I Came With Fire
"TURKEY is the DARK HORSE NATO Nation that could START WW3"
When you look at the threat that we're facing with the number of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, again, our last administration had a complete open borders policy. ISIS was able to get several hundred individuals into the United States that we know of through these migrant smuggling networks. This has really driven a whole through one of the main post-9/11 CT assumptions, which was that it's too hard to get people into the homeland illegally. That doesn't exist anymore. It's not too hard to get people into the homeland. They're here. Another one of the other big assumptions that we now know is not true is that the cartels didn't want to be involved. We know from a couple of years ago that Los Zeta's worked with IRGC to set up this op in DC at Cafe Milano targeting the Saudi ambassador. Now we designated the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. There's a lot of talk that we may start targeting them and partnered offs with the Mexicans. By the way, that New Orleans near Zev attack, the lone actor, we now know he was affiliated with ISIS. He had a number of internal personal family issues, but he called this hotline and they they talked him into the attack that he ended up doing. So it's not just importing these guys. These are very serious threats that we don't really have good coverage on, in my opinion. Welcome back everybody. I came with Fire podcast. It is your host Brandon. We're here with Chris and TJ. You guys already know, but our special guest tonight is Simone Ledin, who used to be the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, which is a pretty big title. I'm not going to lie. It's pretty impressive just like the coin board behind you, but I know we're going to have a really in-depth conversation on some stuff that maybe some viewers might find to be a little disturbing just because of the the content, but it's not too disturbing at all. We had a conversation about, you know, it's kind of dark and heavy just because it's about terrorism. It's terrorism centric, right? So for anybody listening, if you have an issue with listening to something like that, then you can catch us on the next episode. But Simone, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. You're an extremely knowledgeable person. That's why we wanted to have a conversation with you about this. When we talked on the phone, one of the things that we you it was your idea actually to start this conversation with H. Kaya and the way we left Afghanistan and the way the global war on terror ended. And I thought that was a wonderful place to start because I think from that point forward, given everything that's gone on between Ukraine and Russia and obviously the focus that the Chinese have with everything, it's sort of been forgotten. I think the Middle East, you know, Americans are probably sick and tired of hearing about terrorism that word has dominated our lives for the past 25 years. You know, I mean, for for me, you know, and then obviously for people who are older, it's been going on for a long time. But like that's this is the the word that has defined the beginning of the 21st century is the word terrorism. And just because the United States is not involved in the global war on terror does not mean that that's over for them. And the phrase you used to describe the the fall of Afghanistan was a rallying cry for jihad. And I thought that that was a wonderful way to put that. But with that context in mind, again, thank you so much for joining us tonight. And I'm ready to begin. Excellent. Yeah, thank you. Thank you guys so much. I'm really excited to get into everything tonight with you. Yeah, like, like we we sort of talked about a bit on the phone the other day. We are still kind of living in the aftermath of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, our disastrous disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which played out in H Kaya on H Kaya. I was I, you know, I still have I think we all do. I have a lot of feelings about that. I'm still very, you know, really one of the darkest times in my life personally. But and I know a lot of a lot of veterans share share that emotion. Absolutely. The we're still living with the the moral injury of of what was done to us. I think we all were injured by that. We all, especially who served there. And so, yeah, I mean, we left kind of in disgrace with 13, you know, dead service members as our kind of the final chapter of a 20 year work that we know we now know today. Those 13 service members did not have to die. And the withdrawal did not have to go down the way that it did. There were a series of really bad and some might say criminal decisions that were made and covered up later. Be that as it may, terrorist groups around the world, jihadist groups around the world looked at this and just were were and have been extremely incredibly energized by it. Like, look at the United States, you know, this huge enemy that they while they dreamed of defeating us, I think the way that we left with our tail between our legs, again, with these 13 dead service members was just a rallying cry. Like I said, a big rallying cry. And when you look at, I described it the other day, like sort of the initial pebble in the pond. And we're still seeing the ripple effects of that. We're living through that today. For example, the October 7th attack against Israel by Hamas. Would that ever have happened without the way that we withdrew from Afghanistan? I don't believe it would have. I don't believe that. So yeah, I think it's a good kind of scene setter for the discussion we're about to have regarding terrorism and the the the new rise of terrorism that we are. Unfortunately, some of us are witnessing people who want to pay attention to that. I know there's there's a lot of like you said, a lot of we're all tired of it, but be that as it may. Facts are facts. And I think those of us who live in the real world just need to face them. So it's important to educate ourselves. And thanks again for the opportunity to be part of the discussion today. And I'm looking forward to kind of digging into all elements, wherever you want to go. You know, what's kind of interesting is as we're sitting here talking, you know, they're like new developments playing out still. And so yeah, maybe when this is published, there'll be new things that have happened. I'm sure there will. So yeah, I mean, let's, where do you want to start? Well, I just want to say that I agree with you completely and totally. I think that the way we left was disgraceful. It not only was disgraceful, but it emboldened our enemies. I think that too, seeing the weakness that the United States was showing also emboldened the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I mean, you could sit here, like you said, the the pubble in the the pebble in the pond and the ripple effects of all of this, you know, the the Chinese showed up right after that and legitimized the Taliban as a as a government, right governing over the country of Afghanistan. So there's all sorts of ways that it made the United States look weak. And like I said, you on the phone to if I were to go and show 14 year old me, that's how old I was when 9/11 happened, that this was the end of the global war on terror, how our, you know, our our crusade into going after these terrorists that perpetrated that attack on that day was going to end, I probably wouldn't have believed you. And I think that's probably the same for a lot of Americans. My dad was is is retired is a retired all source analyst for the Air Force still does that. And I know for sure if I'd have showed him back then he wouldn't believe it either. Right. So it had a lot of effects and we're still filling those effects. But I think the way that you articulated that is perfect. And I would love to the I'm going to assume here and correct me if I'm wrong, but the new developments you're talking about is what President Trump mentioned at the joint session of Congress the other night about the person who organized the attack at Abigade. Is that what you're talking about? Actually, no. That was a new that was a new development. And they're right like right now in Syria, there's there's a big fight that kicked off today, a new one between some of the agree, you know, the parties that are there, there are a lot of different groups there. And actually, it's a whole it's a whole rabbit hole that I'm happy to go down. But anyway, what I was referring to is that. Okay. But but just to go back, if you don't mind to your your kind of Afghanistan. So I don't know if you know, I had the opportunity a couple years ago to testify in front of a House subcommittee on terrorism, terrorism and like Homeland Defense apologies, I can't remember exactly the name of the subcommittee, but I was I was part of one of the veterans groups that was helping people helping our Afghan partners and US citizens as well to get out. Yeah, during the last days there. And what I still think about that time, it was so crazy. It was like two weeks of just of just no sleep. And when I learned later who I was, you know, we were all on signal chat, who I was talking to later. Like what a honor, you know, what a privilege people that just kind of like jumped in to try to help people who were not authorized to be doing what they were doing. And we're just like, eff it. Let's yeah, everyone kind of, you know, roll up your sleeves. I'm calling in sick, like all that sort of thing, just really, really humbling experience just to be part of it. But also to hear like all the stuff that was going down there in Afghanistan and the decisions that were being made by our leaders and lies that were being told simultaneously by the White House, like real time was so, was so shocking to me. And, and, and then, you know, months later, like short months later, to see there started to be on social media videos from Chinese nationals that were in Afghanistan. And I remember one in particular that was kind of like, it was like, I almost, I felt almost physical pain from watching it. These two women on Chinese women on a motorcycle dressed in like normal clothes, you know, without any any covering whatsoever. They're just rolling down the street like we in charge now. And I just, it's still like, it still causes me almost physical pain. We just gave that up. Like we just gave all that we just handed it to them. And yeah, so I'm not over it. I'm not over it. But I also think it's not it's not about me. People are still building on that huge to them victory, because it was a huge, a huge victory for them for China or global jihad and, you know, yeah, I mean, I'll never forget the photo of the the ISIS guys or the Taliban or whoever they were. They were reenacting the the re raising of the flag from Iwo Jima. And that that ticked me off. But I mean, the thing that makes me the most angry is still there has been no one held accountable that was involved in that chain of command of those decisions to this day. No one has been held accountable for that. And it is the most gross miscarriage of justice, I think, in one of the most gross miscarriages of justice in our country to this day. Absolutely. Amen. And I mean, I am grateful that they, you know, got one of the planners back. I guess he was in Pakistan and and now he's he's here in the US. And that's great. And I hope they put him on trial. And there are all these, you know, details that come out during a trial. But this better just be the beginning, you know, this can't be it. Yeah, I sure hope so. Somebody else, I'm not. I'm sure you know who she is. I follow pretty closely is Sarah Adams. She has gotten quite a bit more attention, I guess, and she did that episode with Sean Ryan. And but anyway, she actually put something out saying that this guy, the way he was described isn't the actual person he's being described as. And I don't, I've not seen any pushback from I mean, there's a very wide community of Intel, you know, people on X, right, who would normally push back on something like that. But I haven't seen anything like that. I mean, do you know, like, we don't have to, you know, jump into Sarah Adams's Kool-Aid. But if you know about like, if that's actually accurate or whatever, I don't I don't know her. I've seen some of the things that she's put out there. And I respectfully disagree with her characterizations of a number of things, including like the fact that she says hums have been latin is alive. Like a lot in 100% is dead. I think there's like a dread pirate Robert situation going on in Afghanistan right now where maybe some some other bin Laden cousin is rolling around there and saying he's Hamza, but but he is he is not he is not Hamza. But yeah, I'm not, you know, everyone does their thing. And I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but but so I given that I just don't know. Yeah, you know, I worked with cash in the first admin first Trump administration and we were both doing counter terrorism. So, you know, he's very definitive about it being a planner. And right. And so I'm gonna so you feel you feel good about him being in that position then knowing like you said, like you hope the the pedal to the metal right on, you know, taking care of this stuff that it'll happen then with with cash Patel at the helm there at the FBI, you feel like that will happen. Yeah, I mean, I'm really optimistic. Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely. You know, I think if it's gonna happen, he's kind of the best, you know, maybe one of the best shots that we have. I know that he's been really focused on a lot of these issues from the beginning. I know when we work together, when he was at the White House and I was at the Pentagon, he was, you know, his CT portfolio that he had at the White House included hostage, you know, HRPR hostage recovery, personal recovery, excuse me. And he was like super aggressive, awesomely aggressive about getting our our people back and and fixing these things that had just kind of been left out to languish. Also, you know, bringing to justice individuals who are kind of still out there in the world who had been involved in murdering Americans in various ways. So yeah, I've seen him. I've seen him be very aggressive about those things. And that's what we want. And that's what we need. So yeah, I mean, go cap. Absolutely. Go cap for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's jump in and let's talk about about these groups, right? You say Isis K. And I've said this to family members and friends talking about this, they have no idea what that is. They're just, I mean, they're familiar with Isis, but not Isis K. These groups, these different factions, what they mean, the significance of some of like the even the Sunni and the Shiite Muslims, like working together in terrorist roles, like that's a big deal, right? That can't be understated. Absolutely. But let's get into some of this. Isis K, like, who are they? Yeah, so Isis K, they're the faction of Isis that's based in Afghanistan, Isis Corazon. They're they were all, by the way, they were basically destroyed right by the time that we had we abandoned Afghanistan. So they were, you know, the guys that were left were locked up in in a parawan in at Bagram, which we also abandoned. And they were, you know, let out a prison. They were like basically dead, you know, starving and miserable, and they had lost. But now, four years later, Isis, Isis K, Isis Corazon is proving to be one of the most dangerous and globally oriented factions of Isis. They're really skilled at leveraging like digital communications. They have really strong ties now into the diaspora networks. And I'm sorry to say also real time operational coordination. So they can carry out high impact attacks worldwide. There are three kind of that I, sorry, I'm just pulling up my notes here. I'm old. You're good. Don't remember everything anymore. But yeah, so I want to talk about just kind of like memory jog, the audience on a couple of attacks. The first one happened in back in January of 2024 was in Iran. And this was an Isis Corazon attack, Isis K. It targeted a memorial event for Qasem Soleimani. And this is interesting, because as you mentioned, this is a so Isis is, is Sunni is a Sunni movement. And part of their, their whole religious fanaticism is, you know, their brand of Islam is the true is the true Islam and all the Shia are heretics. This is what Isis believes. And there's some Sunni or some Shia as well who believe, I mean, I think they all do, but some are kind of more live and let live type. Whereas these extremists just want to kill each other because they believe each other is heretics. So January 2024, Isis K attacked a bunch of people who went to this memorial event for Qasem Soleimani, who was taken out in a US strike during the first, the first Trump administration in Baghdad. So this, you know, there was a secondly, there was an attack in Moscow, a big attack, which you may remember. I do remember this at the Opera House. This was really, this was really shocking, number one, because of the level of sophistication of the attack. It also was the first time that they had directly targeted Russia. Potentially, this was like retribution for what actions that Russia took against Jihadi is in the Caucasus and in Syria. But, and then there was an attack in February of last year, carried out in Germany by Turkic and Central Asian extremists. So this was very important because it showed how Isis Coruscant can incite lone wolf actors in the West. And I want to talk about that for a minute, because Isis Coruscant and Isis in general, they have these online radicalization hubs, which are like, I don't know, call centers for angry young men, basically. And they have operators who pick up, you know, pick up calls or pick up, you know, online calls and connect these folks, you know, attackers or would-be attackers with facilitators who will give them tactical guidance. They'll give them ideological motivation, and they also help them with target selection. So it's basically a terrorism direct coaching, which we've seen has enabled low tech, but incredibly high impact attacks, like a lot of these knife attacks, arson, vehicular assaults in urban centers. We've seen a lot of those. We can tie, we can tie them back to these, like I said, call centers for angry young men. And there are, unfortunately, you know, a lot of them. Some of the other points that I wanted to make about Isis K, so they are really, they're leveraging a lot of the former Soviet diaspora. So I think I mentioned these Turkic communities. Really, we're talking about people from like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and also like the Russia's North Caucasus, but also the diaspora communities in Germany and Turkey and Russia. These are all really fertile ground for radicalization because of the economic struggles, the alienation that a lot of these people are feeling there, and existing extremist networks. So the Moscow concert hall attack, which in case I didn't mention was was in March 2024, killed over 140 people. And the people, the Isis operators who carry this out were I believe, Tajik. So, yeah, I mean, they have super sophisticated media operations, they operate. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. It's crazy. I see them on X. I think it's wild that they have a presence on X, right? Like I'm all for free speech, but like, if you're coordinating terrorist attacks, I think that negates the whole free speech platform thing. And it's also wild to think about a terrorism hotline. Like thank you for calling. If you need access to tools for suicide vest, press one is exactly like what comes to mind, right? The hotline that doesn't route through India. Yeah, no, on purpose, right? Yeah, we're going to keep keep that out of India. Yeah, no, it's it's absolutely insane. But you know, I can actually give some some context to what you're saying about Germany, because I was a part of a police unit that policed off base with Politsai in Kaiser slaughter. You may be probably familiar with the K-town KMC area. Maybe you've been through Ramstein a few times. But I was there in 2018 through 2021. And there was a lot of Syrian refugees that that live there in in K-town. And a lot of the violent crime. I mean, I even went to a grocery off base grocery store one time for a guy who attempted to run people over with his little red Volkswagen in the grocery store parking lot. And it didn't it didn't work. And so it's just like this, this has been going on for a long, a long time. It's not just even, you know, post fall of Afghanistan. But this is this is like a broader issue that Europe is dealing with overall. Look at the UK right now with if they've gotten neighborhoods that are under Sharia law, but just kind of saying here, you know, this this diaspora you're talking about of this, you know, this spread out and of fleeing people going into European countries and sort of bringing this ideology and their ways of life into into them. Like it's it's not compatible first off with Western society in any way, shape or forms conversation we have in this podcast all the time. But it's just crazy to see because of the laws in a place like Germany, where I mean, like I'm just more, more versed on the laws in Germany that allow these things to happen and perpetrate the way they do. And it's even more bonkers to see them going after people for the things they post online, right, which is which is absolutely insane. Yeah, but I don't want to take too much away from what you're talking about because I think the important message you're getting at is just how much more widespread and sophisticated the communications and the way that they're able to perpetrate these things globally has, you know, gone up exponentially since there has been there's no more intervention and the way that there has been over the past 20 years, right? And then we really just gave them the tools to do these things. And then the online community as well, obviously, it's extremely, extremely issue or easy to get access to people these angry young men like you said, you know, can I jump in for a second on that? Yeah, please, because I was looking this up in the background to and to your your point as well, Simone, about just how effective that they've been in the online space for their recruitment. As you were saying that, it reminded me of a few cases that I remember from back when I was studying up to go over to Syria on one of my deployments. You know, there's been two at least two cases that I'm aware of of American women that have been convinced to travel to Syria to join ISIS and then at least one British woman that also went over. And that's just incredible to me because anybody that knows anything about Muslim culture, Sharia law, and the way that women are treated over there, it's pretty bonkers to think that people, you know, could be convinced to do that. And the one female from America, she was actually living in Alabama, a Yemeni woman, when she went over to join ISIS, she ended up being married to. If you read the article, it says she she married. That's not the way it works in that culture. Let me tell you from first aid experience, she was married to as an responsibly three different ISIS fighters while she was over there and forced to bear children for them. And then she was subsequently repatriated. If you guys want to go back and look that article up, but you know, I only bring that up to highlight and put an exclamation point on your points, Simone, of just how effective that they've been in that online space in recruiting, which is which is pretty pretty crazy. I yes, it is crazy. They've been super super effective with their online propaganda online recruiting. And I'm I'm stoked that you brought up Syria and specifically the ISIS women in Syria. I don't know if I think very few people are aware that the women are the most radical. And the like at all whole, for example, which is an IDP camp with the ISIS army and waiting, I'm excited to talk more about that there, you know, they commit more murders there than the men do. And they're raising the next generation of jihadis, you know, kids that were eight or nine years old when the caliphate fell, well, they're teenagers now, and they're ready to go. And they're in these camps that are not really, you know, our Kurdish partners, the SDF have been there sort of guarding them. But there's a there's a lot going on in Syria right now. And they're under duress from the Turks from al Qaeda slash HTS. And I mean, they could, they could abandon, they could. And it's not like they're very, you know, a lot of these IDP camps are not kept kept well. And the, you know, it's not like they're super max strong prisons that are keeping everyone inside. Can you just for the audience to find where IDP means? Sure, it's displaced person. So when the, when we, you know, the coalition beat ISIS and took back, you know, there was a caliphate, they they had successfully grabbed a huge mass of land in Syria and Iraq, and, and the coalition sort of beat them back. And the ISIS leaders and families, some of the leaders, many of the men got put in prisons in detention facilities that are run by the SDF by a Kurdish partners. And the family members were put in these displaced persons camps. And a lot of the, if you recall, during that time, a lot of people went to Iraq in Syria, who were from other places. And we call them foreign fighters. There are a lot of, a lot of these people lost their passports because the countries that they came from no longer, you know, they pulled their citizenship. They don't want them back. They don't want to deal with them. Well, so they're just sitting there. And like I said, in many people call them the army and waiting. I think, I think the current sitcom commander General Corolla calls them the army and waiting. So we just have, we have a huge number of these detainees who are radicalized beyond beyond. And the nations, the countries that they originally came from have no interest in repatriating them. So they're just, you know, rotting and being crazy and sometimes murdering each other. So I don't know. I mean, why don't the Kurds put them on trial? Why aren't they transferred to a third location outside of a hot, a hot combat zone? You know, I mean, if the prisons are about to be overrun, which at some point they might be, I mean, what are they going to do with them? They're just going to let them go? Are they going to kill them all? I mean, these are all pretty important questions that nobody wants to answer. And so everyone just kind of kicks the can down the road. Well, I can speak from personal experience, because I physically been to Al Hall. I had to perform an assessment on it during one of my deployments, right? And so, and then I also had teammates that were at one of the prisons up in Haseka. They were actually there during a prison riot in in 2019, 2020. I had to make a haysti exfil out of the area because like it's it's been that dangerous for for this long. So I just I say that to say like, we understand this problem hasn't sprung up out of the grass. Right? Like, it's been something that's been brewing. I was there in 2018 and then again, 19 into 20. And the Syrian civil war goes way back to 2011. In fact, dealing with the internally displaced person problem was was one of the missions that was given to my company while we were there. And and one of the problems was, you know, it's like you have all of this military doctrine in place about how to do deal with these types of problems. And then still, and I'm going to get myself into trouble really quick. So this is the part where I have to say any opinion that I give tonight is completely and totally my own represent the Department of Defense, the United States Army or any other entity within the DOD or the United States government. But it would seem that for everything that we've learned through the decades of being in GWOT, it still seems like it's the first time that commanders deal with problems when they when they creep up. And Al Hall was 100% one of those problems. And so now we have all these women, children, and noncombatants and like, well, what, like, what are we going to deal with them? And then it becomes a humanitarian aid problem, right? The actual mission is called population and resource control, right? And exactly the points that you, you put out Simone is like, these people are in the battle space, but they're noncombatants, right? So, so how do you deal with that? Get them out of the way of the fighting the best you can. But then that problem in itself then creates another problem, which has gone on to become this terrorist haven, which is what Al Hall, the IDP. And by the way, I was reliably informed while I was there, we're not supposed to call them Camp Simone, it's facilities, it's an IDP facility. I'm seeing so much trouble writing. That's right. Simone has no leash. Stop calling the camps, Chris. That's what I got told 100 times over. But yeah, just to color the situation, so people kind of get a picture in their head, anybody can go Google it, you guys can can go get a sense of what it looks like. But basically, just imagine like the five boroughs, right, in gangs of New York, but instead of like, run down apartment buildings, it's just tents as far as the eye can see. And a lot of these tents aren't even made from like actual tent material. You'll you'll see like USAID grain and rice bags that have been repurposed to make these shanties that these people are living in. And then the the Kurdish SDF, the security, the security, wait, the Syrian Democratic Forces in the area, like they don't have enough guards because they're still fighting basically on all fronts that they don't have enough guards to go to this place to to guard these people. And they know for a fact that the borders of the camp are completely porous. Fighters move in and out of there and are given sanctuary by the the women and the children that inhabit the camp the bulk of the time. They freely move weapons and equipment in there and then they hide them men weapons and material in the camp knowing that if the Kurdish SDF guards were to go in, like there's so many people in this facility that the guards would be overrun in an instant if they wanted to be, right? Like the situation is is untenable, it's tenuous at best. But the reason so then that begs the question why do they why do they stay there? Because USAID continues to move food and other supplies in there to them it becomes a hub. A lot of the ISIS fighters are getting a hold of these food supplies and other things that are moved in. They get requisitioned let's call it and then given out to the ISIS fighters and and for them it actually has worked out so that way they can have almost like a central hub of logistics. That's basically being maintained by the SDF under the watchful eye of the coalition because if they were to do anything the headlines would read Kurdish SDF slaughters women and children and they know that and so that's the cover that's being run there and then to just finish off the context of all of this now our Kurdish partners are basically because of the way that we treated them and this is where I said I have to disclaim because I'm getting in big trouble. I was there on the ground the day that President Trump gave the order to remove everybody from Syria. I had been in a meeting with a local let's just call them you know village leader the day before where they asked us the question how long is the United States going to stay and and solve this problem. It's the number one question in every KLE right and we had to give them the line we are we are here by the orders of the president according to the national security strategy until this mission is complete. 24 hours later I my ass was on a plane and I was sitting in her BLA rack and we went from her bail and ended up hanging out in Kuwait for for about 40 days right and then the the really weird part was after 40 days we got on a got in a convoy and pushed back into the very same guys that we just told 40 days before we weren't going anywhere and we had to show back up like well that that was awkward huh guys let's go back to what to running operations so you can see how that audibly like obviously puts a huge kink in that relationship moving forward and so again now here we are with the you know the Kurds being left with this situation the prisons the IDP facilities and also still basically fighting for their own I'm gonna you know in their eyes their own survival I'm not going to get too often the weeds of the politics of that with the entire eyes of the rest of the world on top of them watching them like hawks you know to see if they're going to commit any war crimes as it were so that's kind of the situation just to to once around the world to drop people into when we talk about these locations and in Syria specifically to kind of color the canvas for for everybody out there moving forward with the conversation I think that's that's such that's so useful um to kind of contextualize everything and and let me let me add to that in my own way be like I was at the Pentagon when that when that order was given um I was I was working I was leading the um special operations combating terrorism office in the office of the secretary of defense and um you know I people you hear these titles and you think like wow you had so much you know power and I was still a staff officer I was just uh you know a higher staff officer um but what what was clear to me and what I've understood later is that president trump always wanted to leave Syria he ran on that and there was a lot of of resistance because the some of the leadership in the defense department didn't agree with what president trump wanted to do and of course he's the elected president and but there there was a lot of uh avoidance there was a lot of avoidance and unfortunately it played out the way that it did because because that's how it played out um are you able to go into when you say avoidance like specifically like what you mean it sounds like well I'm asked like someone like you're the the verse almost sounds like sedition like almost like a veiled way to say seditious behavior would you agree I mean that's a legal term and I'm not a lawyer but sure but um you know more than avoid it let's put it that way yeah that was I mean that was like let's let's kind of like draw this out as long as we can like he you know instead of being extremely responsive and saluting and moving out that's absolutely not what happened and um and finally uh you know the the my understanding is and I you know I wasn't there at the White House but my understanding is the level of frustration got to the point where it was like we're gonna you know fine you know this is how we're gonna do it then if you're not gonna listen to me you know my understanding is that he had requested a plan for a long time and no plan appeared and so um so he just made the decision to pull the plug and again I have no firsthand knowledge of this this is like me you know staff officer to another staff officer but that but that that was my understanding at the time of what happened and I also understand that he had some people around him um who were who successfully kind of talked him off the um off the pull this immediately pull everyone immediately um and convinced and and we're convincing enough to um to the point where he reconsidered just pulling everyone immediately and that that was why you guys got put back in well and I can tell you too from like I said from being on the ground I didn't know then because orders come all the way down and I I'm at the very bottom but what was communicated to us was listen we can only have so many people in country at a given time right and so what we're going to do is we're going to do what's called OTH or over the horizon operations and what that means is we're going to stage in places like Kuwait we're going to stage in Erbil was a big one at the time and we'll push people in for 29 days hint hint wink wink Brandon and then on the 29th day then we're going to pull everybody back to Erbil to rest and refit for a day and then we'll push back in for 29 days and the reason that that 29 day mark is so important um is for TDY orders versus actual deployment orders you can spend up to 29 days in a location in the military and if you trip over that 30th day then family separation allowance kicks in and a bunch of other you know pays like political semantics almost but by saying that you're staged in Iraq and only pushing in to do uh operations then what you can say legally on paper is that no my forces are in Iraq yeah that's where they're based out of and it wasn't until and I'm just I'm just saying what did happen I'm not throwing shade I don't know where the orders came from and I can't speak to any of that but I can say from being on the ground like that's how we were ordered to conduct business hmm yeah and so that's why we were in there uh and and my team specifically was part of the bog that was allowed to stay in country like we we had that number but a many other people were doing the over the horizon thing and getting pulled back to make sure that the personnel count stayed under it was a very very strict very strict number yeah yeah that came from on high um is my was my understanding the the number but um man I mean what a way to what what a way to uh to to run uh you know to run this it's uh it's very you know it's it's hard to really put it into words and then also the conditions that you all had to had to endure while you were there um and the guys that on top like not exactly you know a garden spot um I know there were a lot of hardships when I rolled over to the middle east job I used to get reports my my staff actually I had one guy um my serial director would come and like just hand me these reports of just horrendous things that were happening there like I remember the there were some SDF you know the SDF families were nearby um and they would you know the wives would get pregnant some of them would have problems with their pregnancies and they would come to on top like let us in help us my wife's been in labor for two straight days and um the only person there was a medic um and medics you know you need obstetric surgery for a situation like that and um you know I'm not I'm I don't want to go into some of the stuff that I heard that happened there but that was not right that was not right what we we forced our service members to do was not right and um and my understanding again was that this was came from CENTCOM and um general mckenzie who was the commander at the time um was just like you're not authorized to do anything it's like man these are you know our partners and their fans their wives and and that's wait that's your order okay great thank you now that's that's kind of why I asked like the question about when you said like there was like avoidance to do anything and just to paint this picture for people listening like yeah this is policy president trump says this is what wants to happen but there's people actually behind the scenes dragging their feet people making poor decisions like this the reason why these things become disasters right it's not just the president saying hey this is what I'm gonna do or what I want to do there's all these other people involved that have ways of bogging things down and making things not go the way that they're intended to and you know one of the one of the questions I wanted to ask you is just how far did we just get set back in that region the way we left like I I asked that in the way that like I have read about how after 9/11 and we went back into you know Afghanistan and just how far behind we were because when we left after the Soviets left we didn't keep any sort of tabs on the region didn't learn anything new didn't understand the dynamic or anything like that and so like there was this whole catch-up game the United States Intel community really had to do by going back in there like just so how far behind did this like set us back and combating the spread of this brand of terrorism and then why is it so much worse than it was before well um yes we we lost you know we lost our eyes we and yes the the Taliban objectively were you know we're winning in Afghanistan but I I also think I mean there's it's such a such a broader discussion but our Afghan partners um especially that the Anasoff the Afghans off were extremely capable and the zero units like the the CIA paramilitary the the Afghans that CIA had had trained over there they were extremely capable and were you know running ops they were they were doing what they were trained to do and we provided a logistics backbone for them and we helped them with our targeting and all of that um and that was the unfortunately you know we the way that we uh we built the system they were always going to be reliant on us and and so the whole thing fell apart uh as on purpose on at the end and and you can argue that and I I won't disagree um but you know now the the folks that you know worked with us why would they help us now um and a lot of them have you know they fled for their lives and and um are living elsewhere um or not inclined to help us or switch to the other side or you know all of the above so great so we can do you over the horizon whatever that means I mean maybe we're flying ISR whatever good for us but you know we when you look at the threat that we're facing with the number of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan again um and the fact that we've had our last administration had a complete open borders policy here you know these ISR was able to get several hundred individuals into the United States that we know of um through these migrant smuggling networks um this has really driven a whole through one of the main post 9/11 CT assumptions which was that it's too hard to get people into the homeland illegally um that that doesn't exist anymore they it's not too hard to get people into the homeland they're here um and the scope and severity of you know how many and who are they that's a major concern so um and also they're not they haven't just been using one uh people you know migrant smuggling network people smuggling network they've been using dozens another one of the other big assumptions that we now know is is is not true any longer is that the cartels didn't want to be involved because they wanted to avoid you know the heat from us well we know from a couple of years ago and this was very public in the media that Los Zeta's worked with IRGC to set up this op in DC at Cafe Milano targeting the Saudi ambassador at the time um now looking forward to now we've designated uh the cartels some of the cartels we've designated as foreign terrorist organizations there's a lot of talk that we may start targeting them in partnered ops with the Mexicans or maybe even have like task force ops unilateral ops i don't know um that you know that might cause gloves to be i mean maybe the they will fully take their gloves off and that includes you know facilitation of uh of terrorists of you know weapons and and other materials and stuff so and i would say um by the way that New Orleans near Zeev attack the the lone actor um that guy uh we now know he was he obviously he was um an extremist he was affiliated with ISIS he had a number of internal personal family issues and you know i think he initially was just going to go take out his family or family members but he called this hotline that i talked to you about before and they they talked him into the attack that he ended up doing so it's not just importing these guys they're also you know folks here in the homeland who have problems and um decide they want to act out and um that these are very serious threats that we don't really have good coverage on in my opinion from a collection perspective and i'm very happy to see that we are like with our new leadership we're taking this a lot more seriously we're stopping this nonsense of you know domestic like the the domestic uh extremism as the biggest threat to the homeland come on right come on that's that's like political theater this is real um so yeah so i you know uh debbie downer but it's it's it's pretty great now you know it's it's uh it's pretty bleak well i agree with you i don't think it's a debbie downer i think it's exactly what people need to hear i mean like i was in during the extremism stand down you were probably still serving federal government and may remember that and just how out of focus the goals and priorities are to say that you know white people in the military white men in the military are the largest problem we have to deal with and racism and meanwhile right over the last four years the border is wide open and doing nothing about it you know so i know we know that we're not doing enough about but what should we be doing to defeat this here at home and then abroad and that's a huge question but like what should we be doing in Simone's opinion to keep to keep our country safe well i the first thing that we had to do that we did was to get new leadership in um who actually understands the threat and is taking it seriously um i i'm you know i'm hopeful with the new team that they understand they clearly understand the threat and they're already starting to prioritize you know finding people and deporting them as quickly as possible but as we know there are a lot of people who made it in who were never you know they they were never detected crossing so we don't know who they are so this is a massive um domestic federal law enforcement effort but also local and um you know our our state and local law enforcement have also a huge hugely important task ahead of them to to help identify these folks and um and also to kind of look for the red flags um that we're seeing uh and unfortunately there's a lot of them have to do with public places and um places where where Americans gather and obviously this happens overseas as well but i have to say you know the situation in in europe it's it's different than it is here because um there they also have like the the populations like their their flow of migrants has been so extreme that it's actually changed the um i don't know what the term is like the demographic yes the the demographics of right of these places oh yeah we've all seen their cities in europe that are completely you know taken over by by these communities now and and so we don't to the extent that we have that here and i know there are some places where that does exist um i think it's not a done deal it's not just an accepted reality um and and so uh i'm i'm hoping that we all agree we're taking this seriously and um you know we have the time right now we have a limited time in my opinion because they're going to be more elections you know we've we've got two years until the midterms and a lot of people are saying that maybe at least on the house side uh the house might swing back to the democrats and then they're going to start putting up a lot of roadblocks for um for the administration to kind of be able to finish what it's starting but um i think that's i think that's our best chance i definitely don't want to come off as someone who has like full faith and confidence in our government in general because i expect to be long inside to be able to to just say low trust the government but um but you know the the scale and scope of of what the federal government can do in terms of identifying these people and um you know taking the actions that need to be taken it's it's not as easy for regular citizens to be able to do that we don't have you know we don't necessarily have we don't have those tools so i i think it's a combination of things but it we have to move quickly they have to move quickly and um you know i hope i hope they do i hope they do it's nice to see that already one person was fired for not moving quickly enough i like to see that um and i hope that kind of puts puts uh fear and everybody else um that things need to move things need to move fast yeah no it's just crazy when you to say that you're surprised to see you're like glad to see that somebody has lost their job for not doing it it's just like if this was target and i wasn't doing my job i would lose it and the stakes are so much higher right so it's just kind of wild to even have these conversations where we're like astonished to see somebody lose their position for incompetence right and it honestly makes you wonder like how much of what goes on in the background is incompetence or just like sheer intentional ignorance uh to not follow through on going after some of these targets and and keeping our country safe i mean anybody can speculate i mean nobody has that answer there right but i mean the incompetence definitely shows but one of the things i wanted to to ask you about too is the fall of the you know the Assad government there in Syria is there is now the loss of secular leadership secular like bath party leadership in the region which is a problem because now you're just dealing with more religious zealots than you were before and you have um you know that vacuum that the Bashar al-Assad regime left is going to be filled with more religious extremism you know now that the a like can we talk about like the significance of that because i think that that significance is can't be understated but it isn't talked about enough and then what you think um is going to occur in the region especially with the relationship that Russia used to have with the Assad regime well um the answer is turkey yes the uh the the Assad regime obviously has fallen um but it was it fell to hts which is you know a designated terrorist organization affiliated with al-qaeda and they their sponsor has been turkey um and a NATO partner a NATO partner it's supposed to say that oh i'm gonna say a NATO partner and um thanks Chris keep me honest this is like very spicy okay because the no let's get spicy i'm right i like spicy i like spicy this is spicy because uh you know dc i'm ryan simona dc folks um and especially i mean and rightly so you know in the the trump administration like trump hasn't has a uh a a very healthy respect for for air to one for the Turkish leader and for for what he's done um i would say his rationale air to one's rationale in syria is very similar to russia's in ukraine um but it's a it's a dance right now because each like i said hts designated terrorist organization but now you know they changed out of there and and i'm i'm positive they're like being heavily coached by their turkish overlords you know they took off their uniforms and they put on suits and ties and they're you know on their uh world tour seeking international recognition um but their hold on syria is not stable um it's not stable at all you have curds and the southern opposition which includes the dreuse in sueda um they have refused to accept hts leadership and that's a lot of the reason why hts is doing this kind of polite dance right now instead of just the the the mass you know the mass executions of religious minorities that they may want to be doing they're not doing that right now um but the fact that you have u.s designated terrorists that are appointed to leadership roles in this new government this is to me a much clearer indicator of their planned way ahead and um you know what's been interesting to watch too is the israeli is kind of getting in on it um the dreuse were always uh the dreuse in the south were always allied with asad um and now that the asad regime is gone they you know feel very threatened by hts and um are starting to kind of flirt with israel and israel's flirting back and uh and so to me that's um that's incredibly interesting but um this whole chaos has also enabled al-qaeda like aqap um al-qaeda in syria to kind of come back a bit and so the us actually has uh carried out seven i think seven strikes now against al-qaeda in syria and this highlights it should highlight to us the severity um of and the concerns about the threat from al-qaeda in syria they've also stepped up attacks al-qaeda has stepped up its attacks in syria including the use of uh uav attack capabilities um and i mean we all know you can jerry rate commercial uavs to deliver munitions all day long this is this is uh you know classically what they're doing but i'm if you're interested i'm happy to talk a lot more about turkey because a lot of people yes we understand like what all is going on with them and it's yeah like we like i said on the phone i am not afraid to get info dense right like i i want that sort of thing because this is the end of the weeds conversations i like to have and like you just said not a lot of people know this stuff i'm not as well versus you are to me i bring you on the show because i consider you an expert in these areas and i know they value your opinion right so yes let's jump into those things because i have other questions too but i want to know like what your professional opinion is well um turkey is going full dark side basically um they you know this is one this is one of the biggest kind of geopolitical realities that we're facing right now and it's clear to me washington like they don't want to they're not prepared to face this right now obviously and you mentioned this already it's a nato problem um but let's be honest we would not even have an isis problem anymore if it were not for turkey if it were not for airdo on um i mean if you listen to his speeches and compare them to jalani's who's you know the um the figurehead of this uh of this new government in syria airdo on sounds more than jalani does um and his you know he's engaged in this huge what they call adventurism and it's really paid off for him i mean so let's if you're cool let's dive into that a little bit so let's talk about libia first so in the libia in civil war which was like 2019 2020 time frame airdo on um decided to back the gna um which was the government government of national accord which was against uh califa haftar his libia national army and haftar was kind of who we were backing he was a u.s citizen um dual citizen anyway also the lna was supported by brussia uae egypt and france okay so turkey decided to go against all of those countries and back the other horse um so they sent and so what they did was number one they sent syrian mercenaries uh to go fight they deployed their drones which uh we know are extremely effective and actually were responsible for turning the tide against haftar and then they also provided um a bunch of different types of military support naval support we're talking electronic warfare air defense systems and then they they signed a maritime deal after all this was over with libia which expanded kind of turkeys reach in the mediterranean um so in 2020 haftar's uh offensive collapsed turkey got these energy and military deals with libia um and he forced airdo on forced um the european players france in italy to recognize that turkey is a player in libia's future um so you know libia today is still fragmented uh turkey could still get bogged down in this you know kind of long-term unstable situation um and but short term it's really paid off um and i think i'll not just the u.s but egypt and the uae i think they still definitely see turkey as a threat but uh they're they respect i mean you got to respect the power you know he won he won that one so and then let's talk for a second about azur by jon so in the nagorno carabak which a lot of people talk about and um and people i think people pretend that they know they know what what that's about and and actually don't so basically turkey um in 2020 turkey backed azur by jon's war against armenia um and helped azur by jon to reclaim the nagorno carabak after decades of armenian control so they provided their drones which i mean that was again decisive just decimated the armenian forces they trained the azur by jonnie forces made them a lot more like modernized them and then they also sent their syrian mercenaries similar to libia and um they also provided diplomatic cover which is important to know which kind of prevented russia from intervening too much on armenia's behalf and also helps make that kind of a decisive thing so azur by jon won decisively armenia surrendered large parts of nagorno carabak um that was back in like november i want to say of 2020 and turkey cemented its role as azur by jon's primary military ally um and really gave it access to the caucuses gave turkey access to the caucuses as a result really weakened russia's position um moscow was way too slow to react to all that um so now you know we'll see there was a peace deal in 2023 um where armenia was forced to recognize like that azur by jon had won but um but the russians still control the security guarantee in the region so it's not like over over um but i don't know i mean the friction between turkey and russia could still definitely escalate russia's obviously bogged down in ukraine right now um but um i mean just suffice it to say turkeys military dominance in these areas has significantly undermined russia and their their desire for regional dominance and this is like you know big you know kind of what's that that big risk game kind of thing like you're talking about big movements on the board um and it's important to understand that because obviously there are all these pockets of instability and some of them are very large pockets this is where these um the terrorism breeds because you don't have um you don't have control over these areas or they're constantly going back and forth between different players and then you have turkey who is actually supporting them and funding them and training them um and no one wants to say that because they're a nato partner and they're really powerful and they have you know great they have a very strong uh defense industrial complex they're producing really high quality tech stuff and um it's a problem it is a problem i just think it's interesting that here we are again right the sick man of europe is once again on the wrong side of history but this time there's a treaty a really big one right that is keeping them close to to europe in a way that is dangerous to something you know like world war three pop off right so like turkey just seems to have a problem i think it also just drives home the point we were making earlier i think the reason why they're constantly on the wrong side of history to say is because of the perfidiousness of the the muslim religion in that area right and again just like the reason why there's always problems is because that brand of islam is you know the in general right is not compatible with western values you know and so it it begs the question it as this all wraps up between ukraine and russia like what sort of issues is russia going to now have to shift focus on and deal with in that region and then are we just opening a new host of issues with another nato country or a nato a real nato country this time not one that just wants in right and bring those those troubles to the forefront like what do we looking at you know what i mean that even that makes it more complicated because turkey is a nato partner yeah well and turkey has used its status as a nato partner to you know get just crazy concessions i mean look at was it last year the year before there were a couple new countries that were that were um you know slated to join but to join nato but everybody had to agree and turkey was the one holdout on several countries and uh and they had demands that ended up being met and the and then therefore they agreed but this is turkey is a country that plays definitely plays both sides to its own advantage um i i mean i do think okay so so they're i mean they're in a strong position right now they could there is an argument that over time i mean turkey risks being overextended um and especially like they've pissed off a lot of important countries you know Russia, Iran, Europe um and obviously we're still looking at long-term instability with Libya and Azerbaijan if if like war starts breaking out in these places again with Syria being as hot as it is i mean turkey's gonna have to be in a lot of places at the same time and it could be stretched but i mean it's in a pretty strong position at the moment and um and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of like moaning and groaning about why can't we kick turkey out of nato there's no provision to kick any country out of nato once you're a nato member you're a nato member forever and uh and that that's that's the reality so um and i think if you look at the history of nato there's been i'm not i'm certainly not a nato expert but i know over the years there've been tensions with different countries different nato members at different times during the soviet era there were a number of countries that were basically like soviet satellites but they were nato members and that was awkward so uh nato has had and survived uh periods of you know drama like this in the past but this is um you know it's it's it's it's pretty serious when turkey's backing you know these jihadi's terrorists and that's what they're doing back in alcata let's just say it so um what does that mean for the west and and which is supposed to be represented by nato what does that mean for that right i mean and then turkey turkey is a a nuclear country as well which just makes this even more complicated yes yeah well what what is russia going to have to do you know actually this is gonna be a three prong i guess three prong question because i have some other some other uh bones to pick with some other countries in the region but like russia is inevitably going to have to face this as well because they had such a relationship with bishar al-asad baton you know his version of the bath party they're like what are they going to have to do to fix this problem or or keep it from coming across their border and making things even more worse well i mean they had a big important naval base in tartus and um and that is interesting right before we jumped on this uh on this podcast i saw that there was a a new kind of push from the alloys i.e the former asad army forces former syrian army forces coming from the south pushing pushing uh back against hts um i don't know there were some pretty horrible images that i saw in social media but if there's an opportunity for russia to regain access to its port in tartus guaranteed that they want that they need that that's they want this naval base um and and um it gives them access to a whole i mean it's a game changer for them truly so uh we'll see if there's an opportunity for them to to regain anything there but um right now there's there's no access for them in syria and and so if that is a temporary or permanent situation remains to be seen um but that that will be that is a big determiner for them in my opinion in terms of how successful will they be in other places yeah chris you said you had a question about turkey yeah so i thought it was really interesting uh or or really poignant i should say rather earlier brandon when you layered the religious component on top of all of this because i think that's one thing that you know dc for all of their big thinkers uh up there have not been able to like reconcile with all of their middle east policy specifically is understanding the religious component on top of all of the geo politics and and the the different factions and terrorist organizations on top of all of that you still have the religious extremism on the one side and then even over on the other if you're just talking about you know the the countries um just taking them holistically you know the the different flavors of islam in turkey versus in syria iraq and and so on and so forth um and i'd be really interested simone in and this is a your personal opinion um on this through the ones of your experience if the united states was maybe a little too myopic in choosing the kurdish sdf as the partner in the region because i think that that really put a crawl in in you know in turkey's soup as it were really put a bee in their bonnet and it definitely hasn't done anything um to quell uh unrest in the region right because turkey does not like the curds um and i again when i was there you know turkish soldiers were in northern syria knowing that they're a nato ally knowing that there's absolutely no way that american soldiers can show up on screen with turkish soldiers right there there could be no rounds traded there um and so they they had the political buffer that they needed to pull off some of the operations that they did and they took full advantage of it um very much so um and so i'd be interested in your take on that uh again from your your just your personal opinion on the issue no i mean great great spicy question uh i will we like spicy i will give you my opinion uh which is also probably spicy um yeah i mean turkey so this is like part of the you know barack obama gift that keeps on giving thanks for putting us in this pickle with the sdf which are just a red line yeah yeah they're actually the the reason i left government in 2014 while we're talking about it yeah oh wow that was it for me that was it for me you guys you guys started with hkaya that was a huge impetus for me going yep i yeah it's disgusting anyway sorry not to derail your train of thought there's some on it i feel yeah i i was like what am i doing with my life um money real talk if you're not asking existential existential questions every day like are you really involved in the federal government right what am i doing right um yeah no um but no i mean turkey yeah so erno on sunni this is the sunni brand of islam but obviously uh ottoman turks like he he wants uh you know second ottoman empire that's his that's his goal and um sounds familiar uh yeah here we are here we yes indeed indeed um but that's you know that's his stated goal it's not a secret he gives many speeches about it and um again it's it's uncomfortable but it's it's facts and yeah i mean our partners the stf uh they're cut out from the larger group of of Kurds that are not religious that are not muslim that are communist um they are and they are communists they are secular and communist and um some i think some might be Zoroastrian i don't know you know better than i do super old religion yes small faction yeah but um yeah and they're you know parts of them not the stf but other parts pkk have have uh you know committed uh terrorist acts in turkey and turkey absolutely a hundred percent views them as terrorists and is wants to wipe them off the the map um and is absolutely committed to it and has been for many years and we have ended up to our you know in my opinion to our great detriment now we we must protect them they are very for the reasons we talked about before with isis and the the um idp camps and all the rest of it like we they're important partners that we must we must kind of keep them with us but uh it's super uncomfortable because turkey wants them all dead and every so often they'll kill a bunch of them and it's it's awful i mean it's awful it's an it's a it's an untenable situation that to be honest with you i'm amazed that it's gone on this long without like some someone mass murdering somebody because tensions are tensions are really that high um and so you know maybe there's some good diplomacy going on i have to hope so but it's um it's it's so tense to watch it and now to understand that things are are not calm in seria they're getting hotter and i i don't know again if i this was something that i saw right before um i dialed into this but that turkey was actually sending its own troops into seria now because uh because of this alloy push and their concern about you know what it might mean and displacing the hts forces and and all the rest of it so yeah it's still it's still very much um an un it's unfinished business and i don't know how the story is going to end it has a potential to end really badly in several different ways um but i hope i hope that um different parts of the countries can be i mean maybe i think i think that the best excuse me the best case scenario for seria is that it's just it ceases to exist as a country which i think it already has it gets divided up into a couple of different kind of regional zones and um maybe people can stop killing each other for a minute i i don't know i mean that that's best case scenario it's a big wish terrorists are good a terrorist and and the wild west is there i mean there's a reason that unrest breeds these types of situations because people bad people that want to do bad things will move into lawless areas you know it's it's the middle east's version of most isolated opportunity basically right but it provides them an opportunity for locations as they can train move men weapon and equipment and all the aforementioned things that we've talked about but i just thought i always found it very interesting because obviously we chose the Kurdish sdf is it was a very much so like the enemy of my enemy is my friend um but then in in a tale as old as us foreign policy we jumped into eon's old you know uh um wars and fights and struggles that we have no concept right and and then we we pluck a group out and we're like you're you're my boy blue and we're gonna back you and we've gotten ourselves it the Kurdish sdf in my opinion really is the bubble gum that we can't scrape off the bottom of our shoe now and it puts us in such an interesting situation because you know they're fighting for an autonomous Kurdistan which i'll leave you guys to go out and look up the borders of where that would be but it would basically be chunks of northern iraq syria and then parts of turkey and so you can just see and i ran and i ran we're getting there so you can see how all of the muslim countries immediately revile from that because now you're talking about moving borders and then on top of everything simon you so greatly uh articulate described right how how not only like they're they're not muslim they are largely atheistic some Zoroastrian and communistic and government and like all of those things run counter like hardcore communist hardcore communist oh oh i know try to work with us with a sergeant so yeah it's a very interesting situation and uh i agree with your analysis wholesale on that one i am very surprised that the situation has gone on this long um but like i gave the bubble gum analogy at this point really they're they're the thing that's standing in the way of just total anarchy and so it almost became like well the apparatus has lasted this long like well it kind of just to your point about like borders and how arbitrary like you think about when isis took over they went out with bulldozers and knocked over the old sykes pico borders like these are 100 over 100 years old now right like these things you just can't you can't be arbitrary with them and my question to you is like what is up with the other Arab nations in the region not getting involved in having a more heavier hand and dealing with this it feels like it should not be the responsibility of the west to deal with these things other than protecting its own borders and sovereignty right from from terrorism and and you know expansion into europe and and uh our country but like what why don't these super mega wealthy nations like Saudi Arabia get themselves involved with these things when they absolutely should and then obviously that's going to lead into talking about Iran too but like let's let's eat the elephant one bite at a time right so i mean i actually my answer to that is pretty short like just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening they there is they're very active just quietly um okay let's talk about that that's always how they that's always how they operate i actually have like a very deep respect for um how they you know how they navigate a lot of these geopolitical issues and i think we could learn from their example really uh in some ways yes i do i actually would love to hear that because i'm not i'm pretty ignorant in this there their style is just very different from ours you know and there's a lot of oh there's a lot of quiet talking but they don't do everything out in public they don't lay all their business out in in public like we do it's just very different but it's it's also because our leaders are uh i i know this sounds weird our leaders aren't meant to be accountable to us to the citizens and so that our system of government requires them to kind of air our our business um and sort of do things out in public um we require that of them and um these other like the gulf countries that you're referring to they have a much different system of government and uh and they that requirement doesn't exist for them so um and they've learned over time and their cultural reasons for them why they do things this way but um yeah it's it's just very different um but they're extremely active they've been extreme like all these things that we've talked about tonight i mean they're involved in in many of them and they're you know a couple of these countries have been really important allies to us during during some of these periods well i guess then it almost would seem you said they're so heavily involved that almost from an outsider's perspective and for me definitely more of a layman in this area because i don't have an intelligence background and know um you know what goes into it it almost seems as if from my again my outsider perspective looking in that their relationship and all of the drama to use that where it goes on the area doesn't seem very effective because it is it's constantly happening and maybe that's one of the reasons why they want to keep what they're doing quiet because they think you know they they don't it doesn't always work out and um and you know why be embarrassed for example but i mean let me remind you of a couple years ago when we had boots on the ground in yemen fighting al-qaeda that was actually as part of a seerian let uh seerian on the brain uh Saudi led Saudi led coalition and there were Saudi and Emirati boots on the ground in yemen and we were um working with them we had um advise and assist in some areas and we were doing other things as well so um that was like you know that was that was before afghanistan that was back when we were trusted partner um and uh i don't know i i don't know how things would play out today um and yemen of course has become a much bigger thornier issue than it was back then because again avoidance just like it seems to me right if we're talking about this like i guess almost soft power you're referring to then the influence they've got behind the scenes it's like well if everybody else is putting blood sweat and tears and troops boots on the ground in the region to try to solve these problems it it seems like as regional powers that they should be more involved i mean would you agree or disagree with that like it you know if if if american lives are over there and european lives are involved and whoever else is over there right like you have skin in the game you live in the region like you are a regional power like why isn't the same level of investment overt investment you're going on i mean i think um i think there is investment going on i think uh intelligence sharing is uh a really key part of this counter-terrorism challenge that we're all dealing with um and they they've been great partners in that respect like for many you know for many years and it's it's important to to say that because there's still a lot of you know there've been there's still um i don't want to get myself into trouble i mean i i think you know i i just want to say that um you always want partners to do more and you all but you also have to look at what are what are the partners bring to the table you know what i mean what are their strengths what are their weaknesses and um what are their kind of pain points that are no-go zones and so i think um in terms of like for example gaza you know there are a lot of countries that are involved in trying to figure out what what that looks like you know what does what does a gaza look like in the future um and how to do yes right yeah say again trump trump has a video out about it he was making it yeah yeah i mean is it a joke uh what is it we did i know i would never say that it was a joke i would never say that um but you know that's a potential very big role that some of these countries can play um but also like look at the Abraham Accords that was a huge that was a huge risk that the UAE took um UAE Morocco Sudan Bahrain um they took a huge they took a huge risk in um in signing up for that and it's held it's held even through this uh this war and um that's remarkable and and a huge achievement and it people don't talk enough about the it's not just like an economic agreement it's there's defense stuff happening too there's intelligence stuff happening too and again just because it's it's not it all happening out you know in public for everyone to see doesn't mean it's not happening in their their legitimate reasons why um these things need to maybe not see the light of day but doesn't mean they're not happening i think there's a more simple explanation to your question Brandon and it goes back to the religiosity of the muslim faith because like when you apply that across the middle east and and understand that even though we're looking at separate countries the way that they view themselves as as muslims right across the region it affects everything they do even at a governmental level um and i bring that up because i had a really profound thought and i just lost it religiosity of what oh no i know i hate it when stuff flies up the back of my tbi brain um but yeah just to wrap up what i was saying like they in in conducting business with each other right the two big other it is the two biggest uh aspects of the muslim faith and i don't think a muslim would describe it this way but from the outside looking in is there is their piety right the way that they express their faith and like say face and you see them practicing their faith um and then layering on that anybody that's dealt with middle easterners will tell you they they they are very shrewd and they pride themselves on being incredibly shrewd and they will take you for everything you're worth right and they pride themselves on it it's it's a point of of you know pride i'll just say the word again um and so like when you kind of layer those things together and you watch the way they do business across the countries and understanding that they're you know only doing what's best right for souti to use that as the example but then also as a muslim and protecting muslims across the middle east then i think that that gives a clearer lens for seeing why you know to your point that they haven't been more overt in the media and on the political space of being like yes we're involved because you know this is the right thing to do that's just not the way that in my opinion like a muslim would think about these issues if that makes sense yeah you'd think the money going into their countries from ours would have enough uh they would have gotten the picture by now i guess about foreign foreign policy and diplomacy i guess but again you know that's just my westerners perception of what involvement looks like and what i think involvement should look like i guess and and again like you know way better than me Simone um and the like you said they behind the scenes way that the sort of intervention goes on um you know i don't think that i i don't know maybe i guess i won't get the answer to that that question as far as like what they do and how they do it because it just seems to me that i know if you're there regionally and you would think with all the money that they have that there would be more influence and but you know i don't i don't have that answer i guess let me put it to you this way so um you know radical Islam is the issue not the religion of Islam because you know Islam is like one of the biggest religions in the world and you don't have you know all Muslims of the world conducting these crazy attacks it's it's the radicalized jihadi version of Islam and you know if you if you look at um you know i i lived in the UAE for a couple of years and um and while i was there i learned i don't know if they still do this i think they must but they used to have a rule that uh on Fridays the the sermon that was delivered at all the mosques across the UAE was one sermon the same sermon so you didn't have these you know different religious leaders who had different views and some of them perhaps radical and extremist giving they weren't able to radicalize people from a pulpit um and i think that still goes on today where it's like controlled you know it's it's controlled you know in a way that's like you know um they talk about peace and coexistence and you know they have the Abrahamic center i don't know if you've been to UAE recently but they built an Abrahamic center there with a church mosque and a synagogue and like that that's like amazing you know that's amazing and then you have you but so so this is something that they built there in Saudi you know the strives that they made in such a short time to um to move away from the previous generations focus on you know the Wahabi brand of Islam which is very radical um and and you know has caused i will say has caused a lot of damage across the world and some would say you know was responsible for for 9/11 this brand of of Islam they completely moved away from that there um they completely changed their you know education the way that they're teaching the next generation if you go to Riyadh today you will not you won't believe your eyes what you know the way that men and women coexist what women uh you know the addition of women to the culture women are not away anymore women are like out front and there and um this is a process that they're undergoing because um they do have to worry about i mean the the the Saudi population is large and you know it's just like turning any big ship i mean think about kind of changing the mind of your population that takes time but this is a focused effort um and they're determined to do it and it's born a lot of fruit but it it takes time i don't want to make excuses but i'm just trying to provide a perspective on like this the stuff that they need to do i feel like they're they know they need to do it they want to do it and they they because they're looking also at their oil wealth which is you know where all of the knowledge originally came from all their oil wealth and and seeing like this isn't going to go on forever and um how are we going to kind of sustain ourselves after our you know after the oil stuff runs out they need to exist in the world they need to be you know they want tourism they want all these other um agreements with other countries and these are you know these are kind of prerequisites like you can't you know you you have to be a place where people want to go so what are you going to do to become that and um and these are you know these are things that they're doing that are um already already bearing fruit so i just wanted to say that because i find myself a lot you know as someone who lived in the gulf works a lot with people in the gulf goes still goes to the gulf a lot like it's not what if you haven't been there you'll be really surprised um it's not it's not really what um what a lot of people think it is it's not like uh Saudi Arabia from 20 years ago it's totally different so and which is that which is great which is exciting um you know we always want our partners to do more um and i you know i'm not in government now so i i don't know all the details of what they're doing or not doing but i have heard enough about what they're doing with respect to the israel gaza stuff that you know i'm um i i think they're i think they're an important voice and um i think that they're pushing for for the right things which is peace um and an end to the fighting and hopefully a solution that will benefit everybody um just not the terrorists who just need to be killed at this point there's no uh uh we haven't talked about just but like yeah i'm over like ceasefire blah blah blah just just like finish the war just finish it they these terrorists there's no negotiating there look at what they've done to these people these hostages they murdered those babies i mean no well i definitely don't disagree with you i i don't think that there is any sort of into this that's peaceful to them it's either one world caliphate or death right and so you can't reason with anybody when that is your your mentality right so like it's us or them in their mind it has to be us or them and ours as well right so to to your point um kind of like moving off that a little bit i'd like like what is iran's role right in all of this especially the the terrorism that goes on in the the area and the way that they support it i mean iran iran is plays a major role and has for many many years you know they are the um so they are the sponsor i mean they are the international sponsor of terrorism so they are the sponsor of Hezbollah the sponsor of the Houthis the sponsor of hamas which didn't start that way hamas started as a muslim brotherhood but became another irani and satellite um i mean they're uh and then obviously they have their own you know the irgc um the quits force so they've been um and then you know important to note that iran currently and for a long time has hosted al-qaeda senior leadership um and iran that has enabled al-qaeda to facilitate um a cooperation between the Houthis and al-shabaab by the way which is an offering issue um also al-qaeda outreach to hamas uh a lot of people don't realize this but after october 7th and since during this this multi years war now al-qaeda has issued eulogies and praise for hamas leadership um and their actions and so al-qaeda really has fallen in line with its iranian landlords um and yeah so all of the crap that we've seen over the years from Hezbollah which includes by the way the murder of uh americans many americans in the 80s you know look it up look what they did to our embassy look what they did to our marine barracks um that was Hezbollah that was iranian sponsored Hezbollah and the kobar towers um so what's interesting now is that i mean the ayatollah has to be cursing sinwar from the grave you know um i mean look his bala thanks to israel's actions his bala has fallen apart and now and as a result uh also because Hezbollah could no longer you know protect Assad their the iran's syria land bridge collapsed you know um they had a they had a land bridge where they were you know they were funneling weapons uh really up almost to the israeli border from uh through Hezbollah through syria um so because iran was unwilling at the end of the day to directly support they would only support through Hezbollah um the uh alawait the militias um the asad alawait militias they lost their land bridge um and now you have a situation like i said where israel is happy to support these minorities um and by the way side note i know we're talking about it ran but um one thing that's been really interesting to watch is that the complete collapse of asad and his regime has kind of put the kibosh on iraq's plan to kick us out you know up until asad fell they were like all in to kick us out because unfortunately uh for us iraq was fully sponsored by iran um but uh now they're like you know holy crap we need we need the us here um and they're not trying to kick us out anymore i think that's really interesting but um you know they still have they iran the iranian regime they still have uh the hoothees and the hoothees who are based in yemen of course have taken no major losses for the year um no one who counts in that group has been removed um and there's still this iranian shit that's you know in the red sea doing spotting for them so um and by the way under maritime law they are considered a valid target i mean they're essentially engaged in piracy you can make the argument um anything that we've done today it has not deterred them uh and they're now you know talking to al shabab about expanding their range of attacks further down the african coast to attack us ships to attack us in israel in kenya so um it's already happened it happened at man to bay exactly there you go so and there but they're they're continuing conversations about like future ops and i will say like um there's no better time to strike Iran than now israel has done so much damage to iran i mean basically their air defenses are non-existent um we know that iran has breakout capability they're very i mean a lot of people think they already are nuclear capable um i think do i have like full faith and confidence in our uh intelligence community's ability to to define this or to find the i mean yeah so that's a big thing to say i mean we don't know we it's it the the breakout time is so short that it almost doesn't matter you know what i mean um it's so short that it doesn't that we should just consider them nuclear capable that's my opinion just a stuxnet 2.0 right well it's for it's for all if you guys get the reference that i breathed a giant sigh of relief and thanked my god above when antony blinkin told us that not a single dollar out of all those pallets of cash we said to iran made it to any of these bad guys could you imagine yeah dude you could trust that completely and totally man you're saying yeah yeah well dude it i just thought it's it was iran's money anyway like do you know dumb you sound when you say that like i i don't know we could have we could pick on people all day about this it just that just when i heard some hair no he never cared like he's i mean he just spent four years lying i'm sorry but yeah i mean everything everything that came out of his mouth i also originally i'm like are you that like are you that dumb no um no you're not right no that's what's scary about this just lies just absolutely i realized that actually during the all the age kaya stuff when when they were issuing these statements and i'm like what this is exactly the opposite of what we are hearing and seeing yeah every freaking boot down to the lowest private in the infantry knows that you lay in the ambush security first and then support by fire and then your assault line and when you leave the area your assault line goes off first right then your support by fire and security pulls out last i don't care who the hell you are in the military every person has been through basic training and knows that basic concept and the idea that we're going to pull out of afghanistan and we're going to remove all the military personnel and security first and leave state department officials behind i i it's zero accountability boggles the mind yeah that they were that they could brief the president somebody get the e-form off yeah this is the way that it went down that they briefed the president that this is our plan and how we're going to do it right it boggles the mind that any general with stars on his on his shoulders could look at the president and brief that with with a straight face first of all i don't i'm gonna get sorry we started off with each case no i don't buy it i don't think it yeah no absolutely it's just the biggest political blunder of all time in the United States and then to and then to come in the backside and fall on the i was just following orders like disgusting it's disgusting well then and then blame trump right well this was trump's deal so that's why it got that's why it was botched is trump's that was that was all the well the dojo agreement you know like somehow the dojo agreement had anything to do with any of what happened at hkiah and before and before what what really uh i mean there's so there's so many just disgusting things that happened but one of the worst to me was when they were all these statements that blinken mead and i think it was milli as well but i'm not i'm not positive about like the i think it was just blinking about like we're gonna get everyone out like we're gonna get like our our afghan partners there was never a plan to get any of our afghan partners and in fact we left thousands of americans behind let alone afghan partners and then the notion that they were vetted they were all they were all vetted right like that that whole lie like that's the biggest joke ever i mean i've done security my whole career there's no way all those first couple planes were just randoms and meanwhile you know our like i know of you know a a bunch of people who worked with us like worked for us in in afghanistan for some of them like 15 years who were on purpose left behind that's gross yeah yeah yeah i mean that's that's why i say like this a moral injury that's still um no one i i think we are the last people who will we can spend hours like talking about this stuff i mean i i served i did two years total in afghanistan as a civilian um and both of my brothers were uh in the marine corps one of them served in afghanistan one did a couple tours in iraq and um you know they like i don't talk about it even with them really i mean they happily they've moved on and i'm still like the bitter i'm still i'm i'm not i'm not over it and i agree with you we we must have accountability i don't think it's too late for that i think we must pursue accountability and i still spend time talking to members of congress about why it's important and why we why we we have to we can't move forward we can't move forward as a nation effectively like how are we supposed to be expected to um like watching blinkin for example lecture on you know lecture israel on what it needs to do for humanitarian blah blah blah i'm like how are you giving people lessons on you know what's a humanitarian activity and what's not like how much blood is on your hands antony blinkin anyway i knew one of the 13 service members that was killed at abby gate and i want to say this is as measured as possible so i don't fly off the handle but i hope completely and totally in my opinion obviously that the secretary of defense recalls every single officer that was in the chain of command all the way down to the 82nd commander that was that was in charge on the ground i want them all recalled to active duty i want them to stand military tribunal i want general millie's fucking special forces tab taken away and i want every single one of these military officers to find justice and i hope mr secretary i i hope that you follow through with that because healing starts with justice amen and we left a whole lot of blood over there we did years yep sir it's like it's totally lost on people that that is the end of our response to night 11 like it's totally lost on people because just like the the response to it and how everything happened the lies the the bullshit all of it right like just lost the plot people have like when i even i've said this to people it's like you when you like it's like think about like where you were on 9/11 right and you watch this happen and like that's the way it ended and people were like shh like whoa yeah you're right it's like no shit right like it's just the fact that you even have to say that to somebody is is wild it's that's how disgraceful and how much we lost the plot on on you know avenging and standing up for what happened to everybody you know it's just as wild to me i hate i hate it i hate it it's not just also just like the blood that we left there but the continuing trauma of veterans um and and how this has contributed so dramatically to um you know our our crisis of veteran suicide it's it's all part of the same thing i know you guys know that um and and uh it's it's it's a wrong that must be right it it just must be right it i i i also hope that um secretary hexa follows through i i believe he will and i know i know my quality personally and i know he cares about this so i'm you know i i hope uh i hope we we get um we and the other fan and the families um you know our gold star family is not just of the 13 but all of our gold star families you know how horrified were they i know a few um when all of this came tumbling down and and they rightly asked you know what was it for um i think i have my own answer to that i think we all kind of need to find our own piece that's that's my own personal opinion um but but i do think i mean for me my whole journey on this thing began on 9/11 when um one of my mother's friends was on the plane that hit the pentagon i was not i had no i had no eye toward any of this stuff um i grew up in d.c my father uh and mother both served in the Reagan administration and um my dad was a like a think tank guy and my mother was a staffer in the senate for many years i wanted nothing to do with d.c i was trying to get as far away as possible um but 9/11 happened i was like a block away from the pentagon when the plane hit and then to come to find out later my mom's friend was on i mean this woman that i knew very very well was on the plane and it just changed it it changed my entire life and the life of of my siblings as well and like i i agree like when i think about that as the beginning and then i think about the hkaya disaster as the end i mean yeah i mean i feel you yeah yeah now i remember thinking like what the families of the victims of 9/11 like are thinking now like watching people clinging to the landing gear of a c-17 right like and just watching canines and getting shoved into kennels and left in hangers for the taliban to find and all this equipment and weapons and like oh we took the firing pins it's like no who gives a shit you know what i mean like it's just it was so stupid and i'm with you chris a hundred percent like i mark milli deserves jail for the rest of his life without a doubt you know and there's so many of them that do but um i know we've we've kind of busted that that two hour if i could ask you one more one more big chunk question what do you think the trump administration's stance on a rancher should be and how they should handle uh the situation there with them well to me it's clear um you know trump season one was very much not um was was very much not for regime change um maybe he like maybe he was privately but that was not the policy was not excuse me not regime change at all it was um it was you know force them to the negotiating table and the you know to to achieve the goal of no nukes for iran iran will never give nuclear uh capability so um it looks like they just kind of like returned everything back on that got turned off four years ago but their iran has been working hard for four years to get that nuke um you know of course um you know just civilian nuclear power that's still what they claim they're they're doing but um it's obvious it's obvious uh they're not and um trump has said they will not they will not achieve nuclear capability well given what we assumed to be the breakout time there uh i mean i think i would assume that they're talking about a lot of different things now i don't believe they got a they got a i'm sorry to cut you off but just to add fire you feel your fire they got to feel like they're on a time clock too based on the american administration will change oh a hundred percent i mean i i myself was expecting that they would have an announcement before trump took office i was kind of surprised about that as well yeah so i think it's interesting that they didn't um and but look i do you i do you think i i'm sure that they're having a lot of discussions right now and um it's important to know i'm sure you guys and many members of your audience understand we have a lot of capabilities that we shouldn't talk about in this forum but that are hopefully under consideration we're not talking about american boots on the ground but there's a lot of other things that we can do and i certainly am very opposed to american boots on the ground in iran we don't need that and um and by the way like that's why we have such a one of the reasons why we have such a great strong partner in israel um and because like iran look at how they've taken apart the iranian threat already like they've dismantled it in a way that nobody including myself could ever have believed possible so now it's like all i feel like the majority of my assumptions or i just have thrown out the window and um and so i would like to see myself personally i would like to see an end to the regime and a new way forward for the iranian people who by and large are are not extremists they want to like live yeah i'm really the riots that they've had i mean the ones for women's rights in iran and all of that that that wasn't even that long ago that got memory hold pretty hardcore too i mean they are they have been suffering tremendously for so long and all of the look at the gulf's nations you know and all the oil wealth that they uh that they share with their people you know that people live very well there iran could have that too they ronnie and people could have that too but their government you know it just go back and look at pictures of taran from back in the the 70s yeah women and women in skirts and cars and right it's just yeah i know and they're they're like you know sophisticated uh it's very western people yeah and and they're forced to live under this you know insane uh religious dictatorship but um but i yeah i let's say us has its hand in that that's for sure yeah yeah i mean that's that's a history that's that's you know that's a sad history um for up for us yet another misstep in in the region and we we've made many but um but it's not too late you know i i i still i think we have such an opportunity right now i just i i want to do everything like hope we do it all i hope we we help all these people and and kind of create a new uh a new paradigm in the region i think we can um and so with our partners and so i don't know um there's so much to be gloomy about but it's important to you to look at the the fact that when we change a paradigm a lot of other things could change too always like the second and third order effects are really hard to gauge so well as human beings we're not very good at measuring the second and third order effects there's always an unaccounted thing on multiple unaccounted things right and when you're talking about other humans involved as well you can't account for thoughts and ideas and goals that they had that were unspoken or whatever um i'll say this though i i lied to you i have one more question what is china's presence in the region well china's presence in the region is um sort of two-fold i mean they're it's important to note and this is one reason why um it was funny uh just to go back for a minute when when uh when i left government again for the second time um January it's me every time i get out it keeps me back yeah that's true no that's the truth that is the truth yeah January 2021 everyone a lot of you know a lot of people were like so what are you gonna do now that you know middle the middle east is solved you know are you gonna become an asian person and i'm like yeah i give it five minutes um but right but don't like um don't come to this side of the policy don't come over here i'm telling you right now i'm like um no but but china you know you don't want me to just do we china's mean energy uh i mean they're let me put it a different way Saudi Arabia's primary customer is china for you know oil and gas um so that i mean to me i always thought of that as a lever and a weakness and something that we could exploit and another reason why our partnership and relationship with Saudi Arabia is so important um but yes it's it's uh it it has a very big presence and it's a huge um customer um on the oil and gas stage and then now you also have um their massive collection platform in the form of wawe which is stretching you know across the region and um and actually has tripped up a number of our um you know things that we want to do um in different places because we can't put certain things in certain places because they're there so um they're there in the way that they're there so and i i will say i just came back i was at idex which is um if you don't know it's a buy it's an every other year um defense expo that's held in Abu Dhabi um it's massive and this year was the biggest one yet the chinese presence was uh tremendous it might have even been bigger than our u.s. presence i'm not sure we were we were very i thought we were very well represented but they they just had just the size of their presence was so massive and of course for those for those of you in the audience think shot show but for spies yeah yeah yeah but they also have tanks they have tanks and like primars and stuff you know just out in the it's is good old stolen tech you know i mean yes and then but then also uh i mean there were a lot of countries obviously that were there demonstrating their stuff and showing their stuff and and uh i can't speak to what percentage of that was real what percentage of that was mildec what percentage of that actually even works mildec is military deception for those of you that know trying to um pretend you have something that you don't or trying to pretend you're focused on something that you're not but um make sure you've got water in the in the rocket so at least they have something in there well that's what makes them hypersonic actually we've just never figured that out yeah yeah brilliant but yeah like they had they were so it's a brilliant yeah right water there were people walking they were just walking around with their phones you know just filming everything um but but um but yeah so they're they're a huge um they're a huge player but they're not us everyone i mean we we have heard ourselves so much explained that so many times but um you know we're not like we don't have this kind of fundamental racism element to our culture um and we are we can be transactional china is certainly transactional in their relationships but they also want to dominate and um like through this belt road initiative pushing for many years now i mean that's um it's a debt trap and countries have fallen into that and that was literally on my brain just now yeah it's a debt trap you know uh they they get money upfront and it works if you're like a corrupt dictator or something like that but then when it when the bill comes due and you can't pay you have to handle your natural resources are theirs yeah yeah well that's that's like an underscore now or you have there right that's uh well and look at look at what um the trump administration is doing uh to to clear china out of the Panama Canal thank god by the way yeah um because that's in the event of uh of like a hot war i mean that that would really strap us if we couldn't transit there so um yeah i mean it is it is a problem but that is the middle east is really a region where we are we're competitors um and i still think we have the upper hand i also think china bit hard on iran and uh and look where that's going yeah so i think i think we we have a massive like i said before we have a massive opportunity taking taking the Iranian regime off the table completely will really hurt china they also get a lot of their energy from iran so yeah i mean i that it's just another that's just another uh w we would get um and so yeah i mean they're incredibly problematic and we should be focusing on china but we can't as long as these other issues kind of continue to bubble because we have taken our eye off the ball you know this continued conversation of like let's take away all of our ct resources and put everything into great power competition it's like the enemy has a vote as well you know these terrorists have a vote as well and understood the enemy owns this we have the scorecard or we did uh we did a couple years ago when i was in government about you know terrorist groups like are they capable of conducting attacks against the homeland do they want it um do they have the desire to do they have the capability to conduct attacks against us like in third countries or in the homeland and i just with the way that we're we're kind of postured right now i don't i don't know uh we can say some things for sure but i also wonder what we're missing and i hope it's not i hope it's not something big but i i don't know yeah that's pretty ominous to think about it that way to your point about Huawei i i told i've told the story a few times so our listeners will be familiar but when i was in Kenya i showed up as the security forces flight chief and i got handed the duty phone and i immediately knew or saw that it was a Huawei phone and i looked right at the dude who handed it to me i'm like i'm not using this we're like five clicks from a port that the chinese are building for the kinyans right now right and all of you are you as i was like is your phone Huawei and they're like yeah all the all the camp phones are Huawei i'm like that's retarded i'm like why on earth would i use a Huawei phone like do you know who owns Huawei they're like no i'm like why like how are we here and you don't know this right i never use that phone ever just you know people you know and then like it's it's like a well i mean like we left and then in january the next year man-to-bei got attacked which i know you know right so like i've been talking about like let's let's share posting rosters right what have every weapon system at every post right this post has a 249 this post is a 240 two 240s two of threes you know like it's just like every bit of info you'd want to know about what sort of defense this camp has right is in this phone not to mention every other conversation that somebody from camp leadership was having with you know you safety or african or whatever right so it just i was like i'm not using this and i i kept saying it over and over again i'm like you really shouldn't use that phone like you should just this is a the camp the size of the parking lot you should just walk over and explain these things never right it's just like how fucking dumb are all of you for using these fucking phones right now not to mention like all the landlines i'm sure right because i mean who did all the manual labor on camp the Kenyans right and where else were they coming from looking for jobs every day you know lopset the port down the road where the chinese were building right so like they're someone would come over and they've got like chinese shirts on you know with the the port company it's like it's like i actually can't let you in because i know you were over there you know you idiot you know so might as well go back over there and see if you can figure out something for the day right so but anyway i just knew you'd find that humorous he walks away and changes flips his shirt upside down right yeah exactly no he's got yeah no doubt dude you know just puts on a set of classes right that's good life i mean that's how this stuff goes down yeah it's true oh yeah i'm only i was only half making a joke because anybody that's ever done gate security like that's exactly you know what i was when i was in seria it was the same thing you would see the guys that would come uh onto the fob where i was you know in order to refuel our fuel and then change out the water and all that stuff you know exactly where they were going into aboham and who they were talking to and hanging out with right down the road mm-hmm we knew yeah well dude yeah i mean well whatever we got i can sit here and tell you all about the dumb shit that that happened there when i was there you know between jibouti, smalia, kenya all these places and the horn of africa exactly yeah i mean and you've probably got so many stupid stories as well you know that you could we could riff on for hours but um thanks for coming on and talking to us simon i appreciate you staying up later i know you said uh you're in central time so it's what is it it's got to be pushing past midnight now i'm thirty eleven almost midnight so yeah appreciate you rocking with us uh late hopefully you don't have to get up early tomorrow morning on a friday and roll in super tired wherever you're wherever you're going so it's all good it's all good this was great i appreciate it thank you yeah no doubt i'm so much i mean it would it would be great to have you back on again someday to maybe we could we could come up with the something a little more chronological and have a conversation and it's always good to just have these i think organic talks with people that have just are well springs of information because you never know what kind of conversation you're gonna have and then you know hits on these personal things that are um that are meaningful to like our guests and then you'll hear angles that you wouldn't hear if you you know curated in episode the way that some people do you know so i appreciate you coming on and having just an organic conversation it was great it was great i appreciated that guys thank you so much awesome thank you well well thank you simon thank you so much absolutely yeah and for everybody listening thank you guys so much for for watching the episode and um let us know in the comments i'm sure you will already what questions you have if we can hit simon up and have her back on and talk about those things but um is there a place that people can find you simon for any sort of work that you do and all of that i know you have an x-page and i do um i might explain just simon ladine yes i have a website with all my articles and all the rest of it simonladine.com um yeah so you can you can find me there i'm also on linkedin youtube but everything is connected through my website so but i yeah i you know and you're still doing some consulting and everything right shoot me a note and yes i am i am doing consulting i have a consulting firm uh and uh yes i do advisory work for defense tech uh companies uh i'm mostly focused on uh foreign sales like i help them with business development uh but i'm also affiliated with the university of texas i do some work uh ut as well hookup um and yeah the only thing i know about ut yeah so um yeah yeah i'm i'm uh out and about doing a variety of things but yes uh anyway it's i'm i'm always happy to talk to people hit me up dm me and and i look forward to continuing the conversation hopefully next time we talk it'll be i don't know like maybe they'll be happier things to talk about by then i hope so that'd be kind of cool not gonna lie in that region that's a difficult thing for sure no doubt yeah i mean it's possible it's possible it is all things are possible yeah that's right well absolutely just uh daddy trump is in the seat he is when i i'm gonna let everybody go but just hang out for a second that way we have a virtual upload that's got to happen so don't dip out right away or or kill your kill your stream but thank you guys so much for listening to the episode i appreciate it and you guys have a good night