Trump Was Warned About the Spy in Nvidia CEO’s Bed

Hi, and welcome back to Bulwark Takes. I'm Michael Weiss, investigative reporter and editor of the English-language version of The Insider, which is a Russian investigative news outlet. Joining me, as always, Mark Palmaropoulos, a 26-year veteran of the CIA. And we are here to do two things. One, promote our forthcoming show, which drops on November 22nd. It's called The Reporter and the Spy, or RATS, as the acronym is. A fight show, as we've just discovered. We need bling. I want bling for this. We have to have rats. It's got to explode. Times Square billboard of rats. I mean, I live in New York, man, so if you want rat bling, I can. Oh, nice. They crawl out of the woodwork in my apartment here. Not rats, actually, mice. But mice is actually relevant to the topic of our conversation today, which is Honeytraps Galore, the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, I think I've pronounced his surname correctly, has admitted to having extramarital affair. With a woman, Alice Huang, no relation, and it's got to be extra embarrassing for him to emphasize that, who, according to the U.S. intelligence community, is connected to MSS, which is the Chinese Ministry of State Security. So in other words, she's a likely Chinese spy sent to probably entrap the guy and commit or facilitate industrial espionage. Now, Mark, I mean, I'm turning this one over to you, buddy, because, well, for one thing, I know that the only thing that I'm going to The only woman who would ever agree to sleep with you would be from a hostile foreign intelligence service. And for another, you have had experience with Honeytrap attempts, given the work you've done for almost three decades for this country. Talk us through the Honeytrap. I mean, what is it? How does it work? Who does it? And what are some of the more notorious hauls that intelligence services have gotten out of these things? So, Michael, we have ourselves a good old spy scandal. And this is one for the ages. I mean, I don't know. You want to call something like this Intel porn for Intel geeks like us? That's what this is. I guess. Yeah. I mean, but this is this is a big one. It has extraordinary national security repercussions that we have to stress. This is all alleged. We are talking about issues that have come out in The New York Times, The Financial Times and others. So let's just be very clear about this. Certainly not based on any insider information that we have. But it certainly looks like this is a pretty serious spy scandal. And that's because and it's kind of interesting because it's a little unusual that we go back to what's called this classic Honeytrap operation. And let me just kind of back up a little bit. In the intelligence world, there's various ways in which an intelligence service tries to recruit someone. And it's the famous acronym. You mentioned it before mice. So it can be via money. You know, someone is financially vulnerable. Maybe I ideology, the old days of the Cold War, communism versus capitalism. It can be ego. That's the last part of mice. That's if someone really isn't doing well in their profession. And so an intelligence service would use their damaged ego to then give them some type of gratification. But the M.I.C.E., the C part is coercion. And that's what we're talking about now. And that's a Honeytrap operation where sex is used to entice someone to betray their country, their government, their company, or in this case, several of these. And so what looks like from all the reporting is that this woman, Alice Wong, who was a was a actual business lady working for Megaspeed International. It was a Singapore based cloud computing company. But she develops this sexual relationship with Jensen Wong, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, which is an extraordinarily important entity because they produce much of the world's artificial for processors. They produce processors that underpin much of the world's artificial intelligence infrastructure. The U.S. intelligence community, the military uses this. And so I think that the way you look at this is what would the Chinese intelligence service and I hate to say this tip of the tip of the cap to them. This is a this is a pretty good, good one if they pulled this off. But, you know, did they recruit her as in terms of a Honeytrap in term where she actually then obtains information and Jensen Wong knowingly is providing this to her? Or is she an access agent, which would still be valuable because she would get all of NVIDIA's plans and intentions, perhaps steer him to do things like what he was trying. Which was to loosen export control restrictions on the sale of NVIDIA products to China or just, again, classic espionage, you know, just sucking up everything that that she learns. And so it remains to be seen. Tip of the cap to the MSS. Again, I hate to say that, but also tip the cap to my old folks in the intelligence community. They found out she was doing this, according to The New York Times, from electronic surveillance. A lot of times that that might be part of it. It of the of the MSS. But boy, this is a big one. And the last part of this, which we have to address, is the U.S. government knew this for a while and President Trump was told about this. And as a good friend of mine, a former very senior FBI counterintelligence official, I won't name him, but he told me he said so often we actually do really great work hitting the pavement and policymakers then when they are confronted with this do nothing. And that seems to be the case. That's going to be another part of this scandal that that Trump knew. Marco Rubio, the national security adviser, apparently wrote a memo about this. Yet President Trump the other day says, well, I'm going to Beijing soon and maybe I'll take Jensen Wong with me again. And so, you know, my my head with not much hair in it nearly blows off when I hear something like that. So two points I wanted to make. You mentioned that the U.S. intelligence community might have cottoned on to this by doing surveillance. Just to be clear, if it's an American, we're not listening in on their conversation. But if an American's name comes up in the conversations of foreign actors called incidental collection. Right. So it's not like the CIA is spying on Wong, but they were spying on the Chinese intelligence service, allegedly, and overheard some chatter about him being compromised by this. And then it's important you note that because then there's a process that's called unmasking. And I know we're kind of geeking out on this, but you and I love this stuff. This is like talking about like, I don't know, like averages and major league baseball, if you're a baseball fan and unmasking. It means that, OK, so under this incidental collection, they're looking for Chinese intelligence related stuff. An American pops up and there's a process in which you have to unmask this person. And it's very delicately handled. And a lot of times when you unmask the U.S. person and I remember this, you're like, oh, shit, that's a really important U.S. person. And in this case, that's an oh, shit moment. Wait a second. And if that person is is unmasked to be doing something inappropriate or perhaps illegal, CIA is supposed to hand it over to the FBI. Right. The FBI has. Right. There's a very strict process on this. And all of this appears to have occurred. And there's another caveat, too. And I know we're flying off in all different directions. The Department of Commerce apparently was aware of this and seems to have then tipped off Jensen Wong. Someone from Commerce called NVIDIA and said, basically, you're under investigation. So I think Howard Lutnick and the Commerce folks are, you know, deserve some scrutiny here. This is turning into a bit of a mess because it's, you know, like like every spy scandal, it's the spying than the investigation. And then the cover up. And it looks like there wasn't really a great effort to do anything about this. So when this story broke, I I raced back to my Kindle copy of Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, because I remember the discussion about the exporting of AI tech and NVIDIA. And the best part is that that Wong traveled to the White House with his wife, Lori, who he was cheating on with the Chinese spy and had a candlelight dinner with Donald Trump to persuade the president of the United States to allow him. NVIDIA to export its secret AI tech to to foreign nationals, including the Chinese. So, I mean, it just gets better and better. And then there's another anecdote in this book. This isn't the first time Trump has been confronted with Chinese penetration of the American tech sector. Right. No pun included there. Sorry. No pun. Yes, exactly. The jokes write themselves here on Reporter and the Spy, folks. The CEO of Intel founded a company called Cadence. Cadence Design Services or something like that. And that company had been selling illegally its own tech to the Chinese military. And I just wanted to read you. So the CEO of Intel, who at one point Donald Trump had demanded be fired because all of this had come to light and Senator Tom Cotton was, you know, raining down thunder in congressional hearings about it. So this guy goes to the White House also and tells him Tan is his name. Had convinced Trump that he was not a Chinese spy, but getting off the hook was not so straightforward. Again, I'm quoting from Regime Change, the Haberman Swan book. I can cure your problem, Trump told Tan. I'll solve your problem, but you have to give 10 percent of Intel to the country. So we have an intelligence breach. We have, you know, foreign infiltration into the vanguard of American industry. I'll make it all go away. Just give me a cut. Give me a cut. That's our president. That's a mafioso move right there. If you ever saw one right out of The Sopranos. This message is brought to you by ZocDoc. So I love this time of year between the cooler weather, the football season, all the holidays and everything that comes with fall and then winter. It just feels like there's always something fun around the corner, whether it's getting together with friends, traveling to see family or just enjoying the outdoors. There's so much I don't want to miss. The last thing I want is to be sidelined because I put off caring for myself. The reality is when life gets busy, like it is during this election season, making time for a little bit of fun. I don't want to miss it. that works with your schedule can feel like a whole other job. So that's why I love ZocTalk, who is sponsoring this episode. ZocTalk makes it easy to find in-network doctors near you, compare providers, and book appointments based on real-time availability. You can browse more than 150,000 providers across 200 plus specialties, and then read reviews from real patients to help you find the right fit. And the best part, it's completely free to use. Your health matters, and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. So are you ready to be seen? Head to ZocTalk.com slash Bulwark Takes to get started, and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Bulwark Takes. I mean, I have to say, you know, hats off to the Chinese. Obviously, they know how to apply their trade, but nobody beats the Soviet KGB when it comes to honey traps. Let's rank some of these. So you are a, a historian, I would say, in Russian intelligence. You're writing a book on it, a little plug for your book that's going to come out soon on Russian military intelligence. But give us some good old honey trap operations from the past. And then also, some of them, perhaps not only that failed because of certain maybe cultural norms, where maybe people don't care about affairs, and if they're caught spying. My wife would kick my ass, but anyway, go for it. When we talk about cultural norms and honey traps, I mean, let's just be very clear, we're talking about the French. So my, my favorite story is in 19, I think it was 55, the French ambassador to Moscow, a guy called Maurice Dijon, wasn't only honey trapped by this, the KGB, right? So he's living in, in the capital of the Soviet Union, and the KGB wants to compromise him. So they construct this elaborate, staged, managed operation. It was more like a live theater production. They enlist a celebrated Soviet dramatist who was personal friends with Boris Pasternak, and he was a very, very good friend of Boris Pasternak. And he was a very, he was the guy that you would meet when all the foreigners came to town. He was tall and slender and good looking. And they hired a bunch of swallows, which was the Soviet euphemism for basically women who were working for the services to sexually compromise foreigners. And this thing goes sideways. Basically, the idea was he was to have an affair. He was to be sleeping with the woman or about to sleep with the woman. And her boyfriend comes in and beats the shit out of him. And the whole thing just went off the rails, right? Anyway, the guy's career was ended. And then when Charles de Gaulle found out, he basically was like, oh, hey, Maurice, sleeping around, I hear, you know. But what this did in sort of French counterintelligence, from what I understand, the French just decided, look, you know, we're a little more loosey-goosey with extramarital affairs in our country. If it happens to you, just cop to it and you can carry on. So actually, the KGB at one point, and I have KGB manuals, training manuals going back decades up until 1989. At one point, they just abandoned the idea of honey trapping the French. There's another anecdote I'll cite. I think it was from one of the manuals. So they had found a French captain in the army who was gay. And the KGB arranged to have him honey trapped by another man. And when they dropped the bomb on him, they confronted him. They had an array of photographs of him in flagrante delecto with this other guy. And so they expected, okay, now you work for us, right? The guy stood up, French captain in the army, swooped up the photographs and said, thank you very much. These will make nice additions to my collection. And he just walked the fuck out. So I mean, like the French, hats off to the French too, because they have figured out the antibodies to being honey trapped, which is, you know, hey, everybody does it. But yes, this is a tried and true tactic of the Russian intelligence services. They do it to this day. I interviewed a guy, a GRU agent who was ethnically Russian, but living in Ukraine, who would travel back to Russia all the time. His family lived in Smolensk, his aunts and uncles, and they honey trapped him there. He met a girl at a disco. They went to a hotel. The next morning, he thought everything was fine. They had a nice time. The next morning, two plainclothes Russian guys came up to him with a camcorder and said, we have this on tape. She's accused you of raping her. So you come to work for us. He spied for the GRU for 10 years, destroyed his life. He ruined his life. He's in prison now, right? So, I mean, the Russians know how to do this. But I want to talk to you about, you know, there's been speculation. Everybody does this, right? The Americans do it. CIA does not do this, at least not anymore. Can you explain? We do not do that. I mean, you know, first of all, our listeners, our viewers, they're not going to believe me when I say this. But I'm still going to say it because we have to be true to our previous profession. There's a reason why the CIA does not like to do this, because in the process of recruiting someone, you want to, of course, obtain information. You want them to be also reliable and loyal. Blackmailing somebody, and that's what this is, is not a great way to have a long-term, I will say it again, penetration agent. Sorry, I have to do that. A long-term agent. It's just, you know, it's not something that's going to be sustained over time. And so the CIA, at least in my time, and it's been a hell of a long time, so over the last, you know, half century, we really do not do these things. I think Americans are a little more moralistic. They're not going to do these things. And so the idea of blackmailing someone, because essentially that's what this is, but we don't do it. It's, you know, we are taught about it in our training. We are certainly taught about it in our counterintelligence awareness. I mean, the famous thing is, you know, you go, you know, to a foreign country, if you go to serve in Bogota or Beirut, where there's gorgeous women everywhere, you know, you got to be a little careful if you're like a three or a two, and all of a sudden everyone's running up to you. Come on and run. You know, you're going to be a little careful if you're like a three or a two. And so, you know, we are taught about it in our counterintelligence awareness, which is interesting because there is a huge industry out there, by the way, in corporate America, in, you know, international security firms who do actually provide these kinds of defensive counterintelligence briefings to companies. And, you know, someone I know and I follow, Fred Burton, who basically said this is a corporate espionage mess because of exactly that. So, you know, at the end of the day, we really don't do it now. It's not to say it hasn't worked successfully in the past. I mean, I was thinking back, like, who is the architect of what these operations are like? Go back to East Germany, the former East German spymaster, you know, what was it? Marcus Wolff, right? The man without a face. And they talked about these Romeo operations. I think the East German, the Stasi were recruiting West German secretaries. And there's some great old shows I've seen on Netflix or, you know, about this. And so, you know, it is certainly done, but again, not long-term productive agents. I got to tell you a story, though. Go ahead. Because, as you noted before, you know, every time I hear about honey trap, honeypot ops, any type of entrapment. And so this is in the mid-1990s. Remember, there was a war in the Balkans. And I was sent out to Croatia. And I'm actually going out where the U.S. government is working with the Croatian government. I have to kind of talk around some of the things that we were doing. But I was going out literally one night. We had an off night. And I was going to meet a Croatian sniper to go play pool. Literally to play pool. And I leave my hotel, which was the Zagreb Intercon, which was a wild place. This was like out of Star Wars with, you know, their bar had people because there were people from all over the world coming to fight in the Balkan wars at the time. But I walk out of my room, middle of winter, and the room right next to me opens up. And two women in bikinis look at me and in broken English and very broken, crooked teeth, maybe that affected my decision making, said, you know, careful now, Mark, Mr. Mark, will you please talk to me? And I said, will you please come in? I'm not going to get the accent right. Come in and fix our mini bar. It's broken. And I said, excuse me? They said, our mini bar is broken. I started laughing. And I said, no, thank you. And I remember I go and I go meet the Croatian sniper. And I said, what the hell? I'm going to hang out and have a beer with you. You guys are taking a run at me. And that's a time, of course, you know, after when, you know, there was still probably pro-Soviet, pro-Russian elements throughout the services. And he's like, yeah, maybe a different service took a run at you. Sorry. I go back to the embassy and I report it. And I'm not again, I'm not going to say the name because he turned out to be very senior counterintelligence official in the U.S. government. And I said, hey, this happened. You know, do I have to write it up? And he said, well, what'd you do? And I said, well, I'm not supposed to. And he goes, well, hold on a second. Are you married? I said, no. He said, do you have a girlfriend? I said, not at the time. He's like, eh. I was like, wait a second. You might as well. You might as well. You could have played her back. You could have doubled her. Yeah. Anyhow. So that's my story. So it does happen. And it's amusing. And you put yourself in compromising positions. And, you know, the bottom line is the French actually, you know, if you if we kind of dissect their attitude towards this, it's because of the different set of cultural norms and morals. The French say, well, you can't blackmail me. And so, you know, at least not with sex, right? With money, you could. And so so that's why you wouldn't take a run at them in that way. So so I'm going to give you a quiz. So what's the oldest profession on the planet? Prostitution. What's the second oldest profession? Espionage. There you go. It's a marriage sort of not really made in heaven. So this is a complicated relationship. But, you know, we're joking around about this. But on a very serious note, you know, so we have an alleged Chinese intelligence operation involving the NVIDIA CEO, arguably one of the most powerful individuals on the planet right now. If you think about how AI is dominating, you have suspicions that the Singapore based company that helped them help China obtain restricted chips. And then. And questions over whether the-- whether, you know, Wang and the NVIDIA leadership and U.S. authorities ever protected this type of information. And then finally, the lack of U.S. government action on this. So this is a it's a pretty big deal. If you're an FBI special agent right now working on a counterintelligence squad or anything like that at CIA with a counterespionage group, NSA, anyone who's involved in these things, you're looking at this and saying, like, you know what, we had this and our policymakers didn't do anything. And that's extremely frustrating. And that's not what the American people expect of the public servants. You know, we do our part. But at the end of the day, no action is taken. And so, you know, that's that's the thing that I think the Congress and if there's going to ever be oversight, this is a place I would think that Jensen Wang might find himself in front of congressional oversight. I think there's been talk of that come January 3rd, but I think that's certainly appropriate. Yeah. And I mean, I hate to say it, but, you know, one of the biggest detractors of allowing you to do this is the fact that you're not going to be able to do it. And I think that's tech companies to export sensitive technologies to places like China's Steve Bannon. Right. So within MAGA, there's been this fight. So, you know, you had the Bannon caucus versus the one led by David Sachs, who I think was what the cryptos are under Trump. Just a fucking buffoon on Twitter, too, is very pro-Russian, you know, wants Ukraine to surrender and all this. And there's oh, no, no, you know, let America lead the way in AI technology. Of course, you're not going to be able to do that. So you're not going to be able to do that. The Chinese get access to things, RIP, that they have no business or no right to get access to. And let's let's go over one more thing, Michael. And I think it's important because this is where, you know, President Trump really does himself no favors. What the president should have said was this is a serious matter and we're looking into it. He makes himself look rather foolish by saying, well, actually, I called Jensen Wang and he said I didn't know she was a spy. Well, guess what? She might. Doesn't matter. So two things. One is he's not going to admit it. And number two, if he didn't know, it doesn't matter. You know, so he fell. You know, they were trapped into this. And, you know, to me, just that that notion of Trump once again taking some intelligence. Remember, this goes back to the Helsinki summit back in 2018. Jonathan Lemire, our friend, asked Trump a question about, you know, Russian interference in the elections. And Trump says, well, you know, the Russians. Didn't do it. And I believe Putin. You know, there's no reason for him to keep siding with everyone, you know, on the opposite end of U.S. intelligence. And because the men and women see that. And to me, you know, he just he has this just instinctive inability, of course, to take any kind of accountability, but even just to say a normal response, which is this is potentially serious and we are looking into it. Thank you very much. And everyone would actually say that's an excellent point. And I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. And I think that's a good point. Thank you. Right. And if you willingly do it, that's even worse, obviously. But it doesn't matter. They're there to extract information and to prey upon your emotional and psychosexual vulnerabilities. Right. And it seems like this is we don't we don't know the full extent of the damage that's been done here. NVIDIA shares plummeted as a result of this. So the Chinese have already cost the American tech industry, what, billions of dollars, potentially, and maybe more. This also goes in line with the rampant corruption. It's the lack of background. It's the lack of background investigations on anybody who serves in government and now, you know, excusing what seems to be a pretty serious counterintelligence breach. And so that's where I think January 3rd, you know, when the new Congress is seated, these things really matter. By the way, we talked about this with, you know, several, what, a month or two ago with Jim Himes, who's going to be the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, just oversight. This wasn't even on the radar. Now, this might just, you know, rise itself to the top of the list because of the potential significance. Again, China is our long term pacing threat. It's an adversary. We're in a race with them on AI. NVIDIA and Jensen Wang have been saying we have to cooperate with them. Meanwhile, China is stealing our secrets. And so I think there should be repercussions in this. But there's something I got to raise here. And I think, again, audience is going to love this. Because if you take a look at our old kind of things that we like to do in our free time, you know, I love baseball, I love lifting weights, doing things, but I also love spy movies and spy stories and spy books. So I was thinking of, and I mentioned it before, and I just looked it up, the program on the East German Stasi surveillance, and that just, you know, how it was endemic everywhere. It's called The Lives of Others, if you remember that. I think it's 2006. And that it's really, really kind of impactful when you watch this. And you're like, I mean, just that, that, you know, super pervasive. They coerced the girlfriend of the West German intellectual to, yeah. And so that's one. And of course, how could I have forgotten this? Red Sparrow, which, which was a movie back in 2018. How Russian intelligence actually trains their, their case officers. Well, this is alleged, it's a movie, but but to be that, to be that individual who would seduce someone, it's a, it's a, it's actually, I think it's actually, it's based on a book written by Jason Matthews, who's a former CIA officer, and which was outstanding book, the movie was okay, but it gives you a sense of it. But it just reminded me of something else. In Moscow in 2017. I remember going to a famous kind of, you know, super high end place in Moscow, and the counterintelligence advisory we always get is, hey, careful, if you go there and just have a drink, someone's going to come up to you. And so my buddy of mine who was traveling with, we go there, we walk out on a deck, you look at overlook Red Square. And lo and behold, two supermodels walk up to us and just start laughing. In the intelligence world, when you look for motivations, you prey on what people want. And, you know, sometimes it is sex, sometimes money, again, sometimes it could be ideology. But you know, sex sometimes works. Again, CIA does a lot of work. It doesn't like doing it, because it will not make you a long term, productive asset. But certainly other countries do it and do it successfully. And so I think that, you know, what we so we look at in the in the days and weeks to come is, is this story, you know, nothing, this doesn't get better, you know, with age, it ain't fine wine, spy scandals are like that. I think I've said that before, a lot of times that we're on this show. And, you know, I look, I love my, my career, I, you know, I deeply believe that CIA is an absolute institution that is imperative for US national security. I've been critical of some things in the past about the agency, but kudos to the US intelligence community, they got this right. It's the policymakers, the very senior levels of the White House, who did not and Marco Rubio, if he knew about it, allegedly, he did, he wrote this memo as national security advisor, him not throwing more of a fit, I don't know what's a better, you know, or what's more appropriate, if, if you have a massive counterintelligence concern, and your president does not take you seriously, I'm not sure how you don't, you know, offer your resignation on something like this. But, you know, we've been through this before, right? I mean, your, your old organization's been completely demoralized, hollowed out, people have been either fired, or they've retired preemptively. You know, one of the problems when you have a demoralized intelligence service is people who staff it become much more susceptible to being recruited by foreign adversaries, right? So the Trump error from an IC point of view has been a disaster. He doesn't believe his own people, you know, they tell him, for instance, the Russians are sharing, you know, a critical targeting packages against US troops with the Iranians, they're sending the Iranians anti ship missiles and helping them in all kinds of military technological ways. He just shrugs, he says, Oh, it's no big deal. We can still get make a deal with Putin, right? Yeah, I mean, it's it's he's sort of the worst person to have in the cockpit right now. Because if there is a colossal breach, which I think this this qualifies this one, he just he doesn't see the point. He doesn't care. And it is interesting at the end of the day, when those of us who have followed, like yourself, who followed the intelligence business, myself, who was in it, you see an op like this. And again, the Chinese are adversaries, but there's a little bit of a tip of the cap to them. Yeah, all right. No, that's a that's a that's a hell of an op they pulled off. At the same time, I'll say it one more time. That good job on US counterintelligence for for uncovering this probably with a hell of a lot of work, perhaps things we don't know about, like our own penetrations of the of the Chinese regime. But and by the way, one more thing for Jensen Wong, and for for Alice Wong, you know, when you do these things, you know, you there has to be some part of I don't know if it's ego, there's something in your mind saying that I'm not going to get caught. You know, so so you know, Jensen Wong's having this allegedly having an affair and assuming he knows that his new girlfriend is a Chinese intelligence agent. How long did he think he was going to be able to get away with this? That's always a fascinating thing to explore because, you know, he's on the he's riding the gravy train. He's riding on Air Force One everywhere. He's literally on Air Force One. Yet his girlfriend's a Chinese spy. Pretty amazing what must be going through his head. Well, I mean, and also given the corporate governance of NVIDIA, I mean, everything I'm reading, hearing, there is no next in line. I mean, this is the guy who founded the company in 1993. You know, he is he is so branded with it. It's it's sort of like Musk and SpaceX. So does he now ride it out? And, you know, while they get their house in order and figure out who's going to replace him, or does he just kind of live this down with again, coming back to my earlier point with Trump in the White House, he probably can afford to live this down at least until the end of this term. So. Yeah. And this look just this raises another kind of provocative question, which is we only know about the breaches that we know about. We don't know about the breaches that we don't know about. And given the rather fertile terrain that we have now, where we have a hollowed out counterintelligence apparatus, the FBI, a lot of the veteran guys who worked Russia, CIA and the New York field office have retired or left. Actually, most of the FBI agents, they're chasing people at Home Depot right now. They're chasing people at Home Depot. I meet friends from the FBI. I said they're working overtime at Home Depot, chasing, you know, with this bullshit. And, you know, the thing that always comes up in conversations I have is they know where the bodies are buried. I mean, they're doing the collection. They're surveilling the operatives. They know where the networks are. But it's a, quote, political will factor, right? The absence of political will to go after the bad guys, if those bad guys happen to be coming from a country that this administration is desperate to do a deal with. And right now you've got, I would argue, two highly conflicted, if not compromised special envoys in Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner trying to not only solve the Ukraine war, but relitigate the post-Cold War security architecture of Europe. And the Europeans are beside themselves, terrified of what's happening here because they see these two guys as not only bumbling imbeciles, not professional diplomats who don't understand the Russians and are being led by the nose, but also as financially, at least completely compromised by foreign actors. And that's and so this is, this is a tease for a future show because we're talking about China and the MSS now. But I think one of the things that, again, post-January 3rd, you are going to find is a lot of details in dirt on Kushner and Witkoff coming out. It is no secret that Jared Kushner could not get a security clearance for many months, if not years, at the White House. And we're not even talking about why that was the case. And so, you know, there is going to be a lot coming out on these two. And I don't see how either of them survive as special envoys once there are hearings, once they are subpoenaed. Once these things come out, because it's going to be ugly and frankly, it's deserved, whatever comes their way. Well, one of the things that, you know, there's been a lot of sort of scrutinizing of the article in Vanity Fair by this author who wrote a book on Kushner. Oh, Matthew Cole. Matthew Cole. Yeah. But one of the things that I heard independently of what Matthew Cole has reported is that Kushner was told in term one, the Russians are into your comms. Yes, that's correct. Did he take steps to prevent them from continuing to be in his comms or did he just kind of shrug it off? I mean, this is a guy who was already developing a relationship with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, who's now the chief negotiator or one of the main interlocutors on the Russian side for ending the war and doing all of the things I just mentioned. Eric Prince was meeting with Dmitriev in the Seychelles. I mean, it was it was a complete CI catastrophe. This is back 10 years ago. Now, 10 years later, what leads have the Russians cultivated or what threads have they pulled off? And who are they actually listening into? Like what conversations, if not, who have they recruited on the U.S. side? And by the way, if the Democrats are smart, they will focus on these types of investigations. This is factual. This is going to be based on a lot of work and based on subpoenas when these individuals come in. You know, there's all these talks about impeachment and this and that and that's all. And that's a lot of political theater. And you can see why there would be reasons for for some of those. Certainly, I don't think going after President Trump would be a wise idea because that really backfired. We've talked on the show before. But there are still national security minded Republicans who have been living in a state of occultation or they've they've entered into a state of internal exile since Trump came into office again. But they're the ones kind of whispering to me. It's like, all right, it's not the end of the world. The Democrats took both houses. We just hope they do oversight correctly. That's right. To your point, don't don't chase, you know, the dragons of impeachment and don't do the big, bright, shiny thing. Drill down into the financial transactions. And Witkoff and Kushner are the two big targets here from the Republican side. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I inshallah, I guess we're allowed to say that, you know, the Democrats do this correctly. Another outstanding episode of The Bulwark Takes. And we're getting rats. Well, we're getting down to the point. Let's see. It's it's close to time where we're going to have rats make its debut. The reporter in The Spy, November 22nd. I know both of us are super excited. We're extremely grateful for The Bulwark. Thank you so much for being here. This is literally two friends and professional colleagues as well. You and I being able to just kind of, you know, shoot the crap on air. And one thing is that we always have to mention, we absolutely love the comments from all the listeners and the viewers. We mentioned a bunch of espionage stories. So what I'd love to have people see people write in is what were their favorite types of movies, books, anything. And we'll read those on air. We're going to actually dedicate some shows to kind of show you a little bit of what's going on. And we're going to kind of, you know, where espionage kind of goes in with, you know, U.S. culture and cinema and literature. And that's going to be a lot of fun because who doesn't love reading a good spy book or watching a good spy story? You know, I was going to say that Rats sounds more like one of those mafia tell-all shows that they used to parody on The Sopranos more than The Spy. It's just going to make a good coffee mug or a t-shirt. I will wear the first Rats t-shirt on air. There we go. On that note, I think we should, we should wrap Rats or the proto-Rats because we're still technically bulwark tapes takes. Thanks for joining. I'm Michael Weiss and my partner as always, Mark Palmaropoulos. We will see you next time.