Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here the only podcast where
Speaker 1: the hosts asks all listeners and guests to provide their
Speaker 1: Social Security number and bank account number, routing number, all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. UM. This is a podcast about how
Speaker 1: things aren't always great, uh and maybe are kind of
Speaker 1: falling apart a little bit. And and it has also
Speaker 1: not been, for the most part, a podcast about the
Speaker 1: expanded war in Ukraine. UM. For a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: We have done some coverage of that, uh, but we've
Speaker 1: focused specifically on stories of individual people and and that's
Speaker 1: generally where I feel like our strength is as a program.
Speaker 1: But people have been repeatedly requesting we do a little
Speaker 1: bit of a bigger picture look at what's gone on
Speaker 1: in that conflict, and so I have brought Aram Chambanian
Speaker 1: into the studio. Aram, how are you doing, buddy? Oh?
Speaker 1: Not a bad man? How you doing today? Finding dandy
Speaker 1: like sour candy? Now, would you describe kind of your
Speaker 1: your who you are and what you do and why
Speaker 1: why you're You're someone people should listen to when we're
Speaker 1: talking about a conflict like this, because you are one
Speaker 1: of the people who when everyone was like, there's no
Speaker 1: way Russia will invade was was saying, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: might happen. Yeah, I mean, um, well, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that that sets me aside from a
Speaker 1: lot of other analysts out there is that I never
Speaker 1: thought I would become an analyst, and I never thought
Speaker 1: that I would do this. Um. I it wasn't set
Speaker 1: in stone from me from the beginning. I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna be like a high school history teacher. And
Speaker 1: so I've always studied the world in terms of reading
Speaker 1: books on different conflicts around the world, and and I've
Speaker 1: tried to keep appraised on where these books have led to. Right,
Speaker 1: So if I read a book about the Second Congo War,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to then follow current events that are
Speaker 1: related to what happened after the Second Congo War. As
Speaker 1: a result, I followed things going on in Ukraine starting
Speaker 1: in with you am I done, um, and elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the world. But but Ukraine has been one that I've
Speaker 1: focused on pretty heavily because, um, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of information about Ukraine ever since because of how late
Speaker 1: the war happened in terms of human history and in
Speaker 1: terms of recent conflicts. Feen, isn't that long ago? Um?
Speaker 1: And so uh, I started following it back then, and
Speaker 1: I think that if you combine modern open source tools,
Speaker 1: modern technology, some of the stuff that organizations like Belling
Speaker 1: Cat can do with traditional research and and and knowledge
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that I've done in school, you
Speaker 1: have a really powerful tool to combat disinformation UM. And
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the best tools we have
Speaker 1: to combat disinformation is wedding oh sent with traditional research UM.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, when it comes to open source intelligence, UM,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian War is actually kind of one of the
Speaker 1: It's not the conflict where that really started to become
Speaker 1: a thing. That would probably be the Libyan Civil War
Speaker 1: when when that UM began to be something people were
Speaker 1: talking about in a big way. But the Ukrainian the
Speaker 1: invasion of Ukraine by Russia in particular in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: UM is really where open source intelligence kind of came
Speaker 1: into its own in a really widely known way. That's
Speaker 1: when Belling Cats reporting on the downing of MH On
Speaker 1: seven like went out and that was kind of like
Speaker 1: the first first really huge international story involving like open
Speaker 1: source intelligent cracking a case UM. And now since the
Speaker 1: expanded invasion of Russia back in February, we've kind of
Speaker 1: entered and again this isn't really where this period started,
Speaker 1: but this has been kind of we've seen an explosion
Speaker 1: of what I think would be fair to call open
Speaker 1: source intelligence disinformation. Um. Yeah, you want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about kind of some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: you've seen, because there's there's a number of accounts claiming
Speaker 1: to be doing ocean on the Ukrainian war. Um, and
Speaker 1: boy howdy, they are not all giving out good information.
Speaker 1: And it can be difficult for people to tell what
Speaker 1: they should trust because if you're if you're kind of
Speaker 1: just scanning over it, bad ocean or even outright fake
Speaker 1: ocean can look very similar to good ocean, right and
Speaker 1: and so I would put a lot of the ocean
Speaker 1: community into four rough categories. Uh there's uh osan analysts,
Speaker 1: and those are pretty rare. Those are the kind of
Speaker 1: people who combine what they're seeing in real time on
Speaker 1: social media with a background of knowledge in the area.
Speaker 1: So like a Ukraine regional expert combining that with what
Speaker 1: they're seeing happen in Ukraine, that's an ocean analyst. There's
Speaker 1: some Twitter accounts that are more ocean aggregators. They don't
Speaker 1: really have much analysis that put into what they're what
Speaker 1: they're producing, but they spit out a lot of information
Speaker 1: in real time, and so if you follow the right
Speaker 1: ones that use the right sources, you can get some
Speaker 1: pretty decent information from them. Then there's more of the
Speaker 1: misinformation aggregators, which are accounts that just kind of spread
Speaker 1: whatever they see without regards to whether it's true or not.
Speaker 1: Um they'll sensationalized stories. You know, if there's the uh
Speaker 1: A rare command and control plane takes off somewhere in
Speaker 1: America that's known as the doomsday plane during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: they'll tweet out the doomsday plane is in the air.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean the clear war right, And they're not doing
Speaker 1: it to be hurtful, they're doing it for likes. And
Speaker 1: then there's disinformation aggregators who are deliberately out there trying
Speaker 1: to sow discord and so problems. And those are four
Speaker 1: categories that I've seen all of them develop in their
Speaker 1: own ways in the last ten years. UM. I think
Speaker 1: the best best example of that final category there's an
Speaker 1: account on Twitter called s MM Syria, and if you
Speaker 1: look at the account, it looks almost identical to the
Speaker 1: OS ces Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. It takes the
Speaker 1: same kind of graphics and it has the same kind
Speaker 1: of terminology, but it's an astaddist disinformation outlet and so
Speaker 1: but they've woven their way into if you just took
Speaker 1: a casual glance at the war in Syria, you might
Speaker 1: believe that it's a valid source. And that's the kind
Speaker 1: of more malicious disinformation that I'm talking about, where like
Speaker 1: they know what they're doing and they're trying to confuse people,
Speaker 1: and it's there's you know, I think one of the
Speaker 1: best examples of something that really struck me recently as
Speaker 1: problematic in in the war in Ukraine, as you've got
Speaker 1: a video going around um of that purports to show
Speaker 1: Ukrainian soldiers shooting captured Russian soldiers um, which is a
Speaker 1: war crime. And uh, I think credible people within the
Speaker 1: Ocean community have said this is something that desperately needs
Speaker 1: to be investigated more seriously. This this like is very
Speaker 1: has a very good chance of being legitimate and people
Speaker 1: should be looking into this. Whereas you've also seen folks
Speaker 1: who kind of reflectively jumped to defend Ukraine against these allegations,
Speaker 1: putting out what I think is fairly shoddy ocean claiming
Speaker 1: to show like issues with the video and stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's like people circling blurry sections of the video and
Speaker 1: saying like this is you know, looks like it could
Speaker 1: be edited, or this doesn't look credible, and it is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing. I think. One reason people can
Speaker 1: get tripped up by that is prior to the invasion
Speaker 1: of Ukraine, there were some Russian false flag events that
Speaker 1: involved like cadavers, bodies that had been autopsy and stuff,
Speaker 1: which was broken down by people like Elliot Higgins at
Speaker 1: Belling cat Um and one of the things that again
Speaker 1: if you're just kind of looking at the surface level,
Speaker 1: you can see like, oh well that those were videos
Speaker 1: that were faked, and so these like the o cent
Speaker 1: around this people like pointing out different sections of the
Speaker 1: video looks the same. Some of the differences are, for example, Um,
Speaker 1: when they were analyzing the bodies and those those false
Speaker 1: flag footage, they brought in actual you know, corpse cutter ruppers, morticians, yes,
Speaker 1: to analyze like the cuts in the in the skulls
Speaker 1: and whatnot, as opposed to again just kind of a
Speaker 1: guy circling aspects of a video and being like this
Speaker 1: doesn't seem right and it's like, um, but you can
Speaker 1: I can see why people get tripped up by it,
Speaker 1: and it it is important not to get tripped up
Speaker 1: by that kind of stuff because um, war crimes are bad,
Speaker 1: I think is a general attitude that we we both
Speaker 1: share um and and should be investigated regardless of like
Speaker 1: whether or not they're being done by the side who's
Speaker 1: also towing Russian tanks away with tractors. That you're you're
Speaker 1: on the side of right, like right, And I think
Speaker 1: that that's that's exactly an important distinction to because like,
Speaker 1: there are certain claims that have come out from the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian side, certain statements that have come out that as
Speaker 1: an osan analyst, I could probably look into more and
Speaker 1: maybe poke holes and stuff like the number of kills
Speaker 1: that the ghost of keys, right, Okay, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: thirty kills or whatever it is that people are saying.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's not really, but that's not harmful as much
Speaker 1: as did these guys shoot people in the legs? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: So one of those bears examination just because of the
Speaker 1: nature of the claim. The other one, maybe we can
Speaker 1: xamined it after the war when it's not a It
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter if there is a Ukrainian ace fighter
Speaker 1: pilot who's dropped a bunch of a crazy number like
Speaker 1: obviously in a military sense of Russian jets are being
Speaker 1: down to that doesn't matter. But like from the perspective
Speaker 1: of people just kind of observing this war as as
Speaker 1: news consumers, it doesn't really matter, whereas whether or not
Speaker 1: a country gets away with a war crime absolutely matters,
Speaker 1: and people are treating it with the same reflective handwave
Speaker 1: as they do when they accept these ghost of Kiev.
Speaker 1: Yes Smiths, right, they're saying like, well, no, but I
Speaker 1: want the Ukrainian side to win this war, so we
Speaker 1: can't even look into any claims of war crimes. And
Speaker 1: that's just not how it's supposed to be. Like you
Speaker 1: condemn the crimes up front, and you investigate and you
Speaker 1: try to move forward, and that's how we prove that
Speaker 1: we're better than the opposing sides. Like that's that's been
Speaker 1: the rule in this war, and it's been the rule
Speaker 1: in war's past. You know, you you prove that you're
Speaker 1: better than your opponents by being more decent. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's I have seen some really unsettling logic from
Speaker 1: some people along the lines of like, well, these were
Speaker 1: artillerymen who have been you know, shelling civilian areas, so
Speaker 1: why shouldn't they be be shot in the leg? And
Speaker 1: the answer is because, like, that's number one, it is
Speaker 1: a war crime to shoot captured prisoners. Likely that that
Speaker 1: is a thing that we as a as a species
Speaker 1: have attempted to make illegal, um and problem and ought
Speaker 1: to be. It is a thing that like should not
Speaker 1: be done. And there's actually of a wide variety of
Speaker 1: like tactical reasons why it's bad for Ukraine. If Russian
Speaker 1: soldiers believe they will be shot after being captured, it makes,
Speaker 1: among other things, that makes soldiers less likely to turn
Speaker 1: themselves in. UM. One of the wiser decisions that the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian government has made in this war has been really
Speaker 1: deliberately pushing um the idea that like, hey, Russians, if
Speaker 1: you surrender, will pay you, you can get Ukrainian citizenship,
Speaker 1: Like bring in your tanks, you know, land your planes
Speaker 1: or whatever, like well, you know, will make it worth
Speaker 1: your while. Um, which is a lot which is potentially
Speaker 1: a force multiplier, right, Um, If Russian soldiers think when
Speaker 1: I get captured, they will shoot me, then they will
Speaker 1: fight to the death and Ukraine will lose more people
Speaker 1: in that fight, as opposed to if Russian soldiers think, well, ship,
Speaker 1: I could actually have a pretty decent life if I
Speaker 1: just turned myself into these guys and refused to fight.
Speaker 1: That means less people you have to fight. Um. So
Speaker 1: it it does. It does really matter whether or not
Speaker 1: this is happening. Um. And it's also just like on
Speaker 1: a moral level, you you shouldn't accept it. And I
Speaker 1: see some really I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: I find so unsettling about that logic like these are uh,
Speaker 1: these are you know, artillerymen who have been targeting civilian areas.
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't they be shot? Um, It's not that much
Speaker 1: of a leap to like some other ship we saw
Speaker 1: people saying in Vietnam, you know, these villages are harboring insurgents.
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't we treat them like the enemy? You know,
Speaker 1: like all of this logic leads to people getting murdered
Speaker 1: who don't deserve to get murdered, and that is bad. Right,
Speaker 1: there's the snowball effect, the slippery slope effect with the
Speaker 1: moral side of it. And then like you're saying a
Speaker 1: tactical side of it. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: part of the reason members of ISIS fought so hard
Speaker 1: in places like most of which because once you're in
Speaker 1: that organization, your options are a bullet or like a
Speaker 1: desert cell. If you're lucky, they're not going to treat
Speaker 1: you well and reintegrate you into society. Come on, like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how it works, so you fight like hell,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's a very basic rule that is
Speaker 1: pretty easy to understand, I would think. So that's why
Speaker 1: this needs to be looked into. And if it's proven false,
Speaker 1: if it's proven it to not be a correct true video,
Speaker 1: that just strengthens the Ukrainian side. But if it is
Speaker 1: proven to be true, it's something that needs to be investigated.
Speaker 1: It can't be overlooked. It can't be swept under the
Speaker 1: under the rug. Just because we we want one side
Speaker 1: of this war to come out on top doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that we have to ignore you're committing like one, A
Speaker 1: good rule of thumb to approach a war from when
Speaker 1: you're trying to analyze it is that there there has
Speaker 1: never been a side in a war who have not
Speaker 1: committed war crimes. Um. So that should always be on
Speaker 1: your mind when you're trying to evaluate the reality of
Speaker 1: a war crime. It doesn't mean every claim of a
Speaker 1: war crime is true. That would be a very silly
Speaker 1: way to translate that. But it does mean that when
Speaker 1: there is a claim that the side you support has
Speaker 1: been responsible for a war crime, your default should be
Speaker 1: this is not impossible, and I should I should proceed
Speaker 1: from the area that this could have happened, and and
Speaker 1: it should be analyzed without reflectively dismissing it, and also
Speaker 1: without saying that like war crimes committed by a group
Speaker 1: of soldiers in a single part of a theater necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that the the war itself is being prosecuted in
Speaker 1: a criminal level by that government. Um because for example, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was about to say U. S. Soldiers
Speaker 1: committed war crimes in World War Two, but actually the
Speaker 1: prosecution of that war was criminal in a lot of
Speaker 1: fundamental ways. But it doesn't. That doesn't mean that like
Speaker 1: your granddad committed war crimes because other U. S. Soldiers
Speaker 1: who were in the field executed captured German POWs, you know, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think is something people have an easier time
Speaker 1: understanding when it's not a war, they feel the need
Speaker 1: to have a series of two character or less takes
Speaker 1: on in Twitter. Yeah, it's That's the weirdest thing about
Speaker 1: about the social media age and and kind of sent
Speaker 1: in general, is that while it does make it very
Speaker 1: accessible and easy for anybody to get involved in investigating
Speaker 1: these crimes and these events, it also means that everybody
Speaker 1: thinks they have an opinion that matters on it, and
Speaker 1: uh and and in that sense, they muddy the waters.
Speaker 1: They they a lot of people can can imitate the
Speaker 1: ocent look pretty well. They can circle things in pictures
Speaker 1: that look similar, or as we saw in Syria, a
Speaker 1: lot they'd take two pictures of two totally different dudes
Speaker 1: and say these are the same guy, they're both members
Speaker 1: of Al Nustra are something like that, and they would
Speaker 1: compare the eyes and compare the chins and stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a belling cat image. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't right. It is. That's the anger here is that
Speaker 1: like everybody can can help, but everybody can hurt now too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things. Every every aspect of
Speaker 1: this cuts both ways, because like the thing people started
Speaker 1: saying rightfully so after the invasion, or the expanded invasion
Speaker 1: I should say of Ukraine by Russia. Is like, well,
Speaker 1: now all of these people who were experts in whatever
Speaker 1: the last big story was are going to become experts
Speaker 1: on the Ukrainian conflict, right, which is absolutely a thing
Speaker 1: that happened. You get all of these people who I
Speaker 1: think are pretty bad journalists and reporters who suddenly like
Speaker 1: rushed to to have their commentary on this thing that
Speaker 1: they have ignored for the last eight years. Um. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's to talk about Belling Cat.
Speaker 1: The founder of Belling Cat, my old boss, Elliott Higgins,
Speaker 1: was like literally an unemployed dude sitting on his couch
Speaker 1: and when he started analyzing war footage um and is
Speaker 1: now one of the most respected conflict analysts in the world. UM.
Speaker 1: And that is a thing the Internet has made possible. UM.
Speaker 1: I think a great example would be the Caliber Obscura Twitter,
Speaker 1: which is just like a dude in the UK who
Speaker 1: has an almost impossible ability to recognize firearms and pieces
Speaker 1: of firearms and so just analyzes people send him footage
Speaker 1: from all over the planet and he'll say, like, these
Speaker 1: are these guns, and this is where they came from,
Speaker 1: and this is uh, this one is like looks like
Speaker 1: this kind of gun, but it's actually, um, a fake
Speaker 1: one that's being made locally in this country, and it
Speaker 1: is supposed to look like this. And you can tell
Speaker 1: because like, um, that's not a person who Caliber did
Speaker 1: not like go to some sort of fancy gun school.
Speaker 1: They just are uh. I mean, it's definitely not right
Speaker 1: to call them an amateur because quite frankly, I don't
Speaker 1: know any people who are working at institutes and better
Speaker 1: at the thing that Caliber does than calibers, right um.
Speaker 1: But they did just start as a person on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the thing about this, this is that
Speaker 1: you get people who were not kind of born with
Speaker 1: an idea that they were going to become analysts and
Speaker 1: this in this field. And so you have people like
Speaker 1: both of both of the people you mentioned, whom I
Speaker 1: I know personal I don't know Elliott personally, but I
Speaker 1: remember him from our days are shared days on a
Speaker 1: comedy website together. It's the website that show remained nameless,
Speaker 1: right um. And then and then you know, uh, Caliber
Speaker 1: and I have talked on Twitter a bunch and you know,
Speaker 1: we're friends there and it's just interesting to see that,
Speaker 1: like both of them are very real people behind like
Speaker 1: their professional personality and their their expertise. They're also down
Speaker 1: to earth, real people, which is rare in this field
Speaker 1: because a lot of people are kind of elitist um
Speaker 1: and and and yeah Gatekeeper E And neither of them
Speaker 1: are about that. They're both all about like getting as
Speaker 1: many people doing this as possible because more eyes are better, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Elliott is is Uh. I mean, the whole reason my
Speaker 1: career with Belling Cat existed is because, like I emailed
Speaker 1: him out of the blue one day and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I've been noticing this weird thing in videos of fascists
Speaker 1: talking to cops. Can I write a thing for you?
Speaker 1: And he was just like okay, and and that was
Speaker 1: I mean, like that was how that started. Um and
Speaker 1: he's I've met him since a couple of times, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a very I think it is very informed.
Speaker 1: Because of the fact that he did not come from
Speaker 1: sort of this big institutional background. UM has has a
Speaker 1: humility with which he approaches his investigations that, uh, I
Speaker 1: think is one of the things you should look for
Speaker 1: in trying to decide whether or not open source intelligence
Speaker 1: that you're seeing on Twitter whatever is credible is how
Speaker 1: how how conclusive are they stating their claims? Are? How
Speaker 1: many times do they offer only a single possibility for
Speaker 1: what something is like? Um, you know, there's a number
Speaker 1: of things you can do. I think at this point
Speaker 1: we should probably move to a separate area of discussion,
Speaker 1: which is how's the how's this working? Who? Who's who's winning? What? Um? Well, so,
Speaker 1: I I made a statement on my Facebook page, my
Speaker 1: personal Facebook page, three weeks ago, and I still feel
Speaker 1: confident in that statement, and that is that well, Ukraine
Speaker 1: has yet to win this war. Russia has already lost.
Speaker 1: They've already lost their objectives, They've already lost what they
Speaker 1: what their goals were. And at this point it's a
Speaker 1: face saving venture on the Russian part. But a rum um.
Speaker 1: Russia carried out a cutting faint action to distract while
Speaker 1: they while they took the East by burning a fifth
Speaker 1: of their general staff and all of their armored vehicles.
Speaker 1: It was a cunning fat Yeah. I saw someone on
Speaker 1: Twitter positive was actually uh a move to use up
Speaker 1: all of Ukraine's ammunition. Brilliant, Yeah, just very very zab
Speaker 1: Brannigan logic. Half of Vladimir Putin. Ukrainians have a preset
Speaker 1: kill limit and once they hit ten generals, the army
Speaker 1: will shut down. But no, the war is not well
Speaker 1: for Russia. Um. And that's not to say that it's
Speaker 1: going great for Ukraine either, but no one needs to
Speaker 1: do less well to succeed here. Yes, it's uh, I
Speaker 1: mean because one of the things that is a black box, right.
Speaker 1: I do think because there was a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: earlier in the ward, particularly like how credible are these
Speaker 1: numbers that the Ukrainian government is putting out for for
Speaker 1: dead and for destroyed vehicles? And I think the oceans
Speaker 1: out there, like the verified vehicle casualties and stuff that
Speaker 1: we can verify, means that like obviously the Ukrainian government
Speaker 1: is patting their numbers, but not by as much as
Speaker 1: a lot of people might have, like it's not wildly
Speaker 1: off saw their first casualty account. I think first casual account.
Speaker 1: I think it was okays, like day two or three,
Speaker 1: and then like all of the western and help me, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually yeah, it's probably about oh my god. Wow. Yeah
Speaker 1: in perspective for some people who may not that number
Speaker 1: may not jump out to them. We lost, you know,
Speaker 1: just shy of three thousand soldiers killed during the Iraq Wars. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: two thousand in a couple of days is an extraordinary
Speaker 1: number of losses. Yeah. And of course the black box
Speaker 1: here we don't have nearly as good an information on
Speaker 1: is what kind of casualties is the Ukrainian military suffered
Speaker 1: and what kind of civilian casualties have been suffered? And um,
Speaker 1: Obviously civilian casualties nearly always take much longer to get,
Speaker 1: um to the extent that it's ever. I think we
Speaker 1: have a better chance of getting objective civilian casualties for
Speaker 1: this because, unlike a lot of other conflicts, these civilians
Speaker 1: being killed, our civilians under the ages of a government
Speaker 1: that is a functional state, as opposed to Syria, for example,
Speaker 1: where the there's basically the only people with an interest
Speaker 1: in accurately reporting the death count are a number of
Speaker 1: different non governmental organizations. Um, because the people being are
Speaker 1: being killed by one government or the other, right including
Speaker 1: like this is this was the same thing like in
Speaker 1: a rack. The civilians who died in Mosel were technically
Speaker 1: under the Iraqi government's you know whatever protection. Seems like
Speaker 1: the wrong word to say, but I can tell you
Speaker 1: from my experience there there was no We still do
Speaker 1: not have anything that approaches a credible civilian death count
Speaker 1: for for that conflict, um and probably never will right
Speaker 1: and and on that note, on the civilian casualties note,
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier about what how you can identify
Speaker 1: a credible ostan account versus a one that you probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't give too much credence to. And one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to do that, honestly is is, ah, look
Speaker 1: at their their morals. I guess if they're ever posting
Speaker 1: and celebrating the death of civilians anywhere, you should probably
Speaker 1: disregard them. Like, yeah, I'll never see Elliott Higgins being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: suck at people of belowgrad like you got hit with
Speaker 1: a missile, Like it's not it's you know, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah, it's not. It's the same thing as like,
Speaker 1: I get why people celebrate, uh, you know, battlefield victory. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I don't think, especially if you're literally a Ukrainian living,
Speaker 1: you know, in the area affected, I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything morally wrong with celebrating opposing soldiers being defeated. But
Speaker 1: I I am I continue to be deeply unsettled by
Speaker 1: footage celebrating things like the destruction of armored personnel carriers
Speaker 1: full of nineteen year old kids, um, even though a
Speaker 1: non insignificant number of those nineteen year old kids are
Speaker 1: accessories to war crimes. Right, Like, it doesn't mean like
Speaker 1: I'm broadly okay with it. I do. I do feel
Speaker 1: a lot better about celebrating losses of special forces units
Speaker 1: like the vdv UM that have been heavily involved in
Speaker 1: war crimes around the world, like that I have less
Speaker 1: kind of an issue with. But and I felt that personally.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm Armenian and during the Carback War, it
Speaker 1: was just day, every day I would wake up to
Speaker 1: dozens of videos of Armenian conscripts and soldiers being blown
Speaker 1: up and hunted from the air, and people on when
Speaker 1: or cheering for it because they were, for one reason
Speaker 1: or another, on the ZERI side. And like, I get it,
Speaker 1: you know, like you were saying you want to cheer
Speaker 1: your battlefield victories, and I understand that from people who
Speaker 1: live on the battlefield and live near the battlefield, I
Speaker 1: get it. It's happening to you, to people thousands of
Speaker 1: miles away cheerleading on the internet. What the hell is
Speaker 1: wrong with you. Yeah, maybe don't do that. Maybe don't
Speaker 1: do that, like you what the hell? Like you know,
Speaker 1: those are real people in that video that never did
Speaker 1: anything to you. And this is not like a sporting
Speaker 1: event where like they go home at the end of
Speaker 1: the day and they've just lost, like they're dead even
Speaker 1: when they do. Like, I've spent a huge amount of
Speaker 1: my career talking directly face to face with victims of ISIS, Right,
Speaker 1: I have been to like eight or nine refugee camps
Speaker 1: in two countries at this point, specifically for that were.
Speaker 1: In addition, Todays spent on the refugee trail in between
Speaker 1: Hungary and Serbia, talking to two Syrians and talking to
Speaker 1: um um, people who would like led the region. Uh.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I can't help but like,
Speaker 1: like I've literally been under fire by ISIS and then
Speaker 1: had those ISIS guys gotten killed, and I have celebrated
Speaker 1: and cheered when that's happened. Um, And I'll never forget
Speaker 1: we were embedded with this mortar team and we were
Speaker 1: under fire from this sniper and the mortar team. I forget.
Speaker 1: You can in the article I wrote on it, I
Speaker 1: list the exact number of rounds fired but it was
Speaker 1: like nine or ten something like that, where they're gradually
Speaker 1: walking in mortars until they get this guy um. And
Speaker 1: obviously we like cheered when they fucking killed this dude
Speaker 1: because he was shooting at us. And I remember, like
Speaker 1: kind of on our way out away from the front,
Speaker 1: my fixer Sangar was like, how many rounds did they
Speaker 1: drop before they got him? And I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it was like nine or ten.
Speaker 1: I've got the footage somewhere and he was like, I
Speaker 1: wonder what else they hit and and sing sangarsa uh
Speaker 1: like was born and raised in mosle Um, And it
Speaker 1: was one of those things we spent the very next day.
Speaker 1: We were like talking to people fleeing their homes and stuff.
Speaker 1: And not only did we like see some of those
Speaker 1: people who lost family members to miss his Um, both
Speaker 1: by Iraqi forces and by coalition aircraft and stuff, but
Speaker 1: like we came upon this dead iis fighter in a
Speaker 1: fighting position where you could see he had been in
Speaker 1: there with his wife for days and he had been
Speaker 1: wounded two or three days before he got killed, and
Speaker 1: you could see the evidence of the first aide she
Speaker 1: had done on him, and it was one of those things.
Speaker 1: I guess I could try to make the case that like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe she was a captive and didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: but quite frankly, everything I saw in there makes me
Speaker 1: believe like she cared deeply for him and stayed with
Speaker 1: him until the bitter end, trying to keep him alive
Speaker 1: and fighting. Um. And that doesn't mean he's not like
Speaker 1: a monster, and it doesn't mean he shouldn't have been
Speaker 1: killed because he's a fucking dashi who was in the
Speaker 1: middle of doing enabling a series of terrible things. But
Speaker 1: he's also like, you can't you can't ignore the humanity
Speaker 1: of of somebody when you have seen that element of
Speaker 1: what what happens in the conflict, and that has stayed
Speaker 1: with me quite a bit ever since. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. And you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: remember that the majority of of young men of fighting
Speaker 1: age around the world who joined a military or an
Speaker 1: armed organization or an insurgent group, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: they do so typically because it's whomever is in charge
Speaker 1: of the area they're growing up in. Right, you don't
Speaker 1: join the Russian Army because you wait all the options
Speaker 1: and the Brazilian Army offer some good aid, you know,
Speaker 1: some good healthcare packages. And I looked at the Italian Army,
Speaker 1: but really I want to go with the Russian. No,
Speaker 1: you go with wherever you were born, yeah, whether and
Speaker 1: you know, and I was talking to my roommate about
Speaker 1: this last night. We were watching this footage from the
Speaker 1: flood of ninety six here in Oregon, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's this National Guard a helicopter where they're pushing bales
Speaker 1: of hay out of the back of the helicopter down
Speaker 1: to cows stranded out in your tillamook. And so depending
Speaker 1: on when you join the National Guard, you either fed
Speaker 1: cows hey from a helicopter or deployed to Irock. That's
Speaker 1: the luck of the draw, right, That's not fair. No,
Speaker 1: they don't just or have to die any more than
Speaker 1: the guys dropping the hay out of the helicopter did, right.
Speaker 1: But people get Yeah, they get carried away with like
Speaker 1: turning it into a sport almost, and they forget that
Speaker 1: there's people on the other end, and that like, while
Speaker 1: some of them are threats and they may need to
Speaker 1: be dealt with, it's like you know, a bear comes
Speaker 1: at you in the woods, you shoot it, you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't skin it and make fun of it, like yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I go kill its kids. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not that's not how it works, you know, So like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't be don't be a piece of ship, Like
Speaker 1: don't don't don't don't lose your humanity, m because I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes it easy to lose
Speaker 1: your humanity is that like videos of ship getting blown
Speaker 1: up looks dope, right like it it does. It looks
Speaker 1: cool to watch things get blown up. That's in fact,
Speaker 1: I suspect how a lot of people who become very
Speaker 1: good oh since investigators part of what draws them in.
Speaker 1: It's just like I'm sure that was a part of
Speaker 1: why Caliber started obsessively researching guns. Is like their neat
Speaker 1: guns are neat. You know, weapons are interesting. People are
Speaker 1: inherently interested in in weaponry. Um, which is not a
Speaker 1: good thing. It's just the thing, you know. It's not
Speaker 1: a bad thing either. It's just like a thing human
Speaker 1: beings will always be interested in because warfare is as
Speaker 1: natural to us as eating and fucking um. Well, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the mortars, right, the mortars walking in and
Speaker 1: there's this video on YouTube of made by an American
Speaker 1: Navy attack squadron Um of them dropping bomb after bomb
Speaker 1: on targets and muzzle and and and rocca places like that,
Speaker 1: and it's set to the Devil's going to cut You down,
Speaker 1: and every time there's a beat and in the music
Speaker 1: and you see a bomb drop, and some of these
Speaker 1: bombs it's like four bombs dropping at a time, dropping
Speaker 1: an eight story building. And so I'm sure there was
Speaker 1: a guy inside there with a woman, but like you
Speaker 1: want to tell me there wasn't anybody else in that
Speaker 1: eighth story building, And like, okay, yeah, you're celebrating the
Speaker 1: death of the combatant there, but like also all those
Speaker 1: other people are being celebrated indirectly, and so like you
Speaker 1: gotta remember that, like these bombs explode and they take
Speaker 1: out a large area, and these fights are happening in
Speaker 1: cities a lot of the time. Yeah, the weaponry that
Speaker 1: the United States uses is more precise than something like
Speaker 1: a barrel bomb, but not by as many orders of
Speaker 1: magnitude as you would hope um And and precision doesn't
Speaker 1: precision matters. Yes, it's not a non important things an
Speaker 1: important thing, but ultimately It doesn't matter if your missile
Speaker 1: went right into that living room full of civilians and
Speaker 1: blew them all up, or if you leveled the block
Speaker 1: and maybe you know, killed them indirectly. Like you gotta
Speaker 1: know what you're hitting. The target is what really matters, right,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter if you can hit the target,
Speaker 1: you gotta make sure it's the right target. And that's
Speaker 1: where we're starting to have issues now, is like we
Speaker 1: can hit targets really well, we just aren't always sure
Speaker 1: that it's the right yes, as opposed I mean, and
Speaker 1: and you are seeing. So let's let's talk about we
Speaker 1: we started this chatting about Ukrainian potential Ukrainian war crime. Um,
Speaker 1: what we have absolute documentation. It is a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of war crimes on behalf of the Russian UH invaders,
Speaker 1: including a thing that they have done repeatedly in Syria,
Speaker 1: which is the targeting of hospitals and medical facilities, um
Speaker 1: with with terrible civilian casualties as a as a result.
Speaker 1: And this is something that the New York Times actually
Speaker 1: published an incredible article based on a mix of O
Speaker 1: cent and like I'm not entirely sure how they got them,
Speaker 1: but combat flight recorders, like the audio that these these
Speaker 1: Russian fighter pilots were sending back and forth to command
Speaker 1: as they attacked hospitals in Syria. Um, so we actually
Speaker 1: have a tremendous amount of detail about like what it
Speaker 1: looks like inside the cockpit and in like the control
Speaker 1: room and whatnot, as air strikes are being ordered on
Speaker 1: medical facilities. I really recommend people check that article out.
Speaker 1: Um it's it's pretty harrowing shit. But um, yeah, are
Speaker 1: you are you surprised at all by kind of what
Speaker 1: you are what you've seen so far in behalf of
Speaker 1: the Russian forces in Ukraine? No, no, not even not
Speaker 1: even the slightest, Because I followed the war and in
Speaker 1: Syria rather closely. And uh, I mean there was a
Speaker 1: point when they had stop marking the hospitals with hospital
Speaker 1: marketings because the Russians would target them so consistently. The
Speaker 1: United Nations had to stop giving the Russians the coordinates
Speaker 1: of the hospitals and in Aleppo because they kept getting targeted. Um,
Speaker 1: there was an aid convoy that was struck, I believe
Speaker 1: by Syrian aircraft, but it was the targeting was given
Speaker 1: to them by Russian aircraft. Um, it was just an
Speaker 1: AID convoy coming into Aleppo, a United Nations and Aid convoy,
Speaker 1: and it was bombed and strafe repeatedly for you know,
Speaker 1: several hours. Um. Things like that that happened so regularly
Speaker 1: in Syria to the relative silence of the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. Um, that led me to believe that when
Speaker 1: they go into Ukraine, they're not going to be any gentler. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of people suspected early on that, like, well,
Speaker 1: they it's harder to demonize people who look like you,
Speaker 1: so they're not going to have as much of an
Speaker 1: easy time demonizing Ukrainians. And I think there has been
Speaker 1: some degree of difficulty with that, at least in terms
Speaker 1: of some of the conscripts on the Russian side. But
Speaker 1: the other thing we're seeing is that, like a lot
Speaker 1: of these, a lot of people seem to genuinely believe
Speaker 1: the mission of denazifying Ukraine. And so if that's what
Speaker 1: you believe you're doing, then the bombing doesn't surprise. It
Speaker 1: doesn't become a surprise. Right If you think that you're
Speaker 1: going into Ukraine to suppress it and occupy it, then
Speaker 1: bombing city city is full of Russians, Russians and Russian speakers.
Speaker 1: Seems like a bad idea, but if you believe that
Speaker 1: they're all Nazis, then it makes sense that you might
Speaker 1: just blow them up because they're all the enemy. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I'm not condoning it. I'm saying no, But
Speaker 1: I mean that is literally what the US government in
Speaker 1: the British government did in World War Two. You know exactly.
Speaker 1: There have been claims made that what Russia is doing
Speaker 1: in places like Maryo Pol announced to an active genocide. UM.
Speaker 1: What is your opinion on that? Genocide is a big word.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, but you know it has a lot of
Speaker 1: meaning behind it, in the sense that like, just because
Speaker 1: somebody is killing large numbers of people and doing so
Speaker 1: in heinous ways does not make it a genocide. You
Speaker 1: have to pro an attempt to destroy culture and destroy
Speaker 1: heritage and things of that nature. Um. As it stands,
Speaker 1: I would say that it looks likely that there are
Speaker 1: signs of potential genocide in Mariable. I am not confident
Speaker 1: enough to come out and say that I conclusively think
Speaker 1: it's happening, but the way that it looks like the
Speaker 1: the city is being deliberately targeted to either force the
Speaker 1: entire population to flee or to radicalize them one way
Speaker 1: or the other. Is it goes beyond military uh targeting.
Speaker 1: You know. I think the thing that were that I
Speaker 1: that is the most like troubling potential sign of an
Speaker 1: intention of genocide is the reports that the Russian government
Speaker 1: and has been evacuating civilians that they have in parts
Speaker 1: of Mariopold. They have captured two places in Russia, which
Speaker 1: is this is a misconception. You don't have to just
Speaker 1: be killing people, as you stated, it's an attempt to
Speaker 1: destroy a culture, which you can do by killing, but
Speaker 1: you can also do by things like separating people, moving people,
Speaker 1: like forced migration and whatnot. Like there's aspects of that. Again,
Speaker 1: look at like the genocide of the Native Americans in
Speaker 1: the United States. It was not all straight up killing.
Speaker 1: A lot of it was forced migration, um, which is
Speaker 1: an act of genocide as well. Um. And that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where I'm I'm kind of waiting for
Speaker 1: more reporting on that to the to see here exactly
Speaker 1: what's happening in the extent to what's happening, But that
Speaker 1: really troubles me in terms of potential signs of a genocide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when they when they coined the term genocide after
Speaker 1: World War Two, it was it was with reference to
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. But but what they had in mind was
Speaker 1: the Armenian genocide. Yeah, when it when they when they
Speaker 1: drafted these words, and because it was beyond just sheer
Speaker 1: number of people killed, if we're talking a sheer number
Speaker 1: of people killed, the Nazis also killed six million other
Speaker 1: people in addition to the six million Jews they killed.
Speaker 1: The reason we talked about the Jews is one, six
Speaker 1: million is a lot of people. And two, it was
Speaker 1: a deliberate attempt to destroy their entire culture, to make
Speaker 1: them have never existed. And that's very different and very scary.
Speaker 1: Dying is also very bad, the idea of dying and
Speaker 1: then all of the people who were like you just
Speaker 1: don't exist anymore, and all your books and your literature
Speaker 1: are gone, Like that's that's monstrous. Yeah, And that's why
Speaker 1: there's a difference between genocide and mass killing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's it's the difference that we talked about US war
Speaker 1: crimes in World War Two, of which there were many,
Speaker 1: including the fire bombing of Dresden. I would argue, but
Speaker 1: it's not an act of genocide because when they fire
Speaker 1: bombed Dresden. It was certainly um the killing of civilians
Speaker 1: without particular regard to the direct military efficacy of the action,
Speaker 1: But it was not an attempt to destroy German culture
Speaker 1: or obliterate the German people. And you brought up the
Speaker 1: Armenian genocide, Well, we'll talk about this at some point
Speaker 1: behind the bastards. But he mentioned that that was kind
Speaker 1: of what the people when the term genocide was invented,
Speaker 1: that was what people were looking at, even though it
Speaker 1: was kind of a direct response to the Holocaust. It's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that like when the Nazis planned the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: they used the Armenian genocide as a model. Um Hitler's
Speaker 1: literal statement was when people when he was asked during
Speaker 1: like one of his his dinners with a bunch of
Speaker 1: Nazi officials, like what what about kind of the international
Speaker 1: reaction to what we're planning to do? He was like, well,
Speaker 1: who remembers the Armenians? You know? Like that was his
Speaker 1: That was his attitude, is like, we'll get away with
Speaker 1: it because nobody did anything during this genocide, right and
Speaker 1: and and I think while I would hesitate to call
Speaker 1: the entire war in Ukrainian genocide. Yes, as of yet,
Speaker 1: I would say that there's a similarity between the Armenian
Speaker 1: genocide and and how that led to the Holocaust. There's
Speaker 1: a similarity be between the Russian war crimes committed in
Speaker 1: Syria and how that led to the war crimes being
Speaker 1: committed in Ukraine, in the sense that if the world
Speaker 1: had stood up earlier, we would not be seeing this now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem is the world looked the other way when
Speaker 1: the Russians bombed hospitals in Syria, when they repeatedly bombed hospitals.
Speaker 1: In fact, the world didn't just look away. A lot
Speaker 1: of people in the West mocked it. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard it as often as I have. The last hospital
Speaker 1: and Aleppo joke right where, oh they're bombing the lost
Speaker 1: the last hospital and Aleppo again. Well, the reason that
Speaker 1: happened is because when you bomb the hospital, they build
Speaker 1: a new one and then it gets bombed again three
Speaker 1: days later, so they've bombed the last one again. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't a joke. It was just a tragedy that
Speaker 1: kept playing out that people couldn't really fathom, so they mocked, right,
Speaker 1: And so when that's the attitude of a lot of
Speaker 1: the world, it's no surprise that what's what's happened in
Speaker 1: Ukraine as as run out of control? M hm, Where
Speaker 1: do you think we go from here? What are you
Speaker 1: what are you expecting to kind of see next within
Speaker 1: this conflict? You know, the most recent kind of reporting
Speaker 1: is that Russia's pulling. Russia's framing it as they're pulling
Speaker 1: back from Kiev to to focus on other fronts. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Ukrainian side is saying like, well, they've been defeated
Speaker 1: around Kiev and they're pulling back. What do you think
Speaker 1: kind of we're seeing next? What what is your opinion
Speaker 1: on kind of the next stages here? So I think
Speaker 1: it really depends on Vladimir Putin's power and how long
Speaker 1: he remains in a position of unchecked power. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying necessarily he will fall from power. I'm saying that
Speaker 1: how long can he go as the only guy calling
Speaker 1: the shots? Because as it stands right now, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like he's the same Vladimir Putin that we were
Speaker 1: used to dealing with. It seems like something may have
Speaker 1: changed with him. And that's a wild card because if
Speaker 1: if Vladimir Putin wants to continue to escalate here. He
Speaker 1: can continue to do so because he may not be
Speaker 1: getting the same reporting that we are about the condition
Speaker 1: of his army. He may think his army is doing
Speaker 1: better than they're doing and that they actually are just repositioning.
Speaker 1: So if that's the case, there's a chance to he'll
Speaker 1: escalate against potentially in NATO country. I find that unlikely,
Speaker 1: but there's still a chance for it. I think what's
Speaker 1: more likely is that we're going to see the Russian
Speaker 1: military refocused efforts in the east, in in donetskan Hansk
Speaker 1: with an attempts to create a land bridge to Crimea
Speaker 1: through the area through Mariopola Melitopa area UM and I
Speaker 1: think they're going to try to rusify the area as
Speaker 1: much as possible and remove as many of the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: as possible UM one way or the other. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if they'll be successful in that, but I
Speaker 1: think simultaneously while they do that, they're going to try
Speaker 1: to tie down and destroy as much of the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: military as possible UM, which will be difficult because the
Speaker 1: units in the east are Ukraine's best to equip units.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how this ends. I don't see
Speaker 1: a reasonable end to this insight, but that's just because
Speaker 1: there's too many variables at the moment. I do think
Speaker 1: one thing that's kind of worth looking at this war
Speaker 1: in in historical context. A number of comparisons have been
Speaker 1: made to both of the world wars here, Um, I
Speaker 1: think the thing that it most reminds me of is
Speaker 1: World War One, not in that it's a conflagration on
Speaker 1: that scale or in that um it's a similar war
Speaker 1: in terms of the combat, but it is an example
Speaker 1: of the first big war that utilizes a variety of
Speaker 1: weapons and tactics that have been battlefield tested in a
Speaker 1: series of smaller wars, right, um, And I think we
Speaker 1: are seeing in Ukraine for the first time the actual
Speaker 1: I think one thing that we have seen is that drones.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about the big ones here. You know,
Speaker 1: they get a lot of the bay rock tar and
Speaker 1: stuff like get that gets a lot of attention, but
Speaker 1: like small the kind of drones anyone listening to this
Speaker 1: could pick up and buy today, right Those drones I
Speaker 1: think are proving to be a game changer on a
Speaker 1: tactical level, in a similar manner to the machine gun
Speaker 1: in in the turn of the last century, before the
Speaker 1: last century. Yeah, Well, with the drones, I've often machine
Speaker 1: guns are good, good comparison. I've often thought of it
Speaker 1: as like the airplane, and we had airplanes, and we
Speaker 1: haven't had combat airplanes. Before World War One, we didn't
Speaker 1: have very many of them because no he really realized
Speaker 1: the utility of them in war. And then as the
Speaker 1: war got closer, and then the war started, countries started
Speaker 1: to slowly build up these small fleets of aircraft, and
Speaker 1: then by the end of the war, everybody had an
Speaker 1: air force. I think we see the same thing with
Speaker 1: these small consumer drones, is that like, by the end
Speaker 1: of this war or whatever conflagrations are coming after it,
Speaker 1: every military in the world is going to have little
Speaker 1: little you know, phantom phantom threes or whatever, basically for
Speaker 1: every infantry squad. One of the things that's so wild
Speaker 1: is that if if you again, if you sitting here
Speaker 1: right now, have not an insignificant amount of money, let's
Speaker 1: save three to four thousand dollars and the enough mechanical
Speaker 1: like competence to carry out modest repairs on your own car,
Speaker 1: you could, with things entirely available over the shelf, build
Speaker 1: a weapon system capable of disabling a variety of armored
Speaker 1: vehicles at night. You know, like you that that is
Speaker 1: a thing that individual people you could do that and
Speaker 1: you and have it up and running in a matter
Speaker 1: of days. Just I'm imagining the next protest in unnamed city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a consumer drone flies over the police line and
Speaker 1: drops a little thing on him. This is bang, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of people, even even as as
Speaker 1: influential and meaningful as they've been on the battlefield in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: I think people still are kind of slow to understand
Speaker 1: the extent. Like there's one of the wildest stories that's
Speaker 1: come out of it is that the Ukrainian military has
Speaker 1: a an outfit of civilian drone operators using hacked and
Speaker 1: home built drones to attack Russian forces at night UM
Speaker 1: and they have been The documented of efficacy of their
Speaker 1: raids has been significant, And I can I can remember
Speaker 1: spending a brief period of time with an Iraqi military
Speaker 1: unit that was just using d g I phantoms that
Speaker 1: they had rigged to drop what were since essentially mortar
Speaker 1: shells with shuttlecocks on them from a height um and
Speaker 1: they were very effective at killing people um as isis
Speaker 1: drones were effective at sort of spotting you know, mortars
Speaker 1: for folks well. And one of the things I saw
Speaker 1: i SIS use their more their drones for great effect
Speaker 1: wasn't so much to kill large numbers of enemy soldiers.
Speaker 1: It was to do the same thing that American predator
Speaker 1: drones and report drones had done for for decades by
Speaker 1: that point the terror groups, which is let them know
Speaker 1: you can't gather in large numbers. Yeah, if you gather
Speaker 1: in large numbers your target. And so you saw a
Speaker 1: Rocky soldier saying no more than two or three in
Speaker 1: a group. Any more than that will get targeted, you know,
Speaker 1: And so they flipped the equation basically yep, and don't
Speaker 1: I mean I one of the reasons why I I
Speaker 1: have a general policy heavily informed by my time in
Speaker 1: Mosle that the last place I want to be in
Speaker 1: a anywhere near a war zone is an armored vehicle.
Speaker 1: Um because that's really unless you are in something that's
Speaker 1: heavily up armored, like an im wrap. Little bombs dropped
Speaker 1: by drones can do significant damage to something like a
Speaker 1: humpy and that's exactly what you target. You don't target
Speaker 1: a Toyota Corolla with a drope like that, unless you
Speaker 1: specifically know an individuals in that Corolla that you want
Speaker 1: to kill. But you may just behind the lines see
Speaker 1: a target of opportunity in an armor see an armored
Speaker 1: lightly armored vehicle, and drop a immunition on it. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things this is done. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of talk prior to the expanded Russian invasion about
Speaker 1: how immediately Russia was going to get air superiority, and
Speaker 1: that's obviously a bigger story than just drones. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of factors and why Russia. It's probably accurate to
Speaker 1: say they have superiority in a number of parts of
Speaker 1: the war, but they don't have supremacy like they It's
Speaker 1: not like an absolute matter. And part of that is because, um,
Speaker 1: it's not really possible to at this moment. Someday, I
Speaker 1: suspect there will be more effective ways of stopping drones
Speaker 1: and at like a theater level. Um maybe, but it
Speaker 1: certainly hasn't happened yet. Yeah. Yeah, And and that's the thing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's the drones, and then there's also
Speaker 1: on the Ukrainian side, they you know, I think they
Speaker 1: recognize that air force against air force, the Russians have
Speaker 1: a new miracles periority. So you can deny the Russians
Speaker 1: air supremacy by shooting down their planes with man pads.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have an air force to deny
Speaker 1: your opponent, You just have to dye them the ability
Speaker 1: to freely operate in your airspace. And this is one
Speaker 1: of those things. There's been a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: a no fly zone, um, which I tend to think
Speaker 1: would be a bad idea in the traditional sense in
Speaker 1: terms of like the US and NATO sending in planes
Speaker 1: to down Russian planes over Ukraine. There's a number of
Speaker 1: reasons why that's concerning. But you can effectively establish a
Speaker 1: no fly zone by shipping in a funckload of man
Speaker 1: pads exactly. Yeah, And I'm not against that. I think
Speaker 1: in terms of what kind of what kind of armed
Speaker 1: arms support is ethical to provide, giving people the ability
Speaker 1: to stop planes from bombing cities is broadly speaking, one
Speaker 1: of the most ethical things you can do in terms
Speaker 1: of shipping munitions around the world, right, and the other
Speaker 1: advantages that man pads. I'm sure somebody could turn it
Speaker 1: into a lethal ground weapon, but they're pretty hard use
Speaker 1: against ground targets, against houses, things like that, not really
Speaker 1: what they're designed for. So it's not like just handing over,
Speaker 1: you know, some indiscriminate weapon to the Ukrainians to use
Speaker 1: against Russian cities. You're you're giving them a weapon that's
Speaker 1: specifically used against military aircraft, like most man pads can't
Speaker 1: reach the altitude that airliners are at even so yep,
Speaker 1: so I think that's probably what we want to talk
Speaker 1: about today. Um, you wanna plug your plug aubles. Tell
Speaker 1: people where they can find you in your analysis out
Speaker 1: in the wild. Yeah, so you can. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. My handle is at Shabanian Rum and
Speaker 1: I work I published occasionally with the New Lines Institute.
Speaker 1: Uh so you can see my work there as well.
Speaker 1: And I have a website that I seldom update, the
Speaker 1: Folded Gap dot com um hasn't been updated and probably
Speaker 1: eight months now because I've been tired. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the places to find me, and d ms
Speaker 1: are open on Twitter. If you ever have questions or
Speaker 1: anything like that, let me know. I'm happy to talk
Speaker 1: with anybody who's got questions on these kind of things.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, well that's gonna be us, so you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy this analysis of the of the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: UM before we return you to your regularly scheduled multipart
Speaker 1: series on Nazi cat girls UH, the primary focus of
Speaker 1: this podcast, It Could Happen Here, as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.