Is America's Influence Eroding? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

dee takos (0:00)

What's up, everybody? We're back, Eyes On Geopolitics, midweek episode. I'm here with Jack and Jon. Jack Murphy, of course, and Jonathan Hackett. A lot happening, as usual.

What do you guys wanna hit out first? Wanna hit out on the Russians being indicted? Kind of in absentia, because none of them are in the United States. So I told you guys this in our group chat, that I was a little, I don't know, it sounds a little sketch to me. Obviously, it's fucking crazy, and the Russians are dirty bastards, but you know, that these guys are basically not in the States, and this comes out of nowhere. I don't know if they're trying to change the subject on something, change the story on something, but they've indicted five Russians, and a kid from Brooklyn.

Jack Murphy (0:41)

Two Russians, two Cubans, and one Venezuelan.

dee takos (0:44)

Okay, so it's a mixed bag. Are any of them here?

Jack Murphy (0:47)

I don't believe so.

dee takos (0:48)

Yeah.

Jack Murphy (0:48)

One of them's a fucking salsa dancer instructor.

dee takos (0:52)

That's why I've always told my ex-girlfriend about worried about the salsa dancer instructors. Not because they were Russian, like the saboteurs, but because she was having an affair with them. But anyway.

Jack Murphy (1:04)

This is really interesting, I think. And we talked about this. We had actually some academics on the show. When we spoke to Rory Cormack and Magda Long, and she was saying like one of the big changes in espionage in this century is that it's happening in a gig economy. And I first ran into this in investigating Havana syndrome and the harassment that Havana victims had stateside after they came back. And victims, these guys, former CIA, former State Department people, they're being followed around and photographed by people. And because some of these people have counter surveillance training and so on, they picked up on it pretty, I mean, it wasn't even being hidden really, harassing surveillance.

And some of the people were found to have connections to Venezuela, connections to Cuba. But a lot of times they were also using like Bangladeshi door dash guy, you know, who has, he's unwitting in a sense, you know, he just knows he's being paid $100 to go and take some pictures and then, okay, cool.

So it's sort of this relatively new phenomena. But you're also seeing it like I've heard reporting about, you know, allegedly people who are conducting acts of sabotage in Russia being recruited on telegram channels. So it's kind of going both ways. And I think that's a very interesting dynamic and something that's maybe very difficult to defend against.

Jonathan Hackett (2:35)

Yeah, actually, the Masa Amini, the outspoken Iranian woman living in New York City was they tried to kill her with...

Jack Murphy (2:45)

Yeah.

Jonathan Hackett (2:45)

Or Masa Alina Jett, I'm sorry. They tried to kill her with Chechens multiple times. And of course, the plan was to move her to Cuba on a speedboat. So there is the Cuban connection there as well, just like this story, which is kind of interesting because you can hire these people, like you said, and also Hells Angels was involved in a similar attempt where they're actually illegal immigrants from Canada coming over here, Hells Angels guys, who one of them overstayed his visa and the other two illegally entered the country to go do an assassination just like this.

Jack Murphy (3:15)

And here's something else I'd like to draw people's attention to.

SPEAKER_4 (3:19)

Okay.

Jack Murphy (3:21)

United by Chaos, Examining the Russian Nexus to Online Networks of Nihilistic Violence. Now, this is talking about a number of different groups, 764 and others, predominantly Russian speaking groups. And they make the point here, it cautions their report, it cautions against portraying the Com, this sort of conglomerate organization, as a Kremlin-directed project, suggesting instead that potentially state-linked actors are attempting to hijack an otherwise organic, youth-driven network as a recruitment pool for violence. So these are the guys that you've probably heard some pretty disturbing reports over the last couple of years about these networks and how they essentially groom children online and get them to commit acts of self-harm and other terrible stuff and blackmail them. Have them produce compromising videos of themselves. These are young people. They don't know how to respond or react. They're vulnerable people.

And so I bring people's attention to this article and this dynamic because some of these groups are coming out of Russia and some of the main players are in Russia. And they're targeting people in America and inspiring them to commit acts of violence.