Season 12, Episode Three July 13, 2025

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This is the listening tube.

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Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. It's the worst thing to happen to old people. On this episode, we'll hear about the French Revolution, the Sedition Act, and political parties. Plus, I'll get the scoop about international geopolitics from a man who should know when I speak to Matt Williams.

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But first, not the headlines.

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I want to address the subject of the little girls lost in the Texas flood. There were more than 30 of them among the dozens of others of all ages. This event was a Texas-sized tragedy, to be sure. But the loss of dozens of innocent children, in this case girls, all in one horrific incident just seems to strike a blow to a part of your heart that you may not have even known existed until now. Although they died while assembled in a group, they were from all over the state, which is why this tragedy reaches far and wide from its origin point. Stories about the victims and what made them unique are starting to trickle in, with friends and relatives telling reporters about their memories of their loved ones. The adults who perished have stories to tell. They had time to do things and accomplish goals and contribute to society. They had plenty of time to become memories for somebody else who will now share an anecdote or funny story about that time we were at that place. But these little girls haven't had many opportunities to make an impact on someone else. Their histories had yet to be written, and now they will be remembered for such general things as she was nice, uh she had pretty hair, or she was really smart. These little girls were no more special than any other kid who dies any day of the week from cancer or violence or neglect. But to have that many in one area in one incident means a shockwave of trauma is being felt all over the very large state of Texas. This wasn't confined to one family or one neighborhood. Once the initial shock is past, the realization that there will be no more history for those girls continues to set in. Not just for the parents who will bear the brunt of the mental anguish, but also every school and community that was affected will forever wonder what could have been, if not, for that one fateful Independence Day morning. Those girls never got the chance to make their mark in life, but are ironically now a significant part of our history. Their names are destined to be listed on a plaque somewhere, maybe even with a photo or a video showing what they looked like. We'll remember them for who they were, whether that be smart or shy or wacky or whatever, but not a single one of them ever wanted to be remembered for the sliver of what they've revealed of themselves. They had dreams and goals and didn't want to be little girls forever, but that's how we'll remember them. Maybe having a name on a plaque is enough. Generations from now, people who look at it will know there was a tragedy, but they might not realize the victims were just little. Maybe in the imagination of the person looking at the plaque fifty years from now, they might imagine a grown-up person, a young woman, a young woman who did have accomplishments and who was known for more than having pretty hair. And maybe it won't hurt quite as much. This week in 1789, the citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison, starting the French Revolution. Thirteen years earlier, France helped the American colonies defeat the British Empire for independence. Now France itself was about to undergo a revolution of its own. Three years later, in 1791, the Priestley riots drive Joseph Priestley, a supporter of the French Revolution, out of Birmingham, England. The French Revolution's effects spread all the way across the English Channel, but the Priestley riots were more about religion than politics. Priestley was a scientist and considered a dissenter. Ironically, his home and church were burned down in the riots. The man who discovered oxygen and carbonated water ended up moving to the banks of the Susquehanna River in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he built a spacious home complete with a laboratory that has a wall designed to give way in case of an explosion. You can still tour it today. This week in 1798, the Sedition Act becomes law in the United States. I'm going to look that up.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it. I want the truth!

SPEAKER_00 5:50

You can't handle the truth.net takes great care in pointing out the difference between treason, insurrection, and sedition. Sedition being the least serious among them. The Sedition Act makes it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government. The law does a lot more than that, and was passed in anticipation of a war with France, which, not too long before, helped the American colonies defeat the British Empire. But as I already mentioned, there's a new sheriff in France now. The Sedition Act put limits on immigration, but it's remembered for its limits on free speech. Here's what it says. And be it further enacted that if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States with intent to defame the said government, or either House of the said Congress or the said president, or to bring them or either of them into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the Constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage, or abat any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people, or government, then such person being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $2,000 and by imprisonment not exceeding two years. Any of that sound familiar? There wouldn't be a left-wing journalist walking the streets right now under the Sedition Act of 1798. Our legacy media has done little more than talk smack about the President and Congress, which is currently a conservative majority. But the Sedition Act doesn't actually deny anyone the right to free speech, as is often claimed. I just read it to you. You just can't say false, scandalous, or malicious stuff, which shouldn't be allowed about anybody. It prohibits speech that incites violence and limits itself to the boundaries of already existing law. Just to be safe, the next section says and be it further enacted and declared that if any person shall be prosecuted under this act for the writing or publishing any libel aforesaid, it shall be lawful for the defendant upon the trial of the cause to give in evidence of his defense the truth of the matter contained in publication charged as a libel, and the jury who shall try the cause shall have a right to determine the law and the fact under the direction of the court as in other cases. So as in American law, you have the right to defend your words to a jury of your peers. The Sedition Act of 1798 could probably use a reboot. The problem with our media today is the plethora of crap that it generates. Maybe if so-called journalists were held accountable for the garbage they spew, there would be more responsible journalism. A Sedition Act, or at least the part of it pertaining to being responsible for what you say or write or otherwise communicate for 2025 might be the tool we need to regain some trust in our media and get rid of the lies and dishonest reporting that's being used to divide us and manipulate us instead of inform us. We would need a new updated version of it because of today's technology and also because the Sedition Act of 1798 expired in 1801. This week in 1933, in Germany, all political parties are outlawed except the Nazi Party. Today, the party in power, the Republicans, are often referred to as Nazis. Democrats use words like Gestapo and concentration camps and call the president Hitler. But there won't be any need to outlaw political parties in the United States. The Democrats are ruining themselves. While Elon Musk is starting a new political party. He's got enough money to start two more political parties. Maybe he should. The libertarians haven't been able to make much headway. Independents are just that and don't have any real persuasion. If we had more political parties in the U.S., maybe our government would run with a bit more consensus.

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SPEAKER_00 12:10

My guest today is the chief intelligence officer at Knightsbridge Research, a company that advises its clients on what's happening and what might happen all over the world. Matt Williams spoke with me from his office near Dallas, Texas. You seem to have all the bases covered: intelligence, finance, geopolitics, research, extremist groups, and a whole lot more. I can't think of a better guy to ask this question: who is paying whom to do what?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, that's a that is a great question. Uh, the million-dollar question, as it were. Uh, and it's something we get asked quite a lot uh to dig into uh in our research and for our private clients. You know, when it comes to extremism, especially in the United States, funding is is an uh a huge question. Where are they getting the money to carry out, whether it be smaller, more targeted uh street activity or these wide-scale protests that we've been seeing uh for quite a few years at this point. And really what it boils down to is there there are two distinct subsets uh uh underneath uh radical extremism, if you want to call that, or you could just say protest movements. One is what you see uh prior in in 2020, 2021, Black Lives Matter. Today you see indivisible, you see 50501, you see No Kings, very different groups than BLM, but they would all still be in the same cat uh category, uh, which would be groups that have an element of legitimacy. They're going for legitimate political discourse and discussion, and they are pulling in a lot of money from donors, sometimes globally. They are pulling in grants, they're pulling in funding from NGOs of various types, uh, in some cases, even USAID money is flowing through multiple organizations and then into these political groups that are leading protests. That's kind of column A. Column B is very different. Column B is when you start getting into fringe groups, more fringe groups, such as your Antifa, your John Brown Gun Club, organizations like that that are known to bring not just a level of political protest, but are known to bring targeted political violence to their street action. Those groups, historically and usually from what we see, they struggle with funding. They're not able to pull in grants, they're not able to fundraise on a level of an indivisible or a 50501 or even BLM some four and five years ago. And so these groups often resort to alternative methods of funding. They operate bookshops, for example. Uh, they do various fundraisers that can try to raise money. But typically, the more extreme and radical a group is, the more they struggle with fundraising. That's that's an almost universal truth, kind of across the spectrum, uh, especially here in the United States. When you start going international, the dynamic changes a bit.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

You know, when you see a truck pull up in a protest full of face protecting masks or uh or pallets of bricks are stationed uh nearby uh in anticipation of uh of uh an activity, then you kind of have to wonder, all right, who well, somebody much bigger is behind this than these uh and I'll I'll I'll I'll say punks on the street, uh so to speak. You know, what efforts are being taken to stop that funding, do you know?

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, you know, over the over the Biden administration, essentially none. That is changing slowly under the Trump administration, but I would emphasize slowly. Funding is a is a difficult thing to go after, usually because it's it's one of these dynamics where if you're receiving funding and you're washing it through multiple organizations in order to use it for potentially illegitimate purposes, you're going to take a lot of precautions, right? And so that's what we typically see. It takes a long time to track that down. For the groups that show up with you know, face protectors, uh, antifa and similar groups. Uh, a lot of times what we see is there will be a bit of trickle down from column A into column B when it comes to funding, but not much. A lot of times, these larger, more established protest organizations will allow small amounts of funding to go to, for example, medical equipment for these more radical groups. Well, medical equipment may, that may be the earmark, may end up being face protectors, right? Which is a form of medical equipment if you want to look at it that way. Yeah. So there's a little trickle down, but there's not a lot. We're not talking millions of dollars here. You know, we're talking a couple thousand dollars for face protectors. Uh, we're talking about some U-Haul rentals uh that may total $200, right, for a for a single protest. We're not talking millions, BLM had millions. 50501, these groups, well funded. The more radical groups are simply not very well funded. And and one of the things that we do at Knightsbridge is we dig into these groups. There are ways to socially engineer yourself into any group on the planet, and that's one of the things that we do to get a look at the inner workings. And I and I've been speaking mostly of leftist radical groups because they're the most prominent, but left and right are there's radical groups on both sides that our clients are interested in. And so we are looking into those groups, and and usually what we find from the inside is that these groups struggle with funding consistently, struggle with funding. Uh they're looking for their next $500 most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

That that was going to be my next question. I was gonna ask, do you have anybody inside these operations? Obviously, you you must, or you have connections in there. How how how is your human intelligence in that area?

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah, our human intelligence is is solid, right? Most of what we do at Knights Bridge is uh private client deals. We do have a subscription-based uh service for for everyone else, but a lot of our private clients are very interested in what's happening on the inside of these groups. So you can you can socially engineer your way in, starting with social media in it nine times out of ten, you start digital and you uh you build a profile that appeals to a certain group that you're targeting. And over time, that that digital presence, that social engineering often doesn't always have to, but often turns into human intelligence uh and actually uh going to meetings and things of that nature. So depending on what it is our clients request, uh we'll go to whatever level we need to go to uh to fulfill uh their specific requirements. But as far as just generally speaking, I mean we we monitor all radical groups in the United States, at the very least on a digital level. So maybe we have used social media profiles that are created for specific purposes to get into the uh inner sanctum when it comes to their digital chats, right? We're in the right signal groups, for example, to be able to monitor what we need to monitor. Uh, human intelligence is obvious a step beyond that. We do that when it's required. Uh, but at the very least, we want to have our thumb on the pulse of each of these radical groups in the United States from a digital perspective.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Of course, I'm not going to ask you to divulge anything that might put anybody at risk or or divulge any of your uh activities or methods, but can you just kind of give us a general idea of how far up these chains of command you've been able to infiltrate?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah, well, we're we're not necessarily looking to get into leadership in these groups, right? Our our our perspective is we need to monitor closely. We're not looking to influence decisions, and therefore, leadership is kind of out of the question for us. We we want to be involved and present, but we don't want to ever be in a position where we are uh recommending changes uh because of what a lot of these groups do is illegal, and we don't want to be involved in that. So it's more of an outlier. Yes, we want to be present, we want to understand, and we stop there. Um influence operations is not really what we are there for inside of these groups. Observe and report. That's that's correct. That's correct.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Now, night Knights Bridge Research is a consulting organization, and you advise your clients on domestic and international policies that may affect their investments. Now, were you asked to make predictions about Trump policies and how specific things would affect your clients? Yes. Yes, we were. Were you right about any of them?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Uh well, I will I will not tell you that our accuracy rate is 100%. And if I did, you should end the interview right now, right? You know, one of the things that that we were very focused on is the potential impact of tariffs. Uh it was eminently obvious candidate, then candidate Trump was going to engage in a sweeping tariff campaign. I personally uh spent a decade in finance before uh moving over to Knightsbridge, and and several of our team members have financial backgrounds as well. And we were very concerned really about the lack of development of those policies. That the the tariff policies appear to be half faked, to put it bluntly. And and that is proven to be true. The the policy. These are rolled out, a percentage is announced in a certain sector, then it's rolled back, then it's then it's upgraded, then it's downgraded. I mean, we just saw a few days ago. Uh, now August 1st is the new deadline. It was supposed to be July 9th for a lot of these tariffs to be rolled out. So we were very concerned about the volatile nature of those rollouts, and that certainly held true. Uh, one of the things that we, you know, full disclosure, we expected to see more inflation early on than we've seen as an effect of the tariffs. We expected to see inflation in the US uh about uh three-quarters of a point higher than it is right now. Not a major miss, but at the same time, when you do have a huge amount of tariffs being put on, uh that that's going to be inflationary in almost every case. That has not happened to the extent we thought. It still could. We could be a little early in the game at this point, uh, especially because we saw firms snatching up everything they could ahead of tariff implementation. Uh shipments into the US, for example, from China and India and Taiwan, et cetera, surged just before the initial round of tariffs uh and then declined. So, in a lot of cases, firms are still working through raw materials that they purchased pre-tariff. So we'll see if that prediction ends up coming true or not. Uh, right now it's kind of a 50-50 type thing. The other thing that we predicted was that Trump would be largely ineffective in ending the war in Ukraine. The the issues there are too complex. Russia has no real motivation to end the war at this time, uh, despite uh Trump essentially asking them to. Uh, and so we we predicted that, you know, originally Trump had said within what 30 days the war would be over. We were telling our clients there's no chance, virtually no chance of that happening. Uh and as it stands right now, those peace talks are dead. They're just dead in the water, as of you know, the beginning of July. Uh so we that we were pretty happy with those predictions. Um the the bombing of Iran was a major Trump move. Uh that was something that we knew he would be extraordinarily pro-Israel and unleash Israel to an extent. Um, and and about two and a half weeks before the bombing is when we first predicted that would happen. But you know, November last year, that wasn't necessarily on our radar, right? That the US would be involved in those kinds of things. So, you know, for us, we view the global dynamic as changing all of the time. It's constantly shifting, there's constantly new information. And one of the things that we are really pleased with about how we run Knightsbridge is that we're always willing to bring in new information and change our analysis. We're not entrenched, we're not entrenched in a certain way of thinking that that we made a prediction, now we're gonna stick to it no matter what. No, we made a prediction, and now we have four more data points, prediction changes, and we'll bring that new prediction forward. So uh we're we're we're humble about it and we realize that uh we cannot be entrenched in positions. So anytime we make a prediction, hey, when new information comes alive, it's gonna change. Well, sure. We're not gonna stick with it.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

A lot of people say, well, they're flip-floppers or or they change their mind or whatever, but a lot of people never consider the fact that, well, if you're given new information, you have every right and obligation to perhaps change the way you feel about any given subject if you if you're introduced with new information. I don't think that should come as a surprise to anybody, but sometimes it's held against people. Yeah. Um, you know, when they're trying to be uh critical of their of their new form, newly formed analysis.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

And that's something I tell my clients all the time. It's that look, our predictive accuracy rate ranges from 92 to 96 percent. That's that's an extraordinarily high accuracy rate when it comes to predictive intelligence and predictive analysis. But we will change our predictions when new information comes alight. And our guarantee to our clients is you'll know as soon as that happens, right? If we have a prediction and it changes, you'll have the underlying data, you'll have our assessment of that data and detailed explanation as to why our timeframe is no longer six weeks. Now we're predicting eight weeks for a certain incident, right? We're just upfront about that. Uh, and I think that's something our clients appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Have you had to change your conclusions or your analysis more frequently in the first six months of the Trump administration than say you had during the Biden administration?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

When it comes to uh the economic side of things, yes. Yes. Uh, because it's it's uh there's a lot of whiplash coming from the White House.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

There's been a lot of of over overreaction to things, and then and then people realize, well, uh we didn't all die, so it must not be that bad, you know, and then they go back to normal. Um we've yeah, I've seen a lot of that myself. Was Operation Midnight Hammer a surprise, or did you anticipate some kind of American participation when it came to Iran's nuclear capabilities?

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Sure. So when when Israel began its strikes, right, it was only a 12-day operation as far as Israel is concerned. When Israel began its strikes, our initial prediction was that um, the U.S. would provide uh defensive support for Israel, which we did. We had already been watching the U.S. build up in the region for months. We had seen naval assets, air assets, air defense assets being moved into the region for three months ahead of time. So our prediction was that the U.S. was gearing up for those Israeli attacks. We knew the Israeli attacks were coming two months before they did. That was pretty obvious. Once Israel began attacking, the uh our initial assessment of the damage done to Iran's nuclear program was that based upon the the attack strategy the Israelis used, they would not be able to significantly degrade Iran's underground nuclear facilities, especially the Fordo facility. At that point, we started looking into is it possible that the US would come in with uh Moabs, bunker busters, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

So it is something you considered?

SPEAKER_01 28:32

It is something that we did consider. Um, our our official assessment that the US was likely, because again, we speak in terms of unlikely, somewhat likely, right, all the way up. We we moved to likely U.S. participation five days before the attacks took place, four days before the attack took place. We moved to very likely. We could see the pieces in place. We could see the framing by President Trump and the framing by Prime Minister Netanyahu and how their public statements changed to prepare the public for what was about to happen. And there's a lot of things you can read in between the lines when when world leaders speak. President Trump, for example, started uh speaking about how he had always said, right, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And he started pointing to comments he'd made 15 years ago saying that. Uh Netanyahu started issuing statements that the US has said and we have said we'll never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And just the subtle changes in those statements to us look like framing and laying the groundwork for the public understanding of these attacks. And you see that a lot of times in in geopolitics. And so we saw that happening. At the same time, we saw the Israelis unable to penetrate those deeper bunkers. And at the same time, we saw a lot of excess activity when it came to tankers out of Europe and the US uh going airborne, uh, training missions. We saw a lot more activity around B-2 air bases that you know, these things can be monitored. So you taking taking all of that together, about four days out is when we said this is gonna happen, you know, 90 plus percent on.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

The media literally had people watching that Air Force base in Missouri for B-2's taking off, and somehow they were still able to accomplish this mission without anybody knowing that it was in progress. How how were you surprised by that?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I mean, I it's the B-2 program, especially, is shrouded in secrecy, and they they know how to accomplish what they want to accomplish. And and and you had yeah, yeah, and you had B-2s going out both coasts, right? You had B-2s going out the west and the east. The those that flew out the west were the decoys, and they were very public about it. Those flying to the east were were not, were very much concealed, and they went to high altitude very quickly, which means you know, standing on the ground, you're not gonna notice, right? You're gonna have to specifically be looking for uh those with specialized equipment in a lot of cases. Uh so yeah, it it was it was pulled off brilliantly. The diversion of the westbound aircraft was completely unnecessary, but at the same time, it was just yet another step uh that the US could take to show some capabilities that you may be watching one direction or coming from the other. That that was a that was a brilliant move from a geopolitical perspective uh that you may think you know what's happening, but here we come in the back door, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Well, it certainly certainly caught the press off guard because I read stories about how we're we're sending B-2s to Guam to prepare them to bomb Iran when the actual ones were already on the way over there. So that's right. What is your assessment of the damage done to Iran's nuclear program? There's obviously a lot of controversy about that.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Sure, yeah, and opinions are a dime a dozen, unfortunately, on that. The IAEA has said that it's only the program has only been set back a few months. Uh the Pentagon's official position is two years. Uh, it it two years seems a bit aggressive. We think it's more like a year. And the reason for that is because the damage done to these facilities, granted, they they went in through ventilation shafts, which is the smart thing to do. That makes sense. Um, those facilities are extensive under the surface. And there's already evidence that they're being dug out. There, there's almost no chance that Iran's uranium stockpile was completely destroyed. Almost zero. Iran's also a master of moving around not just its uranium stockpile, but some of its more critical equipment to other facilities. Uh, the IAEA has found a dozen facilities over the last 15 years that had trace amounts of uranium. Uh, clearly, stockpiles were being held there, never disclosed, they never found it. Um, so Iran's really good at this uh as far as concealing what they have. The damage done to Ford is significant. I'm not saying it wasn't significant, but at the same time, the the Iranians still have a significant stockpile. They are able to get the requisite equipment from their other partners, from Russia, from China, they will be able to get those in fairly short order. And now they've learned a lot of lessons about what the U.S. plan of attack is against those facilities, which means that in the future, if you're going to have ventilation shafts in new facilities, that's your weak spot. And that's now a known weak spot where you can position your critical assets in areas that won't be damaged in the future. So a year or so is likely what we've seen here. It's a setback for sure, but this is a short-term victory, not a long-term victory for the United States. Yes, the program's degraded, not for 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Now, you and I are talking specifically about their physical uh facilities. But Israel also took out many of their leading nuclear scientists. How hard will they be to replace? Can they be replaced in a year or two?

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Yeah, they they can be replaced by those who were, you know, a couple of runs down. That's going to be a there, there is a bit of a knowledge gap there. But here's the thing Iran is is on very friendly terms with Russia, China, and North Korea. It's not difficult to recreate knowledge among that grouping of countries around a nuclear program. I mean, Russia and China especially have extraordinarily advanced nuclear programs. They know how to do all of these things. And so it's it's not an issue of Iran being a completely isolated nation where they have to in and of themselves recreate this information. They have partners who are more than willing to assist. And so, if there's a knowledge gap at the top, right, if their top scientists are are all truly deceased, as Israel is claiming, it's not going to be hard for them to replace those guys, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

With with a willing volunteer, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Right. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

There are a lot of flashpoints around the world. India and Pakistan recently went at it again. They've been adversaries for a long time. There's always trouble in the Middle East with Sunni and Shia Muslims at odds and the Jewish state. We recently had two countries in Africa start and end a war. Well, a lot of that's in the news, and people who follow the news are aware. But we don't hear too much about South America. I know there's a lot of political activity and civil strife going on there, but we seem to focus more on the other hemisphere than on our own. What's going on in South America and why do we seem to be ignoring it as compared to Europe and the Middle East?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Sure. Well, uh, you know, I think that the the Middle East gets a lot of attention purely because of oil. If the Middle East didn't have oil, no one would care, quite frankly, as to what's happening there. So that that's a that's a major factor. Um, and of course, the US's close alliance with Israel means we have to be involved on some level in the Middle East. Europe is is been in a large way the center of the Western world for a very long time. It gets a lot of automatic attention. Latin America is is more or less looked upon as uh, well, this is where we get our raw materials from and not much else. It has been uh kind of set aside, I think, in the public consciousness and by our own government in the United States for a very long time. And while we have not focused on Latin America, China has. And so what we have in Latin America right now is almost parity between American influence and Chinese influence, especially when you see trade trade numbers. If you take out Mexico, Latin America does more trade with China than it does with the United States. At Mexico in, the US has a slight advantage. Uh, but a lot of these Latin American countries have have understood over the last 15 years or so uh that the US isn't particularly interested in focusing there, and China is. So the entire continent has seen a pretty significant shift towards China, especially from a trade and economic perspective, uh, over the last uh 15 years. There is a lot of infrastructure being built by China in Latin America. Um, China's heavily invested in most of the major ports. What we're seeing too is a lot of these Latin America countries, especially Bolivia, Argentina, etc., they are cutting red tape in order to allow more mining and faster than what they have in the past. Uh that means primarily China. I mean lithium reserves, right? The lithium triangles right there in South America, critically important elements. Uh, but that's that's generally what's happening on the continent, is there is a China shift happening. There are, you know, there's other elements happening too. Colombia, for example, um uh armed gangs have surged in Colombia over the last three years under President Petro. Uh, we've seen a 45% increase in the number, just personnel that the cartels and gangs have been able to recruit. They're taking more territory, not great. Venezuela looking over at Guyana uh with some potential ambitions, it looks like, over the next years out. Not that's not a near-term thing, more of a mid-to-long-term thing, but uh Venezuela eyeing those oil fields, you know, Brazil's just trying to keep it together from an economic perspective. So there's things are happening for sure. Generally, though, from an American perspective, uh none of that's particularly important. And I think that's a mistake. I think what's happening in our own backyard is extraordinarily important, and we turn a blind eye to those developments to our own detriment, to our own long-term detriment.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Is it maybe because uh they're so close to us that the US doesn't really need to do anything because we can always reach out and slap them if they get too far out of line?

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Sure. I think there's an element to that. I think the US overly relies upon historical uh diplomatic relationships, right? Uh, because Latin America was largely dominated by American influence for decades. Uh and I think we rely upon that in an inappropriate way. We assume that we still have the influence that we once had, and that's not the case anymore.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

What's your biggest concern in the world of geopolitics today?

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Oh my goodness. Uh biggest concern. Long term, uh, I'll I'll take a decade perspective. My biggest concern over the next decade or so uh is what China ultimately does in the Western Pacific. If China does make a move on Taiwan, we think you could see anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of global GDP disappearing a year. And that's a massive hit, not just to China and Taiwan, but to the US, to Australia, to Europe, etc. If if China makes that move, the US can either respond or not. If the US does not respond, then the US has walked away from a country it's sworn to protect. What does that do geopolitically? That that has huge geopolitical implications. If the US does respond, we're likely to war with China. And a war with China is World War III. And so there's no good scenario. If China moves on Taiwan, it's going to have massive repercussions for the United States. So over the next decade, that is my number one concern is what does China do? And that's something we focus on a lot at Knights Bridge, is our predictions around how that would play out, what that would look like, what the implications would be, because that's a world-changing event potentially, if that were to happen.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

It sounds like China's just wondering whether or not they should call our bluff and when.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Sure. China's ready now. I mean, China could carry out a blockade tomorrow if they wanted to. They they stay in a state of perpetual readiness uh for for that particular activity. And so a lot of it comes down to if China has determined that they are going to take Taiwan, they call it re-unify. We don't call it reunify. Um if they decide they are going to take Taiwan, from our perspective, the best case scenario is to wait until after the Trump presidency and see what you get then. Because you essentially know how Trump is going to respond. There is a playbook there, and it would be a pretty negative playbook for China. But who's next? That's an unknown. China can use the next few years to continue building its capabilities. Remember, China's not battle-tested. All of Chinese military strategy, the modern CCP, uh, is using theory. This is not, they're not drawing on this deep well of knowledge, right? Um, they are drawing upon theory, and a lot of it's Russian theory on top of that, uh, which is which is interesting. So they're drawing upon untested troops, theoretical uh military strategy, etc. So for China, it's not necessarily a negative development to build up a few more years, even though they could go now. So China is not going to move on Taiwan until it's confident in its plans and its assessments and its strategy. And right now, whether it's confident or not is anyone's guess, right? We don't have people in the CCP feeding us information. We're not that kind of organization. Um and so outside looking in, sure, they could do it at any time, but the calculus is is is made more complex by the election of President Trump uh than it than it was before. That's where China's at right now. But over the next decade, it's a it's a monstrous risk factor uh globally.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Thanks again to Matt Williams for spending some time in the listening tube. That company again is Knightsbridge Research, and you can find them online. I hope you found Matt's insights as interesting as I did. The listening tube is written and produced by yours to leave February 2025. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Anna Bodley, for now, and phenomenal.