George Friedman
speaker
177 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
George Friedman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah. And so new powers are emerging. And of course, in 50 years, we'll be raging at each other again. And undoubtedly, there'll be wars because humans have wars. They seem to like them. History goes on.
Well, I think I would put it this way. Israel by itself is an accident waiting to happen. It's a small country. It has a superb army, a much weaker intelligence system than it should have. And even more importantly than that, one mistake by Israel, one mistake can threaten its existence.
Israel is a weaker intel infrastructure than... It failed to identify in 1973 the buildup of Syrian tanks and Egyptian tanks in plain sight and misinterpreted them as an exercise. In fact, it came more and almost overran Israel. Wow. Hamas is a small terrorist organization. The Israelis know all about it. I would assume that by now Hamas had been penetrated by Israeli agents so they would know it.
But the best part was these guys were building little bridges over a waterway and Israeli intelligence didn't wonder what the hell they were doing. What was that? It was a complete break. The Israelis published a report on it finally. Finally fired the head of intelligence and everything. It was a massive major Israeli intelligence failure. That war should never have been allowed to start.
But then the Israelis also followed this very strange strategy. They started bombing Hamas territory. It failed to end them. So they bombed them again. Failed to end them. So they had been repeating the same thing without succeeding, hoping for a different outcome each time they do it. So I think Israel, I'm Jewish and I really care about it, really needs a new strategic relationship.
The Saudis are prepared to have the relationship. Now, if Turkey and Saudi Arabia want Hamas to go away, they will go away very fast. So far, Saudis have not had any motivation to do it. But you notice how Qatar, which is a very important tiny country, has become the main negotiating tool. Yes. Both for the Russians and the Americans. Notice they're using the same tool.
I think the Saudis have had it. The Turks have certainly had it. And they themselves are threatened by Iran. Saudi Arabia is very close to Iran. The Turks are wondering. The US has deployed a major bomber force certain areas that are clearly intended to take out the Iranian nuclear capability, but frankly, we want a missile. We're telling the Iranians, we're planning carpet bombing, guys.
We had enough. And the Russians are pretty much masked too. So the Russians are doing a lot of negotiating, but they're doing it through the same agency as the Americans are. Gutter meets with the Iranians for the Russians and the Americans. So when you spend your life, if you don't have a life, like I don't have life, you know, I spend my entire time looking at these little things.
You notice gutter is being used by the Russians and the Americans to talk to the Iranians. Now that's a wonderful thing. What is that? Well, the Iranians don't want to talk directly to Americans or Russians. Okay. They'll talk to the gutters.
so the americans go to gutter they tell the batteries what to tell the iranians and they come back russia had some message to deliver to the iran i don't know what it was they went to qatar and told him to deliver it so if you're talking about unknown collaboration here it is gutter knows what the americans are saying and you know what the russians are saying
Therefore, you must assume that the Russians know what the Americans are saying and the Americans know what the Russians are saying. So the question of Iran, just because they both went to Qatar to be the intermediary, I'm saying they're collaborating. And they are. It's very difficult for Trump to be too close to the Russians because there is much anti-Russian feeling in the United States.
It's very difficult for Putin to be collaborating with the Americans because there's much anti-American feeling in Russia. So each of them are trying very hard not to appear too close. Occasionally threats are exchanged pro forma. but they're not of any substance, really. And I think we're already working more closely with the Russians on many matters. I think the Ukrainian war is over.
I don't think the Russians, having failed miserably in the first war, would try it again, you know, hoping for a different outcome. I mean, look, they attacked them for three years, and look what they have to show for it. You know, a tiny stretch of Eastern Ukraine.
It's not that they're powerful. They're an internal bureaucracy, very complex, made more complex for the fact security is necessary so that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing and everything else. The idea that you could stage a conspiracy within the CIA against the United States is hilarious. These guys couldn't stage a conspiracy against each other.
The institutional structure is a federal institution. It's developed that way. The problem is not their power, how deeply they see. I think they feel that operatives are excellent. I think the Russian FSB is outstanding. Does the intelligence get processed properly to get to the people who need to act on it? And what happens in intelligence agencies, they become social security conscious.
They didn't even want the president to know. Not because they're plotting conspiracy or anything like that. That's nonsense. It's simply that Security becomes a religion. need to know is something that's managed by the intelligence community. Their terror is they're going to lose agents or capabilities because some idiot is going to tell their brother-in-law what was said.
And I think that's the problem with the agencies. It's not that they're involved in a conspiracy. I don't know how many committees they'd have to have to have a true conspiracy. The problem is that intelligence has to be classified, compartmentalized, limited. And the ability even of the head of the CIA to know all of everything that they know is first a mental problem. It's a lot to know.
And you can say we had the intelligence, but we was buried. And how has it gotten out of security? The problem is inherent in intelligence, which is that unless you have a small organization of people you trust completely, a large organization of people on different levels of security,
the flow of information is very hard and the person who might be able to make sense of it, maybe isn't cleared to have it. So you have the inefficiency that you see in federal department exists in the CIA as well. Now, how do you reform an intelligence agency is very hard because you need that security. You need that compartmentalization. You need to protect your sources.
You need to protect your satellites. You can't spread it around. And so what the British always had was a very small intelligence agency. Their view was with MIT, They were very limited in the capabilities they had, but very smart in making sure the information got to the people who had to have it.
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