disappoint people.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: We actually saw just yesterday there were pictures snapped of
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: the CIA director, Secretary Hegseth, and the entire National Security
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Council who met with Trump apparently about this meeting.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: So you can see they see it.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Important enough to summon full National Security Council situation room
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: meeting and for him to fly to Moscow, there's obviously
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: at least some intelligence, which shows that this is a
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: potential possibility.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: But I specifically want to read this one.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: A shortfall in critical munitions driven by expenditures in Iran
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: could also factor into Putin's thinking.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: The U.S.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Has degraded its stockpile of certain weapons because of transfers
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: to Ukraine after Russia's 2022 invasion and as well as
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: the Iran conflict. And so the neocons, ironically, who were
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: obsessed with Ukraine and then also were even more obsessed
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: with Iran, have now created a reality where Kiev has
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: no interceptors left.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: We've got no interceptors left to give them. And Putin is.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Now thinking, well, you guys want to give them all
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: these drones and all this technology and all this weapons
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: manufacturing support. and they're going to be sitting here taking
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: out my critical oil infrastructure, maybe I'll hit you a
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: little bit and I'll undermine Article 5 because you and
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I both know that if they're going to go and
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: hit some town right on the border of a Baltic state,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: nobody in America is going to say, oh, yeah, let's
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: go to nuclear war.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Nobody, including me, I would say we shouldn't do it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and to give a sense of, we can roll
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: D2 here, to give a sense of why Putin is
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: being pressured and contemplating serious escalation. This is the Kostovo
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: oil refinery that just fell victim to a Ukrainian drone attack.
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: One of the biggest refineries in Russia. And put up
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: D3 here. Reuters reporting, and others as well, that it's been... uh,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: taken offline that, you know, a, a central node of
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: the Russian kind of fossil fuel economy, uh, shut down
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: as a result of this. And we could put up D4.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: This is, this is part of a pattern. Um, and
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: so this is Ukrainian media. Um, but this is, this is,
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: you know, verified, uh, is report August 14th, Ukrainian drones attacked, um,
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: nearly one-third of the large oil refineries in Russia. In addition,
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: one of Russia's major oil refineries, which I can't pronounce,
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: completely stopped operations following Ukrainian attacks. They're hitting export capacity
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: in the Caspian and the Black Sea. Russians are hitting
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: Ukrainian ships. Ukraine is hitting Russian ships. And that's on
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: top of the, this is harvest season. Ukraine and Russia provide,
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: you know, this region provides something like a quarter of
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: the grain for the world. And so both sides are
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: seeing their economies getting battered. Russia is also, there was
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: also yesterday another massive attack on basically what is Russia's Amazon,
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: what's called Wildberries.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: What Ukraine has been.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: Doing has been blowing up these absolutely massive warehouses and
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: destroying billions of dollars worth of goods that are held
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: and waiting to be transited to small business owners. And
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: I've seen a bunch of interviews with Russian people who,
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: you know, they're living off of their version of Etsy
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: or whatever. You know, they're just retailers who have seen
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: entire lives wiped out by these attacks on these warehouses.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: And here's the thing for the Ukrainians who are like, oh,
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: but they've been attacking us for four years.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fair. No, fair. All's fair in war.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: But that's the problem is you can't claim, you know,
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: some moral high ground when you literally invaded Russia like
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: two years ago and held a significant parts of its territory.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Now you're hitting their critical infrastructure and you're crying if
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: they're Your only defense is just going to be, well,
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: they started it.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. But you can't end it. You literally can't.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: You know, it's funny, too, because you get accused of
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: being a Putin shill. And as usual, nobody who is
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: obsessed with Ukraine ever actually even reads the news. Their
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: own senior defense official, who Zelensky just fired, prompting mass
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: protests throughout the country, wrote an entire thing about how
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Zelensky has no plan to end the war. how they
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: potentially had a chance in some of these initial attacks,
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: how the current attacks have no actual endgame.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And, I mean, you could read between.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: The lines for his own firing and say that he
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: was fired because he probably was in the meeting saying,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: I think this is a real problem. We have no
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: actual plan to end this entire thing, and we're eventually
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: going to lead to disaster. So both sides of the conflict,
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: it's very, actually, it's very Iran-U.S. in a lot of
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: the same ways, where it starts out in one limited
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: way Things dramatically change the security architecture. People hunker down.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: They're both trying to... hit each other in a very
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: painful way. Russia, though, has the manufacturing on its side.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: It has the population, obviously, advantage on its side. And
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Ukraine is increasingly reliant on a West, which is broke
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: from munitions and can't necessarily help them. And so they're
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: going to escalate in the only way they can with
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: their drones, which, again, you have to give them credit.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: at least for being able to build them, but they're
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: using them in a way that's going to invite a
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: major retaliation from Russia.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And then what happens? We're all living in a new world.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: Right, and we're all going to see higher gas prices
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: and inflation across the entire global economy, plus people are
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: going to starve to death as a result of the
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: food crisis it's creating. One of the things that has
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: been reported to be a major hiccup in the peace
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: talks that just broke down has been Apparently, Russia's insistence
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: on seizing towns and areas being given, you kind of
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: Russian speaking areas that they haven't taken yet, that they
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: couldn't take by force. Which to me, it's not something
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: that's followed extraordinarily closely. I understand Ukraine's point there. Like, OK,
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: it's one thing for you to ask for the territory
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: that you already control. Yeah. You tried to take this
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: stuff you couldn't and you want us to give it
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: to you? Like, that's, like, come on.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Get out of here. Like, what are you talking about?
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: But on the other hand, if there is an ability
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: of the entire world, China, the United States, Europe, Africa,
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: South America, everybody to come together and be like, guys,
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: we have to figure something out here.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. Like, something has to give here. Now
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: is the time. Someone needs to end the war in
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: 24 hours. Somebody needs to do that.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Somebody needs to end the war in 24 hours. Before
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: they even take office, hopefully.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: And apparently Chairman Xi, telling Putin, don't even think about
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: using nuclear weapons. We'll see what that matters. And they're
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: going to meet next week.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. Good point.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: I think SCO or some meeting is happening soon.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Let's get to Mexico. We've got Juan David Rojas standing by.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: All right, joining us now is journalist Juan David Rojas
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: to discuss the question, has the CIA launched a secret
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: war in Mexico?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Juan David, thanks so much for being here. Good to
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: see you, man. Good to see you guys.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: All right, so has the CIA launched a secret war
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: in Mexico?
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: There's been a number of disturbing allegations. Ryan, you, Emily,
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: and I, some months ago, we talked about how there
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: were these two CIA deaths in the state of Chihuahua,
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: which is on the border. And, you know, the story
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: there was that that was these two agents died in
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: a car crash. At the time, I, you know, was
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: a bit skeptical that we were getting the full story
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: since then. And talking to people with, you know, close
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: to the matter, I find it to be more believable.
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: But after that, we started to get these whistleblowers, anonymous
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: whistleblowers within the agency, telling us that there's apparently a secret,
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: this covert assassination campaign by the CIA against cartel operatives.
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: And in March, in Mexico, there was a lot of
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: confused reporting about this car bombing against supposedly a Sinaloa
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: cartel operative. And apparently what these anonymous sources have said
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: is that this was a hit by the CIA. And
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: there's a number of really, what's odd about it is
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: that these anonymous whistleblowers here, I have the quotes, like
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: CNN said that, quote, The March car bombing was a
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: targeted assassination facilitated by CIA operations. And then for the time,
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: someone told them that the agency provided intelligence and support,
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: but was not on the ground when Mexican authorities killed
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: the operative. So, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity,
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: leeway there to interpret what's being said. You know, the
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: second quote kind of like gives a hint that like
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: Mexican authorities are involved. There's some degree of coordination, which
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: could be better, frankly. And this is the last thing.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: This has all come in tandem. There's a lot that's
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: been going on between the U.S. and Mexico just this year.
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: In tandem, we've seen this campaign of targeted lawfare against
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: sitting Mexican politicians, specifically and exclusively from the governing Moreno party.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Go ahead. Go into it.
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so basically they indicted the whole state of Sinaloa, which...
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: you know, per like the famous cartel, Sinaloa State, like it's,
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: you know, every governor ever is like involved in the
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: drug trade, you know, going back to like Kiki Camarena,
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: the DEA agent's assassination in the 80s, like the governor
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: at that time, like supposedly sheltered the head of the
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: Guadalajara cartel after he ordered Camarena's killing. But it was
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: really unprecedented to indict a sitting governor. It was never
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: done because it was always thought that it would be counterproductive.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: It would really screw up relations. And also, you're messing
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: up this entire security ecosystem. You need to work with
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: these guys to some extent. And the problem is in Sinaloa, actually,
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: it has been counterproductive. I'm good friends with a journalist there,
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: and he said that since Rocha Mocha, the governor there, resigned,
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: the security situation has gotten worse. You guys covered back when,
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: how Joaquin Guzman, one of El Chapo's sons, tricked El Mayo.
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: into flying over to Texas, and they both got arrested.
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: And this kicked off this horrific civil war within the cartel.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: It's created a lot of violence within the state. So
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: now you have like loyalists of Maggio, the Maggios, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: then the Chapo, the Chapitos going at it. And Rocha
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: Mocha supposedly was like on the side of the Chapitos.
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: So once he was out of the way, The modules
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: moved in they've been settling scores and it's it's been
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: a complete disaster.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: So yeah Yeah, so talk us through the politics of
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: this why?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: What what is that?
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: What would the CIA objective be and what would the
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: US objective be in only targeting? officials that are linked
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: to Claudia shine bombs government are the kind of opposition
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: party conservative figures just so above involvement with drug trafficking
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: that they can't find anything on them or what is
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: what are they actually going for here.
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: That's the big question and uh a lot of like
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: former like intelligence officials have been asking that question too
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: with no good answers uh so and and look this
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: is the drug trade in mexico like you know cartel
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: corruption this goes way back like Once upon a time,
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: like under like the one party pre that, you know,
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: the government, the country for 70 years, the country really
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: was basically a narco state. It was really the pre
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: in charge, like telling the traffickers what to do. Now,
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: the funny thing is that back then the CIA was like, OK,
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: we're drug trafficking. Historically, the CIA didn't care in general
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: about the drug trade in Latin America, one, because they
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: thought it was useless to oppose it. And two, they
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: cared more about, you know, like opposing leftists and communists.
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: And so that's now where we get the whole like
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: narco communist thing come in. But so what we've seen
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: in the rest of Latin America is that the Trump
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: administration is really willing to condone corruption from right-wing politicians.
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: And talking about the drug trade, Trump pardoned gangster disciples
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: Kingpin Larry Hoover. So it's hard for me to make
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: a case that really what they're after is gains on
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: security in the drug trade itself. But so what I've noticed,
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: and after the Sinaloa indictments, they seem to have taken
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: like a softer approach. They seem to be trying to
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: co-opt certain Morena governors specifically on the border, mind you.
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: So Mexico has six border states with the U.S. And
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: three of the governors there, the three that belong to
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: Morena specifically, they've all had their visas revoked. Some of
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: them have investigations against them in the U.S. And all
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: three of them are supposedly cooperating. with U.S. authorities as informants.
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: So there's questions there of if they're trying to build
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: a bigger indictment. But the other three governors are all opposition,
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: and notably Chihuahua, which is opposition governors, where we saw
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: the deaths of those two CIA agents.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: And yeah, I can tell you one of those governors
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: is very tainted with corruption, too, like narco-corruption.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: One of the things, one second, just step back a
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: little bit, because you had said that this is all,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: let's put your piece up on the screen. You had said,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: will Trump target Mexico next? The forever war logic demands it.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: Can you link kind of the World War III element
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: that you had worried about here with what you're talking
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: about in these corruption scandals?
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: Exactly, exactly. So the thing is, like, Really, the key
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: bit of interest between both countries is the border. Everything
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: that matters between the U.S. and Mexico is the border.
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: It's Mexico's ultimate source of leverage, both for immigration and trade.
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: And so what I think they're trying to do, and again,
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: this is speculation on my part I laid out in
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: the piece, they seem to be trying to co-opt governors
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: that they view as unfriendly from the governing party that's left-wing,
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: and they seem to trust the ones from the oppositions.
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: And I think a lot of this is geared towards
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: kind of safeguarding the CIA operations along the border. Down
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: the line, there's elections next midterm elections next year in.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Mexico.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: The three Moreno governors are actually well, there are elections
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: in their states, so maybe the idea is to try
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: to get opposition governors in there. And beyond that, well,
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: this is an administration that declared a war in Iran,
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: is escalating the Ukraine war, kidnapped Maduro, wants to invade Cuba.
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: And in their own stated words, they also would like
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: to bomb Mexico. So I think that really what they're doing,
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: they're kind of laying the groundwork for if they're interested
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: in the future, really trying to secure the border. And
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: if they ever decide to take kinetic action in the future,
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: I mean, this is a very dangerous and real possibility.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, fascinating stuff. Really scary.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: All right, Juan, continue to stay on top of the story,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: and we'll hope to see you again in the future.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 20:37
  Speaker 6: Thanks, guys.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Joining us now is great friend of the show, Ben Schreckinger.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: He is the publisher of Paradigm.News. Let's put it up
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: here on the screen, gentlemen, and there will be a
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: link down in the description. He, Ben, previously at Politico,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: he wrote a great book on Hunter Biden, interviewed him
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: here at Breaking Points, has now decided to look into
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: the UFO phenomenon and to uncover the everything that he
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: possibly can. So he writes, Reality Shock, A Beginner's Guide
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: to UFOs, Aliens, and Disclosure. Big picture, Ben, before we
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: get into the piece, why did you decide to do this?
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: You had a good gig going, you're at Politico, Hunter Biden,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: corruption guy, and you're like, you know what?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: It's UFOs for me.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: You know, for one thing, I just got sick of Washington.
• 21:22
  Speaker 6: I took some time off. I haven't been in D.C.
• 21:25
  Speaker 6: for a year and a half. I've I'm inspired by
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: what you and Crystal and Ryan and everybody have done here.
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: I think that internet media is still evolving. I wanted
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: to throw myself into the middle of it. And I
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: became completely obsessed with the UFO UAP issue, the mystery.
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: There's clearly room for investigative reporting to get to the
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: bottom of this. And I think it's going to be
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: a massive, both political and cultural phenomenon over the next
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: 12 to, you know, 120 months.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: And where did you find the immediate gaps? Like, where
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: does your journalistic capacity kind of fit in? Like, what's
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: been missing in this conversation? What are the first things
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: you've kind of uncovered?
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, to start with, I think just putting
• 22:17
  Speaker 6: everything that's happened in the last three years, especially since
• 22:21
  Speaker 6: David Grush gave testimony to Congress, since the first attempt
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: at a UAP Disclosure Act started, lay that all out,
• 22:33
  Speaker 6: and then lay that out in the context of what's
• 22:36
  Speaker 6: been going on on this topic for 80 years. I
• 22:41
  Speaker 6: think that's sort of part one. Before you even try
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: to add new information, I think you need a sort
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: of a lot of context and sense-making, and that's what
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: reality shock is for. And then in terms of where
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: there's room to investigate further, I think that David Grosh
• 22:58
  Speaker 6: has been escalating his public claims. I think there's room
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: to get to the bottom of what the basis is
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: for him, for example, going on Dr. Phil and saying
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: that people have communicated telepathically with aliens. I think Probably
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: there needs to be some work done trying to delineate
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: between this UAP issue, which is a very real, concrete
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: airspace security issue that not only is the U.S. dealing with,
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: there is now reporting that Europe has been making progress
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: on tracking UAP. There's an investigation in Japan. and figuring
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: out how that does or does not relate to claims
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: of non-human intelligence. There are obviously a lot of claims
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: floating around, some of them from people who should not
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: be dismissed out of hand, that these two things are
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: intimately related. Some of that may be disinformation. Some of
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: that may be misunderstanding. And I just think that somebody
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: needs to, you know, sort of focus on it and
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: try to start blocking, tackling and getting some more clarity.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: All right. So, Ben, you know, go into the piece.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: Reality show is very long, which it's very good. I
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: read through the entire thing. It's a good primer. Why
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: don't you pick some tidbits for the audience who may
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: be interested? skeptical, sick of hearing me cover the ins
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: and the outs. And I get it. It's been years.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: I've been talking about this topic. We're always being promised,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: including me, I get fatigued. People are like, oh, something
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: big is coming. And it's like, okay, all right. We've
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: been hearing this now for quite some time. So give
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: us a reality check and a reality shock. Yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: One of the things that shocked me, honestly, was learning
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: about the extent to which not only our government, but
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: Foreign governments over the decades have taken the UFO phenomenon
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: seriously as a potential threat and seriously as potentially representing
• 24:54
  Speaker 6: non-human intelligence. There's a memo from 1950 by a Canadian
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: official who cites conversations with people in the United States
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: writing back to Ottawa saying that the U.S. has recovered downcraft.
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: and is trying to reverse engineer them. So, you know,
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: David Grush didn't invent this claim in 2023. As early
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: as 1950, an official of a neighboring country believed that
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: to be true. Very possible that he was exposed to
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: disinformation that was cloaking some sort of, you know, terrestrial
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: Cold War American program, but nonetheless fascinating. In 1972, there's
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: an Australian intelligence analyst named Harry Turner. He also concludes
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: that the U.S. is secretly reverse engineering alien craft. So
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: there's a lot in the history here that made me fascinated,
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: made it harder for me to dismiss this. Even if
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: it is just a story of how did these intelligence
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: analysts over decades keep arriving at the same wrong conclusions,
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: That's a fascinating story. And it gets more fascinating when
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: you have David Grush not analyzing the United States actions
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: from the outside, but from inside with apparently full access,
• 26:13
  Speaker 6: arriving at this conclusion yet again. I had some interesting
• 26:18
  Speaker 6: interactions with Jim Clapper's lawyers in the course of reporting
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: out this piece. The point of this piece was not
• 26:24
  Speaker 6: to report out new information, but I did want clarity
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: for something he said in Age of Disclosure, this sort
• 26:31
  Speaker 6: of pro-disclosure documentary that came out last fall that was
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: very popular. He said that when he was in the
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: Air Force, they had a program for looking into anomalous
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: activities they otherwise couldn't understand and often over ranges out west,
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: notably Area 51. Jim Clapper, on camera, talks about anomalous
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: activity over Area 51. And it's a very short clip,
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: and I know that people in the disclosure movement treated
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: it as a big deal that they went to the
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: Hill and they said, look, we need to get more
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: information out of the Air Force about this, because officially,
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: the military was not looking into UFOs from the late
• 27:08
  Speaker 6: 1960s until the 21st century. So if in the middle
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: of this period there was a UFO program at the
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: Air Force, that would be notable. I went back to
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: Clapper's attorney for clarification. He said something along the lines of, well,
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: Director Clapper was talking about how in the 80s when
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: we were testing stealth aircraft, there were a lot of
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: reports that And many of them were.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Traced back to these stealth aircraft.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: If you ask me, that doesn't add a lot of clarity.
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: He's not emphasizing the idea that there are unexplained activities
• 27:46
  Speaker 6: under Area 51. I think it was a lawyerly comment.
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: And then after my piece came out, in the Liberation Times,
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: I saw a headline that Jim Clapper is now getting
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: uncomfortable with the attention around disclosure.
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: So....
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: What was going on with the Air Force in the 1980s?
• 28:03
  Speaker 6: I'd like to get more clarity there.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Great, great question.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: I'm particularly interested in the way that the entire UAP
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: conversation intersects and interacts with classified programs. Sometimes I suspect
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: that it operates as kind of a cover for other
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: interesting things that you'll find.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I'm curious if you.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: Ended up looking, I think it was back in 2024
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: in New Jersey, when there were all of these like
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: unexplained kind of UAP observations above kind of military facilities
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: in the region. Mayors were talking about it, like we
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: covered it. And then a few weeks after that all
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: kind of faded, you had this extremely complex drone attack
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: by the Ukrainians deep inside Russia where they drove kind of,
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: Mack trucks filled with drones deep, deep into Russia and
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: then released them and attacked a bunch of infrastructure nearby.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: It felt to me like an interesting coincidence that and
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: that perhaps we had been observing what was being produced.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: understood to be some type of UAP phenomenon, but what
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: it may have been was training for this operation that
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: was then successfully carried out later. Do you ever look
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: into that weird 2024 New Jersey phenomenon that was major
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: international news for a couple weeks and then just vanished
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: from the public consciousness?
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: I've not yet had a chance to go deep on it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 6: It does deserve someone needs to look back at that
• 29:41
  Speaker 6: and write the definitive account of that. I've heard rumors,
• 29:44
  Speaker 6: none of them bear repeating. Certainly, whether it's that New
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: Jersey drone flap or other aspects of this, it's quite
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: queer that some of this activity is It is human technology.
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: Some of it may be American adversaries. Some of it
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: certainly is American technology. I'm looking at the moment into
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: some leads involving plasma physics and what our military is
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: able to do with plasma physics. I expect that will
• 30:14
  Speaker 6: be a piece of the puzzle when all is said
• 30:17
  Speaker 6: and done. But it's not by any means clear that
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: that's going to be the entire answer to this.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Hmm. You know, some of the other things that you
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: point at are scientific research and some grants that you
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: found interesting.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Can you go into that?
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, well, what I'm seeing is that, you know, UFOlogy,
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: if you want to call it that, growing up in
• 30:41
  Speaker 6: the 90s, it was, you know, what you assumed, what
• 30:45
  Speaker 6: you absorbed from the culture was that this was for
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: kind of weird people who need to get a life,
• 30:49
  Speaker 6: who wear tinfoil hats. Turns out that Over the decades,
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: there have been very serious civilian efforts to collect and
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: analyze UFO data. And now that's migrating into the realm
• 31:04
  Speaker 6: of institutional science. You have the Galileo Project at Harvard,
• 31:08
  Speaker 6: which wants to use advanced instruments to study UAP. You
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: have a paper in a Nature portfolio journal claiming that
• 31:17
  Speaker 6: there's a statistical link between nuclear tests and strange materials.
• 31:23
  Speaker 6: lights appearing in the night sky in the 1950s. And
• 31:26
  Speaker 6: there is funding. There is grants starting to be made here.
• 31:30
  Speaker 6: New Jersey itself appropriated some money, partly to study UAP
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: after that drone flap. At the University of New York,
• 31:38
  Speaker 6: State University of New York in Albany, there's been a
• 31:40
  Speaker 6: gift to a physicist named Kevin Knuth, who's studying UAP physics.
• 31:47
  Speaker 6: And my expectation is that trend is going to continue
• 31:49
  Speaker 6: and that there's going to be more scientific funding for
• 31:51
  Speaker 6: this in the future.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: It's very interesting, and I'm excited to have somebody like
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: you who is on the beat and is going to
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: dig into all of this. So everybody go and subscribe
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: to the newsletter. It'll be right there, paradigm.news, linked down
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: in our description as well. Ben, thank you very much
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: for doing this and for dedicating your efforts to this phenomenon.
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: Thanks, guys. This was great.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody. Great show. Thank you, Ryan. See you tomorrow.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Appreciate it, brother.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: For Friday.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Think so i'm pretty sure that's the plan uh so
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: anyway there you go uh that's what's happening and we'll
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: see you all tomorrow