The Jordan Harbinger Show
1154: Sean Williams | The North Korea-China-Drug Cartel Connection
15 May 2025
Sean Williams gives us a peek beneath a global shadow economy that thrives as countries like North Korea and China operate like criminal enterprises.Jordan's must reads (including books from this episode): AcceleratEdFull show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1154What We Discuss with Sean Williams:North Korea operates as a massive organized crime outfit, generating revenue through forced labor, human trafficking, drug production/trafficking, and cybercrime to fund the regime's survival.North Korean hackers (Lazarus Group) have become sophisticated cybercriminals, stealing $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency from ByBit exchange in February 2025.Chinese "flying money" (Fei Chen) operates as an ancient, untraceable money transfer system now widely used by drug cartels and for capital flight from China, possibly totaling $2 trillion annually.Chinese money laundering has had a visible impact on real estate markets in Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, and Los Angeles, where properties purchased with laundered funds remain unfinished or abandoned.Despite public diplomatic cooperation between US and China on financial crimes, both countries have conflicting incentives — China benefits from US drug chaos while the US benefits from Chinese capital flight.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:Jordan's must reads (including books from this episode): AcceleratEdIQBAR: 20% off: text "Jordan" to 64,000BetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanNordVPN: Exclusive deal: nordvpn.com/jordanharbingerShopify: 3 months @ $1/month (select plans): shopify.com/jordanHomes.com: Find your home: homes.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.
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Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash starts or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, journalist Sean Williams and I rap about North Korea, how they generate revenue for the regime using illegal operations such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, cryptocurrency heists. They're really big on those these days.
We also dip into Chinese money laundering, drug cartels, and more. I talk a lot during this episode because China, North Korea, money laundering seem to be a nice... The Venn diagram of those passions and interests overlap quite a bit for me personally. So yeah, don't email me whining about how much I'm talking during this episode.
I think this is fascinating, and you'll be able to tell my enthusiasm during the episode itself, and I hope that you share that with us. Here we go with Sean Williams. We've been trying to have this conversation for quite some time. Your Underworld podcast, you guys do so many amazing episodes.
We had your compadre Danny Gold on a long time ago as well, and you and I share this, can we call it a passion for North Korea? Is that a thing? Yeah, we can say that.
Yeah, yeah.
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