Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, where stories about the power of focus and resilience are revealed by the people who live those stories and now the host of the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, jack Hopkins.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast. I'm your host, Jack Hopkins, and today I welcome back an investigative journalist that, if there's anything Musk-Trump related you want to know. He's the guy Dave Troy. Welcome back.

Speaker 3: 0:39

Glad to be here, jack. Thanks for having me, you bet to be here.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Jack, thanks for having me, you bet. Look, we are in crunch time and I've been pouring over everything you've written in the last couple of weeks. I always do, but the last couple of weeks I've found myself reading your post a second and third time and I thought, you know I want to give. I know you've got multiple avenues of getting the word out, but I think your message is so critical, so important, that I wanted to offer yet another, so that there's no possibility of anybody not having access to it and hearing what you have to say, because, as I see you nodding in agreement, almost in anticipation of what I'm going to say next, it is important.

Speaker 3: 1:39

Well, I appreciate that and you know, I think one of the things that we've seen, you know, as this has all unfolded really over the last 10 years or so, you know people eventually get it right, you know, but they get it a little bit too late and you know, it's almost always, you know, kind of this like oh shit, moment when it's like, you know, a year or six months or two months after some terrible thing has unfolded and people go oh, I see now what's in play. And so what I've been doing really for the last several years is trying to just do a little bit more homework, a little bit more reading, to get better into the heads of what amounts to our adversaries here, better, into the heads of, you know, what amounts to our adversaries here. And you know and when I say our adversaries I'm not even really speaking so much of like our fellow Americans, I'm talking really about our foreign adversaries. You know Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, and you know part of the problem of kind of getting into their headspace is that they have different language and you know different alphabets, different ways of seeing the world, and it's very, very difficult to get into the headspace of what our adversaries want to do and how they want to reshape America's role in the world. And you know, you have a lot of projection where people here in the States sort of think, well, if I was Russia I would think this way because and of course you know, if you've been raised in sort of a Western worldview and way of seeing things, you know you're not going to get that right.

Speaker 3: 3:16

No, so you know, the people I think have an image of like Putin as being this, like cold, calculating, rational strategist. But the fact of the matter is that he's kind of a mystic, lunatic and a really good tactician, but he's a terrible strategist. But the one thing that he is is super persistent, super persistent. He will not let this go and people think that he will just give up on this stuff, and he's not, because he set things up in a way where there's no way back, there's no way to go back to the way things were. The best we're going to get is some new situation where things are different, but maybe we can keep the devil down in the hole, as they say. As Tom.

Speaker 3: 3:58

Waits says so. I think that's kind of the scenario that we're in, and so, yeah, what I'm saying is important, because what's going to happen is that in a few months, people are going to go oh shit, either Donald Trump is elected, and this is way more terrible than anybody ever imagined, or he's not going to get elected, and they're still going to be doing some terrible things. So we can talk more about that, but that's really my pitch to America right now is wake up and smell the cat food, because we've got a lot of stuff inbound. If we don't stop it, it's going to be really bad.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Right, and that's one thing I specifically, among other things, but that I wanted you to be able to convey to the listeners, to the viewers, to the listeners, to the viewers, is that we face a really uphill climb, no matter how this election turns out. Correct? Yeah, it's not like they're going to stop coming if Kamala Harris is declared the winner and takes the White House seat. Correct?

Speaker 3: 5:01

If anything and this is your area of expertise, coming from a layperson perspective they're just going to come harder yeah, yeah, no, and and you know it's if you look at what the kind of moves that must making right now, where he's just continually breaking the law and doing things that are kind of insane, he's set up a situation where, you know, again it's just like with Putin. He can't go back to the way things were because he's now, you know, in jeopardy of all kinds of you know repercussions from the stuff that he's doing, and you know people can argue over which things are the most illegal, but you know he's communicating with Putin. He's paying people to vote, you know, I mean, it's, it's crazy stuff, and so you know he's banking very much on, you know, things going his way in the election and not facing any real accountability. But if Harris, you know, is elected and God willing, she is because she's the only pathway out of this, if there is one, you know they're going to basically, first, you know all the things that everybody's anticipating election denial and lawsuits and potential violence and you know they're going to basically first, you know all the things that everybody's anticipating election denial and lawsuits and potential violence, and you know, sure, things are different than they were in 2020 in many ways. I actually, though, don't I actually don't think that. You know, like all of the election denial, institutional stuff is the place that we should be most worried.

Speaker 3: 6:21

To me, the thing that we should be most worried about is the debt ceiling situation that's coming up in the first part of next year, and the problem with that scenario is that it really requires that the Congress take action. To, you know, raise the debt ceiling yet again. Or, you know, the pro move would be to just, you know, pass legislation that eliminates it, because it's probably not constitutional anyway, but it's there and it was put in place by legislation. It can be removed by legislation, but that's going to be really hard. But anyway, you know this debt ceiling situation is going to come up in early January. Really, the deadline is January 2nd, which is the day before the new Congress is sworn in, and then, of course, we know, january 6th is going to be the day when the election is certified, sworn in, and then, of course, we know, january 6th is going to be the day when the election is certified again.

Speaker 3: 7:07

So you know that time period is going to be very fraught, let's just say, with a lot of concern and attention, and unless the Democrats take control of the House. Mike Johnson's going to be the Speaker, you know, and you know maybe a miracle will occur and the Democrats will take the House. From what I hear, that's unlikely, but I don't really take any polls real seriously right now. So we'll see what happens on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Speaker 3: 7:33

But at any rate, you know the you know the debt ceiling situation is going to be such that if the deadline comes and we don't have legislation that addresses it, then what will happen is the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in this case, because she's going to still be Treasury Secretary no matter what on January 2nd, she will enact what's called extraordinary measures, which she had to last do in 2023. And what that will do is basically it's just like when you prioritize which bills to pay in your household, right, like if you're broke and you got to decide you're gonna pay the electric bill and, you know, buy groceries, but you might not, you know, pay your magazine subscriptions or something so anyway, that's gonna kick in january 2nd and you can get by a few months on that.

Speaker 3: 8:20

You know, usually not clear exactly how long, depending on what kind of scrimping and cost cutting they can do for a while, but basically what that means is that you got like a few months, maybe until April, I think last time they did this they bought about four months, and so then there will be what's called the X date, and the X date is the moment when the US stops paying its bills. And what does that mean? Well, it means a lot of things, and I think people are also very confused about what debt default actually means. We're not talking here about another government shutdown, although that would be a byproduct of this. We're talking about the US not paying its bills at all, so not paying its debt obligations, not paying the military, you know, not paying any federal employees. Nobody gets paid, and you know we're defaulting on the debt.

Speaker 3: 9:16

So what that means is that you know the US's credit rating would drop precipitously, and so all the ratings houses would, you know, take our current you know high rating and you know, cut. I think right now it's like AAA, or, you know I'm not super expert on bond ratings, but anyway, you know it's highly rated. You know people trust the US government and so if that rating falls, then our cost of borrowing goes way up, at which point you know the current debt that we have, which is bad. You know like we should probably have less debt, although the debt as a proportion to GDP isn't that big of a deal, you know then our debt will cost way more, and so the whole thing will spiral out of control. The dollar will crash, stock market will crash, global economy will crash, and Moody's estimated it as a $15 trillion global hit. So if you think about the impact of COVID, it was something like $3 to $4 trillion. This would be multiples of that. It would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in the economy.

Speaker 3: 10:19

And really this is what Putin most wants, and Xi wants it too, because you know they really want to take America down a peg and remove our hegemony in the world. And you know, while on the one hand it would be messy and set off a whole chain reaction of events that nobody can predict, you know Putin in particular has such a chip on his shoulder about how you know the Cold War ended and the collapse of the Soviet Union that he's willing to basically burn everything down to see. If, you know, he gets a better hand of cards this time and he wants to do this in his lifetime, and we're here to watch it happen, you know. So if we don't want that to happen, we need to grow the fuck up. Excuse my French no let loose.

Speaker 2: 11:05

So if we don't want that, to happen.

Speaker 3: 11:06

We need to grow the fuck up excuse my French and figure out at scale what is really at stake here and have people take actions that will prevent this from happening, and one of the things that probably needs to happen is a decapitation attack in Russia, ultimately to get this murderous regime under control, which nobody will talk about doing for reasons. I get it. You know it's fraud, but if we're really serious here, that dude needs to be gone somehow, and ideally at the hands of Russians who are getting fucked by him right now. So that's you know.

Speaker 3: 11:39

Sorry, that's about as angry as I want to get on this, but that's where things stand.

Speaker 2: 11:45

Let me ask you this, dave, in terms and I know I'm asking you to speculate here because none of us know for sure but what's your gut tell you about how much the upper levels of our government have grown the fuck up and realize what the situation is and have the impetus to do something about it?

Speaker 3: 12:10

well, you know, if I'm being honest about it, I I think that there are certainly individuals that get it right. You know, like people have to at least have some sense of what's going on here, I think that the challenge that we face is that there's such institutional inertia to like doing anything you know, like you can know, something all day long, but like doing anything, and if so, what is kind of the challenge? So, like you know, just to pick an example, what do you do exactly about Elon Musk? What are you going to do?

Speaker 3: 12:43

Now, you know, pennsylvania the other day tried to like have a hearing that he was supposed to show up at and then he didn't. He filed a motion to move it out of Pennsylvania's jurisdiction into federal court but you know, like they didn't issue a bench you know warrant for him because I guess they figured the legal filing was correct enough. But I think there's a lot of people that get what's going on but just nobody really knows what to do.

Speaker 3: 13:09

And it's crazy and it's not dissimilar from like a 9-11 scenario where you know, Bush gets this memo that says you know Al Qaeda determined to attack in US, and they're like well, that sounds bad. You know, I guess it would be good if we did something about that. But then what exactly? And so you know, between the information that you know all the intelligence community had, you know they pick up the guys, do they know exactly where they are, you know? I mean like, and it just kind of turns out that it's nobody's job to worry about this.

Speaker 3: 13:43

And you know you look at like Washington and sort of who populates Washington and you know I think there's a lot of good people there. I'm not trying to put anybody down really, but it's kind of just the nature of the beast. Where you take somebody like Jake Sullivan, who you know is a smart guy, rhodes Scholar, well-educated, but he's, from the accounts that I've heard, you know, kind of one of these Machiavellian career climber types and these people generally kind of conflate their own career advancement with being good at what they do so they kind of assume well, hey, I'm the National Security Advisor, I must be really smart, you know.

Speaker 3: 14:20

That's a sign that I'm brilliant, you know. And so whatever you know ideas I have are, you know, therefore going to be the best ones. And you know, at the end of the day, I don't think he gets the Putin mindset or what they're up to really. And you know, you just see hints of it and maybe I'm full of shit. You know, like I don't know, you know it's possible. It is quite likely that they have a lot of intel that I certainly don't have. On the other hand, I do spend a great deal of time digging stuff up and trying to read the stuff that they're reading and see things from their point of view. And you know, when Sullivan makes comments like, oh you know, let's have China's friends talk to China about curbing North Korea's actions, I'm like dude, you don't get what's going on with North Korea and China either of them.

Speaker 3: 15:14

Putin has made a full-on pact with China to support their war effort, and you can raise questions as to how durable that is, but all the evidence that we have at this point is that it's quite durable.

Speaker 3: 15:29

And then also, you know, what people don't realize is that North Korea's missile program was largely, you know, made possible in the last 10 years. You know how they went from like, you know, not really being able to shoot a rocket that did anything to being, like, competent with rockets. The reason for that was because, in the 2014 invasion of Donbass by Russia, they seized a whole bunch of rocket motors Soviet era rocket motors and gave them to the North Koreans. So, you know, there's a there's a deep, long standing alliance between North Korea and Russia, and people are just, they're not aware of this, you know, and so they're like, oh well, north Korea has been brought into the war and it's like, well, dude, no, they've been involved in this, you know, tangentially, for 10 years at least. You know. So, anyway, I just I am skeptical that we have anybody. That is either, you know, the combination of knowing what's going on and in a position to do anything about it just doesn't seem to be happening.

Speaker 2: 16:31

You know, this next question seems almost silly to ask it because so much of it is right in front of us and quite obvious. But would it be fair to say that the evil powers if you will have figured out that the way you deal with the United States is come together, for all the differences you have? If the thing you have to do is remove the United States from the equation as a powerhouse, we have to at least unite, for that Is that what's happening.

Speaker 3: 17:10

Yeah, I'd say that's right. There's a whole bunch of things kind of pointing in that direction where, effectively, what's going on is that you have the convergence of, you know, two different groups around two different worldviews, and that set of worldviews is aligning globally. So you basically, you know, you can call it, you know, fascism and authoritarianism, autocracy versus democracy and open society. You know that would be the basic split, and so you see that across a lot of different writing around, you know the catacomb versus the eschaton and you know dividing the world in two and really pushing the world to the brink at the end of, you know, pointy end of a nuclear missile, basically is the way to think of it. It's basically, you know, putting the entire world into a situation where it's either, you know, our side wins or you get nuked. That's the bargain that's on the table, and so you know, you see it in Dugan, you see it.

Speaker 3: 18:20

There's another thing that I just recently became aware of called Project Russia. That was a set of books that became popular in Russia between 2007 and 2011. And you know pretty well read there and again echoing the same kind of worldview of like dividing the world in two, and it actually, you know there's a line in that work that says this work will divide the world in two and the side that wins is right, you know. And so basically, what you have is in these regimes that you mentioned, you know, north Korea and Iran and China and Russia, and you know, grab bag of others is them al global order, collapsing the dollar, crushing US hegemony. It asserts that democracy does not work. It's failed, it's a decadent experiment that has gone wrong and we should move away from it and instead the world should be run by, you know, a small handful of enlightened leaders, of which Putin is one, and I would argue that Musk is like the designee for the United States, or whatever will become of the United States, and you know he kind of wants to be king of America, or at least a chunk of America that he can rule, and I believe that chunk will include Texas, and you know part.

Speaker 3: 20:00

You know if I'm kind of implying the dissolution of the United States here, I am. You know it's very likely that the country would not survive this path and we would end up in some kind of a scenario where you know it would be some kind of a breakup scenario or a civil war of some kind. I'm not of the mind that we're going to end up with like a nationwide civil war where, like, everybody's at everybody's throats, because demographically we just don't have conflict fronts that would work that way. Like, I just don't see it, you know. But I do see the potential for, like a Texas secession, which you know Russia has been talking about for years, at least a decade, and you know, to be honest, like, texas is probably the most vulnerable and most valuable state to kind of pick off and pull away from the United States. And again, probably if somebody is listening to me, going, oh my God, this guy's crazy. You know Texas isn't going to leave the United States, but you this critically the thing that would potentially start to happen here would be, let's say, harris wins, let's say it's June 2025.

Speaker 3: 21:06

Let's say the border is still perceived as a big problem. And so Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton of Texas, the attorney general, there, they start ramping up their rhetoric further against the administration and saying, look, here's the deal If you don't freaking deal with the border, we're going to secede. And of course that would set off a huge firestorm and it would very much help Putin and of course Musk would cheerlead that all day. Putin and of course Musk would cheerlead that all day. And assuming Musk, you know, isn't like in jail by then but he probably wouldn't be, and so you know then you'd have a scenario where all kinds of idiots would start going to Texas with their guns because they want to be part of the secession. You'd have people in Texas leaving Texas because they want to not be part of the secession and don't want to be part of this craziness.

Speaker 3: 21:55

And I mean, texas is like 47%, you know, democrat at this point, like it's, you know, not like there's no Democrats there, it's just majority Republican. And we'll see how that turns out really on Tuesday with Allred fighting Ted Cruz. But anyway, you know, you'd end up with a scenario where you get this iterative effect that could then spark all sorts of unintended consequences. So then you know, let's suppose maybe Ron DeSantis gets in the accident.

Speaker 3: 22:24

Well, you know, if Texas is succeeding, maybe we will too, and you know, maybe then Mississippi and Alabama get in the mix and the next thing, you know, you're recreating the you know Confederacy or the Knights of the Golden Circle or some godforsaken scheme, and of course, this is exactly what Russia wants. So, again, I'm not suggesting that it's going to go this way. I'm not suggesting that, even if it starts to go this way, that they'll be successful, but I'm saying that, just like with January 6th, which was unsuccessful, a lot of harm can come in the process, harm that we're still talking about and which costs several people their lives. So, you know, we got to take this seriously as a security threat, ultimately, and we should be thinking about it in advance and gaming it out. And unfortunately, you know, people are talking about Arnold Palmer's you know, private parts instead.

Speaker 3: 23:11

And you know like that's interesting but not really relevant, so sure when, when you think about or write about either one, not what. We've seen such quiet on those fronts regarding Well yeah, I mean, I think it's a mixture of factors and you know, probably some aspects of all these things are relevant, but you know, one is that doing investigations and building cases against people takes time, it takes expertise, it takes you know, lots of resources that you know potentially are in not necessarily short supply, but they have to be prioritized.

Speaker 3: 24:11

And you know, to be frank, like having, you know, had some experience looking into these things. And you know, occasionally, you know, working with folks in law enforcement to, you know, get information and whatnot, you know it. I think that there's a real, you know, limitation in terms of depth of understanding of resources. It's also, you know, I mean, we have to consider people's constitutional rights, you know, I mean you can't just start monitoring people because they annoy you. And you know, like, are you know saying speech is protected.

Speaker 3: 24:48

You know we do have a First Amendment. So there's a lot of things that are sort of problem signs, but you know that are protected by the Constitution and unless people are directly interfacing with foreign nationals, you know that's protected activity. So you know, if we pretend to believe in the Constitution then we also have to accept some of the limitations that come with that. So that's one thing. The other thing, of course, is we do have signs that there's been corruption at various times and that becomes specific when you can see an indictment. So we know about Charles McGonigal in New York who was accepting money from Oleg Deripaska I believe it was and protecting some people from investigation, which was totally illegal and bad, and he was charged and sentenced and you know that's good. But you know like was he the only one? I kind of doubt it, based on what I've seen.

Speaker 3: 25:44

There's probably, you know, a network of people and in fact you can even make the argument that inside of any large bureaucratic organization there are factions and there's going to be factions that lean towards, you know, progressivism and buy the book. You know doing everything you know to kind of protect the country and there's other people that are going to turn a blind eye to what they perceive, as you know, their political allies. And so you know, and again you know, you don't want to get in a situation where you're persecuting people for their political voting behavior. That's not great. And I think there's a lot of principled Republicans who don't want any part of all of this craziness and just have their opinions and just want to vote, which is fine. Not necessarily, you're not going to necessarily win with that, but that's fine.

Speaker 1: 26:33

It's your right to vote. I have no win with that. But you know, that's fine, it's your right to vote. You know, I have no problem with that.

Speaker 3: 26:35

So, at any rate, you know, I think that it's just a combination of institutional inertia, a little bit of corruption, a little bit of, just, you know, being sympathetic to it, and, you know, a lot of lack of resources, lack of understanding, it's all those things Lack of resources lack of understanding.

Speaker 2: 26:55

It's all those things. The big question mark for me personally and I did not feel this way a year ago, so there have been things that have happened along the way that have nudged me this way the big question mark for me is how compromised is our military? What level of effectiveness have people like Flynn and the kooks that he surrounds himself with, who have made it clear that's one goal they've had going back a number of years? What are we looking at there? Potentially, do you think?

Speaker 3: 27:43

Well, you know, I think there's been some studies on this and I'm trying to remember there's, I believe, a study that was done a couple years ago that suggested that you know, some percentage of the military maybe, you know, 10% was sort of radicalized in one way or another, and I might have that slightly wrong. People should go Google and find these reports and there's probably more recent studies too. And there's probably more recent studies too. But you know, there's a really good movie that was done recently called War Game, which you should be able to watch now on some of the streaming services. Not War Games, the Matthew Broderick movie with the computer and the nuclear missiles.

Speaker 3: 28:27

This is War Game.

Speaker 3: 28:28

It's a documentary about a simulation that was done on January 6, 2023, in anticipation of January 6, 2025.

Speaker 3: 28:38

And it's basically, you know, sort of a tabletop exercise of you know, simulating what would happen if a Michael Flynn type character led an insurrection, using members of the military, and I think that they, you know, estimated that they would have a few percent buy-in from the military on that. And the story was that, you know that the Flynn character was pitching to these military members, was that they were the ones actually defending the real constitution and that the people that had been elected were the usurpers and, you know, were trying to take over the country on behalf of the CCP or whatever. So you know, in that scenario, you know what they kind of found was like oh that would be really bad. And you know they had all these sort of paramilitary groups that were trying to, like, take DC and whatnot no-transcript. And the other thing is is that you know, joe Biden is president this time and not Donald Trump, and Donald Trump was screwing with the Pentagon to try to make sure that there wasn't a response last time.

Speaker 3: 29:49

So I think this is just qualitatively different than it was last time. But I do think that we, you know, could see problems at state capitals, you know, as as they seek to certify their own electors, um, and you know there's probably some stuff we haven't thought of that might turn up. But in terms of, like, radicalization in the military, I do think it's an issue. I don't think it's, you know, rampant to the point where, like, there's going to be a military coup kind of like no matter what, but I do think that there's enough people, not just in the military but also in law enforcement, federally, locally, whatever, and also you have, like this, you know, all the militia movements and the constitutional sheriffs and all that crap.

Speaker 3: 30:28

All of that could merge and kind of come together to cause problems, particularly if there's a focus, and I think that's one of the issues that you know we saw with January 6th was that you know it brought all kinds of people together in one spot to kind of have a focused effect. Right now I don't see where that focused effect would be. That's why I mentioned, you know, state capitals might be an issue. But besides for Washington or the state cap capitals, what other physical places could you exert kinetic force to achieve any kind of strategic or tactical gain? And I don't, you know. I haven't thought of a good answer to that yet.

Speaker 2: 31:07

Maybe there may be your listeners have ideas and can email me one day, and and I'll I'll state this, I it's not that I've ever thought this one creates a legitimate strategic advantage. It just creates chaos, which may or may not create a strategic advantage.

Speaker 2: 31:45

Chaos can sometimes be helpful. Yeah, right, a big concern of mine, just because it's still fresh on our minds from the COVID pandemic when people are confused, when people are panicking, they are also more vulnerable to reaching out and grabbing the first thing that looks to offer security to them. So you know, that's been a concern of mine. And again, you know, and it's not like there's going to be, I don't think, like one leader who's unified with all the militia groups and all of the hate groups, so I think on that front it will be more chaotic. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing. So perhaps this particular group thinks, hey, we'll hit the grid. Or hey, yeah, we'll hit the water supply Again. Not that that's any grand part of a scheme that works, but, like you stated, as far as the people picking up arms and moving to Texas, there are just a lot of people who are just looking for an excuse to do some of this kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 33:01

Yeah, absolutely, people that are, you know, sort of hobbyist, you know preppers and people that think that they want to be the hero of some story and you know, ok, fine, you know, I mean, but you know, and I mean, the thing about democracy and rule of law is that it's pretty boring. The thing about democracy and rule of law is that it's pretty boring. You know, you go, you vote, you wait for stuff to happen. You have Congress, you pass laws, you pay your taxes, like that's not fun. But you know, if you had some kind of revolution or secession or battle or something a lot of dudes are into that, I mean, and I think part of that is that you know, we are at a little bit of a deficit for meaning. You know, in terms of our society, people are looking for things that give their lives meaning and you know this is something that people can sink their teeth into. It also feeds a lot of their social interactions. People are, you know, a lot of.

Speaker 3: 33:51

The reason why people get involved with radicalization is for social reasons and to, you know, feel belonging, to be part of a community, to get connected to others, and you know, I mean that's crucial, that's innate to humans. So like we need to. You know service that need in our society. In some ways we're not doing a great job of that, so it's leading people down into these. You know radicalization pathways. You know as far as you know whether we'll see violence or not or supply chain disruptions. I mean they've obviously been screwing around with truckers and whatnot in the past to try to see what kind of traction they can get. It doesn't feel like they've had very much luck getting focused, long-term participation from truckers.

Speaker 3: 34:39

That whole idea got its start, or at least was well explored, in Chile in 1973 as part of the you know, removing Allende and putting in Pinochet, and they found that that was very effective and, of course, that was being run by the CIA. You know, to basically disrupt the trucker supply chain, and they found that that was very effective and, of course, that was being run by the CIA. Um, you know, to basically disrupt the trucker uh supply chain, which, of course, you know sparked a financial collapse, um, or help spark as financial collapse. So I think you know we could see some of that here. I mean, lee Dundas, in 2021 or two, was talking about how they were actually planning a Christmastime. You know, trucker disruption in order to create inflation and, you know, disrupt the holiday season and, you know, post bad economic numbers for the fourth quarter and whatnot. So, yeah, you know, like, economic warfare is real. I think we should expect all the options to be brought to bear. Um, and I also think we should be thinking a little bit more geopolitically about, you know, like, what kind of global disruptions could disrupt our own perception of reality. So I just keep waiting for putin and, or, you know, kim jong-un, to do some kind of nuclear demo, just to like be like. Hey, look, nuclear bombs, here you go. And, of course, you know, if anybody anywhere detonates a nuke, even if it's just like over the ocean, there's going to be a huge global chatter fest about nuclear weapons, their future, the role in the world, america's capability, whatever and that will alter public perception if that goes down.

Speaker 3: 36:22

Likewise, there's a lot going on in space that people aren't thinking about. We've seen warnings about Russia potentially having nukes in space of some kind. I'm even hearing chatter about ballistic stuff being put onto Starlink satellites, which isn't really public yet. But if you think that you might have some of those Starlink satellites in a position to explode and I don't know whether we're talking about nuclear or what is going on with that, I'm trying to learn more With that. I'm trying to learn more.

Speaker 3: 36:56

But any kind of disruption in space that could generate something like an EMP blast which could take out a lot of terrestrial stuff, disable people's phones in over hundreds of mile radius, that could be financially and psychologically devastating. And we're just not thinking about that stuff because, A it's really unpleasant to think about and, b it's probably somewhat unlikely. But we need to be thinking about all these different kind of possibilities in terms of where this goes Because, as I said, the only way out for these guys is through. There's no way back. They have burned every bridge behind them and they can't be held accountable at this point because they will be found guilty. There's too much going on, and it's likewise for Putin. He can't screw this up or he's going to get removed by his own people. So we've got a lot of challenges ahead.

Speaker 2: 37:53

I've long had a saying, and it's something I've long said. It probably originated from somebody else and I just picked it up, but there's never anything any more dangerous in my mind, when it comes to human beings, than someone who has, in their mind at least, nothing left to lose.

Speaker 2: 38:13

Right, right, they just have nothing left to lose and that's somebody who there are no boundaries left with that person. And you know, dave, that's been one of the biggest eye-opening, shocking, disconcerting things. For me the last few years is when I look at how much of what we've seen happen really just came down to somebody willing not to do things the way we usually do them. You know, it was like that was such a simple thing that we just assumed that, okay, this is how it's always done, so this is what the next person will do. But I'm not sure if anybody on any level had ever factored in okay, but what if somebody doesn't? Do we have any mechanisms in place to quickly and effectively deal with that? And in some cases we've seen, probably not.

Speaker 3: 39:17

No, and this has been the big strategic weakness, in kind, of our institutional setup in the United States, is that you know, we, you know, do have a constitution that guarantees people due process, and due process takes a lot of time, and you know it takes one second to violate a norm. It takes one second to violate the law and the consequences of that can be dire. And so you know, what we're kind of up against is with somebody like Musk, who, you know I mean by any measure is a high agency individual like you can't deny that right. He's done a lot of things that a lot of people said are impossible, everything from electric cars to robots and rockets. I mean, there's just a lot of things that he's been attached to that people have thought to be impossible. And you can argue over how much credit he deserves for any of that. Arguably he's building mostly on the work of others, but at root, he is a high agency individual, and I think part of what we're seeing here is that his agency has been further augmented by an assurance from his buddy, putin, that he is unstoppable and that not only unstoppable but totally unaccountable, can do whatever he wants.

Speaker 3: 40:37

And you know, I mean a way to think about it is that he's backed by Putin's nuclear weapons or the perception of Putin's nuclear weapons. I mean, everybody likes to say, well, you know, putin's nuclear weapons are probably crap and poorly maintained or whatever. But I'm like dude, all you need is one, right? You know you need one nuclear weapon that can reach London or Washington or Berlin or wherever, and you've created a sufficient nuclear deterrent. So what you could end up with is a scenario and this is kind of what I'm anticipating is a scenario where Musk does things is not stopped because we can't get our act together. And then, if he is, if somebody really does decide that you know they're going to come after him. Putin says, well, you know you can try that, but you know London's going to get nuked. You really want to do that. You know Right.

Speaker 3: 41:31

And you know people can argue over whether that's a real threat and all the game theory aspects of you know, nuclear deterrence or whatever, but at the end of the day, if that's what the game is and I do think that these guys, especially people like Musk, who is a big gamer, see this as all a big game I mean, he's such a sociopath, he has no empathy for anybody, and he sees this as a giant game to be won, and he's also convinced himself that he's saving human civilization in the process by becoming a multi-planetary species. I'd love to know which dude in the FSB came up with that line to feed into his head, because now he will do literally anything and he will be convinced that he's saving the freaking, you know human race. So that's what we're up against and people can kind of go, oh, it's not that bad, but really it is that bad, it's this crazy, and I believe that we will end up learning that lesson fairly soon.

Speaker 2: 42:27

Yes, what are your thoughts? I think I know the answer, or the likely answer, just based on the concept of mutual destruction. So I know which way I'd lean on this, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing. What do you think the likelihood is that, in the right situation, that Putin does go ahead and launch a nuclear attack on London or somewhere in the United States?

Speaker 3: 43:02

a nuclear attack on London or on somewhere in the United States. Yeah, I mean, I hesitate to give him, you know that much power to say that like he would do this and there, because really if you believe that he would do that, then you don't really have much choice but to kind of capitulate to his threats, you know, because you don't want to kill you know 16 million people or something, but at the same time, like I do think that they might do something just to prove the point that they're nuts. And I also think that it's possible, although maybe unlikely, that you know these leaks that you know Trump performed, you know with all these nuclear documents in his bathroom, may have compromised our nuclear deterrent capability. That's not unrealistic, that's entirely within the realm of the possible.

Speaker 3: 43:53

And in fact, if you know, as we do, that this is part of their goal is to you know compromise America's, you know capabilities. That's something we should probably expect, and you know. The fact of the matter is is that this is so secret that they can't even talk about what it was, so we don't know. In fact, the fact that we don't know means we should probably assume that that's maybe likely what was going on you know, I agree.

Speaker 3: 44:20

So you know, to the extent that we don't have perfectly balanced, mutually assured destruction, that we don't have an informational advantage potentially over the adversary, we should assume that they may think that they can survive some kind of a first strike situation and maybe they really think that Now, some kind of a first strike situation, and maybe they really think that Now, I think in practice, you know we've got plenty of good aerial reconnaissance and whatnot, and so if they start to move into the mode of you know launching some kind of, you know, high stakes attack, they're going to retreat into their bunkers and hide certain assets and do things that should be pretty obvious to us. So I think we can at least know if something's coming. I don't know what we'd do about it if we saw that, but at least we'd know, you know it'd be good to have a few minutes to know, you know.

Speaker 3: 45:12

So you know, I think that's sort of where we're at, and you know, again, that's why I think they have a lot more to gain by threatening things and doing things that seem menacing and also potentially some kind of a demo thing, either of like a nuke or some, you know, like an experimental weapon. You know, blow up some island somewhere with nobody on it and be like, oh you know, look what we did to the island, and then everybody can write op-eds about it. That'd be great Sure. So I think you know that would be my guess as to kind of like what they would do before doing anything like you know, that would really attack a major city.

Speaker 2: 45:51

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 45:51

But they're also nuts you know. So we'll see.

Speaker 2: 45:54

I don't know I lived in Guam for a couple of years in the 90s. I still have friends there and I know they are on kind of a heightened mental and emotional alert because, as you state and now to be clear, you indicated island out in the middle of nowhere where nobody lives, and I see that as being more likely as well, and I see that as being more likely as well. However, if you wanted to make a big statement but not touch the US mainland and have a much greater chance of hitting it, guam would be one of those places targets that sure that you know so well, and there's also that, uh, other island, uh, is it mauritius or no?

Speaker 3: 46:37

it's not. It's another island that was just handed back over to mauritius, um, in the pacific, uh, that has like some military, you know nuclear type assets on a us air base there um yes so you know, I mean that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 46:52

And so then you get you know, because I mean, ultimately, you know, while we do have a deterrence posture and we want to, you know, blow them up. If they blow us up, do we really want to, though, right, right, do we really want to go down that path? And so I think what they would. And I think that particularly, you know and I hate to say this because it's just, you know, so stereotypical, but you know, there you have Putin, you have a potentially female president who they have convinced themselves is an idiot, and you know he's thinking, oh, a woman can't possibly manage this scenario, and so I'm just going to do what I'm going to do. And you know, I mean it's also it's impossible to overstate the degree to which these guys think that they are blessed by some kind of divine or mystic destiny, like these dudes are in some crazy belief systems, and you know there's several that are overlapping.

Speaker 3: 47:45

There's a little cult group called the Divievo cult that you know is convinced that there's going to be a Holocaust, you know apocalypse scenario, and that only the people in the cult are going to survive. And these are Putin's buddies that he accounts on for advice. Putin himself is believed to be a bit of a mystic believer and is super into all this kind of Altai, mount Athos mysticism and whatnot that blesses the Russian people. They're also trying to bring about what's called the Third Rome, which is a Catholic prophecy that the Russian Orthodox and the Roman churches will merge and have their new headquarters in Moscow, and indeed they built a cathedral dedicated to the Russian military to help bring this about. So people should not underestimate the degree to which they are motivated by weird mystical belief systems and prophecy. And, as I say, he's not a cold calculating strategist or chess player. He's a lunatic mystic and we should take that into account.

Speaker 2: 48:53

And I'm glad you brought that up, because I've taught this in seminars often years ago that when you hear people bring up, oh I wish I could tell what this guy or this woman, I wish I knew what they were thinking. And my thing has always been forget about what they are thinking and discover what they believe. Because if you can discover what they believe, then a great deal of the time you'll get pretty close to being able to tell what they are thinking. And you know, a belief is the filter and the director of so many aspects of human behavior. And so, like you said, when you start getting kooky beliefs, you just about can't not have kooky behavior and planning.

Speaker 3: 49:47

Yeah Well, and there's. I heard a quote and I'm forgetting now where I heard this. I need to figure it out because it's such a good line. But I read this somewhere recently that Russia is what you could call a high-context society, where there's a lot of shared cultural context and stories and common knowledge that people have about how the world works, and so it's a very, I would say, kind of complete worldview. That kind of comes with being Russian and it makes you see the world in a very particular way, and that you know, I'm sure, has roots in Russia's geography, its relationship with the rest of Europe and you know just generally its history.

Speaker 3: 50:32

But you know, when Americans and Westerners, but particularly Americans, try to understand that worldview, they look at all you know the individual, they look at their education, they look at their writings or whatever.

Speaker 3: 50:46

But you really have to combine at least some rudimentary knowledge of this high context Russian thought and you know all of these other sort of belief systems that are running around in Russia and put these people into that milieu. And you know I will be the last person to claim to be any kind of a Russianist or a Russian expert, but I am a diligent reader and researcher and I have read a lot of stuff about. You know Russian cosmism, russian nationalism and you know generally the Russian worldview and I know enough about it to know that we're getting it wrong. You know, and so I think you know, when people are evaluating Putin and what he will or won't do or what he's motivated by. They really need to get a handle on some of these mystic. You know contextual things that really come from Russian culture, and I'm not convinced that we've done a good job of that.

Speaker 2: 51:40

Right, and something that came to mind while you were talking about that, one example I used to give was every now and then, on National Geographic or some type of documentary, you will see one of these newly discovered Amazon tribes, for example, that have never had human contact before right. And the one thing I know that you can count on, prior to any kind of human contact, of human contact, the level of miscommunication between the members of that tribe is about as close to zero as it can get, because they have all got the same shared reality right. You don't have different geographical locations. You just one word that they use to describe something will mean the same to everybody else. That's not true in our society.

Speaker 3: 52:40

Right, yeah, we have a big messy culture yeah.

Speaker 2: 52:42

Right, right. So when you come back then and look at the Russian culture, would it be fair to say that the Russian culture has more of a shared reality than the United States, the Western world?

Speaker 3: 52:57

Yeah, I mean I'd probably defer to somebody that's like a real Russia specialist to make that statement, but I would certainly have that sense that you know and you also have to consider Russia is big, like there's a lot of different cultures and ethnicities that are part of that whole milieu and you know you go to different parts of Russia. It's a totally different ethnic background. So I mean I think, yes, but with limits. And I think also that you know when we're talking about sort of official Russia, we're talking about people you know from St Petersburg, from Moscow you know, who have this kind of shared experience. You know, and particularly for older people, they, you know, remember the USSR and how that went down. So you know like they have a lot of that shared context and I think that's kind of a lot of what we're dealing with.

Speaker 3: 53:43

And I think with Putin, you know you really have to consider the KGB and his experience with the KGB and just you know Czechist thought in general and you know I mean that stuff goes back, you know, all the way back to the secret police of the Tsars and stuff and probably way before that other historians can weigh in on that. But you know it has deep roots. And I think that the deal with Putin is that you know he is basically extending the work of the KGB from like immediate post-war era, and sure they were doing a lot of this kind of stuff prior to the war. But really I mean, and it's fascinating to me, I'm trying to write a book about this set of topics and what I've been finding is that the candidacy of Henry Wallace in 1948 is basically the exact same as Trump's it's. You know, rapprochement with Russia, peace, you know, reduce nuclear. You know reduce nuclear arms, reduce arms spending, reduce the military and everybody's happily ever after.

Speaker 3: 54:48

And you think about, you know, the Russian view on peace is they use the word mir, which means both peace and world, and so the phrase Ruski mir means literally Russian peace, but it also means the Russian world and some people take it to mean like the Russian worldview.

Speaker 3: 55:05

But in this great paper that I read about reflexive control, which is a mechanism of Russian projection of power, a mechanism of Russian projection of power, it basically said that you know when Russians demand peace and say you know, in Russian they had this laid out you know we demand Ruski Mir, you know we want the world. Basically is another way to translate we want peace, and so all of these kind of peace movement things that took place in like the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s were really Russian projections of power trying to disarm the United States so that Russia could, you know, use information warfare to sort of advance its own causes as much as it wanted to, without any deterrence. And I think you have to look at that through the KGB lens, not the communist ideological lens, because ultimately what happened was the communist ideological lens collapsed but the KGB's power and its ability to project power grew. And now that's what we're dealing with with Putin.

Speaker 2: 56:10

That's a fascinating what you just said. I think I know it is for me and if anybody listening or watching, if they just get that what you just said, I'm going to ask you to expand on a little bit. But that connection, if we look at the let's look at the 60s, for example, mid to late 60s up to early 70s and I want to if, if I'm on track with this that much of what we saw going on within our culture, uh, to include the hippie culture and pieces love, that kind of thing, could very well have been, or maybe was, uh, the result of a well-crafted KGB campaign to disarm and kind of take the fight out of America.

Speaker 3: 57:05

Yeah, I think that's pretty well supported by evidence at this point. Now you know, that being said, there's a lot of stuff that needed to be fixed in America in the 60s. You know we had segregation and you know all kinds of racial discrimination and Jim Crow and just generally sucking. You know we sucked pretty hard and we needed to fix that. So what was happening was the Soviets, you know, were basically looking at all of our problems and our fissures and divides and everything and going, ha ha, you guys aren't very good on civil rights, you know, so we're going to make a big stink about that and cause a lot of trouble inside the country. And, of course, you had a lot of very principled people who were like, well, actually, yeah, you know we do suck on civil rights and we do need to have a Civil Rights Act and you know we really should fix you know segregation and all that. So you know that kind of stuff actually, you know, probably advanced social equality and justice in the United States. And to some extent, you know, gee, thanks, soviet Union, you helped us out on that. But at the same time, you have to look at it from just the lens of like, yeah, that advanced their cause as well, because it you know I mean to be really frank you know you can draw a straight line from KGB efforts into, like the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg, which led to, you know Cy Hirsch and you know my Lai and the Family Jewels and Church Committee. And you know, honestly, church Committee reforms really needed to happen, to be sure.

Speaker 3: 58:35

But if you look at kind of like what, we kind of lurched too far back in the other direction afterwards because what ended up happening and I can tell you this because I've done like 1,100 FOIA requests with the FBI at this point Wow, spanning decades, and what I can tell you is that we basically stopped doing counterintelligence after like 1976. Is that we basically stopped doing counterintelligence after like 1976. And you know you have Stanfield Turner. Stanfield Turner fired like 820 people at the CIA. He pissed off John Singlaub who ended up being a mentor to Mike Flynn, you know, because he recalled Singlaub from Korea in 1977 or 8.

Speaker 3: 59:21

So a lot of the seeds that were planted for everything that's going on now were really the product of the KGB's desires in the late 60s, early 70s, to kind of point out America's hypocrisyisy, to tear us apart from the inside and you know, nobody can rightly defend mk ultra, which was real, or you know, uh, the fbi breaking into things, you know. I mean like there's just a lot of stuff that was done that was overreach and like, but the thing was was that the kgb was watching closely what we were up to, CIA and FBI, and any time there was any dirty laundry they would pass it over to journalists like.

Speaker 3: 1:00:02

Seymour Hersh or anybody else that was trying to expose this stuff. And so it ended up that there was kind of this pipeline of KGB intelligence going out through journalists, people like Bob Perry, if Stone, you know, and a lot of people will defend Cy Hersh and Bob Perry and IF Stone till the end because you know they were principal journalists but they were also getting help from the KGB and so you know. And then you get into these long arguments about who was guilty and you know, should we blame? You know it doesn't really matter. Like dude, this is a sausage grinding machine and it makes sausage. Like this is how it works. You don't have to get into the blaming anybody, it's just what's going on, you know.

Speaker 3: 1:00:43

So it's complicated. It's an endlessly fascinating milieu in which to look, especially now, kind of after the fact. My personal opinion as a proud Gen Xer is that the boomers kind of got their own identity wrapped around the axle on some of this stuff. I don't think that a lot of them saw clearly the interaction between the KGB and the press and you know what it was doing to our intelligence capacities, and that really led to the kind of lurch in the other direction where like that now has made it possible for people like Trump and Musk to not be held accountable because we blew out too many walls in the 70s trying to be, you know, less repressive, you know so anyway, it's complicated.

Speaker 3: 1:01:29

Lots of good people on both sides, you know the usual, but it's a bit of a mess now on both sides.

Speaker 2: 1:01:36

you know the usual, but it's a bit of a mess now. What are your thoughts on the cryptic message from Trump to Speaker of the House, mike Johnson about our little secret? Our little secret?

Speaker 3: 1:01:48

Yeah, you know it's hard to know what they were meaning by that. I think a lot of people have taken that to mean that there's going to be some kind of, you know, electoral college shenanigans, or maybe they'll throw the vote to the House and, you know, try to have some kind of state-based vote. You know there's all these little, you know Baroque mechanisms that people are identifying that could potentially be brought to bear. You know who knows. I think it would be stupid for Trump to advertise that kind of a strategy through that kind of a you know little offhand comment. I thought it was a weird thing for him to do and to the point where, like that would be such a weird thing to do that. I don't necessarily think that's what he's talking about.

Speaker 3: 1:02:30

I think he might be talking about you know they have some kind of plan to, like, you know, hold on to the House or gain more seats, or you know they're thinking about whatever the election totals might be for different House seats or whatever. The other thing that he could be referencing is something to do with the debt ceiling coming up, you know, next year. So it might be something related to that. But I think the bottom line is. You know, it was probably a throwaway remark that has been, you know, overanalyzed by people because they're looking for certain things. But you know, who knows? I just don't know and we'll see you know soon. It's a couple months probably.

Speaker 2: 1:03:10

What that as a last word from Dave Troy to the people of this country, and not so much on on voting, I'm I'm of the mind at this point. There aren't really any undecideds there. There might be a few stragglers here and there, but for the most part everybody knows who they're voting for or if they're going to vote. But what would you say to the American public, particularly those of us who love democracy and want to defend democracy? What's the proper mindset to enter into post-election for either scenario? What should we be prepared mentally and emotionally to come to grips with?

Speaker 3: 1:04:01

Yeah, well, I mean, you know first. Obviously you know the stakes are super high. You know I think a Harris win is necessary but not sufficient to kind of get us towards where we can breathe again. But you know, to the extent that you know, if Trump is elected, I think we're just going to have to work really hard to wake up folks on the other side to the threat that's posed. Because really, you know, I have some empathy for people that are being sucked into this, where you know they think they're voting for Donald Trump and his brass. You know brash ways and you know his willingness to like stand up to the other side or whatever. But they're not.

Speaker 3: 1:04:43

They're voting for a short man over in Moscow with his little sidekick Elon and Peter Thiel, and you know JD Vance and that crew, and so you know they're being misled. They're being sold a bill of goods. I feel bad being patriarchal about it or sort of being like you.

Speaker 1: 1:05:04

Poor people have no idea what's actually happening, but it's kind of true and I do feel for some of them.

Speaker 3: 1:05:10

I listen to C-SPAN every morning, people calling in and they got their crazy ideas that they got from who knows where and you feel bad for some of them. You do they're?

Speaker 3: 1:05:18

just ill-informed. So, without being too patronizing, I think that that's a reality wins. We need to take on kind of a campaign of education, of turning people on that side against this administration and demanding that we restore, or, you know, that we retain and strengthen our institutions, because the only thing that will keep us from total oblivion here is strengthening our institutions. And you know, just as we saw, you know kind of the never Trumpers and various people on the right have turned against Donald Trump over the years. I think we'll see a bigger wave of that now if Trump wins, particularly if they realize that they've really sold themselves out to Musk and Putin. So, you know, I think that's probably a practical approach there. And then, you know, if Harris wins, then we need to turn our attention to dealing with other systemic threats, some of which Harris herself doesn't, I think, see yet. You know, like the debt ceiling is probably on her radar, but again, I'm not hearing anything about that from her or from Biden. So I think we need to get Biden immediately to start talking about that from the bully pulpit, because it's existential and that will be the attack surface that people like Musk turn to immediately. And, you know, mike Johnson, same thing. So that needs attention.

Speaker 3: 1:06:50

We also need to bring crypto risk to bear, and what's going on with crypto is that assets like Bitcoin are inflating in value so much that it's capturing the political system and it's capturing politicians on both sides.

Speaker 3: 1:07:04

So we have, you know, in this cycle, over $200 million has been spent by crypto interests to capture politicians on both sides, and the goal of that capture, of course, is to make crypto assets go up in value even further, because they would presumably restrict regulations that would otherwise hinder crypto's progress.

Speaker 3: 1:07:25

If the price of crypto doubles, then the amount of government capture is going to double to the point where, if it goes up to where Bitcoin is like a million dollars or something, then you're going to have this whole class of people that got into that stuff early, that are able to drive, you know, go around and drive lamborghinis at the expense, really, of everybody else, because everybody's purchase power will everybody else's purchase power, will purchasing power will decline proportionally. So it's a zero-sum game, and the European Central Bank just put out a really good paper on this that describes the dynamics of what might happen here. And not only would you have potentially, you know, depletion of people's savings and buying power. You'd also potentially you know, in the scenario where it crashes or, you know, regulation is suddenly placed, you'd have potential for real civil unrest, because the main people that are into the crypto stuff are young men, and they are young men that have been steeped in kind of anti-semitic, anti-bank, anti-government ideology for the last few years and they're highly networked.

Speaker 3: 1:08:35

That's a recipe for genocide honestly, you know, and if those people are suddenly unemployed with no other skills and they're angry and they have a scapegoat. That is going to be terrible. So you know, we have that to deal with. So you know, again, I think you know, try to expect the best, be prepared for what may come and you know, we'll see how things go. But again, people shouldn't have the idea like somebody the other day online was like I was, you know, suggesting an agenda for Biden and Harris to follow, because we really do need to pay attention to these risks. And somebody was like oh, you shouldn't tell Harris what to do, let her cook. You know I'm like okay, well, dude, you are. Well, you know she is more than entitled to cook. Please, by all means cook. But here's some things you need to have on your radar. Really, you know, I'm not joking around here and I'm not waiting for you to figure this out on your own.

Speaker 3: 1:09:29

I'm going to send you, and you do that with love. You do it not to second-guess people. You do it because you give a damn and people should give a damn.

Speaker 2: 1:09:40

I said the same yesterday on a podcast with Jonathan Greenberg. I said you know, my feeling is, if we get Kamala elected and get her put in place, that one of the first things we do and, as you said, respectfully.

Speaker 3: 1:09:54

And, as you said, respectfully.

Speaker 2: 1:09:55

You start applying public pressure on her to do these things, like you are talking about Yep, because we don't have the comfort of time.

Speaker 3: 1:10:06

Yeah, this can't wait, you know. I mean, if we let crypto interest capture, you know, our entire political system, then we're done and I think you know, think she's a quick study, she can quickly figure that out. But ultimately we have to take a stand on some of these things and that's what the Project Russia thing. We're dividing the world in two. Crypto is on the bad side of this divide. Unfortunately, it cannot exist unregulated and not kill our entire democracy. It's just the way it is Is crypto in your mind the potential Trojan horse.

Speaker 3: 1:10:40

It's one of them. Yeah, it's definitely one of them. I mean and I think there's several I mean you've got Trump now as a kind of Trojan horse. You've got Elon's capture of the space program is another Crypto.

Speaker 2: 1:10:56

I mean there's just a bunch of them that if they don't get curbed, we're going to have big problems. All right, dave? Well, listen, I always get excited about having you on. You are one of a handful of people out there whose every word I hang on, because I know that if you write it, you've researched it to the fullest extent. So thank you for coming on. Look, I know you're busy. You've got other things to do, so I truly appreciate you making time for me and my viewers and listeners, and let's hope for the best.

Speaker 3: 1:11:32

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me on. It's helpful to kind of expand the reach of the message at this point and if folks want to talk about this or have leads on stuff that's going on, I'm available on X at Dave Troy although we'll see if I stick around there after the election. They've squashed reach quite a bit in the last few days and then also I'm on Signal at DaveTroy.69, which is assigned randomly.

Speaker 2: 1:12:00

And you may have just stated that you've got a website as well. Yeah, DaveTroycom.

Speaker 3: 1:12:04

It has links to a bunch of my stuff and you can follow me there.

Speaker 2: 1:12:08

Perfect, all right, dave. Thank you again and talk soon.

Speaker 3: 1:12:13

All right, thanks, Jack. Let's hope things go well next week.