October 15th, 2026: Iran's Regime Is Preparing for a War That Could Break It & Ukrainian Officer Faces Trial

Looking for the best of Verbo? Discover vacation rentals of the year top quality homes guess love from across the country Our curated list takes the guesswork out of planning so you can spend less time searching and more time packing Book your next day now with Verbo It's Thursday the 15th of October. Look at that. We are halfway through the month Welcome to the president's daily brief. I'm Mike Baker your eyes and ears on the world stage and what a world stage it is All right, let's get briefed first up Iran is Fortifying its nuclear facilities Mobilizing civilians and preparing for another round of fighting with the US But with its military badly weakened and its economy under enormous pressure What exactly is the Islamic Republic's calculus here? Later in the show a Ukrainian special forces veteran goes on trial in Germany Accused of leading the covert operation that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines Plus the US conducts an underground experiment in Nevada designed to detect secret nuclear explosions as Washington accuses China of conducting clandestine nuclear tests You know the thing I like about 2026 is that it's just been so peaceful and devoid of conflict and And in today's back of the brief the FBI arrests an open AI employee after a listening device is discovered inside an executive Conference room at the company San Francisco offices. Well, that is pretty much how industrial espionage works But first today's PDB spotlight Iran is preparing for another round of fighting with the US and according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal Those preparations now extend well beyond the country's military installations satellite imagery shows Iran is strengthening defenses around sensitive nuclear facilities including the tons and the underground complex known as pickaxe mountain The regime is constructed earthen barriers around most of the entrances apparently Designed to make it more difficult for American forces to carry out potential ground operations Iranian officials say the country's airports ports and power plants are also preparing for wartime conditions installing shelters and emergency supplies Meanwhile Iran's revolutionary guard corps the IRGC is working to mobilize the population Why it seemed like just earlier this year that the IRGC and besiege militia Demobilized thousands of their population slaughtering them for daring to protest in the streets Billboards and Tehran advertised civilian training courses involving sniper rifles and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles Well, one can only hope that they issue rifles and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles to the civilians That could be a very positive development here In addition the guard has publicized the training of female commando units While paramilitary personnel have visited kindergarten to tell children stories about the war good news kids We're having some fairly radical paramilitary commandos coming into talk to you about war. It's going to be great And Iranian leaders are threatening a much more aggressive response if President Trump resumes military operations after the November midterm elections According to the journal Tehran has warned regional governments that another American attack could trigger strikes Against Saudi oil facilities American warships and critical infrastructure throughout the Gulf Some officials have even raised the possibility of sending Iranian ground forces into neighboring countries It sounds like the regime's medications need to be adjusted Regardless the message Tehran is trying to send does seem somewhat clear Another war won't be limited to Iran and the consequences could be considerably more severe than the last round of fighting But there's an obvious problem with their threat Iran has already suffered enormous military losses Its economy is under extraordinary pressure Its conventional forces have been badly weakened And it remains dramatically outmatched by the US and regional allies Which raises an interesting question Is Iran preparing to fight a war that it can't win? Well it is the Islamic Republic and they do tend to not be on the same logic train Well to answer that you have to first consider what Iran has left Since the war began in February, American and Israeli forces have struck thousands of Iranian military targets Damaging air defenses, missile installations, naval assets, and command facilities Iran's ability to challenge American forces in a conventional military engagement has been severely diminished Its Air Force obviously cannot compete with American aircraft The US would have air superiority And its navy would face overwhelming disadvantages in a direct confrontation to say the least But that does not mean that Iran is defenseless as they've shown with their continuing disruptions of the Strait of Hormuz The regime still possesses missiles, drones, and other weapons Capable of threatening American bases and the waterway and regional allies and commercial infrastructure And while its military has taken significant losses The full extent of its remaining capabilities has been difficult to establish specifically Tehran may instead be calculating that it can make another war so expensive, disruptive, and politically complicated That Washington eventually decides the costs outweigh the benefits Consider the targets that Iran is threatening American military installations across the Gulf, Saudi, oil facilities, commercial shipping And now, according to Iranian officials, data centers, and undersea communications infrastructure In other words, Iran's strategy isn't to defeat the US But to expand the conflict until Washington decides it's had enough Now, every escalation, of course, risks provoking a stronger American response An attacking neighboring countries could push their governments into closer military cooperation with Washington There's also the question of what's happening inside Iran The journal is reporting about civilian weapons training, paramilitary mobilization, and pro-regime demonstrations Is particularly interesting, some of this is undoubtedly intended to demonstrate national resolve But Iran's leadership also has to worry about maintaining control at home The country's economy has been battered by inflation, sanctions, and the ongoing American blockade Public frustration has grown, while the war has placed additional pressure on A government already struggling to maintain something resembling economic stability A renewed American bombing campaign could encourage some Iranians to rally behind their government against a foreign enemy But additional destruction, economic hardship, and military losses could also deepen public anger Place greater strain on the regime For Washington, another military campaign might aim to destroy additional nuclear infrastructure Further, we can Iran's missile forces that were compelled Tehran to accept restrictions on its nuclear program But Iran's leadership probably defines success very differently If the regime survives, retains control of the country and preserves enough military and nuclear infrastructure to rebuild It could claim victory regardless of how much destruction American forces inflict And for now, Tehran appears to be betting that it can survive another round of fighting Retain enough leverage to negotiate and convince Washington that continuing the campaign simply isn't worth the price All right, coming up next, Ukrainian Special Forces veteran goes on trial over the Nord Stream pipeline bombings And the U.S. conducts an underground experiment to detect suspected secret Chinese nuclear tests I'll be right back Hey, Mike Baker here with a message for all the dudes out there Now, a couple of years ago, I remember a buddy of mine at the gym Started noticing that workouts were just hitting differently Honestly, I felt the same thing, recovery was taking twice as long Energy was slumping by mid-afternoon, focus fell just a bit out of reach Now most guys accept that as just part of getting older But here's the thing, when you do the research, here's what you learn Testosterone levels in men have dropped 25% since 1980 That's right, we are constantly exposed to microplastics forever chemicals and endocrine disruptors Guys aren't getting lazy, hormones are literally being attacked If you're looking for a natural solution, not some synthetic injections, look no further than Mars men Their formula is clinically dose to tone out a lead, bore on, and zinc designed to support your body's natural production And Mars men is backed by a medical advisory board led by Oxford PhDs You'll find your daily drive and focus are back to where they were years ago For a limited time, our PDB listeners get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at mengotomars.com That's mengotomars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out And after you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them If you don't mind, do me a favor, tell them the PDB sent you Looking for the perfect rental? Discover top rated stays loved by guests rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews These traveler loved stays are recognized by the details that matter most and validated by real experiences Choose confidently for rentals you can trust Verbo, book now of occasion rental loved by guests Welcome back to the PDB Looking now at one of the bigger mysteries of the war in Ukraine, four years after explosions tore through the Nord Stream pipelines, a Ukrainian Special Forces veteran is standing trial in Germany with prosecutors alleging his country's state agencies ordered the attack. The man at the center of the case is identified under German privacy rules only as "Sirke K", his trial opened Wednesday in Hamburg. His attorneys deny that he participated in the September 2022 sabotage beneath the Baltic Sea. Now consider the position that that puts Germany in. Berlin is Ukraine's largest military backer in Europe and has budgeted more than $12 billion to support Kiev this year. Yet its prosecutors say an operation intended to weaken Russia also violated Germany's own sovereign rights. To understand how those interests became entangled, we need to revisit the pipeline attack. Nord Stream was the world's largest offshore natural gas pipeline system, a roughly $20 billion dollar project that had tied Germany's energy supply to Russia for more than a decade. German prosecutors say severing that connection was the point of the operation, with the aim of depriving Moscow of revenue that could help finance its invasion of Ukraine. So now do prosecutors say the team carried it out? Well, at the time, Serke K was serving as a "captain" in the Ukrainian Special Forces unit. Prosecutors alleged that he led a seven-member team, the rented a recreational yacht called the Andromeda, using it to transport divers and military-grade explosives into the Baltic Sea. From there, the divers allegedly descended to pipelines, roughly 250 feet below the surface and planted the explosives. The resulting blasts destroyed three of Nord Stream's four gas lines. The fourth survived with relatively minor damage, but has remained out of service ever since. And that brings us to the evidence what actually connects the individual Serke K to the operation. German prosecutors have no DNA or fingerprints or other forensic evidence, directly linking him to the attack. They say he belonged to a sabotage team, whose other members have been connected to the operation through forensic evidence. The indictment also describes how members of the group allegedly traveled, using Ukrainian fastports bearing false identities, but their real photographs. Serke K was arrested in Italy and extradited to Germany, where he now faces charges of sabotage, destruction of critical infrastructure, and a war crime. Another suspected team member, Ukrainian deep-sea diver Volodymyr Z, could eventually join him in court. German police say traces of explosives recovered from his diving equipment, match explosive residue found at the Nord Stream blast sites. If he's transferred, people close to the prosecution say his case could be combined with Serke K's, potentially strengthening their account of how the team operated. But Serke K's attorneys dispute both his involvement and the prosecution's interpretation of the law. They argue that even if Ukrainian forces destroyed Nord Stream, the pipelines could constitute a legitimate military target in Ukraine's war of self-defense against Russia. The defense points to the money and influence that Nord Stream generated for the Kremlin, along with its majority owner's involvement in the war. According to a 2023 European Union sanctions decision, Russia's state-controlled energy giant Gazprom created and financed private military units, staffed largely by its employees, that fought in Ukraine. But Germany's federal court of justice has already challenged that reasoning. In a preliminary ruling in December, the court rejected the idea that civilian infrastructure becomes a legitimate military target, simply because its revenue helps finance a war. It also found that destroying Nord Stream infringed Germany's sovereign rights, even though the explosions occurred in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden. That brings us back to the relationship at the center of this story. What happens between Berlin and Kiev, if a German court finds that Ukrainian state agencies ordered the operation? Ukraine is long denied state involvement. On the 23rd of August, President Zelensky said, quote, Ukraine has never officially taken part in such an operation. The trial is expected to continue in the next spring. As it unfolds, the court will examine how far country can legally go in striking its aggressor's economic interests when those interests are tied to an allies. For Germany and Ukraine, the question is also whether their partnership can withstand whatever emerges in the courtroom. Okay, I want to turn now to an underground experiment in Nevada aimed at sharpening America's ability to detect secret nuclear tests, including those that the Trump administration says China is trying to hide. At the center of this is a difficult national security question. How do you detect a nuclear explosion if another country deliberately weakens the signals that it would normally give away? The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that the national nuclear security administration, and you say to yourself, I wonder if there is an acronym for that. And the answer is, of course, there is. Come on. NNSA conducted the experiment inside what's dubbed as the P tunnel. Let's just the letter P not P is in the word P tunnel. Interesting, which is cut into the site of a messa at area 12 of the Nevada National Security site north west of Las Vegas. Are you following this? Scientists used chemical explosives and radio tracers to collect data that will help validate scientific models and refine the algorithms that the US relies on to identify nuclear explosions around the world. To be clear, what was done was a conventional blast, not a nuclear explosion. So you say to yourself, what exactly are American scientists trying to recognize what are they looking to gain from this experiment inside the P tunnel? Well, a large underground nuclear explosion creates seismic waves that can travel thousands of miles, but a very small explosion produces a weaker signal and a country trying to hide its activities can potentially make that signal weaker still. One way to do that is through what's called a decoupled explosion. Normally when an underground nuclear device detonates energy transfers directly into the surrounding rock, creating seismic waves that monitoring stations around the world can identify, but place the device inside a sufficiently large underground cavity and less of that energy transfers into the surrounding ground. The explosion produces a weaker seismic signal, making it harder to detect and confidently distinguish from an earthquake or a conventional blast. By collecting measurements from a controlled explosion, scientists can check how well their models predict the signals and underground blast produces. They can then use those findings to refine the algorithms that help identify suspicious events. Look at this, it's almost like I'm a nuclear scientist, which of course then brings us to China. The Trump administration alleges that Beijing secretly conducted a low yield nuclear test at its Lopnour testing complex in northwestern China that was back in June of 2020, an act that Washington says breached the comprehensive nuclear test band Treaty. Now, NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams reinforced accusations made earlier this year by State Department arms officials. He told Axios that China is "clearly" conducting explosive nuclear testing and "trying to hide it." Beijing, for its part, denies the accusations and insists it continues to abide by the treaty. Now, both countries signed that treaty in 1996, but neither has ratified it, and the agreement has not entered into force, so in reality, it's not really an agreement at all. But what do we actually know about the alleged test back in June of 2020? While the comprehensive nuclear test band Treaty organization says its international monitoring system did not detect an event consistent with a nuclear test explosion on the date that Washington identified. It did, however, record two small seismic events, separated by about 12 seconds. The available data could not confidently establish their cause. Now, do those signals establish that China conducted the nuclear test? Well, no, not exactly, but the uncertainty helps explain why Washington wants better detection tools, see, coming around full circle. So you ask, why would a nuclear power bother conducting a test so small that international monitors might struggle to identify it? It's a good question, because a small explosion can still produce valuable information for a weapons program. Robert Kelly, a former energy department official who also served as director of nuclear inspections at the International Atomic Energy Agency, although there's another acronym there, IAEA, says very small tests could help scientists understand, quote, "how a larger bomb may work." That's a very scientific explanation right there. If Beijing is secretly carrying out explosive nuclear tests, it could be gathering information to improve its weapons while denying Washington and its allies a clear picture of what it is exactly developing. And that would be a serious challenge to American national security, especially given the scale of China's rapid nuclear expansion. In its China Military Power report, published last December, the Pentagon estimated that Beijing remains on track to possess more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by the year 2030. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that China had as many as 620 warheads at the beginning of 2026, and expects that stockpiles to continue growing over the coming decade. That buildup is quickly changing the nuclear balance that American policy makers have dealt with for decades. All right, in today's back of the brief, a suspected spying operation inside OpenAI, where an employee is accused of planting a listening device in a room used for sensitive executive meetings. More on that when we come back. Hey, Mike Baker here with an important message about both fashion and health. Yeah, I'm combining the two, fashion and health. Here's the question. Have you thought about how much plastic surrounds us every day? Look studies show that microplastics are everywhere. They're not blood, the heart, lungs, brain. 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All the best-listing devices should be wrapped in toilet paper. It was designed to capture conversations taking place in a room where company executives discussed proprietary technology, product development, government relationships, and other sensitive business matters. OpenAI Security personnel discovered the device on September 30th and launched an internal investigation. And in a bit of irony, according to investigators, Al-Folzen used artificial intelligence to help plan the whole thing. Prosecutors say they uncovered chatbot searches about building a continuous audio recorder, encrypting recordings, and accessing the device remotely. Other searches involve the layout of OpenAI's offices and the scheduling of executive meetings. "Hey, chat GPT, tell me how I can spy on my own company." Yeah, there's some rocket science at work. But AI works both ways. OpenAI says its security team used the company's own AI models to help investigate the device to set anybody to do their own work anymore and identify the suspected culprit, eventually turning its findings over to the FBI. And investigators uncovered some additional evidence. After the original device was discovered, OpenAI installed a security camera inside the conference room. On October 5th, that camera allegedly captured Al-Folzen entering the room and inspecting the area behind the television where the recorder had been hidden. Maybe you just needed to wrap it in new toilet paper. That same day, security personnel found an unattended bag containing his identification while it in a second recording device similar to the first. The FBI arrested Al-Folzen on October 9th, and federal prosecutors announced the charges Tuesday. Of course, there are still a lot of unanswered questions here, which the investigators are working on. Most importantly, who was he working for and what was he planning to do with those recordings? Al-Folzen previously worked at Metta, that would be Mark Zuckerberg's company, and he does have connections to Saudi Arabia's technology industry. But federal authorities haven't accused him of working for Saudi intelligence or any other foreign government. I'm looking at you, China, and there's no publicly established evidence that the recordings were passed to anyone outside the company. Open AI also says it found no indication that its source code, AI models, or customer data was stolen. Al-Folzen is charged with illegally intercepting or attempting to intercept oral communications. If convicted, he faces up to five years in federal prison. And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief for Thursday the 15th of October. Now, if you have any questions or comments, and I hope you do, just reach out to me at [email protected]. And finally, you know, you can have yourself an ad-free pdb experience simply by becoming a premium member of the president's daily brief, just wander on over to pdbpremium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the pdb afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. [Music] Discover top-rated stays loved by guests. Rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews. Verbo. Book a vacation rental loved by guests.