56 - Ryan McBeth

0:01 You are listening to a Funds Media Network production. Hello Wilderblades listeners, and welcome to episode fifty six. Today, I have the pleasure of having Ryan McBeth on the show as my guest. Ryan McBeth is a wild popular YouTuber, a United States military veteran, and a current member of intelligence community. Ryan is very well known for explaining current events, exposing conspiracies, and revealing some of the inner workings and operations of military exercises. Ryan and I had an amazing conversation.

0:46 He's highly intelligent, very outspoken, and we had a lot of fun on this show. You will hear a little crinkling and whatnot in the beginning of the show, and that's just me on wrapping my cigar. As Ryan and I both shared some cigars, had a great time, great conversation, and I think that she'll really enjoy this episode. So with that being said, let's begin, all right. So, mister Ryan macbeth, welcome, Thanks for taking the time man be here. Absolutely so, I got. I got. I was basically referred to you and said, hey, you need to reach out to this guy by Curvin, who I think you know that you were just on his show this week, explained, and he was basically like, yeah, he's he's a he's a real guy. He's a he's an intel guy. He knows the stuff and so as that great, and uh that's when I reached out to you, and uh, you know, I'm glad you responded so that that's very good of you to do. So. I know you're really busy guy, and you work hard, and I know that you know, we don't want to dive too much into crazy details like who you exactly serve with and all that, just for the protection of others. I get it.

1:52 But I thought we. Talked about your background a little bit and maybe even bring up what's going on basically in the world now, which is a crazy twenty twenty five to be quite honest. Let me go ahead and cut this guy. I'm gonna go ahead and share a cigar with you. Oh fantastic. Yeah, I love these things. I have got this guy right. Pretty good stuff. Yeah it was a corona, Yes, sir, it's a La Roma de Cuba de Cuba. I think that's one of the Ashton cigars. Yeah it is. Yeah, yep, good stuff. So Ryan, sir, specific start with this.

2:32 Now I'm gonna I'm gonna get into other topic later. But how long were you in the military, because it's your story's a little different than some other Intel guys I talked to. I don't think you went directly into it. Is that correct? You kind of fell into it later or got gravitated. I fell into it, So, I I mean, am I an Intel guy? I don't know? The story I often talk is, you know, I write the software twenty years infantry, and while I was serving, I got a batch's a Computer Science management. Later I got a master's in or MSc and cybersecurity. And so I was like, when I got out, I started working for Eccentric, specifically Center Federal Services, doing well, doing C four I SR Command Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, fails for connaisance. We fine bag guys, right, and uh so a lot of stuff is sitment cyber intelligence. You know, Daddy al Batty calls his mom every Friday at three o'clock, and all right, let's see Daddy al Batty is always in this location. Then he goes to his favorite fallawful house and all right, so we can hit him here on the road when there's no cross traffic and we're we're all right, we're one hundred meters away from the school over here, so you want to use this kind of muneation that's like beyond what I do. But you know, you confirm our daddy, Oh Baddie is over here at

4:03 this house, you know, because he talks with his mom every whatever where since you know, we know emails are coming from this house. So that's how I kind of get into it. And it's funny is that I have I have people who you know, they go, oh, you're on a real and tow guy, because you're not. You never went to the school at Fornachuka. I'm like, look, once, uh, Michael Jordan was being trash talk by Kobe Bryant. Yeah, and Michael Jordan looked down on Kobe Bryant's wearing air Jordan's and uh, Michael Jordan says Kobe Bryant, Man, how do you got trash talk me when you're wearing my shoes? Right? So that's kind of like you got trash talk. They're using I software, right, They're literally using something that you designed and put together and implemented and questioning you on.

4:49 That, and you know, and and there's uh, it is kind of funny because I have enough well I don't do targeting, weapon earing stuff like that. Like you know, I find the people and you give that information to your client and then your client does whatever. Well, then sometimes you come back and get a pat on the back like, hey, we got daddy old baddie. Thanks man, got it. So that's interesting. Yeah, I mean I I enjoyed my time at Excentsure, like I have. I have nothing bad to say about it. It was it was literally like being in the military again because you uh, In fact, we even have an alumni group, like people who are at the Center and then leftic Center. We have an alumni group that you know, we all stay in touch with each other and stuff, and a lot of it's like it's like being in the army again in a lot of ways because like there was no Extentia was like the first company I worked at where there was no like I'm in it for me.

5:47 It was like, we're in it for the client, okay, And if the client needed a pint of blood, one of us would have opened up a vein, you know, to give that client a pint of blood. Because it was all about the client and at the end of the day. It was all about the soldier, Like what is the end user, you know, out what is the end user's outcome going to be? And so we would work really hard to get things right. That's actually another reason why I get pissed off when people talk about the military industrial complex, like we're a bunch of people just taking money from the government and lighting our cigars one hundred dollars bills. Like no, dude, we like freaking work to make sure this, like to make sure the soldier has what they need to be an effective soldier.

6:35 Like there's a lot of people who work for contracting companies who they put their whole career focus toward, like how can I make how can I protect America? How can I make the lives of our soldier desier? You know, And a lot of people don't understand that, but I mean, I think it's it's necessary for some people because they have to believe in conspiracy. Well yeah, you know, of course, and we'll dive into that later. But so something primarily you're focused on providing the correct tools for the job that was reliable and consistently able to be used out in the field. Yeah, yeah, to find the bag and then there's I mean, I am wearing this sweatshirt that says until because that's like, that's like people they are gonna meet with this source that's human intelligence, and that's useful. But well, you know, one of the things that I've often said human intelligence like we need to know, like we need to know, yeah, ideal like why does intelligence exists? It exists? Because mean to know who is doing what and why? Right now?

7:40 Who is doing what? It's actually usually fairly easy to come up with, right, But the freaking why that's the gold mine. Like, all right, that's always that's always the question why. Why are they doing the thing? And you know, in some cases human intelligence can tell you the why. And sometimes people lie. That's the other big thing. But you know it doesn't lie your browser. History patterns of behavior, right. Oh, I get I get to ask you, hey, George, do you watch pornography? Right? And I can say yes, I could say no. Or you can say no. And the next thing I can say is can I look at your browser history?

8:21 Right? And then you're like, and you know. Today our browsers and this this thing that we keep in our pocket, this magic window, we tell our magic light box. Things that we wouldn't even tell our spouse, true, right, we ask it questions. We wouldn't even ask our spouse. That's the real gold mine, right, that's where the real information is. If I want to know who is doing what and why, I even look at their computer and I have a pretty good idea of what they're doing, especially if they think it's secure. Gotcha. Yeah, So cyber intelligence is uh. I think it is a age your component and figuring out what the bad guys are doing.

9:03 Yeah. And most people don't know how to hide their tracks either. No, and you know, in all honesty, hiding tracks is pretty difficult. Just in general, there is just so much digital exhaust that that we don't know about. I mean, did you do you remember hearing about the fitness trackers that expose some of our bases. Yeah, yeah, it was a couple of years back. It was like fit Bit and Garment. I remember the garment. You know, if you're if your workout, if your Strava is public, you know, people can see every day where you're working out, what you're doing, and where are guys gonna run. They're gonna run on the perimeter of the base, right, because that's the longest distance. So all right, now we have a matt. Now we know there's here's the perimeter of the base, right, and you know things like that, Like it is very difficult to turn that stuff. I don't wanna say turn that stuff off, but you don't even it's so ingreat in our usual life. I mean, I think one of the biggest issues we have in the military right now is signal. Well, it's like the freaking signal app.

10:08 It's like these phones, like you said, very few people ever do not have it on them. You know, it's either on their nightstand right next to their bed, or first thing they get up they have to check their social media whatever, it's always in their pocket. It's tracking you. You're literally leaving breadcrumbs of what you're doing and where you're at at all times. And most people don't realize that, oh. Absolutely, And you have that issue. And the other issue you have is you look at something like signal. The army runs on signal. There's guys, especially if you're an officer, you might have five or six signal chats open. Right, there's one signal chat to the platoon, one signal chat for the company, one signal chat with the Tian command or one signal chat with the S one shop. So you have all these signal messages going and things fall through the cracks, right like, hey, we have and now it's really easy to like change things, say hey, formation time is zero fifteen instead of zero five point thirty, because now you can just send it out. It used to be like, hey, you gotta go get the runner, you gotta go to every All right, well, let's not change the formation time. I can change the formation time with a couple of presses a button. And I can't even imagine what that's like now for soldiers staff to be chained to this device that you're expected to answer within seconds. When you get that you can't you can't.

11:37 Turn an excuse, You have no way to shut it down. Yeah yeah, yeah. And I've actually been of the opinion of the one of the things the Army needs to do on the military in general maybe is uh, I don't want to say band cell phones, but maybe create a cell phone that works on a wireless mess network that's us for soldiers. Okay, and you know, maybe it doesn't have video capability, but now you have a messaging system that maybe it does connect through GSM or through whatever provider. Maybe it does connect through satellite or through a mesh network, maybe just a monochrome screen, right like a kindle, So it lasts a week without having to charge it. Because now soldiers go to the box, they'll go to NTC National Training Center at Fort Huam, California, and they're told, don't bring your cell phone because that's a that's a way for the adversary, for the OP four to detect you. So then they don't. Either one or two things happens. Either if they don't bring their cell phone, and now they don't know how to operate, right because it used to be like, let me contact the S one. Pump up up up up up up right, Or they do bring their cell phone, which is against the rules, and they get detected by the enemy's systems, by the OP four systems and they get blown up, or and then they get in trouble, right because they have their cell phone, or they don't bring their cell phone, and some officers says, hey, how committed to bring your

13:09 cell phone? Yeah right, we're trying to get a hold of you. Well, the rules, I don't bring all your officer's supposed to have your phone on you. You got to you gotta work within the rules without you Like, so what do you do? Well, maybe have a separate cell phone. M Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Yeah, that's a officer. Life is hard. And question being though, since you kind of mentioned yeah, basically communication after fingertips, do you think having too much of it in the service has been kind of, uh, kind of prohibits a few things, or has been kind of a detriment to communication in general, being that it's always accessible and you can never turn it off. Do you think people just automatically have to feel they have to communicate or just constantly be on their phone and trying to message. Do you think that might be a problem.

13:56 It could be. I mean I think that that you certainly have. You certainly have an environment where people today, soldiers today, they've grown up with these things. They've grown up with two devices, so they're probably more used to having them around, so it's probably less of an issue. But at the same time, like, are they able to do something? Are they able to put that phone away and do their job? Right? That's kind of another thing too, right, that might be a general thing. Yeah, distractions, right, and.

14:37 I've had people tell me that, like, there are soldiers who can't read. And it's not they can't read as in like you know, what, what does this word mean? It's more like they can't read as in like they they can't they can't take something and comprehend it if it's in long gotcha. So you have people who can read a street sign, but they have a lot of trouble actually taking a look at like a long manual to find the issue. Like that's just not something people do. No, And they probably don't have the patients for it.

15:17 They're so used to instant short messages. You got you know, you basically got the phone version of shorthand and emojis. So yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. I really do. Well, that's interesting. So so militarily wise or military wise, I mean, do you think that we've improved over the years or have we kind of fallen back? And if you don't want to asker that screat, I just wonder from your perspective. You know, I have family members, I've served my nephews in the Marina. I thinks that the average I think that soldiers today are just as capable and willing and competent as soldiers from twenty years ago. And at some point it is the other the neat thing about like everything being a volunteer service. At some point everybody thought that joining the army would be a good idea. You know, I think soldiers are just as good as they were. Things are just different, you know, just the environment they grew up in is different. Things are just different. And so I wouldn't necessarily say they're better or worse, but I would certainly say that that soldiers today they learned differently. They grew up in a different environment. And you know, we need to focus on the fact that as our society changes,

16:50 what we expect from our soldiers needs to remain the same, but we need to go about it in a different ways. I mean, I'm from the generation where you didn't get tattoos, right Like, if you got a tattoo, like you were kind of a badass, right Like, people didn't tend to get tattoos. Soldiers would tend to get tattoos, but tattoos weren't very acceptable in regular society. And then what happens then tattoos start to become acceptable in society. Right you see chefs with tattoos. So the military used to have a policy that would say like, hey, you can't have any tattoos that could show below a certain part of the sleeve of the dress uniform, right, or you couldn't have anything on your neck. And now some of that, some of those policies have changed. And that doesn't mean we're any weaker. It just means that, look, society moved to a different view on tattoos. We need to reflect what society feels about tattoos.

17:52 Right, Well, society evolves, so it's just it's just a change in times, right. Yeah, And if we don't evolve along with it, that could be a problem virtue, Right, We're not going to be able to find the recruits. So one of the things I've talked about before, and I don't do drugs, but I can tell you that I think we need to figure out a way to allow our soldiers, allow our servicemen to consume marijuana. If you want to take a gum meat up your sleep, or you want to smoke a plant because it makes you feel good, you know, as long as you're fit for duty the next day or you know, we'll figure it out, right, Like, all right, you can't do it within twelve hours of plate operations or whatever. But I think that things like marijuana use beards.

18:39 That's another thing. I think one third of all African American men suffer from razor bumps and grown hairs. All right, Why are we making them go get a shaving profile every couple of months? Why? Because we have this idea of what a soldier should look like. And you look at European armies, you look at Ukraine. Those guys have beards. They seem to be able to fight, and you know that. You get the area. Well, what about make our weapons? All right, well then you have to shave. Sorry, but until that mottlement, let them have a freaking beard. Yeah, you know, like there is We could probably solve recruiting very quickly with just allowing beards and allowing soldiers to partake in recreational marijuanas. If we just we can do that tomorrow. We can do beards tomorrow. Marijuana might take longer, but I.

19:28 Think that'll take longer. But I think you have a point there. It's just figuring out how that would be regulated and how they'd be able to use it. But it does calm your nerves. It helps you sleep, There's there's many benefits to it. And I agree with you in whatich you're saying that, you know, we do have to keep up with the times. Look, things have changed. If if we're gonna stickers about little things such as beards, and that's what's going to hold people back from serving, you know, in the in the armed forces, that's just ridiculous. It doesn't make them less capable of a human being or a service person whatsoever. So I definitely agree with you on that. It's anos like we're fo sing on the wrong things, you know, and by doing so, we're just making ourselves weaker because we're not allowing those who want to participate and contribute what they have to offer because they don't meet this you know criteria you got to be clean shaven for example, right, just silly, It doesn't make any sense.

20:15 And you look at Sikhs, you know, who have to go and get a special dispensation right in order to have in order to have a beard. Well, it's their freaking culture, culture, part of their religion. It's you know, hence also why they wear you know, their their turban or head dress. I'm familiar because i've I've hung out with a lot of both people in India and who are Indian South Indians, North Indians, and of course, you know Seeks in general, so I gotta I definitely have a good grasp with that culture. Spent many years providing services to them, you know, so, and the Seeks are extremely patriotic here in America. So yeah, they I think they deserve a little respectespecially when they serving in the military. You know, definitely, they definitely should ease up a bit, you know, in terms of that.

21:05 So agreed, Let's let's move past military though, like, because here's the thing. Okay, you're a challenging guy. You know how to find information, You're good, you have a good bullshit meter, and uh twenty twenty five really uh started out with you know, well, definitely definitely shot out shout out the shout out the gate really quick here, and a lot of things happened. I mean, you know, I don't know how else to say it, you know, try not to use certain words, right. But yeah, all right, you don't want to get to monetize. Yeah, well whatever, So here's here's the thing we can address, and I'll get your opinions. I'm not gonna hold you to anything, by the way. Okay, so let's let's address what your thoughts are, given your history and everything that you've done, and you know your ability to basically find extracly you know, information and decipher it accurately. Uh, what what is what has been your position to take on what happened both in New Orleans and Las Vegas?

22:05 Uh? Do you what do you think of that? And I know there was some stuff that you had an opinion on certain things regarding letters that that happened with you know, Las Vegas, et cetera. And we'll get into that if you're okay with it. But what what is your opinion in general on those two separate incidents. I think at some point we failed our soldiers, right, at some point the safety system failed, and you have two guys who have either been consuming ideology or maybe had a traumatic brain injury. And I think that one of the things we need to work on is allowing mental health as as a as A as a need to be able to let soldiers go see mental health, right, like if some want something isn't feeling right, And just because you don't have a physical injury doesn't mean that you might not have a mental injury or something like ct is it eat the thing the football people CT and off chronic traumatic and sepalopathy and SEP that thing that that people who play football CD. So you know, if you have something like CTE, you know you've been injured,

23:36 but that injury isn't visible, And so all right, well why haven't why haven't you gotten that looked at? Right? Are you afraid that people are going to call you weak for going to see mental health when you have a genuine, honest, good injury, even if that injury isn't seen, you know, isn't visible. So I think that there there is a non zero chance that some of the participants in those events had some sort of CTE issue. It's a possibility, I won't really. And they they just didn't They just didn't get the care that they needed. Now, there's also the possibility that at least in the New Orleans case, where you had a guy who just, uh, you know, life wasn't going for him so well, and he finds another path and he decides to go down that path and hurt people.

24:39 That's I mean, I don't know how you fix that after they're gone, you know, it could be something as simple as like you know, once you once you join the military, like why why why aren't we checking up on our veterans? Right? Yeah, agreed, Night. I do have a friend that brings this up quite a bit because you know, he's in and out of whatever the VA allows him to get in terms of treatment. You know, he's at their mercy. Really yeah, and there has always been a concern for him and other people I know who's served. It's and you're right, there's always that manly, macho and even if you're not a man whatever, it's just that there's that that level of like, I'm not a weak person. I'm not going to go ahead and submit to getting you know, care for for whatever's going on in my head. Right, And you're I think your point about CTE is it's a valid one because it's something that it's not not detectable immediately. It just kind of comes on and there's no real care for it. You just got to kind of manage it and it gets progressively worse over time.

25:44 So I think it might be onto something there, and that could have been the case as to why you know, these people chose to do what they did, right New Orleans. I don't know. Look, I'm not an expert in it. I'm just I just know what I've read and based on the information and release, one person you know, serves in the military, US citizen and decides I'm gonna go ahead and commit to Islam and to you know, just extremism in general. Fine, but I'm not sure what would cause that. As far as Lebrusburger go, I can't figure that one out. Got got a career green beret, someone who's still you know, serving, et cetera. I can't really make sense of that one either. And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say what exactly happened because I can't, you know, I really can't. But you know, so that one's an interesting case. The thing is, I'm not gonna put you on the spot and ask what you believe, but I will ask you about the letters that that were released, you know, like the two emails and then the other one. What was your take on that. I mean, it kind of just came out sudden, and to me, it looked like it was almost written by three different people.

26:47 And kind of what you said about CTE might have been a you know, a contributing factor to that, but who knows what? What do you think of that? That? It's it's a tough one. It's a tough one because there's a lot of inconsistency. Now I'm actually I bringing news. I'm actually digging deeper into that because I think I using the email address, I actually think I found the guy's phone number. This is kind of what I do. Interesting, So I'm sorry, Yeah, and I'm gonna I need to like cross all my eyes and dot all my te's. I ain't kind of the The thing that kind of upset me with the way that was handled was that the people involved instead of you know, going to the FBI, uh you you know, let's make a video and try to make clicks, right as opposed to like that that's a little I'm actually familiar with the person who broke that story, and there was there's some issues with that particular individual. I encounter that person before you're like, uh, there was this video or this post this person made about Fort Novasel. Now like oh, we don't have any money to train our pilots at Fort Nova Cell. I was like, dude, I'm going down to Fort Nova Cel to make a video in two weeks and I like, I heard any talk of the po wow and like,

28:17 so there's like I get why someone who didn't want to take the COVID vaccine might be upset about about their status in life, right or a set at the military that told them go take this unproven vaccine. I get that, But at the same time, like, don't try to screw over other people who are still serving number one and number two it freaking like, don't parent Russian propaganda. R Like, it's it's just there's a there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. I think part of the part of the issue is that that it's it's this, it's the source of the message, not necessarily the nature of the message. That that's kind of an issue. I think more digging needs to be done.

29:14 There's also some other issues, because like if if you were a bad guy, let's say, if you if you're a bad guy, if you are running from the police, you probably shouldn't take a cyber truck, right, You probably shouldn't leave something that makes a paper trail. Unless something's so freaking yeah, flashy and draw so much attention. I mean, why would you do it? Yeah, unless you wanted to have a paper trail, you know, and because like in your mind, like this is the only way this thing can get any attention is if I create an electronic trail, a breadcrumb trail. But like if you really were on the run from the police and they were trying to find you, you Yeah, and I'm not a counterintelligence guy, but like, if I wanted to disappear, I certainly wouldn't use a cyber truck to do it. No, right, agreed, unless I wanted to be tracked, which kind of gets into another thing entirely.

30:17 I'm I'm on the same path you are, right now, I get where you're wrong with it. Yeah, why why would you leave such an obvious like you said, trailer breadcombs? Why would you do that? It doesn't make sense, It doesn't. And of course, without naming names, I know, you know, we'll avoid certain names. I'm personally not afraid of any of them, to be quite honest, I can care less as long as there's facts and data behind it. But you know, I just think that this was a case of yes, the story shouldn't have been broken how it was. It should have went to the to the authorities first. You know, let's let them get their hands on that, let them see what's happening with it. But no, you know, it turned out to be a big media fiasco. Maybe it was all about likes and clicks or just to be hey, I got the breaking story. I got to get this out. I think it should have been vetted more personally, because it's really hard to determine, you know, all the facts involved with that. It was just kind of a sudden oh, by the way, we found these ideas that weren't burned and whatever. Oh and by the way this happened, and hey, look now we have these messages out of nowhere. So there was definitely a lot more digging to do before, you know, they really broke that story. I think they could have just said, hey, we found some communications that may have been, you know, center related to Matthew Lubersberger. They could have done that, but they chose not to, and so I kind of had an issue with that too. And it's also a case of where, you know, let's say someone like yourself, this is what you do for a living, and you're like questioning it and you get criticized for it, and it's only because maybe you know, the other said person

31:50 just happens to be a more popular person in the media space, and so somehow that person more credible, which happens a lot and doesn't really make much sense. So I hate that too, and I don't think that's the correct way for people to view that that situation either. It's ridiculous personally, But I'm with you. I think more digging has to be done. Is that something that you're going to continue to do and eventually. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm actually doing it right now. Cool. I look forward to your assessment, to be quite honest, you know, I want an answer on it. It's just really strange situation, it really is, and I think to many people are jumping to conclusions without having all the facts. Personally. Yeah, so no, there's that, but yeah, well, not much more to say on that until we know more.

32:34 Right, Well, what do you think is going on? Well, I know you don't want to get. Into politics, because that's that's not what most intel type people do. You want to stay more neutral, and it's understandable, But how do you think how do you think moving forward to twenty twenty five, where does America fit into the geopolitical space for the in the world right now, once Trump actually takes the reins, and I don't we don't have to talk about Trump and genteship, but just just how everything might be approached and handled and how the world might see us moving forward. What do you think about that? So I think that that in a lot of ways, there's a new sheriff in town, okay, right. And I think that one of the things that President Trump has not not a lot of other other people have, is he certainly has his own way of doing things.

33:26 Yes, he does. And and so you know what what you have now is a guy who, you know, world leaders who might be questioning how they're going to proceed with their their way of doing business because you have a guy who is a genuine, honest to god wild card, right exactly. I think that that's going to be it's certainly going to be the case with Iran, where you know, for for the most part, what we've seen coming out of the current administration. Uh and you know we're recording this in January seventh, right, is it's it's almost like you do have a guy who's checked out, right, you have a guy who is he's made decisions that may not have been the best decisions, one of which might have been, let's let's slow walk ammunition to Ukraine, right Like, let's, uh, let's let's only give Ukraine enough ammunition so they don't lose, but let's give them enough so that they lose slowly.

34:42 And that's that's probably not a good policy, right, Like we had started the war with like, hey, we're gonna give Ukraine anything they need in order to kick the Russians out, I think we would see a totally different situation going on in Ukraine. It would definitely a different outcome right now. For sure it would be. And there's no excuse I think we have Look, we got plenty of F sixteen's in the boneyard. We can refurbish those things. We have so many options and ways to help Ukraine, and we sent I think it was around twenty and one Abrams tanks to Ukraine and like great, but that's it's not a lot, right like they and are are those tanks?

35:30 Are those tanks in particular even applicable to to modern war like in this war in it of itself, do you think. Oh, it seems like it seems like what Ukraine is trying to do with with their with their forces. Is there, there's there. They're not using tanks to break through. Okay, that's traditionally what you use a tank for. Find where the bad guys are, find the weak point, breakthrough with armor, and then run havoc in the rear. Right, And it doesn't seem like they're doing it that way, which is how we would do it. And there's a reason why, because they don't have air support. Gotcha. Now, Originally I had said that, you know, F sixteen's were necessary because F sixteens can fire the harm anti radiation missile, and once you fire that harm anti radiation missile, or once you once you start taking out Russian surface to air missiles, that forces the Russian people back, and then you can use jade ms against certain hard targets, and then you can use F sixteens for air superiority, and that that kind of changes what you can do on the ground with your tanks, right once you have their superiority. The reason this war has lasted so long is partially due to the fact that neither side has really gained air superiority. And that's a huge issue. And

37:02 I think one of the things that that we might have learned here and our rule was something to know or something to understand going forward, is that if you don't have air superiority and this now includes space, you don't have air slash space superiority, you're gonna have long wars. You're gonna have wars to take a long freaking time. Yeah, with that, and you know, if you're cool. With that, you know, like, Okay, do you think it's just been unnecessarily drawn out? Definitely? And and it's this is one of those things where it could have been a lot I'm gonna say it could have been a lot shorter. I think that that if we had given Ukraine the stuff they needed when this this whole war started. Uh. You know, one of the things I said is we can't just send F sixteens to Ukraine, right, we can't just you know, like, oh, let's send F sixteens to Ukraine. We can't send them there.

38:06 It takes like a year long training course, we have to worry about maintainers. There's a lot of things we have to do before we can give F sixteens to Ukraine. But if we had started that process the day of the war started, we'd be in a different position. Do you think do you think that may be also the concern of that of the NATO element in and of self, the agreements there kind of was a contribute factor to kind of holding back a bit in the beginning. Yeah, I mean so, I think when this whole thing first started, there are a lot of people who like, they didn't want to upset Russia, right, right, Well, let's not let's not poke the bar, let's not yeah this could be yeah, let's not escalate. That's that's the one damn word they kept using escalation. They did, we don't want to escalate things. Well, Russia doesn't need our help with s escalating anything like they they do that naturally. Right, This is true. And I think one of the things that we discovered when Russia was or when Ukraine actually invaded Kursk was that Russia, I'm not saying they're a paper tiger, but they didn't strike back with nuclear weapons and using nuclear weapons in Kursk. That would be a reason for using nuclear weapons, right, It is a valid

39:38 use case in the sense of all right, there is a there's a bad guy invading, we can drop a bomb here, and that would have stopped the invasion cold and I think that in some ways, Ukraine, I don't know, Ukraine Russia would have been I don't want to say the word justified, but there would have been less blowback if Russia fired a nuclear weapon, a tactical nuclear weapon against invading Ukrainian forces, if they went into Kursk, then if they used it on Ukrainian soil. Now, of course, one of the disadvantage of that. Disadvantages of that is you're using it on your own soil exactly, and the winds prevailing winds if they're going west or they're going east, that's a problem for you. If they're going west, that's a problem for Europe. So Europe still would have been could have been very upset that they did that. However, they probably would have been. Honestly, that probably would have been the best way of justifying using a nuclear weapon, and it would have stopped the work hold.

40:47 Right, it would have. But I'm going to lean more towards the side that they would have actually been affecting their own land and also probably engaging, you know, other nations that they didn't want to be engaged with at that time. Yeah, and probably still they don't. But fast forward to their use of the hypersonic missile technologies, and they launched, they launched when they used one. They haven't done it again that I know of. Why do you think they might be holding back on using those for example? Well, I mean they're expensive. It's ten million dollars a missing. Fair enough. Now, Like, look, when you're when you're Russia, you have you know your I think the budget, I want to say, it's like one hundred and twenty billion dollars a year, like one hundred and twenty eight billion year.

41:36 I think that's what their military budget is. You know, our is eight hundred billion twenty six significantly like that, significantly different. Right. That's actually one of the reasons when people say, like, oh my god, what if Frusher goes nuclear? Like, dude, we spent eighty billion, it was fifty to fifty billion dollars a year on our nuclear program, right, and we have roughly the same amount of nuclear weapons as Russia. So what did that? You know, we spent fifty billion dollars a year and Russia was spending sixty six billion on their entire army back in twenty twenty. Oh. You know, I think that I'm certain that there are some Russian nuclear weapons that have been maintained, They have their tritium refilled.

42:25 You know, they've gone through at least two and a half I think tritium cycles. Tritium is the booster that you use a nucular weapon that that decays kind of the same tritium that's in my gun sights, right, Russia, So you use that as a booster for the weapon. I mean, they've been through two tritium decay cycles. Tritiums are really expensive, so I could easily see Russia making sure that they have a couple of working warheads, especially on like their Bory class submarines, but their whole arsenal not a chance in hell that they have their whole arsenal ready ran. One nuclear weapon might be too many. But I think this whole specter of oh my god, what if Russia goes nuclear like? And I don't really see that as a real stick thing because if they were going to do that, Chris would have been the place to do it, and they didn't. Gotcha, No, I think only we got off on a tangent somewhere.

43:16 Oh no, no, it's it's it's it's fine. I mean, you're you're giving your opinion based on the facts and data you know about this, and it's important to point that out. And it's interesting how you know, basically we spend more than Russia, but yet we have approximately the same amount of nuclear warheads or weapons, which is kind of telling it's crazy, right, Yeah, And of course, yeah, hypersonic missiles are expensive. And then Russia just just lost one of their major you know, income sources, right, They're no longer going to be supplying gas. They got cut off there. I forgot where it's coming from now. Uh, but you know, a lot goes in the head sometimes it sometimes it just doesn't stick there. But I know that they lost that source of income now, right, So there's there's there's money off the table for continued funding from that side. Also for Russia. Interestingly though, relationship wise, what's okay your take? Almost going on in North Korea right now? How they just suddenly were a part of supporting Russia. Now I kind of can understand the relationship with Russia North Korea, I get it. But that being said, they've been in the war in Ukraine and fast forward here they are now allegedly testing their own hypersonic missiles, right, They just launched one fell into the sea over there on its way to Japan. But we don't even know if that's confirmed. I know they've been testing for since is it since twenty twenty or something like that. I think they've been trying to test us for a while,

44:47 but I don't know if they really have that technology. Now. Is a lot that you think attributed, possibly through the to the relationship they have with Russia currently. Do you think Russia's sharing technologies? Yeah, I think they have to, like that's that's something they absolutely have to do. And you know, the big issue with Russia, and people talk about how big Russia is. They have all these troops, but they also kind of don't gotcha. For the longest time, Russia had this deal with their population. The population said, listen, you can do whatever you want, have whatever wars you want, but don't touch our kids. It was the second you touched our kids, that's when we're going to have a revolution. And so as long as you don't touch the kids in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, then you don't have to worry about Russian people rebelling against you. Calling people up now. A couple of years ago in twenty twenty two in the summer, we had a general that Russia had a general mobilization, and that was when you add all those problems with people showing up and like, how do you they didn't know they hadn't actually been to training because they had gotten a deferment, but they were still in the system that they had gone to training. Like that, that's when you add all sorts of problems. So what Russia has

46:19 tried to do is they've tried to just do volunteers, just do an all volunteer army, Like, we're still going to have conscripts, but these conscripts are going to be safely in the rear lince. And the issue is that they keep having to raise the bonuses and the pay for soldiers. So, now if you are a weapons manufacturing company, and Russia, I think like twenty percent of their economy or so is focused on making weapons. So if you're manufacturing weapons, now you have to outbid people who can get more money by joining the army. So then the weapons manufacturers have to raise the wages, and so the army then has to raise the wages. So the weapons manufacturers raise the wages, and so now you have this kind of crazy situation where you have inflation going like crazy, right, because everybody has a job and everybody is making money and either in the army or in doing the doing the weapons manufacturing thing, and that creates inflation. So now you have essentially runaway inflation inside Russia, and now you're at a point where Russia literally can't stop the war because the second they do, there's going to be a

47:51 huge freaking problem. And then that problem is like you're gonna have a whole bunch of people unemployed, and that's how you end up getting the Cholchesky special. Okay, So so you think they might be at the point that if they just suddenly stopped the sword, that it would just basically crash your economy or bring it to a halt. Look, you've just you've just trained about hundreds of thousands of people and how to use weapons systems, right, and now all those people are out of a job now. Granted, gun control is a little stricter in Russia than it is in the US, but men who want to start revolutions have always seemed to.

48:35 Be able to find guns absolutely. And you know, you have a bunch of people who've been you know who get out of the army because the war has stopped and now they can't find a job anywhere. That's a recipe for absolute disaster. Yeah, agreed. So it's it's almost like Russia literally can't stop this war. They have to keep a gun. That's one of the reasons I I don't think President Trump was going to a piece within twenty four hours, Like it's just not it doesn't work for Putin. No, he's not going to be able to stay in power. And earlier, earlier though, we dropped out a bit, so I might have missed what you were saying about why you felt they had to keep that relationship with North Korea.

49:21 Yeah, so Russia they need men. They can't get soldiers from the general population through a general mobilization because the people in Saint Petersburg and Moscow won't like that. Okay, Right, there's been this deal that like hey, you know, do whatever you want, but don't take our kids. Take the other kids, don't take our kid. So basically they're relying on allies to help them bolter their forces at this point. Absolutely, and so like hey, we're going to give you, We're going to give you weapon technology we're going to give you maybe nuclear technology you give us men? Got it? Why Why isn't China stepped in though? So there's there's supposed to be the one of the biggest allies to Russian but yet China's been quiet in supporting or even election to even step in and help Russia with their efforts.

50:13 Do you think that relationship might be slowly just disintegrating, like maybe they're just getting away from each other. I think that that China's always gotta do it's best for China, and it's just it's not you know, actually fighting in in Ukraine just isn't what's best for China because I think that would you know, China wants to sell uh cheap, cheap consumer products to everybody in the world, right yep, But we don't necessarily need to buy those products, right Like if if Tomorrow is actually part of my book The Wind Machine, you know, if tomorrow China stopped selling cheap toasters, right or cheap alarm clocks, someone would step in to fill that void. Might be South America, might be Mexico. We would certainly figure out a way to use cheap labor to manufacture stuff. Again, Yeah, that would that would happen, and it would almost definitely happen sooner if China decided to put boots on the ground and actually go fight in Ukraine, you know, in other ways, like it makes more sense to have a weak Russia for China because they're getting a hell of a deal on oil right now, right like seriously, right like like why should we go help? China doesn't want this war to end because you know, the second this war ends, my god, one of two things gonna happen. If the

51:44 war ends and uh and Putin is still in charge, there is a non zero chance that they might start selling oil to other countries. And now the price of oil goes up. And if Putin loses and Russia either fractures into a bunch of warlord states, which is you know, that's certainly a non zero possibility that Russia could fracture into a bunch of warlord states, then they lose their oil as well. So it's actually best for China to just kind of keep this war going on as long as humanly possible because they get cheap oil out of it, all right, So why would they want this war to end?

52:31 I can see that, like they look they could have. They could have they when the Huthis were shooting missiles in the Red Sea, China could have sent ships there and got experience in actually shooting down missiles because they're gonna need that for when they invade. Taiwan is going to go eventually. But I would saying, look, you know, they're essentially farming XP right. You know, when when are when our forces were in in the Red Sea, when the US is Carney, you know, the largest distributor of Iranian drone parts in the world, the US is Carney rolled into the Red Sea.

53:14 I think they had I want to say, fifty six fifty fifty six engagements. They went fifty six and zero, right, says Carney. And those people are incredible, those sailors. You know, if I ever meet someone from the US's Carney, They're never gonna have to buy a drink. And I'm serious. They did an incredible job. And what we what we learned from from that environment where these are shooting missiles at US and we're shooting them down, we learned a lot about ages about how our missiles function. We got a lot of telemetry, a lot of data on all this stuff. And you know, trying kind of could have sent a couple of destroyers there helped out with the mission. Yeah, they have ships there for doing anti piracy stuff, right, so why didn't they do that? Well, I mean it could be that they were afraid their missiles wouldn't work and they wouldn't want us to see that. So that might be possibly one thing, yeah, right. Another thing might be that they wanted chaos in that area, that particular part of the world because somehow that benefits China. You know, there's there's quite a few reasons why they might not have wanted to participate and that, and you know, you could say the same for Ukraine. China could send troops over to Ukraine and farm Xpe learn how to fight.

54:45 They haven't fought the wars as they fought oh boy, Vietnam, and I think that was in seventy nine, maybe seventy seven, seventy nine, I think. So it's really been a long time since they've ever really been tested. There is nobody I doubt there's anybody left in the Chinese military who was on active duty when China invaded Vietnam, Right, so they essentially have no more experience. I ranted for us all the guys we served around the Global War on Terror or either you know, high ranking sergeants, high ranking NCOs or high ranking officers, those lieutenants and captains.

55:32 They've been promoted since then. You know, the war was God twenty three, my God, twenty four years ago. I'm almost fifty. Me too, I'm forty nine. Like it's kind of crazy, I'm forty nine. It's crazy to look back at things like, man, hey, you know, we were. In Afghanistan for so long that someone who was born on the day of the terrorists acts could have actually been in Afghanistan. Yeah, you know, you know that's a crazy. Guy who was serving in Afghanistan could have had a kid who joined the army and ended up serving in Afghanistan, right, Yeah, yeah, Like that's kind of crazy when you think about it, like the war lasted that long, but all those people, you know, at least we have some data right on how we perform in combat, even though we don't have those those soldiers anymore, you know, in we don't have low lower ranking soldiers of combat experience and also anything about it, we have the wrong kind of combat experience because that was coined, that was counterinsurgency, and now it's all list scale or large scale combat operations. So now anybody who's remaining in the military has the right experience for the wrong war, and that could be just as detrimental as not having any experience at all, but at least well positive or negative however you want to view it.

56:59 You know, the American forces have been tested pretty consistently throughout the years. I think we kind of know what we're doing in in the you know, for the most most part, we're not perfect, but you know, we are pretty battle tested. You know, we have a pretty battle test in America American Force period. So a lot of that is a lot of that is training. Yeah, I U ling was last year I embedded with the Two years ago I embedded with the first airborne with the Rocaissans. They had an air assault with those guys, and you know, they're is just as good as they were ten years ago. Were do you have.

57:39 I want to interject real quick, real quick, because I know we're gonna have so much time. I want to say on the China thing, really from an if you're okay with that, because it seems like they've been again, you know, really pushing the issue about Taiwan. Uh President G has already, you know, made a few statements on Taiwan will always be Chinese and no one's ever going to get between us and whatnot. And they're they're doing more and more exercise and maneuvers over there. And do you think we're eventually within a few years going to be on that I mean, it seems like we're kind of on a collision course. Do you think that is the case or is it just a lot of huff and puffs, so to speak. I think that that President Z has told their military that they have to be ready to invade Taiwan by twenty twenty seven, got it, Like that's when they that's when they are supposed to be ready.

58:32 And that's a consensus I've gotten from other people too. They kind of feel like by twenty seven, maybe even as far out as twenty thirty, we might be in that situation where we might have to defend Taiwan or there might be a situation with Taiwan and China. The ideal time to do it would be in April of twenty twenty twenty eight or October twenty twenty eight, because that's when there's a US presidential election, right that transition it and nobody wants to make the wrong decision right during a presidential election. So that would be, you know, twenty twenty seven is when they're supposed to be ready. And it's if you say, like, hey, China's going to invade Tiwan twenty twenty seven, that's the general consensus of when they will be ready. Now, whether China can still be deterred, that's kind of a different question, right, that is that is a different a valid question play will we be able to deter China? And I think that that's gonna that's going to come into play with all right, how are our alli is going to play into this because you know, we look at America can't do it all America is I think it was sixty sixty one hundred miles away, sixty one hundred miles from the US to to uh Taiwan. That is a heck of a

1:00:03 long way to get supplies and missiles and such. And so that's why we need to rely on our allies. Australia, the Philippines, the UK, France, Canada, Japan, South Korea like all them have invested interest in making sure that China doesn't do stupid stuff and you look at this, I would say especially the Philippines because at the Philippines, the Chinese Coast Guard will frequently roll into their their territory with their And when I say the Chinese coast Guard, people think of the coast Guard and think, oh, they go rest rescue people, and it's not necessarily true. The Chinese Coast Guard are a bunch of bullies. They go around and they they they harass fishing boats. You know, they shoot water cannons at fishing boats, They do unsafe navigation to bully people into leaving.

1:00:58 So yeah, that. You know, the Philippines, if anybody has a vested reason to to to fight China to make sure that China doesn't expand their zone of control. So we have to rely on our allies. And I think if if we rely on if we if we have a strong alliance, and also if we stand together with Ukraine. Now China is watching how we respond to the events going on in Ukraine. Oh absolutely, and they're going to look at Ukraine and say, all right, well, these guys didn't support Ukraine.

1:01:40 When there's a freaking rail line connecting Ukraine and Poland. Why are they going to support Taiwan when Taiwan is sixty one hundred miles away from everything but China, Right, So that I actually see China being a very cognizant of what's going on in Ukraine. I actually view how we find Ukraine to be directly proportional to how China is going to perceive our resolve if to turn its fails and we have to go to war in China. This is true. And you know, circling back to the original question while back about how Trump may affect things, you know, and I'll get into politics, but just in general, there's you know, his view of how he handles things.

1:02:30 He's a wild card. And I think that's what's held most things that day, Like people are unsure like will he pressed the button? Is he really going to do that? That they don't know how he would respond. He just has enough crazy to make people, you know, second guests themselves, and that might be the X factor, so to speak. Right, And it makes complete sense as to why, you know, most people are predicting that China made any move, it might be twenty seven to twenty eight, like they're gonna wait this period out, So that having said, though Trump has been adamant about not funding Ukraine, is that the right decision in your mind? So he might have said that there's things you say to get elected, and there's there's things you say when you actually enter power. And I think that I don't recall Trump ever saying he doesn't want to fund Ukraine.

1:03:22 I know that that he wants Ukraine to pay for a lot of weapons systems. Is right now, we're sending a lot of weapons systems over that are old, but we have to replace anyway. And it's actually cheaper for us to uh send these old weapons systems over to another country than it is to actually that it is to actually send them back to Raiate. You want to get them to milled. So we're actually saving money and we're sending old weapons to Ukraine and some things like uh, like we were taking M one one three's and we're dumping them in the ocean. Yeah, we would. We would take all of the fluids out of them and dump them in the ocean to create artificial reefs. I like fish.

1:04:08 I think fish, You're great. It's not a bad idea to have, you know, an artificial reef. But you know, I also kind of think that that we could also take these mm one thres and we can send them over to Ukraine and you can use them to kick the Russians out of their country. We get rid of them, Ukraine gets rid of Russia. Everybody wins except the Russians, which is kind of how it should be, right like that, right, right? Yeah, that that's the ideal situation there. So you know, when it comes to missiles, if we don't fire them, they expire. Eventually. We need to We need to fire these things if we can. There's not enough days in the training calendar fire all our stuff. So why not send me to the Ukraine. Let Ukraine fire these rockets stored Russians. Saves us the disposal cost, so that at the end of the day, President Trump is aware of the cost of things, and you know, he doesn't want to look weak on the world stage. And I can easily see a situation happening where, uh, you know, he goes to Putin and says, hey, uh, we want peace, and Putin says no, And the next thing he does is go, Okay, you don't get to embarrass me, and he opens up his checkbook in Ukraine gets whatever they want.

1:05:30 Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. Yeah, I can see that. I agree with that. You know, you don't you don't get you don't get to say no to me. I gave you a deal. You chose not to accept this deal. So now we're gonna do things a hard way. And that that's exactly his personality, that's who he is. Yeah, you know you're not gonna tell him no. He's like no, no, no, no, this is what's gonna happen. I absolutely agree with that. So that was a lot a lot going on in the world that you kind of, you know, shed a little light on. Uh, let's let's let's dive into another topic that I know you talked about before and I've been interested in lately just just in my talking to more people. But let's talk about ocent like open source intelligence. What really is it?

1:06:11 Because a lot of people can always say that anyone could read the news and you know, take multiple sources and glean the information and try to, you know, put two and two together make their own assessments. But what separates people like you, for example, and others in your field from just the average individual or you know, the normal guy like me, for example. So honestly, I don't want to say not much, but a lot of It's just it's attention to detail. So when it comes to things like open source intelligence, you are using available open sources to figure out who is doing what and why. So let's say you want to know how large the Russian army is. There's a couple of ways you can do it. One way is to go to the Russian army and ask how big are you?

1:07:00 I'll tell you the truth. Maybe they want right. Nothing you do is have some spy tell you, hey, we're recruiting this many people this year. Maybe that's reliable, maybe it isn't. But if you know that every Russian recruit gets two pairs of boots when they enlist, and Russia just put out a contract for twenty two hundred thousand boots, then you know that Russia is bringing on one hundred thousand people this year. Right, And so you have these little sources all over the place, you can kind of grab that information and you can extrapolate from there. Like people had said that we don't really know the population of Russia, the population of Russia is actually half of what Russia claims it is, all right, maybe that's true, maybe it's not. You know how I figure that out?

1:07:48 See how many how many grocery stores do you need per square mile to feed x amount of people? Right? Because Russia, well they're not a democracy necessary they are capitalists, and that means, you know, if there is a need to open a grocery store to serve a population, someone will do that. Someone will get the funding, they will open a grocery store. Well, one thing we could do, we really want to find out the population of Russia. Let's call let's let's count all the grocery stores in Russia. Yeah, you know, if we know that one grocery store can serve ten thousand people, how many grocery stores are there? Okay, now we know the population, all right. So that's that's kind of another way of doing it. It's it's gathering this information by using open sources that can reveal all sorts of things you wouldn't normally expect.

1:08:41 It's really paying attention, like you said, pay attention to the details and willing to dive deeper, not just saying, hey, I got three sources and now I have a conclusion. You know, and I think one of the regions that I've done fairly okay in this field is that I was a software engineer and one of my specialties was finding and fixing bugs. So a lot of that takes persistence out it. You know, you have to to dig, and you might dig and dig and dig for weeks. You not weeks? Here did it take in weeks? It's probably too much time, but for days trying to find the source of a bug, right all right? Where did this? Where did this bug come from? And you dig and you dig, and you dig and you dig, and I think kind of that level of persistence has helped me out quite a bit.

1:09:29 Gotcha, Yeah, And that makes it makes a lot of sense. I just I have a I have a fear that too many people trust those who say that you know, they're offering offerings, offering their opinions or else's you know, call themselves. Some people that are just doing nothing but regurgitating headlines. And I've seen you're regurgitating what you found on telegram. That's probably not the best way of doing it. But you know what you could do is you could take a look at something on telegram and say, okay, does this make sense from a tactical perspective. Yeah, no, And that's what I was gonna ask you. Ryan's how does someone how does someone how's someone able to know they can trust that particular source, for example, like that ocent person who's claiming to you, I'm I'm the guy, Like I'm gonna I'm gonna explain everything. I'm gonna break it down for you. I have the answer, how do we know we can trust that person? For example?

1:10:23 What's the best way to. See if they're right? You know, you look at their score? What is their score of being right to being wrong? Yeah, okay, simple befairs. Proof is in the pudding there, right. You know, we're you talk about how we verify O some people, it's like, yeah, proof in the pudding. You know how often they're right? All that? And uh, yeah, I'm not gonna disagree with you. I just I just see too many people cinging on to disinformation. Would I say, clean the surface of information? They just believe the headline or whatever and whatever's recurd you to and say, Okay, that guy's correct. Here it is and that's why I'm believe and that's it. And that's as far as I'm gonna go, and then tend to criticize others who dig deeper, and somehow call people like you or me conspiracy theorists for just asking questions and going a little further.

1:11:11 I don't think I've ever been called a conspiracy theorist. I've been called a CIA shell and I've been called I don't I don't know what I'm talking about, and somehow both of those things at the same time. You know, like, all right, either I'm a CIA show or I don't know what I'm talking about, which is crazy. Give me what is given your background, which you can actually verify. It's like, why why would people jump to that conclusion about you? You know, it doesn't make sense. Well, I think for for a lot of people. So some people are bots, right, yeah, some people, you know they look if you're if you're the kind of guy who is you get up every day, you go to a job that you hate, you uh, work all day, you come home. You know, it's it's kind of a conspiracy theory that lays it all out right, this is why things are the way they are. And you it's almost like you you want to believe, right, Yeah, you want to believe that this is true because you know it's it's it's like imagine like Harry Potter, Like, why was Harry Potter so popular? Well, you look at Harry Potter, Who's who's Harry Potter's target audience. It's it's kids, it's teenage, you know, young early teens something like that, right, or these days adults people who grow up on it out.

1:12:42 But when you're a child, you don't have any agency. You don't even get to decide what you put in your mouth, right, what you eat. So it's a very powerful fantasy to imagine that you're actually a wizard and you know more than the grown ups, you know more than the adults, you know the truth about how the world really works. And that's why Harry Potter was popular. So I think a lot of ways conspiracy areas are Harry Potter for adults. All Right, you can have this fantasy world that only you know about, only you and your small groups people know about. I know, the actual truth. The woll is being pulled over your eyes, right.

1:13:22 Yeah, that that's that's a that's a good way to look at it. It's an interesting take on that. And yeah, I think that's kind of the that's kind of the deal. But then then you got the you get you got the other people who they're not necessarily conspiracorist, but they question like they don't stop qush, Like there's no end to to their disbelief. It's like, well you said this, but what if and then what if that? What if this? They just keep going and going and going, And at some point it's like, well, where's the baseline for you to believe anything? You know? And it's so it's like what do you what do you do with people like that who have who just don't don't trust anything whatsoever. So it's like what is their truth based on what what do they believe is to be true?

1:14:04 At some point, Yeah, that's a good question. It is is there's no answer. I'm sure, it's just I just brought i thought i'd bring that up because I do experience that myself, you know, as as we both grow in this space, for example, you know, I'm starting to get out there more and more, and I'm experiencing that more and more with people as well. It's like, no matter what answer you give, it's never correct. Great, And then you got the other side where there's a conspiracy theorist who's just like, no, you're wrong because X, y Z. But then they can't prove it themselves. And it's just very interesting to be people on this side trying to say, look, this is what I found. And of course, most way I do Ryan will be honest. I give you know, I give opinions and whatnot based on data that's available and maybe my own life experiences.

1:14:45 I'll admit that, but I try to never be the guy that's just going to tell the lie for the sake of telling it. I'm not, you know, if look, if it grows, I get clicks and lives good, but that's not my focus per se. If I could turn the career, fine, it'll get there. But at the same time, I'm not looking to lie to people, and I don't think I've seen that from you, either from the videos I've seen and from the people I've talked to. It's just sad that, you know, there are those that are just out to attack others for the sake of maybe just not being happy with their own lives where they're at. You know, maybe I'm going a bit far and saying that, but from what I've seen out there, that seems to be the case more often than not. I guess I'll just leave that there. I've seen. It's probably one of the most interesting things I've seen, is like people who who believe in UFOs.

1:15:35 I did a whole video about how you know, if if if UFOs were real, like genuinely honest to God reeling aliens and come to the earth, would be dead. Yeah, it would be dead because the most logical likely thing to do would be to kill us. And in fact, I've even said this before, which was like, hey, if you are, if you if we ever come upon some kind of alien species, we need to kill them. You know that that might seem like a little extreme, right, But you know, I don't.

1:16:20 Think it's extreme. It's it's it's referring to nature, I think, in and of itself. You know UFOs. Let's let's say aliens, you know nature part of nature. You know, nature wants to basically, organisms want to live, and what they want to do is they want to conquer their environments and be you know, the apex predator or the apex species. And so I don't think you're wrong in that. I mean that that that's a great take because that that very well could be could be what the situation would be everybody wants to be neither believed. They're just like basically, these angels, the benevolent beings, were just looking at it out for us, trying to guide us in the right direction. But yeah, I'm I mean, if if someone's going to make their way all the way over here, why would they do that for what resources? If there's resources, they're going to want to take those, and who's in the way of that It would be us. So yeah, maybe 'run something there.

1:17:10 The resource thing doesn't even make that much sense because no, because I did a whole video on this where like the universe, I actually scaled the universe down to the size of the United States, Okay, and ameer like like our our solar system is a grain of sand in the Wendy's parking lot of Biloxi, Mississippi. We take the gy our galaxy, our whole galaxy, the center of the galaxy is like in somewhere like odin Kansas or something, and then our actual solar system is three fifths of a grain of sand in the Wendy's parking lot in Biloxi, Mississippi. Yeah, and so any any any group of of aliens that wants us for our resources. Well, shoot, if you can get across the universe, across the galaxy, you can probably have the tech to make your own resources, right, you don't need ours, You can make your own stuff. Now, who'd people come for exploration just to say? All right, like, hey, there's this is crazy, dude, there's a bunch of monkeys with nuclear weapons.

1:18:26 You can chuck these guys out. Let's fascinated. Let's see these monkeys with freaking nuclear weapons. We might you know, you might do that, but but how does that get funded? Yeah? Like, why why did we colonize the New World? Well, initially we're looking for a path to send spices, you know, go get spices from India? Right, seriously, Right, it was a financial There was a financial benefit to go on and getting spices from India. What's the financial benefit for coming to Earth? Well? And but that's that's assuming that if there were aliens, that their system is based on monetary values and gains, Like, we don't know that, but I do agree the set of one right we're dealing with. I'm gonna agree with you on this is here's why I would agree. Why would they go all this way to see us? Why us and why us right that that that's that's the that's the piece of puzzle that was never that can never be explained. Why are we so important? Why would they be here?

1:19:28 I don't know. I'm not I'm I'm not too into that side of it. You know, I'm not gonna die. I don't know, UFO expert or you know whatever. It's almost like, you know, bringing up the topic of Bigfoot. Whatever is there possibility? Sure, anything could be possible. But I mean, after all these years, I mean, can you believe that our government is that good in hiding or keeping the lid on something that long? Maybe? I don't know. I mean, like I said, I I believe we would be dead. Y if they were genuine, honest to God aliens, we would be we would be dead. It would make the most sense to kill us before we could present a threat to the galaxy. And that that might be a universal that might be a universal feeling or a universal trait among all living creatures, because you know, all living creatures, they they they do two things.

1:20:30 They acquire energy, and they also they they acquire energy and they reproduce three things. They acquire energy, they reproduce. I've got this is a Spanish inquisition, right, three things, They acquire, energy, they reproduce, and they defend themselves. Yeah, and you know, I can tell you this, if every single Native American murdered every single freaking dude coming off a boat from Spain back in the fifteen hundreds, like there wouldn't have been fourteen fourteen hundreds. Back in the fourteen hundreds, there wouldn't have been. Things would have worked out a lot differently, right they said, you know, these people coming out were just going to kill them. They would have sent more boats. They would have killed those people too, right, And I think things would have looked a lot different. Now you're getting colonized on your own terms, or you're coming into the modern age on your own terms, as opposed to on the on the terms of these invaders just being calmed. So it, Yeah, it would make more sense to if you come upon a species, to wipe them out before they get a chance to do that to you. That's most likely what they you know, because because by the time, look, distances are so far yeah, right, And it's easy to say, oh, well, warp drives. Well, I mean I can't work with that, right like I

1:22:01 but I can work with, Like if you know, one of the things that I that I talked about is that we can use best spectropathy to see to figure out what's coming out of a planet. Right, we point a device at a planet and when a star train that planet transits, a star light shines through the atmosphere that planet. And if we found oxygen on that planet, one of the first things we would go is, hold up, what the heck's making this oxygen? Because oxygen is super reacting. If plants, if all the plants died tomorrow, it would take about six thousand years for all the oxygen on our planet to essentially react with other things and become rust Right, they take about six thousand years for no oxygen to be on this planet, so five six thousand years.

1:22:55 So if we ever saw a planet that was making oxygen, the next question is what the heck's make all this oxygen? Yeah, that's something we might want to go check out, but whether we have the actual ability to do it is another story. And the funding for something like that, And you could say, oh, and if there's a hive mind and they don't believe in money, well that's in a way that's even worse because if it's a freaking hive mind, that hive mind is probably going to decide we need to kill these people before they can kill us. It's like the dark Forest right during that that the threebody problem. Yeah, I saw a little bit of freebody problem. We read the books, watch the Netflix series. It makes absolute sense for the aliens to come to Earth and murder all of us and take over the planets makes the most sense.

1:23:44 So kind of on that vein circling back to Earth. As of now, it kind of died down a bit, and I don't know whatever happened. What I saw your video on your take on what was going on with those those drones in the East Coast, New Jersey. Do you have any more you know now time has pass to add to that and what your thoughts were because you did work in that industry for a while as well. Yeah, I mean, my my basic conclusion was that this was most likely a Red Team event where you're ever watch Seal Team six Richard Marshenko Red Snell. Yeah, and Richard Marshenko he had the foresight to like, all right, let's think like a terrorist, let's create a team. Well he called it Seal Team six. To make everybody believe that, like there were like five other seal teams, right, so Seal Team six, you know, they would try to take these you know, let's let's try to penetrate this naval base, see what their defenses are like. And they tell the commander, right, this exercise is going on, but they wouldn't necessarily tell anybody else. So I can easily see a situation where someone is red teaming and and the base commander knows it, maybe the deputy commander knows that. A couple other people might know. They can't say anything because then it would violate the principles of the exercise, right, you have to see what people are actually going to do here, So yeah,

1:25:14 I could I think that most likely those drones in New Jersey, maybe they had a red teaming event and then everything became drones, like they were seeing helicopters. Find Oh yeah, they saw what they wanted to see at some point, right. Yeah, And again it goes back to the whole conspiracy theory thing of like, well I know the truth I know about thrones. Here's a real story. And you know that was another thing that people said, Oh they're looking for they're looking for a nuclear device. Yeah, stolen from Ukraine. Like, dude, any newglar device that was stolen from Ukraine in nineteen ninety four, You know that thing has gone through multiple tritium cycles. That thing has the plutonium degrades over time, where like you know, plutonium decays is a naturally decaying radioactive isotope, and so you have these little pockets of helium inside the plutonium. That's why you periodically have to re manufacture the plutonium and get all those those helium bubbles out. The explosives that surround the pit those decay or those have to be maintained. The batteries have to be changed. And you could say, oh, what if they took it to a Soviet scientist and they're former Soviet scientists, Like, look, dude, my kid would have to be really freaking sick to take money to go work on a nuclear device, because they will find you.

1:26:44 Right Like, they will find you, like we found the dude who shot the CEO from from United Healthcare super quick. Like if that dude went and shot like some random stranger, No, oh, that's New York. You know what do you want? You know, it's Bryce living in New York. Right, you go shoot the CEO of the healthcare company. We'll find you. Right. So, if you're a scientist who's try who use the tools and materials, plus like the tools and materials to make this stuff re manufactured stuff, they're not exactly available in the open market, right, You're not going you're not going to home depot and picking this stuff up.

1:27:30 Oh hell yeah. So there was that, and there was also the fact that physics is physics, Like, as you get from the inverse square law, double the distance, the radiation goes down by half. So if you're looking for something on a drone trying to use the detector, looking for a radioactive looking for radiation, uh, you're gonna have to be pretty darn close to that source because the further you are up in the air, the more that radiation spreads out and the less likely order to detect that. Now a lot of these weapons are shielded because you don't want the people handling these weapons to get sick, exactly right, So there is shielding in there. And even if it was unshielded, like, dude, the fastest way to find that weapon, if it was unshielded, would be to put police officers at all the hospitals because sooner or later, some dude's going to come out with radiation sickness and the doctors might not even know what the hell it is. Why is this dude sick like this? Because how many doctors have seen radiation sickness?

1:28:29 Right? Feel like someone presenting with you know, there there's a term in medicine horses not zebras, when someone shows up with the condition. You you know, if you're in America and you hear hoof beats behind you, or you're going to think it's a horse, or you're going to think it's a zebra. Right, probably I think it's a horse. You know, if some dude presents with radiation sickness, you might not even recognize that. You might say, oh, this guy, you know, that's why you ask questions, have you traveled outside the country? Have you done this? Have you done that? They're narrowing it down their head with this problem could be right, So, yeah, there was that, and the other thing was someone else and this this happened at a bad time. Someone claimed that a radioactive pin source was stolen, and a pin source, it's like that, it's a little thing that you used to calibrate hospital equipment. You know, so if you're doing like barium treatments, right, and there's a radioactive detector that looks at the barium going through your system, you'd use a radioactive pin source on that thing to make sure. Okay, yeah, this thing is reading correctly, let's go to the Now. Apparently a radioactive pin source that I guess was headed toward disposal got lost, and now it's oh, they're looking for this thing. Could this be used in a dirty bomb? Like, dude, it's a pin source, don't eat it. It's fine, I could have it right here, fine, right, Like it's not like that's funny.

1:29:59 But you know, some of that goes back to like, oh my god, radiation, Like people are afraid of radiation. You shouldn't be. If you're afraid of radiation, don't fly anywhere. Pilots get juiced up, Like if the average pilot, I think the average average rat worker, I think they're allowed five ren a year, all right, And pilots like getting a chest X ray, Yeah, I think that's like, uh, it's five thousand mili ren for a chest X ray, right, So if you get like twenty five chest X rays it's the math wrong there. But if you get a certain amount of chest X rays like that would be you wouldn't be able to work on a nuclear plant, gotcha.

1:30:49 Yeah, So the. Pilots due just because they're flying, you know, in the atmosphere and there there's less atmosphere up there, and they're getting hit with X rays and they're getting hit stuff from space. You know, they get they get juiced up. I'm actually surprised pilots don't have to carry dose simitters. See how much dose they're getting. They get more radiation than the nuclear worker pilots. Center. Now, don't lie anywhere, don't have granite countertops in your home. They give off radiation. Well, yeah they do. Don't eat a banana, yeah, you know, well. Everything gives off a certain level of radiation. They have a potassium Oh my god, if you're the darn isotope. But yeah, bananas are mildly radioactive, just naturally from the potassium.

1:31:33 And yeah, what's what's the drum thing? The drum thing? I'm with you on this. I don't think it's anything. I'm not sure it was anything in the fairs. I I just think it was our government doing testing for whatever reasons they needed to testing, you know, the people wanted to see what they wanted to see. Eventually just got out of control. What let's let's tie this back to Matthew Laviisberger. His that the alleged communication, which some people say was true, some don't. You're still digging into that yourself. So what about those claims in that letter about these being some advanced propulsion technology that are Chinese, you know, off being launched from a submarine in the Atlantic.

1:32:18 What do you think all that? So the question is like in typically in the intelligence world, if you have a security clearance, you only get access to stuff that you need to know about, right your job. Compartmentalization, environmentalization, I mean the the s c I and t S s c I means top secret, sensitive compartmentalized information. So if I'm finding bad guys in the hornet of Africa, I don't know anything about drug cartels in Mexico. Okay, that's just not I don't need to know that. I'm not going to access that information. I want to know about it. So if you're a Special Forces dude, the email is kind of weird because he's talking about Afghanistan and he's talking about Chinese boats and launching drones. And you know I've said this before, like if there was a Chinese submarine launching drones, the Coast Guard would be all over that. All over they love like they love finding Narco submarines. This would be a feather in their cap that never have to buy a drink again, right right, And and there was other weird stuff like it can have like infinite carrying capacity like no, I can't dude, like lift thrust weight and drag dud same that. So you know, again you kind of have to go with most likely. And you know it is not very likely

1:33:51 that someone who was in Germany doing Special Forces stuff would have any knowledge of especially in E eight. You know, if you're a if you're an E eight, a master sergeant in the army, even in special Forces, you're a hitter, you're a door kicker. You're a really good door kicker. You might work with the targeting cell once in a while, you know, to get experience on something, or because they need bodies, or because it generally affects the outcome of an operation. But you're not dealing with Chinese submarines. It's not really an Army. Right right, it's unlikely you come across that intel, correct.

1:34:33 Yeah, that would be that would be somewhat difficult to come across that information. So you know, it's it's uh, it's one of those things that that that kind of activates like this smells. Funny, gotcha. Yeah, And this is the idea of you know, anybody getting that close to our coastline, like within that that distance, how we would not detect that. I kind of yeah, I find it hard to believe personally. Yeah, I know that we had a network or probably still have a network called soosis, which are underground sensors that go between the g I UK gap Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom that gap, so we can detect any Russian submarines coming out of their bastions, which they rarely ever do anyway, Russian submarines essentially never leave the Kerosee. It was a big deal when Russian submarines went down to one Russian submarine went down to Cuba for training exercise.

1:35:34 Like I'm sure the guys in N. A. S. Jacksonville are having a hell of a time using their their using their oh my god, their pa Poseidon's you know, tracking the submarine. I'm sure they I'm sure they had a party, you know, getting all sorts of date on this submarine as it traveled. I tend to stay away from naval topics because I just don't know as much about them. But I'm sure we have some sort of underground network that detect submarines, or at least could detect certain kinds of contacts, and we send something to investigate. So the the odds of a Chinese submarine sitting off the East coast is near zero.

1:36:17 Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I find it a little hard to believe that we wouldn't know, we would know. It's not let me put that different way. The odds of Chinese submarine sitting off the East coast is a roughly even chance. It is likely that China has the capability to do that, and it is open, what do you call it, the international water? You can sail wherever you want. You want to park a Chinese submarine the international water. It's knock yourself on, all right, yeah, sure do it. Well, we'd love to train against you, you know. So it's certainly it's certainly possible that a Chinese submarine could be there. But we would almost certainly know about it.

1:37:00 That That's what That's basically was my point I was trying to make. I guess it was we would have known at some point. We would have definitely known it was there. It wouldn't have just gone undetected. So and again I I'm with you. I I don't know enough about how the Navy works or you know, what they use, but I find it highly unlikely that such a well funded military such as ours would not have the capability to detect a presence out there. Oh we would be so, we would be so on that. Yeah, that's all. I We would have so much fun. Seriously, Like it's it's such a great training opportunity, right and like you know, sometimes like people are getting bored, you know, like why not, you know, why not use this as a training opportunity.

1:37:52 I mean, they're there right as well, let's take this opportunity. Well, I'm gonna start wrapping up because I'm sure you're very busy. I got a few meetings and really quick though, I'm gonna ask you what is your go to cigar these days? What are you into? Well? Right now I'm smoking a bone bone shaker, but I like the Camacho reds. Yeah, yeah, the red Camachas. But part of us black label, partake us black labels of these little ones, and especially because you know, I like, I recognize, like I need to smoke less. Yeah, as I love smoking, And you know, part of one of the nice parts of these is I can write a lot of time. Like I spent a good portion by a day writing scripts. So I'll write and I'll smoke and I don't even notice I'm smoking out and I'll just keep going, going and going. So yeah, that's probably the part of US black label, which I love. The tiny ones. I actually can't get them in Maryland anymore because, yeah, Maryland banned the sale of small cigars. I guess they're trying to do it to prevent like the black and Miles being used as mariandeh, that's ridiculous. But these, since these are so small, I guess you know, they fall under that rule.

1:39:19 They're not that small. And I didn't even know it. I tried to order on and I I was Maryland. Well, thank god, there's this girl I know in Virginia Beach and once in a while I go down to see her, and uh, you know, I stay at her place. I was there for like two weeks. Actually, it's one of the reasons I came back up here. It's kind of overstraining my welcome. And it was about the snow, and uh, I was like, shoot, I need to I need to leave, but I'll order cigars. I'll have them sent there, I'll pick them up there. I'll order the mini tins there. You know that's that's that's something I guess. I was, Uh, yeah, I got us.

1:40:00 And the red camachoson Scheggers are pretty good too. I like this. Yeah, it's it's sad that that that they're trying to more and more limit the sales of cigars and the enjoyment of them is it's I mean, I know we're going off topic here, but it's like, I don't know if you ever listen to Cigar David at all, but he has this whole thing he always he always calls them the pleasure police, you know how they're always going out of their way to make sure that you know, they're just taking these little, little, little, you know, little pieces of enjoyment away from us. And it's not like they're harming anyone except you know, maybe maybe ourselves. If that, but yeah, I'm kind of like, uh, I've been going I've been more and more into the ole mech lately by Foundation cigars, So I've been going that direction a lot more. And of course I've always always enjoyed a padrone, but not always affordable. But but yeah, I've been big on the olmecs. Before we sign off, though, I know you have a book, So let's let's talk about your book.

1:40:52 Let's tell people how they can get you know, seriously, you know, go ahead, pitch your stuff. Why not? You're here, you know, Yeah, So I uh so I a couple of months ago, I guess it was last year, someone said, Ryan, you know, you need to write a book, and I was like, I don't know how to write a book. You know, I'm not a writer. So I wrote a short story called Warlock, which is about an Irish traveler who has like a little bit of magic, but kind of like magic in the sense of like he can tell who's in a house before he robs it, kind of thing like is this a good house to rub? And after the terrorist sacks nine eleven, the FBI contacts him and asks him to help find a song bin Laden, which he does gotcha? And so I wrote that short story and sold really well. People actually bought it. I'm like, Okay, maybe there's something here. So then I started writing a book called The wind Machine, which was about I should have it right here, but I have it over there.

1:41:51 The wind Machine, the candy cane strep thing you can find on Amazon and audible if you're a marine, want to listen to it? And I I was thinking, like, I work in the AI space, at least I used to work in the I space. I was like, you know, like, wouldn't it be neat if there was a guy who had an AI computer, Like, if you knew there was going to be a war, you might be able to buy stocks, right, you know and game the market, right right? Well, what if there is a guy who found out there was going to be a nuclear war between the US and China? Would you game? Would you try to put the limited nuclear exchange limited nuclear exchange in the US and China? Would you try to make money off it?

1:42:38 Or would you try to warn the government? And then that kind of gets into all, right, well, how do you warn the government. There's no hotline? You can call it the Pentagon, right, And plus if you do tell the Pentagon, hey, I have a supercomputer that picked stocks almost perfectly. You do tell the government that the next person you speak to is the SEC Security Exchange Commission, who will then put you out of business because you have a you know, an unfair advantage. So now what do you do? That's kind of the question of the novel. It's it's essentially the responsible use of AI. Like the plot is about the plot is essentially what if doctor Strange ran a hedge fund? But the theme is the responsible use of AI. And uh so it's crazy, is uh?

1:43:29 You know? People love the book and I actually I ran my book through AI and what I found was like eighty percent of the book is meetings, meetings, meetings, like like literally like people in a conference room having a meeting. Like I somehow like I made a book about meetings, and it's exciting. That's funny, you know, like people love it, like of a meeting, but people like, they freaking love the book and they I've had people say it's Ryan is the new Tom Clancy. Ryan. I have one guy's na Ryan is better than Clancy. Wow? And uh, in no way, uh, in no way disparaging.

1:44:16 Jack Carr but you read something like the Terminal List. It's about like special Forces, and everybody in the Terminal List is good at their jobs, like the best. I'm the best sniper, I'm the best pilot, I'm a cross fitter, and I'm a whatever, you know, like I'm the best whatever ever brother. And then yeah, and now it's like it's the fifth book and freaking and now, uh god, what's his name? Kyle Reese. It's like the fifth book and Kyle Reese is thought that dude would be dead, and I know what, I know what Jack Carr is doing. He he likes James Bond, and he's like, I need James Bond, right, James Bond can't die. And that's the interesting thing about these books is that is it's that you're what you know, Kyle Reese is going to be fine at the end. So now in the beginning book, you didn't know that you thought he had a brain to him.

1:45:12 It's all about the journey, right, It's. All about the journey. Yeah, tro what I wanted to do was a book a perfectly normal dude. Run Ahead's fun was in the army, but he's not like you know, he was in the Army thirty years ago. Right, Yeah, he's not some special forces dude. He doesn't know anything anymore. He was a finance officer, right, didn't do a damn thing. But he's thrust into this situation. He's thinking, like, you know, I was in Afghanistan. It sucked to see people fall off the plaine in Afghanistan. What if we could give this information to the government, we could stop this war or prevent it or win it. And then the scary thing becomes like, if you had a machine that could win wars, what's stopping you from starting a war? Right?

1:46:10 Just guaranteed to win? Right? So yeah, that was kind of the path that I took with that book. And people seem to freaking love it. So yeah, it's on Amazon, wind Machine, paperback, and Kindle and on audible. And then can they get it from you directly to through your website? Oh well it's on I can't get a director from me for my website. I do have signed copies available at Bunker Branding. I have all my merch I signed fifty of them. They sold out in three days. They actually sold fifty six. By accident. I have to I ordered like six more books to be sent to me so I could sign them with gotcha, like a special note for these patient people. Then I've sent a bunker branding and I'm going to do another run of fifty because fan love them and I'm kind of a I priced everything as low as the other funny thing I found out, Like I was thinking, like, oh, I'm going to price this as low as possible so as many people want to read it. What I found was that like if I do that, like you barely make I barely make any money. Like a on a seventeen ninety nine book, I make like four dollars.

1:47:17 Yeah, after like everything, there's not a lot of markup or margin on these things. There's not audio. It's a volume game, right Yeah. And audiobooks are even worse. Really, however, audiobooks sales are crazy, like. Like with. Because I guess more people, at least more men, they listen to audiobooks than they do reading. And so now it's like you put out an audiobook, nothing just sits there and it makes money. It's not a lot of money, but there's a lot of volume. I think. I think it's the same reason podcast got so popular. It's just you know, people busy. A lot of people commute depending on where you live, you know, there's a lot of time on the road.

1:48:02 Uh. For example, salespeople, if you work on the trades, you know, you're swinging hammers, whatever, if you're if you're if you're by yourself as an electrician, whatever, you know, you're what you're doing. Just you know, you put your earbuds on and you just you got something going. You can hear a conversation, get some information. I think that's probably what attributed you know, what's attributed to the popularity and audiobooks, for sure. I've tried. I'm over read, like I like reading the word, I like paper I'm one of those people, you know. I don't know if I'm just nostalgic, but I can never I can never pick up my iPad, for example. I tried this, and I'll download some books and I'll try to read them, and it just puts me to sleep. There's something about me trying to stare at a screen. It doesn't have the same feel you know to me. Kindle, the Kindle. I buy everything on Kindle now. I very rarely buy paper books anymore.

1:48:47 You know. I think what I like about the Kindle is that I can switch from because I I do I know, I don't look at but I need two hours in the treadmill every day, in five miles every day, all right, some some walking, you know, walk ron walk, and I typically read while i'm when I'm on the treadmill a peloton and I have the Kindle lap on it and I can. So people ask me like, how do you know so much stuff? Because I don't play video games and I read all the time. Yeah, you're consuming information all the time. Yeah, I'm consuming information like literally all the time. And there isn't like a blank spot in my day. There's actually there is a video I bought. It's two years ago. I bought an Xbox just to do a video about Starfield, like how to improve the AI in the video game Starfield.

1:49:35 So on Xbox, I got Starfield, I played Starfield. I figured out how we could actually improve the AI in Starfield because people were posting about Starfield or the AI was bad. And I actually released a version of how to make Starfield better, how to make the AI better and more realistic. And then I found out there's a new game called Alien's Dark Descent, and up there I have a picture of Drake and Vasquez from Aliens. It's like a painting that scene when they were with the smart guns on this ship and Aliens. And I think I wanted to become a soldier because of that movie Aliens. I wanted to become a heavy weapons guy, machine gun.

1:50:15 I'm a big fan of that Alien saga personally. Yeah, And like that video game is available, I'm like, I want to play that, But I'm also like, with what time? So that's my That's been my thing with video games. I'm not a post to them. I just I get bored after a while. Like I'm very I've always in my mind, I got shit to do. I got there's other things, you know. Maybe I haven't a tension deficit thing. I have no idea, but I want to move on. After a while, I'm like, Okay, I've done this, What's next? You know? I can't I can't sit there for that long. But I like it when I'm playing them. I I don't do it anymore. I mean, I have an old Xbox three sixty that's I can't even use any more anyway, It's up in the closet. I don't even use it.

1:50:58 Me and my brother and my nephew, they are big on them, but I just can't. For some reason, I just can't. I mean it's you know, it's yeah, I don't begarudge anybody who who likes to play video games. No, no, me neither. Yeah, there is there is a consequence because like if you I've said this to people before, people, how could I do what you do? Well, stop playing video games and start reading books. I need to read books about every single subject because, like I've there there are times when I've like someone has said something and went, wait a minute, that isn't correct. I remember the book I read it from, Like I go make a video like, no, this person's wrong, that's not because I read this thing back in whatever.

1:51:45 And yeah, we had we had a we had a friend of the family, my dad's friend when he was he was working at this company, his boss. He was World War two vet, and I remember him. We used to go to his house ald times. Kids. It's almost like a pretty much like a family member. And he had this huge library, like huge library, and somehow I gravitated towards that. And he had all these books on strategy and war and generals and you name it. Everything, and I just I just soaked all that stuff up. And when he passed away, he left me his library. I ended up with all of that. It was it was tons of books, tons of books. It was amazing. And you know what's crazy is what I found through the years though. There was some publications that he had from way back that when I revisited, let's say, the revised versions or whatever, some of the information was changed or taken out. And I never thought that was a thing. I always thought that was just like, ah, that was bullshit, conspiracy. But over time, some of this information was rewritten and it was not the same, and I noticed that it was really really weird, and you know, this could be another rabbit hole we could dive down later, but I'm just I personally saw that and I was I was really, I was really shocked.

1:52:53 I didn't. I was like, wow, why would they change that? Why would they want to you know, alter that information? Yeah, you know, I have no idea why, but it does happen. It does happen. So it's like, over time, how can we always rely on that information, you know, as it gets revised and rewritten. After all, the book I'm listening to right. Now about the Apollo program. Yeah, and I think the book was originally written in the nineteen eighties, and they said right up front in the in the audiobook that we changed this stuff because, like, everybody has a computer now, so we no longer have to at your plaint what a computer is, right, So we cut that out. We also, you know, there were things that that it was weird just seeing like you know, I'm old enough to remember smoking on an airplane. Yeah, right, like that was and it is kind of weird when you watch something like Apollo thirteen. I wonder if Apollo thirteen could even get made today accurately. I don't know. Is the second question light up a cigarette, you get an R rating true? True?

1:54:03 So like could you even make Apaulla thirteen today? That's that's a pretty interesting question. Probably we do, right, rewrite history to modern sensibilities. Yeah, we do, unfortunately, I mean I think we'll just let it be how it is. I mean, it's it's a way to you know, you're just it's a way to look back at how things were and you can learn from that and not saying you have to repeat it, but hey, this is how it was. Deal with it. That's all there is to it. That's what That's what I think. It's ridiculous. You know what I'm gonna I'm gonna have to end it. I'm sorry, Ryan, I gotta go. I like talking to you. Man, You're You're great. This is fun. I hope you can do it. Yeah, no, seriously no, but I thank you for your patience. I really apologize about that technical bs I I don't know what happened there. I'll do my best pieces together.

1:54:48 I want people to support you. Go to your YouTube channel, appreciate your time. Hopefully I can do this with you again some you know, down the road. I'm sure you know you're busy, but hope, let's stay connected please, that'd be awesome. And yeah, hey, hey, have a great day. Man, appreciate it. You got to go, I know I do. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to cut you off. I just literally do have multiple meetings. I'm sorry about this. I want to keep going. I do, but yeah, thank you, really, I appreciate it. All right, thank you for having me on. All right, Ryan, bye, buddy, all right, everybody, that's the end of the show. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I hope you enjoyed it, and remember everybody, please like, follow and share the show and you can connect with me on x. My handle is at fonts ablaze as at FO n ts ablaze. Have a great day and see you on the next one.