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Bustamante and Jacobsen: A non-kinetic World War III is here

How proxy wars, viral AI fakes, and Iran nuclear leverage could spark catastrophe; they argue a non-kinetic World War III is already quietly underway.

Andrew BustamanteguestBenjamin RaddguestAnnie JacobsenguestSteven Bartletthost
Jul 10, 20252h 35mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 6:14

    Intro

    1. AB

      I believe that we are already at the early stages, if not in World War III.

    2. BR

      It just doesn't look like the wars of the past.

    3. AJ

      And people should understand what is at stake, which is we are one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away-

    4. BR

      Or even one AI-generated viral video.

    5. AJ

      ... from nuclear annihilation.

    6. SB

      Is there anything at all you're doing to prepare?

    7. AB

      I'm leaving the United States by 2026.

    8. SB

      But is there anywhere on this map that is safe at all?

    9. AB

      So, my understanding is that there's actually three safe zones.

    10. AJ

      You are right. Uh-

    11. AB

      There's Hawaii-

    12. AJ

      Nope. Because there's so many targets in Hawaii, and same with all of Europe. But there's one tiny little place right there.

    13. SB

      So, where do we find ourself in terms of conflict and warfare now?

    14. AB

      It's getting worse. And-

    15. BR

      In the past, it was whoever had the strongest military. Now, you can destabilize a government or a society using a server farm and 20 people sitting in a room thousands of miles away.

    16. AJ

      And another real problem we have right now is that the different political parties inside the United States are so intent on taking down the other side, they do it at the national security peril.

    17. BR

      So now, Russia or China can play people off against one another and cause division.

    18. SB

      Andrew, what do you think happens next?

    19. AB

      Well, I think World War III is gonna be shaped by what we call proxy war, where a wealthy nation state funds, trains, and arms conflict in a less wealthy state to decrease the capability of your primary target.

    20. SB

      So, they're using that nation to do the work for them?

    21. AB

      Exactly right. That's already happening.

    22. SB

      And what's the probability of nuclear war?

    23. AJ

      So, here's a terrifying detail that the public does not know. So...

    24. BR

      Wow.

    25. SB

      Listen, to my regular listeners, I know you don't like it when I ask you to subscribe at the start of these conversations. I don't like saying it, I don't like it being in there. None of us like it. It's frustrating. Do you know what's also frustrating? It's also frustrating when I go into the backend of a YouTube channel and I see that 56% of you that listen frequently to this podcast haven't yet subscribed, and so many of you don't even know that you haven't subscribed, because I see in the comments section, you say to me, you go, "I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe." And that actually fuels the show. It's basically like you're making a donation to the show. So, that's why I ask all the time, because it enables us to build and build and build and build, and we're going for the long term here. So, all I'd ask you is if you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team here, hit the subscribe button, and we'll continue to build this show for you. That's my promise. Thank you to all of you guys that do subscribe. It means the world to me. Let's get on with the show. I invited you all here today because I intuitively feel like the world is changing before our eyes, and I think so many of us, if we're on social media or reading newspapers, can feel a sort of tension growing in society that is hard to understand if you're not an expert or you're not connected to these subjects in some way. I looked at some stats before this conversation that kind of support this feeling that I've intuitively had, and it shows that conflict zones across the world have increased by 66% in the last three years. In December 2024, the American think tank Atlantic Council asked about 400 global strategists about their thoughts about what's going on in the world, and 65% think that China will evade, invade Taiwan by force within 10 years. About 40% think there'll be a world war in the next 10 years. About 50% think nuclear weapons will be used in the next 10 years. And about 45% think Russia and NATO will fight directly. When we look at sort of spending and what's happening there, there's been a huge jump in military spending. There's now 300,000 NATO troops around the world that are on 30-day high-alert readiness. 59 states, um, have erupted in war since 2023, which is the greatest number logged in any year since 1946. And world military spending is up by about 10% year over year, which is the highest sum ever recorded by SIPR, making it a full decade of uninterrupted growth in military spending. Things feel tense, and every time I turn on the news, I have a mild sense of anxiety. So, I've gathered you three here today to help me as a muggle, as a normal person that doesn't have an understanding, parse through what's going on, and hopefully what we can do about this. Benjamin, to start with you, introductions. What's your context and what's the perspective/experience you bring to this conversation?

    26. BR

      I was born in Iran in 1977. I came to United States as a refugee under a program that President Carter allowed for Iranians fleeing religious and political persecution, and my family came here on that basis. And I basically spent the next 40-some-odd years trying to understand why I come from part of the world that seems to be in sort of continuous conflict and turmoil, and exactly what can be understood about the forces that brought me here, and I'm incredibly grateful to be here, and what can be done to basically change or at least better understand it to pave a way for change and progress in the future.

    27. SB

      What age did you leave Iran, and what was the environment like when you left?

    28. BR

      I was, uh, just under three years old, and it was a few months after... So, the Shah had left in December of '79, and then, um, we, we left a few months after that, around March. Khomeini had just arrived from Paris on a flight in, in February, basically taking control, and there was still a lot of anarchy and chaos as to exactly what the new regime would look like, what the government would look like. But we began, my parents began to see that there were some, you know, there were, there were definitely mass arrests. There were protests. There were things that were happening that looked like those who were loyal to the monarchy would be targeted, which is, my family was, uh, monarchists.

    29. SB

      Henny, same question to you. What, what is the experience/context, uh, that you bring to this conversation?

    30. AJ

      I am an author, uh, a journalist, and I write about war and weapons, US national security, and secrets. And I'm interested in looking at v- the very s- sort of minutiae of weapons and weapons systems, and the people who use them. I've written seven books, and all of them deal with war and weapons, and all of them deal with the Pentagon and the CIA specifically. So, all of my sources come from those organizations, the military and the intelligence community.

  2. 6:14 – 10:38

    Are We Already in World War 3?

    1. AJ

      I take the reader from nuclear launch to nuclear winter, which happens in a period of 72 minutes. And I interview presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, nuclear sub force commander, et cetera, et cetera, people who are very close to the chain of command, people who have rehearsed making these decisions if they need to be made. And what I learned terrified me and from what I... The book has been out for over a year now. It's still in hardback. People are reading it in 28 countries around the world. This is a serious edge of peril topic, and I think we're here to talk about that because no, no time in my life, I think, have we been closer to thinking about this reality than right now.

    2. SB

      Andrew, there's a few subjects and words that Annie mentioned there that also crossover in your story. One of them being nuclear war-

    3. AB

      (laughs)

    4. SB

      ... uh, and nuclear weapons. What is your context and how do you... what is the sort of experience and perspective you bring to this? What's your experience?

    5. AB

      Yeah, I am a former clandestine CIA intelligence officer, uh, also a, uh, decorated wartime veteran from the United States Air Force during our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Um, I've lived in this world that, uh, that we're talking about, this world of conflict, the world of nuclear threats, the world of developing nations, and, uh, political and military force as a tool to shape democracy, to shape diplomacy, um, and I'm very excited to get into this topic because I think there are certain areas here that are misunderstood, areas that are over-dramatized, and then areas that are not being spoken about that are very relevant and very compelling.

    6. SB

      Wasn't there a period of your life where you were underground and part of that sort of nuclear chain of command that Annie described?

    7. AB

      Absolutely. That's where my career started actually was with the, uh, ICBM, the Intercontinental and Ballistic Missile Forces of the United States Air Force, uh, overseeing Minuteman III missiles in Montana, uh, armed with 10 nuclear warheads each, uh, understanding the military doctrine, the strategies, the policies for how to execute.

    8. SB

      So you were, you were underground with a physical nuclear key?

    9. AB

      Correct. Around, around my neck.

    10. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    11. SB

      Hmm.

    12. AB

      And there are, uh, even as we have this conversation now, there are hundreds of US soldiers, hundreds of, of Russian soldiers that are in very similar positions, and they're not, they're not much older than, uh, than a high school graduate right now.

    13. SB

      Many people think we're on the cusp of World War III, but I think you've said in the past that you actually think World War III has already begun in some context.

    14. AB

      Yeah, correct. I believe that we are already at the early stages, if not in World War III. The problem is that people seem to think that World War III is gonna emulate World War II. The deployment of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons now would look completely different than the deployment of nuclear weapons looked in World War II if only because we have nine nuclear capable countries right now, not to mention the fact that we have a completely different information landscape, we have a completely different political landscape, we have a, a whole different, uh, landscape for alliances and for treaties. The world is very, very different than it was when World War II broke out.

    15. SB

      So you think we're in World War III now or the early innings of that?

    16. AB

      And I think World War III is gonna be shaped by what we call proxy war.

    17. SB

      What is proxy warfare?

    18. AB

      Proxy warfare is when a wealthy nation state, uh, funds and trains and arms conflict in a less wealthy state, uh, where there's usually some sort of civil disturbance or civil fight that's already happening. Much of what we've seen in the last 10 years is, is proxy warfare. Libya, Syria, Yemen. People argue that what we saw even Afghanistan, Iraq where the US was involved was proxy warfare. Israel and Iran is model proxy warfare. Uh, Russia and Ukraine are also models for proxy warfare.

    19. SB

      So there's someone else funding it and they're using that nation to do the, the work for them essentially?

    20. AB

      Exactly right. You use a intermediate nation that's still developing to decrease the capability of your primary target while you yourself conserve your own troops, your own weapons, and your own civilians against harm.

    21. SB

      Benjamin, what's your take on that in terms of us being at the start or the precipice of a, of a world war and it looking like a sort of a different, um, different set of weapons, a different way that we'll fight each other and the internet and digital warfare being a part

  3. 10:38 – 19:06

    The Rise of Digital and Proxy Warfare

    1. SB

      of that?

    2. BR

      I don't think since the, the beginning of the Cold War, let's say, let's go back to 1947 or '48, I don't think we've stopped fighting. I just think we're fighting wars of different kinds, so I think this idea of kinetic warfare is less frequent, especially among the major powers. So, um, Israel and Iran is an example of one of the last few gasps of kinetic warfare. But if you look at the United States and China, United States and Russia, the European powers, NATO, it's less kinetic than it is more through, um, use of information, through technology, through cyberwarfare, through-

    3. SB

      What's kinetic?

    4. BR

      So kinetic is, uh, when I refer to kinetic, I mean using actual physical means, bombs, missiles, tanks, um, soldiers, that type of thing. And it's less now... and it's more now moving towards other forms where it, you can now destabilize a government or a system of government or a society using a server farm and 20 people sitting in a room thousands of miles away, and you don't necessarily need weapons to do that, um, where information becomes weaponized, where digital tools become weaponized, and that's far different than anything we saw in the 20th century. So, I think that the rise of the internet in the late, you know, beginning, late 1990s through the 2000s, we've seen now this become industrialized at scale. And I think the threat comes now from the ability of re- of countries and regimes to destabilize and interfere with others in a way that they simply couldn't do years ago, and now you don't even need to fund it massively to do that. It's basically warfare on the cheap.

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm. Before we started recording, I expressed to you that there's a certain tension in the world right now.

    6. BR

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      Where's, where's that coming from and why, in your perspective?

    8. BR

      One of the things that's been evident to us, especially since the, the 2016 elections here in the United States, is this idea that we live in a post-truth society. And with so much information available to everybody, on every platform, through every means and channel, there is now no monopoly on objective truth or fact. And so with that comes the ability to distort, to propagandize, to mislead, to misinform. And people do this to aggregate power, to bring power to themselves. And so when we live in a world where everyone thinks they know everything, or they're afraid that they don't know enough, you have a t- a constant state of tension and anxiety. And people are uncertain about their place in society. There's a, you know, a wealth gap comes into play. And with that, you feel like there's threats or perceived threats or conspiracies around every corner. And this is why I think lies and misinformation and conspiracy theories take hold in times like this, when people are anxious, frightened, uncertain about their place in society, about what's coming next. And that puts us in a very tense state, and very clever people can take advantage of that and manipulate to their benefit. So, that I think explains why we feel this tension that we do.

    9. SB

      The tension is clearly resulting in real changes, 'cause those stats I read out at the start, where there's more nations in conflict now, there's more military funding, um, more people think we're on the verge of, of something pretty catastrophic than any time in the last couple of decades, that information that which is causing a tension is then having a downstream impact, which is conflict is breaking out.

    10. BR

      I'd also say it's upstream. Um, you have polarization happening within societies, especially in Western societies, where there is no monopoly on the truth or news or information. You have the fragmentation of, let's say, n- major news sources. Traditionally, you have a few very respected, trusted sources, and authorities or figureheads that people would turn to. We don't have that anymore. It's now been diluted to the point that it is m- almost meaningless. And so you see that social media has contributed to this, and so with that, these, these, w- with these divisions, these schisms in society have made major industrial powers, like the United States, like let's say the Europeans, more vulnerable to manipulation than ever before. So now, if you're a adversary like Russia or China, Iran, North Korea, you can take advantage of the ability to tap into this polarization and play people off against one another, cause division. And that allo- and that destabilizes democratic societies, and then that, in turn, enables these countries like Russia and China and others to have more leverage and more influence in the developing world. In the past, it was whoever had the strongest military. Now, you don't necessarily need the strongest military to do it. You just need to have the strongest, um, information army and the willingness to do the dirty things that Western societies don't do anymore, but they used to.

    11. AB

      I wanna interrupt, 'cause I think there's an order of operations here that we're getting at that isn't clear. I would argue that, that ignorance starts the foundation for the polarization that is then capitalized on through this information warfare landscape. So, I, I say that because I think it's important for us to understand that your, your statistics are relevant and correct. Those statistics don't come first. They come after. The ignorance kind of comes first. The, the, the willing blindness to what's happening in the world, the willingness to just focus in on what your tasks are or what entertains you and let the rest of the world kind of do whatever it's gonna do, it's that choice first that then leads to other countries finding an opportunity to manipulate the masses that are no longer informed as to what's happening outside of their world. I don't wanna speak for you, but that's, that's kind of how CIA handles clandestine operations when it comes to information security operations, is understanding we're not trying to make an audience ignorant. We're finding an ignorant audience and then giving them messaging to get them to take action.

    12. BR

      The difference is, so I would maintain, w- we've always been ignorant. The difference is now you can actually do something with that ignorance and manipulate it at scale-

    13. AB

      That's right.

    14. BR

      ... that you couldn't before. So ignorance has always been with us, but before, at least people knew where they could go to find what they perceived to be a trusted-

    15. AB

      Yeah.

    16. BR

      ... source. So now that source is gone. That messaging is gone.

    17. AB

      That skill is gone.

    18. AJ

      I have a, I have-

    19. BR

      Yeah.

    20. AJ

      ... a different take entirely, which, and I focus on narrative, so I'm really interested in who tells the story and who gets to control the story. And what I watch happening a lot is that the story is controlled for a while and then it gets hijacked over and it's someone else's story. So it's kind of, it's like the end of the spectrum of what you're both saying, and you have the agency working really hard to grab it back. You've got the White House saying, "We need to get our stakeholder press," you know, and it's this, so you're running essentially like a kinetic war, a proxy war, and an information war at the same time. And I think that the information is what is, what drives most of this conflict, which is why it's so interesting to me to speak to diplomats, the only people not at this table, right?

    21. SB

      Yeah.

    22. AJ

      That are like, because then that's the only where I see the hope of kind of like take it down, because there is an ease that needs to happen when you can move the people from trust to paranoia.

    23. BR

      I love that you mentioned diplomacy and diplomats. So I, I teach courses on diplomacy, and one of the things I've seen emerge in the last few years is this dichotomy between private diplomacy, which is what we were used to when we studied the Cold War and post-Cold War conflicts, and now we have public diplomacy. Almost all diplomacy, take, take the Ir- um, Iran-Israel war, the 12-Day War as, as Trump calls it. How much of that war was conducted via social media?

    24. SB

      Hmm.

    25. BR

      This is now, so you have this public-facing diplomacy where you have, during wartime, leaders, their representatives, their proxies conveying messaging both to their enemies, to their allies, and to a pr- supposedly neutral audience all through social media, right? So it is not, no so much the nuclear age, but the age of the algorithm-

    26. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    27. BR

      ... and how that amplifies diplomacy in a way that never ever existed. And so this is, I think, this lends-

    28. AJ

      Yes.

    29. BR

      ... to that dilution, uh, that then others can take advantage of, 'cause at the end of the day-... if you want to threaten a country, or you want to garner support, how you articulate that via-

    30. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

  4. 19:06 – 23:52

    Iran’s 12-Day War and the Power of Narrative

    1. BR

    2. AJ

      So here's a specific example which might be helpful to what you're saying. W- with the 12-day war recently, I think the White House wanted that to just be a bombing run. You can correct me if I'm wrong. Just a bombing run.

    3. SB

      Yeah.

    4. AJ

      "We're gonna go. You know, we're so power..." It was about power. It was about precision. "Take it out." And it was the press that wrote, "America Enters the War."

    5. SB

      Yeah.

    6. AJ

      And that is a major headline, and that probably made the White House deeply upset, because they don't wanna be, they don't wanna be seen as entering into a war. And so, I think another real problem we have right now with all of this tension ratcheting up is how angry, and I'm just talking about America now, the political sides are at one another, that to my eye... Because I'm an apolitical writer. No one has any idea what my politics are. I write about war and weapons neutrally, but I can observe, and it seems to me like the different f- warring political parties inside the United States are so intent on taking down the other side, they d- they do it from my eye at the national security peril. In other words, a, a, a, a headline against Trump is better for them than US national security or world security. I'm curious what you think.

    7. AB

      Well, I think we're all saying something that's, that's, uh, derivations of the same thing, versions of the same thing, right?

    8. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AB

      There's a massive information warfare landscape happening, and it is that fog of war that we look through that gives us that tension about what's actually happening at the ground level. If you think about conflict as being what, what humans will do to each other, there's layers on top of that that create this, this distortion of what you can expect, and there's so much activity in the information landscape that it's very distorted what could actually happen. We have a term at CIA a- and when we talk about, uh, when we talk about covert influence activities to shape information, we talk about volume and speed, which gets right back to your point about TikTok and social media. We've always engaged in information warfare, but the volume and the speed was much less and much slower, 'cause you had to fly fucking pamphlets and drop them out of airplanes and hope that the people reading it were reading the right dialect of Arabic or Spanish. You had to hope. And then once there was a rainstorm, all of your pamphlets are done. And if you're trying to make it look like they're not f- coming from America, they're trying... Y- there's all sorts of other layers to that. Well, now, an algorithm that you don't even control-

    10. AJ

      Yes.

    11. AB

      ... is contributing to that. And then you've got creators, content creators all over the place that have no, no va- added value to the content they're creating, who are just clipping, cutting, and, and putting things together and then further being amplified, right? So the volume of information is massive, and the speed at which it disseminates is huge, and the algorithm can dictate whether you see it or don't see it at all.

    12. BR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. AB

      So while I appreciate your point of view that there's this tension and there's this growing concern, I honestly think that your, your opinion on that is because you're informed and intelligent, and there are m- huge groups of people who are completely oblivious to where we actually are on a, a sliding scale of approaching conflict.

    14. SB

      Where are we?

    15. AB

      I think that's what we're really here to discuss. I would argue that we are not entering a phase of less conflict. We are going to enter a phase, five to ten years, of more conflict, increase in conflict, a willingness to engage in more kinetic conflict, to use your term. I don't think that we're showing the various, uh, global power competitors of the world that it will not be tolerated. I think we're showing the global power competitors of the world that violence, kinetic attacks, cyberwarfare, weapons development is going to be accepted.

    16. AJ

      My wish is that America could overcome her tribal anger, you know, to- toward, that a lot of Americans have toward one another that are in different political parties, because I feel like America is a leader in terms of security and safety, or can be and should be, and that all of this amplification of the rhetoric is, is deeply div- dividing. The fancy word is divisive, but it's just dividing. And that if there's any place that one's enemies, or adversaries, or call them what you will, is, can take advantage of that, it is right there.

    17. SB

      Is that wishful thinking?

    18. AJ

      For me to say? Uh, I am a very wishful thinking person. I mean, I write about the grimmest, darkest subjects imaginable, you know, with a smile on my face, because I just am naturally, uh, I'm naturally optimistic. I'm the mother of two, you know, college-aged boys. Of course I'm gonna be optimistic.

  5. 23:52 – 25:13

    Why Global Conflict Is About to Surge

    1. SB

      Andrew was just saying that he thinks there's gonna be more conflict going forward. We have nine nations now that have these nuclear weapons that some might argue creates stability, but some might argue that it-

    2. AJ

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... only takes one individual. And you said there's, what, six nations hosting those nuclear weapons? I don't know. Sometimes I think, I think, "Gosh, you only need one miscommunication or one mistake from one person who is, I don't know, not doing too well mentally or having a bad day." That's kind of how I think about it, and I'm like, probabilistically, if you just stretch it out, at some point, that's gonna happen. At some point, that's gonna happen.

    4. AJ

      Well, you're absolutely right, and that is why... I mean, it'll be interesting if we maybe talk about Iran just from the, you know, specifics about what happened in-... you know, why that's, is or is not important. Because I, just having looked at nuclear weapons so microscopically recently, I believe that that existential threat, the global catastrophic risk of a nuclear e- you know, of- of a flame that starts that movement toward a nuclear- nuclear use is a sort of line that must never be crossed. And so while all war is terrible, there is always a solution on the other side of the war. The war- peace can be made, but not with nuclear. And so that, you know, I look th- at things right now through that lens, which is how I saw the most recent bombing.

  6. 25:13 – 36:48

    Is Israel America's Proxy Against Iran?

    1. AJ

    2. BR

      You mentioned, uh, and you talked about Israel and Iran being a proxy war, so that kind of piqued my interest. Um, I- I almost reflexively want to disagree, but I wanna hear more about why you think so, so I can better understand proxy conflict from that angle.

    3. AB

      Yeah. Well, the way I see it, um, Israel is ratcheting up its aggression against proxies that Iran has been using to- to threaten it for decades.

    4. BR

      Right.

    5. AB

      But Israel is also dependent on American weapons to do that. It's also dependent on American intelligence to do that. It's dependent on American support financially and economically, so it needs America to wage its conflict moving forward. If America were to say, "Israel, we don't support you," then Israel would take a different approach without a doubt. So the funding, the support, the intelligence flow, the economic support coming from the United States is what empowers Israel to prosecute its conflict. Without that support, Israel would take a different approach to the conflict.

    6. BR

      But then proxy would imply that Israel is acting as an agent, or at the behest of the United States. The United States, rather than getting involved directly with Iran, up until last week, operates through another entity.

    7. AB

      That's the misunderstanding about proxy war. You're looking first for some sort of conflict that already exists. The conflict between Israel and Iran already exists. The proxy then... The- the- the proxy relationship happens when an outsider, a third party, comes in and exacerbates the conflict by putting more fuel on an existing fire. It's not that- that Israel is the agent of s- of the United States, it's that Israel's already wants to prosecute some sort of conflict. We come in and we're essentially the fuel to help exacerbate that fire.

    8. BR

      So who's the proxy in this conflict?

    9. AB

      Israel.

    10. BR

      Okay.

    11. AB

      Israel's the proxy for the United States, who wants to diminish Iran in the same way that Israel wants to diminish Iran. The- m- this specific conflict is so fascinating because every fucking body wants Israel to degrade Iran. Saudi Arabia wants that.

    12. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    13. AB

      The United States wants that. All of E- the E- European Union wants that. Israel wants that. Everybody wants to see a degraded Iran. So Israel, especially after what it's been doing in Gaza, in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel's desperate for anything it can do to win back favor for the Abraham Accords, as a democratic country, you name it. It's looking for an option and Iran is a very convenient option for them to build back relationships that they've killed along with the- the attacks in Gaza.

    14. BR

      If the reasons are different, does that still make one a proxy of the other? So Iran's, uh, Israel's objections to Iran and its- its reason it sees Iran as- as a adversary might differ from the United States. There is a Venn diagram. There's some overlap, but there's also a tremendous amount that doesn't overlap.

    15. AB

      Right.

    16. BR

      Same thing with the Saudis, the Gulf states, other regional states that see Iran as a threat. They see it for different reasons. Does that still... And I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just trying to understand, does that still make them a proxy if their motives are different?

    17. AB

      I would say yes, because it's not about the parts of the Venn diagram that don't overlap, it's about the parts that do. It's about the convenience of Israeli citizens dying, Israeli soldiers dying, Israeli weapons being spent. That's the benefit of a proxy conflict. It's not American citizens who are at risk, it's not American soldiers who are dying, it's not American weapons that are being spent. We get to build our surplus. And if- if anything, we get to build extra and sell it to Israel, which is benefiting our economy. So this is the- the uncomfortable truth behind proxy war is it- it's all the benefits of a wartime environment without any of the risks.

    18. AJ

      But then what also happens, and you can look at Vietnam as a great example, is the proxy wars that are supposed to be low-cost for the United States-

    19. AB

      Yeah.

    20. AJ

      ... end up blowing up into being a disaster-

    21. AB

      Correct.

    22. AJ

      ... for the United States.

    23. BR

      So I think of Vietnam, I think classic proxy war, right?

    24. AJ

      Yes.

    25. BR

      Right. Khrushchev gave that speech, I think 1963, whenever it was, about wars of national liberation.

    26. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    27. BR

      And that they would be fought in what was then called the Third World.

    28. AJ

      Yeah.

    29. BR

      Vietnam being a classic case. There I see absolutely, right? First you had the French, you know, in French Indochina and then the United States bailing the French out. Arguably, the French were maybe a proxy for US interests. They were part of that firewall that were keeping the dominoes from falling. But again, I'm struggling to... I'm trying to understand the Israel-United States proxy angle here. Um, and that's a unique definition of proxy, I guess. H- okay, so you- you-

    30. AJ

      I'll give you an example.

  7. 36:48 – 41:44

    One Miscommunication From Nuclear War

    1. BR

      I think that's, that's, that's perfect to capture it. It's the context, so, you know, content is what the three of us are discussing here. Uh, content- context is what the cameras are recording, what editing is done afterwards, and then what gets disseminated beyond there. That is, you know, in- in- in a broader s- uh, scope, that is the algorithm, that is social media, that is basically restricting the context to whatever it, the owners of that content feel it needs to be. And that, I think, also contributes to this sort of unipolar zero sum mindset, and, uh, because only one algorithm can win. You can't have competing algorithms. We're trying to have competing algorithms with- with- with China and they're winning. Um, I, a few, um, two years ago, I designed a war game simulation for a group of retired military officials. And we had some prominent ex- we had governors, senators, national security staff, uh, role playing, um, White House situation room. And one of the things that was interesting was my job. I, I designed this game. It was meant to be what if a second January 6th happened, but this time, the insurrection comes from within the military.

    2. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BR

      You have defections from the military, National Guard bases, isolated bases, right? Could the Pentagon be prepared for something like that? What would that look like? And I had... The White House was staffed with this incredible social media team that was meant to sort of signal to the American people and to the- the president and to everyone else what's happening, and I had four people playing the red cell. The red cell consisted of basically trolls, provocateurs who aren't necessarily committed to overthrowing, but just wanted to, you know, to- to burn-

    4. AJ

      It's interesting, they just wanted sort of the action. They want-

    5. BR

      It's like, it's like borrowing what, what, you know, Heath-

    6. AJ

      It's like watching a soap opera.

    7. BR

      ... Heath Ledger said as the Joker, "Some people just wanna watch the world burn," right? Or to-

    8. AJ

      Yeah. Yeah.

    9. BR

      He didn't say that, but it was from Batman, right?

    10. AJ

      Yeah. Wow.

    11. BR

      And the havoc that two or three people in a bar were able to simulate or to create versus an entire White House apparatus staffed with experienced people... These are people who's, who are on actual White House comms teams, who had the training. We had military folks who had worked in defense intelligence, and you had two or three trolls in their 20s, who some were veterans, who were able to absolutely cause havoc. And so that is the, that... Because the algorithm, and I designed the algorithm to amplify their stuff, and it, and it, and the White House could not keep up.

    12. AJ

      That's fascinating.

    13. BR

      You know?

    14. AJ

      And that's terrifying.

    15. BR

      That is terrifying. That is where I think the warfare and, you know, the idea of World War III and conflict, that is how you get to zero sum. That is how you get to who emerges with the gold medal, I think. So, so back to your point, the context, who controls that silo-

    16. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    17. BR

      ... who controls the mic, who controls the aperture is gonna matter more.

    18. AB

      One of the things Donald Trump has shown us is how much of an economy of attention we really are in.

    19. BR

      Mm-hmm.

    20. AB

      And just like having the most money makes you wealthy in a fiscal economy, having the most attention makes you very wealthy in an attention economy. And here's a man who even when he wasn't president-

    21. BR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. AB

      ... was in the headlines every day. So it's... I think that the unpredictability of what he's going to do moving forward doesn't bring us closer to peace. It doesn't bring us closer to, uh, proper communications. It's, uh, you mentioned, you know, are we one miscommunication away? If we are, then we are in a very dire place, because there is a lot of miscommunication happening.

    23. SB

      Well, I've read the stories through history of miscommunications nearly resulting in nuclear war or some missile being launched. I mean, Anna, you've studied quite a few of those moments through history. I was listening to one the other day, I think it was a, a story of, um, a Russian nuclear commander who, who saw something on the radar and he thought the US was striking, and for, for whatever reason, he decided to assume that it wasn't and reported back to his f- his, uh, sort of overlords that it wasn't a nuclear strike and didn't press the button. But everything on his radar told him that the US had launched multiple missiles. Are you familiar with that particular story?

    24. AJ

      Yeah, yeah.

    25. SB

      What is that story?

    26. AJ

      He's called the man who stole- The Man Who Saved the World. It was 1983, and he was in a bunker in Russia, their sort of equivalent of, we have a similar bu- uh, uh, a radar, you know, a, a system that's looking at satellite, tracking satellite activity. And it was perceived that America had launched missiles from the Midwest, ICBMs. And the, you know, you're absolutely right. I mean, you told the story perfectly. He decided not to raise the, the threat up the chain of command, which would have put the entire Soviet nuclear command and control on, you know, massive alert. He just didn't do it. And it was interesting, because he, you know, was sort of really berated later by Russian command and control. But he got the moniker, The Man Who Saved the World. There's a documentary about him that's definitely worth watching. And your point is what Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres said recently, which is, "We are one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation."

  8. 41:44 – 43:25

    How AI Could Trigger a Global Catastrophe

    1. AJ

    2. BR

      Or even one AI-generated viral video that goes, you know, that the wrong person gets the wrong idea from. Imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis, how close we came, and imagine if you had generative AI content that made it look like the Soviets had deployed or fired a missile or anything to that effect. We saw during this Iran-Israel conflict, I mean, how many videos on, on X I saw that showed devastation in Tel Aviv or devastation in downtown Tehran. I mean, they were obviously fabricated and AI-generated, but the extent to which these things were recirculated and spread, and that I saw sources who I would normally trust sort of, um, amplified these, not knowing until someone else pointed out, "Wait a minute, that's, you know, from a video game," or, "That's generative AI." And imagine if our decision makers didn't have redundancies or safe- or- or fail-safes in place to be able to identify that this is what that is and they acted on a misread or something that they thought was real. That's- that's what concerns me.

    3. SB

      Our intelligence force is more sophisticated than that. Presumably, they're not on Twitter or something looking at-

    4. AB

      Well, they are.

    5. AJ

      They, they are. (laughs)

    6. AB

      They are there as well.

    7. AJ

      Yeah.

    8. AB

      And that's, that's a type of intelligence called open source intelligence.

    9. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AB

      Uh, I would... But the short answer is yes. Our intelligence infrastructure is far more sophisticated than that. The, the intelligence infrastructure for all of the, all of the... for the majority of the nine nuclear capable countries are very, very effective. France is very effective. The UK is very effective. The US is very effective. Even China's MSS is very, very effective. So sophisticated intelligence services are looking for corroborating evidence before they make an intelligence estimate. There is a challenge though. It's... And we're seeing it especially in the United States, where (laughs) the chief executive just disagrees-

  9. 43:25 – 46:28

    Did Iran Nearly Develop a Nuclear Bomb?

    1. AB

    2. AJ

      Right.

    3. AB

      ... independently, unilaterally with what his intelligence estimate is, right?

    4. SB

      What do you mean? Give me an example.

    5. AB

      Well, you, you saw two examples in the last few weeks, right? First, you saw, um, Tulsi Gabbard, who's the Director of National Intelligence, in a position that didn't exist until the failure of 9/11. That DNI position was born from the fact that we needed to have more coordination across intelligence services. And she came out and she gave an estimate that Iran was not imminently capable of creating a nuclear weapon, a weaponized nuclear device, right?

    6. SB

      And how would she know?

    7. AB

      Because she's the Director of National Intelligence. All intelligence... Thank you. I'm... It's, it's obvious to me, I understand, and it's not always ob- obvious to everyone else. But all of the intelligence services feed up. They feed up intelligence that's been vetted, corroborated, validated, up through a reporting system that goes to the Director of National Intelligence, whose job it is to advise the president on the current status of, of the most quality intelligence that we have. The president is the chief executive, uh, is the one person who the intelligence services work for at the pleasure of the president, but his primary mouthpiece for current intelligence is supposed to be the DNI. So when Tulsi Gabbard says, "We have no reason to believe that the u- that Iran is imminently ready to prepare to create a nuclear weapon," the president is supposed to say, "Thank you, DNI." And then that becomes the information that he has. Instead, he disagreed with her, and then he said, "That's not the tr- That's not really what's happening."

    8. BR

      Not just disagreed-

    9. AJ

      But I have-

    10. BR

      ... he shut her out.

    11. AB

      Correct.

    12. BR

      Shut her out-

    13. AJ

      I have a different take on it.

    14. BR

      ... out of Senate briefings, intelligence briefings. She's been marginalized.

    15. AB

      And then she changed her opinion and came back and befo- And I wanna hear-

    16. BR

      Yeah.

    17. AB

      ... your disagreement. But then the second example I have is after the bombing raid, uh, of the three sites in Iran, the, uh, DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is charged with collecting military intelligence from foreign targets, came back and said that "We, we may not have reached total obliteration, Mr. President." And again, he disagreed. And he's like, "That's completely wrong. Total obliteration."

    18. AJ

      I have a, a t- It's not a disagreement, but it's more like a different POV on all of this, which has to do with narrative, which I'm very interested in, of how... Because the more people I interview at all these different levels, I begin to realize that we all w- are working from the same set of human conditions, you know, bias-

    19. AB

      Yes.

    20. AJ

      ... and, and sort of like... And really my favorite one is the horse in the race. You know, you have a horse in the race of how you think and the way in which you see the world. And I know as I get older, what I try to do personally is I try to notice where I am wrong, and instead of being defensive about it, be like, "I was wrong about that. That's interesting." Because then you can kind of evolve in your thinking and have a bigger POV. But I perceive Tulsi Gabbard t- making those decisions from the lens in which she sees the world. And her platform is very specific. You, you could almost have discerned that she was going to have that opinion-

    21. BR

      Mm.

    22. AJ

      ... at least

  10. 46:28 – 55:17

    How Close Was the US to Bombing North Korea?

    1. AJ

      in my opinion.

    2. BR

      Mm.

    3. AB

      Right?

    4. BR

      She was a known commodity before she became DNI.

    5. AJ

      Yes. Yes.

    6. BR

      So this is the feeling, I think what you're saying is-

    7. AJ

      Yes.

    8. BR

      ... we knew-

    9. AJ

      Yes.

    10. BR

      ... she was... She, she always saw the regimes in that part of the world-

    11. AJ

      Yeah.

    12. BR

      ... from a certain framework.

    13. AJ

      Yes.

    14. BR

      And her conclusion-

    15. AJ

      Yes.

    16. BR

      ... followed her-

    17. AB

      Biases.

    18. BR

      ... biases, her presuppos-

    19. AJ

      Yes.

    20. BR

      Exactly. Her priors, yeah.

    21. AJ

      And, and maybe they're, they're just... They're pri- priors is a great word-

    22. BR

      Yeah.

    23. AJ

      ... because, because we all have them. There's nothing wrong with this per se. It's just that... Because I would take a totally different look at any of this if I was the DNI, and would be like, "Mr. President, it's not as much about these things that everyone's arguing about. Did we..." Because let's face it, no one's gonna know until time passes the damage that was really done there. Period. Full stop. You, you know that. And we all know that. And so what you have to say... And again, as a historian, I would say, "What's the best example of why we should bomb this facility?" And the best example would be North Korea because Clinton all went... So North Korea once upon a time did not have 50 nuclear warheads and the ICBMs to get them to the United States to take out the United States, which is what I write. There's my bias, my lens, my point of view. But I have studied this. And so it's interesting to me that Clinton was going to bomb North Korea when they were in precisely the same situation that Iran is now not yet having a nuclear bomb. And North Korea promised that they wouldn't enrich their uranium, and this is in 1983. And Clinton was preparing a military strike. And it was complex because a lot of people in Seoul were gonna die, in South Korea. And then Jimmy Carter stepped in and said, "I will go negotiate the peace with the current dictator's father." And he did, and everything was hunky-dory, except for North Korea had their hands behind their back and their fingers crossed, and they were lying, because that is what dictators do who don't like America being the nuclear superpower and being able to threaten them. And if I was the DNI, I would say, "Mr. President, this is the best example of probably what is going on." That's my bias. Rather than saying... You know, so I'm... But I'm interested in how the tribal parts of America, which I find just as dangerous as nuclear weapons, not quite, but, um, that's what I'm interested in. And then everybody jumps on the story that... Which is also true. The story you tell is true. But what is your take on North Korea, the bomb, Tulsi Gabbard-

    24. AB

      If anything, North Korea is the... I mean, I, I never thought in my adult life I would say this, it's the shining example of why nucle- of why countries pursuing nuclear capabilities will continue to pursue nuclear capabilities. Because here is a broken, backwards, poor, fucking despicable regime that we don't touch.

    25. AJ

      No one will touch them.

    26. AB

      Because they've got nuclear weapons.

    27. AJ

      They have nuclear weapons.

    28. AB

      And now they, and now that, now that we have literally bombed a sovereign nation, as the United States, we have sent in... We, we ran a bombing raid of a country that was sovereign-

    29. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    30. AB

      ... its own borders, with no, no-

  11. 55:17 – 1:00:15

    Was Trump Right to Strike Iran?

    1. BR

    2. SB

      So, do you think Trump was right to bomb Iran?

    3. BR

      Do I think he was right to bomb Iran? Um, I think diplomacy with Iran has been exhausted, with this leadership.

    4. SB

      Can you explain that to me-

    5. BR

      Yeah. Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... from, uh, 'cause I'm really keen to just understand where this conflict with Iran has originated from.

    7. BR

      Yeah. So, Iran, uh, up through 1979, it had a, it had various monarchies. The Pahlavi monarchy that came into power in the 1920s was, was the last dominant one, and it had built, at least through the Cold War, a close relationship with the West, specifically the United States. Iran served as one of the two pillars of US power in the Middle East, the Saudis being the other. This is before Israel became important to the United States national security, uh, system. And so, Iran and the Saudis represented really, a projection of US power in the Middle East. With the revolution of '79, that went away. And-

    8. AJ

      We supported the Shah, and after that-

    9. BR

      Absolutely.

    10. AJ

      ... and the, the, you, you tell it, but-

    11. BR

      Yeah. Absolutely, right. So the United States and the Shah, the king of Iran, were extremely close. I mean, this peaked under Richard Nixon and Kissinger's time. And, um, as a result, uh, the Shah became very, very wealthy, looked to rapidly modernize the country. But what he didn't do, Iran experienced tremendous economic growth, but not political growth to match it. So what happens when a country becomes wealthy and becomes more modernized, becomes more European, which is what the Shah was trying to do, the people wanted other things that Europe had. They wanted free elections. They wanted free press. They wanted freedom of assembly, right?

    12. AJ

      Dishwashers.

    13. BR

      They, they wanted democracy to go with their dishwashers.

    14. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    15. BR

      The thing is, is the Shah said, "I will give you all of the trappings of modernity, high-rises, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, dishwashers, electric appliances, but this democracy that you want, that's pushing it too far." So, you had this rapid economic growth, this uneven political growth, and there, the seeds of revolution were planted. The people were unhappy, and they said, "Wait a minute. Why can't we have the other things to go with this, this, this growth?" So, the revolution happened with a bunch of different forces coming into play, not just the Islamists, but the Islamists were the ones that dominated at the end, and they cleared everyone out. They killed them basically, marginalized them. And they have three pillars they stand on, three, like, if you wanna call it their, their, their mission statement. Number one is independence from the West. The, this Iranian regime believes no more dependence on the West like the Shah did. Number two is the destruction of Israel, or hostility to Israel. That is fundamental.

    16. SB

      Why?

    17. BR

      Because they see Israel as an outpost of American power, and arguably, not colonialism, but they see Israel as a projection of US power. They also see, in their attempt to go to pillar number three, which is exporting the revolution to other Muslim Shia countries, they see Israel as getting in the way, because it represents this non-Muslim entity in an otherwise Islamic part of the world. So it's inconsistent with their, their, their goal of expanding the Islamic revolution. You can't do that when Israel is literally in the way.

    18. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    19. BR

      So it has to go, or it has to be diminished.

    20. SB

      And they've said that?

    21. BR

      Oh, yeah. This is, this is Khomeini, the founder of the republic. These, these, these are his three, his, his three principles. So, you have these three principles. You take any one of them away, the whole edifice, the whole thing falls down. It's like a tripod. Break one of its legs, it's got n- it doesn't have enough to stand on. So diplomacy with the US means ending hostilities with the West, and it means acknowledging Israel in some way. This government cannot do that. Otherwise, it loses all credibility. It, it spent 40-plus years saying, "These are the things we stand for." If they all of a sudden abandon those principles, they're gonna have no credibility with their public. Then why, why, why should they still be in power?

    22. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. BR

      It's not because the public wants hostility with Iran and Israel. The public wants relations, but this government is saying, "We oppress you. We terrorize you, all because we're keeping you safe and we're adhering to these three principles."

    24. SB

      And that's 40 years of brainwashing as well.

    25. BR

      Absolutely, of indoctrination. So diplomacy had reached its end. To answer your question, a long answer to a, a good question, "Was Trump right to bomb it?" Trump had reached the limits of diplomacy, and with Iran being a nuclear threshold state, and with Israel, after the 2023 Hamas attacks, realizing it could no longer tolerate this degree of a threshold Iran, the time to act, the pressure was there. So I think, um-

    26. AJ

      And the opportunity-

    27. BR

      The opportunity.

    28. AJ

      ... because of the way it had weakened-

    29. BR

      The defense systems, the proxies-

    30. AJ

      ... their true proxies-

  12. 1:00:15 – 1:04:11

    The Psychology of World Leaders in Crisis

    1. AJ

      with us."

    2. BR

      And, and you mentioned something else I liked. You said that, you know, you, uh, I think when you were saying if, in the role of the DNI or the president, you get information, you were wrong-

    3. AJ

      Yeah.

    4. BR

      ... okay, you have to reassess. Our leaders, and this goes back to sort of the topic of this, this book I'm working on, our male leaders especially suffer from a cognitive dissonance, right? Cognitive dissonance is when you have a set of beliefs, and you get information that is inconsistent-

    5. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    6. BR

      ... with how, with your beliefs. That makes all humans incredibly uncomfortable. All right? What do you do with that? Well, there's multiple ways that we psychologically try to neutralize that. One of them is, you change your view. You say, "You know what? I was wrong."

    7. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    8. BR

      "This is the correct way to see things." Most people won't do that. That's embarrassing. Most men won't do that.

    9. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    10. BR

      Most men in positions of power absolutely won't do that. If they admit that they're wrong-... then what does that, what does that say? Right? So instead, they double down, they reinforce, they become stubborn, and they end up then, in order to justify that, have to act aggressively.

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. BR

      So we suffer from basically men in positions of-

    13. AB

      It's the see-I'm-right problem.

    14. BR

      Exactly. Exactly. Right. They-

    15. AB

      You know? Right? I-told-you-so.

    16. BR

      Exactly.

    17. AB

      I-told-you-so. Yeah.

    18. BR

      Exactly. So you have to reinforce your false belief, because if you don't, it means you were wrong.

    19. AB

      Yeah.

    20. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    21. BR

      And if you're Donald Trump, if you're Khamenei, if you're Benjamin Netanyahu, and you s- were wrong, how bad does that look? You're, you're out. Your credibility is gone in this culture that we're in.

    22. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. BR

      Right? So that leads to the other problem, the cognitive dissonance that, that these world leaders can't seem to handle.

    24. SB

      Do you think we were right to strike Iran?

    25. AB

      I think that we did the right thing at the wrong time. And, and I will say that because the president of the United States is the president of the United States. He's, he's earned the seat. We wanted him there, we voted for it, he gets to do whatever he wants. But considering the politics between Israel and Iran at the time, considering the a- at least, at the very least, inconsistent intelligence that we have about the actual status of the weapons that, uh, Iran was developing, and then, uh, the, the political position inside the United States, being where it was-

    26. Hmm.

    27. ... with failed tariffs, being where it was with, uh, an inability to negotiate peace in Gaza and an inability to negotiate peace, uh, in Ukraine, where it was, if it was the right thing to do, we sh- we certainly seem to have done it prematurely along with preemptively.

    28. BR

      When would have been a better time? And I- I'm not a, I'm not a proponent of war. I'm just wondering. There is never a good time. When would have been a better time?

    29. AB

      I mean, if you wanna, if you wanna speak like a parent, then you're right. There's never a good time.

    30. (sighs)

  13. 1:04:11 – 1:08:48

    How Israeli Spies Infiltrated Iran

    1. AB

      which is when you said, "Let's see, or let's see Israel play out some of the other options." Because, and I'm talking about the covert action-

    2. Yes.

    3. ... that they had planned, because boy, was, did you, I mean, the leaked tapes that were on The Washington Post, Israel's covert action teams, that was pretty stunning to me.

    4. Absolutely.

    5. And I think it's best if you explain, maybe, what we're talking about, because the, we're as close to your, um, as close to you as the vein on your neck.

    6. Absolutely.

    7. Right? So-

    8. So, one of the things that we're seeing in the headlines now and in the near future for sure, is going to continue to be this, this ousting, this collection of-

    9. Mm-hmm.

    10. ... suspected spies within Iran. 'Cause now Iran, Iran has been a Swiss cheese of spies, of Mossad agents, uh, informants for Mossad inside of Iran for-

    11. SB

      What's Mossad?

    12. AB

      Mossad is the, uh, is the Israeli external intelligence collection service.

    13. BR

      Their version of the CIA.

    14. AB

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      Okay, so the Israeli CIA.

    16. AB

      Yeah.

    17. The Israeli CIA, correct. And one of the major differences between Mossad and CIA is that Mossad is essentially exclusively focused on one major enemy to Israel, and that's Iran. So 100, almost 100% of their effort goes into protecting against this one existential threat, where the United States CIA is collecting on everybody, right? So with that kind of intelligence focus, plus the budget that Israel has, plus its partnerships with the West and the technology that it can collect from the West, it far- it has a far superior intelligence advantage over Iran. So- Cutting in for a second here, these are the trigger, w- we're talking about what we were talking about earlier with ground bread. These are trigger pullers. These are covert action operators-

    18. Right.

    19. ... that go in and kill people.

    20. We have multiple types of infiltrations inside Israel or inside Iran. But to, uh, to the point that she's making, um, the, the covert action arm of Mossad inside Iran is massive. That's how they were able to go in, across borders and launch drones. They're finding now thousands of prefabricated drones inside Tehran that were being built by, by assets of Mossad that were being controlled by AI within Tehran, so that Israel could essentially, at a press of a button, fly hundreds of homemade drones built inside the capital of Iran, like, fabricated inside Iran. So it's-

    21. BR

      By Iranians.

    22. AB

      By Iranians.

    23. BR

      Yeah.

    24. AB

      So this is-

    25. I mean, the level of deception and sort of paranoia that comes with all of this territory is shocking and stunning and-

    26. Correct. And, and Iran has suspected this for a long time, has known that it exists, but maybe never to what extent, because it wasn't a, a imminent threat. It wasn't an eminent concern. And then it bekind- it became one with this run, with this, uh, series of activities against Iran.

    27. SB

      I was reading about the, uh, pages the other day.

    28. AB

      Mm-hmm.

    29. SB

      And I'd had no idea. I'd, I'd kind of seen something on my feed, but I thought I'd, I'd research it. And essentially, Israel had managed to-... get the Iranian forces to wear pagers that they had manufactured with bombs inside them, and then they explode all (laughs) ... exploded all the pagers.

    30. AB

      I mean, even more impressive than that, they didn't get anybody to wear a pager. They found the model and type of pager, they found the supply chain, they found the fabricator for that, and then they infiltrated, infiltrated the fabricator to make sure that they input those explosive devices into the same make and model that was going to end up in the hands of Hezbollah. And then they were-

  14. 1:08:48 – 1:11:20

    Why Didn’t Intelligence Stop Major Attacks?

    1. AB

    2. SB

      How does something like October 7th happen when there is so much intelligence in the region, and there's these Mossad forces, there's the CIA? How does... Was it hundreds of people stormed the border of Israel and did this brutal attack? Presumably, they had intel that that was gonna happen.

    3. AB

      Correct. I mean, the, the, the findings since the, the day of the attack have shown that there were multiple reports, there were multiple operators and officers who escalated this problem. The, one of the downsides of democracy is that when you have a bureaucracy that has kind of, has channels of command, and, and people have to agree, and, and collaborate, and validate each other's information, everything moves much slower. So what, uh, and anybody can contribute to this, but, um, for October 7th, the IDF was in charge of border patrol, border security. The IDF meaning the Israeli Defense Force, which is a military unit. They were in charge of the f- the location where the attack happened, and they saw evidence of rehearsals and practice attacks, and they saw an, an escalation of conflict, and they reported up through the bureaucratic chain of command. But somewhere in that chain of command, somebody saw it differently.

    4. BR

      Yeah, exactly.

    5. AB

      And then Shin Bet, which is the, essentially the FBI equivalent, uh, in Israel-

    6. BR

      Internal security, yeah.

    7. AB

      ... internal security, never got the complete accurate memo from IDF. And then Mossad's information on what may or may not be happening was, was obviously never, uh, part of the finished intelligence that did make it up to the policymakers. So there were plen- there was evidence that was only really identified post-fact, which is exactly what happened with 9/11 too. There was information that was only identified after the fact.

    8. AJ

      And I think it's also the good old cliche, you know, hindsight is 20/20-

    9. BR

      Yeah.

    10. AJ

      ... applies in all of these situations, whether it's Pearl Harbor or 9/11. I mean, intelligence failures are what changed the trajectory of history. But if you do interview a lot of CIA people, as I do, y- I often hear this, and it may or may not be true, which is, "Annie, no one ever hears all the attacks we stopped."

    11. AB

      Yeah, of course.

    12. AJ

      And then I say, "Well, tell me about them."

    13. BR

      (laughs)

    14. AJ

      "They're still classified."

    15. BR

      Yeah.

    16. AJ

      You know? So I mean, that's why narrative is so interesting to me, because, uh, first of all, it, it feels personal, because you can relate to it. Even if we can't relate to being in the White House, we can certainly re- relate to being stubborn about not wanting to change your opinion, or, you know, putting together a certain set of facts and saying, "We all probably do this in our own home, oh, this, therefore that,"

  15. 1:11:20 – 1:12:29

    Ads

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    2. SB

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  16. 1:12:29 – 1:16:21

    What Happens Next With Iran?

    1. SB

      What happens next with Iran, with this whole tension with, with, you know, they've said that there's this ceasefire-

    2. BR

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... but it d- doesn't look like a great ceasefire.

    4. BR

      There's a crisis of legitimacy that this current Islamic government has to re- reckon with domestically.

    5. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    6. BR

      They have to now look, look at their people and say, "Okay, we, we basically failed to defend you," though they're trying to spin that narrative saying that they did defend the homeland. And they're trying to use nationalism as a sort of a salve, as a, as a, as a, as a treatment, to justify, or to explain, or to sort of wash over what happened.There's gonna be new leaders. The supreme leader right now is, you know, frail. He's been frail. He's been on the verge of death for years now, setting aside attempts to kill him. Um, and wh- the, the crisis of succession, who comes next, is gonna be now amplified much more, a greater sense of urgency. And then whether or not the next leaders of the revolu- of the Revolutionary Guard, which is sort of Iran's, um... So just to explain something. Iran has two militaries. There is the Iranian military that protects its borders and domestic security, oddly enough, and then there's the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is protecting the revolution. The R in IRGC stands for revolution.

    7. AJ

      Hmm.

    8. BR

      The I does not stand for Iran. It stands for Islamic. In other words, they are protecting what happened in '79. They are not interested in the country. That's what the army does. The army protects the country. The IRGC protects the movement. And so the IRGC is the most powerful entity in Iran, and what, who their next generation of leaders or next level of leaders that rise up, what their views are, are they willing to cooperate with the rest? Are they gonna double down on nuclear enrichment? Are they gonna take things underground? Are they gonna kick out the IAEA permanently? Are they gonna pull out of the NPT? We don't know the answer to these questions.

    9. AJ

      Mm-hmm.

    10. BR

      And what's the public unrest gonna be like? Can somebody emerge? 'Cause you cannot have resistance without a movement led by, you know, a figurehead of some kind. And this regime has been incredibly good. In the last few days, they've executed three or four potential people who they think could emerge as, as-

    11. AJ

      Wow, I didn't know that.

    12. BR

      Oh, yeah.

    13. AJ

      They killed three or four people that-

    14. BR

      About three, I think.

    15. AJ

      ... were sort of-

    16. BR

      Three, three for sure. There was a fourth. I- I'm waiting to get confirmation. Yeah, uh, people that they're, that they're afraid of-

    17. AJ

      Wow.

    18. BR

      ... who could use this period of instability and, um, uh, and, um, dysregulation to foment rebellion and insurrection. It's the last thing they want.

    19. AJ

      And, and that's where I'm gonna butt in here, and you're gonna correct me if I'm wrong. But if we were in a different presidency and a different era, like, you know, this is where the CIA would be in Iran and would be fomenting change, because that is ultimately what the American goal is.

    20. BR

      Which it absolutely should not be doing.

    21. AJ

      (laughs)

    22. BR

      Ever. It did it in '53.

    23. AJ

      Oh.

    24. BR

      And by the way-

    25. AJ

      But I didn't say it should or shouldn't.

    26. BR

      No, no, no. But, but-

    27. AJ

      I'm just saying it would have.

    28. BR

      Meaning, not, not-

    29. AJ

      But you think so?

    30. BR

      ... not should or shouldn't from a moral perspective. It just simply doesn't. Th- this is-

  17. 1:16:21 – 1:20:34

    Is Israeli Intelligence Misleading the U.S.?

    1. BR

Episode duration: 2:35:50

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