Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Software Radio Special operations, military news and straight
Speaker 1: talk with the guys and the community. Hello and everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Software Radio. I'm your host today Steve
Speaker 1: Balis Druri joining me today. We have a very special
Speaker 1: guest and it's uh. It might be an uncomfortable topic
Speaker 1: for some people today because we're gonna be talking with
Speaker 1: Sam Culper. He's a former intelligence and uncommissioned officer in
Speaker 1: the military. He runs a site now called forward Observer
Speaker 1: that's www. Forward reservers dot com. And Sam had almost
Speaker 1: a decade of experience within the military and the intel community,
Speaker 1: but now he's working for himself and he wants UH
Speaker 1: to talk about some stuff that's going on, not in
Speaker 1: the Third World, not in in a foreign country, but
Speaker 1: right here in the United States. And that's a low
Speaker 1: intensity conflict and it's some really interesting stuff. We've had
Speaker 1: a chance to read through it, uh, and I listened
Speaker 1: to one of his podcasts, and I think our listeners
Speaker 1: will really be interested in this. So without any further ado,
Speaker 1: I want to welcome Sam to the podcast. Sam, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Software Pradio. Thanks for taking the time to join
Speaker 1: us this afternoon. Hey, Steve, I'm I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. We're we're very glad to have you.
Speaker 1: I think this is something that you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of our might have heard a little bit about, UM.
Speaker 1: But I want to get to this because I think
Speaker 1: it's important. You know, UM, you talked about in some
Speaker 1: of your some of your posts about you know, we're
Speaker 1: in a kind of a fourth generation war, a low
Speaker 1: intensity conflict, and explain, well, first of all, explain to
Speaker 1: our listeners how you came about doing what you do,
Speaker 1: some of your military experience and in the intelligence community
Speaker 1: kind of given a background on you know, who you
Speaker 1: are and what you've done. Sure, yeah, well I'm I'm
Speaker 1: listed as a ninety six Bravo. It's now a thirty
Speaker 1: five Fox all Sources of Intelligence Analysts and UM. I
Speaker 1: was was also a contractor uh an intelligence contractor for
Speaker 1: a few years. I spent three years in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and finally I've decided to separate all together. I left
Speaker 1: intelligence community in two thousand twelve, and a few years
Speaker 1: later I started this company because I saw a lot
Speaker 1: of unrest in the United States, both among you know,
Speaker 1: right wing groups and left wing groups, and you know,
Speaker 1: in our study of insurgency and proto insurgency and these
Speaker 1: kinds of low intensity conflicts, I just started seeing all
Speaker 1: these indicators appear, and uh it led me to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that things were gonna you know, of course, it
Speaker 1: doesn't take a rocket surgeon to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: things are gonna get a lot worse. But I thought,
Speaker 1: what if we tracked this like you know, an ace,
Speaker 1: like an S two shop, uh, somewhat professionally and use
Speaker 1: similar processes that we did in the army and and
Speaker 1: in the intelligence community at large to analyze what's happening
Speaker 1: here in the United States. And so that's largely what
Speaker 1: we do at Forward Observer today, right. And U I imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, with your background and you started digging into things,
Speaker 1: what you saw probably alarmed you more than you probably
Speaker 1: thought you were going to find, you know, it did.
Speaker 1: It's it's um just to kind of give you some
Speaker 1: context here. Back in November two thousand sixteen. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously that was a fairly tumultuous time as it was
Speaker 1: four years ago. And I, you know, I had this
Speaker 1: list of twenty indicators of organized political violence, and I
Speaker 1: started seeing, Hey, which of these indicators are exhibited? Are
Speaker 1: we seeing evidence for any of these twenty indicators? And
Speaker 1: at the time there were six or maybe seven out
Speaker 1: of twenty, And then I updated that matrix again one
Speaker 1: year later and we were up to twelve out of twenty.
Speaker 1: The year later in November, we're up to like sixteen
Speaker 1: or maybe seventeen out of twenty. And since then it's
Speaker 1: we have we really do have all the pieces here
Speaker 1: in the United States for an armed conflict if there
Speaker 1: were to be a trigger at some point in the future.
Speaker 1: So it is incredibly alarming, and I'm talking about eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one here, but you know, we've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of low intensity conflicts and a lot of other countries
Speaker 1: where a tiny fraction less than one percent, maybe one
Speaker 1: to three percent max. Of a of a population is
Speaker 1: involved in the conflict. And I think that, I think
Speaker 1: it's very likely to where we are headed, even though
Speaker 1: it's relatively calm right now. Yeah, And it's funny because,
Speaker 1: you know, reading some of your stuff, I went back
Speaker 1: and I went back to seventeen seventy six and the
Speaker 1: amount of people, you know, we we like to think
Speaker 1: that the entire thirteen colonies. I mean, that's you know,
Speaker 1: the way we were brought up and raised to believe
Speaker 1: that the entire thirteen colonies just rose up as one
Speaker 1: to fight the British. But in fact that number was very,
Speaker 1: very small, wouldn't it. It was, Well, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: kind of the uh a cultural legend of the three percent,
Speaker 1: and I guess historians have cast some some doubt on that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was not a you know, in these
Speaker 1: types of conflicts, in the American Revolution and lots of others,
Speaker 1: it's a small small fraction of the populace engaged and
Speaker 1: everyone else is just trying to live their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's correct. I mean, you know we heard that
Speaker 1: only you know, a small percentage was actively involved in
Speaker 1: the revolution. There was some that were actively against it,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of the people just wanted to
Speaker 1: be left alone. They didn't care for one side or
Speaker 1: the other. And I think you could uh draw a
Speaker 1: parallel to what we're seeing right now, couldn't you. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I think we we're undergoing another experiencing another massive shift
Speaker 1: in kind of cultural and ideological tectonic plates. Those plates
Speaker 1: are shifting and we look all throughout history. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, the lead up to the Civil War,
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights era, those were the main three tectonic shifts,
Speaker 1: and two out of those three resulted in an armed
Speaker 1: conflict um. Even though I would say the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: era was is a good example of low intensity conflict
Speaker 1: as well. So I think at a minimum we're going
Speaker 1: to we've already kind of relived the kind of scale
Speaker 1: of violence, um that we saw in the Civil Rights era.
Speaker 1: Although I will say with one caveat, and that's there's
Speaker 1: a great book called Days of Rage by Brian Burrow,
Speaker 1: and he talks about in in the first eighteen months
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy one. In nineteen seventy two, there were
Speaker 1: over twenty hundred domestic bombings inside the United States. That's
Speaker 1: according to the FBI data. So we obviously haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to that bull of intensity yet. But who knows. Like
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's two thousand twenty. I would not
Speaker 1: be surprised if Godzilla popped up in the Gulf of
Speaker 1: Mexico and burnt down half in New Orleans tomorrow. You know,
Speaker 1: with all the rain New Orleans has been getting, they
Speaker 1: might welcome Godzilla right at this point. But now you
Speaker 1: know it's um this was a very tumultuous year. And
Speaker 1: you know, uh between the COVID, the George Floyd, that
Speaker 1: whole situation with George Floyd going viral. Really since I
Speaker 1: want to say it was wasn't uh about mid May
Speaker 1: that that happened, and then things just kept getting worse
Speaker 1: and worse, especially out west. We were seeing things out
Speaker 1: in Oregon and you know in other places you talked
Speaker 1: about there might be one kind of a part of
Speaker 1: cake type of incident. Do you think the national election
Speaker 1: could could have been that type of thing? Absolutely? Yeah.
Speaker 1: My most the most dangerous course of action MDC number
Speaker 1: one was the effects of a Trump victory um in
Speaker 1: in November, December, whenever it may have eventually been litigated out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean we saw it. We were you know,
Speaker 1: we monitor a lot of these subversive, radical and revolutionary groups,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure lots of folks
Speaker 1: in the audience saw very similar things. But these people
Speaker 1: were they really were planning for mass mobilization protests and
Speaker 1: something like a Terrier Square or a euro may Don
Speaker 1: where they tried to eject President Trump if he were
Speaker 1: to be reelected. So I think, you know, that was
Speaker 1: kind of the most immediate trigger that I was concerned
Speaker 1: about the following effects if that happened. And today that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. Um, so we're kind of, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're we've shifted into looking, Okay, well, what are some
Speaker 1: post election triggers that might happen if not the general
Speaker 1: election itself? M hm. And you know I noticed in
Speaker 1: you're writing that you talked about there's not just far
Speaker 1: right groups, there's fire left groups as well. And these
Speaker 1: people are getting quite organized, aren't they. They are, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they really are. So if back in two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 1: I started looking for you know, in the army, and
Speaker 1: I guess probably the Marine Corps and maybe other places.
Speaker 1: You know, Steve, you and I we know combat there's
Speaker 1: combat arms, and there's combat support, and there's combat service
Speaker 1: support classes, and you know you have the infantry out
Speaker 1: in the field. Well, they can't produce their own food,
Speaker 1: their own water, they can't create their own ammunition. You know,
Speaker 1: they can't fix their own trucks. They can't do all
Speaker 1: these things. So they have to have support personnel to
Speaker 1: you know, to help keep those operations going. And we
Speaker 1: have seen absolutely on the left, well I won't say
Speaker 1: on the left, on the far left, the radical and
Speaker 1: revolutionary groups, they absolutely have been building their own support
Speaker 1: and service support um classes. We're talking about things about
Speaker 1: examples like intelligence and communication support, medical support, logistics, transportation,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of the traditional support roles that
Speaker 1: the army has, and they've been building that. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you they have done more. I started tracking these
Speaker 1: groups back in two thousand sixteen. They have increased their
Speaker 1: capability more over the past five months than they have
Speaker 1: over the past four years. And there to the point
Speaker 1: where you know, you actually start looking at the indicators
Speaker 1: of armed political violence and they have most of them.
Speaker 1: That that's the scary part. It's like, you know, we're
Speaker 1: used to I guess you could say, looking through the
Speaker 1: lens of working overseas, and we've all dealt with insurgencies
Speaker 1: at different phases of our career and in different I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, the levels. But we're not used
Speaker 1: to seeing that on our own shores, aren't we. Well
Speaker 1: Luckily that yes, historically that has been the case with
Speaker 1: you know, with a few instances, and you know, and
Speaker 1: again This is not to say that, hey, some nationwide
Speaker 1: insurgencies is gonna kick off tomorrow. You look at these
Speaker 1: groups and actually are small. They're geographically limited two areas
Speaker 1: like Portland and Seattle. So it's not like they're in
Speaker 1: central Nebraska, you know, in any in any large numbers. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of low intensity conflict is it's often regional.
Speaker 1: That's often local or regional, and that comes directly from
Speaker 1: the Army's own doctrine. So it's you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of been keeping with low intensity conflict that these things
Speaker 1: really are regionalized, mainly to two urban environments and you know,
Speaker 1: big metro areas. Okay, we're gonna get more to that
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Speaker 1: learn more. So now we're back to our our podcast
Speaker 1: here we're talking with Sam Copper. We're talking about some
Speaker 1: interesting and a little bit alarming stuff that's going on
Speaker 1: in the United States right now. Sam, you know where
Speaker 1: you know, you were talking about how some of these
Speaker 1: groups are getting involved and organized and they're regional. How
Speaker 1: can some people, uh, you know, are average American I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, who's not trained like yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: come to recognize and maybe report some of the stuff
Speaker 1: they're seeing what's going on. Well, yeah, I'm a big
Speaker 1: advocate on intelligence collection at all levels. I mean in
Speaker 1: the army, you know, we said every soldier is a sensor,
Speaker 1: and in your community. I I'm very interested in my
Speaker 1: level of preparedness. So every member of my community is
Speaker 1: a sensor. One way that that more people can kind
Speaker 1: of get involved and maintain some situational awareness on this.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously they can subscribe to what we do.
Speaker 1: We can't cover everything, and we can't you know, we
Speaker 1: can't be in the weeds in every locale So one
Speaker 1: way is to simply just get online or do a
Speaker 1: Google search for some of these groups and you can
Speaker 1: monitor them yourself in the local area. What we specialize
Speaker 1: is putting the puzzle pieces together and kind of explaining
Speaker 1: this so what and also the what's next for some
Speaker 1: of these groups. But that's probably the best way that
Speaker 1: more people can get involved in kind of stay aware
Speaker 1: of what what their local groups are doing. You know,
Speaker 1: and you talked about on your UM on one of
Speaker 1: your podcasts, how there's different levels where you can see
Speaker 1: things from a strategic or tactical level, and uh, maybe
Speaker 1: some of our listeners out there now, can you talk
Speaker 1: them through some of the more tactical level UM, you know,
Speaker 1: indicators that they might see in their communities that could
Speaker 1: give them some pause. Sure. Well, one thing I would
Speaker 1: begin to look at is radical revolutionary political groups or rallies.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of websites you can go to
Speaker 1: meet up dot com or a lot of times these
Speaker 1: things will be posted on Facebook. And if you just
Speaker 1: look at political rallies or anything like that, UM and
Speaker 1: you start digging into who's organizing it and which organizations,
Speaker 1: which organizations are involved, will give you a little better
Speaker 1: idea about what groups may be in your area. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, if there are uh, if there are
Speaker 1: revolutionary socialist groups, are radical groups, um. You know, even
Speaker 1: some of these fascist groups have some level of local, um,
Speaker 1: local presence, and sometimes that stuff is on social media.
Speaker 1: So that's I would say, that's a very good starting
Speaker 1: point to get the kind of the tactical level view
Speaker 1: of your area. Now that's not going to give you everything,
Speaker 1: and you know, at a certain level, I actually would
Speaker 1: advise for just for the interests of general preparedness, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to do an area study and include these
Speaker 1: groups and really dig into who is actually in your area,
Speaker 1: because what happens is, you know a lot of times
Speaker 1: people think, well, this is in Portland and Seattle and
Speaker 1: it may be on the other side of their town
Speaker 1: where it maybe you know, the next big city away,
Speaker 1: there will be some large presence. So we we can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we can't. We can't assume that this type of
Speaker 1: stuff is not going on in our area, especially if
Speaker 1: we're not looking forward actively. Okay, Yeah, I know in
Speaker 1: your website you talked you know, uh, suspicious vehicles and
Speaker 1: people that start showing up in your towns and and
Speaker 1: what constitutes soft targets. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't understand when they hear the term soft target, it
Speaker 1: doesn't always necessarily mean that just something that's easily accessible,
Speaker 1: but something that's a very low risk and perhaps a
Speaker 1: high reward type of target. And some of the other
Speaker 1: things you talked about I thought was interesting was you know,
Speaker 1: you start seeing gun stores being robbed in your area,
Speaker 1: that's always uh, some kind of indicator, I'm sure, And
Speaker 1: you know, this is some stuff that we're seeing more
Speaker 1: and more of across the United States. So, um, how
Speaker 1: how active are you guys across the country right now? Well,
Speaker 1: we have seen a we have seen a drop off
Speaker 1: in activity from a lot of these groups because they
Speaker 1: were organizing and planning to have you to to mass
Speaker 1: mobilize and go and put on these protests, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of been taken off the table, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these groups really have I'm gone quiet, but but
Speaker 1: they're not going to disappear, right, I Mean, it's only
Speaker 1: some of these groups. They still they called Biden a
Speaker 1: fascist and they're getting ready to you know, combat the
Speaker 1: next fascist that was elected president the United States. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: and so you know, um, a couple of things. If
Speaker 1: I if I can just go back to that gun
Speaker 1: store robbery example. You know, you look at early you
Speaker 1: look at early stage indicators of of insurgency that's actually
Speaker 1: moving towards armed conflict. And since that didn't happen in
Speaker 1: November at least not yet due to President Trump being reelected, um,
Speaker 1: you know it maybe it may be years off, who knows,
Speaker 1: it could be days or months off until there's a trigger.
Speaker 1: But what what typically happens with these insurgencies is they
Speaker 1: start small, and they don't have a lot of funding,
Speaker 1: and they have material requirements that they can't fund themselves,
Speaker 1: and so what do they do. You know, they go
Speaker 1: knock off a gun store and you know they've insurgencies.
Speaker 1: You know, they've robbed banks and they've you know, hit
Speaker 1: these um you know you talked about soft targets with
Speaker 1: a high reward. You know, they've gone out and they've
Speaker 1: had to acquire the things that they need to sustain
Speaker 1: themselves or to sustain their operations. So that really is
Speaker 1: um you know, even though it doesn't seem likely right
Speaker 1: now in the future that those absolutely would be very
Speaker 1: good indicators of potential or future organized political violence if
Speaker 1: you did start seeing those things happen. You know, I
Speaker 1: saw um one of your online posts you talked about
Speaker 1: setting up a local intelligence network, and I know it's
Speaker 1: on your online course, but can you talk about a
Speaker 1: little bit about this for people who are interested in
Speaker 1: doing this. Yeah, absolutely so. In addition to running Forward Observer,
Speaker 1: I'd also do training courses on intelligence really for preparedness.
Speaker 1: You know, I live in central Texas. We have flooding,
Speaker 1: and people out west have wildfires, and there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of systems disruption. I think we really, I think the
Speaker 1: next decade in this country is gonna be way more difficult.
Speaker 1: The next twenty years are gonna be way more difficult
Speaker 1: than the last twenty years. And so I'm I want
Speaker 1: to encourage everyone to think about the level of preparedness
Speaker 1: and to think about, um, you know, what they would
Speaker 1: do in an emergency situation. And one of the best
Speaker 1: things you can do is to have access to timely relevant, accurate, specific,
Speaker 1: and predictive or actionable intelligence. And one way to get
Speaker 1: started in that is to simply start a neighborhood watch
Speaker 1: or maybe join one. If one thing you can do is,
Speaker 1: you know, get a baseline of what local crime there is,
Speaker 1: and you know who's involved in that kind of crime,
Speaker 1: start a neighborhood watch, work with you know, you can
Speaker 1: bring into a local sheriff's deputy to talk about, Hey,
Speaker 1: here the gangs that operate in your area, and here
Speaker 1: the you know, here's uh the drug trafficking that's that's
Speaker 1: going on or whatever whatever whatever types of crime or
Speaker 1: in your area, and then you can utilize I mean,
Speaker 1: you could really go door to door and look, I'm
Speaker 1: a very ground level kind of prepared in this guy.
Speaker 1: Like I've I've gone to every single one of my neighbors,
Speaker 1: introduced myself, talked to them, traded contact information, got them
Speaker 1: to be involved at least passively involved in a neighborhood watch.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's something that I really would recommend
Speaker 1: a lot of people to do because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: for in the PP, in the preparedness community, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are who are afraid about an MP or
Speaker 1: societal or economic collapse, you know, or nuclear war, I
Speaker 1: don't know, whatever. And the fact of the matter is,
Speaker 1: if you don't know your neighbors and you don't have
Speaker 1: any organization, any kind of network built locally, then you
Speaker 1: may be on your own in a worst case scenario
Speaker 1: if that were to happen. Um, and even if even
Speaker 1: if nothing bad we're going to happen, just having a
Speaker 1: community that you can belong to and notice that, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, um, we've been seeing this vehicle come up
Speaker 1: and down our street. Maybe it's a you know, maybe
Speaker 1: they're doing pre operational surveillance to try to find houses
Speaker 1: to rob or presents to steal because you know, it's
Speaker 1: Christmas time coming up, and you know, say, hey, if
Speaker 1: they can pass that vehicle description onto me, or maybe
Speaker 1: you know, we can pass it onto the police department
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, we've gotten several reports of that vehicle.
Speaker 1: Information makes the world go around, we said in the Army.
Speaker 1: Intelligence drives the fight, and intelligence drives situational awareness and
Speaker 1: decision making as well, and it really informs us of
Speaker 1: our security situation. So I guess my my real message
Speaker 1: is if you don't have intelligence, then you're going to
Speaker 1: be you know, deaf and blind as it were, in
Speaker 1: an emergency or in some type of local conflict scenario,
Speaker 1: which is why we've got to build local intelligence that
Speaker 1: really can start with the neighborhood watch. That really is
Speaker 1: the most effective, most immediate way to begin a local
Speaker 1: intelligence network. Okay, and a couple of other things that
Speaker 1: you that you wrote about. I thought that hits the
Speaker 1: nail on the head for especially for the people who
Speaker 1: aren't experiencing this focus your efforts. And you talked about
Speaker 1: how the sixty model for collecting and and and information
Speaker 1: coming through the news being deliberate and developing people not sources.
Speaker 1: That's the one that I really like because a lot
Speaker 1: of people they don't understand the difference. And uh, can
Speaker 1: you talk our listeners through that? Yeah? Absolutely. Information overload
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest complaints that I see. You know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna to the point where people turn off the
Speaker 1: news and they don't even pay attention. And even in
Speaker 1: the preparedness community, as I go around and work with
Speaker 1: you know, prepper groups or these groups out there, they're
Speaker 1: so concerned on on the national or the strategic level,
Speaker 1: like strategic threats like we're with China or you know,
Speaker 1: Russia or North Korea, whatever. And what I explained to
Speaker 1: people is that during an emergency, what's gonna matter most
Speaker 1: is not what happened, what's happening A thousand or five
Speaker 1: thousand miles away, but what's happening like a hundred or
Speaker 1: five feet away, and so model I say, you know,
Speaker 1: if you do suffer from information overload where you want
Speaker 1: to be really prepared, the solution here is to spend
Speaker 1: six of your time looking at local news and local issues.
Speaker 1: I can't affect what's going on in d C. I
Speaker 1: can affect what's going on in my on my city council,
Speaker 1: especially with the kind of network building and community organizing
Speaker 1: we've been doing here locally. Beyond that, look at the
Speaker 1: county or the state region, and then ten percent look
Speaker 1: at the national level, because there's just you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know how the news is. There's so much stuff
Speaker 1: out there, and it's it's burning up the press today
Speaker 1: and in twenty four hours it may as well have
Speaker 1: been twenty four years ago because they've moved on to
Speaker 1: the next point of shock and all or the next
Speaker 1: uh you know, thing to get everyone riled up, when
Speaker 1: in reality, things that really to get to really get
Speaker 1: riled up are you know, raising property taxes or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever other hair brained thing you're local city council or
Speaker 1: or county commission are doing. So six look at the
Speaker 1: local level, look at the county or state or maybe
Speaker 1: regional level, and ten percent look at the national or
Speaker 1: strategic level. Really, at the end of the day, what
Speaker 1: matters is what happens locally, and it doesn't matter, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how well you understand or war with China,
Speaker 1: or you know, even a national civil war, some kind
Speaker 1: of domestic conflict. If you don't understand what's going to
Speaker 1: happen locally, then you're really not prepared. You may be
Speaker 1: well informed on a national level, but if you don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on in your own community, uh, you
Speaker 1: really do risk strategic shock. Yeah. And you know, one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things that tend the news a lot lately,
Speaker 1: and I hear it locally because you talk to people
Speaker 1: and everyone says, well, if we go to war with Iran,
Speaker 1: they don't have any kind of military that we need
Speaker 1: to worry about. Uh So, what happens if we go
Speaker 1: to war with Iran? Nothing will happen to us here.
Speaker 1: And that's not really true because I think what a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't understand, and I've seen you touch
Speaker 1: upon this on on your YouTube video, was the fact
Speaker 1: a cyber war has already happened in this country with
Speaker 1: the Iranians. Not saying We're gonna go to war with Iran,
Speaker 1: I'm just using as an excuse. Cyber war can happen.
Speaker 1: It can affect you locally. And you know, of course
Speaker 1: there's always the possibility of proxy groups and terrorists as
Speaker 1: uh incidents in our bigger cities. But um, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: can you fill in our listeners a little bit about
Speaker 1: what the possibility of what some of the cyberg type
Speaker 1: of crimes could influence them in their local communities. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, David Kilcolin has the best take on this,
Speaker 1: and he he writes, oh, man, I forget, he's got
Speaker 1: three or four really great books. I forget if it's
Speaker 1: out of the mountains or the acts. Maybe it's in
Speaker 1: the accidental guerrilla Actually, um, he actually writes about this
Speaker 1: paradox is that the United States in terms of conventional
Speaker 1: military has been so strong that we have really encouraged
Speaker 1: our near peer competitors or are smaller nations in the
Speaker 1: access of evil to pursue asymmetric means of war fighting.
Speaker 1: And given you know, if we if we look at Rome,
Speaker 1: you know, Rome had fifteen thousand miles the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: had fifteen thousand miles of paved road and that was
Speaker 1: their strategic strength because as long as they could protect
Speaker 1: those roads, they could protect commerce. And that's how they
Speaker 1: that's how the Roman Empire became so wealthy is through
Speaker 1: trade and commerce. Well, the problem is is Rome got
Speaker 1: to the later stages of empire and heading into its
Speaker 1: collapse phase. Which I'm not trying to rock the boat
Speaker 1: too much, but I actually I'm very open to the
Speaker 1: potential that the US Empire is already in a collapse phase.
Speaker 1: But you look at that and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand miles of paved roads becomes a strategic disadvantage
Speaker 1: when you are being invaded by you know what, who
Speaker 1: are they called barbarians in using those roads to invade? Well,
Speaker 1: I look at the United States and the interconnectedness and
Speaker 1: our dependence on the internet in the same in the
Speaker 1: same way. Now, we do have a the world's most
Speaker 1: advanced capabilities, but that does not mean that we are
Speaker 1: not susceptible here. So, yes, if we were to get
Speaker 1: into a war with China or with Iran or North
Speaker 1: Korea or whomever, I think there's a very good chance
Speaker 1: then ordered, Well, I think there's a very good chance
Speaker 1: that that cyberwar and cyber attacks and exploitation will be
Speaker 1: a part of that. I mean, let's be honest, a
Speaker 1: lot of these countries have already conducted or declared cyber
Speaker 1: war against the United States. So what that means for
Speaker 1: US is maybe these countries could disrupt our Internet, disrupt
Speaker 1: our commerce, disrupt our the power, things that can make
Speaker 1: a lot of people's lives very difficult. And you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, um who knows how bad these attacks might be.
Speaker 1: I just want to throw out there, Steve, as you said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because we're fighting in some c conflict with some
Speaker 1: foreign country does not mean that they won't bring the
Speaker 1: fight here, and that would include a tax on critical
Speaker 1: infrastructure and you know, using our our commercial roads to
Speaker 1: attack a soft target, which at this point the the
Speaker 1: America would be in terms of cyber conflict. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you mentioned there was a how I'm drawing, I
Speaker 1: wrote down my notes and I don't have it in
Speaker 1: front of me. I think you said something that there
Speaker 1: was a cyber attack on I think it was in
Speaker 1: a community in New York about there was Yeah, a
Speaker 1: water system or a damned system. Yeah. This In two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, this Iranian backed hacking team gained access to
Speaker 1: a dam in upstate New York, the Bowman Damn. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out it actually wasn't a damn. It was
Speaker 1: basically like a sluice gate for irrigation. And there investigators
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out why why the Iranians attack
Speaker 1: this particular thing. It's it's an upstate New York, it's
Speaker 1: not a particular strategic value. And they kind of settled
Speaker 1: on two different scenarios. Either a, I think there's a
Speaker 1: Bowman damn in like Arizona or something like that, so
Speaker 1: maybe they meant to attack a different damn by the
Speaker 1: same name um. Or the other thing is they just said, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of a dry run, like what
Speaker 1: would it actually take to hack into critical infrastructure in
Speaker 1: the United States. Well, the FB, the FBI and DHS
Speaker 1: and n S A, you know, came out and I
Speaker 1: think in like or maybe they charged a number of
Speaker 1: individuals Iranians for for overdoing this. And really, to me,
Speaker 1: this is kind of like a proof of concept. We
Speaker 1: know the we know kind of the untold damage that
Speaker 1: could be done in cyber tax against the United States,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, that's that was that one particular thing,
Speaker 1: and not just that, but you know, Iranian back hackers
Speaker 1: they did denial service attacks on banks and UM and
Speaker 1: some other other targets. Yeah, I just remember that one
Speaker 1: specifically because I I pointed to that one because I
Speaker 1: don't remember that reading about that. UM. I think you
Speaker 1: said two thousand and thirteen, so I don't know where
Speaker 1: I was seven years ago, but I don't remember hearing
Speaker 1: about that. So that's something. As soon as I heard
Speaker 1: that on the podcast, I was like, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to look this one up because I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: But you know, uh, now I'm jumping around a little
Speaker 1: bit because you know, there's so many different things that
Speaker 1: you've written about that I find interest thing, and you
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, there's uh, you know, a possibility
Speaker 1: for an insurgency in this own country, and you talked
Speaker 1: about places like Portland and Seattle and the Irish troubles
Speaker 1: that happened in Ireland and are we ready for a
Speaker 1: counter We didn't do too well in counterinsurgency and Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: are we ready for a possible one in this country? Well?
Speaker 1: I would say no, right, now, but you taught you
Speaker 1: bring up Afghanistan and actually see a parallel here. You know.
Speaker 1: So I spent two years in Afghanistan, and I remember
Speaker 1: being a specialist on my first tour in Afghanistan saying,
Speaker 1: not really understanding how we are actually gonna quote unquote
Speaker 1: win in Afghanistan. In you know, I kept I kept
Speaker 1: seeing this information about green on Blue attacks and the
Speaker 1: Taliban and info traded the A and A and UM
Speaker 1: and the National police, and they were, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: shooting American and Coalition ICE AFT soldiers, UM. And then
Speaker 1: that was part of the problem. The other problem was
Speaker 1: the corruption and the unwillingness or inability of our quote
Speaker 1: unquote security partners in Afghanistan to meet the conditions that
Speaker 1: were required for a US victory for U S counterinsurgency.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I look at Afghanistan and say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes were made. Um. It was was
Speaker 1: kind of an instrumentable task to begin with, to set
Speaker 1: up a functioning nation state democracy in Afghanistan. But I
Speaker 1: looked at the at the government and the government's ties
Speaker 1: with drug running and the Taliban and all these other problems,
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult to win a counter insurgency when
Speaker 1: you're security partners. Now this doesn't mean all of them,
Speaker 1: but when you're scurity partners, aren't kind of meeting your
Speaker 1: meeting the standard required to achieve victory. Well here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Let's look at Portland. What was going on in Portland
Speaker 1: over the summer. So you have these anarchists groups attacking
Speaker 1: a federal courthouse, and so the Trump administration said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna deploy bar Tech and US Marshall Service and
Speaker 1: whatever other federal law enforcement to Portland. And and they
Speaker 1: started snatching these dudes up off the street. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw the videos, but they
Speaker 1: would literally grab one of these activists who was wanted for,
Speaker 1: you know, fire bombing in the courthouse the night before,
Speaker 1: they put him in a minivan and drive off. And
Speaker 1: what did that do to the citizens of Portland? They
Speaker 1: got very angry. And then you had moms and dad's
Speaker 1: out there standing in between federal law enforcement and these
Speaker 1: violent anarchists basically to protect them, saying, uh, we may
Speaker 1: not love what these anarchists are doing, but we're not
Speaker 1: gonna allow federal law enforcement to come into Portland and
Speaker 1: do this to our Ferrett fellow Portlanders, and that is
Speaker 1: a massive counterinsurgency failure. You know, looking at this just
Speaker 1: from a third party, looking at at what federal law enforcement,
Speaker 1: the consequences of their actions and the impact that they
Speaker 1: had on the citizens of Portland, they they made the
Speaker 1: problem much much worse. And Ted Wheeler, the this Portland mayor,
Speaker 1: and Mike Schmidt, the Portland d A, and the city council,
Speaker 1: they did not want federal law enforcement to come into
Speaker 1: the city and to help put help put down this insurrection.
Speaker 1: And so basically you had I don't want to call
Speaker 1: him indigenous, but you know, you had these You had
Speaker 1: these political figures who would not work with federal law
Speaker 1: enforcement to achieve a counter insurgency victory, just like we
Speaker 1: had in Afghanistan. Lots of problems with politicians over there
Speaker 1: not working with the US to achieve a counter insurgency victory,
Speaker 1: and they're parallels. So no, in a lot of places
Speaker 1: like Portland's, you're not going to achieve a counterinsurgency victory
Speaker 1: unless you have complete total buy in, or unless local
Speaker 1: politicians are leading that effort, or local law enforcement is
Speaker 1: leading that effort, and the politicians in Portland were not
Speaker 1: willing to let that happen, which is why you had
Speaker 1: I mean that stuff's long gone now, but billions I
Speaker 1: don't know how much, but you know, maybe billions of
Speaker 1: dollars worth of damage, and they just let it play out,
Speaker 1: and that was their counter insurgency effort. It appeared, right.
Speaker 1: I remember when all that was unfolding there a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago. It wasn't even a couple of months ago, really,
Speaker 1: but you know, I was watching that, and you know,
Speaker 1: not only did they hate not support the effort to
Speaker 1: put that, you know, the rioting and the looting down,
Speaker 1: they actively worked against it. And um, I just thought
Speaker 1: it made the situation there much much worse than it
Speaker 1: could have been and should have been. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know who's in charge of of making those decisions,
Speaker 1: either at DHS or d o J or wherever, but
Speaker 1: the strong arm type of thing, you know, that's something
Speaker 1: that there is no no colonel in the army who
Speaker 1: would go, who would have gone to Afghanistan and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do that. That's a really good idea. Let's let's
Speaker 1: piss off all the locals. As we tried to fight
Speaker 1: against the Taliband. You know, so just like they violated
Speaker 1: like basically rule number one of counterinsurgency, which is do
Speaker 1: not make needless enemies. But that's exactly what we see
Speaker 1: we saw federal law enforcement do in Portland. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was like total failure there on different levels. But it
Speaker 1: was terrible what we saw going on there. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what the answer was there, but it obviously
Speaker 1: wasn't working what we were doing as as a country.
Speaker 1: And I don't know whether it was just because of
Speaker 1: the person in the White House or the fact that
Speaker 1: that the people in the Northwest just have a deep
Speaker 1: seated distrust of federal law enforce, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it was I thought it was totally needless. Well
Speaker 1: we go back to kill Colin and petray Us. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I you know, they get some things right.
Speaker 1: I personally think they get some things wrong. But in
Speaker 1: their counter Insurgency Manual they say the media is an
Speaker 1: asset of the enemy. And it just so happens that
Speaker 1: in that specific instance, the media was not doing anything
Speaker 1: to help the situation. The longer it goes on, the
Speaker 1: more eyeballs they had, the more money they made through advertising.
Speaker 1: And I think that also was part of the problem
Speaker 1: because that the media was inflaming the situation m which
Speaker 1: kill Colin and petray Us talk about. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: another undeniable part of counterinsurgency is the information laying information
Speaker 1: space right, and in the media. We look upon the
Speaker 1: media as the enemy and counterinsurgency, but it should be
Speaker 1: an ally and that that's where I think we we lose.
Speaker 1: I think we lose that that part of the fight
Speaker 1: every time. Yeah, I would even I'm gonna make some
Speaker 1: of my friends angry, but I actually think the information
Speaker 1: operations in Afghanistan was not particularly effective, and I really
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect the federal government to get the IO piece
Speaker 1: of this right either. So to go back and answer questions, no,
Speaker 1: I really don't think the FEDS are prepared to fight
Speaker 1: en counterinsurgency domestically, not yet at least. Okay, So, as
Speaker 1: we're starting to wind up here for our podcast today
Speaker 1: with Sam Culper, Sam uh, is there anything else that
Speaker 1: we haven't touched on with your organization and what you
Speaker 1: do and what you teach that we haven't touched on
Speaker 1: up to this point that you'd like to inform our
Speaker 1: readers about. Yeah. Sure, you know, if I could um
Speaker 1: just define low intensity conflicts, so it exists under it
Speaker 1: exists below the threshold of conventional warfare, so we're not
Speaker 1: talking about tanks and bombers, but it is above routine
Speaker 1: and peaceful competition. And I don't think there's anyone alive
Speaker 1: in America today who would say that the United States
Speaker 1: is at peace. There are some who would say that
Speaker 1: we are at war, but we're really not at conventional
Speaker 1: where we're actually at a low intensity conflict. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of this this gray area between hot conflict
Speaker 1: and a cold conflict, and violence or the kinectic part
Speaker 1: of this is actually not the most important part of
Speaker 1: a low intensity conflict. Low intensity conflict is fought among
Speaker 1: the in political warfare and economic warfare, information warfare, diplomatic
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And let me tell you
Speaker 1: that war is raging. And I think there's a very
Speaker 1: good chance that this decade gets progressively worse in terms
Speaker 1: of the intensity of low intensity conflict. Even though things
Speaker 1: seem fairly peaceful right now, there are number triggers out
Speaker 1: there in the future that that could blow this wide open.
Speaker 1: I do think that the country is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a powder keg. A lot of people feel
Speaker 1: that way, but we at Ford Observer, we can come
Speaker 1: back and we can actually you know, we look at
Speaker 1: the evidence. We can actually provide that the evidence in
Speaker 1: the data to support these conclusions. Um. And so I
Speaker 1: guess that's, you know, really kind of where we differ
Speaker 1: from a blogger out there who who's telling people that
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a civil war. I mean really, my
Speaker 1: response is that it's probably already started. Like we'll probably
Speaker 1: look back in twenty years and say, is probably where
Speaker 1: this thing started. Okay, well, Sam, we want to thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us today here on software. Uh. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate your time and your service to the government
Speaker 1: and what you're doing right now for the people that
Speaker 1: are out there. Tell our listeners where they can sign up, um,
Speaker 1: to take some of your courses that are out there,
Speaker 1: and where they could find you on the different parts
Speaker 1: of social media. Yeah. Well again, thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: My website is Forward observer dot com. I'll be publishing
Speaker 1: my training schedule for two you're shortly so if you
Speaker 1: get on our our email list, then I'll just blast
Speaker 1: out training schedule and uh and if you want access
Speaker 1: to our daily intelligence reports, we'd love to have you
Speaker 1: as a customer, and that's at forward observer dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to get software app on your phone,
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Speaker 1: and exclusive team room forms and content available on all
Speaker 1: your Apple and Android devices. We want to thank everyone
Speaker 1: for listening this afternoon. We want to thank our guests
Speaker 1: Sam Culprit for joining us and Forward Observer dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: Necessarily interesting stuff that he's got out there. He has
Speaker 1: a lot of experience in it. And Sam, it's not
Speaker 1: the most uh comfortable thing for people to talk about
Speaker 1: because we never expect this stuff to be happening in
Speaker 1: our own backyard, but it is. It's happening right with us.
Speaker 1: So thank you for joining us today, Thank you for
Speaker 1: all you do, and we'll be back with another podcast
Speaker 1: real soon. Thanks again, Sam, Yeah, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me