S8 Ep28: Espresso Martini: Russian space weapons, Tucker Carlson in Russia and a beheading in Pennsylvania

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[00:00:24] But Dave's Killer Bread has done more than raised the bar on bread. tradition and obviously our thoughts are with Alexei Navalny's family and friends and we like you are probably wondering about what the future holds for Russia because I know many had high hopes with Navalny that somehow he might be able to find a way to sort of change Russia and get it

[00:01:41] away from Putin's grip. Personally I always felt that was probably a little unlikely but Hello everybody and welcome to espresso martini Matt how are you doing? I'm doing good Chris how are you? It's good to be back. Yeah it's good to be back too. It feels I don't know how long it's been now I've lost track because we were supposed to be doing this last week and then as always my day job got in the way. It's been have we done one in February or was that like the end of January was our last one?

[00:03:01] Yeah end of jam was our last this office.

[00:03:03] Yeah the days just kind of just broke out of nowhere yesterday. So we're recording this on Thursday, February 15th, and this sort of very quickly came to kind of dominate

[00:04:20] DC political reporting most in the day, you know, things leak on the hill and like five minutes once they all start talking about it. So the reports that came out later in the day yesterday suggested the threat involves, so there's sort of two two beliefs here. The one is involved in Russian consideration of deploying nuclear weapons in space for anti-satellite purposes.

[00:05:41] Later last night affiliate weapons, posing threats to US assets in space. Space-based networks are critical for US military operations, including early warning, navigation, and communication. Possibilities include threats from non-space-related Russian military capabilities, Chinese developments in space weaponry, and other countries' missile advancements. If the threat is confirmed as a disruptive Russian space capability, it signifies the

[00:07:02] emergence of space as an active battlefield, potentially requiring new disclosures and especially on my part. But now it looks like Space Force might actually have a job now. So after how many years of being in existence. So if military and communication satellites were destroyed, obviously it will have a devastating effect both for the modern military and civilians. And I suspect the likelihood of such an attack

[00:08:20] would only come in the kind of final desperate days

[00:08:23] or hours of a full out war,

[00:08:25] because anybody, you know, I'd like to find out whether the, I'm sure it can, but whether the military still can function without them, because we've sort of shifted into this digital age over the last like 30 odd years. And certainly the military, much more reliant on military based GPS systems and communication systems. But you do wonder

[00:09:42] whether if somebody took out all the satellite network, whether that would cause a problem trajectory of this whole conversation yesterday. Mike Turner is not, he's a, he's a serious, Mike Turner is a serious person. He's not a conspiracy theorist clown, like some, many of his colleagues. And like I said to you yesterday, when we were discussing, you know, do we delay the show? What do we do to keep an eye on it?

[00:11:00] I mean, I said, if he, if Mike Turner comes out publicly

[00:11:04] and says something like, you know, hey,

[00:11:06] this is a problem, we need to talk about this.

[00:11:08] We need to pay coming to light. We wouldn't have known that we know that the Russians are attending this without his freakout yesterday. Yeah, potentially blown sources methods is the term that comes up frequently. recent years. So Space Force is under the Department of the Air Force. So you can look at its relationship with the Air Force in the same way that like

[00:13:40] the Navy and the Marine Corps are both of keen observers of the issue, we don't really know what it what it does or what it's doing up there or what its capabilities are. I mean, it's been theorized that it could just be like an experimental kind of, you

[00:15:02] know, like testbed platform thing, or? For a new system of spy satellites. And by the time that decade is up, at the time, it actually gets up into orbit, a lot of the payload, the sensors and stuff that are on board

[00:16:21] the satellite aren't really quite cutting edge. They're a bit dated at the time. And once it's gravity, the event that opens it is an example of that, which basically is so like space debris, right? That's up in orbit, circling the earth at like thousands of miles an hour, like little tiny bits of screws or things larger, like just shrapnel debris, right? That's just spinning around 1000 miles an

[00:17:42] hour. And that hits something said, yeah, doing the Kessler syndrome for the lulls is like some incredibly dumb, hair-brained, bond-villain type shit, which is, rings true for was commissioned by the Space Force to draw create some painting illustration whatever of a near future like space battle right and it basically showed

[00:20:23] What's what looks a lot like the X 37 B with an arm coming out of it?

[00:21:23] There's a lot about this area that we don't know. And as I said, I think a lot of the more secretive, interesting stuff that the military is doing

[00:21:28] today is up in space.

[00:21:30] And we just don't know about it.

[00:21:32] Yeah, I'm still intrigued by why the panic.

[00:21:37] Are they launching something that's going to make this a real-time thing?

[00:21:41] Why, Mike Turner's panic?

[00:21:43] I'll rush about to launch.

[00:21:45] And not that actually do it, but stuff on the right because it was used to investigate some of the Russian interference claims, right? So they don't like it. Republicans don't like it for that. And there's some theorizing that Mike Turner sort of had this public freak

[00:23:00] out over it to, I guess, show the's something connected to that as well. I don't know, it's a weird one. Because he doesn't, as you were saying, he doesn't sound like a nutter or anything. So, so imagine there must have been some grand scheme or pressing concern about this, but who knows?

[00:24:22] I guess we'll find out more as time comes on, but yeah. Putin at home, an aid Trump's reelection bid by influencing U.S. audiences. The timing coincides with Russia's presidential election, and the outcome is not a suspenseful thing, offering Putin a chance to assert his dominance at home. Russian officials anticipate leveraging Carlson's large audience to influence the U.S. election

[00:25:42] by emphasizing his criticism of Democrats.

[00:25:44] Russian state media extensively covered Carlson's visit, portraying him sympathetically and a former New York Times bureau chief who was based in Moscow from 1921 to 1934, and Durante gained notoriety for portraying communist Russia in an excessively positive manner, minimising or disregarding human rights violations and echoing Soviet propaganda. He even went as far as denying the Russian campaign to suppress the Ukrainian independence movement by deliberately

[00:27:03] starving Ukrainians during the Holodomor from 1932 to 33 which resulted in the savior of the white Christian world and being a force against progressive values, Putin would have had more sympathy with American and Western viewers who agree with those ideas. And instead, his long and randy interview seemed to be alienating. And now Putin's even publicly criticizing Taka Carlson. And apparently he's been said

[00:28:22] to say, sincerely speaking, I didn't fully bothered to report on Russia or try to speak to Vladimir Putin since the war in Ukraine began, which is just patently just not true. I mean, Christian Amundpur came out like immediately and was like, I've been trying to ask to interview Vladimir Putin since the day the war began, since like before that, you know?

[00:29:43] Plenty of people have asked, they've all been denied

[00:29:45] and excused the lack there of this interview and what it wanted to do here in the US.

[00:31:00] I mean, Tucker has long been a kind of

[00:32:04] And I think part of that, the lack of this introduced success is A, because he doesn't have the platform that he used to, right?

[00:32:05] He was fired from Fox News and he's sort of been doing this weird kind of in-between thing

[00:32:09] where it's on Twitter and it's on broadcast, on YouTube and stuff.

[00:32:14] He hasn't really quite found a new megaphone that's nearly as effective, that has the reach

[00:32:19] that he did when he was on Fox.

[00:32:22] So that's something.

[00:32:23] Yeah.

[00:32:24] And he probably hoped this might change that, but yeah.

[00:32:25] I'm sure he did. Vladimir Putin, like take your job, you know? Was he like an immigrant who took your job, you know? Is he, has he tried to cancel you? You know, really kind of insidious mind games that he tries to play with his audience. But I think he tends to go too far. Like he said, after the interview, he was talking about it

[00:33:42] and he said something, he said, and I'm quoting him here.

[00:33:46] And the most radicalizing thing for me in the eight days And I think there's a fine line between trying to package these far-right white nationalist, pro-Russian kind of ideas in a way that is sympathetic to the broad base of the American right versus just outright? Well, it's what I find really interesting actually was some older people who live through the Cold War and some who even force in the Cold War who have suddenly become very pro Russia. It just, I don't know, is a bit odd. Like, I was trying to think of an example, but you know a bit of a disdain. That's a very good point. I feel like Putin would have more respect for somebody who disliked him and disliked Russia and were open about it than, so maybe we have a better chance. I don't think we're chatting about Putin. Or is it something that like someone is just so slavishly

[00:37:40] fawning in their praise of you and oh my God,

[00:37:43] you're so great, you're so awesome to the point

[00:37:45] that like you being in boot and shoes are like, I was jokingly saying to my wife a few weeks ago, maybe I should just shave my head, take a load of steroids, go very pro-Trump, and then I'll have the most successful podcast on Planet Earth. I mean, we could definitely make a lot more money with this podcast if we did this. I know, I know. That's what it takes everybody. All the time.

[00:39:00] You need to shave my head, do steroids, and get into Trump.

[00:39:03] It will be multimillionaires.

[00:39:05] In certain preparing for these discussions that we have, it would be so much easier. Well, I don't know, in the Trump years, this does a strike me as a bit opportunistic. And then they lost their shit during COVID and became a full-blown COVID conspiracy theorist. So why are people? Yeah, and I really do think that our individual probably did that more for money than they did for belief.

[00:40:21] But I could be wrong, maybe people change,

[00:40:23] but we all like, or Russell Brown,

[00:40:25] that should be seen, and I don't mind mentioning him

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[00:43:02] and organizations that have contributed

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[00:44:20] Russian officials, influencers and state-run media outlets have been actively involved to find these domestic, political, cultural divisions inside adversary target countries and just pour gasoline on them, try and exacerbate. They do best. Yeah, it really is what they do best. It's kind of, it is the specialty

[00:45:41] of their intelligence services.

[00:45:43] As I've demonstrated through these troll farms and stuff, one, I think it's a lot of, it's a lot of wish casting on the part of traditional Russian propaganda. It's like, you have like Demetri Midyadev, who yeah, was the president before for a while, sort of, you know, kept the seat warm for Putin. It was really just fallen like so far, you know? Like, if you look at him now, he looks like a total raging alcoholic.

[00:48:05] who we're asking, you know, okay, well, when we succeed, when we secede, when we're like our own country, are we still going to get our like social security checks?

[00:48:09] No, no, your social security, your Medicare, your Medicaid, that comes from the federal

[00:48:15] government, you know, like everybody's gangster, everybody wants to succeed until you need

[00:48:19] FEMA or your social security checks to get there on time.

[00:48:23] You know, I could tell you from Brexit. a co-worker at the time saying something offhand, and this was before Trump, right? Saying something offhand to the effect of like, oh yeah, we're heading for a civil war in this country. I heard that about 10 years ago as well. And it was around that time when those guys took over that game park, whatever it was. I remember the place is cool, do you remember that?

[00:49:41] Each time I liked the out west,

[00:49:44] it was like public land. like heating and air conditioning and to walk into a grocery store and have food on the shelves and stuff, you do not want a civil war. You're just kind of just bloviating online. And I don't take that talk seriously for that reason. We're not cut out for it. We don't know what that actually is. Well, if you look at January the 6th, I think it'll very quickly, they'll get the impression that, you know, we've exhausted all that we can inside the normal political system and there's nothing left for us to do. And I think you'll see, I don't know if it'll rise to like, you know, the governor of Texas being like, we're going to secede. I don't know that you'll see that. Because again, I think, you know, a lot of these governors, they want to talk tough, you

[00:52:23] know, for their own political interests and stuff. People forget that in Russia they have offices full of people employed to study the culture of a target country and find local contentious issues that can be used to create division. And the goal is to erode people's faith in their own government. And it's exactly what the information research agency did under the supervision of the late

[00:53:43] D. Gevney Progosion, who has a name, who hasn't said changing a little bit because again obviously Republicans are now messing around and blocking funding to Ukraine which could tip the balance in Russia's favor. I think they've been working towards that for a while and obviously there are Russian online campaigns to this day that are still trying to paint the Ukrainians as neo-Nazis and all sorts of nonsense like that. you know, you're going to be so careful really. And so this, this method I've got is just based on what I used to do at university when I was studying for my dissertation. It's known as empirical analysis and it's the method we use for sourcing at university for our dissertations and it does a pretty good job. And I do highly recommend everybody

[00:56:24] if you're not doing that. It's very've been, I think you, the way you feel about this and your sort of best practices that you add here of ways that people can be aware of, how they're being manipulated by bad actors online is certainly very interesting with, I mean, you've been very open about your sort of journey

[00:57:42] out of being a conspiracy theorist.

[00:57:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

[00:57:45] I think you've anything that experienced

[00:57:46] where I feel like I felt a bit like a Cassandra a little bit, you know, that whole Cassandra complex, we start to warn people that this is bad. And then you start to see it, and I really felt it in 2016, to be honest with you, I went around sort of Brexit and Trump, where

[00:59:04] even family members are starting to spout off nonsense, that I just I have so many mixture of emotions. But ultimately, ultimately embarrassment is the main one I have. But there we are. So I guess, you know, why this issue always becomes important to me is just because I see so much damage is done. There are people and I was

[01:00:22] going to go in this with the beheading thing, but I'll go, it's just sort of frustrating really. And just sad because there are some people who are nice and good people who I feel have been completely ruined. And I'm lucky, you know, I got myself out of it around 2007, 2008.

[01:01:40] But the people I know from back in 2003 who still believe this stuff,

[01:01:45] that's a long time. once in a while just to sit down and double check why is it you're angry about this or that and what is it really based on and by doing that process every so often you start to catch yourself out a bit so like for example for me um way from conspiracy theorists that um dreadful murder of Meredith Kirch in Italy for a while I was um I don't know I just started to really

[01:03:03] it's the college students who was um standing right over there and with any kind of media that was pro or anti your established stances. If you're like putting on a jersey and just rooting for your team. Yeah, you would get into these sort of like, you would sort of pick up these fellow travelers and chat with them a bit about why a man in ox is guilty and like how terrible it is when somebody tries to make it out, she's not, you know. But I'm saying more like, if you saw a piece of media

[01:04:23] or a viewpoint out there that ran contrary

[01:04:25] to your held belief that metanock was guilty for this murder, reaction, I think. So I think if anything, those sort of thoughts didn't come to a lot later. And this is interesting. I was listening to an interview actually on, talking about on Spy Talker with a guy who was talking about how he felt the government needs to be doing more to tackle these sort of far-right narratives online. And it ends up looking quite a circular

[01:05:40] discussion. But one of the interesting points he It threatens the very existence of those groups getting recruits. So it becomes this a very interesting area. And to think that there was at a time there was a government program

[01:07:04] that had workshops and people to sit down with you and talk to you narrative. And, you know, I'm just deeply concerned that this idea of painting the response to the war on terror is just deeply racist. And there weren't racist elements to it totally. But it wasn't all racism that led to, you know, it wasn't, you know, 9-11 is the reason why those of war on terror. And, you know, those individuals believe that they were acting in the

[01:08:22] name of Islam. And if anybody looks into Islam, they're worth dealing with but the problem is by only focusing on that, you're kind of us sowing the seeds of well, society's just terrible. So what is it worth us dealing? What is it

[01:09:40] worth us protecting anymore is where I feel some leftist debates are going. I could be

[01:09:45] wrong. that allied themselves with L'amini and his movement. And they were ultimately the first people put up against a wall and shot. Yeah, totally. And many leftists don't even realize that. It's so funny. You know, so yeah, I don't know where all that leads us to. But, you know, it's just we've got to be careful with what things we believe

[01:11:00] and why we know why we believe them.

[01:11:02] And every few years, it's probably healthy, just to double check all that, I guess,

[01:11:06] is the moral of the story.

[01:12:03] bathroom, along with a machete and a large knife. Monde's mother discovered the body and called emergency services.

[01:12:07] Monde fled the scene but was tracked down using cell phone data and apprehended by police.

[01:12:12] He had minimal prior contact with the police before this, with only insubstantial incidents

[01:12:17] in his record.

[01:12:18] According to court records, Monde struggled with employment after graduating from college

[01:12:22] and blamed federal government entities for his financial situation and filing lawsuits Well, yeah, this is an interesting one, isn't it? Because, um, so, uh, I think there's probably, I feel like his personal struggles to find employment led to a low self-esteem that may have led to him going down the rabbit hole. And I suspect then being stuck living with his parents in this sort of weird wacky conspiracy

[01:13:41] mindset, and then probably it was, there was, I suspect there was a trigger of that and

[01:13:45] this me speculating it. and how personal issues are infused with national level political cultural issues that get, I don't know, spun together, create this really toxic kind of belief system. I think it really speaks to a rise in conspiratorial thinking in the country, it just acceptance of it as just like a given fact, are just opposed to Biden and his policies and, you know, support Trump the right. That's the kind of media they consume. And so they're just going to reflexively go with anything that reflects poorly on Biden and the left. They're perceived cultural enemies, right? And then there's a third who are kind of just

[01:16:24] along for the ride just for fun, who don't really believe it at all. But you know, they're like,

[01:17:27] the country and American society has so inexorably moved beyond their reach. You know, I've sort of used it as a way to describe it before.

[01:17:32] I don't think if you talk about like a civil war in the country, I don't think like the

[01:17:38] 1860s, you know, like Gettysburg, that kind of thing is a good way to describe what it

[01:17:44] would look like now. Is that the one? So honestly, I know a little bit about Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift's boyfriend plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, yes. Thank you. That's what I was wondering. So Kansas City, was that Super Bowl parade attacked because somebody thought that Taylor Swift works for the CIA or something? Because they've arrested three people. I don't know that that's been reported, what the motives were for it.

[01:19:00] I have no idea.

[01:19:00] It may be out there.

[01:19:02] I just haven't read it.

[01:19:02] No, no, no, no.

[01:19:03] I've not seen anything yet.

[01:19:05] Yeah.

[01:19:06] I haven't seen anything on the motives see something like that. There's just sort of sustained in the background for a while and a section of elected politicians in the country and just the population as a whole that sort of sees it as justified. I think that's what you would see rather than like the 1867. Yeah, and arguably that's probably

[01:20:21] sadly more effective

[01:20:22] because you're just gonna create a situation

[01:20:25] where people are scared to go out and do anything.

[01:21:22] to proactively counteract these things. And in many ways, I would say for good reason, you know, but it's a problem.

[01:21:28] Yeah, and I think that is the issue, isn't it?

[01:21:31] Because I think the federal government don't really know how to deal with that.

[01:21:34] They've certainly done it successfully against like Islamic extremists to some extent.

[01:21:40] But I think the problem is maybe for law enforcement, the podcast, which is $3, and a very good friend of the podcast, which is five, and you either get a coaster or a coffee cup, depending on which level you choose. If you enjoyed this episode or would like to comment

[01:23:00] on this episode, you can connect with us on social media.

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