S8 Ep52: UK & French Elections, UK defence report and Russian information campaign exposed in US

[00:00:04] Secrets and Spies presents Espresso Martini with Chris Carr and Matt Fulton. Welcome to Espresso Martini. Matt, how are you? How are you doing? I'm doing good, Chris. It's one of those days where like it rains, it pours, you know,

[00:00:37] one thing happens and then a million things happen all at once. And it actually is, it actually is kind of raining today. So that's, I don't know, happed. Yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that. It's definitely, I was just saying to you off air, it's just that time

[00:00:49] a year for me where I get really exhausted. So I'm kind of looking forward to a bit of a production break that's coming up soon. So yeah, but we will do our best to navigate some of the

[00:01:01] kind of crazy stories that have been going on in the world this week. Oh, there's a few of them. Oh, yeah. And there's even, oh my goodness, there's even more that we unfortunately,

[00:01:08] we won't really be able to comment on today, but maybe comment on them on the next episode. But yeah, like that Russian assassination plot that's just been uncovered. I mean, like honestly.

[00:01:18] Yeah, yeah, we will get to that one next time. That was just like, I can't digest this right now. Yeah. In an adequate way. Well, the spies arrest, the two Russian spies arrested in Australia. That's another interesting

[00:01:30] one that came up yesterday. So yeah, sadly we won't be covering that. But yes, that's an interesting story to keep an eye on. I actually, I guess a quick little behind the curtain thing, in our shared note for the next

[00:01:41] episode that I made but had not shared with you yet, because I was busy getting ready for this while I saw that, I saw that story. And it's in there right now with a big thing that says

[00:01:50] Australia story exclamation point exclamation point. So we will definitely cover it. Yeah, definitely. Because to our lovely Australian listeners out there, I do feel like we neglect you slightly because we don't really cover much of Australia. So we

[00:02:01] must make amends with that and definitely do a better job of covering a few Australian and New Zealand stories as we move on. We've just all like comparatively lost our minds up here in the northern hemisphere compared to

[00:02:14] you guys down south. So it's like, we're very distracted up here. Were you familiar with Neville Duke's book? On the Beach, where it's all about this like nuclear holocaust that happens and there's a submarine that gets to New Zealand or Australia.

[00:02:31] And they're just living out the final days of normality before the terrible radioactive cloud finally gets to Australia. Yeah, yeah. Well, there were, I think I recall there were like studies done during the Cold

[00:02:43] War and stuff that said like, in the event of like full thermonuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union, like New Zealand parts of Argentina and stuff would be like if you had to be somewhere. That would be the place to be.

[00:02:56] And yes, like it's probably not a great place to be in that circumstance. But if you had to be somewhere, that's one of the better places you could be. Well, there we go. There we go. Well, there we are next time when when it all goes to hell,

[00:03:10] that's where we'll head. Yes, down to Middle Earth. Exactly, exactly. So what we will be covering today is we're going to be looking at who's who in the new Labour led UK government. We're going to look at a report on the UK armed services

[00:03:26] and much needed sort of defence review. We've then got the French elections and then we'll wrap up with a recently discovered Russian covert information campaign. And I kind of feel now every episode there's some sort of Russian covert information campaign going on now. They just don't stop.

[00:03:45] They don't, they don't. So we'll keep going. We'll keep going. So there we go. Evergreen spy story. It does seem to be sadly. Yeah. And then on Extra Shot, which is our Patreon only show, we'll be looking at NATO's 75th anniversary, terrorists returning to Afghanistan,

[00:04:02] a Chinese spy base in Cuba and GPS under attack. So some interesting stories there to get access to Extra Shot. You will need to be a Patreon subscriber. But the good news is you

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[00:04:33] and past ones as well. Now we will kick off, I guess, with the UK elections because that was a big event for us last week. And so just to give a brief overview of sort of what happened and who's

[00:04:45] who from a sort of national security perspective, I will just outlay some bits. So obviously in the UK, we held a general election on the 4th of July, which funnily enough was American Independence Day.

[00:04:55] And I did have a hot dog that day. It was very nice. And I had mustard with that hot dog, not ketchup. Anyway, so the 4th of July did result in the ousting of the incumbent

[00:05:06] Conservative government who have been in power for 14 years and they were replaced by a Labour-led government. To draw a rough parallel just in case you're not up on who the Conservatives and Labour

[00:05:16] are, I would say the Conservatives are sort of akin to the US Republican Party. But that's a very rough comparison. Maybe a more Reagan era Republican Party possibly. Yeah, I would go back

[00:05:28] in time a bit. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. And then I'd say the Labour Party are obviously they resemble the US Democratic Party. And yeah, I suppose I think under Keir Starmer, they're very

[00:05:39] centre left. They're very, I think Keir Starmer is quite sort of considered similar to sort of Tony Blair and his politics a little bit. And I wanted to briefly bring up the change of government

[00:05:50] because there are some significant changes not only for the UK, but for our sort of defence and intelligence policy that may well have international repercussions. So I'll just give a quick, quick guide of who the key players are in the UK government that are relevant to the interest

[00:06:04] of this podcast. So obviously, we have our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. He was previously a barrister and director of public prosecutions. And then as I was just saying, politically, Starmer could be considered a sort of centre leftist in the vein of sort of Tony Blair,

[00:06:19] who was Prime Minister in the UK from 1997 to 2007. Then we have our new Foreign Secretary, David Lammy. And the Foreign Secretary is the person that the who has this day to day ministerial responsibility for SIS, otherwise known as MI6 and GCHQ. Then we have Yvette Cooper,

[00:06:40] who is our new Home Secretary and MI5, the domestic security service are answerable to Yvette Cooper. And then in the UK military, we now have Defence Secretary John Healey. And so the entire UK military

[00:06:55] and its intelligence divisions are responsible to him. And so far, the new Labour government have said that they're going to conduct a new security and defence review so that they can form a new strategy going forward. Some observers on Twitter have been critical already of the new

[00:07:11] Defence Secretary, who's been very vocal about reform for the army, but has yet said very little on the Royal Navy and the Air Force, which are both considered to be in very poor shape after successive cuts from the previous government. The Prime Minister has committed to a new

[00:07:29] spending pledge to NATO of 2.5%, but has yet to lay out a timeline of when that will happen. The government have also reiterated their continued support for Ukraine, and we will see what comes with that strategy. And then finally, upon taking office, it was reported that the Prime Minister

[00:07:48] was briefed by intelligence chiefs on five significant threats to the UK that cannot wait. Those critical threats are considered to be obviously Russia's war in Ukraine, an emboldened Iran seeking nuclear weapons, the continuing threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,

[00:08:05] the conflict in Gaza that could get much worse for the region. And then finally, the elections across Europe that could lead to the elections of leaders who are critical of NATO, which then could

[00:08:18] pose a threat to NATO itself. And then to wrap up, Defence and intelligence commentators have warned that the Prime Minister takes office during a completely different era of global instability, and they have expressed concerns as to whether the Labour-led government recognises this,

[00:08:36] and is up to the task of implementing much needed defence and intelligence reforms to meet the demands of this new era of instability. So Matt, what are your thoughts on all of this?

[00:08:47] I was for one, really thrilled to see... I mean, I guess just you guys like turning the page, I don't know, like policy aside, whether one considers himself a member of the Conservative

[00:09:04] party or Labour or not, I don't think it's healthy for one party to be in government for 14 years straight. Not really, yeah. And I think we sort of... Honestly, I think we sort of saw the end result of how that goes,

[00:09:20] like you just... They just sort of get, I don't know, maybe a little bit high on their own supply, a bit bloated, lose the plot a bit, and everything just starts to fray around the edges.

[00:09:33] So I think that's just good to see that turnover. I mean, I remember when I interned in the House of Commons many, many years ago, Cameron and Clegg had just come into office in the coalition between

[00:09:49] the Conservative party and the Lib Dems, and that sort of government is still... Well, not that government specifically, but the Tories in some way since then have been in number 10, that whole time. That's just crazy to me to think. One thing that I'm really happy to see,

[00:10:10] Starmer and the new defence secretary seems to be leaning into and championing the need for the UK to increase its defence spending, which we've talked about on here before. I do though, I worry how popular that is with the British public, especially Labour's base. We'll come to that.

[00:10:29] Yeah. And how that plan holds once the honeymoon's over at home and people want the NHS fixed and trains running on schedule, all of these needs are important, but can you balance them? Brexit

[00:10:46] hasn't left you guys in a good position to justify building ships and new air-to-air refuelling tankers when teachers and doctors have also been neglected for 14 years, essentially. It's that classic guns or butter problem. So I'm happy to at least see talk that like, yeah, we need to

[00:11:08] increase our defence spending and not just unilaterally disarm. But we'll see how that shakes out if it actually happens. Yeah. Well, on my position, I'm very happy that Labour won this

[00:11:21] time. The previous election, I was not a fan of the kind of Corbyn-led Labour Party. I felt that they took Labour to a place where in the end they were unelectable. And I think if it were a Corbyn-led

[00:11:37] government in power now, I'd be very concerned because there would be talk of potentially pulling out of NATO. Certainly defence spending would be right at the back of the agenda.

[00:11:47] And I just don't think the far left of the Labour Party understand the necessity and the need of a proper defence strategy. Now, so I'll just go into a little bit here. So Labour obviously in the UK

[00:12:01] do often get criticised for being soft on defence and military matters in comparison to their conservative counterparts. But I don't think that's entirely fair. I think obviously, as I'm saying, the far left, I think are very guilty of that. But I think the centre-left tend to

[00:12:14] understand the need of these things. And ironically, the David Cameron-led government of 2010 to 2015 has been cited as one of the key negative turning points for our armed services, particularly the Royal Navy, with major cuts that continue to happen after that defence review and

[00:12:35] successive conservative governments since then. And in fact, one of the crowning achievements of those defence cuts was we ended up with a naval aircraft carrier, but with no aircraft because we got rid of our Harriers. Did you borrow some of ours? Yeah, we could have done, couldn't we?

[00:12:48] And in the end, we had to wait for about two years for the F-35Bs to finally arrive. And then, and on top of that, that aircraft carrier, and the aircraft carrier was actually commissioned

[00:12:58] by Labour. So it was the Gordon Brown government, I think, signed off on that one. And the two aircraft carriers we have have been beset with some technical problems. And at the moment, there's a massive staff shortage within the Royal Navy. And apparently,

[00:13:11] most of the staffing seems to be geared a lot towards keeping those aircraft carriers kind of crude. And on top of that, to build the... because you don't just have an aircraft carrier,

[00:13:20] you have a kind of network of other ships around it as a sort of support network. So at the moment, the Royal Navy seems to be very geared up towards these aircraft carriers. And then on top of that

[00:13:31] are nuclear deterrent at sea Trident. The submarines that we have are now on these ridiculous, I think 90 day deployments, which is way over what they should be. And I think it might even be worse than that. There's this debate about how many actual active submarines we have,

[00:13:48] because yeah, they keep breaking down, because they're so old and replacing and the replacements are taking a long time. So that's an issue there. So yeah, the Royal Navy and the Air Force

[00:14:01] definitely need a good looking at and yeah, so I think, you know, the good I mean, as we're saying the far left side, the Labour Party, I don't think understand the need for these defence things.

[00:14:09] Whilst the new Labour government under Starmer is more of a centre left thing. So they do understand their responsibility. And obviously, Starmer has pledged 2.5% GDP contribution towards NATO, which is a good thing. And I do I feel optimistic currently about a Starmeload government.

[00:14:25] And I think they will seek a kind of realistic and balanced reform for our defence and security services. Because with a Labour government, they obviously do take into account social services like teaching NHS, you know, those sort of things can't be neglected either. So sort of finding a

[00:14:42] balance because there is this danger, you can get a government who goes way over the top of military spending, and then it kind of has a knock on effect everywhere else. There's always, it's

[00:14:50] always a very careful balance. Now coming to a point you made just a moment ago, I think there is a big issue in the UK, about the public understanding of the need for proper defence

[00:15:01] reforms. Because we do live in a time of kind of increasing kind of political extremes are very noisy on the internet. So I'd be far left or far right. And with the far left side of the Labour

[00:15:16] Party, you know, they they seem to be obviously all about public services, which is a positive thing. But they just they seem to see any talk of defence spending as sort of warmongering. And

[00:15:29] like, it is a deep cynicism within the British public because of the Iraq war. And then on top of that, you know, with the sort of far leftist point of view about well, all this defence

[00:15:40] spending is just to feed the industrial military complex is the one that comes up a lot. And so I think there does need to be some sort of, I don't know if it's a PR initiative, I'm not quite sure

[00:15:50] the right term is, but it needs to be some sort of way of getting the public kind of up to speed with where we're at in the world now. Because you know, I've said this many a time, I think that a

[00:16:01] lot of members of the public is still kind of in that weird late 90s thinking about the cold war's over blah, blah, blah. Even once had somebody come up to me not long ago, a friend of mine who

[00:16:09] feels quite intelligent, say do we even really need spies anymore? It's like, what world are you living in? What world are you living in? I know, I was shocked. Like we've got a war in Ukraine,

[00:16:18] assassinations going on, you know, in the UK and Europe, way before the war in Ukraine. And yet they think why do we even need spies anymore? And you know, and I just don't know how unless you're

[00:16:29] not reading the news at all. I just don't understand how you could think that we are in this sort of post Cold War utopia because we're not we haven't been in it for a very long time.

[00:16:40] But there are a lot of people out there who do seem to be in this mindset that we don't need nuclear submarines. We need more hospitals, whatever. And it's like, and it's just all about

[00:16:50] a careful balance because nuclear submarines are a sad necessity, because you need to have them to make it less likely that somebody is going to use nuclear weapons or other severe weapons against you. You're going to make people think twice before doing something. And obviously,

[00:17:07] it's worked for Russia, because we think twice a lot about helping Ukraine and because we're fearful of Russian nuclear retaliation. So yeah, so I just don't so I think I think I'm confident that the Starmalet government is one that understands the reality

[00:17:24] of the world that we're in. I don't I actually don't think they are suffering too much from late 90s thinking from what I see. I could be wrong, but I don't think they are. I'm intrigued

[00:17:34] by Sir David Lammy, who's now our foreign secretary. So what what may be interesting in time going down is if God forbid, Donald Trump does win the US election. David Lammy said that he called Donald Trump a neo Nazi sympathising sociopath, which is an assessment

[00:17:57] I do not disagree with. But I'm not the foreign secretary. I'm not the one who might have to start dealing with UK US relations under Trump administration. And Trump is famously thin skinned and has a long memory for people who criticise him. So that could become very awkward

[00:18:13] very soon. The UK US relations post Biden, God forbid that happens, but that could happen. Or post democratic led government could really create a massive challenge. But that's that we'll go further into that challenge, I guess a bit later, because I think that will come up again,

[00:18:31] that theme today. So yeah, those are kind of my thoughts really. There's anything else you want to add? Yeah. I want to get back to that issue of the hypothetical about Trump. The other sort of

[00:18:44] concern that I have here coming away from this election is I worry that the Tories and I think we've talked about this online. We talked about this offline a bit. I worry that the Tories learn

[00:18:54] the wrong lesson from the election, that they scapegoat Sunak and his soggy suit and never recognise that Boris's antics and trust his incompetence doomed them before Sunak ever got

[00:19:03] the job. And then there's the issue of reform and Farage too, which I found some of the some of the stuff they were doing during the campaign to be pretty disturbing, honestly.

[00:19:15] Yeah, yeah, no, they are. They are. They are far right, basically. And there was some over here, there was some exposés on certain members of this reform party who were outwardly racist and

[00:19:28] homophobic. And one or two members had to step down, one or two members defected back to the Tories because they defected from the Tories. The thing with Nigel Farage, this is my issue, in the grand scheme of things, he's quite irrelevant. But the problem is he gets way

[00:19:47] too much attention in the media. Yeah. And the Conservatives pay too much attention to him. The thing is, the reform party only got five seats in the election. And quite frankly, the way it was reported, the amount of airtime that man

[00:20:03] got, you would have thought he'd be the next prime minister. On top of that, he was the number one trending UK politician on TikTok during the election. And again, if you use social media as

[00:20:13] your metric, you think, oh my God, Nigel Farage is going to win the election. But he didn't and he wasn't going to. And this is I think we are proportion, our proportionality has kind of gone

[00:20:24] a bit out of kilter with our information systems that we have today, the news and online, social media, etc. I feel like there's something kind of gone very wrong in our society over the last 20

[00:20:37] years where we spend way too much time thinking about fringe characters and they get way too much airtime, way too much power. And in fact, it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where

[00:20:49] they will then have an effect on things. So yes, Nigel Farage could well have an effect on the next kind of conservative government. Now, ironically, I feel Nigel Farage already had an effect on the Conservative government for years because we had the damn Brexit vote and all

[00:21:05] that nonsense. And so, you know, and a classic, they kind of instigated something and the second they had to actually do something about it, actually take responsibility for things, the key players, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage just disappeared and they left Theresa May to deal

[00:21:23] with Brexit for some time. And then obviously she didn't deliver the Brexit that they promised. An impossible task. Yeah. And they came back in as the sort of critics and say, oh, look at Theresa May,

[00:21:34] blah, blah, blah. She couldn't deliver Brexit. And yet neither could they because they're all useless. The ironic thing is with a lot of these people, they don't really understand the systems in play that they are messing around with. They just want to burn the house down without

[00:21:49] understanding what made the house stand up in the first place and made the house work. So, you know, I see it again in the US with Trump a little bit. He gets way too much air time. He gets too softer time. He has for nine years.

[00:22:04] You know, we've had about two weeks now of discussions about President Biden's mental health, you know, whether he's too old or whether he's got Alzheimer's or God knows what. Yet has anybody ever given much air time to Donald Trump and his terrible speeches he does

[00:22:22] almost on a regular basis? He gives all these talks and stuff where he then messes up like Nikki Haley with somebody else. He then spouts out all sorts of lies and inconsistencies. And yet the media is never really covering that. And instead we get totally bombarding it.

[00:22:39] Over here, too. You know, we get bombarded with just like how President Biden's not fit for the job and it becomes this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. And so anyway, so yeah, so a bit of a mini rant there.

[00:22:51] I have a question here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but so Reform won six seats in the Commons? I think it was five. Hang on, let me double check. Five? Okay. I believe it was five. Let me just double check.

[00:23:03] Right. So they won five or six seats in the Commons, you're checking. But by the share of the vote count overall, they're now like the third largest party in the country. Is that correct?

[00:23:17] Yeah. Well, this is an interesting thing. So we have... So the votes themselves in the British system don't really count because some districts are bigger than others. So you might get a

[00:23:26] situation where you could end up with a lot of votes but not many seats because you've only won a certain amount of seats, but the district you've won the seats in is quite big. So in the UK

[00:23:35] system it's more about the members of parliament you get in than it is about the actual vote share. Is that because his share of the vote share is so high compared to the number of seats that Reform

[00:23:45] won? Is that because in the constituencies that he won, they ran the margins up so high? That's sort of like what happened with Corbyn, right? With some of those hard left London constituencies, he couldn't win seats across the country, not enough to get a government put

[00:24:02] together. But in the seats that he did win, it was very high. Yeah. They did get five seats. So the Reform Party got 4,117,221 votes. So they got a share of 14.3% of the vote. And then if you compare that with Labour who got 9,704,655 and they had 33.7%

[00:24:29] of the vote. And then you had the Conservatives who had 6,827,311 and they got 23.7% of the vote. So really it's a Reform got just a little bit more than the Liberal Democrats because the Liberal

[00:24:43] Democrats, so they came in at 3,519,000 but they got 64 seats. So yeah, it's all about where they had their constituents basically. And they picked... A lot of them are kind of coastal towns who are pissed off with immigration and stuff. And that's where Reform...

[00:25:03] Clacton is that like Essex, really like post-industrial kind of... Exactly. And some coastal towns are quite depressing in the UK sometimes because sadly, there's not a lot of jobs there. There's not a lot of prospects.

[00:25:18] And most young people move somewhere else like London, etc. And so the town just becomes a very strange kind of place sometimes obviously a bit of a generalization. But unfortunately then right wing politics because of this resentment there, there's a sort of sense of decline,

[00:25:36] all these sort of things kind of create this sort of cocktail of resentment that leads to people then voting for people like Nigel Farage. So yeah, they did well but ultimately, they didn't get that many seats. But what they're now doing... So Nigel Farage has obviously learnt

[00:25:56] lessons from the US. I was watching one of his talks just after the election and he kind of immediately was criticizing the political system in the UK and wants to reform it. And there's a

[00:26:08] website now called electionreform.org.uk. And I actually don't know who runs this website, but there's a kind of campaign to change the British political system and to make it more

[00:26:20] about vote share than about MPs. And I don't know how that worked. So we had a referendum on changing... It was a Liberal Democrat-led referendum on changing the first past the post system

[00:26:31] and it failed. And so we still have the system we have. And so now Reform want to have a go at changing the political system to benefit them. So that's the only thing... But the thing is,

[00:26:43] it requires them to get into government. I have a feeling that even if Reform do manage to influence the Conservative Party quite significantly, there's so much infighting with that lot anyway, I still think they won't be particularly electable in the next election. I could be dead wrong here,

[00:26:59] but my feeling is that the Conservative Party is going to be a bit of a mess for at least a good four to eight years. And on top of that, Nigel Farage has jumped so many parties in his

[00:27:14] career. So he's a bit of a kind of maverick, if you want to put it that way. And he's not a guy who plays party politics. So I don't see how he'll fit into the Conservative system. And I think he

[00:27:25] will always be a kind of irritant, but be a third party irritant that will just take votes away from the Conservatives because he previously was with UKIP. And he was in and out of being leader

[00:27:36] of UKIP for many years, which the UK Independence Party, and they were kind of pro-Brexit party. So I have a feeling really, I mean, maybe I'm wrong to feel this way. It's my all come back

[00:27:47] to haunt me and egg on my face. But I think Nigel Farage isn't as powerful as people think he is. But there's a danger, like I was saying earlier, that it would give him way too much press. And

[00:27:57] if the Conservatives take him way too seriously, that he could become more powerful than he actually needs to be. That's my feeling. I think you raise very good points here. I think this is also a good

[00:28:09] moment to sort of point out again, that like, you and I are both personally of a centre left political persuasion. We make no secret of that, right? But I don't think we see the podcast,

[00:28:21] this podcast as being left or right politically, but it is pro-democracy, pro-the post World War II international order, right? So anything that runs afoul of that, we're going to talk about it.

[00:28:34] And because like the nature of the audience and you and I where each of us are sitting, so the issue about Farage and reform, and they're sort of playing footsie with the Russians and questioning these democratic processes and stuff, that's a domestic issue for you

[00:28:51] and a very large chunk of the audience. It's a foreign issue for me and another very good chunk of the audience, the same way as if we talk about something regarding like Trump or the far

[00:29:01] right over here, right? But so that's why we're talking about this right now. But nobody should want the Conservative Party lurching toward the far right. And I think if it's going to happen, it'll probably happen over the next couple of years as they're sort of in the wilderness.

[00:29:24] The Labour Party went far left for many years and ended up in the wilderness. They came back. Yes. But I think Farage, definitely I agree with you, is oversaturated,

[00:29:39] is not as powerful a figure as he is thought to be or perhaps made out to be by the press. I do think though in the hypothetical, and I'm sort of funny you brought up David Lamey here.

[00:29:57] I sort of had this in my notes before. I knew you were going to mention that. I do think in the hypothetical of a potential Trump victory here in November, and I still think that's pretty hypothetical at this point. I don't know. I'm sure there's people listening who

[00:30:11] feel very strongly one way or the other at this point. I think that's all valid. A rational person could get to either conclusion. I'm not sold on it. I think it's still hypothetical for the sake

[00:30:22] of conversation, right? Trump's view of a foreign country is almost entirely shaped by his personal relationship with its leader, right? I'm not aware that Trump said anything about Starmer. No, I've not seen anything yet. Right. I don't parse his every utterance because I don't despise myself that much.

[00:30:49] Yes. There's better ways to spend your time. Right. I'm not aware of him saying anything about Starmer. I suspect he hasn't formed an opinion yet or even thought much of Starmer. I honestly think though the safest move for Starmer

[00:31:03] through November would be to stay far away from our election, keep his head down, and quietly pray for Biden or Harris. One thing I'm certain of though, David Lamy would not fare well handling

[00:31:16] Trump or his staff. What did David Lamy call him? Hang on. Let me go back to the quote. Hold on. He said, Trump is a neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath. Okay. I would agree with that as well. That was when he was in opposition not long ago.

[00:31:31] I personally, I don't want to sell David Lamy out because I would side with him on that assessment. Yes. I would agree with his assessment as well. But even before knowing that, I could have told you that David Lamy would not fare well handling Trump or his staff.

[00:31:49] The minute someone tells Trump that Lamy's friendly with Obama, it's over for him. That relationship is never recovering. Farage, I think, now if Trump wins, we're still in that hypothetical, if Trump wins, I think Farage is a lot more powerful of a figure in your politics than he

[00:32:06] would be if Biden or Harris stays in office. That is because Farage would have a far better relationship with Trump on day one and would surely use that to sour Trump on Starmer and his government

[00:32:19] so that he can turn around and say as the chaos agent that he is, that the prime minister hasn't earned the confidence of our closest ally and he can't effectively represent global Britain. Oh yeah. That's the character that he would play.

[00:32:31] Oh yeah. I can see that. Actually, during the previous government, Boris Johnson's government, he suggested that Nigel Farage should become the ambassador to America, but he wasn't a member of the conservative parties. It was never going to happen. Or the foreign office, yes. Sorry,

[00:32:47] the member of the foreign office. It wasn't going to happen. Farage is the American far-right's token Brit, to be honest. They love having someone from, not from around here, that tell them that all of their prejudices about the rest of the world are

[00:33:03] right. He's like a monkey. They dress in this little jester's costume with Union Jacks and jingle bells on it and they send him out at a rally to do this little warmup bit like, those dirty foreigners, the globalists, we hate them too. Churchill, Reagan,

[00:33:18] and Thatcher. He just does that on repeat and they eat it up. Oh yeah. I bet he makes a lot of money out of that. He does. On top of that, with the far-right in the States, you've got an evangelical Christian connection,

[00:33:30] which I'm sure there's an evangelical Christian connection to Nigel Farage here. I'm chatting about an apple bomb next week and with Autocracy Inc. and how a lot of autocrats all stick together in various ways. I think Nigel Farage would benefit from a Trump administration

[00:33:52] and I think it would make things very awkward for the start of the government. So we will see how that goes, but the only person Farage would ever win over would really be conservatives. But the funny thing about the conservative party is even they

[00:34:09] are very mixed about how they feel about Farage. I think that's something to be hopeful about at least. Oh, thunder here. Is that the sound of the future coming? Strike me down. Yes. Yeah, no, it's good. We need the rain. It's been ungodly hot here all week.

[00:34:31] Anyway, that's how I see things over there. So we will see. I'm intrigued. It just feels like at the moment, sorry to go way off topic, it just feels like the entire world is on hold until your elections are done. So I'm blaming you, Matt.

[00:34:51] I'm very sorry. I'm holding you responsible for all of this. We did our bit here. Now it's you guys. If someone approached, if a doctor, we're not going to do some weird back alley thing.

[00:35:04] If a credible medical professional approached me and say, would you like to be in a medically induced coma through the beginning of November? I would probably say yes at this point. Just wake me up later and I'll just deal with it.

[00:35:18] I've had a couple of friends say, what are you doing with the American elections? Because sometimes in the UK we stay up late and I just, I feel there's no point because I think whatever the result will be, there's going to be some legal squabble.

[00:35:30] That's going to take a few days because the 2000, sorry, the 2020 election, I believe it was about two or three days later that it was finally called. It was. That was a bit of a, I'm not saying it won't happen this time. I don't know. I think

[00:35:45] it largely depends on how close and if it's riding on one swing state or one jurisdiction, which is a nightmare. But what complicated things last time around was COVID and how many states were doing mail-in ballots for the first time. Some states had laws that they couldn't

[00:36:07] do this thing called pre-canvassing, which is where they open up the ballots and get everything laid out on the table and set up so that the minute they're legally able to start counting it, they don't have to waste their time opening all these envelopes and stuff.

[00:36:20] So that's why it took so long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was the postal vote in the end, I think it was looking quite good for Trump initially. And then the postal vote came in,

[00:36:28] if I remember, and it started to change. It was like, ah, finally. Because honestly, I think when I first saw the news, I thought, oh fuck it, he's won. Yeah. That's what I thought originally. So there we go. But yeah, so

[00:36:43] shockingly, I think your election will be closer than it should be. So we'll see what happens. Tune in to next week. Tune into November the 5th and then we'll see. Which is Guy Fawkes Day here.

[00:36:57] Oh God, why do they got to put it on Guy Fawkes Day? That's man... Well, we did American Independence. That's a fair trade off. Was there some agreement that happened between the UK and American government a while back

[00:37:07] about elections? That's a fair trade off. I will take that trade. I will take that trade. So yeah, so there'll be a lot of fireworks going off in the UK that day. Right, let's take a break. We'll be right back.

[00:37:38] We haven't completely got away from the UK yet because there was a bit about defence spending. There was a report published by the Royal United Services Institute about defence spending, because this is the big issue I think from our point of view. Because our armed forces are

[00:37:54] definitely at the moment not in the best of states. And we're in an interesting time as well, because we're kind of in this place now where there's a lot of new cheap technology that could

[00:38:05] be seen as a band-aid for a lot of old fashioned problems. And there's a danger that people might get a bit seduced by this technology. Because there's something I definitely want to do at some

[00:38:15] point in the near future about how drones have changed warfare as we know it. Because now you could take out a tank with a hand grenade and a drone, you can take out pretty much a ship with a

[00:38:28] drone with a bomb attached to it. And so that kind of cuts through for the layperson. The problem is when you're trying to convince a layperson about why we need to spend x amount

[00:38:42] of money on a new submarine. Said layperson may have watched the news and seen what's been going on in Ukraine and said, well why do I want to spend billions of pounds on a submarine when I

[00:38:51] could just spend £100 on a few drones that could do that? And there's a danger with that. But at the same time, we've got to be forward looking and forward thinking and not get too

[00:39:04] old fashioned. Because the last thing you also want to do is then spend a fortune on a whole load of submarines that become obsolete in 10 years time. So it's a little bit... We're in a weird place at the moment where there's a lot of technical innovation going on,

[00:39:16] but also a lot of old fashioned problems that might need old fashioned solutions to deal with them. So this report was saying we're in a pre-war era of rising global tensions, notably from Russia, China and Iran and North Korea and non-state actors. And we've got critical

[00:39:34] gaps in our numbers of personnel and firepower and logistical support. And for the UK armed forces to remain relevant in the global community that we need to really look at technological advancements as well as existing technology. So yeah, it's an interesting report to put a link

[00:39:53] to. But I don't know if you had any thoughts on that report itself? Yeah. I think the reference in here to the myth of the quote unquote knockout blow that's used in regard to the infamous 72 hour special military operation is particularly

[00:40:10] interesting. It underscores in the argument here, it underscores the failure to recognize how modern warfare is often protracted and attritional contrary to how wars are often planned and marketed right as or before they start as an assured, quick, decisive victory.

[00:40:31] I mean, Putin made that mistake in Ukraine. We made that mistake in Iraq. It's possible maybe even likely that China could make that mistake in Taiwan at some point in the future.

[00:40:43] I think to me this highlights the need for... And when I get into this, I'm going to say you a couple of times. I don't mean strictly you in terms of the UK, I mean you in terms of Europe

[00:40:56] or the rest of NATO broadly. Basically non-Americans is what you mean. Not across the board because you guys have done a really good job in the past couple of years of stepping it up more. Really good. But this highlights, I think to me, the need for

[00:41:15] resilience and sustained combat power in military planning. I'm always reminded how... I think I mentioned this in here a couple of times, how in Libya in 2011, some European militaries couldn't sustain themselves without constant US support. That's not going to end well when the

[00:41:32] big one comes. No. And also with isolationist president. Right. It isn't good enough anymore for major Western democracies to structure their armed forces to act as an auxiliary for the Pentagon or to solely focus on mounting certain regional

[00:41:48] or low intensity operations. There is strength in numbers, yes. Partnerships are crucial, but they need to be able to pull their own weight and function on their own. You need a well-rounded force that can operate effectively in various scenarios

[00:42:01] jointly and independently. You got to do a little bit of it all. Yeah, definitely. And I think prior to 2022, I think a lot of Europe was especially... and I don't mean to target Germany here, but there was a lot of talk of Germany not meeting their

[00:42:18] NATO obligations. And there was a very popular anti-war sentiment in Germany from the left. And there's also been a lot of Russian information operations focused on Germany to try and make people very anti-war as well. And so a lot of standards fell by the wayside. They didn't have

[00:42:40] enough tanks anymore to a certain standard, etc. UK, we had terrible cuts, partly with the philosophy of, well, the Cold War's over. We don't need this, that and the other. And at the time, Nick Clegg,

[00:42:52] who was the deputy prime minister in the buildup to that election of 2010 even said that we don't need trident anymore because the real threat is terrorism. It's like, well, no, there's not one

[00:43:01] singular threat. There's multiple threats. And this is the thing. So I think a lot of people in the UK still view UK and US politicians as the aggressors, and they tend to cite the Iraq War

[00:43:13] as evidence of those views. And it's very much a leftist view, but there's elements on the far right that think that too. And I think there's cynicism between centre-right and centre-left

[00:43:25] about UK military spending. And often it's like, well, why do we need such a big army or air force or navy? Because we're not really at war and we don't want to be at war anymore. So the argument

[00:43:36] goes, well, if you don't want to be at war, we shouldn't have the capability to be at war. But the problem is, you don't always get to pick the war that you end up in. Sometimes wars find you.

[00:43:46] And World War II is a great example. We were very ill-prepared at the beginning for that, and then suddenly had to kind of get our industry going ASAP. And the thing is, we live in an age

[00:43:56] now where that's not really possible because ships take years to build because there's so much technology in them. It's a bit like a modern car. Modern cars have so many components now.

[00:44:05] You could probably knock out an old Ford from the 70s quite quickly in comparison to a Ford from 2022 or 24, because the new ones are full of all sorts of microchips, etc. Very complicated.

[00:44:21] And hence why a lot of our new ships keep breaking down and stuff. And we don't have a very good procurement system right now. So if a hot war kicked off tomorrow and suddenly we needed to

[00:44:31] rebuild our arsenal ASAP, I don't think we'll be able to keep up. And that's the issue right now. You also mentioned earlier in the last segment the issue with the Queen Elizabeth carrier and

[00:44:43] what a big undertaking it is to manage that, to staff that with the escort destroyers and stuff too. When you look at it in a macro level, it's actually just operating that strike group is a

[00:44:58] lot bigger than just the strike group. It's really a... One of the Nimitz class carriers or one of the newer Ford ones. It's a globe spanning supply chain that sustains these fleets, these

[00:45:15] independent fleets out on the open ocean. So you'll have the task group operating out where it needs to be and you'll have support ships, which in your case are the Royal Fleet Auxiliary,

[00:45:27] going back and forth carrying weapons and fuel and food and water and everything you can imagine. And we've cut back on the Auxiliary fleet. Right. Back and forth. It's a huge undertaking for even the biggest countries.

[00:45:39] Yeah. And many people in the UK think that carriers are outdated technology because an anti-ship missile could take it out. That's the argument a lot of people throw these days. I think that'll more come down to how you fight the carriers and what assets you put around them,

[00:46:00] what countermeasures they have on them. I mean, yeah, if you just sail your carriers into Taiwan straight, they're going to get fucked up. But we have to fight them smarter than the way we did.

[00:46:12] The days of just sailing a carrier into the Persian Gulf and going off and bombing some guys in caves and stuff, that's not happening right now. No, no. And I'm assuming the reason we have these carriers is people are anticipating the China

[00:46:27] situation. I think it's all to do with the kind of Pacific focus that we're moving towards at the moment because it seems the 2030s are all going back to the Pacific. I mean, I'm already seeing

[00:46:36] stuff about how the American military trying to bring back flying boats and stuff. And they've been testing out like C-130s with floats on them and things like that. So it was all sorts of

[00:46:47] bizarre stuff that's in the works. That's attempts to fix the problem of the tyranny of distance in the Pacific. You mentioned the issue of getting the public on board to see this as important and

[00:47:05] to pay for it. I mentioned the guns and butter issue earlier. I think first and foremost, and this is definitely true for Starmer. I wish him well. I have faith in him. I have no reason

[00:47:19] to suspect that off the bat that he's going to do a terrible job. We'll see. But I think first and foremost, if you're doing right by your people, by your citizens, if you are doing what

[00:47:36] you can to keep making their lives a little bit better, right? It's easier for them. It's easier to tell them, hey, we need to pay for some of these guns if you already have their fridge full

[00:47:50] of butter. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it does. And funnily enough, it's a point I was going to make about the French elections, because this is how we stop fringe parties and French politics

[00:47:58] from taking over. Because the reason why fringe politics is cutting through at the moment is because there's a massive wealth inequality. We can't deny it. And there's a growing dissatisfaction

[00:48:11] with our societies and the way they're run. And maybe I could go into a bit more in a minute with the French thing. But yeah, definitely. I agree with you. I think that's the way to kind of

[00:48:19] insulate ourselves from these bad actors. Well, let's talk about the French then and perhaps revealed to be a strategy to sort of prevent these fringe groups and stuff from attaining power.

[00:48:38] So we have here an article from Politico Europe. It's titled How Le Pen's Far Right Blew It. The article outlines how just last week Marine Le Pen's national rally went from being on the brink

[00:48:49] of securing governing power for the first time to a surprising downfall in the French parliamentary elections. Here's a quick rundown of what went wrong. So just a week ago, Le Pen and her supporters were all set to celebrate a historic win. They gathered in the glitzy reception near

[00:49:04] Paris ready to pop champagne. But as results came in, a much different story unfolded. The national rally finished third, trailing behind the left wing alliance and President Macron's centrist coalition. Jordan Mardella, the young leader of national rally took a lot of heat for the loss

[00:49:20] at just 28, which is crazy to me that he's only 28. He is facing... And if he won, he would have been the French prime minister. He's facing a barrage of criticism even from within his party.

[00:49:30] Longtime party members like Bruno Bild and Louis Aliot were quick to point fingers at Mardella's campaign management and candidate selection. Knives are out for him. Many candidates were seen as unprofessional. I guess much in the same way that some reform candidates

[00:49:45] were received, with some making racist or xenophobic remarks. There were viral clips of candidates making embarrassing statements or failing to hold their ground in debates. We know about that over here. This reinforced the perception of the national rally as both hateful

[00:50:00] and incompetent. Opponents of Le Pen also didn't sit idly by. Leaders from the left and Macron's camp united their forces to block the far right's path to power. Hundreds of candidates withdrew to back a single contender against the party, which proved to be a decisive blow. Post-defeat,

[00:50:15] the national rally is in disarray. There's talk of a general reorganization within the party. Some leaders are trying to downplay the loss by arguing that they did increase their share of seats and got the most votes nationwide. Le Pen herself called the defeat a result of an unnatural

[00:50:30] alliance between the left and Macron supporters. There's some not so subtle election denialism being woven in as well. Despite the setbacks, some controversial far right candidates still got elected, adding to the party's challenges in the new legislature. I think that's important to

[00:50:46] add though. They did add to their number of seats, although not enough to get the majority or to form a government. So the national rally is now in damage control mode, looking ahead to the next

[00:50:59] presidential campaign in 2027, as the French far right grapples with what this upset means for the future of Marine Le Pen and her party. Chris, what did you think about your good friends across the

[00:51:12] channel? Wow. Funnily enough, we have a good friend from France yesterday, and we were at five guys, so we were across the table. So we didn't even have a channel between us. That's how far I go

[00:51:24] with people on Research This podcast. I go to five guys with French people and chat about politics. So my friend- Do they call them French fries or chips over there? That's a good question. I think we never really had that conversation. I don't know.

[00:51:38] Because they're different. The cut is different. I'm filibustering this right now. The cut is different between the two. They're frites. Oh, okay. Yes. That is appropriate. So you wouldn't use an English term for it. So yeah, so frites in France, French fries here.

[00:51:52] What do you call them in the States? Are they still frites and fries or has that changed now? Oh no, we got rid of that a long time ago. You would call them fries here. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:01] You would only see frites in a restaurant setting that was like a French place that had- Yeah, yeah. It was like steak frites. Steak and frites. Right. Got you. Got you. Yeah. Side track there. But so what he mentioned was there obviously is a lot of dissatisfaction in

[00:52:17] France with the current political climate. There's a strong feeling that things are in decline and that the status quo is not working. And this is why he feels voters are increasingly turning to fringe

[00:52:28] groups such as the far right of Le Pen and the far left led by Jean-Luc Melenchon. I hope I got that pronunciation right. Now, apparently Melenchon is the kind of French equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn.

[00:52:39] And in fact, my friend was quite concerned about the far left as well as the far right because the far left are getting a lot of traction as well. And as he pointed out not long ago, many members

[00:52:50] of the far left have been dabbling their toe in antisemitism because of the conflict in Gaza. And so there's been a lot of sort of pro-Hamas sentiment and rather antisemitic stuff going on

[00:53:01] on the far left of French politics. So it's the fringes are very ugly. And on top of that, there's a kind of growing sense of lawlessness in the big cities because there's been a lot of attacks against police officers. They're growing more frequent. France has also problems

[00:53:16] with an immigrant population who feel alienated. And then there are concerns about rising costs, house prices and gentrification becoming an issue in cities. And on top of all that, France has also suffered from a high number of terrorist attacks linked to ISIS and Al-Qaeda,

[00:53:33] Charlie Hebdo, Baklan. And then on top of that, frequent stabbings, car based attacks and shootings. France in many ways has been the front line in Europe of the war on terror with regards to ISIS

[00:53:46] and Al-Qaeda inspired terrorism. So the problem is every time there's a terrorist attack like that, that then helps the anti-immigrant sentiment of the far right. And then on top of that, the far left use it as an argument about why France shouldn't be involved in international

[00:54:02] affairs, etc. So you can see how it becomes a sort of cocktail of narratives kind of flying around. And this is the problem in France. And to be fair, it's a problem across I think the whole of Europe

[00:54:13] and the UK to varying degrees. But ultimately, it's people are dissatisfied with their quality of life. And that is the thing I think. And I was just thinking- That's true here as well.

[00:54:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if people were happier with their... If they had a sense of like, you know, they could, you know, like 20, 30 years ago, there was this idea of you've got to get

[00:54:37] yourself a good job, you can get yourself a house and have a family and things will be okay. But that wasn't exist. Like the Homer Simpson, like, you know, there's a joke about how the Homer

[00:54:46] Simpson and having a house is like a massive far away dream now whilst when the Simpsons first came out in the 80s, that was kind of the norm for middle classes and even working class people could

[00:54:57] afford a house just about, you know, but nowadays, house pricing is just all over the place and pretty bad. And so yeah, so I think if governments want to really seriously stop the rise of fringe

[00:55:09] politics, both from the far left and the far right, they need to really be working very hard on making people feel a sense of value for money, because I think that's the issue as well.

[00:55:22] And a sense of the sense of decline in our societies at the moment, and they need to address that. And, you know, I don't know quite how you do all that. That's, you know, but something needs

[00:55:34] to be sort of done about that. Because, you know, we can't sort of sustain this because we will end up then with, you know, you might have it soon with a far right leaning kind of politician. And

[00:55:45] the thing is, with these, here's the funny thing about these fringe groups as well as the thought I had whilst you're describing what was going on in France, a lot of the MPs or politicians that

[00:55:56] these parties float during an election are really most of them, a lot of them are activists. They're not actually politicians, they're not particularly knowledgeable about the system they're about to be

[00:56:06] a part of. And so they're not actually very good at their job, if they get elected, they've got a lot of ideas, they've got a lot of opinions. But when it comes to actual action and how to do it, they're

[00:56:16] not very good, and they tend to piss people off. And I think actually, that might be why, generally like in the UK, why ultimately, those sort of politicians never really dominate. They might dominate the conversation online, and this is where I feel like this sense of proportion has

[00:56:33] gone wrong in our society. They tend to dominate in the media and online giving the impression that my god, these people are going to take over the country, etc. But when it comes to elections,

[00:56:43] at least in the UK, it generally just stays between, you know, when Labour went too far left, they didn't get elected. When the Conservatives go too far right, they don't get elected. So we seem

[00:56:52] to, in the UK, somehow our general population seems to keep parties kind of in the centre, centre-right, sometimes centre-left, but never too far. That could change. But it seems to be, I think a lot of people see through the incompetent politicians who are being presented, and that's

[00:57:09] why they don't get very far. Could be wrong, but that's kind of my feeling about all this at the moment. But yeah, real ramble again today. I think we can say this across the board in France,

[00:57:20] in the UK, and in the US. But I think the idea of when you're faced with a candidate who is an activist, as you said, first and foremost, who's not interested in governing,

[00:57:32] who doesn't know how to govern, who doesn't know how stuff works, right? It can be very seductive if you're unsettled with your own state of affairs in your own life, right?

[00:57:45] It can be very seductive to have someone say, I'm going to go there and I'm going to burn it down, right? But then when you elect those people and they go there and they burn it down,

[00:58:01] everyone gets pissed off that nothing is working and it's all just gridlocking, yelling and arguing and fighting. But at that point, government is not like an alien spaceship that landed in Hyde Park or on the National Mall or on the Champs-Elysees or whatever,

[00:58:16] and just impose itself on us. The people, we sent them there, right? So stop sending people there to burn it down if you need that to work, right? I think to that point though about how you keep

[00:58:30] extremes out on either side. And I mean, you mentioned sort of the issues with the left coalition in the French elections. There's a lot in there to be concerned about. It's a very broad

[00:58:46] coalition of the left. I mean, it's sort of everything from just sort of normie progressives and classical European socialists to Trotskyists and Marxist-Leninists and straight up tankies, right? So there's a whole bunch of ingredients in that stew, right? But I think

[00:59:14] one thing that I find really sort of illustrating is how Macron was able to manage. I don't know that he... Maybe he got lucky. I don't know that he's maybe at the end of the day, the master

[00:59:28] tactician that he sort of wanted to present himself to be by calling this election, right? I'm not going to give him that. I think he got lucky. Right. Operative word, he managed, stumbled his way into demonstrating that the far right in France

[00:59:46] are not inevitable and that their ceiling of support sits somewhere in the 30-ish, 30-something percentile, right? Somewhere in that range. That's their ceiling. When the center and the left get together and act strategically, form one umbrella,

[01:00:02] even if for just a moment, it doesn't have to be a perfectly happy umbrella, right? The far right loses. Okay? And Macron's going to probably struggle to govern a bit domestically the way they have a very strong presidential system so that the foreign policy and stuff,

[01:00:18] that's totally under his control. That's not going to change fundamentally at all as long as he's in office and he has a couple of years left, right? To govern domestically, he'll have to tack to the left. The prime minister is going to be from that left block.

[01:00:33] He'll have to negotiate with them to get anything done. But I think Macron seems pretty pragmatic in how he's risen to the place where he is now coming out of nowhere and just breaking the mold

[01:00:45] of French politics, how it had been for decades, right? So I doubt it'll be all deadlock all the time as it might've been with a far right prime minister. That just could have been a nightmare.

[01:00:57] We'll see how it goes from here though. But I mean, the French presidential elections in a couple of years will be the next big test. But as long as the far right support tops out in the

[01:01:06] 30s, they don't have much of an outright majority unless other factions split the vote, right? And honestly, I think Macron deserves some credit for this and what he's even if accidentally managed to salvage. And there's going to be some parallels here in what I'm about to say.

[01:01:32] After these elections here, there were all sorts of people on democratic-ish left leaning Twitter that were like, see, Labour and now France. They rejected the far right. It's definitely going to happen here. I would not take much solace in that. The situations are very different. The

[01:01:50] systems are very different. I don't necessarily think that the way those two elections went means anything for ours. Well, one thing is one generalization that I've noticed is quite common, but it's still generalization. But a lot of people on the left, if they think it's a given,

[01:02:10] they feel they've got a license to not participate. And I don't understand why that's a very leftist way of doing things because it's stupid. Because if you don't participate, your guy might not get in.

[01:02:21] That's the thing. And that's what I find so self-defeating and just frankly stupid about that whole strategy, right? I mean, let's go back to Macron here for a second. Every bit of commentary, starting with his announcement that he was calling these elections, right?

[01:02:36] Through the first round of voting and right up until the second was unanimous in how he'd made a colossal miscalculation that spelled disaster for the Fifth Republic. It was curtains for that country. The far right's coming to power for the first time since World War II. It's Vichy

[01:02:51] all over again. We're done. That's what it was, the unanimous consensus across the board, that he'd made a huge mistake. And that didn't happen, this time at least, right? And like I said, there are plenty of differences between this French parliamentary election,

[01:03:12] your general election last week, ours coming up in November. But I think it's worth keeping in mind that the conventional wisdom does not always bear out. The far right is not inevitable.

[01:03:23] That's what they want you to believe. They want you to give up, to roll over and die, and let them waltz through the gates. And we do not, and should not, have to accept their

[01:03:33] theory of the case. I just think after the week or two we've had all over the place, I think that's just an important thing to keep in mind. Well, yeah. And normal today, like a functioning society, elections, etc.,

[01:03:49] are not guaranteed for tomorrow. And people forget that. Some people out there wake up every morning and think, oh, it's always going to be like this. And it's like, because we're sort of a few generations in of people who haven't really had to fight for democracy.

[01:04:07] And I feel like we've got a bit complacent, maybe. And I just feel like there's a lot of people who, especially with the Brexit vote, I knew a lot of people, very frustratingly, who were like,

[01:04:20] I'm not going to vote. It's not going to happen. And it just frustrates you. And then obviously, when you look at the Brexit vote, it was quite close, but it went for leave. And if those people

[01:04:30] got off their arse and got out there and voted, and stopped making excuses to make themselves feel better, we might not have had a Brexit. But people seem to always find an excuse not to

[01:04:41] do things. And it's very frustrating. And when good people do nothing is where bad people win. Up to you to decide who the good and bad are. But yeah. Yeah. All right. Wow, we've got one last one, haven't we?

[01:04:58] Last one. We're moving back over to my side of things here for a bit. Yeah. So this last one is an article in The New York Times is breaking down a pretty big story from earlier. A few days

[01:05:13] ago, the Justice Department broke up a pretty large Russian influence operation using hot net. So here's some of the details. Intelligence officials from the US, Canada and the Netherlands uncovered a Russian influence campaign using AI to create nearly 1000 fake accounts on the social

[01:05:30] media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, of course. The Justice Department in collaboration with these countries and X disrupted the operation by seizing two internet domains and taking down 968 fake accounts used to spread propaganda aimed at undermining support for

[01:05:46] Ukraine in creating political divisions. The operation was linked to Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, as most longtime listeners surely know, and RT, the state run TV network. AI was used to quickly generate and manage fake profiles and posts, making it easier to disseminate

[01:06:03] disinformation at scale, which in 2016 or 2020 would have taken months of effort by a large staff of office workers to do. The fake accounts were designed to look real, complete with personal details and engaging content, promoting RT produced propaganda across multiple countries,

[01:06:22] including the US, Poland, Germany and Israel. In most instances, the fake accounts reported to be citizens of those countries. This disruption comes ahead of the US presidential election, with officials warning that Russia and other countries like Iran are already targeting the

[01:06:38] election with influence operations similar to those used in 2016 and 2020. Despite Elon Musk's stance on creating a public square free from government interference, X cooperated with authorities to suspend the bought accounts. Other social media companies are also being urged to

[01:06:54] detect and eliminate fake accounts. The domains used for the campaign violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and federal money laundering laws. The DOJ stressed the importance of exposing and disrupting such operations to mitigate their impact. RT mocked the accusations

[01:07:12] in a brief email response to the Times, and a senior NATO official highlighted that coordinated responses aimed to signal to Russia that their actions are being closely monitored. However, experts warned that while this operation was caught, many other influence campaigns likely

[01:07:29] evade detection, comparing it to drug seizures at the border, catching some but many more slip through. Chris, what did you make of this? Well, I was gonna say, kind of me shocked that there's a Russian information campaign has just been exposed. There's gambling in this establishment.

[01:07:48] I know, it's like, oh my goodness, there's an election coming up and the Russians are trying to interfere in it? My goodness, we haven't heard that before. So obviously, joking aside, key thing, as we were saying earlier, some people in institutions are way too easily swayed by what

[01:08:02] they're seeing on the internet. And we do need to find a way to fix our online literacy problem that we have in our societies, both in America and Britain in particular. And yeah, I was interested

[01:08:12] as well that the Russians picked X as their place to have these thousand fake accounts. And I think like, you know, X's standards have dropped a little bit since Elon Musk took over. A little bit?

[01:08:23] Yeah, and being generous there. And obviously, we're now unfortunately paid members of Twitter. Well, we'll talk about that later maybe. But yeah, so you know, their standards have dropped. But it was good to see that at least Twitter management, or not management, but Twitter, the

[01:08:44] company, X, the company, at least cooperated with law enforcement in a responsible way, which is good because obviously, Musk is very, as you were saying earlier, he's sort of creating X to be this space free of government interference, even though it's a wash in foreign government interference

[01:09:01] with propaganda from Russia and China. And don't forget, obviously, we were saying a few episodes ago that Russia spend about $1 billion a year on propaganda efforts aimed at the West, and China

[01:09:11] spend about $6 billion a year on propaganda efforts aimed at the West as well. So bear that in mind every time you're on the internet and see a significant amount of articles that emotionally

[01:09:21] affect you. So yeah, I still believe that on the day of the US elections, there's likely to be some sort of significant information that's going to trend online all day on social media, that will

[01:09:34] turn out to be fake and probably likely from Russia or China, that could have an effect on people's voting intentions. And are people ready for such a thing? Are people listening now,

[01:09:45] ready for some sort of thing that might make you change your vote suddenly on the day of the election? You know, be careful. So yeah, and you know, obviously, there was some stuff about Russia

[01:09:58] today being slightly linked to this as well. And obviously, Russia today have been pumping out Russian propaganda for years. And for a while, a lot of people were in denial about that they were trying to say, Oh, Russia's days is legitimate news organization, blah, blah, blah, it's like,

[01:10:14] it is a Russian propaganda operation. And I mean, I've done a few episodes in the past about that from like two or three years ago. You know, so yeah, it just be careful really ultimately, what information you read and listen to and watch online. There we go.

[01:10:31] We've talked about this problem often over the past year, you know, how foreign bots and influence operations would run rampant. And we're seeing that now. The difference this cycle is how AI is a force multiplier for these efforts to produce and disseminate content at scale. Yeah, that's boring.

[01:10:49] Yeah. And it's also lowering the bar to entry for less sophisticated countries and non-state actors. Like it takes really little human talent and capital to devise and deploy one of these bot networks and reach millions with content that's like indistinguishable from like, authentic political speech, right?

[01:11:11] Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, create a lot of volume of stuff with AI. And obviously, nowadays, the whole deepfake thing is getting much more convincing. So it's getting harder to tell. I mean, it's again, we're moving into very dangerous uncharted territory now with deepfakes.

[01:11:28] You know, we've talked about this on a few past episodes, but it is worrying. And I think more needs to be talked about in mainstream politics about this and find some way to regulate it because it's getting very bad now.

[01:11:39] Yeah. Well, social media and AI firms act like they're powerless to do anything about it until they get hit with subpoenas, which I find frustrating. I mean, it's great that they're freely cooperating with the DOJ, like Musk's ex most of all. But efforts to contain and prevent

[01:11:59] this stuff from saturating their platforms would be more effective, I think, if they acted proactively and if legislation with teeth compelled them to do so. But you have to pass that legislation before they can do that. Definitely.

[01:12:17] You mentioned your fear for the election. We haven't seen some deepfake video that breaks through and is widely shared and considered to be genuine by voters, but of course, there's still a long road to November. Something's definitely going to happen. I don't know how widely it'll

[01:12:36] break through. I don't know if people believe it. I don't know if it'll have a significant impact, but something's going to happen. It's inconceivable to me that we get over the finish line in November and there's not some nasty deepfake that attempts to screw things up.

[01:12:54] I'll make a prediction that might be wrong, but most effective lies have a grain of truth in them. So I suspect the theme of said lie will be around Joe Biden's health. That's my prediction. It'll

[01:13:08] either be he's had a stroke, he's had a meltdown, can't stop calling Kamala Harris Putin or whatever it might be. And it will feel very convincing because for the last two weeks we've been bombarded with Biden's not fit for office messaging. And so it'll be something on those

[01:13:28] lines, I suspect. That would be my prediction. I worry that people aren't being told that this is something that is being planned and they should expect and be on the lookout for. These are public service announcements.

[01:13:44] I think some people, it's not even within the realm of imagination for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. A bit like the people who think that we don't really need armed services anymore because the world's safer because there's no more Cold War. It's

[01:13:56] that kind of thinking. There are people out there who genuinely believe that right now. And so they're clearly not paying attention to the world we live in. And those are the people who get swayed by this shit sometimes.

[01:14:11] I have just one last thing. There's been a bit of discussion, a very light discussion at the moment about digital citizenship. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but I believe it's Estonia have it as a thing right now. But it removes

[01:14:25] being able to be anonymous on the internet is the idea. So you to have social media, et cetera, you have to have digital citizenship to prove who you are. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's been some very light talk with the Labour Party about this. But

[01:14:40] Starmer was saying it'd be a very hard task to convince the British public that this is a good idea. But I think if you remove, I think here's two things I think that might help remove some of

[01:14:52] the crap on the internet. Number one, remove the anonymity factor so you can't be anonymous anymore and you have to be you and your what you say is a reflection of you as a person. Because then I

[01:15:06] think that might change a bit like how people behave on LinkedIn. I hear that's changed a bit. But in the old days, people very well behaved on LinkedIn, whilst on Facebook, people go off on rants because LinkedIn is connected to your employment is connected to your prospects.

[01:15:19] And there's a lot more at stake should you piss people off whilst on Facebook, you can do whatever the hell you want. And I think there's a lot in that. And then the second thing

[01:15:28] was, I think we still haven't realised I think I think governments and systems have realised that as an individual on the internet, you're kind of in the role of broadcaster. And in the UK, broadcasters are regulated. And I've started to wonder whether individuals should

[01:15:44] be subjected to same said regulations. And if you knowingly spread bollocks, that there should be some sort of consequence for it. And I wonder if those two things they're a bit draconian, but if those two things might well make the internet much more polite place could be wrong.

[01:16:02] And good luck persuading people to make that happen. But but apparently is working in Estonia, apparently, because they I think they set it up because of the Russian information problem. Because they were worried about online propaganda. And they have a lot more at stake because they're

[01:16:15] worried that Russia's trying to invade them in the future. And the last thing they want is their population to suddenly become very pro Russia and turn on the government. Right. And so I think they

[01:16:24] set up the whole and I must talk to Edward Lucas about this, because he's talked about this a lot in the past. But they use the digital citizenship thing as a way to bypass some of the problems

[01:16:34] with the internet. So but I think also your point earlier, I think the government or somebody, I think I think people ignore the government, but there needs to be some sort of like advert or something warning people about the dangers of online foreign propaganda. Yeah,

[01:16:48] you know, a bit like those old adverts in the cinema about there's a fugitive look to your left, look to your right, it is a fugitive Nick possibly next to you right now, you know, those kind of things, but something needs to be put out there.

[01:16:59] Estonia has always been at kind of the forefront of like cybersecurity and digital literacy like that. And I mean, to your point, they've gotten there because it's an existential threat for them.

[01:17:11] You know, like they're right on the they're like that that village on the end of Gondor. That's like, right. Yeah, like right between Gondor and like Mordor. Like that's that's that's them. Right. So they they got the ring race like flying around all over the place.

[01:17:24] I. It's been very impressive what they've been what they've managed to do and and in theory, these are good ideas in theory. However, when you what works for a very small homogenous country like Estonia. I don't think necessarily can just be translated into a much larger, more diverse

[01:17:53] vastly more complicated society. Like you look at the step up from Estonia would be like you guys. Right. And then the step beyond that would be us. Yeah. Right. It's way bigger and way more diverse

[01:18:05] and, you know, herding cats. Yeah, it's it's and I don't I mean, there's been there's been conversation before about like, you know, should you have to like prove your identity to like

[01:18:17] be on Twitter? Like I think Musk early on when he first bought Twitter, maybe when he was when he was playing with the idea of buying it was like throwing that around. And there were genuine

[01:18:26] concerns from like activists and journalists in, you know, in some parts of the Middle East, you know, in India, in different working in different authoritarian sort of countries and stuff that it would it would be legitimately harmful for them. And I'm not quite sure how you

[01:18:46] square that. I think like. I don't know, I just don't know that that you could. One, I don't think it would be constitutional here to I just think it's sort of like I don't know that it's something

[01:18:57] that you could. That really any part of the political spectrum would fully get behind, like it said. I don't know, like it's a serious problem and I get the need to to address it in some really

[01:19:11] forceful way. Like I think honestly, like social media companies are the new cigarette companies. I'm at the point where I would I would fully support like a law banning social media use for kids under like 16 or something, you know, like, no, you're not on it, especially with the

[01:19:32] teen suicides and online bullying, etc. It's appalling what has been going on and is totally and a lot of parents are still not completely clued up on it. It's really bad. Yeah, yeah.

[01:19:43] Yeah. And it's just that it's just a rampant just addiction to it. And I cite myself among that, honestly, you know, I'm not proud of it at times and I would I would like to get away from

[01:19:56] it, but I don't really I don't really know how. And that's the addiction, you know, like just to circle this back around to what we were saying sort of at the at the top of the show,

[01:20:07] people do across the board, across borders legitimately feel bad about the state of their lives, about the state of the world, about where things are going. Right. And there is absolutely a sizable kernel of truth to that, you know, like housing costs or housing costs,

[01:20:25] heating costs or heating costs, grocery costs or grocery costs. That stuff doesn't lie. I mean, it could be debatable as to who is responsible for that and what is a realistic

[01:20:37] way of looking at what those prices should be and how they should come down. But they're still high, higher than people would would would would would want them to be. All of that feeds into this sense

[01:20:47] of like the vibes are off. This sucks. You know, I'm going to check out. I don't really care what goes on. And it just feeds into this nihilism that inherently benefits extremists on the

[01:20:59] political spectrum. Right. Yeah. But. Something an idea that I've been circling for a bit is while things are legitimately bad to some extent, I wonder if they seem so much worse than they actually

[01:21:15] are. Oh, yeah. Because of social media in ways that our brains have been rewired to not even realize. Well, I think we're our perception of reality is a bit out of whack at the moment.

[01:21:27] Yes. And I think social media and legacy media trying to put a thing with legacy media is because legacy media sort of slowly going bankrupt and failing, they feel they need to be

[01:21:39] relevant. So they turn to Twitter to be relevant. And so they start turning to online trends, et cetera. And so they kind of end up repeating. So that's where you end up seeing a lot of waves

[01:21:48] of stuff through online and through legacy media because they're all feeding off each other. And I think it's really distorting our perception of reality now. I think it is. It's like you have these legacy media companies that are struggling to survive because the new, cheaper, cooler drug

[01:22:05] dealer down the block showed up and took all the customers. And now they're like, how do we get our customers back? Oh, I know we'll offer them the same dopamine hit that the new guys down the

[01:22:16] street are. And it just sort of poisons the whole well. Yeah. And what's going on with the Washington Post now? Because hasn't that just been bought up and they're like already lowering standards, et cetera? Because the Washington Post obviously has a really good reputation, but it feels like

[01:22:31] they're about... Yeah. The Washington Post is owned by Bezos, not by Amazon, like personally owned by Bezos. Right. And they had sort of a resurgence in subscriber numbers, in readership and stuff while Trump was in office. They had a lot of really landmark stories around the Mueller

[01:22:49] investigation and stuff. Since then, and I think this has been across the board with traditional media since Trump has been out of office, people have sort of checked out. They're not tuning in

[01:22:59] in such higher numbers as they were. The Washington Post has been hit very hard by that. Their subscriber numbers are down significantly. Their readership numbers are down significantly. I mean, Bezos guarantees that they're going to be able to keep the lights on and pay the rent

[01:23:14] but it ain't really making money to the point that Bezos wants it to be. So I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but he fired the editor and the publisher and appointed some old Fleet

[01:23:34] Street kind of Murdoch guy who was involved in some of the phone hacking stuff. And the newsroom has kind of revolted against it. And I mean, Bezos didn't even get off the yacht. He just

[01:23:46] sent a one paragraph email basically saying like, yeah, I don't care. Get over it. This guy's staying around for a bit. I'm not sure what's going to happen there. Next season of Succession by the

[01:23:58] sounds of it. But anyway. Yeah. We better wrap up. We better move to extra short. So yeah. Thank you everybody for listening. Obviously it's been a bit political this particular episode, but I think

[01:24:10] as we were saying, all this does feed into democracy and a lot of us are concerned about keeping things, keeping the world as we know it kind of going. Because the last thing we want

[01:24:22] is to fall into an authoritarian regime which is on the table in America at the moment. And that's deeply concerning. And if America does go down that path, that will have a massive knock-on effect

[01:24:32] for NATO, for Europe, European security, etc. So I think we are justified for going in the way we've gone today. But yeah, I hope you don't disagree. I hope we haven't poured you to tears.

[01:24:47] I've really enjoyed today's discussion and thank you for that, Matt. It's been very good and quite cathartic. Yeah, I think it's a good one. I would say to listeners, if what we talked about today

[01:24:59] moves you in a particular way, and it could be in a negative way, it could be in a positive way, it could be in a neutral way. That's up to you. But if it moved you in a particular way,

[01:25:06] the stuff we're talking about, if you feel it's affecting you or something, let us know. It'd be cool to have that feedback and see where people are. Yeah. Well, we're going to move over to Extra

[01:25:22] Short, which is our Patreon-only show. What you need to do if you want to carry on with us is just click on the link in your show notes and it will take you straight through to Extra Short. You just

[01:25:31] need to pick a subscription level that works for you, and then you'll be directly supporting this podcast. So thank you in advance. And if you're not joining us on Extra Short, have a wonderful

[01:25:40] weekend and we hope to catch you on our next episode. Take care and thank you for listening. Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.