Transcript of The CIA’s "Secret" Moscow Trip & Putin’s Growing Problems | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Hey everybody, we are back. Another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Jonathan Hackett, Mick Mulroy dressed up for us today. Thank you, Mick. And, uh, Andy just can't get off— got off a workout looking pumped as ever. Um, a lot happening as usual. Iran's kind of like in a standstill, you know. The Strait of Hormuz is open. No, it's not. It's open. No, it's not. Like, it's hilarious what's going on, I guess, in the headlines, uh, between both sides. Um, I think today we're going to focus on— obviously everybody saw, uh, CIA Director Ratcliffe's secret fuck— and I'm saying that in air quotes for the people that are listening— trip to, uh, Moscow that was basically fucking telegraphed the whole time. Like, all the OSINT accounts that follow, you know, plane data and transponders were following this guy when he hit Riga and then when he hit Moscow. So I don't know if you could really technically call it secret because, like, after it happened, there was like a spin cycle that was going on for like the last week. A lot of speculation as to what they were talking about. He met the head of the FSB and SVR.

Putin wasn't there, but he was briefed right after. So yeah, I mean, there's a ton of speculation. Suppose, like, I'll throw it off to you guys. I mean, I'm sure you guys have been paying attention to this really tightly. Andy, let's go.

All right. So on the, uh, I, I got nothing on it really on the Ratcliffe visit.

Uh, so I picked the wrong guy to go first.

I, well, yeah, let's, I mean, let's talk about that first, but I, I would, uh, I would deflect that to, uh, to Mick, and then I'll chime in with some useless comments in the tail end of that. And then, and then I thought we could talk about the, uh, that, that excellent article you forwarded, Dee, by the, uh, the head of, um, of Estonia's intelligence service in, in the wake of the Ratcliffe, right?

Yeah, but that, that's a good segue. So yeah, we talked about a lot on, uh, ABC this week. So to your point, I mean, there's other ways to get the director of the CIA in that's much less, uh, obvious, uh, than going in a military transport plane. We have very nondescript jets, for example, that can do that. It's not perfectly clandestine, of course. But this, I think, to your point, Dee, I think it was meant to, to be known, right? They wanted this to be something that historically they could go back and say, remember that time? Because one, you could also do a phone call rather than take a 14, 15-hour flight for a 2-hour meeting. Um, so I think if you look at it that way, so they wanted it to be known. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but Uh, they sent the CIA director, so it probably was about intelligence, although the CIA is often used for sensitive diplomacy, right, with terrorist groups and stuff like that where you don't want to get, you know, our State Department's hands dirty, uh, so to speak. But I think if you look at most of the reporting, New York Times, um, it was likely about the intelligence they had.

specific to the potential challenge to a NATO country. That's my take. Why? You don't need to fly all the way out there to tell them they're not doing well against Ukraine. Like, why? You don't need to fly all the way out there to ask them to stop helping Iran. They know that. They know that we don't want them to help Iran. We're in a war with Iran. I'm not saying they didn't address it, but like, there had to be something that spurred, one, them wanting to put a marker down that we did this, and two, sending them all the way out there to deliver it. And I think But the sensitivity of telling them that we know that they have— obviously we think they're going to do a major escalation in Ukraine, and it might potentially be a challenge to a NATO country, and that we know it, I think is probably the most likely. Maybe they talked about all of it, but I think that's probably the reason why they got, got, uh, Director Ratcliffe on an aircraft to fly all the way there. So what does it mean? What Well, I think it's important to point out that we actually have, just from looking at it from public reporting, good intelligence on what Russia intends to do.

I mean, how we were talking about before the war in Ukraine, like, we know they're going to do this, this is going to happen. They denied it and then they did it, right? So I think we must have good intelligence. And I think the point is, hey, whatever element of surprise you think you have, you don't. So now the whole world's talking about it. See what I mean? Uh, and I— and hopefully it spurs, uh, the countries in Europe, uh, to start really amping up their own personal or their own national security defense and preparedness. Because it's one thing just to make a lot of fancy new weapon systems, it's another thing to be prepared to use them. So I'll stop there, but I think that's likely the cause, and it's certainly You know, if something like that happened, that's all we're going to be talking about, right? Uh, so a challenge against NATO, which we have a treaty obligation to defend.

So, Mickey, it was— it's kind of interesting. He, you know, he— it wasn't, uh, it wasn't a direct approach to Putin or even Lavrov, right? He met with the, the FSB and the SVR chiefs. Which I thought was kind of interesting. So maybe it was a, that's kind of a, he believed that was going to be more effective. I like what you said about it wasn't intended to be secret because in this age of Twitter plus transponders and all these geeks who track commercial aircraft, it's impossible. You know, the days of Nixon and Kissinger disappearing for a few days to talk to China are long You can't do that anymore, right?

Right.

So I'd heard about, and because the next thing we're going to talk about obviously is this Estonian article and the head of Estonia's intelligence agency thought that it was specifically to warn off Putin against attacking a NATO country, which is probably you know, Estonia. But then a couple of, I think it was the Washington Post and Axios and Wall Street Journal, everyone's been covering this visit, right? And so they suggested that that was not the primary reason. The primary reason was that the US had received intel that the Russians were saying, that Russian intel was reporting that the United States was exhausted by the Iran War, unable to intervene to support Ukraine, even if the decision was made to do so. And that Ratcliffe's mission was to disabuse them because they were the ones who'd said that to Putin. He was going to address that directly with them and say, hey, you're off target. And at the same time, indirectly propose, indirectly because it's him going through the intelligence chain rather than a direct overt proposal that they open, um, you know, remember they talked about trilateral talks when the whole Iran thing blew up in February.

There was this discussion of Zelensky, Putin, and Trump meeting. I forget where, but it, but it was, it was planned and then it was all shelved when the Iran war, um, started. So the secondary, you know, the papers are reporting that the second secondary objective of this meeting was to to float a Trump-Putin-Zelensky trilateral summit again, and is kind of testing whether Russian intelligence could get Putin to reengage with US-mediated talks, the ones that had stalled, without a direct approach that could be shot down and look as though we'd been humiliated. And then the third reason As you pointed out, again, this is just open source media. It's been suggested was to warn off Russia against potentially escalating against a NATO country.

I think also we're seeing, you know, at the highest level of intelligence activity, strategic intelligence, there's a couple of goals, reduce strategic surprise, reduce uncertainty, and inform decision makers. And here we're seeing a public element of a larger thing. So we're seeing the public movement of Ratcliffe to Russia, but there are also other things that the public is not seeing, such as the duty to warn. So there's likely, if there was intelligence that were, that's instigating this behavior in Europe, our European partners are probably receiving separate things connected to this activity, letting them know, we see these things, we're aware of these things. This is to help inform your decision-making and help reduce your strategic surprise in case of a Russian escalation. So that there's stuff that's happening that's probably larger. It's like the iceberg metaphor. We're seeing this little small piece of an iceberg, and there's a lot of other activity happening, like sensitive diplomacy, intelligence activity with our allies and partners in Europe to help them understand the problem as well. Because even if we're not physically there in Europe defending on the ground today, defense isn't just a physical military activity. It's also an intelligence activity.

So we're helping our partners be ready, especially the Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, corridor and Poland, of course, helping them get ready as a bulwark against what might be rolling westward if there was to be such a thing.

Yeah.

And then, D, you sent out— so, I mean, to John's point, so John, you're basically saying that there's always the danger, right? When it comes to interpreting moves, there's always a danger that things can be miscalculated. And so it's a serious danger. if the Russians are underestimating U.S., uh, capability and intent, right, to, to get involved should there be a significant, um, threat to a, to a NATO country.

And hopefully that was—

the message was delivered. And hopefully right after we said we think you might have designs on a NATO country, we will defend the NATO country. I mean, that's what— and, and maybe that's one of the reasons why I wanted it face to face and done through the intelligence services. He's delivering a message. He's not speaking for—

And because the intelligence services reportedly are the ones who had told Putin, hey, I don't think the US is— they don't have the will or the capacity right now to intervene should you want to do this, do X, whatever it is.

I mean, you guys are military experts. Do we have the capability at this point?

To do what?

To defend NATO?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it would take repositioning. It would take reprioritization. That's all, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, you take something as simple as interceptors and this long, torturous argument about interceptors. I mean, Lockheed Martin is still churning them out, but it's the US government that gives Lockheed Martin the prioritization for use of interceptors. And recently that has gone to the war in Iran. But I mean, Again, it's a question of prioritization. If the government says, okay, now we're going to pull all our resources, we're going to put this Iran thing on hold, and we're going to focus everything on containing Russian aggression, of course we can do it. We have the capacity to do it. But it's got to be a deliberate decision.

Let's not overstate, like we have in the past, Russia's capability. They're in a stalemate with Ukraine. Yeah.

Right.

Right. So yes. And we need to, one of the things hopefully that comes out of it in addition to passing the message and the promise of like, we won't stand for it is we can now go to the NATO partners and say, let's prepare for this. Let's literally prepare for it.

You've got 7th Fleet vessels in 5th Fleet right now. So they're much closer to the Middle East, which means they're physically closer to Europe. So you have aircraft carriers that are not typically in that proximity to Europe that are near nearby that can be easily called off. And if we have to remember, you know, the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff is the global force integrator. That was an upgrade in his position after the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1987, where he is the single individual that can actually move all these forces through these different areas from 7th Fleet in Pacific to 5th Fleet to 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, for example. So that would be to answer your question, Dee. If the chairman, you know, is told, hey, new priority one is defense of Europe, go, it's very easy for him to shift those forces through those corridors and move them through their different areas so that they can be ready to respond to this new priority issue. And as it stands, they're actually closer than usual. So that would be a shorter timeline to actually readjust. And there's something called the Global Force Management Allocation Plan or GIFMAP that is basically a big chart of spreadsheet where it's like, like a chessboard, essentially, like moving pieces around.

And that global force integrator can instantly start moving forces, flowing forces to Europe. And they don't have to be in Europe. They can be offshore. They can be even further away, especially with strategic bombing assets. And we're talking about Russia. You, you will certainly see those strategic assets employed on a much higher scale than they would be against a country like Iran, which is a middling regional power that does not require such strategic assets to be put against it. And those assets were developed in the first place to fight Russia in the Cold War. So like, that's what they're built for.

Let me ask you, in a meeting like this high level, would they be talking about Russia cutting off, stopping all the sabotage that's been going on across Europe? I mean, we saw what happened in Leipzig with the unexploded drones and stuff like that. Is that even brought up or talked about, or is that like talked about like on a lower level and not such a high-profile meeting?

It depends on if it might have been part of the assessment of their intent, right? These advanced force operations, I don't know specifically if it's just— it probably would need to, since it was very concentrated, right? A 2-hour meeting. And I'm told it didn't go well, by the way, pretty specifically. It was— we didn't expect them to go, oh, you caught us. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're not going to do it now. Um, so we knew that was going to be the case, but, you know, that's why they said, oh, Red Cliff over there. And I tell you what, if you want to, you know, a more definitive view of this, they don't treat guests well. But ask, ask Mark, Paul Maropoulos, like, you know, this idea that you're a guest and therefore it's, it's, it really reflects on you how the guest is treated, like most cultures. I'm not saying it's a cultural thing for Russia. I'm just saying it's the regime thing. They still treat you like crap. Like keep you waiting, like waiting for hours and hours standing up and, uh, go here, go there. I mean, it's petty, but I don't know how bad it was.

But I think they would probably focus it on— they might have talked about Iran. They might have talked about, hey, why don't you guys come up with a reasonable path toward a ceasefire in Ukraine? But I think it was probably focused on if this was in fact what they're talking about, which is the only thing that makes sense to put them on a plane like that. I think it's going to— the supporting evidence, to the extent that you don't want to give away your hand either, right? And they're going to deny it. And then they're going to yell at us for starting a war in Iran, stuff like that. But I think it was important to do. So hats off for doing it. I think they probably wanted to put a marker on the field saying, On this date, we went and told them we knew what they were doing. Not that that's going to keep them from doing it, but—

Hello everyone. If you're hearing this, uh, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early, and you can ask us questions, maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com/theteamhouse. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters, and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com/theteamhouse. Thanks, guys. I have a couple questions. So there was a bit— I don't remember the exact article where they mentioned like Ratcliffe felt that the FSB director was like the right go-between and like a good actor in terms of like getting Putin to listen and come to sit down, I guess, for the trilateral meeting with Zelensky and Trump. That sounds like bullshit, because how the fuck can we ever trust the FSB director, who is a big part of Putin's inner circle?

Yeah, I guess it's all compared to others.

So he was the least dick of the bunch?

Yeah, because think about it, when it comes to the head of intelligence, they generally do very limited public engagements. And if it is, it usually is on anything political, right? So, and I bring that up because other people that could potentially have shared the message are going to be asked nonstop about it, whereas Ratcliffe is just not going to answer the question. He's not really expected to, or whoever the CIA director is. And maybe that's the case that he just has a best relationship with his counterpart. You see what I mean? So I don't know. I don't think we trust any of them, and I don't think they probably trust any of us, but you're probably picking the best relationship that is conducive to passing this message. And obviously we're the intelligence folks, so if we're passing a message, it's based on intelligence assessments, and that makes sense. But it's also a political issue too, in the sense that these two are probably the least political.

Yeah, the, um, yeah, they— and correct me if I'm wrong, but, uh, but Ratcliffe, it's not the, uh, I mean, the FSB is, is primarily a domestic security service. I mean, I know it goes beyond that, but, uh, but the SVR, I suppose the most direct pairing for, for the agency.

Right.

I think they were both in there, right? Is that what we're saying?

Yeah, they were both in there, but neither of this— not a huge amount is known about both of these guys. And it's Bornikov. I forget the name of the FSB guy. Yeah, something beginning with N.

Sergei Naryshkin.

But I know Bornikov's been head of FSB forever. I mean, it's almost 20 years. Can you imagine having a single CIA director that long? And he's come through the KGB apparatus. I mean, he's obviously, he knows his way around, undoubtedly, not just the intelligence community, but politics. He came through the same pipeline as Putin. He's obviously close to Putin. And so, That may have been why he was a useful target for this kind of message.

Has anybody seen that movie about Putin?

No, I want to see it though. Jude Law plays him?

Yeah, I need to see it too.

I don't think it's out yet. It might be like select theaters or something. I haven't seen it advertised much.

I thought it was out.

You know, just one more point on that. You know, it occurs to me Though, I mean, it is true FSB is domestic intelligence, but it's not— I suspect that, and Mick knows more about this than I do, and John does too, but I suspect it's not as clean a cut as that. Because remember when there was kind of that discussion about in the aftermath of the Ukrainian invasion, and there was a lot of discussion about where was Putin getting his intel, and reportedly, he got the bad intel about Ukraine being ready to fold quickly from Bornikov from the FSB. So I suppose from one viewpoint, it's surprising Bornikov still has his job, but then, you know, Putin doesn't want to admit that there was any mistake or failure made there. But it's interesting because that was clearly foreign intelligence, unless domestic intelligence is a wider you know, former Soviet Union view of domestic intelligence.

Yeah, they don't have the legal restrictions that we impose on ourselves, right? We don't want the CIA running around doing weird stuff with US citizens, right? So we have— and it was a— it actually is something they had to adjust after 9/11, right? Because it was such a wall. It was deliberate because they didn't want law enforcement talking to intelligence. Now they have For example, all these joint terrorism task forces around the country where there's a place to fuse it, but still the US doesn't use the CIA against US citizens. Whereas there, I imagine everybody's an enemy, including citizens, right? Their view as a potential threat to the regime. So it's probably a much more mixed bag. Like a lot of regimes have that, you know, they, they have a lot of components that do similar things, Because they want to pin them against each other. And, you know, it's kind of like a regime protection policy. Several groups like the IRGC and the military of Iran, for example, doing a lot of similar things.

It's like the Ministry of Interior in a lot of countries. In America, the Ministry of Interior manages our parks and wildlife.

Yeah.

The Ministry of Interior in a lot of other countries does very different stuff than that.

got people hanging up by their ankles and stuff.

Well, I guess ours is the FBI, right? That's our internal domestic intel.

For the Russians, I know we're going to talk about this next. So, I mean, there's FSB, supposedly domestic, SVR, which is their foreign intelligence service. But all this shit happening in Europe that, you know, the Estonian intelligence chief was talking about, and that, you know, like the Leipzig airport attack, all of that is the GRU, which is, you know, which is military intelligence, of course. I mean, they're the ones who did the Novichok, you know, attack in Salisbury. They're the ones who did the 2014 Czech ammunition depot explosions. The failed, you remember the failed coup in Montenegro, all that kind of destabilization efforts in Moldova during the elections, the London warehouse bombing, I think that was 2024, and the drone attack in Leipzig, all of that's the GRU.

Yeah, what's the unit called, that unit 29-something, 28155 or whatever the unit's called? It's like—

29155.

Yeah. Let's— so let me ask you something.

Andrei— I forget the name, but it's, it's something— it's Andrei, Andrei Avranov, right? Is the leader of the unit. I don't know how his name got out in the public sphere, but it has.

Can you look at the GRU? I know it's military intel, so it's probably its own division and stuff like that. Is it kind of like their paramilitary arm? I don't want to compare apples to apples with the CIA, but like their ground branch.

Similar. It's like a DMI.

They do Department of Military Intelligence. Yeah. But they do things like these targeted killings. So not that we do, but—

So like my— the way I'm seeing it in my head is like SVR is like their espionage arm. Like they cultivate sources, do all the stuff that all other intelligence agencies do. The GRU gets after it in terms of like poisoning, sabotage, that. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it doesn't completely line up with our system, but there's crossovers. And of course, they don't have a lot of lawyers telling them what to do like we do, even in the clandestine COVID side.

Yeah, because GRU does the— they do kind of the offensive cyber stuff, but SVR does a lot of the hacking, the collection, what's it called? The Cozy Bear and SolarWinds breaches were SVR operations. And there's another unit. I can't, it's a Defense Ministry unit. So it's quite complicated. I mean, it's a patchwork, right? And I'm sure there's bleed over and who knows whether they share. Their operations with, with each other.

John, you got any?

I mean, it's like in the US we have 17 intelligence entities. Many of them do very similar things. And looking at it from the outside, we see the product, we don't see the purpose. So a lot of times you might see GRU with Novichok in Britain killing Andrei Skripal. That looks like an assassination, which it is, but it could be carried out by any of these entities. It wouldn't really matter which one it is cuz we don't know what the actual foreign policy purpose was for doing that intelligence activity. So we just see the outcomes or we see the behaviors and things on the street, and it's kind of less relevant, I think, to kind of try to even untangle it because it's not really important to untangle because it's all part of the same government, you know, ultimate entity pushing policy down to these independent actors that all are funded and directed by the same leadership, which is Putin and his inner circle.

All right. There was an interesting article, I think, from The Telegraph. I'm almost positive it was. I don't remember. I think it's Telegraph. from, uh, I'm trying to get his name, I'm gonna mispronounce his name, from the Estonian intelligence chief Kuopo Rosen, basically warning that, uh, Putin's entering a period where increasingly he has only bad options, essentially. Um, I also wanted to talk a little bit about, like, we've heard the rumors about Russia mobilizing again, um, you know, and what that does. You guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but that article basically stated that, like, He has low confidence that a ground-up, by-the-people revolution will happen, but like the more on the side of the elites where like the elites will start getting kind of pissed that things are getting squeezed more and more. They're not making the exact same money they're used to making, and that somebody might make a move. There was another intel chief that kind of called it wishful thinking in terms of like being able to overthrow Putin and stuff like that. If you watch like the Times Radio YouTube, and I don't want to take a shot, it's like every other video is like Putin's in trouble, Putin's trouble.

It's been like 3 years of videos like that. I mean, I get it. Like, that's where they make their bread. Their bread is buttered. But realistically, and I know Estonia, like, they hit that nail on the head in terms of the invasion in '22 and when it was going to happen too. So like, they have a ton of like political capital, for lack of a better term, in terms of like when the intel chief comes out and says something like this, people are going to take notice and be like, yeah, oh wow, because it's like basically their whole job is, or their number one priority is keeping an eye on Russia, right? Because they're right there and they can get probably taken over in a few days. It's not a huge country. There's not a lot of people. So I mean, that's their number one threat. Where are you guys at? Andy, Mick, you're up now. So, give me something good. Don't pass it off to Mick again.

Okay. Yeah, no, I thought that was a good article actually. It was David Blair in The Telegraph. But, you know, and I love, yeah, I love the Estonians. I love their attitude. I love what they do. But it's also important to bear in mind, they don't do anything that is not deliberate. You know, no one in the Estonian government or their intelligence community appears suddenly and jabbers away throwaway lines or sends out something on X that is kind of a random spark. It's all very clearly designed and clearly timed. And I think this interview was too from a guy who doesn't often give interviews. So, I agree with the gist of the article, but I think it's important to remember this. And you mentioned it, the bad options framing, right? That's the most quotable line, but it's also the line that's most likely to be subject to intelligence community messaging bias from Europeans. Every Western intelligence official has an incentive, European intelligence official has an incentive to describe Russia as fragile, Putin as cornered, because it justifies continued Ukrainian funding which is definitely something the Estonians support. You know, I mean, it mentions in that article there's a Ukrainian flag flying in the intelligence, you know, right next to the Estonian flag and the headquarters building of Estonian intelligence because they see this as a common fight.

Um, you know, so I mean, he's obviously not a neutral analyst, uh, and I didn't think anything in that article was particularly surprising. I mean, He said, he's not saying Russia could collapse overnight, as you said. He's basically said Putin's one bad month from a palace coup. I mean, he's not saying that, but he is saying that there is, I think he uses the term echelons. He's saying that there's growing anger. in influential echelons within Russia. And he mentions, you know, he says, yeah, it's not going to be a revolution in the streets. I mean, that's not the way it's going to happen, but discontent rising in, as he said, all echelons, which includes the oligarchs, right? He said, the real risk is that it's these people with what he calls money, weapons, and information quietly concluding that it's time for Putin to move on. And when that happens, he says, as typically happens in Russia, there won't be any warning. It probably won't be predicted. And he uses the 2023 Prigozhin mutiny as proof of how you know, hollow the system can suddenly appear from an unexpected source. So nothing, I didn't see anything really new there.

You know, a key part of his messaging, I mean, he talks, he says, hey, let's not call this hybrid war, right? What we just talked about, what the GRU is doing in Europe, it's warfare, it's open war. We're already in a state of war. NATO's already waging war against Russia, or rather Russia's waging war against NATO. You know, it's— you can call it war, you can call it state-sponsored terrorism. And he talks about the drone attack in Leipzig. By the way, for readers not familiar with that, those Ukrainian aircraft, I believe it was a commercial cargo plane on the ground in Leipzig hit by a drone, undoubtedly Russian, Um, which fortunately, I mean, it was, it carried explosives. The explosives didn't detonate. Otherwise it would have been a much, you know, bigger mess with great risk to obviously everyone in the, in the, uh, the apron at the, at the airport. But he talks about all of that. He said, hey, it's that, that's war. It's not, you know, let's stop using this hybrid bullshit term. Um, you know, when he's talking about bad options, he's talking about the fact, and we've quoted this, on this show that the Russians are losing at least 1,000 guys a day.

That isn't a throwaway number. That's been, you know, the British MOD's assessment, British MOD's assessment, um, at least 1,000, sometimes 1,200 casualties a day, which is just hard to, hard to imagine. Um, their, their economy is in the shitter. He talks about their massive debt. Um, although who are we in the United States to talk about massive debts? And he talks about the risks of announcing mobilization. That'll be obviously another round of mobilization is going to again bring it home to a Russian public that's already suffering economically from the war. And now they're watching again and they're having to run for the exits to avoid being mobilized to fight in this war, which has seen by most young Russians as being a death sentence. But, you know, his key point there was, he says, look, NATO is safe as long as deterrence holds, right? And that holds only if the West keeps spending and stays unified. So it was kind of an explicit message, I think, to Trump. Or rather, you know, the Trump-era doubts about Article 5. And that's right in line, of course, with, you know, with the Estonian messaging. So yeah, I mean, it was an interesting article, but I didn't see anything that was shattering there.

So Putin is 73. Just looked it up. Unfortunately, still young. And I think the guy's reportedly like super into longevity and all that stuff. You know, he just makes statements about it. Quite often. So, uh, to the point of the article, I didn't get a chance to read it. I was doing the other, uh, podcast when you sent it out. But I would say this, it's easier from an intelligence assessment to, to say the status quo is going to remain the status quo, right? Because it's— something has to actually happen dramatically, especially when it comes to regime change, for that to be the case. But there are a lot of things that could lead to it. So, I mean, Andy already pointed out one. He's eliminating a whole generation of Russian males, and they all have moms, and they have— that matters everywhere, including Russia. The mother factor, even in the regime of Russia, has a, has a major factor. Um, is it enough to bring down the regime? Probably not, because they'll brutally oppress them if they have to. But that's why they're so— they're talking about the oligarchs, right? The oligarchs and senior members of His government could eventually get to a point where it's like, this is just destroying the entire country and we're not winning.

And the longer it goes on, something I would say, the longer it goes on, the chances of Ukraine advancing and getting more lethal and having direct impacts on every aspect of the Russian, uh, society, right? Because they're gonna have longer range strikes. It's going to cause more fuel shortages, power outages, etc., as they get better and better. And we all, I think, expect that whoever comes in next after this administration is probably going to support— hopefully, hopefully, I guess, I guess we shouldn't say we know, but it could be a major increase in support for Ukraine. So they have a— Ukraine does have a lot of things going for them, and Putin's only real, uh, response to it is let's kill a bunch of civilians by launching cruise missiles into apartment complexes, which is horrible, and every one of them is a war crime. And every time they do it, they make the resolve in Ukraine stronger. So I would say the quagmire that Putin's got him into, the decimation of a whole generation, and potentially pressure from adjacent power structures could lead to it. But weirder things have happened. But we'll see. I can't make a prediction, but I hope that we are putting our thumb on the levers that are making this more likely, put it that way.

Like a lot. He's the biggest problem.

It's interesting. There's a lot of context actually in Russian history, especially Soviet history post-Stalin, If people remember, you know, after Stalin, there was kind of a change in internal politics inside Russia, trying to figure out how do we live now that Stalin's gone. And Beria was in charge, and there was some restructuring that Beria did that was not popular with people like Khrushchev and Malenkov, who eventually actually ousted Beria from the party. And that's kind of the type of palace coup context that we could probably look back toward to see how did that occur, because it's still in part of the Russian common memory and the cultural memory. And it's also in Estonian cultural memory because Estonia was part of the Soviet Union during that time when that coup occurred. It's not technically called a coup today, but it, it's similar to what you would consider a palace coup. And it's very, the reasons are also similar. Dissatisfaction with how the, the government leadership under Berea is happening because it's harming elites that are, that were initially benefiting and now are no longer benefiting from those policies. And they have the ability to do something, whereas, as you mentioned, Nick, the people on the street do not.

They could try, but they would be stopped. I mean, how many is it? 500,000 Russian men have died in Ukraine so far. It's, it's, that's an incredible number outside the country. And that shows how, how little Putin cares for the, the people of his own country, you know? So those people on the streets will not be able to actually do anything. It would be very similar to a Beria ousting that happened already in the '50s.

I got a question. I mean, is an article like this with the chief, the intel chief of Estonia, right, when like, I'm sure he's taken very seriously by our NATO allies and ourselves, right? They're right there, they're on the front line, um, and like their whole thing is about, you know, worrying about Russia, what Russia is going to do. Is his whole thing doing this article kind of like, um, kind of like a message to the elites in Russia? Like, hey, if you guys are interested, We're available, you know, whether it's like where you're gonna pick up guns and shoot Putin, or you're just gonna give us information on what's going on. Is it kind of like a way to either signal to the Russian elite that like, hey, we're open for business, and also kind of use up more of the like FSB bandwidth in terms of like, oh, is somebody fucking around and like talking to foreign intel and stuff like that and working against us? Like, let's burn some of our resources doing that. instead of sabotaging Europe?

All the above. Multiple reasons for doing that. You covered a couple of them. It's also telling everybody else that, at least in his assessment, which I would imagine is based on some credible, uh, intelligence, that Putin is under challenge. So it's, it's trying to promote the idea that he is. It's trying to promote the idea that the elites could cooperate with us to facilitate it coming about.

If you guys had to bet money, um, would— do you see Russia mobilizing more people, more men?

What's the option? I mean, if the option is like either accept the current state, which isn't going well for them, and it likely will start becoming even less well for them, or they do something dramatic. But of course, mobilizing that many that didn't just get thrown right in the meat grinder could, from Putin's perspective, make it far more likely that he gets— he's hanging from a light post.

Right?

So eventually, how many people has to be— I mean, what is the life expectancy now on the battlefield? It's like 30 minutes.

Yeah.

When is the people of Russia going to say, well, yeah, if I protest, they're going to kill me, but I'm gonna die anyway. You know, maybe I can save the next generation. Maybe I can save my little brother. Like, when does that happen? Like, I'm gonna go ahead and fight the, fight the man right now rather than getting, you know, shish kebabbed by a drone in the Donbas. So my little brother who's gonna be eligible to be sent there in 3 years doesn't have to. I mean, what would you do? I mean, I think we should really promote that, you know, idea that like it's time to step up rather than you're gonna lose your life anyway. young, not connected Russian man. Um, are you going to do it to save your brother, or are you going to do it just because Putin can't figure out, uh, how to get out of something he started, and you're just fodder, piece of fodder?

Um, I had a question. I forgot it.

Sorry.

Help me, John.

I mean, I know we're trying— we deliberately didn't want to just talk about Iran Because we talk about it all the time. But we did hit the 6-month mark. So that was a big topic this week. 6 months. It seems to be focused primarily— and if you're cool with this, D, I was just going to throw a little bit about the Iran stuff.

Please.

But it seems to be focused primarily on the economic aspect, this economic D-Day. It's unclear to me actually how much was actually implemented. Like when, when, uh, the Treasury Secretary gave the— you know, I've been pushing this. People who follow the show, I've been pushing this for a while. But then when I was listening to the press conferences, it sounded like a lot of it wasn't happening. Like theoretically, we might, we might, we might. I don't know if you guys are tracking that we're doing more, but I'm like, okay, well, why do we announce this stuff? And then I know we, we, uh, we sanctioned some individuals, some companies, etc., but It seems like a lot of the major aspects we just put on hold. Is that your— Yeah.

On OFAC's website, I was looking actually that same day to see, did they publish some new actual sanction documents? And there, there were no new substantive sanctions that were separate from what we'd already been working with. And it actually seems more like the US is trying to ask other countries to enforce existing sanctions because that's really the challenge. And we've talked about that is We can make sanctions all day, but if the activity is happening in another country, there's very little we can do economically to enforce those sanctions unless the partner nation or the host nation agrees to commit their own resources to doing something to assist with that sanction enforcement.

So the Trump administration lied? I'm shocked. Well, I mean, I guess they have. They made a whole—

held on. I guess they've held off. I just don't know why you'd announce it as— I mean, China has to participate for this to have maximum effect. They buy like 80% of their energy. So, and I think China already came out and said—

Why would they?

So, and they don't want to do something too disruptive because, you know, President Xi's coming to the US here. So we probably have a stalemate here until after the elections. But that doesn't mean we're busy.

We're too busy, like, trying to strong-arm Canada too. Which, you know, if anybody was following, that was absolutely ridiculous. Like, some of the things that we were at, we were demanding are just like, who the fuck? Like, that's honestly, if I'm Canadian, I'm telling the US to go fuck themselves too, frankly. Like, who are you to dictate to us, our sovereign, like, domestic— like, who are you? You just because you guys buy a lot of shit from us? It's not our fault you're fucking consumers, and that's all we're really good for, frankly. I mean, yeah. So I'm not really surprised, to go back to the economic D-Day, that nothing really happened and they made a big show of it just to get some headlines. Not really surprised by that, by this administration.

Well, inside Iran, domestic politics-wise, President Pashinyan is even more vocally opposed to what's going on with the US-Iran relationship. In other words, he is promoting diplomacy. He thinks— he has said on Iran-controlled media that the Iranian government should be pushing for diplomacy to end the war.

Hmm.

Which is a very different narrative than others that we've mentioned, like Ghalibaf, Vahidi, and others that are now in control. That there was a reshuffle of people in power. I'm not sure if people had noticed that in June through now. Where after the Supreme Leader, quote unquote, took control, a lot of new IRGC people that most are unfamiliar with rose to the top and took over. And they're much more extreme and willing to basically die on the hill that they're, they're on right now. And Pozheshkian is basically shouting at them and saying, please stop. We need the country to get back to order so that we can manage our own domestic issues. Because I think Pozheshkian is looking at this long term and he's saying, we had unrest from October last year through January when the massacres occurred. We're going to have unrest again if prices continue going the way they are. And they will go the way they are if we continue at this stalemate. So, Pazeshkian is pushing for some concessions on the Iran side, and a lot of the others in the Iran government are not promoting that. They're not supporting that.

So there's division within the domestic politics of Iran that are important to keep an eye on.

Because the economy is really, really stressed. So we should point that out. They, they're, I mean, inflation, the, what's the real now? It's like 2.2 million.

It's over 200,000 tomans, which is, it's like 6 times more than it was 5 years ago, which is really incredible because 5 years ago it was already dramatically high. You know, the price of an iPhone there is something like $8,000 right now.

Wow. I mean, so we, they are, they are under economic strain. Like Jonathan pointed out, that was the purpose of the protests or the reason. So it's gonna get worse and worse and worse because the blockade, because everything else that goes with this.

And the economy is a unifying principle. So there may be diff— disagreements inside of Iran or any country about what's going on, but there's one thing everybody can agree on. It's that they don't wanna spend more money on stuff.

Yeah.

And so these camps that don't normally agree can have that and come together. And that's, there were gasoline protests a few years ago because there were gas lines. And this is the thing in Iran, gas is actually subsidized, so it's still cheap now. And there's been this back and forth about should, should the Iranian government stop the gas subsidy? And the reason they have not is because they know that last time they did that, they had some of the largest protests in their history. It countrywide, it was very dramatic and almost got out of control. And they don't want that to happen again, but it might have to because you, you can't just keep printing money unless you want to be Zimbabwe and have a $1 trillion bill, right?

Yep. And I mean, you could do without an iPhone maybe, but you can't do without a tomato, right? They get— they— the inflation for food has gone through the roof. They have to eat. So yeah.

Even back in May, there were people that had to take out a payment plan to buy yogurt at the grocery store. Like, the stores actually had informal payment plans because they understood the issue with the currency at the time.

I mean, realistically, how long do you think Iran can hold on economically if it stays like this or gets worse?

Well, Iran is not a monolith, and that's the problem. The government can hold on for a long time because it's kind of like the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam. While we're bombing Vietnam, there's this whole Ho Chi Minh Trail going on and they're just resupplying themselves. And it's very similar if you think about that metaphor with the elites have access to resources outside of Iran. So if all of our stuff is focused on inside of Iran, the elites are going to survive because they're drawing all their energy and power from somewhere else. Whereas the people in Iran are the regular people, the everyday people. They, they will suffer. They will die. They will starve. They will have mass unrest. There'll be all kinds of problems soon, but the government will still be able to protect itself very long term. And they're committed to doing that. Even people like Pozheshkin, who sounds like he's opposed to the policies. he's going to survive too. You know, so there's definitely a difference between this very small group of people who can last for a very long time and everybody else.

Yeah. You think we're doing anything in terms of, uh, trying to arm them? Not just the Kurds.

Doesn't appear to be.

I mean, isn't that crazy? Are we nuts? Like we already are, you know, burning through our Patriots and THAAD missiles and all of our, if there's any left, political will in the region, uh, to not be doing this covertly, or at least trying to do it, or at least taking it seriously, to me sounds fucking insane.

The amount of time it would take to arm, train, equip an actual fieldable force is way beyond the time horizon of the time we have right now. It would be years to get a large enough force. I mean, the IRGC has several hundred thousand active members. There are hundreds of thousands of reserve members. The Basij has up to 2 million people that can be called into duty now. That's a huge, huge opposition force that has to be balanced against. It can't just be small groups of tribal fighters like it was in the '80s against the Soviets and the Afghan government that we, that we produced under Operation Cyclone. And it won't be like Timber Sycamore in Syria. Like, we're talking about a very, very large surrogate force. If that was to be the case, that would take years to build, years to sustain, man, and equip, and then actually field. By the time that happens, the country might not even be the same country it is today.

Right.

From my take on, I don't know, or I wouldn't be talking about it, but I don't know. I would, these are all best done in comprehensive approach, right? So if we decide we want to go to war with Iran, then we should be doing stuff like this. It's Jonathan's point. It's not going to be dispositive on the outcome, but it could enhance what we're doing. We could have no-go zones for the regime, right? They could essentially start blocking off parts of the country, um, that they can control but not really challenge, you know, the multi-millions of people they would have to go through to bring down the regime. But it's, it's, it's not necessarily one or the other. So you have military, economic, internal From the, uh, inside the regime. And then, uh, and then a covert program and an influence covert program we should be doing too, right? Because it's, um, covert ops, although, you know, most people think of actual ops, um, or like action type stuff, is also influence propaganda and all the other stuff. It— the way the NSC should work, um, it should be a comprehensive plan that supports each other.

Just for a stated political objective or strategic, you know, objective. So if it's starting now just because we've decided we can't, it doesn't, it doesn't work to do just airstrikes. Yeah.

Like that's the opposite of the way it, you know, it should work.

And that's what that, and you know, to, to stick up for my old outfit a little bit, that's a concern that the agency gets is like, well, we tried diplomacy. That didn't work. We tried the military. That didn't work. So it's like, You know that burning dumpster outside? That's yours. Right? It's like, ah. So it's already like a complete failure and they can't figure it out, so they hand it to the agency. It needs to be like, you know, the agency needs to be there from day one. And what they can provide to the overall security, national security effort is just part of, you know, the military, diplomatic, economic, you know, the whole dime influence.

I'm kind of disappointed that this hasn't been a thing like from like the start of 5 years ago. Maybe not right after the JCPOA and stuff like that, but like in the, like the Trump 1 years, like why this wasn't— or maybe 2019 when they had the big protests and stuff like that, why we didn't start doing that from then. Just getting them guns, getting them guns and seeing what happens.

Like, I mean, yeah, I mean, the other thing is, if you set the bar like it has to be able to topple the regime, then It's not going to happen.

That's an impossible ballgame.

Yeah.

I mean, look at what Iran does. Did Hamas ever have a chance to take over Israel? But they still funded them, right? I'm not saying it's a good thing. Obviously, that's a horrible thing. But you see, it doesn't have to be—

Yeah, it doesn't have to be one for one. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We just want them to—

The zones of influence you're talking about, that's what Hezbollah was in South Lebanon for Iran, where they didn't really care about the Christian north. That wasn't part of the mission. The mission was to control the south and create a buffer between Israel and this space. And that cost them a billion dollars a year. The IRGC budget funding that surrogate was a billion dollars a year.

And now we keep paying for aircraft carriers, right, Andy?

Yeah, we're no longer, you know, we're not fighting to prevent a crisis. We're fighting to undo the one that arguably the crisis that the war has created, you know, and I mean, we've talked about, I think we've all kind of come to a consensus here, at least on among the co-hosts on this show that it isn't one tool, right? But each one has to be done and integrated in a more smarter way. And so, for instance, I mean, and then we talked about the role of sanctions, the fact that rolling targeted, really specifically rolling targeted sanctions that continuously investigate, sanction, investigate, sanction, you know, so it's always closing the aperture is a more effective way to do than what we have to do, which is issue them in tranches, announce them, and then never really plug the gaps. We talked about the failures of the military campaign, why they have failed. You know, they— the goals have been unrealistic, and the way we've gone after those goals has, has not been the best way to do it. Um, you know, being, being a little more focused than that, we've talked about cyber. what could be done in offensive cyber operations to understanding the downside, of course, of exposing your hand.

We've talked about COVID action, the fact that it takes a long time to have effect normally, but to Mick's point, you can still make things uncomfortable for your enemy by, again, narrowing your aperture, having less ambitious goals, but focusing on certain segments and spheres of influence. But we don't seem to even be able to do one of those things coherently, let alone do them all coherently and in an integrated manner, which is truly what a campaign, an effective campaign requires. Instead, what we're doing is this kind of, okay, let's just, let's see who blinks first. You know, let's gamble on Iranian economic collapse, which is unlikely to happen for the reasons that John just gave us, and hope that that happens before it costs Washington more. In the meantime, we're watching not just interceptors are the big story, munitions, but just the extended, the effect of the degrading influence that extended deployments have on our military readiness. I mean, there is a cost, obviously, for us for all of this. It may not be as readily apparent as the economic cost to Iran, but nevertheless, there's a real cost, especially when we have obligations elsewhere.

Man. All right. Great way to end it. Great summary, Andy, as usual. I knew you would come through.

Good job, Andy.

Tell us about your book, Andy. What's the title?

Well, it's The War in Gaza. All right, suspend judgment, guys. You know, read some of the, uh, I've on Substack, uh, I've, I've already published a few of the chapters as a preview. They're also available on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Um, I think, I think it's going to be— I, and I've read books on gods that have come out, and who knows what'll come out between now and when my book is published in the spring, but I think it is the most robust effort. I notice I say effort. I'm not banging my chest too hard. Robust effort to do a real, really thorough analysis of what happened and why preceding the war on October the 7th itself and the war since then to include the war against Iran, you know, the wider conflict. So please, yes, go out and buy it. Well, actually, you can't buy it yet, but commit yourself to take a look.

Yeah. Keep your eyes out for those preview chapters.

Are free and will remain so.

Yeah. The link to Andy's Substack is down in the description. The link to Find Mick and the Whitefish Security Summit is down in the description. John Hack and his 2 incredible books. Are down in the description.

Um, you're writing this book, Theory of Irregular War, which was my first one. Actually, this is my dad's copy. That's why it's so messed up because he was reading it. Um, but it's coming out as an audiobook in like a month or two. So people can listen to it because it's a little dense and I don't really read much, but, uh, it'll—

no, it's—

no, he doesn't read out loud.

Yeah.

He means he's an audio voice.

It's a guy that's doing it. He was the same guy that narrated the Uh, Iran's shadow weapons. So that'll be very— his name is, uh, Hennessy. It'll be a good one, I think.

Cool. Yeah.

So we'll have a third one too.

I know you told me about that. It sounds like an incredible story too. I don't know if you want to kind of, uh, tease it at all, but it sounds like a really cool story.

True story about how I met my wife in Iraq when ISIS was there, and she's an Iranian refugee. And, uh, we had a pretty interesting way of getting out of Iraq. So I'm gonna put that on paper. Eventually, and soon.

Right.

I'm gonna say it here so I make sure I finish it completely. I have a book coming out too. It's fiction. Uh, it should be coming out—

It's gonna be interesting.

Thanks, John. Yeah, it should be coming out in the end of October. Um, yeah, stay tuned. It's pretty incendiary, so some of you guys might not like it, but that's just life sometimes. So, you know, look out for that.

I mean, not like everyone likes Steve, but I meant incendiary.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's probably debatable on whether everybody likes me or not too. But again, don't give a fuck.

Again, who cares?

Yes.

So guys, check out all the guys' links down in the description. Of course, Mick's got another podcast called The Pub on the Porch: Applied Stoicism. Really cool pod. They just did one about The Odyssey. Check it out. And support us on Patreon, patreon.com/theteamhouse. You get ad-free episodes and early episodes, and you help support the show. So guys, a pleasure as always.

Thanks, everybody.

Bye, everyone.