From Nord Stream to Taiwan: Brandon Weichert on Global Flashpoints

What if space mining could revolutionize our energy and commodity security? Join us on the Lead Lag Report as we welcome Brandon Weichert, a renowned national security analyst and author, to break down the complex world of energy, commodity security, and geopolitical economics. With an extensive background from his work with the National Interest and the Pipeline, Brandon brings unparalleled insights into how global warming policies and the Biden administration's domestic energy regulations are reshaping our energy landscape. We also touch on the strategic shift in global energy reliance, including the impactful destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline.

Venture with us into the untapped potential of space mining and its critical role in securing rare earth minerals. Brandon explains the compelling advantages of mining asteroids and the Moon, along with the importance of building alliances with friendly governments in Latin America and Africa. This episode doesn't just scratch the surface; we tackle the intricacies of geopolitical influence and the urgency to counteract Chinese and Russian dominance in crucial resource areas. Discover the exciting possibilities spurred by recent lithium discoveries in Pennsylvania and the regulatory considerations necessary for tapping into these resources.

Our conversation turns to Taiwan, a pivotal flashpoint in the US-China power tussle, and its indispensable role in the semiconductor industry. We analyze the contrasting positions of the Biden and Trump administrations on Taiwan and discuss Taiwan's military strategy, with Brandon suggesting an insurgent-style defense over traditional approaches. As we conclude, we delve into potential global flashpoints for World War III, comparing the Middle East with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and examining the interconnectedness of global powers like Iran, Russia, and China. Don't miss Brandon's insightful perspectives and his recommendations for further reading to deepen your understanding of these critical issues.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

with all that said, my name is michael guy, a publisher of the lead lag report, joining me for the rougher with brandon weichert. Uh, brand, I know you've done the media rounds and you've got several books which we'll hit on, but, uh, introduce yourself to the audience to me. Who are you, what's your background, what have you done throughout your career and what are you doing currently?

Speaker 2: 0:25

all right, well, thanks for having me. Um, it's about time we connected like this, so I'm happy to be yourself. To the audience, to me, who are you, what's your background, what have you done throughout your career and what are you doing currently? All right, well, thanks for having me. It's about time we connected like this, so I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 2: 0:36

I am presently a national security analyst for the National Interest, that's a national security defense geopolitical publication. I'm also an occasional poster. I'm an energy security analyst over at the at the pipeline dot com, where they focus a lot on energy and sort of the geopolitics of energy and some of the political stuff going on with global warming, and also I am the author of three books the Shadow War, iran's Quest for Supremacy, Biohacks, china's Race to Control Life and Winning Space how America Remains a Superpower. I have a fourth book on the way, coming out October 22nd from Encounter Books, called A Disaster of Our Own Making how the West Lost Ukraine. I have been told that that is probably my most controversial work, and so I'm happy to talk more about that.

Speaker 2: 1:23

I also have a website that I occasionally write on the Weikert report dot com, and I'm pretty prolific on Twitter, x or Twix, whatever we're calling it these days and you can find me pretty much anywhere. Type in my name in Google. I'm sure a dozen interviews will show up. I'm also an occasional contributor to the Washington Times.

Speaker 1: 1:48

We're going to go around the globe. But I want to hit on energy security, since you mentioned that up front. I feel like we should define what energy security means. I don't mean necessarily in terms of inventory, in terms of the SPR, but what is energy security? And is that more just a word that's thrown out that scares people, or is there something to really be concerned about there?

Speaker 2: 2:10

Well, I would say not just energy, but basically I've sort of tossed around the last year terms like commodities security, because it's not just energy, it's metals, it's all the stuff that goes into making not only a military work properly, but that goes into the building blocks of civilization. You can throw food, you can throw water in there, and so basically, when it comes to energy security, we're tracking things like price of oil, how that's going to affect access for ordinary people. We're looking at things like disruptions to energy flows, things like war in the Middle East. How is that going to impact energy coming out of fossil fuel products, for instance, coming out of the Middle East to the rest of the world? How will that affect price? If it increases price, what will that do for the overall economy, things like that, and that's kind of a really rough not necessarily a great definition of energy security.

Speaker 2: 3:17

That's one of the things that I really look at is accessibility and something for the pipeline, which is founded by a friend of mine, michael Walsh. One of the things is that he looks at is sort of the impact of global warming and what exactly governments are doing to basically undermine our access to basic commodities that are the requirement for all civilization to operate properly. Basically, global warming policies or policies created to protect the environment are actually harming the security and access to these basic goods, so that's another kind of unique aspect of this. The energy security that I look at is what governments are doing to impose or harm our ability to access these things.

Speaker 1: 4:19

So there is a narrative which I think there's a lot of truth to, that the Biden administration has not exactly been friendly to oil and gas, to the energy sector broadly, yeah. But at the same time I think there's a logical argument also that we are far more secure from an energy perspective than we have been in the past. We're not as reliant on OPEC. It used to be the case that whatever OPEC would say or do, it affected WTI prices. Obviously not anywhere near as sensitive now, right. Wti prices obviously not anywhere near as sensitive now, right. Compared to history, how important is the executive branch when it comes to energy security and volatility, especially in oil prices.

Speaker 2: 4:55

It's very important, you know. The issue is you're absolutely correct to say that we are in many respects, more energy independent now than ever and the destruction of the pipeline the Nord Stream pipeline in Germany. You know, I personally think that we were behind that, or NATO was, but the one upside is that it's basically made Europe, particularly Germany, more dependent on the United States, and the reason that they can be dependent on us is because of the domestic energy production that we're still going through. The thing where the Biden administration, or any administration, can really do damage to productivity of America's domestic energy sources is in the form of regulations. Sources is in the form of regulations, regulatory burdens, not approving new leases to do more drilling, things like that, complicating the ability of those private energy producers to effectively and reliably do business. And one of the things that I've been tracking is the Biden administration in particular, from day one that they took office, has been undermining, through regulatory burdens, the ability of America's fossil fuel producers to operate effectively. They've also not really been approving new leases for oil and natural gas development, and so we're sitting on a veritable gold mine. We still are seeing the benefits of previous investments into developing those domestic energy sources. But in my opinion we could be doing much, much more to enhance that and are not relying on the Middle East the way that we used to be, thank God, but the rest of the world, a lot of the rest of the world, notably Asia, is furthermore, because of OPEC. They're able in the Middle East to really impact the price of energy globally. And so what we're seeing is, for instance, saudi Arabia, a traditional US ally, very friendly under the Trump administration.

Speaker 2: 7:06

That government was Under Biden, because the Biden administration has been slamming the current leader of Saudi Arabia, mohammed bin Salman. Biden has from day one been slamming MBS for human rights violations, and MBS is a human rights violator, but it's the Middle East. I don't know what we're expecting. And MBS is a human rights violator, but it's the Middle East. I don't know what we're expecting. But because of that, mbs has sort of stuck it to Biden. Normally there's sort of a quiet understanding that the Saudis and other Arab oil producers, if requested by the US president behind the scenes, they'll try to keep those oil prices relatively low. But when Biden has apparently behind the scenes, his people have requested hey, can you guys go easy on raising the oil prices because of how the MBS has been disrespected by Biden. Now, not even the Saudis really want to listen to the American leadership, even though they really are reliant on us for a lot of security issues.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So you correctly said commodity security, not just energy security. Let's talk about other commodities that maybe are more vulnerable to geopolitical risks, that tend to not get as much attention. What do you tend to look at there?

Speaker 2: 8:54

So one of the things that I've really been fascinated by is rare earth minerals, and so those are.

Speaker 2: 9:01

You know they're called rare earths not because they're hard to find they're actually in abundance. It's because they're hard to get to. You got to go deep into the earth to get it lithium, you know things like that. Those are sort of the building blocks, particularly of the new economy, the fourth industrial revolution, as we call it. Some would say it's also, you know, the green economy, but the rest of the world is becoming really dependent on these systems or these commodities rare earths and what we're finding is that since 2010,.

Speaker 2: 9:37

The People's Republic of China has spent an inordinate amount of time and resources to basically capture something like I think it's upwards of 90% possibly I don't know the actual percentage off the top of my head, I used to but it's an insanely high percentage rate of the known rare earth mineral market, which means that that gives China a lot of leverage. Now I have a lot of friends at the libertarian side of things who say this doesn't matter. That's a very old world way of looking at it, but we have to understand the Chinese are a mercantilist power. They are not a capitalist system. They're not even in many respects a communist system, they're sort of old school imperial mercantilist. And so the mercantilist perspective is I have to dominate as many of these resource chains as possible so that I can dictate the course of events in the rare earth mineral market. But they want to dominate the water flows. This is, by the way, the real purpose behind the tension with India over the Ladakh province. It's over Tibetan water rights. They want to dominate the food flows, they want to dominate all of these sort of commodities that we take for granted, because China has to import a lot of goods.

Speaker 2: 11:00

And so they figure, if they can and this is sort of the old imperial mindset from the 18th and 19th centuries they figure that if they can dominate as many of those known commodities markets as possible as a nation, it will complicate the Americans' ability to blockade goods coming from around the world into China in the event of a war between China and the US over Taiwan or elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific.

Speaker 2: 11:26

And so one of the big areas that I look at because of its importance for the new fourth industrial revolution is the rare earth mineral market. And China has a huge stake in that, and you know one of the ways you offset that, of course, is by finding new sources, and so one of the things from 2010 that Japan and Australia has done very effectively is they have been good about finding new sources that have not yet been bought out by Chinese interests. Something in my first book, winning Space, I talk about is we need to start really making long-term investments into space mining, because we're surrounded by an asteroid belt, we have a moon that's very nearby and all of these celestial objects. Actually, they're nothing more than big bases of rare earth minerals, and so if you could capture those, you can really offset any ability for China or another rival to capture this all important market.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So I've actually been fascinated by space mining on a side note, yeah, because I think it. Just it sounds fantastical, but it's no more fantastical than you know being 30,000 feet in the air and checking your email Right In a more complicated way.

Speaker 2: 12:42

Obviously it is the future as much as the internet was back, you know, 40 years ago, when our parents and grandparents were sort of thinking about well, wow, this would be amazing. Space mining is the next wave. It's just a question of which country and which corporations will lead the way. Sadly, it doesn't look like the US. I mean, we have some companies trying to do it, but China has an all of society approach to space in general and specifically because it's a minimum of a $1 trillion economy waiting to be exploited. The Chinese want it and that's why they're such a threat.

Speaker 1: 13:18

So I definitely want to expand on that a bit more. But taking that side of it out, how else can the West diminish that leverage, other than the obvious answer of just shore up our own commodities here? I mean, we even have them on the rare earth side. But what else can be done just to to mitigate the risk that china plays games there?

Speaker 2: 13:39

well, interestingly, on a side note, before I get into that, we actually just found uh, I think it was a lithium, uh, untapped lithium mine in pennsylvania that I think they said could supply 30 to 40 percent of America's lithium needs without ever having to go outside of the country. Of course, the big issue is going to be regulatory environment. Can we get to that in a cost effective way without the government coming in and overregulating this? And so you know, one of the easiest ways to override China's dominance in these commodities markets, notably rare earths, is to simply find new sources on earth, and the good news is we're always looking, and so we will probably be able to offset on some level that by finding new sources. Another thing that we could do and this sort of gets to the nub of your question another thing we absolutely should be doing is looking for friendly governments.

Speaker 2: 14:32

So a lot of rare earths are found in two places Latin America and Africa, and these are the two regions of the world that the United States is Air Force built and has been running for more than a decade in Niger. We just lost it to the Russians. The Russians were allowed to take it by the new military dictatorship, the junta in Niger, and that is a huge blow to the US in terms of access to that continent. In that region, china and Russia and even Iran by the way, I reported on this for the TVP in Poland about a year ago, before they had their government change the Iranian government is also moving heavily into Africa and then, of course, in Latin America.

Speaker 2: 15:27

One of the things that I'm involved with, or starting to get involved with, is trying to compel Congress to take hemispheric defense more seriously.

Speaker 2: 15:36

In my opinion, we're going to lose Europe, we're probably going to lose Taiwan, and so America's defensive perimeter needs to be ardent in the Western hemisphere, and what we're seeing is that China and Russia, as well as Iran, are moving heavily into Latin America, which is traditionally a US backyard, and that's where a lot of these rare earth mineral mines are, and we're losing access because the Chinese, russians and even Iranians are coming in and gaining access, via friendly governments in the region, to those known sources of rare earths. So what I would love to see happen is for the US to actually build out a reliable Latin America slash Western hemispheric defense strategy that involves empowering governments or move political movements in these Latin American countries that are pro-America. We see that with Javier Milay in Argentina. So looking for people like that to get behind and throughout the region, and then, you know, in the conduct of business with them, getting them to allow us to have access to those rare earth mineral mines, rather than the mercantilistic Chinese and Russians.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Let's go there. When it comes to Taiwan, yeah, it seems like it's inevitable that they're going to try to take it, and if they try, they likely would, although I've had plenty of military strategists that say it's actually a lot harder. People think just from an operational perspective.

Speaker 2: 17:38

This is a huge debate in the military circles that I swim in. Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Let's maybe to the edge of your cover it, kind of explore a little bit of that. But. But I think the most in question for everybody is timing, right, I mean, that's always now, of course, if you know, it seems to me the best time to do will be in an election year, so the us be distracted from, can be distracted on domestically. But, um, let's talk about the difficulty of it, the implications, and then timing.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Yeah, okay. So the difficulty is this is not an easy feat, especially for a military like China, which is still going through a mass modernization effort. At the same time, china has truly become a modernized force. They also have a lot of advantages in that Taiwan is about 100 miles away from their coastline, whereas Taiwan is thousands of miles away from the United States. China has been very smart in developing countermeasures, the, the defenses that taiwan and the americans and and the rest of the western alliance have built up in an attempt to help defend taiwan. One of the things that china has done is they have probably the world's most sophisticated and robust and redundant um anti access area denial a2ad capabilities, and that's basically thousands of missiles and rockets and even now hypersonic weapons that can go about a thousand kilometers away from where they're based, and they can with satellites and these balloons and other sensors. They can track in real time US warships entering range and then fire these massive number of A2AD systems to overwhelm the defense, the close and weapons support systems of an aircraft carrier, or even the Aegis system that kind of protects a carrier battle group. And the belief among China's planners is we don't have to beat the Americans in a direct conflict. All we have to do is keep them far enough away that they can't project power near our invasion force or near territory that we covet. And China has those capabilities now. China could probably in fact take Taiwan, if it really wanted to, in the next week, and that's because, partly because of these A2AD systems that are designed not only to keep the US Navy surface fleet back, but they're also designed to destroy and disrupt the operations of the handful of air bases the US maintains in places like Guam. We've got bases in Okinawa Well, that's all known to the Chinese and those are stationary targets and they now have weapons systems that can reach those targets. So that's the A2AD threat. So keep the Americans back. They can also at the same time and they will ongoing Chinese cyber attack against critical US infrastructure water systems, electrical grid, telecommunications networks, cyberweapons that are still not known to us in terms of where they're located. But the Chinese have been able to embed these attack systems within the larger American network to basically detonate for lack of a better term at a time of Beijing's choosing, and that could really cause chaos here in the United States. So that would distract us from being able to get behind a full military effort to stop a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Speaker 2: 21:27

There's also counter space capabilities, with China has in abundance, which is the ability to knock out our satellite constellations. This is, by the way, why Starlink exists, because it's a redundancy that we're trying to create backdoor but the Chinese have capabilities to knock out the majority of our critical satellite constellations in orbit. That basically renders US military deaf, dumb and blind. It could also debilitate our economy. Something like a trillion dollars of electronic transactions, perfectly timed, occur across these satellite constellations. They're made possible by it, so they could not only disrupt the normal functions of our military, our ability to coordinate and mass attacks, they could also disrupt our economy. We could lose about a trillion dollars in 24 hours just gone because of the loss of those satellites.

Speaker 2: 22:18

And then there's a final aspect here the actual invasion China. A lot of the military people I know they say Brandon, you're being, you're overhyping this. They don't have enough amphibious landing capabilities. It's true, the Chinese Navy does not have the requisite number of amphibious landers. Those are the ships that you need to have a lot of troops inside of and a lot of equipment to go across the Taiwan Strait from China and land like a D-Day style invasion in Taiwan of ferries that they use to transport people and cars around their cities. Think of the ferry from New Jersey to New York. That's a Roro.

Speaker 2: 23:10

The Chinese have the world's largest Roro ferry fleet, and all of their ferries since 2012, so that's the bulk of the fleet have been built to military specifications. That is not normal for a civilian Roro ferry. That's only the case if you want to start an invasion and not have those systems counted by US and Western intelligence services, because they don't usually, when they're doing these threat assessments and the likelihood of China going into Taiwan, they usually don't include the Roro ferry. So that's one of those gray zone operations, or one of those military civil fusion that China calls it MCF. That's one of those operations they've engaged in since 2012, since Xi took power, the current president, and it's all being built up, I think, for some big move against Taiwan, probably this year, simply because of the election. I think it's probably going to be this year. It could also, though, be an early part of the Trump administration, because you know, if Trump does win in November and they do let him assume power, you can bet there's going to be chaos in the United States, because the left is not going to just let that happen without some kind of chaos. And so the next six to 12 months are really the window of instability, although I really do think it's going to be closer to six months.

Speaker 2: 24:25

It could be. I mean China. You know China's leadership and this could just be propaganda. It probably is, because it's so soon. But China's leadership about a week ago said they're going to try to go in June at some point. Now I don't know if that's they're going to do that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they try to do it in, say, september. Um, that that could be. You know the time, because it's close enough to the us election. And yet it's also still within the weather window, because there's the monsoon season they have to worry about, there's high tide they have to worry about. So in my opinion, there is soon, much sooner than the pentagon says. The pentagon says the soonest is 2027. I think that is not the accurate assessment. It's going to be much sooner than that.

Speaker 1: 25:07

What do you suspect the response by the West would be? I mean, I don't get the sense that there's much of an appetite for war the way Ukraine-Russia has played out.

Speaker 2: 25:16

Yeah. So this is sort of, in my opinion, even bigger of a question that needs to be answered than even the capabilities and intentions of China, because we kind of know that, especially if you factor in these civilian systems, that have been an economic, a consistent economic downturn in China, which is making Xi's hold on power very weak, and so he's going to want to do something to change the narrative. So one thing he could do is pick a fight with Taiwan. Another thing he could do, by the way, is pick a fight either with India or with Japan over the Senkakus, and the one thing to keep in mind that might actually restrain China from attacking Taiwan is the fact that China loves their sons. And who's going to go do the fighting? The Chinese sons, taiwan, culturally very Chinese. They're descended from the Chinese. They are still independent, of course, though, but culturally they're very Chinese in the sense that they too love their sons, and both sides kind of consider themselves from the same culture at least. So there might be some off ramp there to avoid total war, but Xi's going to want to channel the destructive impulses of his people, rally around the flag to prevent his own economic mistakes from becoming detrimental to his political future so he could channel those aggressions into a war with Japan or into another conflict with India. But the question of politically on the American side and that's really the key question here both President Biden and former President Trump have said that basically well, biden explicitly well, I'm sorry, trump explicitly said questioned the efficacy of risking a war with China over Taiwan. Biden has multiple times indicated that he is not interested in using US military forces to protect Taiwan, at least ina direct fight, indirectly. I know there are contingencies that we've gamed out as a government, going back to the Trump years, even before then, for things that we could be doing to support the Taiwanese resistance to China that are indirect, but ultimately and I said this to a retiring Taiwanese general when I worked in government in 2014 or 15, the expectation that any Republican or Democrat except maybe Nikki Haley any Republican or Democratic Party president is ever going to risk World War III with China over Taiwan is not a healthy assumption to make.

Speaker 2: 27:55

And the Taiwanese military? They are a proficient force. They are well-trained. They're also, though, not big enough. They've got corruption issues Most. They're also, though, not big enough, they've also got corruption issues.

Speaker 2: 28:04

Most of the people of Taiwan are not signing up for their military the way they should if they really are serious about slowing down a Chinese or stopping a Chinese invasion of their land. And they're also in Taiwan. Their problem is they're building a miniaturized version of the US military. They're also in Taiwan. Their problem is they're building a miniaturized version of the US military and that is the way, wrong approach to take, because such a military will get broken apart within a week of fighting against the Chinese behemoth Just a numbers game at that point.

Speaker 2: 28:33

And the issue is that that military in Taiwan the reason it's designed as a mini American military is because the assumption politically in Taiwan has always been, after about a week or two of resisting China, the Americans and their allies come rushing in like the cavalry the old cavalry to save the day. That's not the case and I have advised Taiwan's governments over the last 10 years they need to be not building many American military that will get crushed quickly. They need to be building almost like a Taliban type situation where there are cells spread throughout the country with the assumption that within a week or two the Chinese will make it onto the mainland and they will take what they want, and so they're going to need to wage a long term insurgency against the Chinese, against the Chinese invasion, and right now Taiwan is not prepared for that. They're starting to, but they're not, and it's because the reason they need to prepare this way is because the US government I do not believe either a Trump or a Biden administration would intervene directly with direct military support. I could be wrong, and you know we, in my opinion this is just my opinion I don't want to see a war with China, but at the same time I do think that, much more so than Ukraine, the US has propped up Taiwan for decades.

Speaker 2: 29:59

We have given them assurances, we have basically led them along, and I think that Taiwan, the strategic location of Taiwan within that first island chain China needs to dominate the three island chains in order to be able to really kind of dominate the Indo-Pacific as they want to. And Taiwan is a complicating factor for them strategically as long as it is oriented toward the US. The Chinese can't break out of their little region in the Indo-Pacific to dominate. But if they can capture Taiwan, they then can influence Japan. They can then more thoroughly dominate the South China Sea. They can then pivot and go to the second island chain. Take those southern Pacific islands and then push beyond the second to the third.

Speaker 2: 30:45

The third island chain, by the way, includes the Aleutian Islands of Alaska all the way through the Hawaiian Islands, and this has always been a Chinese desire is to split the Pacific. Everything to the west of Hawaii goes to China. Everything to the east goes to the United States, and Taiwan is the linchpin goes to China. Everything to the east goes to the United States and Taiwan is the linchpin. If they can take Taiwan, that plan could be more easily influenced and affected. If we can stop them from taking Taiwan, we can keep China bottled up indefinitely in their isolated part of Eurasia, and so that is why I believe we have a vested interest to try to prepare Taiwan for resisting China and to not just let them have it. But do I believe we will do that? No, I think that a Trump or a Biden administration will just let Taiwan fall at the end of the day, which is going to be problematic for us.

Speaker 1: 31:35

And taking it to the investment side, that's where it gets to be volatile for the semiconductor industry, given how much Taiwan is a linchpin to that.

Speaker 2: 31:44

Yeah, yeah. So I mean you know Taiwan, south Korea and Japan are pretty much the three big makers of these semis. I want to make your audience aware of something, though, because this is sort of downplayed the Chinese also have a semiconductor industry. The Chinese also have a semiconductor industry. Now, they are not yet able to produce the level of sophistication that the Taiwanese, south Koreans and Japanese industries can produce. However, they are getting there, and the tech war that was begun under the Trump administration and somewhat continued under the Biden administration the tech war did harm China, but what it forced them to do it actually might help them in the long run is it's forced them to really focus on indigenously producing increasingly sophisticated semiconductors. They now, we know they now have seven nanometer chips, which is now embedded within their Huawei smartphones, which has really done damage to Apple's market share in Asia, which is a huge market for Apple, and they're now taking second fiddle to Huawei. We also know I'm forgetting the company's name, but there's an electric car company in China that they're saying their their electric cars are running off of indigenously produced five nanometer chips, and so they're getting close, on their own, to being able to counteract the tech war bands, and they're being able to create their own indigenous systems that are good enough to stay competitive with the West.

Speaker 2: 33:20

And the reason I bring this up is because right now it is basically an accepted fact that, when and if the hammer drops over Taiwan, that Taiwanese semiconductor TSMC plant that produces so many of the world's advanced semiconductors is going to either be purposely destroyed by Western intelligence assets to prevent China from getting their hands on it, or it may be incidentally destroyed as part of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. That will inevitably remove Western advantages. We will lose access to a massive number of these chips, which will mean things that rely on those chips industries like the automotive industry. Most of our cars need these chips. This is why the price of used cars and cars in general after COVID went so high, because there was a supply chain crisis where these American and Western car companies could not get reliable access to the number of chips they needed due to the COVID bans and the supply chain breakage during the pandemic. That was sort of a test run of what we could see happen. Only over a much more protracted period of time. If the TSMC plant in Taiwan is destroyed or damaged in a war with China, that's going to spike the cost of semiconductors because it's going to take a lot of them off the market for a protracted period of time and that, of course, is going to have knock-on effects for every industry, which is almost every industry in the world that relies on these semiconductors. So I'm using a laptop right now. I have a very nice Apple laptop. It costs a few thousand dollars. One can anticipate such a product going up at least by double, not just because of inflation but because of the limits on these chips, until a new source of production can be determined, and this was the idea behind the CHIPS Act.

Speaker 2: 35:19

The Trump administration wanted it. They couldn't get it. This was to bring indigenous production of semiconductors online in the United States. The Biden administration got it. The Republicans in the House wanted to give the Biden administration double the amount of money, the funding, to kind of get this project going. But they ultimately reneged on it because the Democrats and the Biden administration wanted half of that money to be spent on DEI initiatives in the semiconductor industry, as well as global warming initiatives, and the Republicans said this is not what this is about. So we're going to give you half the money because you're going to blow the other half anyway, and so all that did was damage America's ability to rapidly build out our own semiconductor capabilities.

Speaker 2: 36:03

So now we're going to be coming behind, and so the Taiwanese situation is such if we lose the TSMC plant in a Chinese attack, we then have to rely disproportionately on South Korea and Japan.

Speaker 2: 36:15

Well, if Taiwan does fall to China, china's going to be able to use Taiwan as a beating heart for their strategy to basically pressure South Korea to become more pro-China and to basically the plan is, I think, to blockade Japan and to basically force Japan out of its alliance with the United States, which means that's cool, and they're going to be able to.

Speaker 2: 36:39

Then, from taiwan, the chinese navy would be able to interdict any uh shipments coming out from japan and south korea of these semiconductors. So you could be living in a world in which china completely closes off accessibility to semiconductor production. Oh and by the way, they're, then, the only ones in China with somewhat sophisticated semiconductor capabilities, and they're now becoming the world's primary developer for it. So this is a real nightmare scenario in which, over the next five to 10 years, not only could you see semiconductors become inaccessible to the West, but you could actually see China build itself out into the new ruler of the semiconductor industry, and that's basically like being the head of the oil industry in the last century. It will completely change geopolitics as well as geoeconomics.

Speaker 1: 37:34

Just to play devil's advocate. Yeah, when Russia went into Ukraine there was a lot of alarmist talk by a lot of people, which made a lot of sense back then. As far as what that meant for grains, food supply, yes, you had a spike in the ag side, but for the most part, at least economically, it doesn't seem like it's mattered all that much, much less so than people thought. Europe, you can say, got lucky because of the warmer winter when it was around that gas. Is there a possibility that, other than the laptop example, which I agree with right Obviously, you'd have a spike in prices in basic technology? Is there a possibility that, if China does go into Taiwan and does take it, or if it takes longer than people think to take?

Speaker 1: 38:14

it that we're just isolated to it. Economically, it doesn't actually matter for our pocketbooks.

Speaker 2: 38:20

Well, I mean again, it'll come down to we need the semiconductors for basically everything. It's a little bit different from food in the sense that ultimately you have Latin America producing food, you have the American heartland producing food. So you know, ukraine happens and it really affected Europe and it affected really Africa directly. But you know, ukraine happens and it really affected Europe and it affected really Africa directly. But you know, ultimately we were able to override the really kind of nightmare scenario because there are other areas we could grow food and we could do it relatively quickly, it reliably with the semiconductor issue. The united states has basically handed over this capability to taiwan, to south korea, to, uh, japan, um, yes, we, we could build that capability here.

Speaker 2: 39:15

But, as we're seeing right now with the chips act, um, there's burdensome regulations about creating these factories and about bringing in the talent. There's these problems that we did not intend where, you know, back in think of World War II we needed to surge production basically overnight. We had the latent industrial capacity to do that. We don't today have a similar latent capacity to surge production of domestically produced semiconductors. I'm not saying we can't get there. In fact I believe we can, but it's going to take a protracted period of time and it's going to be very painful economically in the meantime.

Speaker 2: 39:56

And I again remind audiences of the experience with automotives during the pandemic lockdowns, in which everything from the price of new cars but even the price of older cars began to spike, partly because car companies could not gain access to the requisite number of and there's of course more to it, but one of the key factors was they couldn't gain access to the requisite number of chips because of the pandemic lockdowns and things not being moved and distributed the way that they used to be ordinarily.

Speaker 2: 41:11

And so that's sort of a microcosm experience of what could happen over a much protracted period of time. If China goes into Taiwan, if that factory is lost or is it taken over, there could be some significant issues. And, by the way, even if it's not destroyed and Taiwan's capabilities maintained, and let's say that China takes over and they get that factory back up and running and they just want to basically be the new sort of dealer of semiconductors, well, again, that's a problem for us, because that means that we are now inextricably linked to China for semiconductor production and they can cut us off whenever they want, sort of like what we did to them in the tech war to begin with. Payback, unfortunately, would be very painful at that point.

Speaker 1: 42:00

All right. Now again, we've got a looming scenario that could be very volatile for China, taiwan, but we also have existing scenarios which are still volatile. Which is? You mentioned Ukraine, russia and then, of course, the Middle East. Which are people underestimating the most in terms of it becoming a bigger deal? The Middle East or Russia-Ukraine? Because, other than the scare of World War III, which happened initially when Russia went into Ukraine, and it happened initially when Israel and Iran started trading bombs, for the most part now it's back to well, that's the way the world is and keep trucking along.

Speaker 2: 42:42

Yeah, I still think that. So it's funny because if you had asked me this about two or three weeks ago, I've been saying for years that in terms of the US perspective which is what I speak from because I'm an American, so I try to understand other countries, of course, but I sort of default to the American perspective I have been arguing for a few years at least, that if you're worried about World War III breaking out and a US direct involvement, I would be worried about the Middle East, specifically the Iran issue. Iran, to me, really reminds me of Germany to a degree in World War I part because, well, both world wars, in large part because Germany was trying to redefine its role and its influence in Europe and the other European powers didn't want it. They didn't want to have that. Something similar is at stake in the Middle East, where Iran is very much trying to reassert its historical power in the region as trying to redefine the region's power dynamics to make it favor Iran over the rest of the Arab countries, the Arab Muslim countries or even Israel. That, of course, could have a really negative impact on the US. So you know, for years I've said I'd be worried about World War III in the Middle East breaking out there.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Having said that, with my new book coming out, I really did kind of a deep dive into what is really going on with NATO in Ukraine, and we now have it looks like NATO troops being moved to the Russian frontier in numbers, particularly US troops, in numbers that have not really been deployed in some time. It looks like there is some attempt by the French to backdoor an Article 5, which is the mutual defense rule in the NATO charter, to backdoor an Article 5 claim by putting their troops as NATO members, putting French troops directly in harm's way against Russian forces in Ukraine, and if French troops die, that of course could could lead to NATO invoking Article 5, and then you really have a world war. And so you know I, at this point it almost looks like Europe could be again the flash point of World War Three. So I you know, but I do think that we are definitely in the outer contours of a third world war and I really think that november, this election, I think leadership matters, and so I really think that whoever wins is going to determine whether we get sucked into a world war or not. Um, and I think under biden, we are headed straight for World War Three.

Speaker 2: 45:32

You know he's he is antagonizing, or his administration is antagonizing, and has been going back even to the Obama administration, antagonizing Russia.

Speaker 2: 45:41

And that's not to say I'm taking up for Russia, because I'm not, but you know the West has been poking the bear for a long time and now the bear is in a position where it can scratch back.

Speaker 2: 46:02

But you also have to keep an eye on Iran, because the Middle East is a much more area of importance for the US than it is Europe, and the US has actual direct military forces currently in larger numbers than they do, I think, in Ukraine. But the US has many forces deployed throughout the Middle East that could fall under direct attack by Iran. But of course, it doesn't really matter if it's the Middle East or Europe, because Iran, russia, China, all three of these powers are now congealed into one alliance, and that alliance is getting stronger every day. And so whether it's in europe and whether it's in the middle east or eventually in uh uh, the, the indo-pacific, it doesn't really matter, because ultimately all of these powers will be roped in uh in a in a global conflagration, which is why we need to find desperately an off before the shooting between the great powers begins.

Speaker 1: 46:57

Brandon, maybe for the remaining few minutes here I want you to do kind of a synopsis of the various books and the new book. Yeah, and first of all, yeah, I give you a lot of credit. I mean, my father wrote two books on markets. I write a lot of content but I've never written a book myself. I know that's a hell of an undertaking.

Speaker 2: 47:12

It is, and I'm known for a quick turnaround, so Biohacked here was written over the course of the summer of 2023. So about three, four months it was written. So I am known in the industry as good content plus quick turnaround. But it is not an easy feat, especially these kinds of books, because I research and I provide all of my research so people can pick it apart. Um, so the book here, uh, the shadow war iran's quest for supremacy that was written, uh, in 2022.

Speaker 2: 47:44

Actually, the manuscript sat in development hell for about a year and a half. It was released in July of 2023. And basically it was a warning. I was writing a warning. It was around the time that Biden was really kind of, his administration was taking shape in the Middle East, and I was writing it as a cautionary tale. Don't destroy the Trump era, abraham Accords, don't do what Obama did and try to distance the US from its traditional allies, israel and the Sunni Arab states, and don't try to make a deal with Iran, because they're not going to be appeased. They're not going to stop. They're not a rational actor as we understand it and, of course, everything. And the warning was if we do what Obama did, if we do what the Biden team had been talking about doing, which is normalizing relations with Iran, looking the other way on their nuclear development and punishing our traditional allies, we're going to get World War III and that's what I think we're seeing the beginnings in the region of, particularly after October 7th.

Speaker 2: 48:45

The book behind it is Biohack China's Race to Control Life, and that book I have been at the ground level of proving that COVID was from a lab. I was banned on social media, I was removed from different publications because I was saying it, but I've proven it. It's been proven. Now I realize it's still controversial to say, but it's there and all of my data is there. But more importantly about Biohat, it wasn't just about the COVID origins, that was just the hook. In my book I get into the details of how China plans to use CRISPR-Cas9, which is the gene editing tool that America created to do these sort of gene therapies and to manipulate viruses through gain of function tests, weaponize that tool to create what the Chinese military refers to as specific ethnic genetic attacks, and that's tailoring biological weapons to kill one person based on their DNA or to kill a specific group of people, like the Muslim Uyghurs in China, based on their DNA. And so I get into how China sort of the story of big data masses and merges with the story of new age bioweapons, and so it's biohacking.

Speaker 2: 50:01

And then the book behind that is my first book Winning Space how America Remains a Superpower. It's all about my involvement at the periphery. I was by no means a major player, but I was involved when I worked in government and then when I consulted, after I left government, with the formation of Space Force, why it's important, how we could be speeding toward a space Pearl Harbor conducted by either Russia, china, iran or even North Korea. Our satellites are the key and yet they're not well defended and so, and then I talk also about space mining, I talk about the future of space and sort of the opportunities there, and those are the three books I've got out, and the fourth book that's coming out, a Disaster of Our Own Making.

Speaker 2: 50:43

How the West Lost Ukraine, is a. It's been described as a critical assessment of NATO's enlargement. It's been described as a critical assessment of NATO's enlargement. It's been described as a revisionist history of Russo-Ukrainian-American relations. But the bottom line is it's the sordid tale of how the United States not only lost the peace of the Cold War by poking post-Cold War Russia, by poking post-Cold War Russia, but also how the US policy process or government has been hijacked by what I call the cabal, which is that coalition of neoconservative and neoliberal bureaucrats and think tankers, what Boris Yeltsin referred to as policy entrepreneurs in Washington and referred to as policy entrepreneurs in Washington, and how they basically for 30 years, since 1990s, have co-opted every post-Cold War presidency to shape a policy agenda that is adversarial, needlessly adversarial to Russia, to the point that we are now here standing on the precipice of nuclear World War III with russia over what is really an ancillary issue ukraine.

Speaker 2: 51:54

Ultimately, this war is still about geopolitics. Ignore the claims about human rights and democracy promotion. The ukrainians have been as big of violators of human rights as the russians have in the war. The ukrainians are not a democracy anymore. They don't. They never had democracy.

Speaker 2: 52:11

Um, so it's really about geopolitics and in this case, it's about who controls sevastopol in crimea, and that is the key russian warm water port in the black sea. It's one of only four russian warm water ports. After the cold war, the neocon neoliberal cabal believed they could break Russia apart into its smaller medieval era borders by rolling Russian power completely away from Europe. And one of those things they could do is take the port of Sevastopol by changing the regime in Ukraine into a pro-NATO, pro-american regime, which would then force Russia to abandon its Black Sea port, closing them off.

Speaker 2: 52:55

By the way, in the book I talk about also, this is also why America one of the reasons we were involved in Syria we were trying to change the regime there in order to get rid of Russia's access to the Mediterranean Sea, getting rid of their Tardis deep warm water port. They also have a warm water port in the Kaliningrad, which is the space they've held since 1945, separating Poland and Germany on the Baltic Sea, and they, of course, have one in their actual proper Russia in Vladivostostok. But this war is still about breaking russia, pushing russia away from europe and expanding nato. But the problem is, as I argue in the book, we're actually breaking ourselves. We're not breaking russia, as has been proven, you know, by the news in the last couple years. Russia's doing fine, uh, so that's sort of the books in a nutshell.

Speaker 1: 53:53

All those books are available on Amazoncom. Obviously. I encourage everybody to look at those books. I very much enjoyed this conversation, brandon.

Speaker 2: 53:58

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 53:58

Let's do it again. Yeah, for sure.