Ratcliffe’s Moscow Warning, Iran’s Long Reach, and an Alliance on Edge | Espresso Martini

[00:00:04] Secrets and Spies presents Espresso Martini with Chris Carr and Matt Fulton. Well, hello everybody and welcome back to Secrets and Spies and we're now on season 11.

[00:00:31] So we're officially 10 years old. Next Tuesday will be officially 10 years old, but we are now 10 years old as a podcast, which is pretty crazy. And it made me think about like trying to remember my 10th birthday and I remember getting a Garfield birthday cake, but I don't think I've got a Garfield cake coming up for the 10th anniversary of this show, sadly, as much as I'd enjoy one. But there we go.

[00:00:54] Well, you deserve one for sure. Yeah, maybe I'll have to, I don't know, find a baker over there. Can you do a Garfield cake and send it to this address? Don't put any note on it. Just, just, just drop a Garfield cake off. Make it, make it vaguely threatening. Yeah. Well, and the best bit was as well, Garfield had a Sherlock Holmes hat and a magnifying glass, which kind of feels semi-appropriate to the podcast. It was great.

[00:01:21] I'm going to try and dig out some photos of it. I can see if I can find it, but yeah, just think about the 10th year and stuff suddenly made me think about like, you know, my life in 10 year increments, which was quite funny. And also I did meet a 10 year old child recently and I'm thinking, crikey, my podcast is old as you are. It's quite funny that, but there we are. So we have reached the 10 year mark, which is pretty amazing. So yeah. So anyway, moving aside from 10 years, how are you doing?

[00:01:50] How, how, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good. My summer's been, it's been, it's been chill. I've been, you know, here doing, doing my thing in my, in my lair. Nice. Pretty much. Your lair's looking good at the moment. Yeah. How about, thank you. Thank you. Pay no attention to the map of central Beirut on the whiteboard over there. I was wondering whether, I was just suddenly looking at it and thinking, where is that? And it's definitely not. It's Beirut. Excellent. Yeah. It's Beirut for reasons. Fair enough.

[00:02:16] Yeah. It's been, it's been cool. How was, how was your break? How are you? I haven't really talked to you much. Yeah. Gosh. Well, no summer, well, summer was not chill. It was very hot. We've had five heat waves in the UK. Yeah. It's been, I think the hottest summer on record, at least since 1979, they say. It is certainly the hottest summer I remember since about 1990. Cause I remember that summer being particularly hot, but I don't ever recall having like five heat waves in almost two week increments.

[00:02:43] So that has been challenging. But apart from that, I had a pretty good break. I went to Belfast, which was nice. Got to see where they built the Titanic, which was very nerdy and very interesting. And I filmed my Buddhist retreat that I ended up filming most years. And that was really great. And reasonably enlightening. And it's just nice to be out of London for a week in the middle of Hampshire, just hanging out with Buddhist people and just not having to do an awful lot, which was

[00:03:12] quite cool. Other than sort of filming four hours a day. But apart from that, it was very, very chill. Very cool. So yeah. So I feel better for that. Were there red arrows over that retreat last summer? They were, but they moved the date of the retreat by one week. So we definitely didn't have any red arrows this time. We did have Chinook helicopters doing their things. It's quite near RAF Odeum where

[00:03:36] we had this retreat. And then we did have, we had the eclipse. That was really cool. We had an eclipse in the UK. So that was pretty impressive on the first day of the retreat. So yeah, so that was awesome. So yeah, it's been, it's been a, it's been a pretty good summer actually, apart from the heat, which has just made it very difficult to want to do things. I've actually would put this summer as one of the better summers of recent times. So yeah, it's been good. So I'm happy. And, and Glad to hear it.

[00:04:06] On world, on the world stage, I mean, I don't think we certainly didn't have any more attempted coups in Russia or anything like that. So, I mean, there's been terrible things, but on a, on a kind of groundbreaking scale, I think the world has sort of kept itself in order whilst we've been away to an extent. There's been sort of the general craziness and unpleasantness and stupidity and all that kind

[00:04:29] of awfulness just, but kind of nothing, nothing in, in particular or, or unique apart from that register while we were gone. The usual craziness continues, but nothing significant to the point where like, we have to do a special on it or something, which when Prokosian died, we were very close to doing a special on it. We were. We were. Oh my goodness. So yeah. So, uh, no. So, so I mean, yes, the usual craziness does continue and we will

[00:04:58] be now talking a bit about some of that craziness that has happened over August. So I'll be kicking off in a moment with the CIA chief's visit to Moscow. Then we have Iran's using foreign criminals to attack critics abroad. And that's something we have touched upon in past episodes a long time back. So there's some new stuff there is a great piece in foreign affairs about how the transatlantic alliance could survive, which I hope it does. So I'll kick off with the CIA director's trip to Moscow.

[00:05:28] That did happen over August. So that happened. So CIA director, John Radcliffe made a highly unusual and largely publicly unexplained visit to Moscow. He flew into Russia aboard a US Air Force C-17, which was a bit, bit of an interesting transport choice, but we'll go into that maybe in a little bit. And he held talks with senior Russian intelligence officials. Now the Kremlin says Radcliffe did not meet Vladimir Putin directly, although Putin was subsequently briefed on the

[00:05:58] discussions that were had. Neither Washington nor Moscow have publicly disclosed exactly what was discussed. And obviously it's quite rare that CIA directors make visits of this kind to Moscow. The last one of this kind was actually in 2021 when the then CIA director, William Burns, traveled to Moscow before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So Radcliffe's presence obviously does indicate that Washington wanted

[00:06:25] to communicate something particularly sensitive directly to the Russian leadership. Now, as I mentioned before, the other intriguing detail is he flew in on a C-17. And that C-17 was reportedly equipped with the US military's new roll-on conference capsule, the ROCC. And essentially it's a mobile secure communications facility that looks a bit like an airstream when I looked at pictures of it. And it allows senior officials

[00:06:52] to conduct classified voice, video and data communications whilst traveling. Maybe we should get one of those. We should. And it means that Radcliffe could remain in secure contact with Washington, even though he's been flying into and operating around Russia. Now, the most significant claim about the visit is that Radcliffe may have been carrying a direct warning from Washington not to attack NATO. So there's been reporting cited in

[00:07:19] the war zone that suggests new intelligence assessments have raised concerns that Putin could attempt to test NATO's resolve with some form of limited attack against an alliance member. That does not necessarily mean a conventional invasion. Scenarios reportedly being considered range from cyber attacks, covert action to small-scale military incursions, potentially involving one of the Baltic states. Those fears come

[00:07:44] amid growing concerns that Russia is already conducting hybrid operations inside NATO countries. So European governments have been investigating suspected Russian sabotage and drone activity and other covert operations. One recent case involved an explosive-equipped drone discovered near a Russian-built AN-124 cargo aircraft at Leipzig airport, which US intelligence reportedly linked through its characteristics to

[00:08:11] the Russia's GRU military intelligence services. All of this is happening as fears grow about a wider escalation of the war on Ukraine. Peace negotiations appear to be struggling whilst Ukrainian long-range attacks are increasingly hitting Russian refineries, logistics and infrastructure. And obviously there's been some spectacular videos of that. And then Kremlin-linked sources have reportedly suggested

[00:08:35] Moscow is considering a much heavier ballistic missile attack against Ukrainian cities. And certainly as we're recording, I think this is the seventh day of some quite significant airstrikes in Ukraine from Russia. And more alarmingly, there's also been claims that Putin is considered using tactical nuclear weapons, although there is no evidence that a decision to use them has been made. But taken together with

[00:09:00] reckless and usual trip, it appears that we've come to a moment when Washington is increasingly concerned about escalation both inside Ukraine and potentially between Russia and NATO. So, Matt, what are your thoughts and insights on this interesting trip? Yeah, really, really interesting trip. As you said, the first by a CIA director since Bill Burns went over there

[00:09:24] in 2021 to warn Putin about, yeah, the invasion of Ukraine. And of course, we know how that went down. So I think that sort of sparked a lot of people's justifiable concerns over there about this. I honestly, I read the fact that Ratcliffe was sent over there and that someone was sent over there supposedly to deliver this warning at all from the American side is honestly a kind of an encouraging sign. Yes, it is, actually.

[00:09:53] And I'm just not to say that, you know, that everything's everything's great and honky dory and that the Russians aren't up to anything bad. And, you know, they're not planning a very hard winter for the Ukrainians and all that. But I think the fact that Ratcliffe went over there and that he was ordered to go over there by the president is a promising sign. I mean, I think, yeah, it wasn't, I don't know, Steve Whitcoff, you know, real estate, New York real estate developer who has,

[00:10:21] you know, friendly with the president, but no diplomatic or intelligence experience whatsoever. It wasn't Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. It wasn't, you know, someone like, I don't know, Pete Hegseth or Kash Patel or something going over there. It was the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who for a Trump 2.0 in that cast of characters is one of the more, has been so far, one of the more normal, serious officials, you know?

[00:10:48] And so I think that it's, that it's, that it's him and that they, that Washington saw the need to convey this warning at all is a, is a positive sign, you know? If the convention, yeah, and the conventional wisdom is, and I agree with this, that likely a warning as Bill Burns gave, you know, hey, we see what you're up to. We know what's going on here, what you're planning or thinking about doing. Don't do it. I mean, at the same time that this happened just before it, there was a rivet joint RC-135 aircraft that was

[00:11:16] doing exercises around Kaliningrad and in the, in the Swalke gap between Poland and, and the Baltic states, you know? And that's the one we could see. There might be other stuff that was in that area too. Yeah. There's other, there's other stuff that's not, that's not squawking on, on flight radar, you know, for sure. But, you know, I, I think if, if, if Russia's theory of the case here is that

[00:11:42] they were going to, you know, try some provocation, some false flag attack, whatever, some sort of limited encouraging to test NATO's resolve and article five and all that sort of stuff. And like, see if the Alliance can be shattered in that way. I think just the fact that, yeah, Washington saw the need to send John Ratcliffe and not some other joker or not send anyone at all would to the Russians show that that's theory of what would happen if they try this is probably,

[00:12:09] it's probably not the case. So it's, it's one data point. It's a very big data point. It's certainly, again, it's not, you know, to suggest that everything's great and fine and we have nothing to be concerned about in the months and years to come, but that John Ratcliffe went over there with him at all is in itself positive, I think. I agree. I think in all the negative about the Trump administration, that certainly is a positive

[00:12:35] because there's been some very wishy-washy language with regards, well, wishy-washy actions with regards to America's kind of resolve to help Ukraine and also to defend Europe in the future. And so there's been all sorts of things going on. And certainly, I mean, like the temperature over here is hot right now with regards to Russia, because Europe is growing more and more concerned

[00:12:59] about something's going to happen. And certainly Poland, Latvia and Estonia, there is a very much a very big concern that Russia might attempt something. And that could be, you know, as we've said, some sort of direct attack, like a limited incursion, hopefully not a more big, you know, proper incursion, because I don't think Russia potentially could do that at the moment, but who knows? Right. There's also a concern of more aggressive sabotage. I mean, you know, we've had all sorts of stories

[00:13:27] about like lorries packed with explosives that are due to detonate in a place away from people, but that could go wrong, you know, and if Putin sort of steps that up, the chance of civilian casualties increases, you know. So yeah. And then the Wall Street Journal mentioned that, you know, US officials are concerned that Putin sort of squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, and he could launch some sort of assault ranging from cyber attacks, a small scale land incursion,

[00:13:58] likely in a Baltic nation, but it's an unnamed nation. So yeah, that this is the sort of thing that's kind of a conversational point in Europe right now. And so as I was saying, like, I think an invasion by Putin is probably unlikely, just judging by how poorly Russia's sort of been doing in Ukraine. But yeah, I think we're going to see more cyber attacks for sure. And already there have been some cyber attacks targeting airports and other things. And there was something that

[00:14:25] happened in the UK just a couple of weeks ago that I kind of passingly looked at and didn't really look into in great detail. But yeah, and then also we've had like in the past undersea cable incidents where a Russian friendly vessel drags its anchor across the floor and oh dear, cuts the internet cable, that kind of stuff could happen again, you know. There have been drone incursions in Denmark and in Ireland, you know, one drone got very

[00:14:50] close to a plane carrying Zelensky, you know. So this isn't, you know, this is new. And even if you go back in, you know, in prior years, you know, I mean, Russia sees weapons of mass destruction on British soil, you know. They use sarin and polonium to assassinate Sergei Skripal and other, you know, dissidents and stuff, you know. So this isn't like, it's, it's not some, you think, okay, yeah, what, what, what could they do? What would they do that would be so

[00:15:19] sort of above and beyond what they've done already? Yeah. I think some sort of, some sort of false flag, limited incursion, some kind of little green men thing in the Baltics or whatever to, to stir up and, and see how we respond, I think is probably what, what, what that intelligence that spurred that visit was, was about. Well, Putin loves to test boundaries.

[00:15:47] You know, we've had it with aggressive, like flight incursions over the years going into NATO airspace and stuff. Had a lot of that in the, even prior to the invasion of Ukraine. I mean, that's been going on for a long time. Turkey shot down Russian aircraft when it, when it entered their airspace from, from Syria, you know, so we've, we've, we've been here before. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. And then obviously aside from threats to NATO members,

[00:16:13] Russia has also been getting more direct support from North Korea, which again, I'm surprised is not a bigger story. I mean, as it stands right now, North Korea currently have 8,500 troops deployed, but, and, and those troops have like advanced drone units. And it's expected that when Putin meets Kim Jong-un later this month, the North Korea could supply up to 50,000 more troops. And that's a significant number. And one has to ask at what point is that becoming an invasion of Europe from

[00:16:42] North Korea? You know, there's all sorts of implications. Well, their troops have already been in Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And it's just, it's outrageous. And it, and it just seems, I find it fascinating that there's such little press on this apart from obviously, if you go looking for it, there it's there, but it's not like headline news. I don't recall seeing like the son of a daily mail with a frontline story saying like Kim Jong-un has sent in 50,000 troops

[00:17:07] to Ukraine or whatever. I mean, maybe that might happen in September if they do send in a significant number of troops, but, but it just, there's a lot of people who are unaware of this. I find when I'm having chats with, should we say normie people who don't look at these things like North Korea sent troops to Ukraine. Wow. You know, to me, that's not exactly kind of surprising, but it is concerning. So yeah. And then what else has been going on? Yeah. And obviously Ukraine is still short, painfully short on air defenses. I mean, they've been, as we've been

[00:17:36] saying, they've been suffering some terrible attacks over the summer. And with just this morning, there was a new attack where Russia had launched 163 drones and half of them apparently jet powered Shahids, which is a new, a new thing. And 135 of them were destroyed or jammed, but apparently hits recorded about 15 locations, which is still pretty significant. So it's, it's, yeah, there's a lot going on there still. And it's, I don't know, I think without some

[00:18:06] proper air defenses, I think Ukraine's incredibly vulnerable right now. Yeah. I think they're in for a really hard winter. Another one, which is terrible to say. Yeah. I think they're going to hit the power grid really hard. And you know, they're, as you said, their air defenses are really limited and course in the war in Iran makes that sort of more exasperated. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not a good situation that, that they're in. And Latvia and Estonia also, they've called on the EU for more financial support in protecting

[00:18:34] their borders. And the Kiev Independent, who I was having a quick look at this morning, in their reporting about Estonia and Latvia's concerns, they interviewed a spokesperson from the International Center for Defense and Security in Tallinn. And they, and that spokesperson said that the US is involved and indeed leads the way in apparent efforts to send deterrent messages to Moscow. But they also added Trump's willingness to go to great lengths to accommodate Russia may

[00:19:01] have left an impression in Moscow that whatever the CIA director says, he may not be able to back up with real action. And time will tell how seriously he will be taken. So yeah, that's a slight concern too. It's sort of like management saying one thing and then Ratcliffe saying something else. Yeah. Yeah, but Ratcliffe didn't go over there on his own. Like he didn't wake up one that day and decide, oh, let me go to Moscow and talk to Putin. Like he was sent there by, he was given orders by the White House to go over there and do it. And there was a big meeting at the White House the day after

[00:19:30] when he got back with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was there, Hegseth was there, Rubio was there, like they're all photographed coming in and out. So that's not like he wasn't, Ratcliffe wasn't freelancing and just going off on his own without backing behind him. You know, again, not plenty of reasons to be concerned about this administration and their stance toward European security and what they would do in the face of a serious Russian incursion. Plenty of reason to

[00:19:56] be concerned about that, but he didn't have to go over there. You know, there's a very, there's a very, I think the more obvious scenario looking at this, okay, if you get some intelligence that bubbles up from somewhere in Europe, okay, the Russians are handling this, they're, they're planning this, it's not good, would be like the, the path of least resistance for them. The most true to character for, for them would be to say, well, we got all these other deals going on.

[00:20:23] We don't want to rock the boat or whatever. And this is Europe's problem, yada, yada. They got to handle it and you do nothing, right? The, the, the easiest thing for them to do in this situation is to do nothing and to essentially ignore it, which I think is what the Russians would have been hoping for them to do. I just come back to that John Ratcliffe went over there is a positive sign that whatever it is that they're seeing is being taken more seriously. And I think the fact that it is being taken seriously again goes against the Russian theory of the case that

[00:20:51] they could do whatever they want here and the U S would just sort of shrug its shoulders at it. Yeah. And he's sometimes better to use sort of background diplomacy for these things and making a public statement because then people can kind of save face. Sure. You know, there's a, there's one thing where, you know, heads of intelligence services are quite useful sometimes, or even the heads of the state department where they can sort of slip in and have a private conversation so people can kind of publicly save face. Do we know if Ratcliffe met with Putin

[00:21:21] directly? Cause I believe in Bill Burns went over there in 2021, he wasn't able to. From all the reporting I've seen, I don't believe they met directly. It's just that Putin, they only met the heads of intelligence and then, and then Putin was briefed about it afterwards. So, and that's the same, as you were saying with William Burns as well. So yeah, I think didn't William Burns famously end up having to talk on a phone or something? Yeah. Well, this was 2021. Putin was like way isolated, locked down during COVID, which is

[00:21:47] one of the things that we think led to him kind of losing his mind and invading Ukraine in the first place. But he was sort of like hermetically sealed in one of his, one of his palaces somewhere and not in the, in the, in the Kremlin. Yeah. Yeah. God, I forgot about Putin and COVID. It's, uh, it's been a long time. Yeah. He kind of lost his, uh, spadoinkle during COVID, didn't he? Remember his long table and stuff like that.

[00:22:12] Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. Had this like, this like negative pressure, like, I don't know, disinfecting system that they had people go through whenever they met with him. It was a, it was a big deal. It was a real big deal. Yeah. Crikey. Some people came anti-vaxxers, he decided to invade Ukraine. So, you know, I'm not sure which ones. We all have our own journeys. Yeah. You know, some people picked up new hobbies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Putin just needs a free Netflix subscription or something and it might

[00:22:39] just calm everything down. I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe that's the answer. Or is there anything else you had to add to this story or you, you could put that one? No, I'm sure we will hear, hear more about this in the, in the coming months. Before spring, I think we'll see something more about this. Yeah, indeed. I think it'd be interesting to keep an eye on the potential talks of North Korea and

[00:23:04] Russia and what happens through that. Yeah. So whether there is a big troop deployment or not. And, and, and Belarus as well. Don't, don't discount Belarusian troops becoming far more openly involved in the conflict than they have been to date. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and also I suppose whether we're up, we might see a minor skirmish somewhere around Estonia or Latvia, whether, yeah, I don't know, we might see something going on

[00:23:31] there. It was interesting looking at the map actually. I just, I forgot how Estonia is right on the border of Russia. I was thinking, God, it'd be really interesting to go to Estonia, but sadly, I don't think we have the funds for an excursion to Estonia this year, but maybe next year. Yeah. It's very nice. Tallinn's very, I've heard Tallinn's very gorgeous, gorgeous. Yeah. I've always wanted to go. I've heard any good things. I know Edward Lucas is a big fan fan of Estonia. He's been a few times and they, and they've been paving the way of like digital

[00:23:57] ID and stuff like that. So no, definitely keep an eye on all this. We will be keeping an eye on it too. So I think what we'll do, we'll go to our first break and then we'll come back with our

[00:24:06] next story. Right. Welcome back everybody. So Matt, our next one is one that you picked out about Iran using foreign criminals to attack critics abroad. So that's a kind of worrying, worrying one, that one.

[00:24:34] Yeah. Really interesting long read in the New Yorker from Cora Engelbrecht with a few, one, a very big friend of the show quoted in here. So I'll, I'll summarize it here for us. So on a Friday afternoon in March, 2024, a man stopped Poria Zarate outside his home in Wimbledon and asked him for three pounds. As Zarate reached into his pocket, an accomplice grabbed him from behind

[00:25:01] and stabbed him in the leg three times. The pair ran off laughing to a blue Mazda where a third man sat waiting to drive them away, leaving a construction worker to improvise a tourniquet around Zarate's leg. He's lucky to have survived that. Yeah. Yeah, really? Yeah. Especially if he hit like an artery or something. Yeah. The attackers were Romanian petty criminals hired through an anonymous handler at the end of a year of paid surveillance, and they had been sent for a reason. Zarate anchored a program on Iran

[00:25:29] International, the London-based Persian language news channel that the Iranian regime considers a tool of its enemies. That's the case Cora Engelbrecht opens with in an interesting piece in the New Yorker late last month, and it's one of many such cases. Through its contracting of Russian mobsters, hell's angels, and Swedish teenagers recruited over Snapchat, Iran has learned to reach its critics abroad by renting the local underworld. Matthew Levitt, an analyst at the Washington Institute

[00:25:58] for Near East Policy, counts more than 200 such plots in five years, nearly double the four decades before. Philip Smythe, good friend of this podcast, of course, tells her the whole appeal of renting local criminals is that they can blend in, cross borders, move money, and vanish. And even a plot the police roll up still does its work because the point was never really the body count. It was about instilling fear in Iranian dissidents abroad. And that's what makes it so hard to actually stop.

[00:26:26] A service like MI5 works by watching known quantities, the declared Iranian diplomats, the Quds Force, and Intelligence Ministry-linked figures already on its radar. The cutout of a cutout is built to defeat exactly that, giving the job to people MI5 has no reason to watch, of Romanian over to paint houses. A teenager recruited on Snapchat a month ago, someone who clears immigration at Heathrow with no link back to Tehran. By the time the connection surfaces,

[00:26:54] there could already be a body on the street. So, Chris, what do you think here? Is it sort of, is there a way Western security services respond to this? Is there a, I don't know. Well, there was a TV series in the 1970s where they had a department called CI5 and they were known as the Professionals. Bodie and Doyle, do you remember that? I don't know if you've ever seen that show. That Professionals? Yeah. I've heard of it, but I hadn't seen it.

[00:27:22] Oh, wow. Well, look it up on YouTube later. Very famous for a title sequence where they drive a car through a window. It's like the opening shot of the show. And there were many, many episodes of the Professionals where they were dealing with like people targeting sort of political refugees abroad and stuff. So, so maybe we need to reactivate CI5. But no, joking aside, I mean, it's not an easy thing to deal with. It's not just Iran too, where this is an issue. No, exactly. Yeah, yeah. We've had

[00:27:48] things, obviously, famously Russia uses its own intelligence services and is now starting to use cutouts to target critics abroad. You know, you mentioned earlier Litvinenko's murder. I mean, it's the clearest example in recent time of, of how serious it can get, you know, and that was horrendous. And then obviously we've had the Scripple poisoning attempt and things like that.

[00:28:12] And Scripple eventually was moved to America because America was considered safer. But even from this article, I was reading it today, because I was thinking of that whilst reading the article and thinking, is America safer? But even America's got issues now, like you've got the Hell's Angels have been recruited and there's been all sorts of things. There's been a, somebody turned up at an Iranian political refugee's house with an AK-47 in New York and all sorts of stuff. Right, right, right. It was a few years ago.

[00:28:39] Yeah. And the problem is regimes like Iran are obviously built on fear and that fear is used to kind of control people. And so being able to have a long reach is going to make it, well, the regime relies on that in a sense to kind of silence its critics because the easy thing to do is just not to say anything. And, you know, there've been other campaigns as well that have targeted journalists because a few years back, I remember reading in the Guardian and the

[00:29:05] Independent about how Iranian journalists, like female journalists, were being targeted online and sort of either having fake, deep fake images made of them in the nude and published in places. Right. Or they were suddenly on their computer and suddenly like a window would pop up and somebody in Iran would start shouting at them and just scaring them and stuff. There's one report of a woman who was an Iranian journalist who was in Waterloo Station at one of the coffee shops there and suddenly her

[00:29:33] screen changed and somebody in Iran started shouting explosives at her and threatening her. So it's not great. Yeah. So, and this is not like, it's not like this hasn't happened before. So like I was saying jokingly kind of with the professionals in fiction, obviously it's happened before, but in reality it's happened too. Like in 1978, we had Georgi Markov who was attacked at Waterloo Bridge

[00:30:00] by Bulgarian secret services. And he was poisoned with a special umbrella that kind of fired a little dart into his leg. And in 1980, we had a Libyan dissident who worked for the BBC World Service, a journalist named Mohammed Mustafa Ramadan. And he was shot dead by two gunmen outside Regent's Park Mosque in London. That's like the largest mosque in London and possibly I think one of the largest in Europe actually. And he was just shot in broad daylight. So this has all happened before.

[00:30:31] And it's so, I have faith that the police and intelligence services sort of do a very good job at sort of containing all this. And a lot of the cases that we've mentioned in the article, in some ways the police have intervened in some ways, which is encouraging. I mean, there's this recent trial that just finished in July where this 19 year old Norwegian, Johannes Kognes, I think is how you pronounce his name. Forgive me, Johannes, if I got your name

[00:30:57] wrong there. But he was convicted in the Old Bailey for conspiracy to murder. And he'd traveled from Norway to Britain in March 2025, agreeing to kill an unknown person for 25,000 euros. And Natalan was recruited through the Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organized crime group that Iran has been using. And they've just recently been sanctioned in the UK for their involvement in violence on behalf of the Iranian regime. And apparently Natalan came to the UK. He was told

[00:31:27] to go to a particular location where he then was, there was a 2000 pounds in cash waiting for him, two guns, one of them a semi-automatic pistol, which is very difficult to get hold of in the UK. And it was quite a modern pistol too. And then he had a rather ancient looking revolver given to him as well, which is more likely the kind of gun you'd probably get in the underworld in the UK at the moment. Then he had ammunition and it was also supplied with a stolen car with false number

[00:31:53] plates. And that could be how that might be the way the police found him was the stolen car. That's my suspicion, but I could be wrong on that. They might've intercepted the electronics a lot earlier, but he managed to get into the UK, get hold of guns and cash. And then two days later, the police arrested him at a hotel in Huddersfield. And apparently, and I've seen the video of this, when he was arrested by the armed police, he kind of with his arms mimicked shooting at the police. And it was like, he was treating it all as a bit of a game. It was really weird. So if you

[00:32:22] get a chance to see the arrest video. I mean, you get, you get these vibes from some of the accounts in this, in this New Yorker piece here too, you know, like the Romanian guys that stabbed Parati in the legs sort of running away to their car, laughing like these teenagers and stuff that like Philip talks about who just have sort of no real kind of, Philip makes a good point here about, he was working on a piece. I'll ask him about this. He was, he was working on a piece about some of these attacks in, in Europe.

[00:32:51] Hasn't been, hasn't been published. I don't know if he's still working on it or what's up with that. I'll, I'll get to the bottom of that, but he, he, he, he mentions here in this piece about how, you know, if you're recruiting, I don't know, the Swedish teenager over like Snapchat or whatever, you don't have to do like the ideological indoctrination of explaining to them a little Iranian concept of, of, of Al-I-Faki and, you know, the, the Islamic jurisprudence and the whole

[00:33:18] like philosophy behind the Islamic regime and what it is and all that kind of stuff. You know, it's just like, you don't even have to say, you know, why, why you want this guy dead. You know, I think in one of the cases, it might've been one of the Russian mobsters who were hired here. They said, yeah, you go up and slap this guy or attack him because he, you know, fooled around with someone's wife, you know, just sort of like normal, like mobster organized crime kind of

[00:33:43] stuff. And there isn't like the ideological indoctrination and stuff that you would see in like the classic case of like someone who like comes to be like a suicide bomber, you know, and like converts and, and totally like embraces that stuff. It's, it's, it's just a job, you know, it's like, it's, it's like a gig. It's part of like the gig economy, which is really kind of insidious about this whole thing. You know, like we've seen it with, with the Russians,

[00:34:11] of course, doing this in Europe because after 2022 and the, you know, full scale invasion, a ton of Russian intelligence sources got thrown out of the EU, right out of all their embassies and everything. So they resort to, you know, hiring these contractors, I guess we'll say the Iranians are sort of doing it, doing it also for more, well, their capabilities are not to, they're good.

[00:34:35] They're not to the extent that the Russians are, but you know, it's, it's, it gives them easier reach and more deniability, you know, and also like this Iranian intelligence, their targeting of, of distant, of, of dissonant groups has been so extensive over the decades and everything. Like we've talked about here in, in past episodes, you know, they are targeting of leaders of Kurdish

[00:35:00] distant, distant groups like Kamala and KDPI, Pajak, the Arab dissonant groups in Huzestan province, the sort of Southwest of the country. Those groups over in Europe, based in Europe, their leadership base there have been systematically targeted for, for decades, which has made organizing that kind of a cohesive, effective opposition to the regime inside the country. So difficult, you know, which

[00:35:28] again, it goes back to that dream at the start of that in the end of February and March, you know, that all these groups are going to rise up against the regime and march on Tehran. And that would be the end of it. Happy day just is not, it does not reflect reality because the work to organize this opposition has never been effectively done. And again, part of the reason it has been so hard to do that is because of stuff like this. Exactly. Yeah. Well, it's it, those kind of

[00:35:52] revolutions or dreams revolutions are always sort of kind of organized in back rooms of places. Like there's a Polish Institute in New York that used to be used by Polish distance who wanted to overthrow the regime in Poland back in the cold war. There's places in the UK like that too. And, and obviously the, you know, the kind of Russian security service, et cetera, are always penetrating those groups. And then now with the threat of assassination and stuff, it just doesn't make it worth it anymore

[00:36:21] for a lot of people. And, and, you know, that the targeting of those journalists from Iran independence, the, the, uh, the publication international. Yeah. I mean, that was a big story last year because we had like armed police having to protect the building like 24 seven and stuff like that. And they, they've subsequently moved to America and then Zerati's moved on to Israel now because he feels that safe. Yeah. Yeah. Zerati's in Israel is broadcasting from Israel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's yeah,

[00:36:49] it's crazy. It's yeah. What to say, but one thing that popped out in the article for me, there's a guy called Matthew Levitt from the Washington Institute for Near East studies. He's been tracking these back plots since the 79 revolution and over the past writing on this stuff for decades. Yeah. And we probably should try and get him on actually. And, and he was saying over the past five years, he's recorded more than 200, which is nearly double the number of documented

[00:37:13] cases from 79 to 2021. So 200 kind of cases basically of attempted assassination or harassment. And that's a huge spike. And then apparently in the UK, counterintelligence officials have since 2022 have identified more than sort of 20 Iranian backed operations that targeted sort of UK residents. So mainly Iranians in the UK, rather than should we say Joe blogs walking down the road, but it's not good.

[00:37:43] And then the potential for, you know, all these things, the potential for kind of like crossfire, et cetera, is quite high. If people are walking around with guns and things or stabbing people, it's all sorts of nasty things can happen beyond the intended, uh, the victim's demise. What do you make of how MI5 and Scotland Yard have, have responded to these incidents, these threats, not specifically against Iranian dissidents, but just the attacks on diaspora

[00:38:12] communities in the UK as a whole. I mean, of course this article, it's, it's not all just failure after failure after failure. They disrupt quite, quite a few of these, but it seems like there's something, I don't know, permissive about the UK where a lot of this stuff happens. And I think it's safe to say that they haven't always been, the security services haven't always been as tough about this stuff as they, as they should have been. Yeah. I think there's a number of issues. I mean, number one, it kind of falls into policing

[00:38:40] and the Metropolitan Police in London is way under resourced at the moment, overstretched. And, and so basically what seems to happen is if you get a threat, a viable threat, it is significant and like going to happen tomorrow or something, they will put you in a safe house, but that's quite rare. Most of the time, they just give you a panic button. They install some panic button in your house and CCTV and then the panic button will lead to a very quick,

[00:39:08] but not perfectly quick, but you know, a response within so many minutes. But the problem is if somebody's attacking you and you've got to wait five minutes for the police to arrive, it's an issue. Yeah. You're, you're already dead. That doesn't know. And UK has got very funky self-defense laws as well. And, and I think this was what kind of makes it a little bit, the UK, a bit of an easy touch sometimes or appears to be an easy touch. So unless the

[00:39:35] police directly intervene in the plot and sort these people out, either arresting them or shooting them, they've got a window of time to kind of get away with stuff and it's not good. And so, yeah. So what is the answer? I don't honestly know what the answer is. I mean, I think in the UK, we do need to have a proper discussion about what is sort of a reasonable self-defense because there have been situations over the years where, where, you know, somebody's being

[00:40:03] attacked in their own home and then they fight back and then they're the ones who end up in jail and it's ridiculous. I could, uh, invite, invite a couple Florida man characters over to give like a seminar on what to do in that situation. Oh my goodness. Well, yeah. I mean, there's so many restrictions. So if you're caught carrying anything that's considered a weapon, you're in deep doodah basically. You know, somebody once said to me, if you're going to keep a cricket bat for self-defense, you better put some

[00:40:30] balls with it and at least go to a cricket club once in a while. See, that's kind of nuts to me. Like in your house, in your house, in your house. I want to be an owner and oozy. Like if you, yeah. And a couple of grenades. I don't know. If you break into, I don't know. No. Break into shit. I don't know. It's, it's, yeah. I think why, so this is the thing. I think because of, in some ways, because of America's problematic gun culture, that some ways is an advantage in America because

[00:40:58] suddenly there is a chance that you could get shot by that person. And I swear to God, if, if, if a lot of these groups thought that people were going to shoot back at them, that might make recruitment harder. So it's, it's not, there's a lot of downsides to that. I mean, if you, some, some houses, if you, if you get the address wrong and this is, this has literally happened. Oh yeah. This has literally happened. And with law enforcement too, it just, there's a case in PA, not like it just, it's ongoing right now where like you walk up to the wrong door and you know,

[00:41:27] you knock on the door and the person there doesn't know who you are. You can get shot through the door. Like that's happened. And that's a problem too. But yeah, I don't know if I got a baseball bat in my house to defend myself. Yeah. You don't need to worry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even if you legally own a gun, which is very rare in the UK, but you could like own a shotgun. So I think I was reading, I think it was one of the XSS guys. It was either Andy McNabb or Chris Ryan. One of them had some threat to them and they own shotguns, but the police said to

[00:41:55] them explicitly, if you use your shotgun in self-defense, you're in trouble, son, you know, effectively. And Chris Ryan or Andy McNabb, one of them wrote a very lengthy piece on their blog about why this is ridiculous. And in some ways it is. It is. Yeah. James Bond at the end of Skyfall, he should have been arrested and charged for killing all those terrorists who raided his house in Scotland. Yeah. Well, and I suppose with James Bond, he has the defense of he works for the British

[00:42:20] government, but if he were retired, if he was retired, so if he were James Bond in Jamaica, came back to London and then shot a load of people trying to invade his house, yeah, he could probably be arrested. And doing work for the CIA as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, so yeah. So no, I mean, there are no easy answers to this other than we have to rely on the police and intelligence services being given

[00:42:48] the resources to do their job. And I think if anything, maybe, I mean, obviously a lot of this sort of falls into counterterrorism command area, I believe. And obviously counterterrorism command can only deal with so much. So they might well, because again, this is a problem at the moment in the UK as well with direct threats to politicians. So just before our summer break, we had the murder of Anne Whittacombe, who was a retired MP, but she's a politician. I didn't agree with her thing,

[00:43:16] but she was a politician and she should, you know, she was murdered and that's not on, you know, no politician should be in fear of their life. But a lot of politicians in the UK in particular have found an uptick in threats of violence in the last of 10 or 15 years. And obviously in the States, that's a similar thing as well. We've talked a bit about how political atmosphere and stuff led to that. But in the UK, I do think that they do, joking aside and not CI5, but they do need to

[00:43:45] come up with some sort of unit that maybe is dedicated more to these kinds of specific threats, both to regular politicians and both to, you know, political dissidents who live in the UK. It's also a targeting issue for them too. You know, like if you're following, I don't know, an Iranian diplomat based out of the embassy in London or something, or elsewhere in Europe, or there's a known affiliate of IRGC Kud's force, you know,

[00:44:13] their unit 840 that does operations in Europe. That's, you know, you pick up on the radars in Europe coming through Heathrow or whatever, then, okay, yeah, you can put surveillance on that guy and you can watch him, right? It's like a normal traditional target, but you can't surveil any, any like, you know, teenager with Snapchat on their phone who could be talking to someone in who's a cutout of a cutout, you know, that that's three layers back to someone

[00:44:41] working for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence or something. It's sort of like, there's no, there's, I don't know how you respond to that without adopting some sort of Chinese surveillance state model. And that's not really an answer either. Will it require signal is signals intelligence, doesn't it? To pick up the chatter that, and this is what's interesting is we don't know with the case of the Norwegian exactly what it was that got him caught. And I suspect it was the car. I could be wrong, but I suspect it was the car

[00:45:08] because cloning, so if you steal, so the trick is if you steal a car, but then steal a number plate of a car that's almost exactly the same as the car you've stolen, in theory, you can, you know, get around for a period of time because a number plate being cloned is less likely to be reported because the owner's unlikely to know about it. The stolen car is a different matter, so you need to kind of steal a number plate from the exact replica of the other car to kind of, in theory,

[00:45:34] get away with this. And I'm assuming that's what they tried to do. And I could only assume that that might be the, might have been the fatal flaw. The fact it took two days to find him is interesting, or whether he, his just persona and behavior at the hotel led to something, I'm unclear, or whether it was signals intelligence, whether it was intercepted by a Norwegian intelligence and then British intelligence got a tip off, or whether British intelligence somehow picked up

[00:46:03] on it when he came to the UK. But the fact he was allowed to come to the UK and allowed to get hold of a weapon with live ammo strikes me as he got found out very late in the, in the, in it. Because I think if they knew about it before he came here, they would have arrested him at the point of getting hold of the weapon, not being able, because obviously then he becomes more dangerous the second he has bullets and stuff. You know, if you arrest him before there are bullets in the gun, it's a lot safer to arrest somebody. Yeah.

[00:46:29] So there is definitely an interesting timeline there that one can read into. So yeah, so who knows? And we still don't know exactly who the target was either. So that's the other interesting thing. And actually the, the guy who, in fact, the other thing is that the Norwegian guy, sorry, I'm trying to look up his name. I've completely forgotten it now, but the Norwegian guy, the Norwegian suspect Natland, he was also like texting his girlfriend saying, I'm on a mission and stuff.

[00:46:58] So he wasn't exactly practicing great OPSEC operational security. So maybe it was those messages that might've set an alarm off maybe. So I don't know. It's, it's difficult to really say exactly what it was that got him. So yeah, so I, I, I just hope, you know, basically in the UK, the police need to be able to do their job and that's what we're kind of reliant on. And if even Iranian does, you know, sorry, even Iranian backed criminal comes knocking at your door in the UK, it's kind

[00:47:27] of pretty bad at the moment. Whilst in America, at least he could shoot back. You can, you can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, maybe one positive there for the second amendment. Think twice. Yeah. So there we go. No, is there anything else to add on that, Matt? Or are

[00:47:50] you, uh, no, really great long form read here. Good quotes from a lot of people. They're really great writers and analysts of this, of this stuff. It's a, it's a, it's an enduring issue that, that we have in confronting these regimes as a whole. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. So yeah. Right. Well, let's move to another break and we'll be back with more.

[00:48:30] Welcome back everybody. So our final piece, another one you picked up, Matt, about how alliances survive. And it's certainly a topic that we sort of talked about very early on in the Trump administration. Actually, we talked about it. It was a very emotional episode somewhere. Was it November last year? I can't remember. There was one episode where we ended up talking about your grandfather. Last spring. Yeah. That was, yeah, that was, yeah, that was, that was, yeah. Yeah. We had a chat about your grandfather who was involved in the battle of the bold, if I remember

[00:48:55] correctly. And, uh, you know, yeah, it was involved in world war two. So, uh, yeah, talk to us a little bit about this piece. Yes. This is a new article that came out in the latest issue of, um, of, of foreign affairs that I wanted to offer as food for food for thought necessarily that I'm saying, let me hold that for the end, but we'll get into it. So, okay. So in 1984, a few months after the Reagan administration's decision to put perishing two nuclear missiles in Western Europe,

[00:49:25] drove hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets. A group of French, German, and Italian officials cornered NATO secretary general, Lord Carrington outside his office in Brussels. The Americans they told him were rude, reckless, and didn't listen to their allies. Carrington heard them out, shrugged and gave them the line he always gave. Alas, they are the only Americans we have. It's like a unique trait about NATO secretary generals that they're always like that. I don't know why we'll leave that there for folks that she won.

[00:49:55] Well, I guess they just pick good ones, don't they? It's like good casting. I suppose somebody somewhere picks, they were like picking the Pope. You said that, not me for the, for the continentals listening. Go after Chris. He said that, not me. Well, it's like picking a Pope as an it's not easy. Uh-huh. No, we can't always, we can't always, we can't always like who we get, but he's the Pope regardless for now anyway. So Kurt Campbell and

[00:50:22] Rush, Doshi opened with that story in a piece in the latest issue of foreign affairs, and it's not hard to see why. Two years into the second Trump term, conventional wisdom is that the transatlantic alliance is on life support. Campbell and Doshi think that's wrong. They argue the system has survived worse. Suez crisis, Charles de Gaulle pulling France out of NATO's military command, the Nixon era economic shocks. This isn't really mentioned in the article, but not too long ago,

[00:50:50] Turkish troops were bracketing U.S. forces in Syria with, you know, artillery. So that wasn't great. And that things that actually bind allies to Washington are material and getting stronger, not weaker. They cite Europe and Asia's defensive buildups and converging views that both Russia and China pose existential threats as factors in this. But it's worth saying who's making the case.

[00:51:16] Campbell was Biden's deputy secretary of state and the architect of his Indo-Pacific strategy. Doshi ran China policy on the National Security Council. So this is a Washington insider's argument written by two of the people who helped build the system they're now insisting can't really break, which is a comfortable thing to believe when it's your own life's work. So, Chris, what's your sort of view of this whole thing?

[00:51:42] Yeah, it's a very interesting article. In some ways, it provided a bit of hope. And I sort of broadly agree with the points in the article. But sorry, you want to say something there? I want to preface this before we, because I'm sure there's probably people listening who are driving that like their fists are just bloody, just beating it through their dashboard as I talk about this stuff. You know, I can I can certainly feed into that in a minute if you want me to.

[00:52:08] Okay. Again, yes, throw your rotten vegetables at Chris for what he's about to say. I'm offering this as food for thought. It's I think it's an interesting perspective. And I think there's there's some good points here. It doesn't mean I'm not saying this is the way, you know, but just discussion. Don't don't yell at me. Go ahead. Well, I'll give my quick overview. And then if you want me to, I can go into a longer spiel.

[00:52:36] Because it's quite like, I, I, 45 minutes. So you got to go go off. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. So I've got a bit of stuff here. But so I broadly agree the points in the article and I hope the authors are right. My concern is they may be a bit optimistic that existing alliances will merge intact the other side of Trump due to technological and defense dependencies, which is most of their argument kind of seems to hinge on a little bit there. And it's good to hear that there's still some people in the Republican Party who understand the importance of alliances.

[00:53:06] But again, that could change over time as people age out and are replaced. And I think there's no guarantees that the philosophy driving the current administration disappears when Trump leaves office. And at the same time, there are signs that, you know, I would say there are signs that the political tide in America is turning at the moment, which is good. And I remain hopeful that many Americans trying to preserve these alliances ultimately come out on top over the next few

[00:53:34] election cycles. But there are, you know, obviously deeper domestic political problems, both in America and here as well. But in America with regards to this at the moment, there are domestic political problems that need to be addressed. But before we can, you know, that needs to be addressed before we can assume that destructive MAGA philosophy is going away. At the same time, I think the authors are right on the dangers of a self-fulfilling prophecy,

[00:53:59] that alliances are now weakened and possibly over. I think that is a dangerous line of thinking. But we can't be blind to the active damage the Trump administration has done to American relations. Now, I can go further into that if you want me to. Or I can go to you for a moment. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. So, well, if anybody follows us on Blue Sky, and occasionally on X, since Trump has returned to

[00:54:26] the White House, I've sort of grown to adopt a little mantra that seems to sum up what I've seen from his administration. And it ultimately is, Trump is bad for allies, but good for foes. That's kind of my mantra that I'm kind of growing with at the moment. And despite much of the arguments about defense dependence in the article, I am seeing in Canada and Europe, they're actively looking for ways to become less reliant on American military support and trade. And certainly in the

[00:54:51] article, there are many things that say that might not be possible. But there are definitely efforts going on. So, one example is, you know, like the F-35 program. Canada committed to 88 aircraft, but is now reviewing that purchasing and considering a smaller F-35 fleet. And they might even go with the Saab Gripen aircraft instead. And in fact, Saab's come out quite well out of a lot of this

[00:55:17] recently, because also the E-7 Wedgetail that was supposed to replace a lot of the aging AWACS fleet with NATO members, a lot of those orders have been canceled. And instead, they've gone with the Saab, I think it's the Global Eye, it's called, which is their kind of equivalent of an AWACS. And that's just some examples there. Then there's also the Trump administration's sort of pointless

[00:55:43] war of tariffs and words with Canada, your neighbor, which has fundamentally challenged the relationship or changed the relationship. And Prime Minister Mark Khan is now actively pursuing closer economic relations with China and with Europe. And in August, he said that America has changed and that we will not return to our old relationship. And, you know, that's an extraordinary relationship from the

[00:56:08] leader of one of America's oldest and closest allies. I'll just do one more example because I could go on forever. But then we have Greenland, the Greenland buckle, which at the moment is kind of on the back burner, but it could easily rear its ugly head once again. It's going to be a lot harder in a couple months to do that. Well, one would hope, touch wood, fingers crossed and whatever else we need to

[00:56:32] kind of do to make sure that happens. But, you know, Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out using military force to acquire Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally. And if an American president ever attempts to seize the territory of another NATO member by force, it will most likely rip the alliance to shreds. And I think the article even mentions that is a big if. And so, yeah, so it's, I want to be optimistic. I want to be hopeful. But then

[00:57:02] looking at kind of the conversations going on in Europe and stuff, the article on some level feels a weenie bit out of touch, but, you know, you know what I mean? That's why I prefaced it by saying who the authors were. Mm. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what are your, what are your thoughts? Because you, you obviously you probably got more inside view than I do just from the fact that I'm across the pond from you, but.

[00:57:33] No, no. I mean, I think it's, it's, there are good points here, you know, again, I don't, I don't think this is simply, I would not offer this article as like, this is the way, and this is how it's going to be. And, you know, deal with it. I do think in a lot of the commentary on this, there's a lot of, there's a lot of recency bias, you know, and there's a lot of

[00:58:00] justifiable rage and anger about wanting to give the administration a black eye and to show, to highlight their arrogance and stupidity that sometimes verges toward like rooting for the Iranians in one case, you know, in this war or saying they're not actually that bad after all, or you do some stuff like some kind of, you know, leftist streamers who shan't be named,

[00:58:29] who are like, you know, North Korea is kind of cool, actually, like just verging into like tanky shit, you know, which also wasn't cool, you know? And I think part of that also, that desire to give the administration a black eye tends to sometimes lend itself to this sort of rooting for these alliance structures to fail also, you know? And I think that's really short-sighted

[00:58:53] and just not wise. But at the same point, you know, a lot of this, you know, what will the transatlantic alliance look like after Trump is gone? And there will be a day when he is gone, or even when his power has been constrained significantly, as I think we're likely to see in the next few months, which would make, you know, something like a revival of the Greenland

[00:59:17] clusterfuck way harder to actually even bandy about and threaten the way it was last winter. A lot of this, what happens here after Trump, it's going to be different. That doesn't mean that it's going to be gone. And I think there's a lot of recency bias and everything that looks at that and comes to that conclusion, and also does not factor in a lot of the other really sort of rocky

[00:59:44] moments that the alliance has had post-war, which this article goes into, you know, stuff about like the Pershing II missiles under Reagan being based in Europe, and that hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets being opposed to that, you know, the Suez crisis, which was really bad, you know, for the alliance. The stuff that, you know, Nixon was up to that really alienated

[01:00:08] Asian allies, the way the end of the Vietnam War, how that sort of reflected views about America's role in the world and everything. And in all of those moments, I'm sure it looked very similar to how things look now, you know, but you have the perspective looking back at how the alliance has endured and evolved and everything. And okay, it wasn't the end. I don't think it's necessarily the end, the end now. I don't, I don't know. I'm, I wish I was more

[01:00:38] eloquent about this right now. I think also a lot of this is, the story is being written right now, how this is going to go down. You know, we don't have an ending yet. We don't know what the ending is going to be. And I think a lot of how we as the United States, speaking as, uh, as, as the American half of the show here, how, how we respond to this in the coming years, I think will have everything

[01:01:04] to do with how the alliance looks after Trump is gone and, and, and whether what, how that kind of recovery comes to be, you know, like, I think if we, if we look at folks like Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner and Pete Hegseth after this and go, it's fine. We'll just move on, you know, and just not,

[01:01:29] and not address this, you know, then yeah, we're sort of showing that, okay, that none of this actually matters, that this wasn't a total catastrophe and just an inexcusable disgrace, you know, how we respond to it and how we bring justice to these people and, and enact our own reforms to ensure that nothing like it can ever happen again goes a long way to showing that we still are the people we've long

[01:01:55] presented ourselves to be, you know, to that point about like changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America that's supported by about 14% of the country. So yeah, yeah, you know, and there's also like, I'm going to say something that's going to piss people off, whatever. There is a lot of commentary and discussion in European media coverage of the U S right now. And a lot of it is

[01:02:23] justified and, and correct, but there's sort of this like nihilism and, and doomerism about it that insists that the country is, is far more along this dark path and accepting of it than it actually is. And they don't react well when that view is challenged, you know? And I think a lot of that, you saw that punctured a bit by the people who came over here for the world cup and had a

[01:02:45] great time, you know, and did not see the ugly MAGA-ification of it totally reflected. And I don't know, there's a, there's, there's an insistence of, there's an insistence of people that America is uniformly the way it is right now. And it's accepted that I feel is Trumpian in its persistent denial of objective reality in favor of a preferred and convenient narrative.

[01:03:13] It falls into historic anti-Americanism that does exist in Europe. And it also falls a little bit on the left into the kind of anti-capitalist kind of pro-Soviet point of view, which is sort of rarer, but it still exists a little bit in certain fringes of, of European politics. Uh-huh. And there's a lot of that comes into it as well. And then obviously on top of that, the,

[01:03:39] the very real examples of all the terrible things that do go on. America is not as far gone as people believe, which is a good thing. And it, and obviously there are some very sort of sane voices and people working behind the scenes, try and make things better. And I think if there is a positive, should we say a big pushback in the midterms that is successful and challenges this sort of behavior that most people in Europe sees as sort of reckless and destructive, we'll put it that

[01:04:08] way. I won't say everybody believes that, but certainly a lot of people do. And there's some sort of pushback to that. It will just, it will, yeah, it would challenge that view more significantly. I mean, with the world cup, one funny thing, apparently the sale of ranch dressing has increased since people have come back from the world cup. As long as you don't call it salad cream. That's honestly, that's a different thing. Right. Okay. That's just, that's just, just the name grosses me out. It's an English, it's a very specific English thing.

[01:04:38] Yeah. I don't, I don't like the name. It's like moist to me. I hear it. I'm like, don't call it that salad cream is really, I've had a bit of a salad cream Renaissance recently and it's actually, I forgot how good I think it is, but that's a different matter. Anyway, it's a different matter, but yeah. Yeah. So I think look, you were talking about ranch dressing in the world cup. We were, I mean, one other more serious point is sort of like, you know, we've said this before the political winds that have blown through America

[01:05:06] has led to sort of Trump and this sort of destructive MAGA philosophy is blowing. It has been blown through Europe and still is and is in the UK. Now in the UK, we're currently kind of in this interesting honeymoon period because of the new Andy Burnham led government. And that government appears to be tackling a lot of the kind of economic issues that have led to this mass dissatisfaction. They, I mean, they haven't actually dealt with it yet, but they're talking about it, which is a

[01:05:31] positive. And we will see over time how effective that will be and whether that will lead to some political stability in the UK because the UK that was traditionally always seems politically stable for the last 10 years, we've been on a revolving door of prime ministers and Larry, Larry the cat's the only stable force. You guys have been like Italy since Brexit. Yeah. Yeah. And things need to change. And, and, and I don't know whether the Burnham government's going to achieve that as a whole different thing. And many people listening to this will be like,

[01:05:57] have their opinions about that. And that's absolutely fine. I'm not saying that Burnham's the savior of us all. I doubt he will be, but at least I will acknowledge that at least their government has been making some messaging about why, about a lot of the economic issues that are pissing people off that is leading to this very destructive kind of attitude in, in politics. And it's certainly in America. When I was in the States, when the election happened, it very much felt like Trump won

[01:06:24] on an economic card, but obviously his behavior has made matters objectively worse, but there are a lot of people in denial about that, but it might come back to haunt him in the midterms. We will see. But I think economic issues are a national security concern. I think since 2008, the Western world's been in a very difficult place and a lot of people are very dissatisfied. And, you know, we've seen through

[01:06:50] history how economic situations have led to the rise of Nazism and we're seeing all forterranism grow every day in America and Europe. And it's, I strongly believe it is linked to economics and I think, and economic satisfaction. And I think that is- It's just the information environment too. Yeah. And it all feeds into it. And I think that's what both, all politicians need to be

[01:07:16] thinking about as they go forward. But, but that's not our podcast. That's a different podcast to deal with the economic problems that underpin our societies to resolve that. But yeah. Even if you look at like, you know, Europe and Canada looking, looking beyond sort of US defense industrial base to, you know, where it buys its aircraft and everything from. I don't see that as a bad thing. I've always thought that's an awesome thing. Please do. I think it's bad if the

[01:07:45] entire Western Alliance, Lockheed Martin supplies all of its fighter jets. Like that seems like a vulnerability to me. Yeah. You know, I think it's bad if you don't have your own tanker and ISR support, your own AWACS planes. That's bad. If, if our air force has to provide all of that in perpetuity, I think it's bad for us national security. If the entire Western Alliance is entirely dependent on the

[01:08:09] us for its defense, that's bad and unsustainable, you know? So if this is a thing that helps reconfigure that we can come out of this together a lot better off. But again, I come back to if Americans are serious about our values and, and the kind of country that we like to project that we are to the rest of the world, you know, for, for good and bad. If we care about these Alliance structures and want to

[01:08:36] preserve them and, and show that that man and his ideology and, and everything around him is a cancer upon this nation, right? How we respond to it after he is gone to hold those accountable who we can in meaningful ways, publicly hold them accountable, demonstrate that for the world and to enact our

[01:09:00] own reforms to ensure that it cannot happen again. That goes so far, I think to that kind of recovery. I mean, I remember, I remember the Bush administration. That was really bad. I was 18 years old in Paris getting harassed because of my accent. Wow. Because of the Bush, because of the war on terror, because of everything about the Bush administration, that was really bad. And we don't, we, now we think of him as this, you know, endearing grandpa with his, with his candies and his, you know, cute friendship

[01:09:29] with Michelle Obama. That shit was really bad. And we totally forget about it. Yeah. A lot of people became Canadian during that time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did for half a day in Paris. Yeah. You know? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. But yeah, honestly, it's, it's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it was fine. It wasn't, I wasn't like in danger or anything. It was just like, oh shit. Okay. Y'all don't like me. You know? Yeah. We forget these things and it's happened before. Yeah. Yeah. We need to learn from

[01:09:57] recent history as well as ancient history, but yeah. Well, there we go. But yeah, I, yeah, there's, there's big, deeper questions that need to be explored to sort of figure a lot of that out really. But, uh, yeah, I, I think you're right. I mean, the key is not to take this nihilistic approach and just wish the end of these alliances because that's not going to be good for anybody. And in fact, that's exactly what our foes would love, you know, China and Russia would love to see the end of NATO. And obviously they're working their damnedest through misinformation, et cetera,

[01:10:27] to make that happen. Transatlantic Alliance is, is the, would be the envy of any, any world power that has ever existed since we stood up on two legs in East Africa, you know, a gajillion years ago. Yeah. So we shouldn't give up on it lightly. Well, unfortunately on that note, I think we need

[01:10:53] to wrap up because I've sadly got to disappear, but, um, it's been great to chat with you today, Matt. And you know, it's great to be back and I hope everybody enjoyed our discussion and, you know, thank you very much for watching and for listening to us. And we will be back with another espresso martini in a couple of weeks. And we've got some interviews coming out over September and we'd be, it'd be good to discuss the results of the survey and our next espresso martini as well. So just a

[01:11:20] huge thank you to everybody who has been, uh, you know, participating in that. We've had a, the biggest response ever, to be honest, in a very, you know, in a very encouraging way to the survey. A lot. Yeah. So there's a lot of food for thought with that. Not a huge amount to talk about, but I just would like to talk about it a little bit just to acknowledge it and say thank you to everybody who has participated. No one said y'all suck, pack it up, which was kind of nice. Well, yeah, let's not encourage that. They do that on the Apple podcast instead.

[01:11:52] That's where that view gets put out. So on that note, if you do like this podcast, please leave us a five-star review on Apple podcast because we do get a lot of one-star reviews. Or on YouTube. Also on YouTube, like smash that like button, you know, like a subscribe share all that juicy algorithm. Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And don't forget to support us on Patreon. You can get access to the ad free version of this show on patreon.com forward slash secrets and spies. And if that's not your thing, we also have buy us a coffee where

[01:12:22] you can go to buy me a coffee.com forward slash secrets and spies, and you can buy us a cup of coffee because all of that really does help the show. We're a completely independent podcast. It's just me and Matt. And we're doing this in between our day jobs and anything that can help keep the lights going. There's no Russian funding. No, I know. I mean, Russian, but I just did an interview just yesterday with Dave Troy and Russian funding came up. And honestly, I was envious for a moment because

[01:12:48] one particular podcast who was backed by Russia was getting a hundred thousand dollars an episode. Yeah. Not even the most successful podcasts get that much money. These are the super rah-rah America guys that are being funded by the Russians under the table. I don't know. Yeah. And, and like, why is it all authoritarian regimes are really good at funding podcasts yet people who are pro-democracy are not? That's what I want to know. People want to destroy

[01:13:17] democracy. I've got all the money. All of my Bugattis are rented. All of my Bugattis are rented, Chris. And I want to change that this year. I want to buy them outright. All right. I want to be legit. Damn right. You know, my goodness. But yeah, so honestly, any, joking aside, any support is gratefully received and, and thank you to our existing Patreon subscribers are out there because you really do help. And you've been a lovely, wonderful, loyal audience. You've been supporting

[01:13:45] us through many years. And so, yeah, but it's just to stress that we are completely independent because I, you know, sometimes get the odd comment where it sounds like we've got some major editorial team and a social media team, et cetera. And there are no teams. We are the team. God, I would kill for a producer. What you see is what you get. I would kill for a producer. Well, I just want an editor. I'll tell you what I'd love to be able to afford. Yeah.

[01:14:10] So I edit the majority of these episodes and it takes about on average three to six hours to edit an episode. And my goodness, especially over the summer when I edited all the summer episodes before they came out in like a chunk, my, and I've actually got tennis elbow right now because I do so much editing. I've got tennis elbow. I'm seeing doctors about it. So I would love by this time next year where we're in a position where we can afford an editor. So somebody else can have tennis

[01:14:40] elbow because I'm really not enjoying it. Yeah. Or there's a media company out there. Who's like, you know what? They do good stuff on their own and they could do a lot more of it and a lot better with some, you know, infrastructure backing them up. Hey, we're cheap. The lines are open, you know, drop us a line, you know, secret to the spice podcast at gmail.com. You'll find us there and you'll find us on social media too. So we're on blue sky Instagram. We are an ex still

[01:15:10] as much as I feel very conflicted about being on X, but there we go. Take a shower after that. Yeah. Oh my goodness. But there we go. But anyway, I'll wrap us up. So thank you everybody for listening and hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you had a wonderful summer and thank you for joining us again and we'll catch you on the next episode. Take care. Bye.

[01:15:42] Thanks for listening. This is secrets and spies.