The Hidden Secrets Threatening National Security - Mike Baker (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 Are you with AT&T?

Mike Baker 0:01 (laughs) No, I am not. (laughs) Yeah. That was, that was, uh, one of those moments, right?

Chris Williamson 0:08 What happened?

Mike Baker 0:09 Uh, I, I think everybody thought it was the end of the world, right? 'Cause they couldn't get on TikTok or send a text message. (laughs) And it was, it was disastrous. I had a couple of meetings that morning and, and, and people were losing their shit because, you know... And, and it was funny because everyone was just sort of bailing out of things. I th- some people probably saw it as an opportunity to bail out of meetings, right? "I, I, you know, I can't do anything."

Chris Williamson 0:29 Are you sure that, that wasn't just you?

Mike Baker 0:30 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:30 It's like, "We've got that meeting with Mike."

Mike Baker 0:32 Ugh.

Chris Williamson 0:33 We've been waiting for an excuse.

Mike Baker 0:33 Yeah, it does happen a lot. Yeah, that's a good point. (laughs) No, uh, who knows, right? The frailty of, of our comm systems, our telecoms and, and, and our power grid and our water systems and everything else, if most people knew how easy that could actually happen, uh, you know... N- n- not even talking about a, a targeted attack, just, just it going down because systems are old, um, you know, they probably wouldn't sleep at night.

Chris Williamson 0:57 How so? What do you mean when you say systems are old?

Mike Baker 0:59 Well, you look at, uh, you look at the power grid, and that thing was patched together, right, like a quilt over the years, right? And we've got three grids in the country, East and West in, in Texas, in the US. And, uh, Texas has its own grid. And, um, yeah. (laughs) So, uh, i- i- but it, but it was put together over, over a long period of time, right? And never with the intention that it was going to have to stand up to some attack, right? O- o- or really even with the idea that it's gonna have to withstand some natural disaster, as strange as that seems. You would think they would wanna make them pretty resilient to that. Um, so that's why you can drive by a substation, you know, and, and reach out and touch it. That's why you look at the water treatment facilities and think, "Well, that doesn't look particularly well protected." I mean, most of the infrastructure-

Chris Williamson 1:44 Yeah.

Mike Baker 1:44 ... was never designed to withstand a physical attack, and certainly not a, uh, a cyberattack.

Chris Williamson 1:49 'Cause that wouldn't have existed when it was first being designed.

Mike Baker 1:51 No, no, exactly, exactly. And then a lot of the equipment used for, uh, going back to the power grid, a lot of the major gear that's y- that runs the power grids, we don't even manufacture in the States anymore, right? So, the idea that something would shut down and we'd have a catastrophic, you know, collapse and, and, and, and it would kinda have a cascading effect like we had several years back that kind of hit the Northeast, um, you know, that's, that's a devastating issue because we don't... It's not like we've got some, you know, large, uh, hardware or, or power plants we're able to just roll in and replace gear with, right?

Chris Williamson 2:24 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 2:24 We don't, we don't manufacture that stuff anymore.

Chris Williamson 2:26 Yeah, you haven't got a spare power plant-

Mike Baker 2:27 Yes.

Chris Williamson 2:27 ... for every power plant.

Mike Baker 2:28 So the idea, I mean, I, you know, people always ask me, they say, "Well, what should I do to be prepared?" Well, I mean, if you could afford it, and it's easy to say, "Well, you should have this," because, you know, they're, they're not cheap, but you should have a, a generator of a decent size-

Chris Williamson 2:39 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 2:39 ... that will provide you with some level of power, right? If you don't have power, you know, the first thing most people will notice is their phones die, right? And then, you know, what are you gonna do? You're gonna sit in the dark and not have TikTok, right? So-

Chris Williamson 2:51 Right, yeah.

Mike Baker 2:51 ... that's pretty devastating.

Chris Williamson 2:51 Which would, which would obviously bring society to a standstill.

Mike Baker 2:54 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:54 Yeah, it's, uh, it's so weird to think, when you think about attacks and, and problems with telecommunications, with infrastructure, with energy, with water, you think about actual attacks. But then you don't realize that just the inbuilt fragility of the system is a threat in itself.

Mike Baker 3:12 Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:12 You go, "Wow, oh wow, we could take this down just by, uh, no mal- malicious intent. No one's done anything other than..." And we don't know, is... So we don't know what's happened with AT&T?

Mike Baker 3:22 Yeah, you know what? I'd, I (laughs) I was so disinterested. To tell you the truth, I was happy not to have communications with, with folks for a while. So, I was not the sort to think, "I gotta get to the bottom of this."

Chris Williamson 3:30 Right.

Mike Baker 3:30 I was just like, "Okay, I got, I got a little while to, to relax."

Chris Williamson 3:33 A little celebration time.

Mike Baker 3:34 Yeah, yeah. So I was, I, I, you know, I'm the wrong guy to ask about the AT&T, uh, kerfuffle. Um, but I did find it charming. I've, I've said before, um, you know, we don't, we don't really understand the, the damage that these things are doing in a way, right? They're, they're, they're great. I mean, don't take that I'm not a l-, you know, fucking Luddite, but, um, you know, it's gonna be years before we understand what access to this for our kids means, right? And, you know, if anybody's got kids, they understand what that, what I'm talking about, right? It's, it's, it's the impact that these, this instant information and access to material and information that they should never have at an early age, right? All these things. Again, is there an upside? Of course, there's a f- like an upside, right? But, you know, we're not gonna stand the impact this is gonna have. It's just like with, uh, you know, AI coming in now, right? We're not gonna n- really know what this means, right? But I can tell you what it's starting to mean. Look, I've had a hard time with, with my company, which is, uh, an intelligence and security firm, uh, Portman Square Group, thank you very much. (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:32 Link in bio.

Mike Baker 4:33 Hey, ping! First marketing plug. Um, and, um, you know, we've always had a hard time finding young folks who could write well, right? I mean, you can find people who are curious, and we, we, we gather intelligence, we gather information around the world, right? So as part of what we do. But you've gotta package that up, right? You've gotta present it to the clients, right? People are paying us for this, and you've gotta be able to tell that in a, in a smart way. Take a lot of information, distill it down to its key points, and provide that to somebody, right? And so, finding young folks who can write well, right, who can do that has been a problem. And if we think it's a problem now, you know, wait five or 10 years with AI when every kid is just using ChatGPT or the next version-

Chris Williamson 5:12 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 5:13 ... to create everything that they, they need for school, I think we got a real problem coming down the pike.

Chris Williamson 5:18 Did you see

Chris Williamson 5:19 Google's Gemini disaster?

Mike Baker 5:21 Yeah, yeah, (laughs) yeah. Show me a Viking.

Chris Williamson 5:24 It tried to be so anti-racist that it was racist, and it managed to annoy leftists by portraying Nazis as Black people-

Mike Baker 5:31 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:32 ... and then it managed to annoy rightists by portraying the founding father- fathers as Black people.

Mike Baker 5:37 Yeah, yeah. I think the Nazis w- it was a very diverse group of Nazis, right?

Chris Williamson 5:40 (laughs)

Mike Baker 5:40 I think there was an Asian Nazi, there was a Hispanic Nazi-

Chris Williamson 5:43 (laughs)

Mike Baker 5:43 There was a Black Nazi. Yeah, it was everybody except someone from the Aryan race.

Chris Williamson 5:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Baker 5:47 And, um, yeah, (laughs) 'cause, 'cause we all know that, that the Nazis, they, they loved-

Chris Williamson 5:52 Very ethnically ******.

Mike Baker 5:52 They loved DEI. They were, they were all about the... I think Goebbels was the, uh, DEI minister for the-

Chris Williamson 5:58 Yes.

Mike Baker 5:58 ... during the war.

Chris Williamson 5:58 Yes.

Mike Baker 5:59 So.By the way, this is very good.

Chris Williamson 6:02 You enjoying that?

Mike Baker 6:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:03 Oh, yeah.

Mike Baker 6:03 It's really good.

Chris Williamson 6:03 That'll fire you up. So yeah, AI, Gemini, I mean, it's, uh, I was talking to a friend yesterday who's big in, uh, the world of fashion.

Mike Baker 6:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:11 Remember Balenciaga got in trouble a while ago? They kinda showed some very BDSM stuff that maybe featured kids' toys and s- it, it really crossed a line. It was very, very-

Mike Baker 6:22 God, I missed that one.

Chris Williamson 6:23 Yeah, it was like, uh, you know, if you want to feed into the pedophiles who run the world drinking goat blood and sacrificing, like, women at the full moon and stuff, like it, it really played into that. But-

Mike Baker 6:35 You really, don't, don't knock people's hobbies.

Chris Williamson 6:37 They have. (laughs)

Mike Baker 6:37 Uh, yeah, so.

Chris Williamson 6:39 They, uh, everyone, everyone needs something to keep them going.

Mike Baker 6:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:42 Um, they're 70% down from when they started.

Mike Baker 6:46 God.

Chris Williamson 6:46 70% down from when that, that first happened. My point being that the antibody defense system that the public has against feeling like they're being fucked with-

Mike Baker 6:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:58 Right? L- many companies, many organizations, many individuals are trying to contrive and cynically portray some sort of image, even, uh, us interpersonally day-to-day. You know, you don't tell your friend about the fucking athlete's foot you're dealing with. You know, like, it's all part, it's all fucking smoke and mirrors. But they're 70% down. Google is way more important than overpriced shoes. But I don't think that we should underestimate how catastrophic and, uh, uh, apocalyptic for a company it can be for, for the veil to sort of be revealed and it's like, here, we know that they were doing something. What's happening with the search engine? How can we trust Google overall?

Mike Baker 7:36 Right, yeah. No, I think it's, most, most companies now do things out of fear, right? I mean, the fear that they're not going to be, um, whatever the term is nowadays, woke or, or progressive enough, right? And so, you know, they, whether it's their marketing department or their communications department, I think most, most companies always kind of, eh, when they look at, okay, w- we have a new product, or we have a new ad campaign we gotta put out there, they've gotta tick some boxes. And okay, fine. You know, marketing has always been that, advertising has always been that, right? Appeal to whoever you believe your consumer to be, right? But I think that there is a, there's a level of fear now that exists that probably wasn't there before that says, "We, we, we don't wanna get sideways with the very loud, um, you know, vocal minority, right, that's out there." Because, you know, last time I checked, you know, the LGBTQ community, God bless 'em, right, but they're not, they're not the majority of the population, right? And, but our consumer product then seems to be, like, believing that they are. But it's not. It's just fear of upsetting a very loud minority of people who, you know, have figured out how to manipulate, right, the narrative. And that, and, and again, hey, good for them, you know, 'cause everybody's trying to, I suppose, do the same thing and, you know, win the day. But, uh, yeah, we live in, we live in interesting times, right? And, um, if you raise, if you've got kids in school, right, you, you see it almost on a daily basis, because kids are pretty, pretty good until they get to a certain age, right? Young kids are pretty good about just kinda telling you the truth, right? They'll just come home and they'll say something. They don't tend to edit things that much at a young age, right? And so they'll come back and, (laughs) you'll say, "How was your day?" And they'll go, "Well, you know, I, I had a girl hiss at me." You say, "What do you mean hiss at you?" "Well, she, well, she thinks she's a cat, and so she dresses like a cat, and she only communicates by meowing and hissing, and so she hissed at me." And you say, "Well, why'd she hiss at you?" They say, "Well, I pulled her tail." Well, I think that's funny, right? (laughs) But, but you could, you could legitimately get in trouble in school now for, for, you know, harassing a, a, a cat.

Chris Williamson 9:37 Cat person.

Mike Baker 9:38 Yeah, a cat person. And so you, you hear these things and, and there's other versions of that story that come out on a daily basis, and you think, "Okay, you know, I get it." We're kind of accommodating everything nowadays, right?

Chris Williamson 9:50 Yes.

Mike Baker 9:50 And, and, you know, I, I, everybody's got their own opinion, you know? My opinion is that you probably don't wanna do that, right? If some kid tells you that they wanna be a dinosaur when they grow up, you know, they'll probably get over that.

Chris Williamson 10:04 Not necessarily need to indulge all of the-

Mike Baker 10:05 You don't need to indulge.

Chris Williamson 10:06 I mean, if you look at a three-year-old, he's a fireman when he wakes up, and then he's a postman after lunch, and-

Mike Baker 10:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:10 ... he's a, an astronaut before dinner.

Mike Baker 10:12 Yeah. Oh God, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was young.

Chris Williamson 10:15 Yeah?

Mike Baker 10:15 I still, I kept this little essay that I wrote when I was in... I don't even remember what I was, how old I was, but that was what I wanted to be. And, and, uh, I was never gonna be smart enough to be an astronaut, and my dad was nice enough not to tell me that, but you know, it was, I remember that-

Chris Williamson 10:28 Indulged your fantasy.

Mike Baker 10:29 I, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:30 You were the, you were the astronaut cat person.

Mike Baker 10:31 Yeah, I mean, he did, he did tell me, you know, (laughs) at one point, "You're, you know, you might wanna set your sights somewhere else other than space." But, um, yeah, I guess that anyway, the point being is I think the, the overindulgence, right?

Chris Williamson 10:44 Yep.

Mike Baker 10:45 Um, at a y- at a, for kids at a young age is not, I don't think, actually solid parenting.

Chris Williamson 10:51 It seems different than just indulging a young person's desire for fantasy or, or, or a different life. This appears to be a complete rewriting of history.

Mike Baker 11:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:04 It appears to be a, a, a-

Mike Baker 11:05 Yeah. Uh, yeah, and particularly we're talking about Gemini here.

Chris Williamson 11:07 Yeah, it seems to be-

Mike Baker 11:08 Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:09 ... 50% hiding reality and 50% erasing history.

Mike Baker 11:13 Yeah. And think about how focused that was, right? Think about the, the thought process that went into that, right? And it wasn't just one, it's not like s- one dude said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, create this code that's gonna allow this to happen." This was a, this was a, this was a legitimate discussion. Nothing happens in a company that size that doesn't go through several layers of decision-making, right, and has to get signed off on. It's bullshit if we imagine it was just s- one very progressive person who thought, "I'm gonna fuck with the system a little bit, so here we go," right? This thing was test-driven to a fucking fare-thee-well, right? And so the idea (laughs) that they would, now they come out and go, "Well, uh, well, yeah. It caught us by surprise." Shoot.

Chris Williamson 11:51 Bugs in the code, unforeseen externalities.

Mike Baker 11:54 Yeah, yeah. Who could've seen that coming, right? (laughs) Eh, well everybody in product development, right? Um, yeah, I, it's, it is amazing to think about. And then you think about the power that that has, right? I mean, Google, you can't swing a dead cat without, you know, without hitting Google at some point, right? And so everybody is, in a way, is impacted, right? And-... yeah, again, I go bi- back to that original comment, which is, uh, uh, I don't, we don't understand. We don't have enough data points yet to understand what all this means for the development of, of, of, uh, the human race maybe, if you wanna take it that far-

Chris Williamson 12:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 12:28 ... right, down the road.

Chris Williamson 12:30 Definitely what you want to be doing, though, if you're in this position, you're at the very beginning of the inception of a new type of technology, of AI, of large language models, of all of that stuff, you do not want to activate the antibody system within the populous. Uh, you should be moving so slowly. It should be... You shouldn't be allowing it to generate images. It should be just, you know, first off, text. I don't... I think Gemini kind of jumped in, straight in at the deep end-

Mike Baker 12:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:55 ... and, and did some super advanced stuff. Uh, but yeah, I think the implications for the rest of Google's unbiasedness, or lack of-

Mike Baker 13:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:05 ... is I think this has really brought to the front a lot of, uh, latent skepticism that people had about that company overall.

Mike Baker 13:13 I, I think so, but I think what they're probably counting on is, um, what most companies count on, uh, which is sort of the short attention span, right? We'll, I'll, uh... So I turned (laughs) turned that off.

Chris Williamson 13:25 (laughs)

Mike Baker 13:25 Uh, that was Goo-

Chris Williamson 13:26 Bad call.

Mike Baker 13:26 That's Google calling me.

Chris Williamson 13:27 Is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Baker 13:28 Saying, "Hey, would you shut the fuck up?"

Chris Williamson 13:29 God damn it.

Mike Baker 13:30 Um, yeah. I think, uh, they're counting on the short attention span, right? Uh, I mean, look at... Everybody imagined... Uh, well, the, okay, the far right imagined Bud Light's going down, right? After that, it'll go rou-

Chris Williamson 13:41 Within a year.

Mike Baker 13:42 Yeah, yeah. And, and nobody gives a shit at the end of the day, right? I mean, there was a, there was a dip, right? And they, and they, they hit their stock price a little bit, but that company's not going out. You know, that's, it's just not gonna happen. And, and people forget these things, right? And, and our attention spans, particularly in, in the U-, in the US, and I would argue, you know, in the West to some degree, but really in the US I see it. And I spend a lot of time overseas, but here in, in, in, uh, in America, we've got such a short attention span. And there's this inability, right, to... And I'm not saying you, you shouldn't look at Google and say, "Okay, now we gotta punish them hard. We gotta drive them out of business." That's bullshit. You know, boycott, boycott.

Chris Williamson 14:22 Yeah, yep.

Mike Baker 14:22 Ah, whatever. You don't like a product, don't use the product, right? But I, I don't think this is gonna impact them in the long run, and I don't think they ultimately believe it will or care, right? They care in the short, very short term, but I think they understand the dynamics. Uh, and we're all like, you know, a bunch of raccoons chasing the next tinfoil ball.

Chris Williamson 14:43 It's very easy to outwit somebody else by just looking at a longer time horizon than they do.

Mike Baker 14:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:51 You know, if you just realize right now... The e- the Bud Light example is so perfect. This is the end of it. Kid Rock's shooting it with a gun.

Mike Baker 14:58 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 14:58 It's gonna be Kid Rock with Ron Rogan the other week.

Mike Baker 15:00 Yeah, he was. Yeah, it was good.

Chris Williamson 15:01 Fucking drinking it-

Mike Baker 15:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:02 ... with Joe. Shane Gillis is now an ambassador for them. You've got, like, the Bud Light f- New World Order fucking booth at the Super Bowl, right?

Mike Baker 15:09 (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 15:10 And it's all the coolest people are in there. Post Malone's in there and all the rest of it.

Mike Baker 15:12 Yeah, yeah. They came out with a camo can.

Chris Williamson 15:13 Yeah.

Mike Baker 15:13 Remember that? Yeah, it is-

Chris Williamson 15:14 We support our veterans, all that shit, right?

Mike Baker 15:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:16 And you go... So this is one of the... I have such... I get so annoyed with people that are super vehement about a thing-

Mike Baker 15:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:24 ... and then forget about it. Because you captured my attention with your bullshit, over-the-top vehement denial or assertion about some fucking thing-

Mike Baker 15:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:36 ... and it's still in my memory, but it's not in yours.

Mike Baker 15:38 Right, yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:39 There was this image of a single squaddie soldier walking down the streets of London, and it got forwarded on WhatsApp. This was during COVID.

Mike Baker 15:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:48 And it was, um, "This is an image, uh, sent to me by my brother who's part of the Armed Forces," and blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever. Um, "The Army are gonna come and force you at gunpoint to stay in your house." And this is... I don't know if you, you've ever seen-

Mike Baker 16:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:00 ... this on WhatsApp. There's a thing that says, "Forwarded many times."

Mike Baker 16:03 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:04 And it's like a warning that this is being pushed around a lot on WhatsApp. This thing went beyond hyper viral, and people were adamant this is the beginning. Remember when the, there was, like, tanks rolling through Florida? Miami, maybe?

Mike Baker 16:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:15 Miami Beach? And it was like, "This is the beginning. It's gonna be"-

Mike Baker 16:17 That's it. (laughs) You know.

Chris Williamson 16:18 ... "Marshall Law and everyone's gonna be locked down."

Mike Baker 16:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:20 And people were fucking adamant. Uh, global health passports? Remember that?

Mike Baker 16:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:25 Remember that was gonna come in?

Mike Baker 16:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:26 And it's just a case of either, oh, well, um, the amount of attention that we gave it online stopped them from being able to do it. I'm like, all right. Well, that's fucking unfalsifiable, isn't it? Or they're just biding their time until we're less vigilant.

Mike Baker 16:40 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:40 I go, "Dude, you don't get to make insanely certain assertions about the world and then just, like, allow them to fold."

Mike Baker 16:50 Yeah. Then move on.

Chris Williamson 16:50 Yeah.

Mike Baker 16:50 And then you're mo- you... Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 16:52 Ugh, dude, it winds me up so much.

Mike Baker 16:53 Yeah. No, I, if you've spent any time, um, working for the government or a government, you know, typically what you'll find, uh, unless you're in a totalitarian regime, unless you're working for Xi Jinping in China maybe, um, you know, the government, you know, the US government in, in particular is not capable of organizing panic in a doomed submarine, right? They just can't. Yeah, so this idea that somehow they're going to, (laughs) you know, create this new world order or they're gonna do these things, I mean, you always wanna be vigilant, but yeah, uh, the COVID, the pandemic brought out a lot of that, I think in part because it kind of fed into... You know, it was, it was a, it was a great trough, you know, for people who wanted to talk about conspiracies and things.

Chris Williamson 17:36 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 17:36 And, and so, okay, great. But, um, you know, we all knew another pandemic was gonna happen, right? We know another one's gonna happen at some point, right? We'll probably have the same reactions. (laughs) We won't learn anything. But yeah, I'm, I've never been a big fan of the i- or a big believer in the idea that somehow the government's gonna get this massive conspiracy over on us, because I spent too much time working for the government.

Chris Williamson 17:55 Right, so it's-

Mike Baker 17:55 And-

Chris Williamson 17:55 ... your, your, uh, belief is that because they're so useless, this level of coordination would essentially be impossible?

Mike Baker 18:02 Yeah, yeah. The idea that they could keep secrets to that degree, right? I mean, you, you, you know, they, there, certain parts of the government, you know, intel community is pretty good at keeping sources and methods, right? Because it's life or death, you know, for assets working overseas. But I mean, on the big level, you know, we've created some, you know, some-... you know, secret lair somewhere where we're developing some new... Okay, fine. Maybe so, but I, uh, my experience anyway has been that it's tough for the government to keep a secret if it involves multiple agencies or, you know, a variety of- of- of positions. I- I just don't... I, again, you have to go with what your personal experience is. That's mine.

Chris Williamson 18:38 Hmm.

Mike Baker 18:38 I'm sure somebody else that's, you know, sitting in somebody's basement with no experience has a different idea, so... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 18:44 Did you see

Chris Williamson 18:45 that, uh, Gemini also refused to create an image of what happened at Tiananmen Square?

Mike Baker 18:51 Yes.

Chris Williamson 18:52 Yeah.

Mike Baker 18:53 It did. And I also saw that... What was it? Somebody asked them... I mean, there's- there's so many examples out there.

Chris Williamson 19:00 Correct.

Mike Baker 19:01 Um, I think one example, and I haven't tracked it back to its original source yet, but somebody asked if- if it was, uh, um, all right to misgender, I think it was, uh, Bruce Jenner, or sorry, Caitlyn Jenner, um, in order to stop a- a nuclear apocalypse or Armageddon. And the, kinda the answer was sort of shaded. "Well, it's not right, you know, because it could be considered discriminatory. Now, there may be other ways to stop the Armageddon."

Chris Williamson 19:34 Okay.

Mike Baker 19:34 You know? And I think, okay, that's-

Chris Williamson 19:35 That's some good lateral thinking.

Mike Baker 19:36 Yeah. So there was, you know, there was... It was layered, I guess. But no, there's... (laughs) I don't, I don't know. I, uh... What I worry about, I- I take it... I tend to think about things in very simple terms. I, um... My greatest joy in life comes from my- my family, right? So I think about a lot of things in terms of the impact it will have on my kids, uh, what we're leaving behind for the kids, you know, what it means for their development. And so I tend... I look at something like, you know, AI and, and... and again, it's a fairly simplistic way of looking at it. I'm not necessarily considering the human race. I'm considering what kind of impact will it have on- on teaching my boys to be smart thinkers, to become, you know, productive, become leaders. You know, what does all of this mean? TikTok, what does that... You know, not just TikTok, but I mean, the- just the- the access to information and social media. What is that doing to these minds, right? And, you know, again, I suppose, you know, the- the just recent generation had the same conversations with shooter games, right? Video games.

Chris Williamson 20:36 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 20:36 Right? So, you know, every- every generation deals with it, you know? I'm sure my parents talked about rock and roll music, right? And were worried about that. So it's not- it's not-

Chris Williamson 20:43 TV before that, radio before that.

Mike Baker 20:45 Yeah, it's nothing new. It's just... It does seem more insidious, right? It seems more... Because it- it is. It's reaching more people, right? And it's having more of an immediate impact, and it's affecting the way that we think about things and how we react to news of the day, right? We're- we're tired of Ukraine after two years, right? We were in Afghanistan for fucking 20 years, right? And now we're all fatigued from it to some degree or in some fashion, but took almost no time for people to get tired of... And- and- and, you know, a lot of people that were out there and couldn't wait to pin a fucking Ukraine flag in their front yard, right? Or- or- or post a little Ukraine flag on- on their Twitter site, you know, now they're all like, "Oh, we're... You know, we can't spend any more money there." You know? So, okay, what happened in that short span of two years? Well, immediate access to information and a- and all those opinions and ideas, right? And then people get siloed and they start reading only things that agree with them, and then- then they're- they're done, right? Now they're... Now they've got a hardened opinion, and you can't shift them off that position, right? Anyway.

Chris Williamson 21:44 We'll get back to talking to Mike in one minute, but first, I need to tell you about Surfshark. Browsing the internet without a VPN is like going for a walk in a muddy field without any shoes on. You can do it, but it's ill-advised and you might catch something. You can protect your browsing online and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. If you're someone that works off public Wi-Fi networks like cafes or libraries or airports, the internet administrator can see all of the traffic going back and forth between your devices and the internet, and that is tres bad. You do not want this. Also, your internet service provider is able to see all of your traffic and then sell it to companies that can target you with ads. Websites are split testing you for prices on products that you're already buying, and even flight websites are doing this too. So, to protect yourself from all of this, plus access the entire world's Netflix library, you can do that right now with one membership, and it's across unlimited devices. You can have it across your laptop, your iPad, your phone, and even your smart TV. You can get an 83% discount plus three months free by going to the link in the description below or heading to surfshark.deals/modernwisdom. That's surfshark.deals/modernwisdom. Did you see what happened with the Super Bowl where Alicia Keys' voice broke, and then they went back and retroactively fixed her voice?

Mike Baker 22:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:55 Did you see this?

Mike Baker 22:56 No, I- I... You know, I did not... The Giants were not in the Super Bowl, so I didn't watch it.

Chris Williamson 23:00 Right. Oh, well.

Mike Baker 23:01 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:01 Look, you missed- you missed Alicia Keys.

Mike Baker 23:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:03 Very good performance. Usher, fantastic dancer, still pretty ripped. Um, Alicia Keys' voice broke on the first note of this piano solo thing that she was doing. But if you go back and watch the Super Bowl's recording of it on YouTube-

Mike Baker 23:16 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:16 ... her voice is perfect.

Mike Baker 23:18 Wow.

Chris Williamson 23:18 And this has been... I... Look, Alicia Keys is not the vanguard of us rewriting history, but you can certainly see between AI being able to misrepresent how history would have been-

Mike Baker 23:34 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:34 ... this sort of erasing of history and rewriting of the present, and then this retroactive changing, and even if it's just a little bit with regards to someone's voice, this is different to auto-tuning a song. This is a record of what happened in history.

Mike Baker 23:47 Right.

Chris Williamson 23:47 And I think I- I'm... This is starting to get quite worrying. Like, I err on the side of non-conspiracism, but-

Mike Baker 23:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:53 ... this is starting to get a bit... I don't like the-

Mike Baker 23:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:57 ... doors that are being opened here.

Mike Baker 23:58 Well, and I think there's... There are some, uh, mechanisms that are... And- and companies that are trying to, uh, or have been trying to get ahead of the curve. I'm not sure that that's- that's possible right now, but, uh, y- you have to... It's- it's like, it's like the old days. You'd- you'd read an article in the newspaper and you'd think, "Okay, that's very interesting." Well, mm-mm-mm, you know... But is it true, right? I mean, so what's the basis for this, you know? And used to be, one of the defenses was sources would be named, right? You couldn't write an article, you- you wouldn't get it published if it was based on anonymous sources. Well, now that's not true anymore. New York Times will publish a front page article (laughs) on the, you know, top half.... based on anonymous sources. And so, you're trying to verify something, right? And- and you push that forward to today, and you say, "Okay, well, now I'm trying to verify, um, a- a clip that I'm seeing on- on X," right, or on YouTube or something. And how do you do that? Because the ability to manipulate video, the abilit- and- and audio is remarkable, right? There's- there's- y- you- almost impossible to tell the difference basically, without some ex- assistance. And so there's companies out there that are trying to ensure that you're... are basically imprinting actual- the- the truth, right? So you take video and that is the- the original source, and it's- and it's imprinted in the- in the code-

Chris Williamson 25:23 Oh, okay.

Mike Baker 25:23 ... that says this is the- the date, the time, the location. And so you can verify that what's being said by that political candidate or whomever, right, on the- in- on that podium is accurate. Because then you may see a day later, you may see the same clip, but it's been altered, right?

Chris Williamson 25:40 Auto-tuned.

Mike Baker 25:40 And... Yeah, auto-tuned. And- and so there are s- some companies out there that are working to do that to- to prevent deep fakes.

Chris Williamson 25:47 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 25:47 But it's- it's very difficult because m- you're relying on people's curiosity and, um, and them having the interest, right, to pursue to make sure that what they're saying... And most people don't. Either they don't have the time or they don't have the patience or the interest.

Chris Williamson 26:02 Well, the point with ChatGPT and these LLMs and AI and search engines is to reduce the friction from getting where you are to where you want to be-

Mike Baker 26:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:12 ... in terms of understanding, in terms of whatever it is that you're searching for, right?

Mike Baker 26:15 Right.

Chris Williamson 26:15 And the fact that it's frictionless is precisely where the attraction lies. It's the convenience and all the rest of the stuff.

Mike Baker 26:22 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 26:23 And if you could imagine a world in which the most convenient route also bakes in, uh, lack of accuracy. So it goes, look, you can find this out in three seconds, but there's a- a accuracy of 30%.

Mike Baker 26:38 Your margin of error is... Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:39 Yes, exactly, precisely. You could be a little bit wrong either way. Or you can do your own research and it's gonna take you a day and a half, and you're gonna know what actually happened.

Mike Baker 26:46 Like, everybody know what it's gonna do that.

Chris Williamson 26:46 Where are people gonna go? Of course, of course. And the thing is-

Mike Baker 26:50 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:50 ... you have the opportunity. It is more effortful to not portray the truth. It takes more effort to do that. Now, it's less convenient-

Mike Baker 27:00 Right.

Chris Williamson 27:00 ... but it takes more effort to lie than it does to tell the truth.

Mike Baker 27:04 Well, um, yeah, it... That- but that- but that- that gap, that difference between lying and telling the truth is- is shrinking, right, because of-

Chris Williamson 27:12 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 27:13 ... the technology, because of the access to- to be able to this. So, um, you know, and- and, but you're right, I mean, if you just... if you pare it back to just sort of the human nature, right? If you're, you know... But that's why if you're being interrogated, you know, you gotta stick to the truth to the most part, right? You wanna stay as close to the truth as possible, obviously without veering off (laughs) into something that's gonna get your ass kicked. But, um, the idea being... Because otherwise, if you- if you're lying, you gotta keep building on that, and you gotta keep remembering, and then... and you spend all your time thinking, "Okay, where was... Okay, what did I say there? What... No, I said that, and then I said that, and then..." And if you're dealing in an interrogation situation, you know, and that's what you're counting on. You're counting on if that person's lying to me, at some point, they're gonna get confused, right, and they're gonna start mixing up that story. And particularly if you... You know, in the old days you've got the ability for sleep deprivation or whatever it is, right, and you can start messing with their mind a little bit. Then yes, that's- that's what you're counting on. But... So you're absolutely right in the sense that lying is much more difficult. Aside from the fact that, (laughs) you know, usually... If you make a mistake, right, the best thing... We- we were taught this at the agency, right, as- as- as, uh, uh, being out in the field in- in operations. I remember right... uh, one of my first, uh, bosses told me when I landed on site, before I went in- in- i- uh, off to do whatever I was doing, he said, "You know, if- if anything happens, if you make a mistake, just come tell me and we'll- we'll sort it out, right? But just- just tell me." Smartest thing, right, you can do to empower, um, young people with responsibility, or given responsibility, to know that if they make a mistake, come forward with it, tell him. And sure enough, you know, because of, you know, operations in the agency, out in the field (laughs) sometimes things happen.

Chris Williamson 28:55 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 28:55 So y- you know, and- and he was good to his word, right? We had a bit of a goat rope, and you know, it- it worked out. But you gotta be able to do that, and you gotta be able to show... It's not enough to say, "Hey, you make a mistake, come tell me, we'll fix it." You know? If you kick their ass when they come and made a mistake, then you've- you've-

Chris Williamson 29:10 Disincentivized them.

Mike Baker 29:11 Yeah, exactly. So you gotta- you gotta follow through. But you're... So you're right in a sense, yeah. Telling it- it's always the truth, you know. It... Telling the truth is always the easiest path, right? But I guess my point being is, in the world of disinformation now, if your job is- is propaganda or misinformation or disinformation, it's becoming a lot easier, right, and a lot quicker, a lot more efficient, right, to create that than... In the old days, if you were gonna do a propaganda campaign, right, change hearts and minds in some country, right, that you're- you're trying to sway the people... You know, I'm not talking about overthrowing the government, you know (laughs) . Those good old days are gone.

Chris Williamson 29:50 (laughs)

Mike Baker 29:51 (laughs) So I'm sorry (laughs) . That's not true. We never did that sort of thing. Come on. Um, but the point being is that you ha-... That was a lot of work, right? 'Cause what were you doing? You were using old media technology, right? You were finding journalists who might be inclined, for whatever reason, to write articles in a certain tone, right? And then you'd create a network of them, and you'd kind of pepper the- the country with, you know, this- this narrative, and you'd build on that and hope that you're having an impact. Bullshit. Much easier now (laughs) . Are you kidding me? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:18 Think

Chris Williamson 30:19 about... You- you remember Cambridge Analytica?

Mike Baker 30:21 Yeah, sure.

Chris Williamson 30:21 You remember that?

Mike Baker 30:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:22 So, uh, you know, targeted, um, memes and- and ads that were tronched into cohorts, and we have the, um, H- maybe Hillary is a non-US citizen, maybe Hillary is a da-da-da-da... You know, all the different ways-

Mike Baker 30:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:39 ... that this gets split up. You had all of these different, uh, um-... vulnerabilities-

Mike Baker 30:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:44 ... and vectors of attack. But there was still a person making a meme or making an advert or whatever, so there was still human labor getting in the way of the rapidity of this.

Mike Baker 30:55 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:55 Whereas now, you have both the ability for AI to deliver it in a targeted manner-

Mike Baker 31:00 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:01 ... and also to create it. So you, you can have Mike Baker-

Mike Baker 31:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:06 ... profile on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and it's just-

Mike Baker 31:10 And who wouldn't want that? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:11 No one wants that-

Mike Baker 31:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 31:12 ... not at all. Uh, but, and it's just you that it's targeted at.

Mike Baker 31:16 Right.

Chris Williamson 31:16 So yeah, I think, uh, yeah, increasingly, we're going to see real information, original sources. You know, maybe there'll be a way where, uh, being an actual person on social media will be a, a, a rarity in the next five years.

Mike Baker 31:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:30 Maybe humans are gonna be a, it's 99% of content will be created by bots.

Mike Baker 31:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 31:36 And every so often, you'll see a tweet from you or, or someone else that's real.

Mike Baker 31:39 Yeah, and it's, look, if, if you're, if you're talking about a, a, a state, right, if you're talking about, um, creating something that's gonna get past the scrutiny of, uh, of, um, you know, Chinese intel or Russian intel or something, yeah, then you're, you're working your ass off, right? You're creating a very hard backstopped, you know-

Chris Williamson 31:57 Elaborate.

Mike Baker 31:58 ... elaborate cover, um, and it, it's, it's a lot of work. But for the average person out there, if what you're trying to do is influence a campaign or you're trying to do, you know, creating 10,000, uh, fictional characters, you know, saying interesting things out there-

Chris Williamson 32:14 Hm.

Mike Baker 32:14 ... who then, you know, it's, it's like the old s- concentric circles who then get 5,000 followers each, and that, it's, I, I get (laughs) , but again, it all comes down to the same problem, right? We can talk about all the, you know, the things you can do, but it's individuals, right? It comes down to each person saying to themselves, "Is what I'm reading or hearing or watching true?" You know, and, and I, I don't know how you, you impact that, right? Because-

Chris Williamson 32:40 Hm.

Mike Baker 32:40 ... human nature being what it is, we're just, you know, we're, we're consuming shit and then moving on, right?

Chris Williamson 32:45 Path of least resistance.

Mike Baker 32:46 Yeah, path of least resistance, and, and to be fair, most people are just trying to put food on the table or take care of their kids or whatever they're doing, and so you can't ask them to spend a lot of time scrutinizing.

Chris Williamson 32:54 I don't have t- time to be my own personal Snopes-

Mike Baker 32:57 Yeah, yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:57 ... for every single thing-

Mike Baker 32:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:58 ... that I see.

Mike Baker 32:59 Who am I, Poirot?

Chris Williamson 33:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Baker 33:00 It's not gonna happen. Again, so, I think that there is, you know, there, there is a, there's always going to be this, this, uh, this, this problem. And not to say that it hasn't always existed, right, but I, I do think the acceleration is pretty impressive, right, the speed of which you can create this, this, this fake, right, this deep fake, or, or this persona that pushes information out there or whatever it may be, and, uh, the speed with which people are willing to consume it and pass it along, right? So, that's something we're gonna be battling, I think, for a while. And, and it, will it impact this upcoming election? Of course it will. And, and future elections, right? Why wouldn't you? If I'm, if I'm Russian intelligence or Chinese intelligence or the Iranians or who, anybody who's got the resources, why wouldn't I try to fuck with the US?

Chris Williamson 33:44 Yeah.

Mike Baker 33:45 Right? So, or, or the UK, or really, it's not, it's, again, it's not just a US-centric problem.

Chris Williamson 33:49 Yes. What

Chris Williamson 33:51 do you think we learned from the Putin-Tucker interview, speaking of Russia?

Mike Baker 33:55 (laughs) Um, well, Putin's a douchebag, I think. I, I took that away, but I'd say I had a preconceived notion (laughs) of Putin.

Chris Williamson 34:05 Those were your priors.

Mike Baker 34:05 Yeah, that was, that was something I walked into the interview with. Um, look, I, I don't, I don't know. I, I think, I understand why Tucker wanted to do it aside from just 160 million views or however many he got, right? I mean, that was sure to be a, a winner, um, in, in just the ratings. Uh, I don't think it revealed anything clever or new about Putin's mindset. He's a smart cat, right? So, he knew what he was going to say, how he was going to act, what he was gonna look like, you know, every, I mean, it, he's a very calculating individual, right? He survived Russian politics, right, for this long and b- at the top, right? Um, you don't do that by being a moron, right, or f- or, or stumbling into an interview with Tucker Carlson, right, who's not exactly Lex Luthor, right? I mean, so that, you know, again, not, that doesn't, and that's not belittling to Tucker. (laughs) He's a smart guy. I'm just saying that it's not like it was, it was not like some Marvel, you know, movie where the, the two evil minds got together. Putin's a very calculating, clever individual. So, I don't think we, I, I mean, this from my perspective, I, I didn't learn anything new about him.

Chris Williamson 35:16 Yup.

Mike Baker 35:16 Um, look, this idea that somehow we have no interest in Ukraine and we should just, you know, close the curtains on it, um, yay, Ukraine, great courage for two years. We all loved it. Uh, you know, I'll keep my bumper sticker on the car, um, for Ukraine. And now we walk away because we don't care anymore, because we're tired of it, and we wanna, you know, do something, and we spend that money back. Of course, we should have spent the fucking money at home, right? We got a lot of infrastructure problems and resources we should do, but we also have concerns over there. And so, I think, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm amazed at the speed with which it happened, but you could argue that about a lot of things. You know? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:56 The speed at which the support fell off?

Mike Baker 35:58 Yes.

Chris Williamson 35:59 Yes.

Mike Baker 35:59 The speed at which the f- I mean, look, again, I, I don't mean to jump all over the place, but Hamas rolls into Southern Israel, slaughters 1,200 people in probably the most medieval display of brutality that we've seen in our lifetimes, right, uh, which everybody agreed was, was incredibly brutal. And in record time, it's Israel's fault, right, because they've gone into Gaza to try to destroy the Hamas, which has been doing this, which has always been in existence to destroy Israel. And so, yeah, and of course, you don't want civilians to die, but Hamas has spent-... you know, going on a couple of decades now, embedding themselves inside that population, knowing that every time that there is a conflict, civilians are gonna die, knowing that that's gonna drive the narrative. That's what they do. So the speed with which that happened, the speed with which we've gotten fatigued in Ukraine, you know, it all kinda comes back around again to this, this whole idea.

Chris Williamson 36:54 Novelty-

Mike Baker 36:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:55 ... desire for something new. Yeah, I, um, you know, I knew that the, uh, Putin-Tucker interview was gonna be a big deal, and I'd sort of prepared myself for, yeah, this like cataclysmic meeting of, you know, like West and, and, and Soviet and... And then I'd, I don't know, I came away from it kind of just being like, "Oh, uh," just very-

Mike Baker 37:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:17 ... unenlightened, kind of unimpressed, I think.

Mike Baker 37:21 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:21 You know, you have this 30-minute treaty, s- monologue, soliloquy at the start about this is the history and this is why we feel this way and so on and so forth. And, you know, Tucker's a, he's a very competent interviewer.

Mike Baker 37:36 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:37 Usually.

Mike Baker 37:38 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 37:38 And I, I, you know, I don't know how difficult it must've been, and this is something that people are never really gonna see, the intermediary of a translator between the two adds a degree of complexity that can really-

Mike Baker 37:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:51 It's like fighting a southpaw or something.

Mike Baker 37:53 Yeah (laughs) . Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:53 You know, it sort of-

Mike Baker 37:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:54 ... throws you off your step a little bit.

Mike Baker 37:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 37:56 And, um, that sounds silly but, you know, ultimate-

Mike Baker 37:59 No, no.

Chris Williamson 38:00 O-

Mike Baker 38:00 They use that to... I mean that, that's always been the case. You always use a translator to your advantage, right?

Chris Williamson 38:04 It gives him more t- chance to say something back, to do whatever. Right, yeah, very interesting. But no, I just... It was a bit,

Chris Williamson 38:11 uh... And now Navalny's dead.

Mike Baker 38:14 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:14 And that's the next... And that happens, what, a week maybe?

Mike Baker 38:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:17 10 days after he sits down with Tucker?

Mike Baker 38:19 Yeah. No, it, it... (sighs) And it's, he doesn't care, right? I mean, we, we imagine that, that Russia cares what we think about them and how they're portrayed, and we imagine that Xi worries about how China... You know?

Chris Williamson 38:32 You mean like they've-

Mike Baker 38:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:33 ... got a, a brand equity dashboard somewhere?

Mike Baker 38:36 Yes (laughs) . Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 38:36 And they're like, "What's our current rating? Oh, we're at-"

Mike Baker 38:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:38 "... 4.4 stars on Tripadvisor."

Mike Baker 38:40 Yeah, yeah. Or Q- What is that? The old Q rating or the Q factor or something.

Chris Williamson 38:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Baker 38:43 You know, how popular are we? Uh, yeah. They, they, they really don't care. In part, not so much Russia but more China because they've got the longer view, right? They, they, they look way down the road compared to, to how the, the West tends to do it. But, um, I think the, the parameters of what they were allowed to do, uh, uh, Carlson and his crew when they went in, uh, were pretty hard and fast, right? Uh, there, there's a, as y- you can imagine, there's a lot of back and forth that goes into that.

Chris Williamson 39:10 I think he was two hours late as well for it.

Mike Baker 39:11 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:12 I think he was two hours late, which-

Mike Baker 39:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:13 ... apparently is like par for the course with him.

Mike Baker 39:15 Y- He was riding a tiger, he was doing something. He was-

Chris Williamson 39:17 Yes, fighting a bear.

Mike Baker 39:18 ... he was busy, fighting a bear (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 39:20 Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Baker 39:20 Saw a couple of them. Uh, but yeah, if, if Carlson had like born in on or, or bored in on, on Gershkovich, right? Evan Gershkovich, who's sitting in, in jail, or Paul Whelan or... You know, um, and, and, and, in, in a more aggressive fashion said, "Okay, well, where's your evidence of, with, with Evan that he's been engaged in espionage? How about that? You know, when are you actually gonna do something about a, a, an actual, you know, uh, open and transparent effort to discuss his case?" Um, you know, wha- if you'd, if you'd, if he had gone in on that more. Um, but that wouldn't have been allowed to happen, right? That wasn't, that was, wasn't part of the, the agreed upon, you know, uh, playing field. So (sighs) I, I just, I, I didn't think we were gonna get anything new and I, I didn't feel like we, we did. Um, I, again, I understand why he did it, uh, had the interview. Um, but anyway, but the Navalny situation, um, (laughs) sudden death syndrome, um, yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:22 D- Uh, dude, you're in a forced labor camp, like just-

Mike Baker 40:26 Yeah, above the Arctic Circle.

Chris Williamson 40:27 Being alive-

Mike Baker 40:28 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:28 Being alive is a surprise.

Mike Baker 40:30 Yeah (laughs) . Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:31 Like the death isn't the surprise thing.

Mike Baker 40:32 Yeah, that's it.

Chris Williamson 40:32 Oh my God, he lasted t- two and a half years.

Mike Baker 40:34 Yeah. He went for a walk and then he didn't feel well. That was their original comment, you know, he went for a walk and then he didn't feel well (laughs) because, because that's what you do above the Arctic Circle, you know?

Chris Williamson 40:44 Go for a walk.

Mike Baker 40:44 Go for a walk. And, um, and then e- you know, there was some comment that he had, uh, bruising around his head and his chest, and their, their response was, "Well, he hit his head (laughs) when he fell-"

Chris Williamson 40:56 On his chest.

Mike Baker 40:56 "... apparently repeatedly." And then the chest was when they were trying to revive him (laughs) . It's very... So from a Russian perspective, it was, it was exactly what you would expect. And whether he was poisoned or whether they, you know, they, they... He has blunt force trauma or whatever, the outcome was probably always inevitable with Navalny because he was always a threat. And-

Chris Williamson 41:16 What's the... Give the 30,000-foot view for the people who, who don't know his background, Navalny. Who was he?

Mike Baker 41:22 (sighs) He's e- um... I'm trying to remember the year that he kind of really first surfaced. Um, man, I'm, I'm, I'm drawing a blank. But he, um, he e- most, not most recently, but he became sort of a critic of, uh, of Chechnya. He became a critic of some of the governance in Chechnya and, and the corruption. He started, um, being more vocal about, primarily about corruption issues, right? And then he fed off of that... I'm, I'm really oversimplifying it, but he had to be careful about how he was doing that obviously because you get, you get sideways with the Russian regime pretty quickly. But he started getting a following because he was one of the few people who was actually getting out and talking about things that people, you know... I suppose in the back of their minds, they were thinking, "Yeah, there's probably some corruption going on here in the Russian government and, and around the, the region." And eventually, he, he went to run for mayor and that didn't end well, right? He didn't... He got, uh, convicted or charged with, um, business corruption. And that was kind of the first-... salvo that Putin fired at him, I think in, in, an effort to say, "Hey, look, just shut up because I think, you know, you're gonna find this is not going to go well for you." So, it was business corruption. You see that in China too. Anytime somebody gets sideways with Xi, usually it's a corruption charge, it's a, it's some type of malfeasance-

Chris Williamson 42:48 Bluffy.

Mike Baker 42:48 ... on the business side, yeah. So, uh, and then, and then they disappear. So Navalny, uh, made a bid for, for mayor of Moscow, feeling like that's where you could make a change, right? I think his, his real mindset was if you, if, if he could get that post, then he really could, perhaps, longer term, uh, influence change in Russia. I mean, he was, he was a proponent of democracy, then, then, then disinformation started to get in there, was a lot of movement from the Putin regime, uh, painting him in, you know, a lot of different ways, right? Saying, okay, you're, you're, you know, far right, you're an extremist, you're... The, all, all sorts of things started to come through. Um, and then it kind of all went sideways. He eventually ended up, uh, I think it was 2019, 2020, um, he was, uh, on a flight, got sick, you know, Novichok was the nerve agent that they used. Um-

Chris Williamson 43:42 Which is serious shit.

Mike Baker 43:43 Serious shit invented by the Soviets. Um, and, uh, so he almost died from that. He was out of the country. And then to his credit, after he recovered, "Okay, I'm gonna come back."

Chris Williamson 43:56 Straight back.

Mike Baker 43:57 Yeah. Yeah. So, he flew back. He got arrested before he even really got anywhere near, you know, passport control. They just picked him up. And, and that was pretty much it. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:08 But during, during this period, he had started to do YouTube.

Mike Baker 44:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 44:13 And he was flying drones... Not him.

Mike Baker 44:15 No. No. Right.

Chris Williamson 44:15 His team were flying drones over the top of Putin's billion-dollar compound-

Mike Baker 44:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:22 ... and releasing stories that he's just got like an army of hookers and, and, uh, pole dancers and stuff just cycling their way through this place, and look at all of the money, and this is where it's being spent. But they're, you know, full on... Like, what, in order to be able to go as far as they did, it looks like pretty high-grade technology to be able to capture this sort of stuff.

Mike Baker 44:40 Yeah. I mean, you can, it's, you know, again, drones being what they are nowadays.

Chris Williamson 44:44 Yes.

Mike Baker 44:44 Uh, um...

Chris Williamson 44:45 Oh, I don't know if they're more-

Mike Baker 44:46 Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're feeling it.

Mike Baker 44:48 Yeah, that's, that's some character. Yeah, I know. Um, so yeah, the, uh, the drone technology has changed everything, right? And it's so accessible, right? Uh, you don't need much. A few hundred bucks will get you a drone with a camera that you can, you know, get some really good footage of, so. But you're right, you know, talking about his, his, his, uh, his lavish lifestyle and his spending, that irked Putin on a, on a personal level, right? And I- Putin only cares about one thing, right, right? Which is maintaining power. Same with Xi. And you maintain power by keeping the people under control, right? So social unrest is the one thing that these guys all fear the most, right? Including the mullahs in Iran, and, and, and, you know, Kim Jong-un, although he lives in kind of a fantasy world out in North Korea. But, so Navalny, um, you know, at, at, at a certain point, he, you know, it was, it... For him, it was inevitable-

Chris Williamson 45:39 Yeah.

Mike Baker 45:39 ... I think that this-

Chris Williamson 45:40 It was-

Mike Baker 45:40 ... was where it was going.

Chris Williamson 45:41 I mean-

Mike Baker 45:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:42 ... I remember watching it unfold at the time after this guy's been popped with nerve agent, and then slowly recovers, and then starts doing his YouTube stuff again. And this is getting, in days, tens of millions of plays. And it's not even, it's only in Russian, right?

Mike Baker 45:57 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 45:57 There's may- you can maybe translate it into British subtitles or English subtitles or whatever. And, uh, and then he's like, "I'm not scared of you." Like, you should be.

Mike Baker 46:06 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:06 You should be scared.

Mike Baker 46:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:07 But, and as soon as he got on that plane, right? To go back to the motherland, that was at some point within the next five years, you're probably going to be dead.

Mike Baker 46:16 Yeah. And I think that, uh, I could see the calculation that he and his, his, you know, his wife, I'm sure, and, and probably his close cadre made that the most impact he can have will be in country, right? I mean, it's one thing to be a dissident outside the country. You know, China's got a number of those, even though the Xi regime tries to track them down (laughs) and change their minds. Um, but, um, I think Navalny probably spent a fair amount of time. Who knows? But it's speculation. But I suspect he spent a lot of time, uh, on that calculation. Can I have more impact outside the country or inside the country? And, uh, to his credit, and he, you know, he flew back knowing, I think, exactly what was going to happen.

Chris Williamson 46:58 Yeah.

Mike Baker 46:58 Um, and so that-

Chris Williamson 47:01 Have you got any idea what these labor camps are like? What do you... Where, where it is, and, and what it's like there? Do we have any information about that?

Mike Baker 47:07 This was the, what's known as the Polar Wolf. It's the IK3, um, uh, penal colony up, uh, above the Arctic Circle. And it... I personally haven't spent time there (laughs) , but it's, um, it's r- reported to be one of the most brutal, uh, camps that they've got, right? Which tells you when... It's, it's completely isolated, and that's really what they were looking to do, was just to put him away somewhere where people would forget about him. Um, to his wife's credit, to his lawyer's credit, right? Um, and to a, a small circle of, of supporters, um, they were able to keep some attention, s- keep some focus on it, and his mother as well. Uh, but, you know, the idea being we're just out of sight, out of mind, right?

Chris Williamson 47:53 Yeah.

Mike Baker 47:53 And look, people talked about when he died, you know, the headlines were all, you know, "Putin's most prominent critic." Well, well, prominent implies that there's a bunch of others, right?

Chris Williamson 48:05 Only.

Mike Baker 48:06 Yeah. Basically-

Chris Williamson 48:07 Putin's critic.

Mike Baker 48:07 ... only critic at this point. Yeah. Um, I mean, there's, there's some brave people who will get on the street and, and, you know-

Chris Williamson 48:14 There were a lot of protests, but then those people were being rounded up and arrested en masse.

Mike Baker 48:17 Yeah, preemptively, preemptively. Some, some of them were picked up, uh, before there was even an opportunity to have a, not even so much a protest as a memorial service out in public, right? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:28 And then they refused to give the body back for a little while as well.

Mike Baker 48:31 They did. Um, you know, there was some talk about, well, they're letting the poison dissipate, um-Honestly, you know, at this point, you know, would- would-

Chris Williamson 48:40 Who gives a fuck?

Mike Baker 48:41 Yeah. Would- would Putin (laughs) - would Putin's team think to themselves, "We're, you know, we're gonna waste some poison on him up here," or, "We're just gonna, you know-"

Chris Williamson 48:48 Let him freeze and starve and-

Mike Baker 48:49 "... let him die." Yeah. I- I... Who knows how he actually ended up going. But, uh, his wife is, you know, promised to carry on. And, you know, there were lots of headlines saying, "What does this mean for Russia?" It doesn't mean shit for Russia, unfortunately, right? It's... We- we will not be talking about this, unfortunately, in six months time. I know they laid some more sanctions on, on Russia.

Chris Williamson 49:09 Yeah, 500 new sanctions, largely against Russia's financial and military sectors, the round of sanctions at the most, at one time, since Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago. And a lot of criticism that this isn't enough, this isn't sufficient.

Mike Baker 49:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:24 Biden basically made a, a threat, I suppose, or a deal, that if Navalny died, that there would be more sanctions.

Mike Baker 49:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:31 We've deposited half a thousand and it seems like it was k- kind of like a...

Mike Baker 49:35 Yeah, yeah. How about this? How about we did those sanctions two years ago when Russia invaded? If we had additional sanctions we could lay on to- to fuck with their ability to make money to fund their military adventurism into Ukraine, why didn't we do that before? I mean, what- what are we half-assing sanctions for? So they came up with a- you know, sort of this bullshit price cap on oil, right? The only way Putin affords what he's doing in Ukraine is through energy revenues, right? So, you know, the sanctions up to this point have been like, "Well, okay, well, you know, we're gonna cap Russian oil at $60 a barrel. Can't buy it at a higher price." (laughs) Well, you know, the world's not gonna... d- what are we talking about, right? So, they've created this whole shadow fleet of merchant ships. They're s- they've sold $35 billion worth of oil to India, which turns around and refines a lot of that oil, sells a lot of that product to the US and the EU, right? It's- it's just bullshit. The idea that... Uh, they've got more cash in their account now in Russia than they've had in quite some time.

Chris Williamson 50:40 Really?

Mike Baker 50:40 Right? Certainly m- more than before the war even started because they've... Uh, the sanctions have been ineffective, they haven't been aggressive enough, and we should be doing more. You could argue the same for Iran but, you know, again, that's... I don't wanna disappear down other rabbit holes. But, um, yeah, I... Uh, when they talked about... They came out and they, you know, they- they bloviate about, "We- we're gonna lay out in sanctions now, all because of Navalny," you know, you should have fucking done those sanctions two years ago, right? Squeezed him, made it so he couldn't afford this, right? And maybe we wouldn't have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine-

Chris Williamson 51:16 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 51:16 ... because Putin couldn't afford to do what he's doing. But that's... You know, I don't know, I'm not president.

Chris Williamson 51:22 In other news, this episode is brought to you by LMNT. Stop having coffee first thing in the morning. Your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't working for the first 90 minutes of the day. So your morning coffee that you have upon waking is completely pointless, but salt acts on your adrenal system, and that is what is active. So, taking LMNT first thing in the morning will help you to feel more awake, have less caffeine throughout the day, and be more energized. It'll help to regulate your appetite, curb cravings, and improve your brain function. It's a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, and it tastes fantastic. This orange salt in water first thing in the morning is gorgeous. It is my favorite way to start the day. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't love it. And I was using this product long before they were a partner on the show. Best of all, there is a no BS, no questions asked refund policy, so you can buy it 100% risk-free, and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.

Chris Williamson 52:30 What, uh... I've heard you say before that Putin's goal is to rebuild the Soviet Union. Is that, is that... That's, uh, just the synopsis of what he wants to do?

Mike Baker 52:39 Well, he said it numerous times himself. He s- he said that... I mean, this... His most, um, you know, direct quote was, uh, "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest crisis of the 20th century," right? And- and so, I guess my- my point is that he spent the past 30 plus years trying to figure out how to rebuild it in some fashion. I don't mean the entire Soviet Union-

Chris Williamson 53:00 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 53:00 ... but he certainly wants to- to get back to something more, uh, than what he's got, right? He- he's very keen on sort of the- the glory of the motherland, right? And- and, okay, everybody, you know, you could argue, eh, everybody's nationalistic, you know? But he's, uh, ambitious in a, uh, land grab sort of way. (laughs) So, when he says that, and when he talks about, um, the threat of NATO on his border, right? He's- he's not bullshitting, right? He means that, right? And so the idea that he's gonna take Ukraine, and if we stop aid... You know, again, this... I... Pe- you know, Washington's gonna do what they do, um, but if they don't provide resources to Ukraine going forward, if we say, "Ah, that's- that's enough, let's focus on ourselves, it's not important," um, and people rationalize that by thinking that it's just Ukraine, you know, "Why do we care? It's one country," um, if they imagine that that's w- where he's gonna stop, he's gonna end up with Kyiv and then go, "Yeah, okay, I'm good, it's all fine now, I don't care, I'm gonna- I'm gonna- I'm gonna now focus on- on improving myself and- (laughs) and, you know, the homeland," um, yeah, no, that's not his track record. I'm- I'm not sure where people get that- that belief or optimism from. I- I think it's- it's a rationalization that... Because they don't want to spend any more money on Ukraine because they don't see the value in, um, trying to prevent Putin from invading (laughs) and taking over-

Chris Williamson 54:34 Just seems inevitable then.

Mike Baker 54:34 ... a separate country. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:35 Yeah. W- how much truth is there in the-Russia's got declining birth rates. This is close to the highest that their population is ever going to be, therefore, their armed forces are... This is kind of a last chance attempt to be able to have the manpower to go into Ukraine. Is there any truth in that? It's, it's a story I've seen pushed around online.

Mike Baker 54:57 Yeah, um, (sighs) look, they've got a three-to-one manpower advantage over Ukraine. Um, and more importantly, they've got, uh, an ability to, uh, suffer and put up with, um, pain, um, that I don't think the West really understands. And, um, go back and look at their history in World War II and their losses that they were willing to, uh, sustain. Uh, it's, yeah-

Chris Williamson 55:27 Is the culture still the same as then though?

Mike Baker 55:29 Um, I think it's pretty well embedded in the culture. Yeah, I mean, you can argue that it's a more modern society and they've got access to information. But I- a- at the end of the day, um, I think Putin and his, and his cohorts, I think they, they read the people pretty well. And you would imagine that, you know, there must be populations, you know, just rising up in the streets and, and-

Chris Williamson 55:50 Hmm. Hmm.

Mike Baker 55:51 And that's not happening, right? Um, look, in part he was smart in how he was conscripting a lot of people. He took them from, you know, sort of the Netherlands, you know, the, the outer regions, you know, the... He wasn't recruiting a lot of, of, uh, soldiers off the streets of St. Petersburg or Moscow or wherever. And because he doesn't wanna... He doesn't necessarily wanna bring the war right to Moscow and make them feel the pain, right? I mean, they, they went through that in Afghanistan to some degree when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. And eventually, you know, sort of the popular unrest at home, uh, mothers of dead soldiers, you know, they all started to... And so he could start to feel that, right? I think, I think they do have the appetite to wear a lot of pain. And so I think they, that's what Putin counts on. Um, you know, whether they'll have the manpower, I think... You know, Putin, you know, he, they miscalculated so much, right? The, the Russian military and intelligence apparatus made so many mistakes going into this invasion. Um, but I think one calculation that he's kind of clung to is that the West will get tired of it.

Chris Williamson 56:56 Hmm.

Mike Baker 56:57 Um, and that's, that's kind of what's happening. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:59 You can count on the shortness of the attention span.

Mike Baker 57:01 Yeah, and I think he, he imagined, I mean, look, he, he imagined NATO was gonna, was gonna break, right? Or splinter, or there wouldn't certainly be the cohesiveness that there is. And he certainly didn't anticipate it growing like NATO has. But, so there's a lot of mistakes there. But I think he has, um, correctly pinned some hope on the fact that we'd get tired of it, right? And that there would sort of be this popular unrest. And make no mistake, the Russian disinformation apparatus is busy feeding that, right? So again, goes back to what we're talking about with information that you read and trying to figure out what these opinions are on social media. Um, why wouldn't they, right? It, it, it's, it, it's impossible to think that the Russian, uh, regime, the, the, the intel apparatus wouldn't look at the situation and go, "Yeah, we need to do what we can to influence the narrative in the States and the West," right? They've been doing this forever. They did it in World War II to try to keep us out of World War II, right? Before the Nazis or the Germans invaded Russia when they were allied, you know, they spent a lot of time, uh, focused on trying to influence public opinion inside the US to keep America out of the war. So, it's not something new, right? They're just using different technology.

Chris Williamson 58:14 How much longer do you think manned warfare has?

Mike Baker 58:19 I think there's always gonna be a, a, a place for, uh, you know, door-kickers. I don't think there's any doubt about it, right? You gotta, you've gotta have, you've gotta have some boots on the ground. But the, I think the pointy edge of the spear in a major, in, in, in a major global conflict, a big global, not a regional issue, I, that's definitely going to be, um, you know, taking place in cyberspace. Um, and, uh, I think that the, the first... The goal will be to kill morale at home, right? Wherever that

Chris Williamson 58:52 What will that look like?

Mike Baker 58:53 Well, I mean, you'll, you'll do the usual. That's why they're mapping out... You know, if you went to (laughs) , I don't know which office it is in China, but if you went to an office, you would find a playbook that maps out the infrastructure in the US, the UK, the West, in terms of our power systems, uh, transportation, water treatment facilities, um, you know, how do you stop the financial systems? Um, simple things. How do you keep someone from going to a cash point and pulling out money, right? How do you keep somebody from being able to, you know, get their medicines, right? How do you shut down the power grid? How do you-

Chris Williamson 59:25 Morale, morale, morale.

Mike Baker 59:26 Yeah, you wanna, you wanna bring the pain to the home front as quickly as possible, right? And you do that by attacking the infrastructure.

Chris Williamson 59:33 You don't have to fly bombers over the top of-

Mike Baker 59:35 No. No, you may not. You may at a certain point, you know, but I, I, so I, I think that that will be the first, that will be the first major effort. Um, the weaponization of space, right, you'll be looking to take out. Now, the... Part of the problem when people talk about knocking out GPS, well, yes, you can target a country's specific satellites, right? But, um, you know, some of this, like a, a massive EMP attack, right, uh, will impact everybody, right?

Chris Williamson 1:00:01 Hmm.

Mike Baker 1:00:01 To some degree. So that will be more of a targeted surgical effort, but it'll certainly play a role. And yeah, I, I think that's, that's undoubted, but I don't think... Look, we didn't imagine there would be another major land war (laughs) in Europe, right? If you had, if you had said five years ago, "Yeah, we're gonna have a, like a World War I, like, trench situation where it goes into a war of attrition, you know, and they make very little movement on either side, and they, and they get..." Probably people would have thought that was crazy.

Chris Williamson 1:00:30 Yeah.

Mike Baker 1:00:30 You can go to the Imperial War Museum in London and go through the World War I exhibit, right? And you, you look at it and you, you see what, what took place during World War I and, and, and how it impacted, uh, food production and energy production and everything, and you think, "Well, it seems somewhat similar." So there, I think...... that w- there'll always be a place for that, but I think what we'll see is there, there will be that immediate desire to hurt the homeland as quickly as possible and try to impact morale, because knowing that that's what gonna drive domestic decisions, right?

Chris Williamson 1:01:05 What about from a kinetic standpoint? How much is gonna be drones, how much is gonna be robotics, how much is gonna be unmanned aerial vehicles and stuff like that?

Mike Baker 1:01:15 Yeah. Well, we're see- we're seeing that in a big way, right? I mean, we're t- it's almost like we're testing, uh, the capabilities right now and seeing what are the impacts. Um, forward-looking gathering of intelligence, right? For, uh, sort of short-term strategic planning of, of troop movements or certainly immediate impact of targeting, um, on, on targets of opportunity. Uh, drones, um, are, are proving to be invaluable, right? And, you know, give the Iranian regime credit, right? They (laughs) at some point they must have seen that several years ago, because they built a certain capability in production of drones. They, they, I think they understood the, the value there, uh, as did a variety of other... Obviously, you know, US and, and UK have been, uh, in advanced drone production for years, right? Uh, but, um, it's not just delivery of, of weapons on target. It's, it's the intel gathering, you know, functions that drones are, are really changing the battlefield in a certain way. So that'll, that'll play a real important role. Unmanned, uh, capabilities. Yeah, I mean, we... But we've been seeing that for some time. There's been arguments, you know, w- can you take the human out of, out of targeting-

Chris Williamson 1:02:30 Hm.

Mike Baker 1:02:30 ... right? And, and the decision-making of, of actually, you know, um, greenlighting a, uh, an attack.

Chris Williamson 1:02:36 I guess it depends how discriminate you want to be with the damage and the collateral damage as well.

Mike Baker 1:02:42 Yeah, and I think there's also, there's a, there's a moral implication there of saying, you know, do we take the human out of a decision to target, kill o- other humans? Uh, I think that's a, that's a big leap. Uh, I'm sure it's gonna happen, frankly. I mean, I, I... (laughs) Human nature being what it is. I think that the decision's gonna be to drive towards whatever's most efficient and effective, particularly if something kicks off, if we've got a major conflict. But for right now, you know, there's... Look, it's happened before. The Soviets had what was called the Dead Hand system, which essentially, uh, for, uh, if, if, if all their leadership was wiped out, they did have a system in place that would take over and, and, uh, continue a counter-response.

Chris Williamson 1:03:29 Wow.

Mike Baker 1:03:29 And so they had that. Um, so it's not unthought-of or undeveloped.

Chris Williamson 1:03:34 Hm.

Mike Baker 1:03:35 It's unused. Um, but-

Chris Williamson 1:03:37 And potentially suboptimal compared with what's being used at least for the time being.

Mike Baker 1:03:42 Right. Yeah, yeah. Things, things have advanced since the, the Dead Hand in, in the old Soviet Union, for sure. But, um, yeah. So I think there's the... What, what holds people back from that is, is again this uneasy feeling, this moral issue of, of-

Chris Williamson 1:03:57 But you think that the Russians, if they're prepared to put nerve agent into some dissident-

Mike Baker 1:04:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:03 ... like, rival, w- you know, that's not gonna be a consideration for them? That doesn't seem like it would be a consideration for the...

Mike Baker 1:04:09 Well, it... But the, uh, w- the consideration, I think, is more of, does it mean I lose power, right? Does d- d- You know, the calculation is, "Okay, is this the end for me then if I do something, if I step over that line..."

Chris Williamson 1:04:19 Oh, I make myself obsolete by just becoming an algorithm in, in one fo- it's a slippery slope all the way down.

Mike Baker 1:04:24 Well, that I think is, is... Uh, part of it is, is, is that, but I'm, I, I guess I was looking more towards sort of the, uh, pushing the button on the big one, right? And saying, "Okay, we're gonna get into there." I think that's, that's where it, it, you get that hard and fast, "Nah, I don't..." You know? "I wanna cling onto power."

Chris Williamson 1:04:38 Because you still want to centralize. Yes, yes, yes.

Mike Baker 1:04:40 Yeah, I like my army of hookers more than I, I wanna destroy America.

Chris Williamson 1:04:42 I also like an army of hookers.

Mike Baker 1:04:43 Yeah. Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:44 Um, did you see this modified RX-9 Hellfire missile, this Flying Jin Su thing? Have you looked at this?

Mike Baker 1:04:51 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:52 This thing is hardcore.

Mike Baker 1:04:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:55 Yeah, these samurai... I think it's six, six samurai blades come out the e- uh, it's three, four, five feet long, and it can target an individual car. And if you withstood two yards to the side of the car, I mean, it'd be a big bang and you'd know that something had happened-

Mike Baker 1:05:09 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:10 ... but you would be... Physically, you would be fine. And-

Mike Baker 1:05:12 Yeah. It's, it's something out of a anime or a Marvel film.

Chris Williamson 1:05:16 It's crazy. And they got, um, Al-Zawahiri, they got the, one of the guys that supposedly was-

Mike Baker 1:05:21 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:05:21 ... a part of, uh, 9/11 morning coffee on a balcony, and obviously some bloke just with a little-

Mike Baker 1:05:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:27 ... bink, laser targeter-

Mike Baker 1:05:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:29 ... and they sent two.

Mike Baker 1:05:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:31 That just in case the first one-

Mike Baker 1:05:32 Well, you have a backup. Yeah, you always want a redundant system. People always say, "Eh, redundancy, eh," you know? But no, you want, you want (laughs) you want a backup in case it does fail. For instance-

Chris Williamson 1:05:42 Can you imagine?

Mike Baker 1:05:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:43 You, you step out onto your balcony-

Mike Baker 1:05:44 Fuck up your day.

Chris Williamson 1:05:45 ... having your morning espresso-

Mike Baker 1:05:47 (inhales through teeth) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:47 ... and then before you know it, you're just dust.

Mike Baker 1:05:49 Yeah. Yeah. I, I know (laughs) . It's as... Look, it's the lethality of that, but, but also other weapons systems is pretty, uh, uh... You know, it would shock a lot of people-

Chris Williamson 1:05:59 Hm.

Mike Baker 1:05:59 ... I think. But the, the precision is also... Look, I mean, people talk about this, you know, and, and there's a lot of, of focus put on that because there's... I, I don't think people really understand how much debate goes on before you, you, you know, uh, pull the cord on a, on a target, and you think, "Okay, uh..." There's a lot of back and forth. "What's the blowback? What, what's the, you know, potential, you know, civilian damage? What did..." It's not like the movies which say, "Yeah, go." You know? "We don't give a shit." You know? "Just get the target." There's a lot of back and forth, and so as a result of that because people in the, in the Pentagon in particular are always asking about zero risk, and we want zero, you know, we want zero collateral damage, right? But you can't... You know, things are messy, right? So if something happens and, you know, there's a potential for collateral damage. That's the way the world works. But they have worked very hard, uh, on the weapons technology side to try to create these-... these systems-

Chris Williamson 1:06:57 Uh-

Mike Baker 1:06:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:58 ... minimal collateral damage.

Mike Baker 1:06:59 Minimal collateral damage. In, in, in order to a- in part, yeah, in part it's to avoid, you know, the killing of civilians. In part it's also to ensure that you can, when you've got a high value target, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:07:09 You pull the trigger more easily.

Mike Baker 1:07:09 ... you can pull the trigger, yeah-

Chris Williamson 1:07:10 Yeah.

Mike Baker 1:07:10 ... and get it done.

Chris Williamson 1:07:11 Yeah. Yeah, well if you're thinking, "What's this gonna do? What, what are the optics of this?" And you go, "Well, he's a bad guy. If he's a bad guy, and you know that he's a bad guy, you, you, you pull the trigger." But then you, "Well, well, how's this going to play in the press?" And all of these-

Mike Baker 1:07:24 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:24 ... narratives begin to, I guess, subjugate a tactical decision with a branding decision.

Mike Baker 1:07:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:33 That's very, very... Yeah, I, I, that's, I hadn't thought about that, that it, it is a, it reduces the friction between pulling the trigger, because it is less likely to cause headaches down the road.

Mike Baker 1:07:45 Right, right. Because that's always the question. That's always, and it's become more and more of an issue is, is, you know, what, what does that collateral damage look like? And if we-

Chris Williamson 1:07:52 Is the-

Mike Baker 1:07:52 ... you know, and then sometimes what they'll say is, they'll say, "Okay, we have to wait. We have to pull back, hold fire."

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 Then maybe you lose the gun.

Mike Baker 1:07:57 And you lose the opportunity, 'cause that, that, that window of opportunity on a particular target, you know, it, that shuts really quickly sometimes, and, and so then you don't know whether you're gonna... And, and there's a l- you know, there, there can be a lot of, of, uh, of frustration involved, because you know that that target, you know, you, you should act on it, but you also know, okay, we got, you know, we do have this legitimate question. So, so, so the decision made at a higher level-

Chris Williamson 1:08:20 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 1:08:20 ... uh, is always, you know, it's gonna fall on that, that side. It's gonna say, "Okay, we have to, we have to pull back."

Chris Williamson 1:08:27 Is this a new degree of scrutiny around collateral damage-

Mike Baker 1:08:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:32 ... uh, in, in warfare? You know, obviously-

Mike Baker 1:08:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:35 ... collateral damage has been, I know that it's a obvious example, but like bombing of Dresden, that type of stuff.

Mike Baker 1:08:41 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:08:42 You know, you, it was done for collateral damage. Uh, whereas now, it seems like-

Mike Baker 1:08:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:48 ... war is supposed to be the most surgical, sterile, targeted, precise, ethical way. Like I only want the fuel for my fucking RX9 Hellfire missile to be, uh, from renewable sources.

Mike Baker 1:09:02 (laughs) Exactly (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:09:05 You know (laughs) . But do you know what I mean?

Mike Baker 1:09:06 It's an EV.

Chris Williamson 1:09:06 Yeah.

Mike Baker 1:09:07 It's an EV. We plug it in-

Chris Williamson 1:09:08 Yeah.

Mike Baker 1:09:08 ... and, and, uh, we have a recharge station halfway there to target. Um, yeah, it is, it's relatively new, and I think part of it's also, we, we keep coming back to the same thing, flow of information, speed of information. Look if-

Chris Williamson 1:09:19 You can see the destruction of-

Mike Baker 1:09:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:21 This is ah-

Mike Baker 1:09:21 If people could watch Dresden being bombed, right, or get photos of it, I mean, people would have... I mean, look, I mean, go back to the Civil War. If people had, you know, seen actual footage of what the hell was happening on the fields of Gettysburg, I mean, people would have been horrified, right? Um, D-Day, right? If people could've seen the film that evening of what was taking place the first day, you know, public opinion would've, would've shifted considerably. But I think, so yeah, so that's helped to drive this idea that we gotta, we gotta minimize that, right? We gotta minimize that damage. You still gotta have bad actors in the world. You still have to deal with them, you know. It's not a, it's not a fucking community of nations where everybody's acting in everybody else's best interest. That's bullshit, right? And so you have to, you have to account for the fact that, uh, at times things are gonna be unpleasant. But yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:12 I only found out, speaking of the drone thing, we walked past a DJI store-

Mike Baker 1:10:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:18 ... here in, uh, downtown Miami, and I didn't realize that the US had basically put so many restrictions on US drone creators. They said, "We don't want anyone who's basically able to interfere with flight paths and create this technology, 'cause we definitely don't want it at home."

Mike Baker 1:10:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:10:35 Which left the market completely open for DJI, which I didn't know is a Chinese company.

Mike Baker 1:10:40 Yeah. Yeah, go figure.

Chris Williamson 1:10:41 And now-

Mike Baker 1:10:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:42 ... the entire drone market is dominated by DJI, and now America are trying to play catch-up, and they've tried to relinquish some of these restrictions on domestic, uh, creators of drone technology, and it's just, it's, they're away with the wind. It's already-

Mike Baker 1:10:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:56 ... it's already done.

Mike Baker 1:10:56 Yeah. We've, we've, we've done that in a number of areas, right? Whether you're talking about, I don't know, LiDAR or anything. Uh, there's, you know, regulatory policies and, and, and, you know, domestic concerns, um, have definitely impacted development of certain technologies. Uh, and the Chinese have no such restrictions, right? And they certainly have no such restrictions on, on, uh, on providing, uh, information. Look, they spend a great deal of time hoovering up intelligence, you know, from a variety of sources overseas, and providing that to their private sector, right? And that's part of the intel apparatus'-

Chris Williamson 1:11:32 How does that work?

Mike Baker 1:11:32 ... role in life. Well, they steal information, bring it home, and, and funnel it into, uh, supposedly private, but they're, they're state-owned and-

Chris Williamson 1:11:40 Half and half.

Mike Baker 1:11:40 ... pseudo state-operated companies.

Chris Williamson 1:11:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Baker 1:11:43 Um, but I guess the, the point being is that their, their intel apparatus' primary objective, aside from, you know, keeping the population in check, is, uh, is to develop and promote their commercial side of things, their, their economy, right? And so-

Chris Williamson 1:12:00 The two work-

Mike Baker 1:12:01 You know, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:01 ... simpatico together.

Mike Baker 1:12:02 Yeah. We don't go out, we don't, you know, the, the, the, as, as an example, the agency, the CIA wouldn't get a directive, a tasking order from General Electric that says, "Hey, we need, we need the plans from, uh, an international competitor, you know, that they're working on some, some new engine, uh, component. Please go out and get that for us," right? That's not how it works, right? Now (laughs) , you could argue that would benefit our economy, I mean, if it was-

Chris Williamson 1:12:30 Mm-hmm.

Mike Baker 1:12:30 ... because it certainly benefited China's economy to have that, that cross-border, but we have, there's a firewall there. So, you know, you don't take, you know, tasking with the idea that, okay, we're developing information here or intelligence, collecting it from others, stealing it basically, to provide it to the private sector, right?

Chris Williamson 1:12:46 So there's a, not an arbitrary line, but there is a, uh, compartmentalization between the, uh, private and the governmental sectors in-

Mike Baker 1:12:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:12:56 ... the US.

Mike Baker 1:12:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:56 Which means that the resources and information of