Transcript of The China Summit, & the Terrible New CT Strategy | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS New

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm joined today with Mark Polymeropoulos. Two Greeks for the price of one.

Here we go.

Uh, no Marines, thank God, finally. Um, no, everyone's had a— everyone had a pretty eventful weekend, so we weren't able to record yesterday, so we grabbed one. We needed to get something out because it seems like it's been a bit of a wild news week. Um, first and foremost, there's a ton of stuff we're going to talk about. First thing is the China summit. As far as all the reporting goes, like, seems like nothing really fucking came of it, frankly. The Iran war was looming the whole time over it. Obviously China was still, you know, digging their heels in when it comes to Taiwan. President Trump's statements really, like, his interviews and stuff like that with the press were not, you know, he was basically, I don't know, it sounded like he was spinning a little bit for China, which is kind of crazy. He has this weird thing where he Whenever he goes and meets a dictator, he like falls in love with him and like he becomes like their number one pal. Uh, so it was just an interesting thing. The news was covering it for like, you know, minute to minute, and like nothing happened, more or less.

Like there was a lot of like, yeah, we'll agree to talk about this, we'll agree to maybe talk about soybeans and Boeing, like in jets and stuff like that, and AI chips or whatever, but nothing concrete came out of it. Um, also we're looking at, you know, the Iran war still going on. Strait of Hormuz is essentially still blocked. Inflation's creeping up here in America slowly but surely. Gas is obviously a lot higher in Europe. It's like crazy, I've heard. And so there's word that the Iranians are thinking that like it's going to start up in the next 48 hours. Bibi had a phone call with Trump, I think over the weekend. To discuss next steps and stuff like that. So, you know, we're kind of in a waiting pattern. We're waiting to see. I was telling my friend of mine too, I was like, there's no way that we're going to start bombing Iran while we're in China, while Trump's in China with like 50 CEOs and like basically the whole cabinet. So we're back here, we're waiting and seeing. And also I wanted to get your take on the, the new counterterrorism strategy, you know, because you worked in it for couple decades.

So, and how insane it reads and looks. But first, what are your thoughts on China?

Well, okay. So we'll get to, we'll get these things. I definitely, the CT strategy is something right up my alley. We'll talk about China in a second, but I like that we have two Greeks on right now. You're right. And this is actually Greek day because earlier today is actually cool. I mentioned this. I'm in it. So let me just say I'm in a new state of mind now. I'm going to be positive. There's too much negativity. There's too much. I post on X nonstop. It's always negative. Not good, not healthy for me. I'm in my new health kick. And so today it was actually a cool event. Good buddy of mine, he's on CNN all the time, Alex Pitsos, another Greek. Awesome, awesome friend, former PSYOPS guy for DOD, then worked on the civilian side in DOD. So we went and we talked to 150 college interns down in DC at the Washington Center. It was so cool about passing the torch to the next generation, all positivity. The kids were all fired up. I got fired up. I have a million emails after that in terms of just mentoring folks. And so there's gotta be some good in the world.

There's a guy, I don't even know who this guy is. Maybe you guys, maybe you and Jack know. On Twitter, he's Actual1Murph. I was just looking him up. I think he's a former SEAL, but it's all this motivational stuff.

Okay.

And usually I don't kind of get hooked into that, but it's all positive. Just, it's about just taking care of yourself and forgiveness, but it's Actual1Murph. It's really good. Anyway, so it's my new mood now. So I'm gonna be positive. I'm gonna be a little critical. I'll give constructive criticism to the Trump administration and to—

Are you starting this today?

This is the first day? Oh yeah, I started today. Actually, I said last night to my wife, I said, "I can't, I'm going down the dark road of negativity. It's not healthy, not good for me, not good for everybody." Everyone thinks I have total Trump derangement syndrome, which I do, but I have to kind of modulate that into saying now, instead of just criticizing, saying, "Hey, what should we be doing?" So that's, I'm gonna turn over a new leaf here. All right, so, so, so D, so, uh, anyways, Greeks are taking over the world today. I have my Greek event number 1 earlier today. Now I got my Greek event number 2. The Marines can go kind of, you know, they're doing their like family celebration stuff, right? Which is great. And they'll tell you about it. They'll tell us all about it next week. Really cool stuff happening to some of our fellow colleagues.

Listen, I hope you do keep a positive attitude. I mean, it's not great for content really, but like, It's better for your mental health.

So it really is. Yeah. Uh, uh, you know, and the funny thing is I was just on— so I gotta be honest, I was just on a Signal chat with some buddies of mine, former agency, former DOD, and I was talking to them that the, uh, that we're witnessing the fall. This is like the Roman Empire. America's committing superpower suicide. So I'm not taking my own advice.

Yeah. I mean, you're not wrong either. That's the sad part.

So the China summit, interesting. And, uh, I don't know about some of our fellow colleagues, whether it's Mick or Jonathan, but like my TV appearances went to zero last last week. So what does that tell you?

Really?

Uh, that means nothing happened in the China summit. A lot of pomp, you know, we watched the big ballroom. There was the— really, actually, I thought it was funny, again, in my newfound positivity— Elon Musk's, um, faces he was making while he was taking selfies with some— face. Yeah, yeah, the ketamine face. So just, you know, but nothing really substantive happened other than— and D, you nailed it— that the, the any kind of resumption of military hostilities would not occur, would never occur, was never going to occur, while Uh, uh, everybody was in Beijing, and so I think you, you got that right. Um, but in terms of, you know, the, the pomp and circumstance, sure. Um, I think the highlights only were that, uh, uh, the Chinese, as they usually do, agree to some type of nebulous trade deals. We don't know the details. There's, there's supposed to be hundreds of Boeing planes, there might be 200. Chip stuff, like nothing really is substantive. Um, if it was, we would have heard about it. And then the big thing was, frankly, President Trump's interview with Sean Hannity on Fox, in which he said, "Yeah, you know, I'm not sure about this giant, you know, billion-dollar weapon, billions of dollars of weapons package to Taiwan.

I'll think about it." And he discussed it with the Chinese, which goes against decades of US policy that weapons deals to Taiwan were not to be discussed with the Chinese. And so now the Taiwanese, I'm sure, are freaking out. Guess who is going to China right now. Jared Wickliffe.

Jared and— I thought Jared Wickliffe. I call them by the same one name.

It's just one name. I got that. And so ultimately it was a summit of not a lot of substance. And now our allies in the Pacific are questioning us. Sure. And so, you know, and what it— but honestly, and again, this is certainly not about me at all, but in terms of things which put me in the media, I was not last week. I'm not a fan.

That's interesting.

But nothing, not a peep from MSNOW. And of course, I got on this morning because we're talking about the possibility of resuming the war with Iran. So just switching to that, it's fascinating. And I just got a whole bunch of texts from some other reporters. Trump is now threatening all sorts of Armageddon again because the Iranians are not certainly adhering to any of our demands. but nobody's like, no one's panicking this time. No one's saying— because no one— two things. One is no one believes Trump anymore. You don't know if he's going to carry through on these threats. And number two is, and there's been a lot of really good military analysis done by this, by some former Israeli military officials who are critical of the campaign, saying that there actually, there's really nothing militarily we can do now to cause the Iranians to capitulate to what we need them to do, save 100,000, 200,000 US ground forces in a full-on invasion of Iran, which is never going to happen. Additional strikes, what does that actually do? The Iranians think they can weather it. They think they can outlast Trump. And so, you know, we're kind of in this box right now.

And frankly, the only thing, you know, and might be a good thing, is that we're going to have to not cave, but we're going to have to compromise to some of the Iranian demands. And that's going to be a political problem for Trump. And he doesn't want to do that. So we're stuck. So I don't know where this goes, frankly. And that's—

By the way, yeah, it was interesting to see like both sides. I think DropSite— I mean, DropSite is, you know, Ryan Grimm and Jeremy Scahill. So take it for what it's worth. They do good work.

But yeah, yeah.

But they— I mean, they get— they're not pro-Israel and they are a little bit too much of like a— they're like the Axios for the Fars, like for Iranians, to be honest. But, you know, they posted something about the demands from both sides and it sounds like both sides are totally maximalist.

Yeah, right, exactly.

And it's like we're even farther apart than we've ever been.

Yep. You know, you're nailing it. Right. So, so yeah, that, and that's not the way anything ever gets settled. Now, ordinarily, if we had kind of a, you know, a less kind of bombastic leader who has not put himself in a box, you would say, okay, we're gonna have to compromise. I think the American people couldn't give a rat's ass if we compromised. But politically, Trump has boxed himself in. So when he says now, you know, we're talking the details of this, and I'm not a nuclear expert, have to do with how much highly enriched uranium, how much, when do they have to, when do we, when was the moratorium on enrichment end? And, you know, we said 20 years, the Iranians said 10, 5, whatever. There is a time period in there in which it would be okay. But Trump today said, nope, 20 years or nothing. And so, you know, he's, I don't know where this goes. Yeah. Because, you know, again, there's have to be compromise on both sides and I don't see that happening yet. And kind of the last point on the Iran thing, and because we could talk about it forever, but I don't even know if there's anything all that new, is just the notion of once again that militarily we can have tactical successes, but strategically we have not been able to plan or execute anything that is even remotely coherent.

And on that note, and I've talked about it before on the podcast, you know, and God bless the American, the men and women, the American military, the airmen, the sailors, everybody, the Marines, everyone involved in this. But I don't know if I or others, and perhaps D, you comment on this, you know, when I hear another Pentagon briefing, I'm not even sure what to believe anymore. Because, and I will tell you this, and here's a huge point, We've kind of hammered, you know, kind of the pro-Israel right, the Freedom and Defense Democracy folks, definitely pushing the war, pushing the administration's lines. Even Mark Dubowitz, who heads the whole organization there, and there's some good people there who actually are really smart on this, but he actually said the other day, well, because US intelligence now says only half of the ballistic missile inventory has been degraded, we have to keep going. And I was like, well, hold on a second. The Pentagon said a couple days ago that it was much more than that. So now even the most hawkish people are saying, well, maybe those assessments are not correct. And so, you know, is this even, I guess, D, here's a question for you.

Is this even under the constraints we know the United States has? You know, if we're not going for 200,000 ground troops and full-on regime change, you know, can we win this?

I think we lost it.

Militarily, I don't know what the answer is on that.

Yeah. I mean, we probably need more than 200,000 troops, right? You know what I mean? It's a significant amount. Um, yeah, I think we strategically lost this the day we started bombing them when we had another negotiation set up for that Monday where supposedly on the table was, you know, uh, digging up the uranium, enriched uranium, and sending it to another country. Like, we're not gonna get that. At this point, you know. So I think we're just going to go back to this holding pattern. It's like, it's like a weird, deranged, like, mowing of the lawn, you know, that strategy everyone fucking talks about, which is bullshit in my opinion too. But I digress. Like, it's like this weird, deranged version of Iran.

No, don't, don't digress, because I think you're right. I mean, so when I talk to Israelis, and you know, I'm far closer to them than I think you are, and that's okay, we have to have different opinions on the show. But I think they're coming to the realization that it's going to be a mowing the lawn strategy because things are not going to kind of be settled militarily like many people anticipated. So in some ways, and maybe this is what happens, is that nothing happens. Does that work?

Strait of Hormuz stays like that? They get 2 million a boat?

But if Trump, I mean, you know, in some fashion, The Iranians are going to— so maybe, but the Iranians are going to start cutting deals with other countries on the side, and maybe the US has nothing to do about it, and then it turns into a toll booth. Now, that's not good for us, um, but I, again, I'm not so sure how we get out of this.

And what about like the UAE, Qataris, and stuff like that, like sending their boats out with their oil? Iraqi, I'm sure, whoever.

Kuwait. We're going to start cutting deals. I mean, already the UAE and the Saudis are at odds over this. There was all sorts of rumors over the weekend of some kind of Yeah, that the Saudis wanted to cut some kind of deal.

I saw that supposedly the Saudis bombed the UAE. There's rumors of that too. Yeah. Well, they got hit from drones, not from Iran, but from the west of them.

I think it was not that. It was Iraqi Shia groups.

Okay.

I would imagine. But ultimately, you know, this is a tough one again. And so going to the Mick Mulroy line, which I believe in, hey, we want to win. 'cause you know, we're on Team America. I'm not just sure how we do so right now, how we get out of this. We don't, bro. And again, unfortunately, so there's two things. One is we can criticize the entry into this mess. That's fine. But again, if you were sitting at the National Security Council and if Dee was in the administration, probably something that would never happen. Yeah. And I say the same thing for me. What kind of advice would you give? I actually, you know, that would get us out of this. And aside from a compromise, I'm not, and which politically I don't think Trump can go through, Lindsey Graham will have an aneurysm. Yeah, I don't know what—

He was on the Sunday shows like going bananas again, like, you know, beating the drum, Graham.

You know, at some point, and I hate to do this, is you kind of say to these folks, well, fucking sign up, go send your kids. Now, I don't think Lindsey has any kids, but, you know, or just Lindsey, go back into, I think he was a reservist at one point. But, you know, I mean, all these people who are beating the drum comes a war, fine, sign your kids up for it. Um, because, uh, I'm not sure where this goes right now. So, and, and frankly, um, you know, there's, there's, there's not that much more to, to— when I say to say on this, um, you know, unless someone has some kind of, you know, magic bullet. I mean, what was Mick saying, that, that's what he— I think that was his thing, or there's no, there's no, uh, um, you know, magic wand to wave or whatever that makes this all okay. I, I'm just not quite sure how we get out of this now, and that's a, that's a tough one. And You know, and again, if you're on the politics side of it, you know, the American people clearly are not in favor of this and are not going to.

I mean, you go fill up my truck and it costs over $100. Yeah, it's $4.50 in Virginia. I think it's probably like $8 in California.

It's like just over $6, like $6.15, $6.20 in Cali on the West Coast.

And that's what American people care about. I mean, no, the American people don't give a shit about foreign policy. We love this podcast, Eyes on Geopolitics. We want people to get excited. It's not— actually, let me change that. It's not that they don't care. They don't vote on it.

Yeah.

They vote in their pocketbook.

It's like 5th level, 5th thing down.

Yeah. And so, and they vote in their pocketbook and their pocketbook is not good. The pocketbook, by the way, is great if you invest in the stock market.

Yeah.

The stock market's at an all-time high. My portfolio's crushing it. I'm as happy as can be. I'm going to go out and buy another Jeep.

Yeah.

But that doesn't mean that 85% of Americans are feeling good about things because they're not.

Yeah, it is interesting to see how the stock market's going off and, you know, oil is higher, you know, especially in the, you know, in Southeast Asia. Those, those countries are getting smoked, um, in terms of how much it costs for a barrel. But the, like, the disconnect between the, the price of oil, what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz, and the American stock market is something insane. I mean, it's all, it's all juiced up with AI money essentially, and like the promise of AI money.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, and so a lot of people might be getting rich in America, but not most Americans. And that's the bottom line on that. And so it's, you know, there's, you know, that line. I mean, again, the Trump administration, you can't criticize everything that they do. But, and I think often there are actions that the administration takes, which, you know, for example, we'll talk about counterterrorism. There's a couple of counterterrorism operations that I think were really good that occurred over the last 72 hours. The problem is Trump then goes on a TV interview and says, you know, he doesn't really care that things are more expensive for Americans. I mean, it's a Marie Antoinette moment, you know, her famous line, let them eat cake. So Trump is like a walking campaign ad sometimes for the Democrats when he doesn't have to be. It's very strange. All you have to say is, yes, you know, American people are hurting. I understand that.

Right. I mean, inflation's almost at 4%. Yeah.

And so, so that— and I think that probably is a lot of Republican members in the House who are very nervous about their standing now.

They're not nervous. They're fucking crazy. Yeah. Because the numbers are on the wall and it may be even like the Senate might be in play as well, which is insane to see that.

Just, yeah, just you never know.

Listen, when you're promised getting out of wars, and not being in forever wars. And then you go and spend probably $50 to $70 billion in 6 weeks in Iran. 13 service members die, you know, service folks die, over a couple hundred injured. One of our equipment fucked up. And, you know, you know, probably things that'll take years to bring back, like all those radars and stuff like that are different bases. Yeah, yeah. If I even, you know, make America great again, it's like, where's that? Because my, my my eggs are fucking expensive. And my gas is expensive.

One of my buddies, he's never been on the team, House Horizon. I don't think he would, but he's a former Dev Group guy and his son's a SEAL too. And I haven't talked to him for a while, but I remember when I asked him the first time around, why'd you vote for Trump? And he said very clearly, he said, because I don't want my kid going into combat. And so it just is that kind of fundamental notion of America now embroiled in more conflict is something that is, you know, it is kind of head scratching, but You know, when I say to Trump's credit, I think he's doing what he thinks is right. It might not be right, but ultimately, you know, when he says, hey, he's the first American president to tackle Iran in ways that others have, that is correct. I just wish, and I go back to something that we've talked about a lot on the pod, is that we had people who knew what they were doing. You can have a president who's kind of, out there a bit and, you know, and, and an outlier, and that's Trump. But there's no James Mattis around, right?

Um, there's no, there's no adults in, in actually executing a political and military strategy that where we could have come out on top. Um, and absent that, this is not going to be a success.

Was there ever one, man? I mean, like, IRGC is pretty fucking well entrenched in that country. I mean, is there enough—

the things I don't know about, I don't know the kind of COVID action operation running beforehand. You know, certainly there are things we could do with our allies in the preparation preparation before such a campaign that we probably didn't do. I mean, there's a lot of operational prep of the environment that, you know, in order to kind of go after the Iranian regime. And I don't know if we did this.

Wouldn't that be good if there was like ground branch teams and SF teams in there already doing that?

Or other, you know, not even necessarily inside, but just, you know, some type of COVID activity. And I don't know if we've done that or not. I just tend to think that we might not have only because They seem to have kind of concocted this on a napkin in the Oval Office.

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Like, hope is not a strategy. I mean, there's— yeah, there's all these kinds.

Yeah, right. And it's— it's— I don't know if there ever was a strategy unless you have 300,000, 400,000 American troops ready to rock and, you know, get, you know, parachuted into Tehran.

Yeah, and you know what? With that not on the table as well, by the way, and that's going to horrify people maybe if I say this, taking that off the table means the Iranians are not scared of us. It would have been far better to have that on the table, but because Trump promised no more wars, he said that very, you know, it was very clear. I mean, they kind of nuanced it a little bit, said nothing's, you know, there are no other, no, there's no options that, we wouldn't consider. But everybody knew that that was a possibility. It would have been better if the Iranians thought, holy crap, this crazy guy might send half a million Americans there.

Now, again, maybe it would be believable with Trump because he's such a wild card like that. Oh, yeah, he would send a bunch like, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops because after that, the regime doesn't feel threatened. America's not interested in sending fucking regular kids.

Right. Right.

So like me too. And I love the military. I love the intelligence community. I think they have roles to play. I'm a fan, but like, yeah, we can't do that shit again. Yeah, it was, it was a strategic blunder, I would say, doing this. Let me ask you this before we get into the CT strat, the new CT strategy. Like, um, let's say you were in the CIA, you know, if you were on the Iran desk or running it, um, and yet Ayatollah got smoked and like 40 of the top guys have gotten smoked, and now there's obviously like a vacuum and things are rearranging. Are you guys like pulling your hair out at CIA to try and figure out who's making the fucking decisions here?

And like, yeah, of course. So the key thing on this now, Iran is a hard target. That's a great question, D. And it's something that I think I've raised here before. I don't know the quality of intelligence we have on Iran. You go back to back in 2011, 2012, and I would be very careful. This is as reported in the press. There were very significant compromises of CIA's agent networks. And so when I say Iran's a hard target, it's obviously we don't have a diplomatic presence there. The CIA officers are not on the ground. State Department's not on the ground. US military not on the ground. And so, you know, and so, so, you know, do we have clandestine collection or even signals intelligence too that tells us the plans and intentions of Iran's leaders? And I don't know the answer to that. And, you know, without boots on the ground, without that kind of that level of granularity on intelligence, you know, that is, it makes things a lot harder. And so I think that, you know, the agency, there's two parts of it. One is what we call FI collection, foreign intelligence collection, and that's what are the Iranians gonna do?

What's the Iranian order of battle for the military? What's their decision-making? You know, what's the health of the Supreme Leader? Is the IRGC really kind of the dominant faction in control? Who's on top? You know, who's who in the zoo? And then the other part of it would be more of kind of the tactical part, the pattern of life of individuals, you know, how to support US military strikes, Yeah. But again, I don't know the level of intelligence collection that we have. And with that in mind, it makes it hard then to even— and so then you kind of— and that's some types of collection. Then you have the COVID action side is, are there elements of any kind of Iranian opposition figures inside who we can be working with? I mean, President Trump has actually been complaining that there was some kind of aborted covert action effort where we gave arms to the Iranian Kurds and they stole all the weapons.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which— and he never should be talking about this in public. At all. But, you know, what does that even mean? Was there a covert action plan? So lots of questions. But, but I don't know, and I don't think there's enough scrutiny. The national security media has failed on this, but there should be much more scrutiny of the, the degree of success that CIA has had in penetrating the Iranian regime.

Well, I'm sure we— I mean, we had him clocked pretty fucking good right before, you know, you know, in 2020 when we smoked Soleimani. Like, we had him, we knew where he was going.

That's a way different type of collection. That's pattern of life on an individual. That's putting someone on the X. That's not recruiting recruiting someone in the inner circle of the Supreme Leader. And those are the decisions that, I mean, right now, so here's what we need to have. I don't know if we have it. And agents I've run in the past, penetrations of foreign governments, we did have this level of penetration. We need the talking points that the Iranians were going to use in Pakistan.

Gotcha.

Period. The talking points.

Yeah.

I'm holding up a check right now. I don't even know what this is for. We need that. We need those talking points. And if you don't have that, you know, we are at a disadvantage diplomatically. So while we can put someone on the X for a kinetic strike, that's awesome. That's pattern of life. That's recruiting the janitor.

Yeah.

That's not plans and intentions.

Strategic long-term intelligence.

That's hard to do. Yeah.

So like someone's assistant or something like that.

Yeah.

If anyone's listening out there and they want to make like a couple hundred thousand dollars a month, Hey, no, here's a great opportunity.

No, you contact D and D will be your front.

Yeah, I'll totally be the middleman. I don't give a shit. Absolutely.

Take a little cut. You got to look at a little slice of the pie.

America, for God's sakes. I'm facilitating.

The Trump administration will understand that because I think that's what we do now. Yeah, exactly. It's all about getting your slice. You know, one of the funny things, what reminds me of the United— this is digressing a little bit. When I was in Jordan, I did several tours in Jordan and the Jordanians are amazing allies, but we'd always joke that some of the Jordanian security officials when they came into positions of power, would have several years to make themselves as rich as possible before they got caught and fired. I think we're there.

The GID is no bullshit, right?

No bullshit, but same thing. GID directors have been fired successively for corruption.

Yeah.

And so, but they're a great ally, tremendous ally and great partners and really helped in the GWAT. And you know that we always consider Jordan kind of our lily pad in the Middle East to do a lot of cool stuff.

All right, moving to the new counterterrorism strategy. They haven't been coming out like— usually there's a national defense strategy or whatever like every year. Uh, this comes out like maybe once every 4 or 5 years. Like, it's not exactly like every year thing. Um, so you'd think there'd be a little bit more thought that went into it, uh, slightly. But it's like 16 pages. You guys can take a look at it. Just go to like whitehouse.gov. You can read the bullshit that they, they put. It's extremely partisan. Yeah, you know, Joe Biden's mentioned like a ton of times.

Right, right.

It's, it's why, you know, like we still have to go after the, you know, Islamic terrorists and stuff like that, you know, our bread and butter, what make Mark a millionaire, you know, why he made the big bucks over the last 25 years. But then we also have to watch out for Antifa and, um, some of the transgender terrorists. Yeah, exactly. No real mention about like, you know, far right wing terrorism or extremists and stuff like that, which we know exists. Like, sorry, guys, it's just the truth in America. It was, it was just insane. It was an insane partisan document that like, aren't you supposed to have smart people work on this? Like, you know, what?

Well, we don't because only one person worked on this. And that's the director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, someone by the name of Sebastian Gorka, who was kind of this kind of member of the right wing. He worked in the first Trump administration about 5 minutes before he couldn't get a security clearance and was removed. He's insane. Let's just be very clear. This is not right versus left. This is not Democrat versus Republican. He is totally unqualified for this. And he wrote this on his own. Now, ordinarily, the NSC document like this would be part of kind of an interagency process. You know, the NSC is the coordinating body in the United States government that's supposed to take input from the intelligence community, from the military, from Department of Treasury, from the diplomatic community, the State Department, and others. And put together a strategy, a whole-of-government strategy, yet this was insane. Parts of it, okay, are fine. Do we have to go after Islamic extremism? Absolutely. But let's go over the strategy one by one, because this is something, because I read it and everyone is in kind of disbelief. There's nobody in the counterterrorism world who thinks this was anything other than a giant piece of shit, a giant turd.

And even those of my friends kind of who are the MAGA-curious types and from the right, and that's fine, but they're like, oh my God, look at this thing. So it starts off with the notion that the biggest counterterrorism threat is narcotraffickers. Right. Now, are narcotraffickers an issue for the United States government? Absolutely. You know, traditionally we would go after them based on counter-narcotics strategy, which had to do with law enforcement, the military, you know, liaison partners, public health as well. But they're kind of now saying that this is the biggest terrorism threat because they're using terrorism authorities to go kill them as we're drilling people on boats and also active on the ground and active on the ground too. And so, and so I think that's a mistake. I think it's apples and oranges. Um, uh, you know, America has a demand for drugs. Uh, America does not have a demand for terrorists, right? And so, um, that's not to say this is not an issue. Fentanyl is a massive issue. But, um, the idea that this should be, uh, done under the CT, uh, uh, authorities is, I think, is, is, is nuts.

And the problem with that is you then divert resources. As we have talked about, I think, on Eyes On in the past, but certainly members of the CIA have been diverted from the threat against Islamic extremism. They're down in Mexico. In fact, tragically, two CIA officers were killed down in Mexico recently doing things that we used to do in the war on— in the GWOT. And so I think that elevating narcotraffickers to this terrorism, you know, under the terrorism paradigm is not smart. But the part of it which gets a little nuts, D, and you noted it, is the politicization. And so, I mean, literally transgender ideology and Antifa, two very nebulous groups. Have transgender people been involved in terrorism? Sure. But just think about if I was sitting in London Station and I was going to my colleagues at the British Intelligence Service at SIS and saying, let's talk CT. And they're like, all right, let's talk, you know, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, ISIL.

You're like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

AQ. Yeah.

We gotta talk about the real fucking.

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Because the White House has said we're talking about transgender.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Like stop talking.

And Antifa.

Yeah.

And that we would be laughed out of the room. So this is preposterous. Alongside of that, which is of course blatant politicization, and it's just not, it's gonna be ignored. No CIA officer is gonna ever approach a foreign liaison service on this. But the other part of it is they don't talk about right-wing terrorism. And since 2001, 85% of terrorism domestically in the US has been carried out by the right. That's not to say there's not left-wing terrorism. It exists. It should be investigated. We should put the full power in the US government against it, 100%. And I'm for that. But not even to mention the right-wing terrorism is insane because the data is very clear. Now you have high-profile events like the assassination of Charlie Kirk undertaken by the left or whatever that person was. I think that was the transgender thing that people freaked out about. But again, the data shows that the majority of the terrorism comes from the right. And so just mention it. By not mentioning it, it's crazy. I think the last—

He was writing it for one guy, let's be honest.

He was writing it for, but it just, it was, there was typos in it. I mean, it was just, it was nonsensical kind of blather. It was, it's almost fun to respond to. And there's people in the CT world, whether it's Colin Clark or Jacob Ware or others who are really smart on this, who immediately said, this is a big load of shit. And we're very vocal on it. And, but the last part of it, which I think is the most important part, and this, I think it will resonate with the audience here is that, there has to be a whole of government approach and there has to be the use of what we had in the past, which was American soft power. So you cannot kill our way out of this problem. Every CT expert, if Mick was on here and him and I did CT stuff together, he'd say the same thing. Soft power means the US Department of State, it means what we used to have in the USAID, gone now. General Mattis, who, and I'm gonna botch his quote, but essentially he said, if we don't have diplomacy, if we don't have soft power, I gotta buy more ammunition.

Yeah.

And so ultimately not having a soft power strategy, because terrorists thrive in places where there, you know, there's lack of kind of government, ungoverned spaces. Well, I'm sorry, terrorism thrives when there's, you know, terrible poverty. And so the US government has had a huge role to play in that counter-radicalization programs. Right. But the CT document basically says we're killing our way out of this problem. And that's just, that's not a strategy. That's certainly not a solution. And this is coming from someone who did a lot of those things. And I believe in that, but I was a very small piece of the pie, an important piece, but there's gotta be other stuff too. So the whole CT strategy is just comical and it's sad. And the problem is, if it was just a speech Trump gave, who cares? But it's not, it's the strategy that comes from the White House. And that means resources are pushed that way. And that's the key part of this. I don't care what Gorka, or the president really think I care what, you know, how many billions, millions or billions certain entities in the US government get to tackle this issue, but resources are going to emanate from this document.

Now, with all that in mind, there were a couple of counterterrorism successes recently. We killed a senior ISIS member in Nigeria. El-Manoukhi is his name. Of course, the administration, as only they can, exaggerated it. He said he was the number 2 ISIS guy worldwide. That's not true. Yeah, he was important and it's a great strike. At the same time, we arrested in Turkey the leading figure in Kata'ib Hezbollah, which is an Iraqi Shia group supported by Iran. Great, great get. No doubt.

What's he doing hanging in Turkey?

Well, I think he was en route to Russia. That's kind of interesting. Kata'ib Hezbollah has been involved in the deaths of Americans and he was responsible for, and now it's coming out, all these kind of mysterious attacks against Jewish targets globally after the war in Iran started. And so that's a really good a good operation that was carried out. Interestingly though, nothing in the document says, hey, by the way, because of our activities in Iran, terrorism may explode now, which is what was all of our worry. And so now we have this really big takedown that everyone is touting, yet in the CT strategy, there's no mention that our actions in Iran actually will have kind of pushed such— United States. And one of the things is that, and again, this D, this is going to go back to my, I cite the Israelis a lot, but when I worked with the Israelis and they would think about undertaking some type of kinetic operation and they would be very clear in their cost-benefit analysis, they would say, if we do this, a Soleimani type thing, we're going to lose an embassy. People were willing to do that.

This administration, ours, has never done that. They never said, you know what? Was there ever a document task the intelligence community saying, if we go after Iran, if we launch this war, these are the things, Mr. President, that are going to occur. Americans are going to die in terrorist attacks overseas. And I don't think that happened. And that's the right way to look at these things because nothing comes free. There's no—

It's not even overseas either. It was like lone wolf guys.

Yeah. There's been some—

A guy in Austin who was inspired by the Iranian thing. The kid whose family members lived in Lebanon.

And the Iranians took years to avenge this stuff. And so that's where I think— But the CT strike strategy is just, just a mess, and you just kind of shake your head. And because the problem is that in this administration, there are not people who served in the first Trump administration because they don't want to. And but Mick is a perfect example. Mick was in the first Trump administration, great American, did great stuff there. But there's— I don't think Mick would— would— I'm not going to speak for him anyhow. But, um, uh, but, you know, you don't have kind of experts there now, um, uh, who would be able to, uh, uh, to help on such a CT strategy. And so you get this kind kind of piece of garbage as a document. And, and, but it's there and they're proud of it. That's the other thing. There's no— and Gorka is running around in the media saying how great this is.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. Really, the cognitive dissonance, that's like just, just plain, it's just plain as day. It's not even like they're not even trying to hide it. I think it's fucking scary. You know, if you're an American citizen who maybe leans left, or if you're a transgender person, like, come on, bro, what are we talking about?

I would say if you're a centrist, I mean, just anything, or you're just a regular American, like, it's just weird. What are we doing talking about Antifa and transgender ideology when it comes to counterterrorism? That's just kind of strange. Now talk about left-wing terrorism, sure. Yeah. You know, and of course, and then no mention of kind of terrorism, but that's just, you know, from the right, but that's just kind of, you have it, like, all you have to do is write a normal document.

Right.

Like, why can't they just do that?

I don't know, bro.

I don't like me who are from the center and are still critics. Administration would say, hey, that was pretty good, right? I like that.

Yeah.

You know, but that's— they can't even do something like that because it's so politicized. Everything is. And that to me is the kind of the tragedy. This I say to my Republican friends and I have millions of them. I'm like, how do you defend this? And they just kind of shrug.

You know, that's bad, bro. Let me ask you this. You mentioned like how the Israelis do like their calculus on like when they want to go kinetic. Do you think that calculus has kind of changed a little bit since October 7th? And like, yes, you know what I mean? Like in terms of like what they're expecting blowback to be, you know, are they even thinking of that anymore? Did they expect when we, us and them hit on February 28th Iran that they would, Iran would respond so aggressively, frankly?

So you're asking some, you ask better questions to me than you do when the other people are on the approved. Thanks.

Yeah. Well, it's easier when it's one or two people.

I know, I know. But so great question. I think October 7th changed the mentality of Israeli national security officials massively. You know, there is no more kind of tolerance for any kind of risk. And now the problem also is that Netanyahu is also drunk on power and drunk on using the military. And Israeli diplomacy could actually be just as effective on some of these things and some deterrence as well. But Netanyahu, the second this war ends, is going to face elections. And so, you know, there's no— so that has really kind of screwed a lot of things up. But my friends in Israel definitely are traumatized, understandably, from October 7th. And so, you know, the kind of the fallback on using the Israeli military or intelligence services, you know, I think the aperture is much wider now, the appetite for that. But it's also changing because there's friends of mine too who are like, you know what, we're exhausted. The IDF is exhausted. And all these promises that Netanyahu made about keeping us safer, you know, I'm not so sure now. And look exactly what's, you know, the Israelis just killed the leading military official in Gaza again.

Great operation. But Hamas still controls Gaza. They are not dissolving. There's a ceasefire, sort of, but ultimately—

They're still bombing, you know, kids. Yeah.

But so what has, you know, what has been the promises that the Israeli political kind of echelon have made to the Israeli public have not come forward. And so, you know, there is that notion again of, you know, it's the idea of military operations, kinetic capabilities are really important, but it's just one piece of the pie. I mean, think about right now if Netanyahu, and he can't do it because he's kind of, he's reliant on the crazy right wing in Israel for his political survival. Survival. But if he actually said at any point after October 7th, yes, there will be peace with the Palestinians, there will be a Palestinian state, the Saudis would have signed on. This is before the Iran War. The Saudis would have signed on to the Abraham Accords. There would have been a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And you can, and that would have changed.

Ben-Gavir would have had him killed.

But that would have changed the region if he had done these. So the Israeli government falls, but there's a peace treaty with the Saudis. That's unbelievable. And then you have this absolute kind of alliance of the Sunni Gulf Arab states and Israel against who? Against Iran. And perhaps we would have been better off globally right there rather than what you have right now. But, you know, that's kind of just wishful thinking.

For sure. I mean, yeah.

But this is— Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis were ready. They just had to say something. Give us something.

Yeah, I get it.

And Bibi couldn't do it for his political survival. But also, I think there was a lot of trauma after October 7th. And it's just too bad. It's sad.

Yeah, I guess. You see Bibi's 60 Minutes interview?

Yeah. And that was designed for the American audience only.

Fucking nonsense.

Well, he doesn't say any of that stuff.

70-year-olds, the fucking 70-year-olds, who's going to buy that bullshit?

Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately, the, you know, he does this for the US audience and And CBS wasn't really— didn't—

well, Barry Weiss gave them the choice of who to have as an interviewer.

And they also edited a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's like, come on, it's a big deal because they, you know, remember they didn't— Trump sued them or something like that.

Trump sued. Yeah, correct. So it's—

we're being positive. Positivity.

I was about to be very negative just now.

Positivity. Let's see what we can bring up positive about.

Can I bring up one thing? You know that there's Israel is suing the New York Times for that article.

The Kristof article, I didn't like, I mean, I'll be honest.

Which was horrific.

But I didn't like the Kristof article because it was an opinion piece. It wasn't written by people.

Yeah, but he spoke to 14 sources.

Yeah, but they're also very kind of, so you and I might disagree on this. But first of all, Kristof can write anything he wants. The New York Times can publish anything they want. Kristof, I think, has a record of being very critical of the Israelis. You might agree with it. You might not. I didn't like the sourcing on it, but I don't care. It's an opinion piece. Who gives a shit? And then of course everyone went crazy after this. And the idea of the Israelis suing the New York Times is preposterous. We have First Amendment rights here. It's an opinion piece. It's not in the news section.

Even if it is in the news section and it's well sourced, fuck you.

But it doesn't have to be well sourced. And I would argue that it's not well sourced because I didn't like the sources that are used. But again, the point on here is that it's not, from their national security team, which has a much different fact-checking process. It's an opinion piece. Nicholas Kristof can act and think anything he wants and they can write anything they want. And that's fine. The smartest thing for the Israelis to do would've been like, that's an opinion piece, thanks a lot. And then, but by suing the New York Times, it gets to be kind of ridiculous. And so a lot of my friends who are incensed about this, I'm like, sure, get angry at Nicholas Kristof. It's an opinion piece. The Washington Post has crazy opinion pieces too. I mean, that's the idea. Like you can have debates on stuff.

Well, all right. So like, Kristof didn't go to Gaza, right? He was going— he went to the West Bank because Western journalists aren't allowed in Gaza, number one. Number two, that video that leaked out from the prison in Gaza was a guy getting gang raped, uh, that those guys got let off the hook, like the soldiers that gang raped that guy.

And that's— and that the point on that is—

so like, I just don't want to hear the most moral army in the world when things like that are happening in prisons.

The prison system in Israel has a huge problem. Problems. No doubt. And so the right response on this would have been, yeah, there's, you know, the, the, this is not going to happen. But it's, it's the, the mature response is, yeah, the prison system is really messed up, you know, the, in Israel it needs reform. But some of these, some of these allegations about training dogs for raping people are kind of ridiculous. Uh, and, and, but you know, we'll look into it because it's a big deal because we, you know, we want to have the right set of morals. You know, New York Times, um, don't agree with all of this. But we're on it now. That's in another— of course, that's not going to happen. But that's the right attitude. Like, I'm not going to defend the Israelis or the Israeli prison system. I think training rape dogs— and that's been this trope that's been used by kind of the crazy left, you know, who hates all counterterrorism activity all the time. You know, there's been allegations of that forever. I don't even think that's possible.

I don't know about the dog. I mean, but they didn't— it wasn't just dogs raping people.

It was right. But that doesn't mean the horrible abuses haven't occurred. And they have. And so that's the way you tackle this. But, you know, I mean, suing the New York Times, just, I'm like, at this point, like you can't defend, you can't defend that. That's just stupid. And they're just dumb. You sue the New York Times. What's that going to do? It's going to stay in the news for years.

Yeah. It's fucking, it's so dumb.

It's like stupid. And if you're the Israeli embassy in DC, I've said this to Israeli embassy officials there. I said, you have a massive problem here because the American left and right have turned against you. And so my advice would have been don't sue the New York Times.

Right.

What are you doing?

This is, I mean, it's like New York on, and frankly, the New York Times has had like, has been called out on having like a pro-Israel bias as well.

So let's, yeah.

So let's like, I don't know if you should be suing the New York Times.

Look, look, look, in the United States, we face the same things. There are allegations which were confirmed of torture at Abu Ghraib. The American military did some pretty horrific stuff. American CIA did some stuff that's kind of messed up over the years. So you don't kind of, the reaction against it is not like this is not true. Well, some of it's true. A lot of it's overblown. We didn't waterboard hundreds of people. But the right answer is, you know what? This was done in reaction to September 11th. This is what I tell college students all the time when they ask me, yep, we did some things that probably we shouldn't have. But I'll tell you, the time was people were terrified and we had a lot, we had a big fucking menu of options. And we chose them all. There was, you know, I would— the analogy I use sometimes is a remote control on a TV. Yeah, we chose every frickin channel. We subscribed to everything.

Yeah. Yeah.

Looking back, like, shouldn't have done that.

Also, frankly, if you didn't get the direction from the fucking Bush White House that EITs are okay, you guys probably wouldn't be doing them.

I don't know. There's— there was a lot. I mean, again, but maybe like a rogue fucking maniac would, but No, we were bloodthirsty just like the Israelis were after October 7th.

Yeah, but do you think you guys, the CIA, would have done that unilaterally without the fucking president saying, yeah, it's okay?

No, I mean, you have to get the legal opinion that it was okay.

Right, right. And there was a ton of beef over that too.

But the bottom line is there were plenty of people who still think it's okay. And I'm really agnostic on this whole thing because I remember that I literally remember members of Congress from the Democratic Party, from the left, who were basically wanting us to kill everyone.

I mean, hip-hop is—

whether it's from really senior members of Democrats who were just like, why aren't you just cutting fucking throats everywhere?

I remember after 9/11, directly after 9/11, everybody was saying, let's fucking nuke wherever we need to nuke, just crazy shit.

And so that— but you have to have the maturity later on to say, yeah, I'm not defending everything we did. You have to say, yeah, we probably shouldn't have done that stuff. This is the reason why we did. I don't think we'll do it again. No CIA officer is ever going to waterboard anybody ever again, period. Not because they don't think it works, because that's debatable. It's that I'm not fucking getting in trouble with this. I don't care what you tell me. Remember when Trump was running for president again? He said, I'm going to bring back waterboarding. And everyone at the agency's like, good luck, man.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not going to jail for this shit. I don't care what kind of DOJ opinion you give. Right, right. Because I'm not going down for this kind of crap.

What does the agency do now? We just hand them off to like GID or somebody and they take care of it?

I mean, no, I mean, there's— well, I mean, first of all, the CIA is not in the, in the, in the, in the whatchamacallit. Well, sort of. We're not in the business of holding prisoners.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

That did not look— that did not turn out.

Yeah, it wasn't great. No, it wasn't great for the PR, bro. I'll be honest.

Like, even the other thing too is like, I mean, I remember doing prison debriefs. I'm like, in Afghanistan early on, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm not trained. I'm a case officer. I'm not trained. I'm not a debriefer. I'm not, you know, I don't know what I'm doing on this thing. And so, yeah, so we're not in the business of that anymore. And that's, again, it's, but, you know, at some point, I hope for my Israeli friends' sake that they will come to the realization that there were massive excesses after October 7th. And my response to that would be, I understand your pain and your grief and the desire for revenge, but the government of Israel did some things they probably shouldn't have done. And I think at some point, people will come to that realization. And you can be as hardline as you want.

People in Israel?

Yeah.

You mean? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think a lot of Americans were like, good Lord.

But we're already there, Americans.

The majority are going to come to their senses on this. But the trauma of October 7th is, you know, was so fresh. And that's, and we have to remember the trauma that we had after September 11th. And so that's kind of where I stand on this. Having been involved in a lot of crazy stuff that we did.

Yeah. So it was a couple dozen people they CIA waterboarded or what? Yeah.

I can't talk about CIA and waterboarding in any kind of authority. And actually I didn't have anything to do with that. But just, you know, this is all reported stuff.

Right, right.

If you talk about testimony, I think it's the numbers that have kind of come in public were far less than what would've been alleged. And the other part of it too, I mean, I got in trouble in all these, in all my podcasts. I did it with you guys. I did it like on the Sean Ryan Show when I, and I, and I, and you know, and Jack Carr and others. When I just, when people would ask me, what do you think about this? Do you have any regrets? I'm like, no. I mean, it was a different time. I just don't.

I mean, why? Yeah, I don't know.

Why would you? So yeah, did we do some stuff that was messed up? Sure. But it was after October 11th, 3,000 Americans died. They asked us to take it to the enemy. And so in retrospect, were some of these things a little wacky? Yeah, probably. But do I have any regrets? I mean, I'd be a fucking hypocritical asshole. I could do it easily. I could go on MSNOW. They'd love this. You know, yeah, but so bad for what we did. I just don't. I'd be lying. But again, you know, in retrospect, probably the US military and the intelligence community did some things we shouldn't have done. And the Israelis will eventually come to that realization. It just takes a lot of time.

Yeah, we can go back and forth on this a lot, a long time. I feel like I don't think any war is moral, really, when it comes down to it. It's horrible all the way. But what we're seeing in Gaza is pretty fucking reprehensible.

The civilian deaths are— and the notion of—

even Lebanon too. I know Hezbollah sucks.

The civilian deaths in the Middle East and in Gaza in particular are far beyond anything that the US government would tolerate under the law of armed conflict. Andy and I have written about this. We got into fights with everybody about this. Yeah. You know, I supported him when he was doing stuff with War on the Rocks. Against some kind of really kind of extreme, more extreme pro-Israel folks. And so, but it's just a fact. Like, you know, we care about civcas much more than Israel.

I mean, we lost a fuck ton of Marines in Fallujah that Andy was commanding some of them, you know what I mean? Like to clear house to house to avoid just, you know, wholesale bombing the entire fucking neighborhood.

Here's the thing, like, you know, I've been involved in some civcas incidents. It's really bad. Like you don't want to be involved in that. And so the idea of like, we shouldn't give a shit about civilian casualties. People in the US military and the intelligence community do.

Yeah.

You just do. You don't want to be hurting innocent people. That's not a good feeling. And that's something that's going to stay with you. And again, that's different than the conversation we just had about some of the more extreme things we did in the GWAT. And the reason why I say I don't have a lot of regrets on kind of the collective on what was done is because these are really bad people. Uh, and so, you know, but now, was— should we still do those kind of things? Yeah, probably not. But, but that's way different than accidentally, uh, killing a, uh, you know, a non-combatant, right?

Yeah, no, for sure. All right, this is good.

I like it.

We're supposed to go 20 minutes, it's been 52.

But, but again, but you know, it's, uh, it's fun talking on this. And I think I will say this to you, uh, sometimes, you know, the, the other guests kind of dominate a lot of stuff, but you got a lot of good lot of good points. And you got to be on these things.

No, listen, we have so many— I appreciate that. But I mean, we have so many guys on, you guys are all experts. I don't really know, I'm running my mouth. I read the news like everybody else. So I'd rather, I'd rather have John Hackett like talk about like actual shit than me run my mouth. Like maybe I can learn something. I'll always jump in when I think the CIA ghouls are going too far. I'll always jump in.

Well, uh, just remember you got a lot of good points to make. That was awesome. That was fun.

Thanks, bro. All right, I want everyone to do me a favor. Check out Mark's, uh, stuff. The links are in the description. Um, and the best place to support the show is patreon.com/theteamhouse. You get both Eyes on It, uh, geopolitics episodes and Team House episodes ad-free and early, and you help support the show. Mark, a pleasure as always.

Remember what I said before. We need Team House slash IZON Coffee, man.

Scott, yeah, before we jumped on, Mark was— we were brainstorming on like ideas.

Black Rifle Coffee. I was like, it's pretty good. We need—

I don't think another vet bro coffee company is in the mix needed in the market right now.

All right, well, we'll do it. We'll do an audience poll.

Yeah, there was actually a good coffee company we had as a sponsor called Redacted Coffee, and they had some really cool like cool. The coffee was good too, but they had some really cool like covers and stuff like that. I was like trippy, like MKUltra stuff. Yeah, it was a cool— it's a cool company. Check it out. It's Redacted Coffee.

All right, cool.

All right, Mark, thank you.

All right.

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