FULL TRANSCRIPT: Ex-CIA Spy: China Is Preparing & We’re Not Paying Attention!

Because that’s that, anyway, I’m disappearing down a rabbit hole.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, you’re not. I mean, this is exactly the rabbit hole that I wanted to go down, because this is the Dare of a Seer. So I do want to understand how you think about selling, because that seems like the hardest thing to sell, to get, you know, potentially a Russian to commit treason against their country. I’m thinking, God, what are you offering them in terms of an incentive?

So would your job in that be to convince them, or would it be to go and meet them to collect the information? Or would it be something else?

MIKE BAKER: It could be all of those. And then part of it depends on where, what location. I mean, sometimes you have difficult places. Obviously, it’s more difficult to work in a challenging environment, like pick a place. I mean, right now, current conflicts, think about working in Lebanon, right? Yeah, developing or working with a source. I don’t, it’s not a lot of potential recruits for Hezbollah, right? Even though there’s headroom, I don’t think there’s a lot of willing people wanting to take some of those jobs.

But the point being is that you could end up doing all of those things. You might have spotted somebody, you might develop, you might recruit them, right? And you’re going to handle them for a while. Maybe then you’re going to head off someplace else, and someone else is going to come in and take over that relationship.

That’s also a crucial point, right? Because if you’ve developed a personal relationship with somebody, to the point where they’re going, “Yeah, I guess I can do that. I can provide you with intelligence on this or that.” Think about it, they’re not just betraying their country. I’ve always thought about this, particularly when we’re talking about traitors here in the States. Ed Lee Howard, Jim Nicholson, Hanssen, these are all traitors to the US. So moles, whatever you want to call them within the agency. Hanssen was at the FBI, one of the most destructive traitors we ever had.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But what did he do?

MIKE BAKER: He, interestingly enough, was a longtime FBI agent who was responsible for counterintelligence to some degree, for a big degree, related to the former Soviet Union and to Russia. And so he had a tremendous amount of knowledge about how the Russian service worked. And then eventually he ended up allowing, he wasn’t even recruited, he offered his services, but he offered them in such a way, because he understood how they worked, that he was able to do it without the Russians knowing who he was.

So it was a very remote relationship, and he controlled it, which is fascinating, which allowed him to then do this for a very long period of time and betray a number of our Russian assets. And those people didn’t have a happy ending.

But the idea is that you look at those people, or you look at anybody who does that. They’re not just betraying their country, they’re betraying their service, they’re betraying their family, all these things, because it’s a fascinating psychology. And if you don’t think about that, if you don’t understand that, then I think it’s hard to close the deal with anybody.

Motivations for Betrayal

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is that deal? So in the case of the gentleman you mentioned, who was a traitor to the US, is he getting paid? Is it money?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, he was getting paid. He had some issues. He was kind of a quirky individual. He was spending a lot of money on a mistress, or someone who he imagined to be his mistress. And motivation can be a difficult thing sometimes. And sometimes it’s a very straightforward thing. It’s usually not ideology.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Interesting.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I know. I had the same thought when I first started, and they kind of went through this process of saying, what are motivations? Well, money is a big one. And then ideology, not so much. Sometimes it could be something as simple as they’ve got a sick kid, they can’t get treatment for the kid in whatever country they happen to reside in. Sometimes it’s more base than that. They just don’t feel like they got enough hugs from their employer, or they feel disrespected by their government or whatever.

You have to be able to identify those weaknesses, and then you have to be willing to play on them, frankly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so on the point of identification, if you met me, and I was an asset, that’s the word, right?

MIKE BAKER: You would be, I mean, if we had just met, you would be a potential source, a potential target, developmental.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, so I’m a cab driver, and I drive a high-ranking official. And every day in the car, he’s telling me everything that’s going on. He’s just offloading. So you want to recruit me, right?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So how do you go about recruiting me?

MIKE BAKER: Well, theoretically, it’s just going to be, I’m going to find something that you’re interested in.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How?

MIKE BAKER: And then I’m going to be a conversation. It’s as simple as that.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you might get in my cab one day?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah. And then I’ll just get in your cab, and we’ll start talking.

The Art of Conversation and Intelligence Gathering

MIKE BAKER: People love, I mean, you’re probably on planes as much as I am, people love to talk, right? And they love to talk about themselves. So if you just ask questions, if that’s all you do, you don’t have to say anything about yourself. I don’t know how many thousands of conversations I’ve had where someone says, “So what do you do?” And I said, and just, you know, I’ll give them some bullshit. I mean, not now, but yeah.

And as soon as you give them something that doesn’t sound interesting, then fine. Now you got a runway, and you just turn it on to them and say, “So what do you do?” People want to talk about themselves. It’s striking sometimes.

And I mean, we find this all the time, and it’s just information gathering, right? Like if we have a client, and they say, “We’ve got a business in pick a place, let’s just for grins, let’s say China, we’ve got an investment that we’ve made in China. But it doesn’t, it’s not making sense, right? We’re not seeing what we thought we were going to see from the revenues or from the production, whatever, what’s going on?”

Well, if we have someone rock up at that factory, or that manufacturing facility, or whatever, and outside the factory is just rows of noodle shops, or whatever, food trucks, or whatever you want. But there’s maybe a security guard, or some people just sitting around, they love to talk, right? Because they’ve got nothing else going on in their day. And so the information you can get from people, whether it’s a security guard sitting in a booth all day long, who’s suddenly going to tell you, “Well, no, the plant is only up and operating Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” or “This is the number of trucks that are coming out,” a little benign stuff that no one’s going to think anything of, the amount of information you can gather from people.

MIKE BAKER: Maybe it’s someone who’s working as a cleaner in a building, maybe it’s a cab driver, it doesn’t matter. You know, it’s a secretary in a business. You’re looking for people with access, who they’re just going to be inclined to talk. It sounds odd sometimes.

But you get that conversation going, you find things that the person’s interested in, then you start mirroring that perhaps maybe that only you know, “I’m interested in that too.” Maybe I’m not, maybe I find it boring as hell. There was one where it was like chess. I was like, I hate chess. But the guy was really into chess, and I was overseas. And we were drinking and bumped into him at the bar. And you know, we started talking and turns out that his passion was chess. Suddenly, my passion is chess.

Problem is, you got to demonstrate that. And I sucked at it. So that was a quick crash course in how to at least make myself look somewhat reasonable. But then you’re just looking for other points of access. And what that turns into is points of leverage.

So that sounds, once you take it far enough down the walk, it can sound very mercenary. And it is, you’re talking about asking people to do something that’s not necessarily in their best interests. But you’re doing it for a very stated purpose. Now, again, a lot of people will listen to this and go, “That’s just bullshit. You’re just doing it for the man. You’re doing it for the government.”

Okay, well, you know, nations that are hostile to US interests, or UK’s interests, or Australia’s interests, or Canada’s interests, or Europe’s interests, they’re doing this all the time. And they’re doing it a lot more aggressively and with no guardrails about how they behave.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I’m that cab driver, I started offloading to you, because you’ve got me talking, you told me your, you know, you said your career is not interesting. I start talking. At what point do you look, seek out that leverage? So at some point, you’re looking for him to maybe say his son’s sick or something, right?

MIKE BAKER: Well, I mean, I did something along those lines, or you’re just looking for, you’re building a profile of the person’s personality. So you’re trying to understand what’s important to them. You’re trying to understand what drives them, you’re trying to understand where their problems are, you’re trying to understand if they have any grievances, you’re really just building a map of what this person is like.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’re not going to get that in one taxi ride.

MIKE BAKER: Oh, no, no, not at all. So what do you want to do? You want to have a reason to meet up again, right? You’re always looking, in simple terms, you get that first encounter, what do you want? Well, you want a second encounter. So you got to find some reason for that. Now, sometimes it’s easier than other times.

Like, so, you know, you can’t always get that. But that’s what you’re looking for, another reason to meet back up with that individual, seemingly just for no other reason than this just happens. Or, I mean, it’s like this morning, I got in the car, right? It was an Uber. And at the end of the drive, the guy gives me his card, says, “Hey, you know, if you ever need a ride, whatever, I’ve got a couple of cars. And so this is kind of what I do. Plus I do the Uber. I like that as well.”

And so now, yeah, fine, I can give him a call back. And I’ve done that overseas in cases where I’ve said, “Look, I need to know that I can get from point A to point B tomorrow. Can I just call you rather than hope that I catch a cab?” There’s a lot of ways you can do this. It’s not rocket science, but it can be difficult when you’re talking about a high value target.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Cab drivers are probably a little bit more straightforward, because there’s a clear reason why you’d frequent their presence, but maybe the head of the Iranian nuclear program is a little bit more complicated.

MIKE BAKER: Although that would be good, too.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So your training, they find you at 22 years old, what do they train you to be good at?

MIKE BAKER: There’s everything from tradecraft, which is a key part of it. And tradecraft encompasses a lot of things. It’s how do you conduct yourself overseas? How do you do clandestine communications? How do you go undercover? Use of disguise, surveillance, counter surveillance. There’s a lot to when I just say tradecraft, what that involves. And then there’s other training, there’s paramilitary training and other things that you do.

Psychological Training

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about people skills? What are the people skills they try and teach you?

MIKE BAKER: There’s a lot of talking about the psychology of the recruitment process, which means you’re diving into profiling individuals, the psychology of how people think, what that process does to an individual. And there’s, it’s interesting. There’s some folks who I think struggled with that more than others. And I think the idea of getting people to that point of recruiting people, I think some folks found it difficult, maybe problematic, because of the manipulation involved.

You know, I didn’t, again, not necessarily being a deep thinker, I didn’t sit a lot of the time at home, angst ridden over whether I was being manipulative or not, I would just, I have a task, I’m going to do the task and then move on. But the training can take quite a while, can be a couple of years before they feel like you’re ready to go out.

Leaving the CIA

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you eventually leave the CIA after a very, very long career there. Why did you leave?

MIKE BAKER: My daughter was young. And I was in the process of getting a divorce, which took a while, my ex-wife, great person, but not compatible. By the end, I think my career was a little difficult. And so I needed to do something that kept me closer to home.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You started doing corporate espionage thereafter.

MIKE BAKER: We call it strategic intelligence and investigations.

STEVEN BARTLETT: For someone that doesn’t know what strategic intelligence and investigation slash espionage is, it’s effectively being a spy for companies.

MIKE BAKER: It could be, there could be an element of that. Yes, I’m not going to deny that. Look, it’s, there are corporations out there that are very aggressive in understanding what other companies are doing, in particular. But what we got started in was primarily a company will come to you and say, “We’re making an investment in a country we’ve never operated in before. Pick a country. Tell us everything we need to know. What are the problems? What are the risks? What are the threats? How do you assess that?”

It could be, “We’ve had a fraud, we’ve got theft of intellectual property. We need to know how bad it is.” It could be, “We’re doing a joint venture and we just need to know about who we’re investing in.” You never know. It could be that they’re saying, “Look, we’re not having any success in maybe they’re in the mining sector. We’re not having any success in Africa where we’re trying to pick up these licenses. And yet these other companies are picking up left and right. What are we doing wrong? What are they doing right? Who are they dealing with?” So now we’re getting closer to what you referred to as corporate espionage.

But you have to, because you’re not working for a government, the guardrails have now shrunk in terms of what you can do. And so you have to know what is legally appropriate in each jurisdiction. And that changes. What you can do over here is different than what you could do in the UK or in France or in the U.S. or wherever. So as long as you know what the parameters are, then you do that to gather information that’s going to benefit the client.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did you have to go undercover in terms of physical disguises?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah. On occasion, which was great. I mean, if you like, I love the acting part of it, because you’d be completely absorbed in it. And I love it. So I didn’t have a problem. Sometimes people don’t enjoy it or it’s not, if you’re not confident, if you don’t have, if you put on a disguise, whether it’s a full overhead mask or whether it’s just a disguise kit or whatever, if you’re not comfortable doing that, it’ll show out. But if you’re walking down the street in disguise, nobody on that street is thinking, “Oh, that guy’s in disguise.” It’s not how people think. So unless you do something stupid, it’s not going to show out.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did you ever wear a mask?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah. That’s a fright. Look, we had Hollywood makeup artists there that I mean, their disguise unit is legendary. Amazing what they can do.

Company Rules

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why did you write Company Rules?

MIKE BAKER: I felt like for me, over a short period of time after I’d been involved in private sector for quite a while, it suddenly occurred to me that the reason why we were able to keep a business breathing was because of some of these things that I absorbed from the company. These rules. And it’s not like there’s a book. They don’t hand you a book and say, “Here’s your company rules” on day one.

It’s, they’re implied. They’re kind of embedded in the training process of the CIA. And so what I hadn’t realized was, because I thought when I got out, look, people asked me when I said I was going to leave. I didn’t retire. I was too young to retire. I was leaving. I left behind my pension and everything, I didn’t have, there was no financial reason to do what I did.

And so they were — their question was always the same, “What the hell are you going to do?” I didn’t have an answer, which probably should have been a red flag. But I knew I was going to have to go into kind of this world of gathering information, of security services, because I don’t think I fit anywhere else.

And so it took me a long time to realize that the reason why I was able to build a business, and I couldn’t have built a business without a very, very close friend of mine, Nick Day, who came out of SPS and MI5. But we couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t absorbed some of that training and those rules, as I put them, from the agency. So that’s why I wanted to try to say, look, this is why I was able to do this and keep a business breathing.

Look, we haven’t built a mega corporation, but we built a nice life for a lot of people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what are the most sort of transferable rules that you were able to transfer from your time working in the CIA to the world of business that you were like, “Oh my god, this is exactly the same game here, the same technique”?

Define the Mission

MIKE BAKER: I mean, first and foremost, it was, we’ll start out with the first one I put down, which is define the mission. So the agency does that very well. At the very outset, you spend a lot of time sitting in classrooms, listening to people explain how the agency works, why it works the way it does, where it fits within the government, what its purpose is, what its mission is.

And if you don’t know that, right, then whether it’s the CIA or whether it’s your business, then you got a problem. You probably shouldn’t really get started. And then you have to communicate that mission. And that’s what they did very, very well.

And so I took that away. And I was always very simple minded in terms of a business. I always knew what I wanted to do, which was provide, again, the best quality product possible. That’s how you get companies to stay with you for 20 years. They know you’re going to bust your ass and you’re going to overproduce. And you’re going to do everything within what you can do to give them the best information so that they can then win in whatever they’re working or operating.

And then we, you know, I think if you hire smart people and you explain the mission, you communicate that properly to them, then your battle’s half won. You’ve really cracked that nut.

Know Your Risk Appetite

MIKE BAKER: But then other parts of it are you’ve got to know your risk appetite. And the agency spends a lot of time, I guess that was my point from earlier, is that a lot of people think the agency just goes out and does shit, right? “Let’s just go blow that building up, or let’s go pick up that high value target, or let’s go whatever it is we’re going to do.” And they don’t give any thought to it because that’s how the movies operate. And they just go do this shit.

There’s a lot of time spent on risk versus gain. And what’s the potential blowback? What do those scenarios look like? So you have to know your risk appetite and you have to communicate that because everybody has to be on the same page as to what’s allowable and what’s not allowable.

And that’s true in private sector as well. We have to know, “You can’t do this. You can’t have a one-party conversation and record it in a particular jurisdiction” or “No, you can’t do the following because the information you’re gathering is going to end up in court. It’s got to be evidentially proper.”

So things have to be done in an appropriate way. So if you don’t know all those things, then you’re going to get yourself crosswise somehow.

MIKE BAKER: Know your operating environment is a key thing. This is a constant surprise sometimes with some companies that we start working with where you realize that they don’t necessarily understand the operating environment, where they’re working, what the market restrictions are, what their competitors are doing. What the government is like in that particular country, what the instability issues are, whatever it may be. You put all that together, you know your operating environment, you know your risk, you define your mission.

And then at some point, you got to make decisions. And I think that’s, again, a long-winded answer to your question, which is probably the most important thing I took away was what I referred to as getting off the X. And the X is the ambush site. So in the old days, you don’t want to end up on the ambush site. That’s a bad place to be.

And there are indicators. Whether you’re talking about being in Mexico and rolling up on a cartel ambush, or you’re talking about being overseas in a place like Iraq, and you’re in a convoy movement, and you have to understand what the indicators are that something bad is going to happen if you don’t make a decision.

Make a Decision

MIKE BAKER: You’re never going to get all the information you want in business. But there are a lot of people who get paralyzed by that. They want all the data, they want to be able to think through. You know, that’s a good thing if that’s your mindset, but something bad is going to happen, or you’re going to miss an opportunity. It’s going to pass you by.

And so one of the things that the agency taught was just make a damn decision. With the information that you’ve got, you’re always going to want more, but with the information that you’ve got, whether it’s imperfect or not, understand the nature of that information, but then just make a damn decision.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do they get you to do that? Because there’s a lot of people listening now that may be paralyzed in their own personal lives with a decision to leave a job, to leave a city, to leave a partner, you know, or a big strategic decision.

MIKE BAKER: That’s actually really good. That’s a good point. Yeah. The agency teaches you through sort of repetition and understanding that, “Sorry, you waited too long. This is not good.” But in a better sense, I think what I’ve learned also is, look, I tell my kids this all the time. I tell my boys and my daughter this, is that there’s never that many options on the decision tree. Not that life’s completely binary, but we tend to overthink everything.

And we tend to overcomplicate things when we’re faced with a decision, whether it’s, “Do I leave my job? Do I move?” Whatever it might be. “Do I take a big strategic decision for my company?” You tend to overcomplicate. I’ve always found, and maybe I’m simple-minded, but one of the things that I took away from the agency is that life sometimes is just as simple as it seems. And again, I’m not a big conspiracy theorist, but so if you narrow it down and say, “Look, I’m not faced with an endless array of options here, you know, I may have on any big decision, I may have two or three options.”

“I’m going to take this job.” Okay. What does that mean? Well, it means I’m taking a chance. People talk about writing your positives and your negatives down. I don’t know whether that’s really a helpful thing or not, because then you get lost in this list and you start imagining positives and negatives.

So I always try to say, look, you don’t act just for the sake of acting. That sometimes has its own negative consequences, but you should take the information you’ve got. And then you just, you make a decision. Because if, again, if it’s the inertia of not acting, if you’re in an unhappy relationship and you say, “What do I do? Do I stay in this unhappy relationship? Because maybe it’s going to get better.” Okay. What are the odds of that happening? It’s been going on for 10 years. Maybe you’re not happy. Get the hell out. Do something different.

If you’re thinking about changing your job, if you’re not happy in your job, which is a quality of life issue, and I tell that to my folks all the time, if you think you would be happier somewhere else, you’ve got to go give it a try. If you think you’d be happy going out and starting a business, you should do that.

But you gotta jump in. And I know I’m, this is probably not as detailed as a psychiatrist would give, but I really do honestly believe that any major decision, you can distill it down to a very, very limited number of options. And that makes it easier. But if you just sit there staring at it and people do, I would see this in operations all the time.

People would just start imagining all the different scenarios. And I thought, “You know what, honest to God, when the whistle goes, and the ambush starts,” usually you shouldn’t start an ambush with a whistle. You know, it’s going to go one way, another way. Don’t get bogged down in what could happen, what might happen. And that was another thing I think I did well at the agency was I didn’t ever sit around and stare at my belly button and think, “Well, I wonder what would have happened if I’d done this.” No, you live with your mistakes, you live with your consequences, you live with the good things. Life is tough enough as it is. And we just seem like we want to make it tougher. And I don’t ever understand that.

Consequential Election Results

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s an interesting time in the United States at the moment.

MIKE BAKER: Is it?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting time in the world, to be honest, when you think about everything that’s going on. Very, very unique times. But Trump has just been elected. He’s now President Elect of the United States. Is that consequential? And if so, how do you believe it to be consequential?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, what do they say? Don’t talk about politics, religion or taxes. So yes, I think it is consequential. I think it was something that very few people predicted the size of the victory. Look, he took all the swing states. He turned a surprising number of districts in favor of the Republicans in states that he didn’t win. He outperformed in most categories.

The demographics were rather shocking. And people wanted to talk about how well it’s going to be the — it’s going to come down to the women voters. Well, it didn’t. Fewer women voters voted for Kamala Harris than they did previously for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. So and he gained in suburban voters, women voters. So it’s consequential in reshaping, at least in the short to midterm, people’s understanding of the electorate.

I think now, it’s probably not consequential in the fact that I don’t know that the Democrats, they don’t seem to be doing it yet. I don’t think they’re going to be particularly self-aware or introspective. They spent months, longer than that, referring to a large portion of the population as moronic, as unintelligent, as sexist, as racist, as garbage, as fascists, as Nazis. How you do that, and then not understand how you’ve just gotten kicked in the ass during the election. I’m not quite sure, but they seem incapable right now of any sort of reflection on what they need to do as a party to maybe turn things around.

So I don’t know consequentially, whether it’s going to change the Democrat party for the next election. But yeah, it’ll be and then you have to ask yourself, “Okay, the policies that are important from a national security perspective, from foreign policy, what are we looking at differently here with Trump coming in?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think he’s going to end some of these wars, like the war in the Ukraine and Russia? Do you think he’s going to end that? Because I mean, he’s pretty much said in the election cycle that he was going to call Putin and end it on day one or something like that.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that. It’s going to end it on day one, going to stop this war. Yeah, with, set Trump over here to the side for a second. And you have to look at what’s happening on the ground with Ukraine and Russia. Because that will determine whether Trump’s going to be successful in any move that he makes.

So the problem that Ukraine is facing right now is either going into winter, and a massive percentage of their energy infrastructure has been destroyed by Russia. So it’s going to be a very hard winter. You look at the resolve of the Ukrainian people. And an institute in Kyiv does these very interesting surveys of Ukrainian citizens throughout Ukraine, not just in Kyiv, on a regular basis. And they ask questions like, “Are you willing to fight indefinitely? Are you willing to stay in the game? Are you willing to give it your all for however long it takes?”

And to that question, to that phrasing, at the beginning of the year, 73% said yes, of the citizenry. Last month, it was 63%. And so that 10% drop is significant when we’re talking about the fate of your nation. They’re losing soldiers at an alarming rate. And they have a significant disadvantage to the Russians in terms of manpower. The Russian manpower has, depending on who you talk to, maybe a three to one advantage in terms of available combatants.

The Russian military is gaining ground in the eastern part of Ukraine, in Donetsk, in particular. The front line is about 600 miles long, 620 miles long. In overall, right now, if you said, “Stop the war, stop the fighting.” Right now, Russia controls 20% of Ukraine.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why did Russia start this war?

MIKE BAKER: Well, I mean, if you wanted to, sort of a theoretical 30,000 foot answer. Putin has repeatedly referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest disaster of the 20th century. And he meant it. And so he’s been trying and he hasn’t been shy about it.

Ever since he’s been in charge, which seems now like about 100 years to recreate the glory, the strength of the former Soviet Union in some capacity, not entirely, he’s not crazy. But he is completely jonesing for some form of a stronger Russia. And in his mind, that means he’s got to have a buffer zone between him and NATO. And so this is part of that.

He also considers, if you think about it, he’s basically saying, “This is mine.” If you think that, which is the east, this is the eastern part of Ukraine. Frontline, this is not, I mean, simplifying this, but frontline stretches about 600 miles. He’s also annexed, of course, Crimea, but that’s another issue here. And that’s the only port for their Black Sea fleet, which Ukrainian military has frankly destroyed almost at this stage of the game. But they own, at this stage, they’ve got about 20% of Ukraine, if you were to say, “Stop the shooting now.”

And then the problem is that at the outset of this war, Zelensky and the Ukrainian government said, “The only answer here is total victory, we have to get all our territory back – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, we have to get it all back.” And that is not, again, it’s not satisfying to say this, but it’s not possible.

So the problem that is being faced right now, is when this war got started in the first year, year and a half, everybody was, you know, they’re putting their Ukrainian flags on their porch, they were putting a little flag on their Twitter site. And there’s no doubt the Ukrainian military has been incredibly courageous and the population of Ukraine has put up with a great deal.

Look, the months of September and October of this year, those two months, there’s only been one night when Kiev hasn’t been under attack by Russian drones. Which is, if you think about it, it’s insane. And that’s just Kiev. They, all their other major cities have also been under attack by the Russians. They’ve destroyed much of their energy infrastructure.

Now, a bright spot for the Ukrainian military was that they did a surprise offensive into Kursk, which is Russian territory. And in doing that, that was the first time there were foreign troops on Russian turf since World War Two. And that really shocked the hell out of Putin and the Russian military. And they acted as if they really didn’t know how to respond, didn’t have the resources to respond.

But this is a game of attrition. We’re going into our full third year early this coming year. And what’s kept them in the fight is US support and EU or NATO support. And the EU has done a very good job. I mean, look, they’ve picked up a great part of the effort. Without that support, this thing would never have lasted this long, never.

And so I think Putin, in part, has been very surprised. He miscalculated a lot of things, but he miscalculated the sort of support that Ukraine would receive from NATO in particular.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And why is NATO giving so much support? Why is this in their interests?

MIKE BAKER: Well, think about where Ukraine is. Think about where Poland is. Russian missiles have flown errantly into Poland. Their history tells them or informs them that if Putin takes Ukraine, then it’s not as if he’s going to say, “Okay, I’m done, I’m finished.” They believe… Now, whether they’re right or not, but this answers the question about why such strong NATO support, they believe that that’s not his inclination. It’s not in his character to say, “That’s all I want. I’m good.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do you think?

MIKE BAKER: I take him at his word when he says he wants to recreate the former Soviet Union in a fashion. Do I think this is enough of a buffer from NATO for him? I don’t think so. Do I think he might consider moving a little bit further north? Look, he already has. This is Belarus. Belarus is a solid ally of Putin. But is there a chance that he says to himself, “Well, maybe over here,” he’s already made verbal threats up here.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Latvia.

MIKE BAKER: Latvia, yeah. And so I think I understand what their mindset is. It’s like Israel, right? Sometimes we say, “Oh my God, why is Israel acting the way they do?” Well, because they’re surrounded by a ring of terrorist proxy that all are there to serve the purpose of the Iranian regime, which is to destroy Israel. So that’s their mindset. We don’t live there. We don’t understand it.

So to say, “Okay, well, that’s ridiculous” for someone in the US to go, “That’s ridiculous that that’s Putin.” Okay, well, fuck off. You don’t live here. You’re not in Poland watching this if he takes over Ukraine.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And World War II wasn’t so long ago.

MIKE BAKER: Exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It wasn’t until I studied World War II, which actually wasn’t very long ago, it was about six months ago, that I understood the sort of geopolitical backdrop as to why you need to defend Ukraine. Because when you see, you can probably explain it better than me, but what Hitler did, and he just took a little bit, was it like Czechoslovakia?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take this piece.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then a little bit more. And then he took a little bit more, and then a little bit more. And by the end of it, he was trying to take the UK, he was trying to take Russia, he was trying to take the lot.

MIKE BAKER: Over here in the States, you had this isolationist feeling. So World War II is happening. And they don’t want any of it. They went through World War I, they sent a lot of their boys over, and they’re like, “No, screw it. Look, we got this big ocean here, we don’t have to worry about it.”

And yeah, that’s a problem. But you see that now, there’s some of this isolationist attitude, which is “Why do we even care?” And that’s like, okay, fine, that’s a great question to ask. People should ask questions like that. But I’m telling you, having worked against Russia for a long period of time, it’s a mistake not to take Putin at his word. And we tend to always mirror our values. It’s like when we were talking about the cab driver, how do you get him into a conversation? You start to mirror the values.

And we do that as a nation, sometimes in the US, where we imagine that people are going to react the same way or think the same way about freedom or democracy, and it’s not how the world works.

Ukrainian Counter-Offensive

MIKE BAKER: So just going back here to the incursion into Russia that the Ukrainian military did. So they’re holding territory up there, maybe it depends on who you talk to, maybe 500 square miles, it varies. But they’ve stretched their resources relatively thin.

And that’s a problem, because it all goes back to war, as long as we’ve known war, which is supply lines. If you can’t maintain your supply lines, you’ve lost the plot. And so what we’re seeing right now is Putin has amassed about 40,000 Russian troops, and about 10,000 North Korean troops. And that’s another story.

So North Korea, because Kim Jong Un of North Korea, his best buddies now with Putin, he has sent upwards of 12,000 troops to Russia. And they are now on the front lines, essentially, they’re already in combat. But they’re an important part of Putin’s effort.

And I think what he’s trying to do, Trump is one, takes us back to our original point of, “Okay, what’s Trump going to do? And what’s this going to look like after the inauguration?” Trump’s one, I think there’s a calculation here, Putin could be saying, “I’ve got to do everything now, I’ve got to throw everything I can to gain that Russian territory back, before sitting down at a negotiating table, and coming up with a deal.”

Because I don’t want to sit at a negotiating table, if Zelensky and NATO are saying, “We have part of your Russian territory, you want it back? Well, we’re going to need this back, we’re going to need Eastern Ukraine back, or we’re going to need Crimea back.” I don’t think he’s ever given back Crimea. But it’s likely, I think, if you have to make these decisions, and without real insight into his mindset, it’s true, it’s all speculation.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if what he’s calculated right now, is “I got to throw all these troops to regain this Russian territory, the Ukrainians surprised us by taking ahead of sitting down and doing a negotiated settlement,” which again, is going to be very unsatisfying to all those people who put Ukrainian flags on their porch, and now they’re going to get all the territory back.

No, they’re not. They don’t have the ability to do that. And I hope that what we don’t see is if Trump, when Trump comes into office, I think he and the people that he will have around him working on this issue, will be sufficiently convinced that they have to maintain a level of support that allows Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table from at least a position of relative strength. Otherwise, they’re just sitting and they’re asking for whatever they can get in this deal. And that’s never going to sell. Zelensky’s got to sell this to the Ukrainian population.

Significance of the Conflict

MIKE BAKER: This is an incredible moment in time. This is an invading force from Russia into another country, an independent country. And there’s so much complexity here. It’s hard to explain without saying, “Okay, we’re going to take the next five or six days to talk about it.” But it’s an incredible moment in time.

And so yes, it matters a great deal about, is this consequential? It’s consequential if worst case scenario, the next administration says, “That’s it, we’re cutting off all assistance and all aid.” Well, the rest of NATO will definitely stay in the game, because they view it differently, because they’re right here. But US support is critical. And it’s critical to get a settlement.

And if what you want is to end war, to stop the killing, and if you’re pragmatic, you have to assume this is going to be a settlement that means that Russia is going to keep maybe not all of this, maybe they’ll keep this much. And this will be maybe a demilitarized zone, patrolled by UN peacekeepers or whatever, to act as a buffer.

But then you have other issues. Is Putin going to say “No part of this deal has got to be that Ukraine never joins NATO.” That’s, I’m sure that’s going to be a part of his deal. And then how NATO deals with that, I have no idea. Because they’ve already made sort of a guarantee, “Okay, you’re going to be in at some point.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do you think it ends, if you have to bet?

MIKE BAKER: I think, look, part of the reason why the North Korean troops have ended up in Russia, which is, again, is an astounding thing, is because Putin desperately doesn’t want to do another conscription. He knows that’s vastly unpopular with his folks.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Which is when you ask your everyday people…

MIKE BAKER: You basically round up more people, right? “I’m going to need another 150,000 soldiers.” Because he runs what’s essentially called a meat grinder operation. He just throws people in the front, as cannon fodder. I mean, the Russian casualty rate has been ridiculous, compared to the Ukrainians, but they’ve been willing to sacrifice all those people.

I think the idea being, look, Kim Jong Un, he’s making money off of this deal, sending troops up there. He’s getting the troops that survive, they will get combat experience. He doesn’t have a military with any combat experience right now. And he’s also getting weapons technology transfer from Russia. So he’s getting part of a deal here.

What’s Putin getting? I think Putin’s just getting bodies he can throw out there ahead of the next wave, which will be Russian troops. So I think those 10,000 North Koreans soldiers are fucked.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s been a rising sentiment in the United States that we should stop sending money to Ukraine, and why are we bothering, and this isn’t our problem, etc, etc. What do you say to those people? Because that sentiment is rising. And it’s rising, from my opinion, it’s rising on the right side of politics. I hear it more and more on some of the big podcasts. I hear it more and more on X and Twitter.

And, again, it’s only because I researched what happened in Nazi Germany in World War Two, that I suddenly go, “Okay, this is much more complicated than you think.” And you can embolden someone, if you don’t resist them invading a local country. And why stop at one?

MIKE BAKER: Well, look, I mean, this, and the thing is, the world is shrinking. The world has been and continues to shrink. Nothing happens in a bubble. So what’s happening right here is being watched by Xi Jinping in China, in terms of Taiwan.

I mean, he’s sitting there saying, “Okay, here’s Taiwan, this is straight to Taiwan, there’s no distance whatsoever.” He’s just conducted, Xi Jinping and the Chinese regime has just conducted the largest military exercise around Taiwan ever, basically blocking it off, blocking the ports and patrolling the airways. So the idea being, he just wanted to show that he could do that. And so he’s watching what’s happening over here in terms of the US response and NATO response.

And he’s saying, “Okay, at what point does it make sense for me to do this?” Because at the end of the day, Xi Jinping is tied to his desired legacy, which is the reunification. And in his mind, this belongs right here.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So let’s move on to China. The question was, how do you think it ends if you’re a betting man? How do you think the Ukrainian war ends?

MIKE BAKER: I think in this coming year, I think, in part, I know I’ve talked a lot about what the Ukrainians are suffering from, but there are reasons why Putin is going to need to figure this out as well. I think part of it is his economy is suffering.

And so I think it finishes with a negotiated settlement at some point during 2025. And I think that means the lines are going to look, again, I keep using the word unsatisfactory, but that’s the way it’s going to feel to a lot of people. The lines are going to look a lot like they did before the invasion, maybe some additional territory being held by the Russians. And then I do think that there will be some agreement to have a buffer zone that will be essentially under the auspices of UN peacekeeping troops somehow.

MIKE BAKER: You know, a no-fly zone, whatever you want to call it as well. I think that’s how it’s going to end up. I think Kursk, that region in Russia, goes back to the Russians. I think the problem is going to be, I think, in the short order, I think they’re going to want to move quickly, before we get into the teeth of winter. I think that’s going to be a mess. So that’s going to be a major, when they start that offensive, and we’re talking, again, potentially 50,000 troops thrown at a relatively thin line. I think that territory goes back to Russia.

STEVEN BARTLETT: In the next month?

MIKE BAKER: I would suspect, yeah. I mean, basically, you don’t put troops there, with all those resources without intending to use them. And I think the longer those North Korean troops sit there, the more trouble they will have in terms of command and control. So they’re going to want to get them into the cannon as quickly as possible.

China’s 2049 Plan

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you mentioned China. China feel like Taiwan is theirs. Taiwan is a little island off the coast of China. I hear about this plan that they say China has, which is the 2049 plan. What is China’s 2049 plan?

MIKE BAKER: Well, part of that was based around a timeline for how we want to refer to it, the reunification, the absorption of Taiwan, the taking over of Taiwan. Nobody really knows what that will look like, because there’s a concern, is it going to be a completely kinetic, is it going to be a military operation? Is it going to be more of a soft takeover?

Sort of like, there’s a good example right here, Hong Kong. You remember, there used to be democracy in Hong Kong. And now there’s not. And that happened over a period of time, but they basically just squashed all remnants of democracy, particularly during the pandemic.

So what’s it going to look like when they do take over Taiwan? That’s the big question. But the timeline has shrunk. So now there’s some feeling that the movement on Taiwan will be during the course of Xi Jinping’s tenure.

So what are you looking at? Well, that depends on his grip on power, which seems very solid. It seems like it depends on his health, which, again, I’d be speculating, but so I don’t see him riding off into the sunset willingly, without finishing that project that in his mind is so important. He’s consolidated power in China, like nobody since Deng Xiaoping or Mao Zedong. So I think he’s serious.

Again, take certain leaders at their word. Some bluster a lot, some make very big pronouncements. Donald Trump would be one of them who tends to just speak off the cuff and throw things out. I think the danger sometimes is the Democrats, for example, take him at his word for everything he says. They take everything he says literally. But there are other leaders, Putin, Xi Jinping, I think you need to pay real close attention to exactly what they’re saying.

So I think when he talks about that, absorbing Taiwan and making it part of the motherland again, I mean, he’s not kidding around.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why does he want Taiwan? It looks like such an insignificant part of that — part of the map. It’s so small in comparison to China.

MIKE BAKER: It’s a good point. When you look at the map, you go, “You really need to bother.” You know what, it’s part of it is the history. Ever since the Chiang Kai-shek and the separatists and the escaping to Taiwan and raising it as a separate nation, it’s just, it’s hard to explain. It’s a very emotive subject.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why does the US care so much about Taiwan?

MIKE BAKER: That’s a better question, too. Okay, part of that is, I don’t say emotional, but it’s the idea of, “Look, they’re democratic institutions. It’s an ally. How could we possibly stand by and watch a communist regime step on it and destroy it?” Part of it is practical. It’s like, it’s an important chip manufacturing center.

So there’s a couple elements to it. Honestly, look, if all the chip manufacturing on Taiwan was reshored over to California somewhere, would we care quite as much? Well, we would still care on that sort of emotional values based side. We could probably overlook it in the long run. Now, are we going to send boots on the ground over to defend Taiwan if there’s a military action? You know, going back to your betting person, I would bet no, no matter who’s in office.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But they will say they’re going to defend Taiwan. Everyone will look like the US president’s always asked, “Would you defend Taiwan if Russia invaded?” And you’ll probably know some of the quotes better than I do. But they’ve all said that they would.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah. The only slip up at one point was Biden where he really meant to say what he said, which was sort of ambiguous towards the defense of Taiwan, but then he corrected it. So do I honestly think that we would send troops over? No, no, I don’t. Do I think that we would do what we’re doing with Ukraine? Sure. We provide resources, but this is a much different situation.

And so I think while I get the concepts, I just don’t know that there’d be follow through because that is a very tough sell to explain why we’re sending troops over to face down the Chinese military, which is about a stone’s throw away from Taiwan.

And look, this is going to be an interesting situation because the folks over here, the folks in China, they don’t view the folks in Taiwan as Taiwanese. They view them as Chinese. So are you going to have Chinese military shooting Chinese? I don’t know. Maybe it’s going to be a softer takeover. Maybe there’s more influences of massive disinformation campaigns that go on on Taiwan, courtesy of the Chinese regime. There’s all sorts of efforts there to undermine Taiwanese leadership.

But this is, again, the point being is this is a crisis. Look, this is already, this is a mess and has been, and it’s underway, and it’s hopefully settled in Ukraine situation. But over here, this is looming as a major issue.

South China Sea Conflicts

MIKE BAKER: And if you think about that, there are other activities. This is what’s referred to as a South China Sea…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Below Taiwan.

MIKE BAKER: It is, yes. And it’s, this is the Philippines here, Vietnam over here. China has always viewed this as their territory. This is their backyard. Well, ever since World War Two, the US has essentially patrolled and maintained security in the South China Sea, in the interest of international free trade and freedom of movement. There are increasing numbers of encounters between the Chinese Navy and the Philippines, Vietnamese over this sea, because, again, they view this as theirs. They’re constantly in here pushing, they’re building artificial islands for ports. There’s a major flashpoint here for potential conflict.

And China, I’ve talked to a number of experts that I really value. And their take is, and I think it’s not incorrect, is that China is basically on a war footing with the West already. We just don’t see it, or we don’t feel it, or we don’t want to acknowledge it. And I don’t mean like they’re going to launch missiles, but in their minds, they’re at war with the US already. And they’re acting in a sense as if that’s the case. And we act as if, well, they’re just an economic competitor, but it would be nice if we could all get along. So I think we may be misreading the tea leaves.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Who’s the real enemy of the West, in your opinion? If you were the President of the United States, who would you be most concerned about?

MIKE BAKER: Well, this is our biggest concern. China is, I think, is the top line concern because of their abilities, their resources. And again, these sort of the increasing aggressiveness in this region, their desire to reshape the global structure. They don’t want the West to be in charge. They view this as “How do we realign this so that we get the BRICs and a different realignment of world order so that the US and its allies are not at the top of the food chain?”

So in a sense, that doesn’t mean that I think that we’re going to be in a shooting match with China anytime soon. I don’t actually believe that’s going to be the case. But that’s where we have to focus a lot of our concerns when you talk about identifying and resolving and prioritizing threats.

Iran and Regional Instability

MIKE BAKER: In the short term, right here is Iran. And look, the Iranian regime has been engaged in assassination plots to try to kill now the president-elect, as well as several other US officials who may believe were responsible for the targeting back in 2020 of Qasem Soleimani, who ran the Quds Force and was a very close ally of the Supreme Leader Khamenei in Iran.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You think Iran have tried to kill Trump?

MIKE BAKER: Oh, they have definitely. Yeah, there’s no doubt that they’ve been engaged in, they have a hit list, and they’ve actually been engaged in trying to get a plot underway to target not just him, but Mike Pompeo, Mark Milley, former head of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense, Brian Hook, and others.

So, but I guess, setting that aside, setting aside the bizarreness of this state with a hit list of US officials, and that’s just saying that out loud should make people think, “Well, that is bizarre.” But what they’ve done in terms of establishing and building over the years, this network of proxies, the Houthis, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran has stated numerous times, they’ve been very clear about it, their desire, their objective is to wipe Israel from the face of the earth.

So they’ve set up their proxies with the same objective, and the idea being, “Okay, we’ll let the proxies do the dirty work, we’re not going to take accountability, we’re not going to be in the direct line of fire.” Now that’s happened a couple of times. There’s been this direct, back and forth between Iran and Israel. So this is a very serious problem that will not be resolved, as long as the Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, maintain their belief system that Israel needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.

As long as they believe that, they will continue to be the primary cause of instability in the Middle East. So we talk about getting ceasefires in Gaza, talk about ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, not that there’s much left of the Hezbollah leadership. But that’s just putting lipstick on a pig, because you’re not solving the problem.

And, I don’t know that you’ve changed the belief structure of the Iranian regime and the IRGC. So in that case, what do you hope for? You hope for internally, that there will be at some point, the population will just say, “We’ve had enough.” I mean, there have been how many cases do we need where women go out on the streets to protest the new morality laws, and they disappear? It’s brutal. You don’t hear any of that. You don’t hear people, you don’t hear activists in the States going on college campuses and protesting the treatment of women in Iran. No, it’s always, “God, my God, look what Israel’s doing.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Those protests in Iran, did the United States fuel those protests? Did they cause disinformation in that country to try and destabilize it to try and get a coup so that they can throw out the leadership? Is that how the world works?

MIKE BAKER: You know what, what I’m going to say, I think a lot of people who would look at my background and go, “Well, of course, that son of a bitch is going to say that.” What I would say is that what happens is, okay, let me put it this way. In years past, yeah, that’s what would have happened. We would have tried to say, “Okay, how do we get that, that uprising? How do we get that?” But now it’s more, “How do we get information into those people?” And then if there is a protest that develops, “How do we support it?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do you do to support that?

MIKE BAKER: That I would argue has not worked. The green movement and a few other unsuccessful attempts by people to kind of get out on the streets and protest have been brutally put down. And the US and the UN and others, for the most part, they’re going to protest and write a nasty memo, but none of it helps.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do you get information to the people in a country like that?

MIKE BAKER: You know, they have access to some degree, most of it’s locked down, I guess, but they have access to some degree. So you try to push information out. Look, Voice of America is probably the best example over the years. VOA was for years, its whole purpose was “How do we get information about what happens in the world into Russia, into the Soviet Union?” And nowadays, you could argue you’ve got more possibilities because of technology.

That’s outside my scope. And we start talking about how you, aside from dropping leaflets, which bizarrely enough in South Korea, North Korea, they still do. South Korea drops leaflets using balloons over North Korean territory to convince people that Kim Jong-un is bad and that life could be better. But yeah, the worst part is with Iran is you just look, these people are under the thumb of the mullahs and the IRGC. And they are brutal. It’s like Hamas has ruled Gaza with an iron fist. And they’ve been brutal against anyone that they disagree with, LGBTQ activists, women, name them. And yet, you never see protests outside the country about Hamas, how they beat a gay activist. It doesn’t happen. Campus protests are all about Israel.

Israel is surrounded by a ring of proxies built by Iran that wants to destroy them. So yes, they’re going to think differently than we do.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What happened in Israel on that day where I mean, people rushed into their country and thousands of people died?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, their estimate was 1200. And then 250 were dragged off into Gaza.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I just don’t know how that’s possible when that state is so unbelievably paranoid about invasions and attacks and they have the Iron Dome. How does that happen? How does and —

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, it that was a — it was a long term project that was very well orchestrated by Hamas with Iran, the IRGC was fully aware of what was going on. The IRGC provided some of the training to some of the Hamas fighters that eventually ended up inside southern Israel.

So probably the best way to put it would be, they lulled the Israeli government to sleep and the military to sleep. They made them believe that they really weren’t interested in violence anymore. And what that did, and what they really wanted was, “Okay, we just want to try to build up our economy, and try to make a better life.” Well, that was horse shit on Hamas’s part. That’s what the Palestinians would like. But that was horse shit on Hamas’s part.

What they were doing was lulling them to sleep in that then they kind of took their eye off the ball, the Israeli government in particular, started looking more inward, you had a lot of internal political battles going on. And they were doing that because they viewed that they didn’t have the same existential threat on their doorstep that they had been dealing with. They sort of took the bait.

And it was an intelligence failure, there’s no doubt about it, in part, because the people running that operation dumbed down their communications. They deliberately stopped using communications that they felt could be compromised or had been compromised. And we’ve seen that over the years. Al Qaeda is a good example. Once Al Qaeda understood the extent to which we could intercept their communications, they went back to the old days, handing handwritten notes, “This is my cousin, I want you to take it to that person over there, who’s his cousin, only give him that note, and don’t talk to anybody.” Very hard to intercept.

MIKE BAKER: And so it’s very hard to conduct your operations, it takes a lot more time. But that’s the extent to which they went to try to get this thing done. And, unfortunately, they were very successful.

Support for Israel vs Ukraine

STEVEN BARTLETT: How are you thinking about the world’s perception, specifically the United States perception of what’s going on in Israel and Palestine? You know, we talked about how support seems to be waning for providing support to Ukraine. Is support waning, do you believe for Israel, and the plight of Israel, because there’s been a lot of information around the amount of innocent people that have been killed in Palestine?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I would be more concerned about Ukrainian support, and I would be losing the level of Israeli support.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why?

MIKE BAKER: Because I think it’s a little bit of a different dynamic. Israel has always kind of had this interesting place within US psyche, I guess. And it’s also, look, there’s a massive Jewish American community. I mean, there’s no doubt about that. So there’s a level of support there that Ukraine doesn’t have. And also just the length of support. Look, we’ve been close allies of Israel for generations. Ever since it started. You can’t say the same thing about Ukraine.

So I guess I’m hopeful that moving into the next administration, and I know people say, “Oh, my God, it sounds like you’re a warmonger.” Well, no. Again, I go back to with Ukraine. If you want peace, if that’s what you want, if you don’t want conflict, then my argument is, they’ve got to be able to sit down at a negotiating table. If Putin feels like he’s winning, if he feels like the US is backing off, he’s not going to negotiate. He’s just going to move forward. He doesn’t give a shit about his soldiers. He just keeps throwing them into the front lines. So if you want peace here, then you need to continue support sufficiently to get them to the table.

And I do think we’re close. Because again, I don’t, Russia, yes, they’re making headway here. But long term, meaning another two or three years, I don’t think Putin can sustain that with the Russian population.

Future of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

STEVEN BARTLETT: So how does Israel, Palestine’s war end?

MIKE BAKER: And unfortunately, again, being a cynic, I think it ends the way a lot of these have ended, which means we’re just putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound, and they’ll come up with a ceasefire. I think Hamas, they’ll figure out a way to bring in the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza.

I think sort of the linchpin there is if they can get a ceasefire with Gaza with Hamas. That will make it infinitely easier for the Houthis to say, “Okay, we’ll back off. We’re not going to keep screwing up the Red Sea firing missiles at international trade and US and allied naval ships.” And I think that it also allows for Hezbollah.

Look, I think the Israelis look at Hezbollah leadership now, I think we’ve pretty much taken everybody out. And there’s more of a structure in Lebanon. I think it’s always been problematic, but I think the Lebanese government could deal with the problem if there is an official ceasefire with Hezbollah.

So I think it all comes down to, and I guess what I mean by the bandaid on a sucking chest wound is that’s all well and good. We’ll stop the conflicts. I think those will stop relatively soon. I don’t think Iran is interested in getting into a bigger shooting match with Israel, because I think they understand there’s no way they do that without the US entering.

The US has already got carriers forward deployed out here, a big show of force. There’s already B-52 fortresses out there, nuclear capable, not that we’ve dropped nukes, but it’s a show of force that I think Iran understands. And the Mullahs, the IRGC in particular, which has its fingers in every part of the Iranian economy and has made itself wealthy, much like the Hamas leadership made themselves wealthy by stealing billions. That leadership in Iran, it’s very similar to Putin, in a sense, and very similar over here to Xi Jinping. But one thing they want more than anything else is to retain control.

So the Iranian regime is going to look at this and go, “Can we really afford to get into a shooting match with the US and Israel?” And the answer is no, they can’t win that. So I think they’re not inclined to do this. So we’re going to get these ceasefires. And then we’re just kicking the can down the road.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But if they get nuclear weapons, then they can hold their weight.

MIKE BAKER: Absolutely. Yeah. And that will completely change the calculus in terms of how do we deal with them and negotiate.

So, and again, this can make me sound like a warmonger, but that last retaliatory strike by Israel into Iran, they focused on missile production facilities and air defense systems. Now, that’s smart in that destroying a significant portion of the missile production capabilities impacts their ability to both attack directly Israel, but also then to provide those missiles to their proxies.

The air defense, you could argue, is setting the table. If they decide that that breakout window for the Iranian regime to get a nuke is tightening to a point where it’s not really acceptable. And if you’ve basically destroyed their defense systems and they’re somewhat naked in that regard, then you’re talking about dropping and trying to disrupt their weapons capability. Now, most of that is significantly underground.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do we know they don’t have a nuclear weapon?

MIKE BAKER: I don’t think they could have kept their yap shut. They would have told us because for what you’re saying, which is, “Okay, now what?” I don’t think that, I don’t think they could have kept that secret.

Plus also we rely on our liaison partners. So the Israeli intelligence, Jordanian intelligence, Saudi intelligence, we rely on a sort of input from a lot of the players, but the Saudis, the Jordanians and others, would they be upset if the Iranian regime were to change? No. What do they want? They want stability, because that leads to economic prosperity. That’s better for their populations, keeps their folks happy. And so, you know, are they going to come right out and say it? No. But there’s a lot of reasons.

So I think that the problem with these ceasefires, again, it’s good. You want to end conflict. You don’t want people suffering. It would be fantastic if the Palestinians had a much better opportunity for a great life. But you don’t get there as long as the Iranian regime and the IRGC are saying, “We want to destroy Israel.” So we’re going to keep pushing at it. That’s not really a recipe for long term stability. So that’s why I say they’re kind of key to this whole problem.

U.S. Focus on Iran’s Nuclear Program

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why is the US so focused on Iran of all these countries not getting a nuclear weapon? The US seem obsessed with making sure Iran of all people don’t get a nuclear weapon?

MIKE BAKER: Because they’re the largest state sponsor of terrorism is one issue and they’ve shown it. I mean, they’ve been perfectly willing to, look, I mean, the fellow who was killed in 2020, who was the head of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, and it was his targeting that then created the Supreme Leader’s desire and the Iranian regime’s desire to target US officials, including the president elect. He had the blood of 1000s of US soldiers on his hands, because he was running operations to develop IEDs, and get them out in the field, train up Iraqi militias.

So I, again, they hate the US. They hate the US. So I, look, it’s, again, going back to that same thing, it’d be lovely if we all lived in a community of nations. But when I look at a map like this, I don’t see a community of nations. I see problems, which, again, maybe makes me just a cynical bastard.

Nuclear Weapons Concerns

STEVEN BARTLETT: Problems. You recently said we’re in a more sensitive time right now than in recent modern times, than we can recall. And you were referring here to nuclear weapons. People are normalizing the limited use of nukes. And that is worrisome. We’ve got Russia doing tactical nuclear drills on the border alongside Ukraine. How concerned should we be about nuclear weapons? And why should we be so concerned?

I actually didn’t realize until recently, when I spoke to Annie Jacobsen, that the president has the sole responsibility and the sole power to launch a nuclear weapon. But they don’t have to speak to anyone to launch a nuclear weapon. They don’t have to have a meeting. They don’t have to speak to the House or the Senate. Trump could turn around and say, “Launch that nuke.”

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, so could Biden, so could Barack Obama, so could George Bush or Ronald Reagan or, let’s go back in time. Look, the Russians created what was referred to as the dead hand system, which took people completely out of the decision making process. I mean, if you want to talk about something that’s even more frightening is let’s remove humans from the decision to launch the nukes.

It was what it was referred to as, it was the idea was during the Cold War. The idea was the Kremlin started sitting around thinking a little bit too much. And they said, “Well, what happens if there’s a first strike and we’re taken out, meaning the Kremlin, meaning the leadership? Well, we need some system in place, an automated system that will respond.”

And so they created this system that would, luckily obviously never used, but it was referred to as the dead hand system. It was a non-human decision making process that would assess the damage done in the first strike and would then make a decision on its own as to what to do.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So that’s a problem, but yes, it’s still there.

MIKE BAKER: No, it’s not there. Supposedly, they’ve advised us it’s been disarmed some time ago. But, you know, again, who knows? I mean, and again, that’s another problem with AI and its ability to supplant humans. You talk about drones and taking humans out of drone strikes. You can’t do that either. You need to have that element, I think, in any weapon system.

But, yeah, Russia talking about and Medvedev and Dmitry Peskov and some of the other minions for Putin rattling the nuclear saber on occasion doing their tactical drills. You know, obviously, North Korea…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Who has nuclear weapons here?

MIKE BAKER: Well, I mean, the members of the nuclear club.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I’ve got United States, Russia, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India.

MIKE BAKER: Yep.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Israel.

MIKE BAKER: We don’t know. I mean, that’s a very I mean, it’s a great point. We assume. But we don’t know.

STEVEN BARTLETT: North Korea?

MIKE BAKER: Because they know. Yes, North Korea.

STEVEN BARTLETT: North Korea got nuclear weapons?

MIKE BAKER: Well, they don’t have a delivery system. Right. And are they completely there is up for grabs. So that program isn’t quite as well understood. The Iranian program is a heavy lift in terms of specific intelligence. The breakout window is often discussed, but it’s anywhere from, “Oh, it’s a couple of weeks” to “It’s months.” So that tells you because of the gap in the parameters there, that tells you that maybe the intelligence isn’t as good as it should be.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Just to give a context on how powerful these weapons are, there was a post that I read that said the warhead on one U.S. nuclear armed submarine has seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War Two, including two atomic bombs combined. And the U.S. has 10 of those submarines. Are we closer now to nuclear war than we’ve ever been in the last century?

MIKE BAKER: No, I think we were closer in the height of the Cold War. I think there really was. I mean, it was a top of mind. People literally thought we were going to get into a shooting match with the Soviet Union. And I think we were close on occasion.

So I wouldn’t argue that it’s more prevalent. And by that, I mean, there’s more of them than there were at that point. There’s more members of the nuclear club. But that was at a point in time when I think we were much closer because also in part, we — there wasn’t the understanding, the level of communication that exists. There’s still a lot of, there’s even when it seems like two nations are at odds, I think sometimes people don’t understand how much communication still exists off the radar between militaries, between intel organizations. People understand the risk.

But my point is, when you talk about it a lot, when you threaten it, you’re normalizing it. And I think that that could lead us down a very bad path. And then if the Iranian regime were to get nuclear weapons, are they on the logic train, or do they view this as something that they use as leverage to exert to get concessions from Israel, whatever this might be? I don’t know. I think there would be an unknown player in that realm. And I think that causes some of this concern also as to why it’s felt they shouldn’t have it.

And also, if they announce that they have a nuclear weapon, then you can count on the Saudis saying to themselves, “Me, too. I’m going to get them,” because it’s not as if the Saudis and the Iranians are close friends.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There becomes a tipping point here, doesn’t there, where Iran gets their nuclear weapon, Saudi want a nuclear weapon, and then most of the countries in this region and other parts of the world think, “Well, we need one now.”

MIKE BAKER: We need one. And the Israelis, maybe that’s the moment when they come out and say and confirm whether they do or don’t, and they’re not going to confirm that they don’t. So I think there’s some real problems there. Look, it’s bad that anybody has them. Obviously, everybody wants peace, but you have to deal with the world you got, not the one you hope for.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s interesting when I think about the biggest risk to the world and I think about all the potential things that could happen. We could have a solar flare. That could be, I don’t know, whatever can happen.

MIKE BAKER: Is that meteor death to a meteor?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. Global warming could do it. The thing that seems to be so obvious to me is if you get more and more nuclear weapons and you’ve got more and more of these sometimes crazy, egotistical leaders who are aging and they’re trying to hang on to their power and then you throw in AI which is a kind of sentient being that can think for itself. For me, I go, I don’t know, in the next 100 years, there’s got to be an incident. There’s got to be an incident because probabilistically, this many weapons, this many crazy leaders, this much disruption to technology, people not wanting to let go of their power. Something’s going to go wrong. It might be a mistake or something. But all it takes is one missile to fly or one person to think that a missile is flying.

MIKE BAKER: You get one broken arrow. You get one, one missing nuke, gets in the wrong hands.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve heard about the story, I think, was it in Hawaii when Hawaii’s missile detection system went off one day and they thought that they’re about to be hit by a…

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, exactly. Think about what those people went through. And it wasn’t like a minute or two. I think I forget what the length of time was before they got the all clear.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 30 minutes, I think, roughly. I mean, where everyone in Hawaii thought that a missile was about to strike them. And I heard the stories of people trying to decide which kid to go to. And hiding in cupboards and going out onto the beach and praying.

MIKE BAKER: And by the way, just so everyone knows, hiding in a cupboard is not going to be helpful.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that was just because one person in a office somewhere clicked the wrong button. And that’s when that made you into panic. So you can imagine in Iran, someone accidentally clicking the wrong button or…

MIKE BAKER: Or deliberately clicking the wrong button or whatever. I just think it’s you get… Look, there’s always this concern. I mean, Russia has moved some of its arsenal to Belarus. Well, okay, what happens if one of those goes missing or what happens if a non-state actor organization gets a hold of one of Pakistan? So there’s a complete fallout in the Pakistan government. And suddenly you’ve got a very hostile government that has control. So, yeah, it’s an issue. You have to ask yourself sometimes why would you want to be a world leader?

Greatest Concerns for the Future

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is your biggest concern as it relates to the map, but also technology and the future that we’re heading towards? What’s your biggest concern?

MIKE BAKER: I don’t know that that’s a really interesting question, and I know I should have like a pat answer right off the top of my head. I tend to look at the next big global conflict, so I’m not so much again, don’t get me wrong, these are bad, these potential flare ups, these problems, this conflict here in the Middle East, these are all bad. People are suffering.

But I think about the next actual global conflict and when that occurs, just like another pandemic is going to happen, I know it’s not like we’re not going to get another pandemic, when the next big global conflict occurs, I think what we’re going to find is that the pain is brought to the homeland a lot quicker.

So what I mean by that is say you’re in the U.S. Well, we know that nations that don’t necessarily have U.S. interests at heart, China, let’s focus on China because they are close to the top of the heap and they’re motivated to get to the top. Not again, not saying it’s going to be a shooting match, but the point being is every day the critical infrastructure, critical systems in the U.S. are being tested and poked and prodded and looked at and mapped out, and there’s a reason why that happens.

So they’re developing a playbook that says in the event that it should happen and we have a global conflict, we are going to shut down everything we can shut down in the U.S. Suddenly, all power goes off, your water treatment facilities aren’t working. You can’t move fuel around, can’t get fuel. Pharmaceuticals aren’t being delivered. No food is being delivered. Can’t get cash out, whether you want cash or not at that point.

The idea being is we’re going to bring the pain to the homeland immediately. That’s what you want to do. Will there be a kinetic element where you actually have a shooting match with troops on ground? Yeah, I’m not sure that ever goes away. But the next global conflict is going to be fought in a way that that we have a hard time understanding.

And then it’ll be up in space as well. The Chinese have spent a great deal of effort on directed energy weapons. And one of the points of that is essentially to knock out satellite systems. Think about it. Take away satellite structures, whether it’s Starlink or any of the satellite systems up there, you shut down GPS, people can’t move, you shut down the Internet. My God, people will lose their minds, can’t do TikTok.

And so it’s not to make light of it, because we’re talking about a different type of warfare. And so that’s kind of the thing that I worry about. If you said, “What do people really worry about?” Well, yeah, top concerns always on China and Russia and Iran. But it’s the infrastructure and it’s a way that it’s going to be brought to the homeland that’s going to create, I think, a level of pain that most people aren’t going to be willing to put up with for very long.

STEVEN BARTLETT: When you say they’re going to bring pain to the homeland, were you saying the US were going to shut down their infrastructure?

MIKE BAKER: No, I’m saying that whoever. Again, I’m just as a it could be any it could be the EU and a conflict. It could be the US and NATO in a conflict with another. But the point being is that, they don’t map out infrastructure for no reason.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Who’s mapping the infrastructure?

MIKE BAKER: Well, Russia, China, our infrastructure. We’re doing the same. People always say, “Well, you’re doing the same thing.” Well, you better hope that whether it’s the UK or whether it’s Australia, whether it’s the US, that we hope that we’re engaged in the same activities, because that’s where this is going to end up going.

Having said that, if someone had said we’re going to be engaged in a massive land war, World War One style with trenches and very little ground gain and lots of bombardment over it, people would say, “No, it’s never going to happen again.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: But that’s happening in Ukraine right now.

MIKE BAKER: It’s happening in Ukraine. You can go, the Imperial War Museum in London, which is a wonderful museum. They’ve got a World War One exhibit and you go through the World War One exhibit. And you look at it and you realize the same thing is taking place. You look at the aerial photographs of the front line and you see the trench lines here in Ukraine. It’s stunning. And we’re just making the same mistakes over again.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s funny how history has a strange way of repeating itself.

MIKE BAKER: Because we don’t we like to think that we learn.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But we’re dealing with the same old humans, with the same old emotions and egos and ideologies and stuff over and over again.

MIKE BAKER: So it’s because humans haven’t changed. You’re right. You’re absolutely. Yeah, that’s right.

Personal Preparation for Conflict

STEVEN BARTLETT: How are you preparing on a personal level? If you’re seeing that —

MIKE BAKER: Somebody’s out of guns and ammo…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Really?

MIKE BAKER: No, no, I’m not kidding. But that’s not how I’m preparing. I just like this, load up.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because you’re saying you don’t believe Americans and Westerners really understand how the next big global conflict will look. So is there a way they can prepare for such a conflict?

MIKE BAKER: Well, on one level, people need to read as much as they can and pay attention. I mean, get as many different sources of information. Don’t just read one outlet that you happen to agree with. But try to be as informed as possible, which I think sometimes it’s difficult to do because we’re all busy, we’re all putting food on the table and trying to take care of families and whatever.

But so I think there’s an element of folks just trying to be informed. And then, look, I mean, the pandemic that occurred, the COVID-19 thing. If people were really, really watching what was going on, October 2019, there was this weird situation going on in China, a couple of cities were quarantined and that started to bubble up and people were paying attention to it, I was getting notifications about, “What the hell’s going on in China?” well before there was any declaration of a problem. And so and the Wuhan lab was mentioned repeatedly.

So I think just being informed is one of the best things that people can do. And then, I’m not a prepper, but it’s always good just to be prepared for a natural crisis. Power goes out because there’s a blackout. Fine. There’s a, whatever the reason may be, just be a little aware of and have a plan of some sort that says if there is a natural disaster, not saying a shooting match, then what do I do? What’s my commo plan? I got kids at school. How do I reach them?

STEVEN BARTLETT: We’re so unprepared because in our lifetimes we’ve never had a war. So I grew up, I’m 32 years old now. I assume what’s happened in other places. They don’t happen in the UK or in L.A. or New York. They happen over there. So I’m comfortable and I’m complacent to some degree. I like I could never imagine even an adversarial plane flying over my city.

MIKE BAKER: There’s a level of we’ve all gotten. We’ve all got I don’t want to say soft necessarily, but look, every generation wants it to be easier.

My parents were older when they had me. They were born in 1919 and 1920. And they went through the tough times, economic times. They went through a couple of wars. They wanted it better for their kids. Now, their parents, my grandparents wanted it better for them. And so on and so forth. That’s human nature. You want to be doing the best for your kids. You want it to be better for that generation. I think eventually you reach diminishing returns.

And I do worry that that’s kind of where we’re at. You know, I look at my own kids and look, nobody’s out there, in here or over here or wherever. There’s certainly places in the world where that’s not true. But, these areas here that we’re talking about, we’re not out worrying about whether we can collect enough food and clean water necessarily, we’re worried about, is my Wi-Fi signal strong enough?

STEVEN BARTLETT: But it’s interesting when you’re talking about Israel earlier, you said how Israel had got a bit comfortable. So they start infighting. And what you’re seeing over in the United States and other parts of Europe is infighting. It’s like we’ve got nothing better to do. So we’re arguing over our identity politics and things are getting more woke and it’s more divided because I don’t know, it’s like we have nothing better to do.

MIKE BAKER: And also that’s being fueled. But you never want to underestimate the impact of the disinformation campaigns run by I mean, again, I keep on I sound like I’m just constantly throwing out the same bogeyman, but look, it’s the way the world is. China, Russia in particular, Iran has proven itself to be very adept at this at disinformation campaigns that prey on whether it’s in in the EU or whether it’s in the US or elsewhere that prey on what they view as vulnerabilities.

So it goes back to what we were talking about before about recruiting an asset, identifying weaknesses and leverage. Well, they look at the US and they go, “You know what, if we kind of just keep poking at that racist issue, we keep poking it at the woke issues.” I mean, that’s very divisive and it’s and it does. It works.

So the next thing you know, they’re putting together a bot. They’re throwing out some misinformation or disinformation on X. Someone looks at that and goes, “Yeah, that’s right.” And then they just forward it on to their friends and their family. And it just keeps building so that the those campaigns have a real significant impact on the West.

Because we’re not inclined, for whatever reason, we’re not curious enough or we don’t have enough time or whatever to look at a piece of information and go, “Is this even credible?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do you say to people that think that’s just completely impossible? That’s a conspiracy theory. There’s no way China and Russia are involved in misinformation. There’s no way they’re trying to tear us apart.

MIKE BAKER: You know what? All they need to do is a little fact based research, spend a little time. They don’t have to look at one side or another. Look across the board at a variety of think tanks, research institutes that focus on this sort of thing and know there’s look, there’s — there is no doubt there is a concerted effort to influence whether it’s an election. And they’re not trying necessarily to get anybody to win. They’re just trying to undermine the concept of democracy. They want to create some chaos. That’s from their perspective that to win.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So do you not think Russia wanted Trump to win?

MIKE BAKER: That’s a good question. I don’t know if they did. I think they’ve made a mistake or they’ve calculated wrong here because I know there’s sort of a trope out there that says, “Well, he’s Putin’s puppet.” Well, we also have to remember, that was a very large disinformation campaign or misinformation campaign. And I don’t want to make it sound more nefarious, but people swallowed that hook, line and sinker and then ran with it over this idea that, “Oh, my God, look at the dossier.”

So I think there’s sort of this narrative that says, “Okay, well, yeah, Putin definitely wanted Trump to win because Trump’s going to completely get out of Ukraine.” I don’t think that’s going to happen. And there’s already been reporting that he had a call with Putin already. Now, the Kremlin saying, “Oh, that call never happened.” But according to Western reporting, he had a call and he said, “You are not to intensify this war,” and then basically setting down a marker.

Now, again, we won’t know until we know, until he gets out there and he starts putting more people in place. I’m very curious to see who he puts in at the Pentagon and at sorry, at the Defense Department.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But because if I was Putin, I know Trump has ran his whole campaign saying he’s going to end this war. And if I’m Putin, I go, that means that I don’t have to throw more men at the front line. I can get my economy back. Putin also wants to end this war.

But Trump — if Trump doesn’t end that war in the next four years, the Democrats are going to get in because they’re going to say, “You said you were going to end the war. We’re still out there fighting. You said you’re going to end this.”

MIKE BAKER: But think about it. If he does end the war, then they’re going to say, “Well, yeah, that’s because, you know, you and Putin like each other. And you gave away some Ukrainian territory.”

Well, the reality is, look, Putin, he annexed Crimea during Obama’s administration. He invaded during Biden’s administration. He knew what he had. He knew what the response was going to be. Now, look, people say, “Well, Biden, to his credit, he kind of rallied and he pushed for more support.” And yes, that’s absolutely true. But Putin engaged in this during his time because I think he knew or he felt he knew maybe that’s more important. He felt he knew what he was going to get.

Now, he wasn’t anticipating that NATO response was going to be as hard line. And that’s a good thing. I’m glad that Biden has done that. Biden has also withheld authorization to use long range munitions to target Russian military sites that are being used to target Ukraine right now, you could argue that until Putin feels some pain or Ukraine is in a better offensive position of some sort, that you can’t get people to the negotiating table.

And again, if you want to end the conflict, you’re probably going to want to do that unless you just want Putin to overrun Ukraine, if you want, if you want that to happen, then stop support. And that’s what’s going to happen. But I think the narrative, I think, is a little bit off. I’m not because, yeah, you’re right. If the war continues, I’m not sure the Democrats have as much to play off of. But I think if the war is ended, then I think what they’ll say is, “You gave it away,” acting as if somehow Ukraine could have won and gained all their territory back, which is unrealistic.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think it’s more compelling to say we stopped all the wars. I think for Americans right now, I think they want to look, we saved your money. We stopped sending billions there. We stopped the war. People aren’t dying anymore. I think that’s a much more compelling narrative. Then I don’t think Americans care as much, this is a guess, about giving away a little piece of land they know nothing about.

MIKE BAKER: Okay, yeah, you’re right, that was my mistake. I think you’re right in the sense that if the war is still ongoing, yeah, the Dems have, the Democrats have a better chance. “You lied, you said you’d shut it down on day one.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: If I’m Putin, I’m going, I know Trump, he’s incentivized to stop this thing. And I can, so that puts me in a stronger position, because if Trump doesn’t stop it, then maybe Eric Trump’s not going to get in next year or whoever, or J.D. Vance.

MIKE BAKER: I mean, I think Putin also, I think, is smart enough to realize, to remember that it was the Trump administration that authorized lethal aid to Ukraine to begin with. Back during Obama-Biden years, they did not authorize lethal aid into Ukraine. And despite, apparently, Crimea annexation was going to be a red line and it wasn’t.

TikTok and Disinformation

STEVEN BARTLETT: We mentioned disinformation, TikTok. I mean, TikTok has ties to China, has origins to China. Do you think TikTok is… The interesting thing about TikTok, because I worked in social media for 10 years, is TikTok as a platform, the algorithm is so unbelievably addictive. How would I describe it?

I guess the word is the algorithm is so powerful. And you notice this, anyone that uses TikTok, you’ll notice this, because if you post something on your page and you have a million followers, the post could either get a thousand views or 10 million views. And when I think about algorithms, the variance in views you’re getting basically are an expression of how powerful the algorithm is.

So on Instagram, say you have a million followers and you post something, the variance between how many views you’re going to get is quite low. But on TikTok, it’s wide. So what the algorithm is doing is it’s saying, “Take that and show everyone, take this, show no one.” And what this means is that the app, so this is why it’s so addictive to young people, because everything they’re seeing is really, really interesting stuff.

And they care a lot less about how many followers you have, and it’s more about, is this really, really interesting? So as a platform, it’s super addictive. It can put you in an echo chamber faster than anything, because if I’m looking at videos about, I don’t know, X, it’s going to keep showing me the most interesting, emotional, fear-centric videos about that thing. No boring. You’re going to see no boring. So do you think there’s a chance that TikTok is being used by one of our foreign adversaries to divide us?

MIKE BAKER: Oh, sure. I think social media is, look, in the old days, if you wanted to influence hearts and minds, if you wanted to change, say, you were interested in turning the population in where? Kenya, Nigeria, Niger. Then it was kind of old school stuff, right? You would, how am I going to get information out there? I’m going to recruit a bunch of journalists, local journalists. And I’m going to get them to publish stories, right? Maybe there’s a radio station. I’ll recruit somebody who can put stories on the radio.

Technology has given the ability to do covert action campaigns, propaganda, disinformation, whatever you want to call it, a real jumpstart. So the concept is the same. I’m trying to influence opinion. I’m trying to get viewers, whatever it is, trying to change hearts and minds, but you can do it much faster.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that’s the type of thing the U.S. would have done to their adversaries, right? The U.S. would literally send a entrepreneur undercover into these countries to start a perfectly legitimate business with his family, then find a way to potentially fund it in some way to make sure it was successful. And he might be starting a social media app in Russia undercover. Like, that’s the type of thing the CIA and other, maybe MI6 would do.

MIKE BAKER: It’s you’re looking for ways to I mean, you wouldn’t necessarily want to say, “Okay, I’m going to go into China, I’m going to go into Russia and start a business.” Because now that’s problematic from an operational perspective. But you’re going to use the technology for sure to get to as many eyeballs as possible.

And so, yes, I mean, TikTok’s a great example of that. There’s a reason why Chinese citizens can’t access TikTok inside China. I mean, you think about that.

MIKE BAKER: Is TikTok, is it beneficial to our kids? Well, if it was, TikTok could probably be available inside China, but it’s not. It’s a tough one. We deal with that on a personal level all the time, trying to figure out how much screen time, and what the kids can access. Now they’re getting older. So it’s, you kind of fight a losing battle on that one.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Some people think that there’s like a back to China where China are harvesting data from the back end of TikTok in some way. And I, much like you, I’m less likely to believe those kinds of conspiracy theories.

But one theory that makes logical sense to me is if I was China and I wanted to sow division in the United States, what I would do is make an app, a social media app that has a really, really powerful divisive algorithm, which really, really is strong. And I would just make it succeed in the country. I don’t need the data because, as you said, what I’m going to do is I’m going to tap people to pop.

MIKE BAKER: I would say, yes, that’s a good point. And you see that based on what you’re saying. I don’t have anywhere near the level of understanding of the app world. But you see that when you, just say, “Okay, oh, I’m interested in that. Look at that. There’s a protest over here.” Next thing you know, you’re getting 40 protest videos or whatever.

But I would say also they still want data. They thrive on collecting mass amounts of information. And so, I again, I don’t know that tech world well enough to get into a conversation about that. But it is clear based on their economic espionage and efforts over the past that they love nothing better than to collect as much information as possible. And it doesn’t even have to be on a target that you think, “No wonder they’re targeting Raytheon” or they’re targeting a company that that makes sense. They’ll go after anybody, really.

But I think for the most part, when you talk about social media, what I worry about the most is this tendency for people not to question, not to be cynical or not to be at least curious and say, “Where’s this come from?” And if everyone would just do that, because there is no other defense at the end of the day, you don’t want the government telling you what you can see and what you can’t see, I don’t think anyway.

But there’s no other defense in the front line, which is the individual with their smartphone looking at something and then stopping for at least a moment to say, “Where’s this information coming from? Is it credible? Let me check elsewhere before I send this on to my family, and create more conflict.” Just take the time to be quizzical.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s difficult because we all have that confirmation bias. So we’re looking for what we want to believe.

MIKE BAKER: True.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so it’s like I was just thinking about that. You just saw it in this election cycle. If that is what I wanted to believe and what I think is right, then I think that’s true and I will share that.

And you see it in the election cycle. If someone who is this sort of outside observer, I’m watching disinformation on both sides. I’m watching them lie about Trump and I’m watching them lie about Kamala on both sides and I’m watching it happen and going, “Oh, no, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie.” But both sides are enraged and they think they’re the sort of bastion of truth. It’s so interesting.

MIKE BAKER: But the hard edges are equally problematic. And the problem we have is, much, much like the conflict in Ukraine on the front lines, in the trenches, people are sitting in their trenches throwing hand grenades at each other. And there’s nobody living in the middle anymore.

And, it’s almost become a nasty word to say compromise, but I don’t know how you get meaningful things done without the ability to listen to both sides and say, “Okay, well, that that actually kind of makes sense or that idea doesn’t make sense.” But but at least to work together. But nobody is in the center for the most part. Or if they are, they don’t make any noise.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Random idea, random thought. I just had Scott Galloway was on my podcast and he said there’s a 33% chance that Trump dies in office based on his age and BMI. Like statistically, he’s the age he’s at and the BMI he has, there’s a 32% chance he dies while he’s in the next four years. I just wonder what that might do to this whole thing, because if if Trump drops dead one day in the United States, people aren’t going to believe that was innocent. But to stabilize it…

MIKE BAKER: I just, one of the best results that came out of this election was the size of the result that was important, regardless of who won. And, I don’t know how many conversations with a variety of people and, on both sides of the spectrum of politics and they all kind of felt the same way, which was, “Well, okay, well, whoever wins, I just hope it’s convincing so that we don’t then struggle with this over the next four years.” But you’re right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What happens in the next four years? I’ve got my theory of how it plays out.

MIKE BAKER: But I think, again, part of it depends on how good the Democrat Party is at introspection, not very good, not very good. I don’t think so. But I don’t think it’s still the government. It’s still the U.S. government. And we have to remember, people are, they’re very upset about the idea that, “Oh, my God, maybe the Republicans have all three. They have the White House, they have the Congress, they have the Senate.” But that’s been the case for many going back on how many administrations, but several is five or six where the president started out with control of both houses.

And so, the lesson from that usually is that not a lot really gets done. It’s still a very large machine. And so I know people are, look, they spent — people spent a long time saying if Trump wins, it’s the end of life. As we note, it’s the end of democracy. “Oh, my God, this is going to be.”

And then, a day and a half later, President Biden, comes out and goes, “We’re going to be just fine.” And then people are like, “Well, what the fuck was all that talk about the end of the world then?” It’s politics. It’s a narrative, but it’s gotten so hyperbolic. It’s just like this. You have to take it to the far extreme no matter what you’re saying.

And so then now people have a hard time absorbing that. “Well, but you told me to go out in the street and rend my clothing and cry and gnash my teeth. And now you’re telling me it’s going to be okay. What?” So I think we’re going to be just fine and we would have been just fine if we had the other. It’s a very resilient nation. Despite these things that we’ve been talking about, it’s a pretty resilient world.

So I think, it’s not going to be — we’re not going to see 10 million people deported, for instance. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Will we have a tougher border policy? Will there be some deportations? Yes. Will they start with folks who are in the country illegally who have committed crimes? Well, yes. Is that a problem? I don’t know. Is anyone upset if someone who’s got a criminal convictions and is here illegally is deported? You know, I guess that maybe — maybe there’s some issue there, but, is so I think we tend to get so over the top on whether we’re talking about left or right, that the reality is usually there’s not the big sea change that people anticipate.

So I think we’re going to be okay. That’s why I still — I’m optimistic that this next administration will hold the line, realizing that holding the line is the best way to get folks to the table, to come up with a settlement in Ukraine and Russia.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Russia.

MIKE BAKER: Exactly. And, again, I’m more cynical about this region just because I think nobody really wants to deal with the Iranian regime. And so fine. Yes, we get ceasefires. Does it mean anything in the long term? No, we’ll be dealing with this conflict. Our kids will be dealing with this conflict. So I’m a little bit more reluctant to say happy things about that.

Advice for Success

STEVEN BARTLETT: Anyway, kids, just to close off, if you had to give your children advice on how to be successful based on everything you learned at your time in the CIA and how to climb whatever ladder that they aspire to climb in their life, what would you say to them?

MIKE BAKER: Well, I’ll tell you what I do say to them, which is my job as a parent is not to raise average kids. There’s enough mediocrity out there. My job is to raise exceptional children, and that means they have to not give it 150%. I don’t know what that is. And people talk about they’ve got to get 110%. But you have to work a little bit harder than everyone else. And your gain, your result is that much more. It’s really shocking. You just have to work a little bit harder and you can always do a little bit more than you think you can do.

It’s hard to explain that to kids because they think they’re bulletproof. They think they’ve got 2000 years ahead of them. They don’t understand how time passes. But if it’s one thing I tell them, I mean, aside from the basics, just be honest, be loyal, be kind. It’s this idea you just you have to put in the effort. And if you do, you can — I don’t want to say you can do anything. You probably don’t have the genetic build of LeBron James. You’re probably not doing what he’s doing, but that’s it, and I always felt it’s just it’s a simple thing, but if I’ve learned one thing in whether it was in the agency or out, all you got to do is work a little bit harder.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about people advice you’d give them to, because I spoke to Andrew Bustamante on the podcast and he talks about motivation and manipulation, being two sides of the same coin. When you think about what stands in the way of your life, when you think about the sort of geopolitical issues where we were describing, it’s all just people, your business at the moment is people.

My business is people even doing this podcast. It’s trying to understand people. One of the things I got from you, which I think is just really unappreciated, is just the remarkable power of just listening and letting someone else talk so you can understand them. Is there anything else you think about if you’re trying to create a good sales person as relates to people?

MIKE BAKER: You can’t — I suppose a psychotic or could, but you can’t fake empathy, you can’t fake real interest. You can’t fake enjoyment of people. And I do think folks, even if they’re not trained, they’re pretty good at spotting that. They’re pretty good at spotting if people are being disingenuous.

So it’s really that I mean, you have to with I mean, I don’t want to dwell too much on business, but in that world, when I’m talking to my folks, I just know some of them aren’t going to enjoy the process of sales. If we’re talking about sales, they’re not going to enjoy going out and doing business development. But they do an amazing job on the other aspects of the work. And all that work keeps clients coming back.

So it’s horses for courses. You know, I think people are made up differently and you can’t ask everyone to do the same thing, the only things you can control. I keep going back to the same thing with because I keep thinking about my kids now that we talked about them is they can’t like the middle boy, he plays basketball. It’s all he wants to do.

He plays basketball. He goes to an academy down in Florida, IMG, which is an amazing place, and it’s a sports academy for the most part. And he can’t control how tall he is, how I mean, he can work on how fast he is, I suppose, but, those sort of things, but he can control how hard he works and he can always work harder than the next guy you think about it.

I’ve been in situations before where I thought I cannot take one more step. And then you think, “Well, yeah, I can take one more step.” It’s not it. I know, again, this is not an epiphany, but people forget that, people sometimes lose sight in part because they’re not pushed or they’re not challenged or the circumstances mean that they don’t have to be pushed or challenged.

And so people get away from understanding exactly what they’re capable of accomplishing if they really think about it. So that’s all — all I ask from my folks is, be honest, work hard, keep the clients happy and, Bob’s your uncle. But, people right now are going like, “That’s it. That’s your advice, Bob, your uncle.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: You said you like — you think life is much more simple than most people portray. And I think hard work is definitely one of those things that is both controllable and it creates such a disproportionate winning advantage.

MIKE BAKER: That’s exactly right. That’s a much more eloquent way than, I’m going to steal that. Yeah, I’m going to try. Yeah, it does.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And it’s not sexy because he wants fucking hard work. People want tricks. There’s got to be something.

MIKE BAKER: So what do you do? How do you tell if somebody’s not just… You know what? Just unass the sofa, work a little bit harder. And you’re right. It’s not a popular thing to say. But I think people are capable of it and more so than they realize.

STEVEN BARTLETT: We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question to the next, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. And the question that’s been left for you is what do you think is the most important thing that’s happened in your life to create your success?

MIKE BAKER: Wow, you obviously have some smart guests on here. I’m not — I’m already jumped to the next point where I’m like, “Oh, what’s your favorite color?”

You know, the thing I would have to say. This is going to sound. I’m going to sound like I don’t know. I think I had probably the best parents that you could ask for. My dad was an amazing individual, amazing individual, and they, I think, more than anything, if I have to go all the way back, meeting my wife, Emily, I mean, she’s the smartest person I know, the funniest person I know.

But, you know, I met her going on 20 years ago now. So what happened before the 20 years? And what happened leading through? If I said that, then, the first half of my life, I think it was my parents. And no doubt about it. My dad was just such a role model and just laid a foundation. But I would say then the next half would definitely be my wife. I think that’s what does it is the people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What was the model that your dad left you?

MIKE BAKER: Part of it was the work ethic. My dad worked hard and he never complained. And he loved my mother. Just they were married for 50 years. And that was part of it, too, is I was fortunate. I was blessed. And I realize a lot of people come from very different circumstances.

But I came from one of those families where it was never in question. My father was fiercely loyal to my mother and she was fiercely loyal to him. And loyalty, I think, plays an important role in what you’re doing. I think people see that as something that they can count on. And that sets you up for success, too, I think.

So I would say that was probably, again, the first half of my life, I would say that’s what paved the way. And then meeting Emily, I completely outkicked my coverage, as they say.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did your dad know how much you appreciated the model of what it is to be a man that he set you?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah. I feel good about. I remember thinking about that when he died. I remember thinking that. I remember thinking I was very happy that I had told him, sorry, that I had told him what I thought of him and we were very — we were very good with each other in terms of talking about what we felt and how we appreciated each other. And that’s a really good thing, because I don’t think you want someone to go and you think, “Well, I should have said that. I should have said something different.” I was lucky, we had a really good dialogue.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Where does my mission come from?

MIKE BAKER: You just you know, it’s I think it’s that’s humanity, it’s just how you feel. And your experiences. All my experiences with my dad were just solid, just going out, just doing things, just getting together, just meeting up as you know, when I was older and I’d come I’d come back to the States for a few days and get together and just like there was — there was a bond there that was just really solid. And I feel the same way with my brothers and they’re all older than I am. And, that’s a tight relationship.

So, yeah, I think it’s good. I don’t — I don’t get I don’t get emotional about much. But family, I do, because at the end of the day, nobody — nobody’s going to write on my tombstone that I worked my ass off or that I was a real solid officer with it. You know, I sure built a really nice business. It’s not going to matter. You know, all I care about is family and friends.

STEVEN BARTLETT: If you could write something on his tombstone. What would you write?

MIKE BAKER: Thanks. I don’t know what else you would say, just thank you. I did write a little note, he was in his uniform when we buried him and I wrote a little note and tucked it in his uniform pocket, but that’s between me and him.

But I appreciate you bringing this up, it’s nice. I mean, it is nice to talk. I would you know, I love talking about the family, but yeah, that’s it. It’s not a you know, it’s probably not the probably — not the most dynamic answer you get from that question, I suppose people have more interesting answers, but I don’t know, one that would be more meaningful. So.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think it’s a perfectly — I think it’s a wonderful answer because it says so much about your values and where you’ve come from and what’s driving you and the man that you are and your priorities, because it’s so clear how much he meant to you. And it’s evident to me how you must be paying that forward as a man to your children as well in any way that you possibly can.

And I think if we understand, especially for men, I think if we understand the role model that our father set us, we understand what we think is important and what we think is right, because my same with my father, my father and my mother didn’t get on. But one of the things I’ll always remember was even in the heat of their conflicts. If she needed something mid argument, he would do it. He never left because of the kids.

And so there was clearly a principle in my father where there was something more important than the argument, and that is the family, the love and the taking care of your woman. So even now, when I’m in a relationship, if I’m in an argument with my girlfriend or we’re disagreeing about something, I would always know that there’s something more important, which is my responsibility to take care of these people. Yeah. And that came from my dad.

MIKE BAKER: That’s exactly right. That’s that’s exactly right. Yeah. You have to know when to bend your spear. And you just I think. Yeah, I think that’s — if you can — if you can pass that sense of of whatever it is, of loyalty, of appreciation, of duty, of hard work, of honesty, if you can pass that along to your kids, you know, you’ve done your job.

That’s why I said it’s — and that’s what I mean by I’m not here to raise average kids. I don’t mean like I’ve got to raise multimillionaires. So I’ve got to you know, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about their character and how they deal with the world.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Mike, thank you. Thank you for doing what you do. As I said before we started recording, I’m someone that’s quite naive to these issues. And part of that is because I’m very busy doing my own thing.

So I try not to talk about these things and I don’t understand. But the way that you deliver the information through your book, through your podcast and even here today and on all the shows that I’ve seen you on is incredibly important because it’s so accessible. And that means that people like me can gain a better understanding of what’s happening in the world and then make better decisions for my life. But who I’m voting for and why I’m voting for them, which are consequential to all of us. And that’s a very noble, noble cause. Thank you.

MIKE BAKER: I know. Thank you. I’ve enjoyed a lot of this conversation. I really, really have. And it’s gone by very quickly. And I apologize for marking up your map.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s all good. Thank you, Mike.

Related Posts

• President Trump on Operation Epic Fury Update (Transcript)
• President Trump Remarks on US, Israel Attacking Iran (Transcript)
• President Trump on Economy, Energy in Corpus Christi, TX (Transcript) 
• Bulwark Podcast: w/ Susan Glasser on Trump’s State of the Union address (Transcript)
• Douglas Macgregor: US-Iran Diplomacy Fail (Transcript)