10/7/26: CIA Warns Civil War In Israel, Epstein Whistleblower Dead, Arctic Sea Route Battleground

This is an I Heart Podcast, Guaranteed Human. Michael Lewis here to tell you about my new book, Blockers, which gives you an inside look at the Trump administration and the public servants who stood in its way. These were people who were securing our most sensitive data, keeping the public safe from all sorts of threats, and engaged in life-saving scientific research, until they were told they no longer belonged. And the question to me is, if they can't survive in our government, then what does it say about us? Get Blockers Now only at blockers.fm. Hey everybody, it's me, Debbie C'mon Bell. This season on my podcast Who's With Me, I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that, you're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to Who's With Me with Debbie C'mon Bell on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of Betrayal, Carl thought he was living a normal drama of free life, until the messages started. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. Every piece of evidence pointed to the wrong guy. He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal season 6 on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, ready or not? 2024 is here, and we, here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Turning now to Israel, where obviously it's the three year anniversary of October 7th. So we want to look at the state of Israel's society of what's happened to Gaza and the wake of really an Earth-shaking geopolitical event we're in the middle of the Iran War. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it really did change the entire region forever. We're still just really in the midst of what that change is going to mean. Let's start first of all with Israel. Let's put this up here on the screen. This was a new report from Capital and Empire by Ada Chavez. I know that she previously worked with Ryan Grimm, and this was also co-published with Dropsides. She says that a classified CIA current assessment warned that Israel is at the risk of a civil war of state collapse after years of what she says genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon, Iran, deep in political, economic, and social fractures within the country. The August report, which is titled "Fracture from Within," was compiled with by experts within the CIA Red Cell, and they say it is the unit responsible for providing "alternative analysis within the agency, produce the assessment for a combination of open source and US intelligence." The assessment appears to refer only to Israel's Jewish citizens and point to a volatile mix of pressures converging ahead of Israel's elections on October 27th, economic crisis, soaring military spending, heavily armed veterans returning from prolonged combat, many carrying serious psychological trauma, and growing fury over ultra-orthodox men who are exempt from military service, escalating setter violence in the West Bank, and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continuing to fight onto power and igniting the potential constitutional crisis as he himself is under a corruption investigation, Emily. And so I feel like whenever you put all of that together, you can see that the country in the way that it reacted to October 7th clearly unleashed something in their society. They opened the Overton window, let's say, to the people like Ben Givir and to Smotrich and elevated them to the absolute mainstream. They also, Netanyahu, had to collaborate and work with these people to keep his hold on power. Obviously, the actions they took in Gaza, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, either killed, injured, maimed, decimated the entire population as a reaction to what was, obviously, discussing horrific terrorist attack there some three years ago. But they have come and now found themselves in amidst a really of a crisis of their own making, because they won, I guess, in a certain sense by killing as many of these Palestinians as they could. They didn't necessarily defeat Desarm Hamas, you know, in the way that they claimed that they would. They certainly ignited a lot of hatred against them in the rest of the Middle East, and then even more so, they turned public opinion in the United States against them and capped it off with the Iran war. And so it's basically become like this garrison state where, you know, they're insular and they have their own kind of crazy ass politics heading in to this election. But the long-term vision, at the very least of how Israel's founders and kind of the liberal Zionists and others who rule the country for many years, it is not going to go in that direction. That's the one thing that we know for absolute certain. You know, I saw Nazi last night here in DC, which is whirling the Israeli elections and obviously putting a lot of heat on Netanyahu, and you having imbibed a lot of media coverage on it. I was a bit surprised by how balanced it was to be honest, because they dwell significantly on the horrors of October 7th, because what they do is build the case that you just built saga of how that affected the kind of national psyche in ways that you hear these guys from the intelligence units talking in ways that really, really deeply affected them. And for the worst in some of these cases where you're hearing people talking about how they were essentially saying they have to do as much as possible before they lose international legitimacy. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people look back on the last three years, and that's why public opinion has changed here in the United States. Public opinion was consistently pro-Israel in the United States, across the board, consistently pro-Israel in the United States, across the board. And that's changed here. We've covered that enormously here, and it hasn't just changed because the American people have suddenly become pro-Hamas as a lot of the commentary it would have you believe from pro-Israel folks. It's changed because people didn't like what they saw. And I think it's entirely fair to think back in the last three years and look at the ways that things went in horrible directions because there was this race to do what they felt needed to be done before international legitimacy was lost. And that's just a really, really sad and bleak way to look at the region. Right. I mean, I just think it back by tremendously, and it wasn't what you're saying in terms of not like what we saw. So we're paying for it. Right. And that's really what it made. Yeah. Such a fundamental difference. Not just paying for it, but the influence in our society, our elections in our business community at the highest echelons of our culture, of the government, deporting people or prosecuting people for-- I just want to say there's another moment in Gaza where one of the guys in the intelligence unit says he's actually supportive of the AI, they're talking about lavender, using AI to target Palestinians. He says, I think the AI is better than a guy who just lost his friend in Gaza a few weeks ago. And that is an interesting insight, like it's-- it was chilling. But it's an interesting insight into how some of these, like, awful targets or misfires or intentional bad targeting all of that, the collateral damage to the Gaza as they would say in the film, how all of that happened is because there was a real righteous fury after October 7th. And it's fun because it basically went unchecked or checked in some really dubious ways. I was encouraged, you know? Yeah. Right. I mean, there's a thing everybody can kind of empathize with that to a certain extent until it just goes absolutely insane. And then until you take for it in the US to your point. Yeah. Right. And then let's put D2 up here on the screen. So this was from Reuters where they talked and published this yesterday. You know, don't forget that a year ago we had this whole Gaza plan, Israeli ceasefire and Hamas. They had all agreed to it this phase, which at the 2025 in October 10th almost exactly secured the release of the last remaining hostages that were seized in 2023, along with freedom for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, detainees that were held by Israel. That was greeted. I think with a lot of people were excited about it or they're really like, this is a beneficial direction. Finally, that we're moving into and this can move on. But as they point out, he has not stopped Israeli fire as they point out and it has not disarmed Hamas. And so they say the first phase, if we'll remember, the 20 point plan was a suspension of all military operations in Israeli withdrawal from parts of the enclave. Well, instead, you know, what they've said is that there's been no return yet to full scale military operation, but at least 1400 have now been killed just in the last year in direct combat. Many of them they say women and children, although it does not disclose how many are militant casualties. There have been a number of also Israeli soldiers that have now been killed in the last year or so. And then in terms of the initial phase, the so-called yellow line, which we covered all this stuff extensively in October of 2025, the left Israel, supposedly in control. 53% of Gaza, they have actually expanded its effective control to around two-thirds of the country and then in terms of Hamas. I mean, it is certainly much less powerful than it was on October 7th, but that doesn't mean that it is completely dismantled or destroyed in the way that they had said the organization itself reached this ceasefire with a political infrastructure intact with at least some militant forces there largely at the behest of the civilian population who was like, "Hey, we can't take this anymore." And that's kind of the devastation that they all live with right now. And that is a kind of tension for Netanyahu to deal with. On the one hand, he wants to say that this made Israel safer, that the last three years have made Israel safer. On the other hand, he's still using Hamas for a potential new Hamas attack as kind of an election boost for himself to say, "You need to vote, Lecude. You need to vote to keep Lecude in power because the threat of Hamas is still real." On the other hand, he wants to basically be able to declare a victory against Hamas and say that he made the country safer. And that also is in conflict with him saying he wants to finish the job, so to speak. He wants to do more. Which is, it has Hamas been eradicated, the goals of the war have been completed, or that Hamas is still such a threat. It could attack any day. That is a real tension for him. Yeah, it's really well said. You're absolutely right. Let's put D3 up there just to highlight what you were saying is that Netanyahu, even just a couple of days ago, is saying Netanyahu Hamas will try to attack before the elections, precisely because Hamas is so weak, it will challenge us. We are ready for this. He's really holding himself up as Mr. Security. There's also just been, you know, look, we talked about this a little bit earlier in terms of just some of the stuff that continues to dribble out of Israel. Let's say here, this is the case of one of their politicians, Mosha Fiegelin, who says that their morality requires kind of the killing and the destruction of the children of your enemies. And these are, I'm the Jerusalem Post, you know, the stuff is said on Mike, really, in English so that all of us can take a listen to it. And he is, himself, a politician in the country. Let's take a listen. If we would have done what I said needs to be done. If we would have done Gaza, what the British people did in Hamburg, and what the Americans didn't in Nagasaki, okay? To blow it up, you're saying? To finish with that, okay? This movie, "Naza," just came out, would never came. The world would have been with us just as they were with us after we won the 6th day war. But you don't think about, you know, blow, just blowing it up. Let's say, as you're mentioning, like, the children that are there, the babies. I'm saying again, because I'm Jewish, and I guess I'm a little bit weak morally, I don't want to see babies killed, okay? Morally, that's what should have been done, okay? Because of everything I explained so far. But because I'm Jewish with soft heart, I would open the borders and let them all go, but no one can stay. And it has to be a part of the Jewish state. We should have seen now the Gushkative villages built already. We should have seen now the new Israeli international airport, almost finished, done, created, okay, in the Gaza Strip. And if that would have been done, the whole Middle East would have come down. They would understand that Jews, the Israelis, are not in the Oslo concept anymore. You think that things would have come down on an international level, if we would have done that because that would have sent a message to all our enemies, to all what our enemies, what victory means to us. So, you know, he mentions that movie. Obviously, what he's saying, there's utterly repulsive, in terms of morality, killing babies, etc. But Emily, again, name checks that movie. And so, yeah, before we end, why do you think that that movie is roiling elections? You said, if anything, you kind of found it pretty sympathetic to the mind frame of what they were in originally. But by and large, like, what was your biggest takeaway since you were able to see it yesterday? Well, it's interviews with the intelligence officers themselves. And a lot of them are still morally torn over what was right and what was wrong. And I think that's why it's particularly a threat to LeCouge and Netanyahu is that you have people who are kind of probably similar to the average Israeli who, because of October 7th, are we're just, horrified and so upset about what had been done to hundreds and hundreds of civilians of their own civilians. And then kind of that that chant was channeled in ways that they were uncomfortable with. And so, you see that through the intelligence officers themselves explaining it. And yes, they're anonymous. But they are in person. So, it's not just like disembodied voices. For the most case, it's it's human beings who are talking. It's just they've made the shot really dark. So, you can't tell who they are and they've disguised their voices a bit. So, you can't really tell who they are. But you see them drawing diagrams of what they did. And you hear their own moral conflicts. They're not all just like leftists. They're not all and that comes up a bit in the film. You know, they're not just like the leftists who have always been upset about Gaza and the West Bank. They're people who joined, in some cases, the effort because of October 7th. Or were eager to participate in the effort because of October 7th. And I think that's why Lecude sees it as such a big threat is that it kind of taps into that moral discomfort that a lot of Israelis have with what occurred over the last few years. It's not just, you know, leftists talking about, you know, people have always been leftists talking about what went wrong. It's people who were talking about what went wrong, who really believed in it at first. Well, I do love Faglian's, you know, theories. Like, well, if we just done what the Americans done, then no one would be saying it. Instead, there are famous quotes from many of the generals and people who were involved, not just in Nagasaki, but in the firebombing, where Kurtis Labay, the general himself, said that if we had lost the war, we'd all have been hanged as war criminals. So, there you go. And we all part hope in creating protocols so that Nagasaki Hiroshima, Dresden wouldn't happen again after that. That was the entire point. As Israel was being created, this was why the United Nations was focused on these issues is because everybody understood we didn't want Dresden to happen again. We didn't want Nagasaki to happen again. Then it did. All right, let's get to Epstein. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them to listen to these days. How are you going to get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. We are the best podcast in the entire world. I swear. I know. Bold. But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? So, sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. And how nice they were, or if we tip them or not, come and find out. Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about. Trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground or drama music or TV shows or the Med Gala and what the actors wore. What we're saying is we're not afraid to talk about everything under the sun. And if you want to see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out anyone, wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Blockers. In Washington, it became the worst thing you could be. And I found six of them. People who devoted their lives to public service, who believe their work mattered. Until they were told, they no longer belonged. I'm Michael Lewis and my new audiobook, Blockers, Rebels in the Deep State, tells the story of these blockers. People who kept our most sensitive data secure, help prevent wildfires, made huge scientific discoveries, but got in the way of the Trump administration's agenda. What fascinated me wasn't politics. It was what happens when a society decides it no longer values the people during the work it depends on. If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body, but someone will find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They won't knew that I did the scary boogie stuff and this is maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him by the backhand of the bow. And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with. The clock is ticking down and the woods are calling. There are a lot of demons in Putnam County, but I've met the devil and he's real. I'm Paul Solitarov and this is Season 2 of The Devil's Quarry. Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the Devil's Quarry Season 2 add free with exclusive content, subscribe to LavaForGoodPlus on Apple Podcasts. Well, an Epstein whistleblower has been found dead of a parent suicide, and we want to walk you through the details of who this person is, because obviously there have been other apparent suicides and Epstein-related cases, Jean-Luc Bernel being perhaps the most famous one. But let's start here with a BBC tear sheet. This is their report on what happened to Simon and Dries. So he was a former senior employee of BGC Partners, and I'm going to be reading here from BBC, but this is a financial time mentioning that the FCA in the UK is going to examine how it treated this whistleblower who died by suicide back in September. So the BBC reports that the treatment of whistleblowers by the UK's financial watchdog, that is, the FCA as Financial Times notes, must be investigated following the death of a British trader who exposed evidence of links between US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and Jeffrey Epstein, according to members of Parliament, Simon and Dries, a former senior employee of BGC Partners, which was a firm of brokers that was founded and run by Lutnik. It was part of Cantor Fitzgerald before he was then appointed Commerce Secretary by Trump. He died last month in Thailand. So early this year, Andrews raised concerns with the Financial Conduct Authority, that's the FCA, the FBI, and other watchdogs about evidence he had uncovered of business links between Epstein and Lutnik. I'll mention right here, he had also been talking to the FBI as early as 2020. So there's some people out there saying, this guy is not a whistleblower, he approached the FBI and he approached the media. We're going to get to BBC's coverage of him in just a moment. But as early as 2020, 2021, in that time frame, saying he had evidence of wrongdoing, and he then, according to the BBC, quote, cast doubt on Lutnik's public statements about his associations with the late sex offender, a group of UK MPs have now said his death race is, quote, deeply troubling questions about the way whistleblowers can be treated when they approach the FCA, the financial regulator, with concerns about wrongdoing and subsequent retaliation. And Dresa's family says he had taken his own life on September 23, and that there was no suggestion of foul play. So we have all of that out there. But for a little bit of background on who this guy is, you probably remember how would Lutnik be caught in lies about his relationship saga. I know you remember this, about his relationship, the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. They literally shared a wall. So our current commerce secretary shared a wall with Jeffrey Epstein. They lived at, I think, was nine East 71st Street and 11 East 71st Street. And so injuries who had been trying to blow the whistle on some hinky financial stuff, he claimed, happened at the firm at BCG. So then, is told by the BBC, he's in the Epstein files when the emails come out earlier this year. Why? Well, because he had been talking to the FBI about all of this. So BBC reported on July 14th. Just for a sample here on who this guy was, he was in the headlines back in July, because he discovered an email chain from 2018 in which Lutnik and Epstein, the BBC reports, had discussed the prospects of a startup business. They were both involved in injuries, shared his findings from the millions of released Epstein files with US politicians on the influential House Oversight Committee ahead of an appearance there by Lutnik in May. Andrews also discovered in the files that one of Lutnik's firms had made plans in 2013 to go into business with another figure linked to Epstein, the then Prince Andrew by commercially exploiting the contacts. The former UK trade envoy had made the specific files in which Andrews appeared to relate to interviews he had given to the FBI while in dispute with his former employer, BGC partners of financial brokerage form. And here's one of the most important parts of the BBC article from July when the span was still alive. 2016, Andrews had raised concerns internally about accounting irregularities at the firm. He was sacked in 2017, but some of the allegations later led to BGC being ordered to pay a $3 million penalty by the US derivatives regulator for numerous supervision reporting and record keeping violations. So what he reported was significant enough that he was rewarded a, they were fined and he was rewarded for his whistle blowing efforts. And the file show that he alleged Lutnik had undeclared business ties with Epstein just to underscore that. So as a reminder, Lutnik said on a podcast in 2025, he claimed he'd only ever met Epstein one time. They were neighbors. He got a tour. He felt really uncomfortable when he got a tour than the Epstein files showed Lutnik with Epstein at Little St. James in December of 2012. So Andrews, because he had worked at the firm, had the idea to search HWL in the files because he knew people went by their initials because again, he had worked with Lutnik. He had worked in Lutnik's orbit. And that is how people found emails back and forth from Lutnik and Epstein back in 2018 where they talked directly about a digital advertising company called Adfin, in which Epstein and Lutnik's firm, then Cantor Fitzgerald had both invested. So with that said, I do want to take a little bit of a listen here to a BBC podcast. They did about this whistleblower before he died and you get to hear his voice in his own words, a bit of what had happened transpired in his life since he started trying to blow the whistle on Epstein and Howard Lutnik, we can rule E1. Well, it's one of those stories where you've been thinking of doing it for years and years, but it's not quite there. So a man named Simon Andrews, who's at the center of our story, he's a British whistleblower. He now lives in Cornwall in South West England. In South West England, I went into a trauma crisis centre for two months and did a huge amount of work on myself and was able to get myself into trauma recovery. He's lost his career on Wall Street and he's struggling with debts from legal costs of this ongoing struggle he's had. And his physical and mental health has taken a real toll, which he's had to do lots of work going to trauma recovery centres, et cetera, to try to get better. So he was obviously troubled and staggered just before we tossed to you. I want to put his own post on X up on the screen from August 9th, where he wrote, "I am the British whistleblower who reported evidence concerning Howard Lutnik, his links to Jeffrey Epstein, Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC to the FBI in 2020, 2021. My disclosure is contributed to regulatory action in the US in UK, including a 96 million pound tax assessment related to their partnership scheme and he believes the true tax exposure is substantially higher." So he said that in August, he believes the true tax exposure is substantially higher. And finally, you can see this email for yourself. This is one of the emails from the Epstein files, ESICs. You can see in the FBI's files, they noted that Simon Injuries was one of the people who had talked to them about Epstein and Howard Lutnik. So that's how he started going through these files himself because the BBC journalist told him he was in Epstein files. So that's how he got the idea to search H-W-L. It is, Sagar, to say the least, a very, very strange state of affairs this follows as usually put it back in August, 2022. Stephen Hoffenberg, you probably remember, who back in 2022, 77 years old, was quote, the latest of several Epstein associates found dead. There was John Brook, John Luke Brunnell, who was actually accused of reaping minors. Then there was Mark Middleton, who was found dead in May of 2022. So people will reasonably raise their eyebrows when they hear this news. Yeah, I mean, like you said, by his own admission, he had trouble past trauma center and all of that. And it does appear at least very much based upon his own belief that he saw things at the center, kind of at everything that was going on. So just as you said, he previously had supplied all of this information to multiple UK and US governments around what he saw was this tax assessment and this financial chicaneery that was all happening behind the scenes. Lutnik previously said he cut ties in 2005, look, synthetic knowledge is visiting the island in 2012. He said that he had provided BCG cancer, Fitzgerald Lutnik, and to all US authorities, information about them, including the FBI, and to these congressional investigators. So he was specifically, and the reason why this really lit both you and I up is, look, there's a lot of talk around, you know, obviously what happened on the island and who was trafficked et cetera. But the real story for me has always been at the center of the intelligence connections. And then really what he was doing with money, he was a financial engineer who was at the center clearly of very sketchy schemes that were all happening behind the scenes with multi billionaires, including people like Lutnik, Leon Black and others, none of whom when you scratch the surface, these stories all began to really make a ton of sense. Like people will recall our interview that we had with the biographer of Leon Black, and he was like, I'm telling you, I looked at the paperwork and it all seemed fine. And I was just like, I don't know man, you know, sorry, like, I don't really believe you, whatever it comes to multi billionaire who is to pay him 150 million dollars or whatever for tax advice. But what he was uncovering really is about what he was uncovering was at the center of this financial scheme. All it's always about tax avoidance of all Swiss banks and all this stuff. And the UK regulator, as you said, remember, they incorrectly, they had to apologize for incorrectly advising him around whistleblower protection, especially before some of the information that he provided was about to become the subject of congressional review and of scrutiny. So I do think that we have to pay very, very close attention to this story. And like you know, without being uber conspiratorial or any of that, you don't have to be crazy to just look at the number of people involved in this case or in this story, who have or alleged to have been dyed by suicide. So that's, I think really all we can have on the subject so far, we will keep people updated. Emily remains very much on top of this. So all right, with all of that said, we got our guests to anybody. Rhonda, for a roar, let's get to work. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. It's a podcast. I swear. I know, bold. So sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. Trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground, or drama and music, or TV shows, or the Med Gala and what the actors were. It's a place where everyone can hang out, anyone, wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's big money players network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Blockers. People who devoted their lives to public service, who believed their work mattered. I'm Michael Lewis. And my new audio book, Blockers, Rebels in the Deep State, tells the story of these blockers. People who kept our most sensitive data secure, helped prevent wildfires, made huge scientific discoveries, but got in the way of the Trump administration's agenda. It was what happens when a society decides it no longer values the people during the work. It depends on. Get blockers now, only at blockers.fm. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And they said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him violent. Backhanded a bow. And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with it. The clock is ticking down, and the woods are calling. There are a lot of demons in Putnam County, but I've met the devil, and he's real. I'm Paul Solitarov, and this is Season 2 of The Devil's Quarry. Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear The Devil's Quarry Season 2 add free with exclusive content, subscribe to Love A For Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Joining us now is Ron Forsche, an FT columnist. But for our purposes, she's the author of a fantastic new book. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. It is called Sea Change. America's new great game in the Arctic Circle, and it details shipping routes, and the change in climate, and how this has opened up an entire new kind of great power, politics scramble for all of access to this. So Ron, thank you so much for joining us. I have been fascinated by this question for quite some time, and reading articles in your paper, specifically about the ice silk road and more. So I'm happy to hear more about it. But first of all, just why did you decide to write this book? You know, you kind of head of the curve. How'd you scratch this, even if you'd come to find this topic, long before other people were writing about it? Well, thank you for that. I do like to think I'm sort of prescient about these things. The way it came to me, I had a lot of friends in the Biden administration. And, you know, I have for a long time in my body of work been arguing that we've gotten to financialize as a country, as a society. We don't make things anymore. This is going to come back to bite us. And, you know, I think that is something post-COVID, post-war, and Ukraine post-a-ron that we all now have as a felt experience. 80% of the world's trade travels on ships. And I came to find out, during the Biden administration, that America really can't build them anymore. 0.2% of all the ships by tonnage globally, China builds most of them today. It now has 5,500 ocean-going vessels. America has less than 200. And it's one of those facts that when you kind of realize that and you pull back, you're like, "Oh my God, if there was a blockade of Taiwan, if there were a naval war, you know, the Navy gets most of its munitions and supplies from commercial ships, which the US just doesn't have and can't build." So what do we do about that? I then found out that America was cutting a bipartisan deal, actually, to make icebreakers with fins and Canadians. And it's like, why icebreakers? Why do we need to go to the Arctic? Well, because it's melting. And there are new commerce pathways opening up. And China has just opened a weekly shipping route across the Arctic, across Russian waters. So all this starts coming together. I start hearing about more Chinese and Russian military drills off the coast of Alaska. The search for natural resources, rare earth minerals, natural gas in this area, and migration, which is going to become northward, which is going to become a thing as the planet warms. So I got interested, and I was able to get on America's only icebreaker in the Arctic, the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy for two weeks, which was a trip, literally, which I can tell you about more, if you'd like. Yeah. Please do. I'd be very curious to hear more about that, literal. Yeah. Well, it was interesting because the first thing I did was get a drama mean patch because the only time I've ever been on a long haul deep water vessel was whale watching off the coast of Massachusetts. And I spent most of the time being sick. So I thought, you know, I got to make sure that I can be on this icebreaker for two weeks. You get 20 to 40 foot waves sometimes in the Arctic. It's actually one of the roughest waters. We were doing a tremendous number of things on the ship. It was an amazing experience to be, by the way, with these service people who are, you know, they are there for duty, for service, for adventure. They are kind of completely outside the world of commerce. That was very interesting. We had adventures. We saw polar bears. We saw northern lights, but we also saw Russian ships. We did sonar mapping of underwater seabed features like a methane-plumed volcano, where you may find natural gas. You know, there are so many things. There was surveillance going on. There were intelligence operations. There were climate and environmental research tasks happening, scientists that are measuring the water to see what's happening. Is there going to be more extreme weather? What's this going to mean? Not just for people living in Alaska, but for people living in New York. You know, if you think about the fires that we've had over the last few years that have come from the Canadian wildfires down and, you know, blanketed parts of the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard, this is all because the Arctic is melting. And so it is really becoming one of the most important regions in the world to watch for a number of reasons. And I'm hearing some whispers that the next Homeland Security documents may actually look at the Arctic as a new Homeland Security issue. Fascinating. Let's put F2 up here on the screen from the Financial Times, literally just a couple days ago, where they detail some of this. So the Arctic searout is booming as the Gulf War and global warming are stifling so much of shipping. You see, transits via what they say is the northern searout have quadrupled, as melting ice has made journey more passable and vessels avoid the Middle East. You know, one of the things that struck me in your comment about the destruction of the American shipbuilding industry, the lack of control is that for so much of the US Empire, the ability to project power on the high seas and really the blue water navy was the reason why we all pay the tax rate that we do and that we don't have health care or any of these things. Indeed. What level of control do we have in the Arctic? Because from what I'm reading, this is Chinese dominated. It is not in any way somewhere that the US is really projecting force. You combine that with the Iran War situation, the inability to fully control the straight of our moves. US seem like an literal geopolitical moving event. It really is. There's so much in what you just said. Let me try and break it into two or three pieces here. For starters, the headlines that the FT has been covering wonderfully really show that choke points matter. You may not think the Arctic has anything to do with Iran or the straight of our moves. It has everything to do with it. One of the reasons that the Chinese have started shipping and the Russians as well, exponentially more natural gas across the northern seerute, which Russia interestingly declares its own sovereign water, is because of things like what's happening in Iran. And the fact that the straight of our moves has now become perhaps the most important geopolitical choke point, along with the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal for different reasons, terrorism, low waters in the Panama Canal due to global warming. These are all becoming areas that you can't necessarily safely transit. So where can you safely transit? Well, the Arctic, because it's a little bit of the Wild West, it's still unclaimed, it's only 15 percent mapped. So you have the Chinese working with the Russians as, I think, a vassal state. I'll be at one with the most territory. If you look, actually, if you look at a map from the north down of the world, you see Russia's about two-thirds of it. So it suddenly becomes very important. So you've got this great game already happening there. The Chinese have been trying to launch what they call officially, a polar silk road in the region. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Russians together have about 60 icebreakers in the Arctic. America has three. When I got on board the Heli, we had one, which, by the way, it had some mechanical problems recently. And it's now out of service. Now, we have at the same time in this country alienated the Canadians, which is about the stupidest foreign policy move around. They have a huge amount of territory. They have more icebreakers. Fortunately, the US is working with the Finns to build more. But this gets back, you know, your point about, why do we have a huge navy, which, by the way, can't produce ships well or efficiently or cheaply anymore? And why don't we have health care? Because we did stupid things like breaking apart military and commercial operations. In China, everything is connected. You build ships for commercial. You build ships for military. There are economies of scale. The US can and should get back to that. Not just in shipbuilding, but in many industries. And this is part of actually a much bigger and I think the most important story of our lifetime, really. Which is a pendulum shift away from the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, away from neoliberalism, away from the markets, no best and no everything, ethos, to a. We have a public that needs certain public resources. How are we going to get them if the markets aren't doing that? How is government going to do that? And, you know, there's a bipartisan coalition, I think, to start doing more in that area. Not just around ships, but ships, biotech, pharma, rare earths, many things. I know Sager wanted to ask about the scientific American report, but we can pop it up on the screen. I have some questions about it, too. The headline was how melting Arctic ice has created a new silk road. And they talk about whether these vessels warm the polar ice in this protocol. And I wanted to ask you about that. If you could help us understand a bit about the environmental concerns with just the traffic period, like the question of whether or not that's actually contributing to the problems here. It's such a great question. You know, I spent a lot of time in Finland writing this book and reporting for the FT. The Finns are the sort of lords of icebreakers. They design 80% of them and build 60. And I asked the designers. I said, for starters, if the Arctic is melting, why do we need more icebreakers? And it's quite interesting because actually you do need more when the ice is breaking apart. Because wind and waves can very quickly trap ships in ice. You know, if you kind of think back to the endurance, Shackleton, and you know, you can imagine that's old-fashioned ships caught in ice, that's what can happen because there is more transit in a route where there is ice. If it was just solid, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Now to your question, is it bad to be having more commerce, more icebreakers in this area? Yeah, it's not great for the environment. It does create more fragility in the ice. But, you know, like everything else these days, it has become a bit of a tragedy of the commons problem where you have many nations that are trying to stake claims in this area. You have the Chinese and Russians already exponentially increasing shipping in the area. One of the things I'm arguing in the book is that the US and its allies have an opportunity here to band together to create more institutional frameworks, more certainty about how things work in the Arctic. You know, this is something that would be a great cell for people in Greenland, for native people who are worried about this environment that they depend on. We need to have more governance and more collaboration. The US cannot go it alone in this or anything else, I don't think. Last question for you, Rana, is a lot of the discussion around climate change and rise in global temperatures talked about this like shifting balance in migration, but it's actually kind of fascinating. You're like, well, actually this is opening up an entire new area of land. So we might go from middle to top or middle to bottom, depending on which way you're looking at the globe. So you've taken a look at the Arctic. Have you ever thought about the Antarctic? And what that's going to look like down there? Yes, yes, as a matter of fact, I was also offered by the Coast Guard of Trips, the Antarctic. It was going to be three months, though. And I had to draw a line. It was, you know, it's a lot to be on a boat in a 300 square foot cabin for a couple of weeks. The Antarctic is actually rougher. And from a from a geostrategic point, somewhat less interesting, the Arctic, because it is literally an America's backyard, is I think where the action is going to be. Also, you have Canada, which is a thriving economy. And the Antarctic is very different. You don't have that same kind of, you know, connection to real functional economies, geostrategic conflict. And so the Arctic is more interesting. I do think that you are already starting to see migration north. I think there's going to be more of that. And, you know, it presents challenges, but it also presents opportunities. I actually spoke, there was a native observer from the UPEC and Inuit tribes on the boat, while I was with the Coast Guard. And I asked her about this. Her job was to basically relay information from the Coast Guard to her, to her tribes. And back and forth, because these tribes actually have long-term oral history about the region that is very useful to climate scientists and actually to the military as well. And she was saying, look, there are going to be huge challenges, but there are also going to be opportunities that there could be more farming in these areas. There could be the possibility of, you know, opening up new settlements. But it has to be managed. And there has to be collaboration. Otherwise, it's going to end badly. It's a poor point. All right. Yeah, very well said. Everybody go buy the book. I'm fascinated by it. I can't-- I would be-- I would love to go both to the Arctic and the Antarctic. I've probably read like 50 books of the original explorers and the-- Oh, my gosh, right? I want to go see it myself. OK, we'll get a very heavy jacket. That's all I can tell you. Yeah, I know. I have one of those old maps that they would draw. Like the Yukon and all of that. So anyway, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. Ryan Grimm is going to have a great time at fish. You had to put up with the two of us. But I didn't think it was so bad. I didn't think it was so bad. I don't think we did anything wrong. I think we were OK. I think-- well, our leftist viewers will let us know if we did anything wrong. I'm sure they have thoughts. I'm sure. They're bitching always. Ryan's back tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. No, Chris was back tomorrow. Oh, Chris was back tomorrow. That Ryan will still be in the Eora, the fish aura. He'll be emerging from his acid trip and his marijuana-induced psychosis. So hopefully he comes back to-- Long Rips for Saga, Prayers for Ryan. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't acknowledge that phrase here officially on the show. OK, with all that said, we hope you had a great show, or had a great time watching the show. And Chris and I will see you tomorrow. [MUSIC PLAYING] Michael Lewis here to tell you about my new book, "Blockers," which gives you an inside look at the Trump administration and the public servants who stood in its way. These were people who were securing our most sensitive data, keeping the public safe from all sorts of threats, and engaged in life-saving scientific research. Hey, everybody. It's me, Debbie Cuell. This season on my podcast, "Who's With Me," I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy in giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to "Who's With Me" with Debbie Cuell Bell on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You broke me. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, Carl thought he was living a normal drama-free life until the messages started. Listen to "Betrayal" season six on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.