Erik Prince: CIA Corruption, Killer Drones, and Government Surveillance

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It's like, so the, the prepper.

I totally agree with that, but I'm not rational about it. Like, I'm sure you, who's like equipped an entire private army is, you're pretty rational about it. I'm not, I'm like, I'm not exactly sure. I need, I don't give a shit. Gold, ammo, you know, whatever.

dudes with guns are not a match for dudes with drones.

of person and I'm not, you know, naming names or identifying myself by name, but if you're the kind of person who sees a deal on steel case 7.

How is that pointless?

the world is watching this potential future adversaries are seeing on display, American.

military capability. And we should be concerned, as taxpayers and as citizens that all this money we've spent, we have not gotten very good value for in the same way. But doesn't it?

Doesn't it display our vulnerability to? if our weapon systems aren't working in Ukraine? Why would they work in other parts of the world? Right? Aren't we sort of showing our hand?

Look, some of the stuff works well, but at what cost? Right? Because you know, the hooties are using a 20 to $50,000 drone to attack commercial shipping or US shipping in the Red Sea Gulf of Aden. And the US has to shoot that down with not one but two missiles that cost $2 million a piece. So you're costing us $4 million to shoot down a $50,000 drone.

Bad math. So even in Washington, DC, why wouldn't? because this is on display in the world is sort of watching? Why wouldn't military planners in the United States be taking notes and adjusting?

accordingly? Because the money flow keeps on going the same way, with no accountability and no, no self introspection, no learning it. look who got fired, who got punished for a complete debacle in Afghanistan, where, over 20 years, we replaced the Taliban with the Taliban.

Scheller went to jail.

I know. Because if he said, look, if a couple of my young Marines lost a rifle on the rifle range, they would be punished. We lost, we left 80, some billion dollars worth of military equipment and turned over the country to a terror organization. And everybody's been promoted and everybody is just, it's business as usual. That's a problem.

So, I mean, I've, I've too many questions and I do want to circle back to your initial point. that warfare is completely different to step changes, you said, but how on this thread, how does the US Congress, how do people who claim to support our troops back the military strong defense that the Liz Cheney wing of the, of the Congress, how do they keep sending money to an organization that's increasingly incapable of defending the country?

I spoke to a bunch of members yesterday morning in Congress, and they were at the point of despair because they're trying to restrict the money and to bring some accountability. And they said the, the money is the, the, the, the amount of money that is sprinkled around the Capitol by the defense contractors, by the effectively the brigade's worth of lobbyists, thousands of lobbyists, spreading tens of millions of dollars around politicians. And they just keep the money train going. It's, it's really disgusting. And the, and the big thing I, in the article I wrote recently, I'd said,

it's about, it's, it's about money and grift. Or their children serve in foreign militaries. So just back, back to the technology itself, which you've been watching all your life, because you've been around it all your life. I think you had the world's largest private.

air force at one point. Is that true?

So why couldn't I remember that very well. And in my memory, you were not making the case for a forever occupation. You were making the case for a sensible drawdown that didn't destroy the.

credibility of the United States. All the conventional forces could have left. Right. 90% of the contractors could have left. There would have been a small stay behind special operations force, 6,000 contractors, that's it.

Afghanistan. It's really sad. Why? And I remember, again, I remember that, in fact, I think we talked, I know we talked about it at the time. And it seemed, it seemed sensible.

I would say, the same neocon perpetual war presence in Washington that wants to do it the same way that we've been doing for decades. And I would argue, losing. doing that. Yes. And it's about, it's about money and power and perpetuation, not about actually having a, putting a bow on a bad situation.

How do those people, as they inevitably do, seize the moral high ground in the, in the opening moments of the ideological battle and position themselves as like the champions of freedom and human rights, when in fact they're monsters? Like, how do they, how do they get away with that every single time?

I think it's a direct result of the all-volunteer force, which seems a good idea. I'm still supportive of it, but it means it's a very, the people that actually serve, that bear the cost of these overseas efforts is maybe one half of 1% of the population, serving. Three or 4% know that 1%. And then 95% of America has no clue and no skin in the game. And so they're easily bullshitted by the posturing jackasses in Washington.

That's yeah. That's why Dan Crenshaw has a job. So I just want to get back to the technology, because I'm just, I'm interested on behalf of all people who sense turmoil ahead and are, say, stockpiling ammo. Right. I think there are people like that.

I would argue for Taiwan, for example, facing a possible invasion or issue from coming from mainland China, the best thing they could do is build a home guard, because a well-armed, well-motivated people, I mean, as we showed in Afghanistan, as the Taliban showed the U.

Yes.

It's not the steel in the ships that make a great Navy. It's the steel in the men. Right. The steel in the crew.

But are you ever going to see another war between states that's won or lost on the basis of artillery tanks? I mean, is that, are those the cavalry charges of today?

Cavalry, artillery is still the king of battle, as Ukrainians are learning the hard way. And the Russians have gone from, you know, if you shot at the Russians a year and a half ago, it would take them about an hour and a half to shoot back accurately. Yes. To geolocate and to coordinate with their fire, you know, fire control centers to shoot back. Now they're down to about two or three minutes.

good right now. And what role did drones play going forward? to the extent you can,

predict and imagine it? Very significant. You know, people say the tank is dead, it's gone forever. It will go just like chariots or the attack helicopter of 2000 years ago. There'll still be a role for tanks, but people are gonna have to figure out how to knock down the swarms of incoming drones with hard kill and soft kill, etc.

to our detriment. So these are countries with fewer marketing majors and more engineers coming.

out. Right? Yeah, they've marketing that at creating drones. They've done well at STEM.

Yeah, well, and they're smart people, which no one wants to say, but it's true. You may have come to the obvious conclusion that the real debate is not between Republican and Democrat or socialist and capitalist, right, left, the real battles between people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth. It's between good and evil. It's between honesty and falsehood. And we hope we are on the former side.

think, going in 10 years? What will that look like? You could load a face. And, between network surveillance and the facial recognition on that drone, find one person and fly into that person's head. that fast.

Oh, yeah. Well, I've noticed. And now TSA has decided to take your photograph every time you walk through. I went through yesterday. And they had a, you know, stare into the screen and we'll assess your face.

they doing that?

government is gathering data on you, is it?

what, what, what, what chipped our founding fathers off, right? paying some taxes on tea and land taxes. And I mean, I guess, our idea of of what we will resist over in terms of liberty and government intrusion has been very steadily eroding. And now it's, I would say, increasingly.

a steep curve of dissent. Yeah, and it does seem like the purpose of politicizing the military and making it left wing, anti, white, pro, trans, all this stuff, which I think the right just sort of says, Well, that's gonna be less effective military, it's bad, they make fun of it. But that seems way darker to me. I mean, it does seem like it's being weaponized against.

dissent in the United States.

So you made it through the first year? Yeah, people drop out. Yeah. No, I left halfway through.

my sophomore year. I finished my finals. So you did the hard stuff and you still dropped out? Yeah, it's not that hard. It's just you have to have a high tolerance, high tolerance for bullshit.

why didn't anyone say anything about it? Because women don't fight different wars, presumably it would be the same war. So that's like, very obviously insane.

Look, I had no issue with women being at the academies, but at least make equal enforcement. If it's going to be, you're going to call it the same, then be the same. That's fine. And you, but what I also found, I went to Hillsdale and I joined the fire department of the local town. And I learned more about small unit leadership there than I did in the very artificial learning lab.

process. One of the things I think is most interesting about you, which I know you hate to talk about, but, um, is the fact that you were from an affluent family. And so you didn't actually need to do any of that at all. So why did you do that?

Never a part of the equation. Why? No, I did. No, I did. I got married, uh, between my junior and senior year.

That was may. Okay. So I got married that summer also. And I went to the mid ocean club in Tuckerstown, Bermuda. Um, it seemed more romantic than Estonia.

architecture? I'm going to show you. We road trip through, but it was, it was really funny. I'll never forget. Um, babe Buchanan bought an entire uniform off of a Soviet border guard, a captain for 20 bucks.

In fact, it was, I think it was in August of two months later, it was done. That's incredible. Um, so my final question about the drones, I mean, is it, is it a crazy thing to consider the possibility that the government might employ this technology against its own citizens, deploy it against those citizens. If they're putting people, if people are still rotting in prison for protesting at the Capitol on January 6th, if they're putting a woman got four years in prison yesterday for protesting outside an abortion clinic, it's a government at war with its own citizens. So why wouldn't drones be part of that?

Uh, that's actually one of the, uh, it's a big problem for the small FPV drones. They're so small and small, hard, so hard to hit. It's almost like hitting a, uh, a Ptarmigan. very hard to hit that bird, very fast, very fast. I know you love bird hunting, so I try to correlate it to, you know, or maybe a very, like a quail on cocaine.

kind of sporty. So what is the defense? So if nets, net nets, nets are, nets are a cheap,

simple defense for small FPV drones. Cause that's a small charge. If you can keep the charge away from the target, the small charge doesn't have that much effect, but you know, P for plenty, you can always increase the poundage. My sense is that police departments.

and state police have drones now for surveillance. Yes. For surveillance. How hard is it to alter a surveillance drone to become an offensive weapon?

done that in their garages or in a tent on the edge of battle? pretty easily. Okay. So why wouldn't,

I mean, if you care about living in a non totalitarian country, if you care about America, why wouldn't someone say, I would say actually, no, we're not, you know, we're just going to pass a federal law that no law enforcement or Intel agency or the U S military, these things cannot be used domestically against Americans period under any circumstances, or certainly not.

armed or surveillance. Like why do you need, you know what I mean? Look for, for stopping a mass shooter or some actual terrorism event, it provides good situation awareness and it protects the cops who are trying to do an honest job. Um, but the, the, the, the leakage in the same way that the wars of Iraq or Afghanistan and all those surveillance tools that the government tells us they need to protect us. The, the danger is certainly some of that tech on the arm side,

leaking back to be used domestically. That's a, I don't see any effort by the U? S government to stop mass shootings. In fact, they seem to be abetting them. And time and time again, you find in the small print in the right up after the shooting, that the person has been detained repeatedly by some branch of government.

the Uvalde one was not a, I wouldn't say that's not a top down federal conspiracy. That was, individual inadequacy of training and readiness, because there's, because there's dozens of other ones where the cops have just been spectacular, like in Nashville. Yes. But then you see the political correctness of them being reluctant to release the, the, the, the writings of this trans shooter who is out to kill Christians, right? So great individual valor by those cops.

obviously in the media to get to that information. So it's left to like people on X to do it. But I mean, you've been in and around the government since you were 18 and shipped off to Annapolis. So do you think it's fair for the rest of us who haven't to be skeptical of massive increases in government power, particularly military and law enforcement power, that are justified by some threat? Like we should be highly skeptical.

more on drugs, more drugs, more on terrorism. Didn't go so well. Right. Um, and, and just to.

that, I know we're jumping around, but I, I have too many questions, but, um, maybe we both suffer from a little ADD. Well, I mean, there's just a lot to go through. So you were at the center of war on terror, um, more than any other American, I would say. Well, how? I mean, we had, we had our.

shoulder to the wheel, pushing like everybody else. I'm just, but the scale was, you know,

I don't think there's ever been a more effective military contractor, you know, in a war that I'm aware of in the United States than, than Blackwater, which you started in Iran. So, but, you know, you were subject to the policymakers as well. And, as in the Afghanistan withdrawal, not one of them, not only was not like, indicted or punished, but not a single one of them sort of lost a step in career advancement. They all kind of went on to the Atlantic council or whatever. Or their board.

seats. Or their board seats. On the big defense contractors. So how, since you watched that,

how did that happen? Like, how did Torian Newland go from Dick Cheney's office to being like the number two person in the state department overseeing the war in Ukraine? Like, that's just crazy to me.

Because it's at that, it's almost a uniparty. It is the party of big government and big Washington and more spending and more warfare. And 100% wrong.

The guys that you serve with in the SEAL teams, and that, you know, who you've been around in the subsequent 30 years, like, how do they feel about that? Like guys who did, you know, three or four?

deployments or more. The guys that actually paid the cost. That's exactly right. Of the.

bad policymaker decisions. Yeah, where their friends commit suicide and they didn't get to see their kids grow up or they got killed or lost a limb. Like those guys. Yep. What do they think?

They're disgusted. They're angry. They're righteously angry. Because it, they believe in the republic. When you, when you join the military, you swear to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

things can come apart very quickly. Frighteningly. It's part of the accountability is informal. It's.

social pressure, which is very effective. Shame. Exactly. And humor. We need, first of all, we need to just laugh at the freaking incompetence.

They don't do that anymore. Nope. No. But I mean, if, if you can't land an aircraft on a pitching deck of an aircraft carrier, I mean, you put your own life, the hardware and the lives of the sailors at risk, correct? Right.

High stakes, very important mission, literally lives on the line. And it's good to, to reinforce good behavior and to punish bad behavior and, and, and shame and derision of your peers matters.

So looking back, since, again, you were so close to what was happening during that whole period, or at least until maybe 2012,. but for the critical years, you were like right there. Who do you blame most for the mistakes made in Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent wars? Who were the villains? Who shouldn't get forward seats?

Look, any, we went through like 18 different commanders, 18 different four-star generals over the course of Afghanistan. Got a lot of four-star generals. We have as many generals now as we did in World War II, when we had 14 million men under arms. So now you have 10% of that. So you have basically 1.4 million under arms versus 14..

All chiefs and no Indians.

Each four-star general has a personal butler and a valet, and a driver and a cook and all those kind of quaint 18th century habits of staff that they surrounded military generals with. We have that.

yet for our generals. Back, when generals were brave, though. Generals got killed in the civil war.

Yes. And not so much now.

That's, it's just, it's so unbelievably corrupt. So, but, but again,

But again, it's, it's, it's corrupt, because we just keep throwing money at it, and no one ever calls bullshit. A business that goes through a massive growth cycle. Everybody can get fat and sloppy and lazy because you just, there's always more money and there's, we never have to tighten a belt. And so the U.S. military has been on like a, a Krispy Kreme bender of donuts.

No, it seems we're at a point where it's dangerous. Yep. And it does seem, I just want to restate, I don't know this as a dead, certain fact, but I can feel it very strongly. I think the purpose of it is to keep, you know, I think, I think the enemy that they're seeking to fight lives here. I mean, I think this is a political, I think the policymakers feel that way.

I would argue it's about for, for the defense contractors, they just want to keep selling expensive weapons, right? And they will keep paying politicians to keep buying the expensive weapons. I almost feel, I don't feel sad for the, for the white house as they deal with a problem, like in Yemen, where the Houthis have become long range pirates and have shut off the entire Red Sea, like 50% of global container traffic flowed through the Red Sea. Now it doesn't. Egypt is losing $800 million a month in lost toll fees from, from container traffic.

we'd get ornery about that. Well, obviously. Yeah. They're putting, if they put, you know,

look at what happened when they put missiles in Cuba in 1962.

it would be unacceptable, right?

I, I, maybe,

I don't think, and I think they are dumb. I mean, they're, well, they're definitely, Tony Blinken. I mean, really? Dumb.

Having a rock concert in Kiev during massive combat operations, while the Ukrainian army is getting crushed.

Here it is.

Most of that money goes to five major U.

Oh, is it tank season again?

Weather still matters in warfare. And, you know, if you have a wet snow covered farm field, it's very muddy, very gooey, not great for tanks.

Mud season.

Mud season. I think the Russians call it the Great Rasputitsa, the Great Slush. Yeah. That's done now. And as June comes, it'll be game on.

And that seems achievable. I'm afraid. so. What happens to Ukraine?

I don't know if it survives as an independent country. If they take Odessa, if they take the ability for Ukraine to export its grain, that really threatens the long term economic viability. Maybe it goes back to, look, Western Ukraine used to be part of Poland. Eastern Ukraine used to be part of Russia. So, you know, maps move depending on, you know, military victories drive diplomatic breakthroughs.

summer. Is there anybody who's knowledgeable on the subject, who believes Ukraine can, quote, win, which is to say, push Russian troops all the way back to the, to the old Russian border?

Well, I didn't really believe it ever. Oh, I know that. But I don't. I don't know who's advising the White House at this point or who they're listening to, but they probably need to.

change out their advisor list. But then you have the Secretary of State, our buffoonish Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, boomer parody, showing up and telling the Ukrainians during his rock concert that, you know, we're with you forever. Like, how could you say something like that when I've never met a single person who knows anything about the region, who thinks the Ukrainians will achieve victory, no matter how much money we send them? How could you say?

something like that? It's good money after bad. And all we're, all we're doing now is facilitating the demise of Ukrainian men and destroying them for future generations.

How many have died? I've asked members of Congress who are funding this stuff.

Hundreds of thousands.

But here's what I understand. If you're paying for this war, which the United States is, the U.S. Congress is, Mike Johnson is, don't you have a moral obligation to know its consequences? Like, how can you, just how can you get up there with a Ukrainian lapel pin and talk about the brave Ukrainian people who are being killed by the hundreds of thousands, and you don't even keep track of the casualties? Like, aren't you kind of a monster for doing that?

And you look at, if you, if you made the pictures of the modern battle space on the front, a little grainy and black and white. Yep. It's indistinguishable from the Battle of the Somme or World War I.

Well, that's exactly right.

Artillery, a grinding, crushing, pointless loss of humanity.

But it's being abetted by our policymakers like they. they they're responsible for this to some extent. Like what?

And, and it's it's shocking how uniparty government has become.

You don't seem shocked that they don't care about how many Ukrainians have died.

They don't care about how many U.

Good point. No, it's totally fair point.

Because they, because they'll send, they'll send U.

Is there any precedent for it in history?

No.

So I thought a sort of a key component of education at the military academies was military history.

I didn't read. I didn't learn that at the academy. Really? No, no, that's a lifetime of curiosity. I had, I was a military history geek as a kid when we, my family, went to Normandy when I was 11..

So do you think your average, like modern flag officer, is just sort of not aware of the history of warfare?

I'm sure they get some level of it, but they have not made it a career. I, I'd say the best book I read on general officers was one, it was a British military study. It's called the Psychology of Military Incompetence. And it, and it went through five of the biggest disasters in British military history, like the surrender at Singapore.

Yeah, Khartoum.

Yeah, Khartoum, Baghdad in World War I.

Of course, the Afghan withdrawal.

Yes.

Into Peshawar.

Yes. And, and it went, and it, it literally looked through the guy's childhood, where he went to school, his relationship with his father, all the rest, and very consistent themes. And... What were they?

Yeah. So they're Tony Blinken, basically.

I, or just not, not people able to say, okay, this is not working. We're going to, we're going to attack, we're going to attack the boat because the, this is not working in this direction. And so the...

They're weak men, in other words.

Um, yeah, look, the, the, the anomaly of Patton is, doesn't occur very often.

Patton, who's been maligned since his death, um, remarkable human being. Um, and of course, you know, Hollywood is, I don't know how many movies they've done telling us Patton was bad. Um, but you know, there are some suggestions that Patton was also murdered. Do you think that that's possible?

It'd be a hell of a difficult.

But then, but he survived it and then died later.

I, I, man, I don't know, but he hated the Soviets. He hated communism.

Oh, I know. So I don't want to get too far afield here, but I, that does seem like a pivot point in world history. where that were, you know, April, 1945, Hitler kills himself. Berlin is occupied by the Russians, et cetera, et cetera. We, we win in Europe and then we sort of like kind of pivot toward the Soviet Union for a few years, until maybe the Rosenbergs or...

Yeah, well, and even the amount of communist agents that were surrounding Roosevelt.

Oh, well, yes, of course, well, Harry Hopkins is literally a Soviet agent. Yeah, right. So, um, but like, why did that happen? Like, how do we fight this war for freedom and then wind up sort of handing Poland to Stalin, for example, or on the side of the totalitarian?

Handing all of those countries of the world. Well, of course. Yeah, it showed, uh...

So how is this a war for freedom if we're handing half of them?

An exhaustion of moral leadership.

Yeah.

I think.

Who was that? Who? do you think, if we could hold one person responsible for that?

Truman was president. Yeah, I know. And Roosevelt was dead. So, as Churchill said, he died in the traces. But I think, um, I think, when you look at history, the, the lie of socialism, communism, it is such a, it's, it's easy for elitists to love that paradigm, because it's because the, because the right wing Austrian school economics approach is massive decentralization.

Yeah.

Decision-making at the micro level. A farmer knows what prices are, has a good idea what demand is going to be, decides whether he's going to plant more acres that, that year or not. And takes that risk himself. The Soviet planner says, I need everyone to plant this many acres, and we're going to do it at this price. And it's, it's the lie of individual incentive versus massive central planning to the betterment of elite thinking.

Right.

With the grift that goes with it. And that's just a, that's like a mind worm disease that so many people continue, generation after generation, continue to fall for.

Yeah. It's a mom-based system. Whereas the, let the farmer figure it out. It's a dad-based system.

Yeah. It's true.

What are you, a farmer? Like, how do you know? Like, that's what your dad says. Your mom's like, no, let's, let's get it all. Sorry.

But that's why I'm, I, I, I'm so excited to see Millet having success in Argentina. For a guy, and maybe it's analogy to, to America. Because he got sick of, I mean, you know, at the end of World War II, cap per capita living standards in Argentina were higher than Switzerland. Yes.

I agree with that. You think that'll happen here?

I don't think the Republican party is really that salvageable anymore. No, of course not. Because it's been gobbled up by corporatists.

Yes.

And the, you know, the defense industry now spreads money equally, right and left. Not even really right. Just across the Washington insiders. So yeah, maybe an entirely new political movement. That's why Trump is transformational, because he kind of came outside the Republican party.

So I got to ask you a personal question. We were in the Middle East together not that long ago and I noticed two things. One, you flew coach to the Middle East, which obviously you don't need to do, but you did it on purpose. I think that is your custom. We're the same age, three weeks apart.

I, when I, I got out of the SEAL teams earlier than I wanted to. I loved being a SEAL. I was pretty good at it, I think. And I would have had a nice career going there.

For those who don't know the story, if you could explain why you got out.

My dad died and when I was 25 and my wife got cancer. No, I was 26,, she was 29 and she got cancer. So I got out to sort out the home front. And that's really why I started Blackwater, just as a way to stay connected to the SEAL teams. I knew nothing of business, nothing of land development, nothing of government contracting.

But I mean, you know, 54, 55 year old guys who've been successful, which you have been despite having your business smashed. They don't fly coach. Like, what is that? Is that like just a Spartan impulse? Or you just don't want to get soft?

You get there at the same time.

Yeah, but it's.

I could talk, Tucker. I fly so much that...

I mean, that's fine if you're flying to Fort Lauderdale from DC or something. But, you know, Dubai's a long way. I just think it's very, very interesting.

Learn to sleep in any position.

So that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. What's the weirdest place you've been recently?

I would say there are lots of countries that need help organizing with the basics of tax collection and security assistance and border security and police advisement. Because what we take for granted in America, if you want to start a business in America, you can call a law office in Delaware, get a business in two hours for 200 bucks. It's simple. And you can get title to your land here. You can get a bank account.

I'm judging by what little I know of your travel schedule. It seems pretty frequent. That's interesting. So, since you are everywhere all the time, and most Americans are, including me, sort of only dimly aware of what's happening around the world, name three places we should be paying more attention to now than we are.

The Chinese Communist Party has been very active in Mexico. The fentanyl crisis is very much... You know, last year fentanyl in America killed like 109,000 people.

To murder American children.

100%. Yes.

And just to be clear, these are not junkies who took too much.

No.

These are kids who ordered a Valium off Instagram.

Yes. Or a bootleg, Percocet or something.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And so they're people dying. And that is... You trace that, and I can show all of that going right back to mainland China.

Why wouldn't.

You don't need to bomb. Fire is an underutilized tool.

That's true. What's happening here? I noticed there are quite a few manufacturing and agricultural facilities that seem to be going up in smoke in this country. Yeah.

And so, look, at the same.

It's hard to stomach. And so is that, I mean, you're... So I guess what you're saying is you're not speculating about this. This is known.

100%.

Do the intelligence, I assume, know this?

Yeah, but nobody wants to do anything.

Why?

I think the.

Which agency?

CIA. Because I think, and I know you have, rightly, very mixed feelings on the CIA.

I mean, I applied to CIA. My dad worked with CIA. I was never against CIA. I thought only dumb liberals were against CIA and traitors or whatever. So my views on CIA have evolved based on things that I have seen and personally experienced.

It is. I mean, when you have the leadership of the CIA,

What does that mean?

It's effectively a microwave weapon that's been used to effectively blast the brains of Americans working out of embassies, first in Havana, Columbia, Delhi, Hanoi, Vienna, Washington, D.

It's bulimia.

Yeah, that's wrong. When your people are getting screwed by a-.

So you think that's, I don't have a view on that. I mean, I'm sort of, I don't know the answer, but I'm sympathetic to, open to both possibilities, being true. But you think, based on evidence, that this is absolutely real? Yes.

I know it to be real. Wow.

Who's doing this and why?

It was a device that was developed in the Soviet Union in the early 70s, actually in Ukraine. So, I think the Kharkiv development plant, nothing to do with the Ukrainians now, but it's a, it's about the size of a, like a beverage cart on an aircraft, that size device. And it's very damaging. And the fact that the Russians can do that to us without consequences, it shows how pathetic they view the CIA and the US government to not push back on consequences.

So CIA, what motive would they have to pretend this wasn't real?

Because it would require pushback somewhere, somehow.

But they're literally fighting Russia in Ukraine. CIA is all over Ukraine fighting Russia.

Good question. I mean, put it this way. They don't like me enough that I was uninvited from a dear friend's retirement 10 days ago.

Oh, I bet, I bet they don't like you. And you've obviously worked with them most of your life, right?

We did a lot of great work for them. 100% success rate. But yeah, look, people, the wrong people being in charge, the agency has also gotten hyper bloated. Basically the same number of case officers that there's always been for 25 years. But the place has grown tenfold of all the wrong kind of people under the decision making of a guy like Brennan.

Yes.

And why does Brennan hate the actual DO, the director of operations? Because he's a failed case officer. He flunked out of school. I mean, how did a guy that voted for Gus Hall in 1976, who was Gus Hall?

Gustavo Hallberg. He was the Finnish-American head of the American Communist Party in New York City.

Exactly. How does a guy vote for the head of the Communist Party in 1976 at the height of the Cold War, and then pass whatever background check the agency is doing and have a security clearance? I find that stunning.

He retains his security clearance because the last administration refused to strip him of his security clearance, despite the fact he was actively working to undermine the democratically elected president. Yeah. No, I know. The levels of betrayal and self-betrayal are just almost mind boggling. Let me ask you specifically about what the CIA does in Ukraine.

I don't know. I honestly don't know that. I'm sure they have been there advising and supporting, but I think the Ukrainians probably grew frustrated at lack of willingness to do certain things. So I don't know where the U.S. support ends and where the Ukrainian unilateral stuff begins.

But I ask because they've assassinated people. I think they tried to assassinate me, for example, but they definitely killed Alexander Dujan's daughter.

And if you had an honest.

But even then, and I like Devin a lot, but those guys are all afraid of the CIA, as you know, they're afraid of them. They know they're being spied on by CIA or NSA or any FBI. They know they're being... Members of Congress that are supposed to be in charge of overseeing these agencies are being spied on by them. They're fully aware of that.

Yeah. That's like Marcus Wolf and the Stasi. That's exactly what he did.

That's exactly right. The East German referee.

The most of.

It was like the only effective institution in the entire country.

Alles war in Ordnung. What does that mean? Everything was in order.

Yeah, nice. So, and then I know that CIA runs businesses, like, runs businesses outside the country, and those are sources of income for the agency. How can a government agency run businesses? I don't understand that and profit from that.

I am truly not aware of any of that.

Okay.

The agency is the most easy to reform of all federal agencies. Civil service rules don't apply.

Yes.

You can fire anyone for any reason that fast. You could clean house, have a all hands meeting at the bubble on a Friday, and send 50% of them home. Send them out to their cars and tell them, we'll ship your stuff from your desk. You could clean it out that fast.

But why does no one do that? I don't know.

Maybe no one's had the balls, as the director or the deputy director, to do that.

Do you believe CIA has, in the last 25 years, used violence against any American citizen?

Yeah. Barack Obama killed an American citizen and his 16-year-old son. Correct. Al-Awlaki in Yemen.

Right. And that's publicly known, but there are all sorts of...

Maybe there's more, but I know that one.

Yeah. So you don't think it's crazy to assume that?

Entirely possible. Well, there's a lot of people that are considered American citizens that probably shouldn't be considered American citizens.

I agree with that completely. But an actual American, someone who grew up here.

Yeah, yeah, fair. But the left has so devalued citizenship, it should mean something. To be an American, I mean, a Roman citizen, it meant something.

Oh, a Venezuelan gang member who's here illegally is every bit as American as you, born in Western Michigan. So yes, I'm quite aware of that.

Anchor babies, birthright, citizenship, all of that must go.

Yeah. You wonder, you know, if we've reached a point where that it's impossible for the country to just because of the changes due to immigration.

I read a lot of history, and I know that things have been a lot worse in certain societies.

CIA and not just CIA, but FBI and other agencies supposed to be enforcing the law on gathering intelligence have, this has been shown, withheld information from democratically elected presidents, a number of them, certainly Trump. That's a crime, is it not?

Yeah, and it should be met with immediate discipline. And that's a matter of having people that will follow through and wade through the bureaucratic process and exercise the authority that they're charged with doing, right? When you join the military, you swear to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign, domestic. We should probably do something similar for any civilian employee of the federal government that they swear to defend the Constitution, not swear allegiance to a political leader.

Of course not.

Constitution.

Right. But it's not a constitutional republic. if, you know, unelected employees of the federal government ignore the elected employees.

Yeah, well, that's something to love it or hate it. at Blackwater. Every contractor that worked for us swore to defend the Constitution, the same oath they swore when they joined the military or law enforcement. They've swore it again in our presence, as a reminder that we're here to serve.

So I want to ask you about spying on American citizens. so we know that it's widespread, it's accelerating, data is being collected about every single one of us, and the vector for a lot of that is the phone.

Let me back up to where, I guess, where this started. You know, if you think about after 9-11, suddenly, holy shit, all these federal agencies are waking up. and how do we prevent this kind of conspiracy and attack against us again? And so they start looking at data. But of course, in 9-11, we didn't have smartphones.

Yes.

And so as ad data into the private sector always innovates much faster than governments do. And so as Apple and Google mobile services start developing phones, they put ad IDs and tracking information on those phones. Why? To micro target you to sell advertising.

Can you give us a sense of what that information is? What do they know about you?

Well, an advertising ID is like a 25 digit alphanumeric code that sits on your phone. And it enables to collect where you go, what you buy, who you call, and what you browse. It even works with the apps sitting on your phone, which are also built with a software developer kit that comes from Google. And they pay you more to put the Google hooks in so that those apps can also turn on the microphone on your phone or the camera or the GPS. So that your phone, yes, it's a computer, but effectively becomes a mobile microphone collection listening device that fits in your pocket or sits in your nightstand.

Yes.

What big tech has created in surveillance. capitalism is more pervasive and more intrusive than anything you could ever possibly, it's more, it's more pervasive than Marcus Wolf of the Stasi or barrier of the KGB of the NKVD could ever possibly.

anything that happens in contemporary North Korea.

Yes, exactly. And we give it away, and we give it away freely. And so people still close the bathroom stall. When you go into the toilet, you still close the shower curtain. We still do lots of things that we expect to have a privacy, but yet people with a regular phone put on their nightstand and are surprised that the microphone is listening.

Yeah. Given what happens in healthy bedrooms, that's, I mean, so what happens to those recordings?

Well, we've been doing a study following our device, a Google mobile services phone, any Android running Google mobile services, which is all of them or an iPhone and about 3am we're seeing a spike of data leaving the phone, but 50 megabytes, that is basically that phone dialing home to the mothership, exporting all of your goings on.

All your pillow talk is going to.

Pillow talk, whatever, right? So Zuckerberg paid $20 billion for WhatsApp. Why? Because every message, call, video, picture, voice, note, everything that goes through there, they say, well, it's end to end, encrypted. Yeah, it's end to end until it passes through their server, where it's sliced and diced and analyzed and used to push, used to sell advertising to that customer.

So why isn't he like the creepiest person in world history if he's listening to what's going on in your bedroom?

Because they're able, as big tech, to shape that message. That's, that's the frightening thing about the power of big tech and their ability to, to influence what you watch, what you think about candidates. If you search something, how they, how they score those rankings. It's, it is shocking. We have an antitrust problem here in America, vastly worse than in the early 19,, late 1800s, early 1900s, with oil and railways and steel and all the rest.

This is more important.

Yeah.

Including your sexual preferences. I mean, if you're being honest here. Yeah, exactly. Considering that young people are introduced to sexuality through pornography. Yep.

Nothing's private.

Right. So what happens to all this data?

Well, now, obviously that's, it's used and stored. I mean, it's, it's the, the, uh, the bloom of data centers surrounding all these tech hubs around America is horrific. And all that data is being collected and stored and, and.

Can I just ask you just a far field question? I'm just interested. So, given that those data centers are some of the biggest users of electricity, they're like a steel plant. Okay. Yeah.

It's a, I would say there, if, if they were coming after data centers, then they would be getting a nonstop stream of, of social media messaging, of why they should be attacking art instead of data centers. Well, exactly.

But like, why, why are the AI ghouls? Why is Mark Zuckerberg? Why are they not climate criminals? Why am I a climate criminal for having a wood stove and a Silverado? But, but the people who run data centers, which literally draw more power with a hundred?

percent backup as well.

Right. So I'm not against using energy. I'm pro energy actually, and cheap energy, but, but by the current rules, they're criminals. So why does no one call them criminals?

Um, because big tech has, shockingly, uh, complete control over how that messaging is. Yes.

Over our minds and what we think.

And, and so now Congress, including a lot of Republicans in their idiocy, have not only extended FISA, right? FISA started as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yeah.

1977 ish. Yeah.

It's supposed to be measuring, monitoring how you collect intelligence or communications going to foreigners. Now FISA is really all about Americans. Um, I guess we're treated as foreigners by our own government. Uh, and, and so the federal agencies got sick of getting beat up when they'd come before Congress for millions of times, illegally accessing what was supposed to be FISA unauthorized communications information.

Well, considering that these companies hold, you know, audio of you having sex with your wife, video of you watching pornography, like stuff that, you know, audio of you telling racial jokes or whatever, like your most intimate moments, the ones that could be used to blackmail and destroy you doing things you would not do in public and shouldn't do in public. Like that's just, that's the ultimate power. Isn't it?

Yeah. I guess, um, you either have to not give a shit and fight anyway.

Yeah.

Or.

Try to live virtuously too. Helps.

That always helps. Yep.

So how does your phone protect people?

So again, this, like I said, this, uh, this era started three and a half years ago and we came at it from a completely contrarian view. Yeah. So this phone, uh, it's our hardware, made in Indonesia at a Singaporean facility. Um, our operating system, all our code, and we are solely focused on data sovereignty that you control.

It's pretty cool. Just that I am kind of impressed that you made hardware. You didn't just build an app like you actually.

Because you have to control it down to the root level of, of the hardware and the software, so that our, our, we don't have an advertising ID and our operating system blocks any, any attempt by any app to turn on your camera or your wifi or your microphone or your GPS or anything. We don't allow any of that leakage. In fact, we have a privacy center.

This is called the unplug.

This is an unplugged phone. And this is a effectively a firewall, which prevents apps from doing all the things they're used to doing on all the other phones. So you're in control of what of your data goes out, which is effectively zero. This is like a, this is like a safe comes in. It doesn't come out.

So I'm just to bottom line it. I'm protected from. what am I protected from? Here's the thing.

The, the, uh, if you're using apps and some federal agency goes to that app purveyor and says, uh, give me everything you have on Tucker that he's been using on that app. There'll be nothing, because there's no data leaking from you, from your device to that, to that app. If, um, if you call somebody, we have our own secure messenger. For example, you want to call and make a secure call and you call me, it takes about five seconds to connect because it's literally creating a encrypted tunnel between you and me generates a new encryption key. Every call.

So the government hates that. And there've been all kinds of legal battles over this question. They don't want secure communication between citizens because all of a sudden they care about human trafficking or something.

Yes. And their, their latest excuse for this, uh, massive Pfizer enlargement was drug trafficking,

drug trafficking, right?

Cause they've been failing for 40 freaking years at that.

Well, they just opened the Southern border to fentanyl and human trafficking. So these exact same people are suddenly really worried about human trafficking and drugs.

It's just, it's a, it's a joke. So we've, um, we, uh, we produced 500 units, a few of them. last fall. We did a big data, big beta test, and now we have 10,000 units. So people can order and deliver.

So what can't I do? I mean, I'll just confess that I use an iPhone made by a company I actually kind of hate. And that hates my country and me. And I use it anyway.

Cause it's, and we figured there's a lot of people like you that would want to digitally opt out of the lie of big tech. And so what you can't do, obviously we don't have the Apple store. Uh, we don't have Apple music, but you can use Spotify. You can use, um, a lot of the other streaming services on here. We just prevent them from collecting your data as to what you're listening to or, or where you are when you do it.

What about pictures?

Of course you can take pictures and you can share pictures. You can send pictures. We have a lot of the other privacy related apps, whether it's Signal or Threema or Proton or Telegram. We have, well, it's usually done this.

So everyone complains about this. Everyone who pays any attention or all understands, plus the iPhone's incredibly expensive. Um, but they have a hammer lock on your life.

Other people have tried it before and they, they burn through a lot of money. And I don't think the timing is right.

They're not flying coach to Dubai, are they?

We, we, we did this.

Man, you're a Dutch. I love that, fly coach to Dubai.

For example, this phone also has a kill switch. An actual, uh, switch, which separates the battery from the electronics. You can't shut your iPhone off.

Oh, I know.

It's always listening. It's always pinging towers. It's always pinging wifi, building a digital breadcrumb trail of where you go and what you do.

Even if I turn the iPhone off, it's not off. Correct.

This, you turn that off, it's off because it physically separates battery from electronics. It's just like pulling the battery out of an old, uh, Nokia phone.

I'm sorry, I interrupted you. So this, I love this, of course. It's incredibly ambitious, but also on some level, it's kind of obvious, like, why haven't we had this before? So you said people have tried, they spent too much money. And then I interrupted you.

And they tried. maybe just with an app, and just with an app doesn't work. And, and people have tried to do it with a re-skinned Google phone. We have this, this phone is incapable of running Google mobile services. So you're not going to get Google maps.

How, how, amen. How hard is it to text people who don't have that phone?

Um, it's just, we look, it emits electrons. So ultimately you can see if it's on a tower or not, but we even provide it with a, with a SIM, uh, with a SIM provider, a data provider, uh, a network airtime provider, that, um, collects the minimum amount. Basically, all they need is your zip code, where you're buying it. That's it.

What I'm saying is, if I am using an unplugged phone and my wife has an iPhone, I can text her.

Yes, sure. And she can even put unplugged messenger on her iPhone as well.

How much more expensive is that than an iPhone?

This is $989.

Can you actually get one?

Yeah, you can order it at, uh, unplugged.

Man. So if, I mean, it's not a threat to Apple right now, but if, if there's big take up, it could be. So what, how do you expect them to try and stifle competition? It's a monopoly. Sure.

Look, if you search for, if you do a Google search for unplugged phone or things like that, they tend to stack every negative article possible written about it first.

Oh, there have been bad pieces written. Of course.