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I'm Venicia Rainey and this is Iran the latest. It's Thursday 29th of October 2026, the eighth month of the war between the US and Iran. On today's episode, growing certainty that the war will restart in the coming weeks one way or another. But is it a good idea? And what can the US and Israel achieve that they haven't already? Plus, is JD Vance trying to back channel a peace deal with Iran before the midterms? I'll be discussing all of that and more with ex-military YouTuber and Osent intelligence analyst Ryan McBth. Ryan, welcome to Around the Latest. Thank you so much for having me. It is great to be here.
Great. We love that. Good morning America energy. We need it. Um I just want to get a bit into your background because you've done a lot over the years. So you spent 20 years in the US Army. You were a heavy weapons team leader, infantry instructor, first sergeant with two overseas deployments. You then developed special software that was used to identify and track national security threats for Accentra Federal Services. And now you analyze cyber intelligence, online influence operations, military techn technology, and much more for your significant audience on YouTube. Anything I missed? Hey, pretty much hit the nail on the head. Although I was in a first sergeant position, I never actually made the
rank of first sergeant because if that had happened, then I would have to leave my boys behind and uh start sitting on my butt with an Excel spreadsheet turning red cells green. So, platoon starting was a much more fun job. Okay, fair enough. Um let's start with a question that is on everyone's minds. The possibility of the Iran war restarting in full. It's never obviously ended. um heard a lot of reports in recent weeks about a three-day strike campaign after the midterms. Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the US has now warned several Gulf Arab countries to be prepared for a short intense campaign after the elections. So, they're coming up next Tuesday, of
course. They also report that the US military is sending additional Patriot systems to Israel from Texas to beef up its missile defenses and that it's moved troops off bases in the Middle East where they were vulnerable. We know that they've been drawing down diplomats as well in embassies and consulates. How likely do you think more strikes are and how much does it depend on that midterms result for the Republicans? I would say this is a roughly even chance. And that might sound like I'm doing a copout because a roughly even chance sounds like a coin flip, right? And either we're going to do it or we're not going to do it. I don't know how much the midterms might
actually affect what the president decides to do because we're kind of implying that if I will tell you this in the uh American system of government, we have two levels of um of houses. We have the House, the two levels of Congress. We have the House and then we have the Senate, which is the upper chamber. It is certainly possible that the president might lose the lower chamber. the upper chamber. That's kind of a tossup as to whether or not that might go to the opposition party. If the opposition party gains both chambers, he still has like a threemonth window or so to do all sorts of shenanigans. Now, if the current majority party, the Republican party, stays in power, it's going to be a lot
harder to prevent President Trump from moving forward on any of this stuff. And even if uh the opposition party gains power, now you have another issue where the president can still since he is commander-in-chief of the military, the president can still direct troops and he can still send troops out for uh I think it was up to 60 days before notifying Congress. He can do all sorts of things because he is the commander-in-chief. Congress does have power of the purse. They can try to shut off money. That's going to be politically very unpopular because the next thing you're gonna get in two years is campaign ads. Senator Bedfellow cut off the supply of food to
soldiers who are overseas. So, do you really want to be that congressman? But I can tell you that we don't really know what's going on. You have that coin flip, right, of whether the president's going to actually engage in more strikes. He doesn't need to wait for the midterms. I think that he is choosing to wait if he decides to do this because this is a fairly unpopular war. He doesn't want oil prices, gasoline prices higher. Uh and that would almost certainly happen if new strikes are conducted on Iran. So, let's stay on the side of the coin flip where new strikes do occur. What do you think what do you think they'll look like? And what do you think they're going to try and achieve that they
haven't achieved already? And I'm talking here about the US and Israel because it does seem fairly clear that the Americans and Israelis will go in alongside each other for the first time since it all kicked off in March. For the first time since the last time and I can tell you that well, we had those strikes over summer, right, where the Americans went in solo and it was pretty clear that they were keeping the Israelis out of it. So yeah, I think uh we're basically going to be turning big rocks into little rocks. I mean for 38 days we essentially curb stomped Iran and we attred their ability to uh build missiles. We attred their ability to launch air sorties. We destroyed basically their entire navy the exception of some small boats
the conventional right. Yeah. So what do we where do we go from here? Well, there are places like Pickax Mountain, which may or may not still have nuclear material. Iran has started to assemble more missiles and drones from spare parts that it had lying around. And there is a non-zero chance that they were able to get in more equipment uh in parts, spare parts from Russia, from China over time through little holes inside of the sanctions as well as holes inside of the blockade. I mean, the Caspian Sea is wide open. Can't really fit as much Carter through the Caspian Sea, but you can fit some. There's also air. Stuff can arrive by air from Russia, from China, from far off locations. And Iran is a country of
94 million people that would take up most of the Midwest or a good portion of Europe if you overlaid it on Europe. It is a functioning country with things like rail lines that go all over the place. Now, the ones to Afghanistan probably aren't bringing much in, but the ones that go to other countries surrounding Iran can still bring in things like weapons or dual use parts. So, we might go after those factories that are building those missile systems that could reach our allies and our partners uh around the Middle East. uh that's 100% and plus IRGC command posts pretty much what we did before kind of the problem and also the advantage is that for 38 days we were really hitting Iran hard. So there may
not be many good targets left. That's good in the sense that America's JATO or joint all domain operations doctrine worked exactly as advertised. The bad thing is that if you are an Air Force targeter and you are told, "Find me a target. We need to launch at least 200 sorties a day." And a sort is one flight. Um, you're going to go find a target. And that's how you end up bombing a girl school. That's how you end up hitting the wrong target. An IRGC base that isn't there anymore because you're under pressure. Got to generate sorties. And so now you're looking through the stuff like we don't have anything left.
What about Pickaxe Mountain that Trump keeps mentioning? And I know you've sort of looked a bit at this and the viability of targeting this suspected nuclear site, very deeply fortified, suggestions that even bunker buster bombs would struggle to get through to it. Do you think that's potentially what's going to happen? It's certainly possible. Uh so Pickax Mountain is essentially an underground Iranian nuclear enrichment facility. Now you don't necessarily have to uh penetrate the mountain and actually hit these centeres. The shock waves of bombs hitting the mountain could throw off these centues. And these centures are designed to enrich uranium or uranium hex fluoride and they're spinning essentially at the
speed of sound. So if that calibration is off by even a millimeter, it's going to tear itself apart. So, we might certainly be at a point where if Iran wants to restart the uranium enrichment program underneath the pickaxe mountain, they're going to have to do a heck of a lot of maintenance on these centures to enrich more uranium, which may or may not be something they're capable of doing uh right now, especially if we go back to bombing them. Another thing about pickaxe mountain, if you genuinely want to destroy Pickaxe Mountain, you might be able to use a bunker buster. A more likely option would be to use a tactical nuclear weapon or a commando team with a nuclear demolition charge that would enter uh that would enter Pickaxe
Mountain, drop, you know, find exactly what they need to destroy and detonate the weapon or leave and detonate the weapon. So, Pickaxe Mountain is a really tough nut to crack. We have the tools to do it, but the fallout could be radioactive in every sense of the word. Yeah, I was going to say both of those options, troops on the ground and a tactical nuclear weapon would be huge escalations. I mean, do you think Trump has the political risk appetite for that? He's shown to be very averse to putting any troops into danger, right? I mean, they still haven't sent any warships that we know of, maybe one or two really, into the straight of Hormuz even.
Oh, I believe they are escorting uh ships to the straight of Hormuz. Uh, but I can tell you that um when we had one single two airmen down, dude 44, Alpha and Bravo, uh we moved heaven and earth to get those men. So, we have no problem putting boots on the ground. Uh we destroyed more equipment on the ground in Iran than some nations have in their air force just to grab two guys. So, would President Trump put boots on the ground, such as a commando team who are trained to do this if he thought it would have a positive effect on destroying Iran's uh nuclear program? Yeah, I think that is certainly something he would do. He's the president. He has multiple options at his disposal. Perhaps even options
that we're not even aware of in the open space. I will say that I think those airmen were rescued from closer to the sort of edges of Iran desert area whereas Pickax Mountain is in Isvahan right in the center of Iran. It would be a much bigger operation, much riskier. Okay. Well, let's leave that aside. I want to get your thoughts on there's so much I want to discuss with you. Um, what does Israel add to this element militarily, I guess, but also politically? I know there's been lots of constonnation in America about Israel's role in this, how much they were pushing, what kind of, you know, arguments they were making ahead of the war um to the Trump administration. And then also the diverging aims as the war
has continued, right, the Israelis seem to continue to want to push for regime change or at least destabilization of the regime and of the entire country, whereas the Americans seem keener to extract some kind of deal. Um, what do you make of the Israelis and the Americans going in together and how that will change things? Well, Israel brings incredible capability, especially their air force, uh especially any sort of special forces or MSAD troops that might be on the ground working with Iranians right now, um who are identifying targets that need to be struck. Uh for a while, the Israelis were taking out individual IRGC checkpoints in the hopes that people on the ground would rise up
and defeat the regime. And when you think about it, Israel is living next to a really bad neighbor. And this is the guy he beats his wife. He kicks his dog. And every once in a while, they call the police and they don't do anything until they elected a new sheriff in the form of Donald Trump who decided, you know what? I'm going to serve an eviction notice. Now, Israel would love to see a new Iran, an Iran that is free of control of the mullis. They would love to see that. The United States, we don't live there. Remember, we're the sheriff, right? We live a couple of towns away. We're not that concerned about Iran's capabilities, at least not as much as Israel is, and they're they're right next door.
I want to ask you about munitions depletion because you're you're um so good on armaments. We had a report from CSIS earlier in this war, April, after the sort of 40-day bombing campaign, that the US had used about half of its initial inventory for three um munitions, Patriot, TAD interceptor missiles and the precision strike missiles, and about onethird of their inventory for other missiles, the Jasmine Tomahawk longrange cruise missiles and the SM naval surfaceto-air missiles. um they were looking at the impact this would have both on the US for future wars and of course also on Middle East allies and European allies who also need these interceptor stocks. So as I say that was back in April. Um it would might have changed slightly
since then. There's been some more fighting. There's probably been some more restocking but I would imagine the picture is more or less the same. How worried are you that going into another strike campaign will severely deplete those stocks all over again and just compile the problem for a future war, say against China, which I know you speak about a lot on your channel. I can tell you this, there are fewer weapons today than there were on February 27th, 2026. Right? We have used those munitions in strikes. Now, for the people who say, "Well, we need to save these munitions for China." I kind of
say, "Wait a minute. We can't use these weapons in a war. We might need them for a war." This is what weapons are for, right? You use them in a war. And I've also said when it comes to interceptors, um there are essentially five bases that surround China. There's two in Japan, uh two in South Korea, and one on Guam. And we could have 100 interceptors remaining or we could have 10,000 interceptors remaining. It's not going to matter. Those five bases are going to be lakes of fire within the first 30 minutes of any conflict with China. And this is why the Air Force has developed the ACE doctrine, agile combat employment, where they're constantly moving aircraft. It's why we've cleared
off a lot of islands from World War II. So we can base aircraft there, refuel, rearm, get them back up in the air. So the interceptor question I'm not that worried about. Tomahawk is something to worry about because I've often said and actually one of your members of parliament, the uh the conservative leader, she used my line where I said, "Shoot the archer, not the arrow." But actually, if you're smart, you want to shoot the Fletcher, not the archer. All right? The Fletcher is the guy who makes the arrows. So tomahawk missiles would be crucial for striking sites for manufacturing if this war goes on a long time. But we're America. We are great at violence. It is our one export,
our gift to the world, our ability to kill. And so we have multiple ways of doing this. And so while we have had reduced amounts of munitions, one of the reasons I'm not that concerned about China is that China is going to be mostly a naval battle, we have to prevent the Chinese from getting ships 100 miles across the straight of Taiwan. So in order to do that, what are we going to be using? We're going to be using missiles like naval strike missile, harpoon, uh torpedoes fired from submarines, uh and elrazm, that's another munition that we might use. And we haven't really used any of those against Iran. So, I'm not that worried about China because they need to cross 100 miles of ocean in order to get to Taiwan and actually uh complete their
objectives. And the whole way they're going to be facing a hellscape of Taiwanese drones and American submarines and American fighter and bomber aircraft that are basically crossing into the straight of Taiwan and shooting everybody not dressed like us. And if we're lucky, hey, the UK and Australia and France, they might they might come to the party as well, along with Japan and South Korea who were uh who were a little annoyed that four bases in their countries are now lakes of fire. So, I'm I'm not that concerned about the munition shortage. Maybe we'll come help you guys out if you let us know that it's going to happen and it's going to, you know, wreck our economy and all sorts of other things. Maybe. Just give us the heads up.
Yeah. Sorry about that. Probably should have been uh a little more articulate. Unfortunately, I don't have the president's ear. And honestly, I think he gets up every day and is like, he just takes advice from the last person who talked to him, you know, so what am I going to do? Um, okay. So, I'm not that worried about US munitions. What about Iranian munitions? Um, there's a fascinating Reuters investigation released today in collaboration with an Israeli American risk consultancy, 240 Analytics, and I'm just going to read some of its findings out for our audience because I think they'll find it fascinating. Um, so Iran has created, according to this report, Iran has created a secret network of
5,000 military agencies with a global reach that has enabled it to import at least two billion dollars in hardware, explosives, and heavyduty trucks since January 2025, so last year, invade evading both the US naval blockade and Western sanctions. I've pulled out the bits that are relevant to the Iran war this year because I think that's the most pertinent, but the report goes into much more depth as I say to towards the beginning of um last year. So during the first six months of this year, according to the import data, deliveries including 1.9 million worth of detonators, tons of explosives, aircraft engine parts, rocket fuel ingredients, and heavyduty launch vehicles were brought in. They
could all be used as key components to build and fire ballistic missiles and drones, including the Shahed series, according to weapons and sanctions experts. There's some really nice details in here. This is how they found these agencies. They all begin with the letters MOD. not actual letters, mod, but voda in fary, but ministry of defense. It's the acronym that stands for that. So, it seems kind of blatant. They all share the same tan address as Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics Company. And they all list their incorporation date as February 11th, 1979. Pop quiz. What happened on that date, Ryan? Do you know?
I think there was a revolution. Correct. That was the day Ayati took power in Iran after overthrowing the sha. Most these companies were actually established in 2013. But it gives you a an insight into the um I guess the sort of spirit of these places. Um some of them are tied to the IRGC. Some of them are tied to business conglomerates known as boneyards that are controlled by Iran's elite. And the money never crosses the borders where it might trip up sanctions alarms. Right. So 97% of the shipments that Reuters reviewed the transactions were settled without currency transfer.
One of the end users of this network is the military unit that oversees Iran's ballistic missile program. Another is Sahara Thunder which was sanctioned in the US for 20 in 2024 for manufacturing and supplying drones to Russia that have devastated Ukraine. I want to come on to the Russia and China stuff in a second because I know you brought that up before, but does this surprise you or does this is this for me this is a bit of a light bulb moment like okay this is how the Iranians have managed to keep firing missiles at ships in the straight of Amuse at their Gulf neighbors at American bases across the Middle East um despite a really heavy bombing campaign by the American and Israelis that were
supposed to have taken out almost completely their missile capabilities. I wouldn't necessarily take that at face value uh that anything that entered the country or was purchased in the country in 2025 was actually being fired back at the west in 2026. Uh it does take a little while to manufacture a weapon system and you also periodically have to test some of the lots and so on. Now, I don't exactly know the lead time of how long it takes to go from a bunch of pig iron and sheet metal to a genuine honest to god fireable shahed drone. But I can tell you that when it comes to sanctions, there's always going to be
holes. And sometimes it's going to look like a colander. And when you take a look at Iraq, it's during the era of Saddam Hussein from until uh 2003. We had multiple sanctions against Iran. We also had no fly zones for a number of those years. Operation Northern Watch, Operation Southern Watch. Iran was still able to get missile components in. Some of these things are dual use items. Um, uh, things like aluminum, aluminum tubing. Hey, aluminum tubing can be used to manufacture pipes, but it also might be used to manufacture a missile system. So it doesn't really surprise me that Iran is able to get these things in
especially if they consider themselves dual use and from what I understand they're using a lot of cryptocurrency as well. Um so then and in that way nothing has to change hands either. I mean I guess it also depends on all of the other countries in the world obeying those sanctions right and Reuters points quite clearly to Russia and China and some countries in the EU including Germany giving goods to Iran despite the sanctions. So it talks about material entering Iran by cargo ship across the Caspian Sea, which you mentioned, from Russia, by truck from Central Asia, and by freight planes from China. Um, from this year, it talks specifically about
June 2026 shipment of $ 1.9 million worth of Russian detonators, which can be used obviously to trigger high explos high explosives in drones, missile warheads. Um, and in February this year, it talks about a ship arriving. This is February 9th, so before the war fully started, but still this year, a ship arrived in Bandar Abbas, the Iranian port on the south in the south, with 93 tons of unroar Chinese titanium, a high strength metal that the weapons and sanctions experts said can be used to build missile airframes and rocket motor casings. It says in all throughout the month leading to the war's start on February 28th, ships brought in a total of 268 tons of nitro cellulose and 276
tons of other chemicals, all originating in China and listed under a code that includes percolorate ingredients for both rocket propellant and explosives. China's foreign ministry, I will just quickly say, says it's unaware of the situation that Reuters describes, firmly opposes attempts to maliciously link regional hostilities to China or smear China's reputation. Russia's defense ministry declined to comment, but this does all tally with previous reporting around China and Russia providing both material assistance and also intelligence and targeting assistance.
Trump has said quite firmly, I don't believe China and Russia are helping Iran. If they are, it's at a very low level. I'm not worried. I mean, why do you think he's downplaying this role? Shouldn't he be a bit more worried that these two superpowers are helping this country that he's at war with? Yeah, I wish I had a better answer. I wish I had a funnier answer. Um, you know, right now, uh, the president is he wants some sort of peace deal with Ukraine and Russia. Uh, I mean, we just had a, uh, an envoy go over to Russia and call Putin a humanitarian. I'm even having trouble saying that without laughing. uh we are going to head to a summit in China fairly soon to um you know it
could end up with a trade agreement. So you know we're we're dealing with a guy who is kind of thinking like you know because it's always worked before. Uh, you know, one thing that uh I always point out with President Trump was his famous quote, you know, uh, in Springfield, Ohio, they're the Haitians, the immigrants, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're and it wasn't true, but it didn't matter that it wasn't true. I think one of the things the president has realized is he could say things that totally contradict things that he's said before and there are certain factions within his party that will choose to believe the new information instead of say wait a minute didn't you
say this a couple of months ago and there is no doubt that uh Russia was assisting Iran with targeting. Um they have the satellite capability and I'm sure Russia wants to see the effects of how some of those weapons work against um American aircraft on the ground and China. Is it possible they've been helping? I mean is it helping if you look the other way? So if you're China, it's very easy for you to say, "Oh, we have nothing to do with this. It's one business making a transaction with another business. The United Nations doesn't have any sanctions on Iran. These are sanctions that were proposed by the United States. So, we're just going to allow our businessmen to
do business until we think they're doing something wrong. And uh that could certainly be the case where China isn't directly helping, but they might certainly allow businesses to sell their wares, to sell their products inside of Iran, even if it's dual use technology. I wonder if um I mean so we've talked about this coin flip as you put it 50-50 chance of the war erupting. Let's talk about the other side because it does sound like peace talks attempts to find some kind of deal underway even as we also have this um very bellose rhetoric. Um we were reporting yesterday on a proposed peace deal being put forward by the Qataris and the Pakistanis. Some kind of deal that would see the straight of moose reopened
within four days after America lifts some sanctions. Uh lots of reports suggesting that the Americans are pushing for nuclear inspectors to be allowed into Iran as part of any kind of final deal. It also sounds like there are direct talksish. Well, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that um Vice President JD Vance has sent a letter to one of Iran's most powerful hardliners to try to revive peace talks. Um so this is Masan Razi, the secretary of Iran's top security body, the Supreme National Security Council. And apparently Trump directed the letter to be sent. That's according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump has
obviously denied that. This was him speaking to reporters yesterday. They need help with medical supplies and various things. Uh he asked me what I thought. I said if you want to do that, that's okay. Basically, it's getting supplies in to help people that are not well. What do you make of all of this? We have of course been here before with Trump. He threatened to wipe out Iran's civilization and then suddenly theou popped up. Do you think all this war talk is just trying to force Iran's hand, get them back to the table? That's certainly possible. Um, and I'm kind of reminded of the Joker in that
movie The Dark Knight. Do I look like the kind of guy with a plan, right? Right. And like when you kind of look at it, you know, look, when it comes to getting Iran things like medicine, I actually have no problem with that. It's certainly possible that we could have some sort of carrot and a stick thing. I'm sure there are things like different kinds of cancer medications and such that are only made in America. You know what? Iran is a country of 94 million people. If we I guarantee you there's some people in Iran that have cancer and if we have drugs that can save their life, I'll have a problem getting that stuff over to them as a humanitarian thing. But hey, you know, let's make a deal. So, I certainly think it is possible
that we might be reaching out to Iran, offering a carrot and offering a stick. Um, but I think one of the issues with Iran, again, this kind of goes back to what their goals are, but if you have one group of people who know that they will win spiritually and then you have another group of moderates who are like, you know, it'd be nice to win spiritually, but I kind of like it if my mom has cancer medication. You know, the question is which one of those parties wins? And it's it's the faction with more guns. It's the faction that can control the IRGC.
Not even necessarily the army, the artesh, but who controls the IRGC that has that amount of power. Ideal outcome here is that Iran's government collapses. The people rise up. We have a Jeffersonian democracy inside of Iran. I'm not saying that's going to happen. But I'm just letting you know that possibility could theoretically exist in some parallel universe. A more likely possibility is that Iran leadership in Iran is you know what uh we're losing between $450 to $500 million a day in oil revenue. Uh I would love to see the end of the world. Uh but this is not going to happen today and it's probably not going to happen tomorrow and sooner or later we're going to have to pay our
people in the IRGC, our members of the IRGC and that exit might be some sort of deal where they go, you know what, we're going to come up with a deal where we're going to and this is in Ryan McBth's world. This is how a rational Iranian actor works. Rational Iranian actor says, "You know what? We're gonna send our nuclear fuel over to Pakistan. Pakistan is going to blend it down to it's like 3.2% something like that can go into it and create nuclear fuel from that go into a reactor. Iran, if Iran wants nuclear power, I mean shoot, I would love to give it to them. I'll build them a bunch of Westinghouse reactors. I'll be first in line. Everyone should have nuclear power. It's freaking great. If they were
serious about peace, that uranium would already be over in Pakistan being blended down to 3 point whatever percent to be turned into fuel pellets for a reactor. That's not happening. Airgo that they're looking to build a bomb. You don't enrich something to 60% just for the laws. I think that's false logic. You can enrich something and they can use it as a sort of, you know, like a bargaining card, you know, will they, won't they? It I don't think the erggo is quite right there. Just because they are enriching doesn't mean they're definitely gonna build a bomb. I think they like I don't even know what means, but like I it sounded like something you would say in the UK.
One story I want to get your thoughts on. We've got a story up on our website right now which is right up your street. Our excellent foreign correspondent Act McCoy, he's been speaking to Iranian officials who say they're preparing to disrupt the US midterm elections and have already attempted to interfere in the Israeli elections which were held this week. I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but I'm just going to read some quotes. He spoke to one official who said, "We've been looking into ways to recruit agents in both the American and Israeli regime's election processes, and that powerful cyber groups have also been established to hack the election systems." Another official said, "War
does not just mean missiles and guns when we're under their blockade. It also means we are prepared to disrupt their elections, their banking, their travel, and all their ordinary systems. We're not in favor of any candidate anywhere. We would like to see a divided America and a divided Israel. Midterms coming up on Tuesday. How worried are you about this? Is it plausible or is this just talk? The idea of hacking an election would be extremely difficult. The way things work in the United States is that every state kind of runs their own elections and in many cases every county has their own elections or has their own election uh
rules and equipment as well. So, some counties might have a paper ballot. Uh, some counties might have a mechanical voting machine. Some might have an electronic voting machine. Some allow vote by mail, some don't. And what that creates is this heterogeneous environment. So, even if, let's say, you had some crazy system that is connected to the internet and that could theoretically be hacked, that might only happen in one isolated county. So, uh, I don't know if you remember the, uh, election of the year 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush. Uh, essentially everything came down to this one county in Florida, the Hanging Chads.
The Hanging Chads. Absolutely correct. Put them on a Christmas tree. He got some person who's 92 years old and blind as a bat and they're supposed to take a little pin and pop out a Chad, right, for the person that they like. and you know their blood sugar is probably low and you know they're standing on a walker. So, but like that in that case that was considered a failure point but try hacking a hanging chad. You can't do it. You can't do that. Right. Wait, are there still Chads in some of the voting systems in America? I would not be surprised if there are you know it is a method.
Okay. Now, I can also tell you this. bribing election officials or getting to come over to your way of thinking or to accept money to influence an election or change the ballot box. Um that's going to be a little bit harder. What Russia has been very good at doing is hacking our brains. And that is manufacturing the misinformation and information warfare to convince people that the other party is they want people in this country that eat pets. That's that's something that they're very good at doing. Do the Iranians do that kind of stuff as well? That kind of sewing this Oh, look at the Lego videos. Absolutely they do.
Yeah. Uh they were creating uh so this is brilliant. I actually covered a I created a video about this uh these fake Iranian uh Instagram videos that were put out uh last year and it was after the operation Midnight Hammer and some of the Israeli attacks uh not Rising Line. I can't remember the operational name, but there the Israeli attacks last summer against Iran, summer of 2005. And it was really it was fascinating what they did. They the Iranians took some footage, they manufactured footage of bombs entering command centers and blowing people up inside the command centers. And these were all AI generated. you could tell by the fact that some of the rank tabs weren't correct or the computer consoles didn't make any sense for the layout of the
room and then they released them on the public internet and that's what I call a sentinel canary. So what Iran basically did there was see who would repeat these videos and show these Iranians these fake AI Iranians getting blown up. Could they get past the sensors? And then when you take a look at some of the Lego videos that came out, which were genuinely funny, you see that Iran started to control the narrative. If you are not putting out your own content that is accessible and interesting and engaging, the adversary will put out their own content. And in America's case with Iran, we didn't allow journalists and content creators on ships or at air bases. So we weren't making our own content showing
look at these brave American sailors who are porting starboard four hours on four hours off turning these jets to get these jets back up in the air. We weren't making content like that and that created a content gap that Iran was able to exploit. So yeah, information warfare. Yeah, absolutely. Iran practices information warfare and they're very good at it. One final question. Hegsaf. He's fired another top general, Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia. Director of strategy plans policy on the joint staff. 32 years of service. No official reason given the latest in at least 20 generals,
admirals, civilian military leaders to be terminated or pushed out. I know you've been quite critical of Seth. Do you think he's going to last after the midterms? I think it is most likely that uh that particular general was talking to the press and he was a source of leaks. There was a reason. Okay. So that is probably the most Do you know that or you suspect that I suspect that you don't just go around firing generals because they disagree with you and you might say that oh you know they'll do this thing. Yeah. Uh you might disagree with that. Um but the one thing this administration hates and the one thing that Secretary Hegsth does not like are leakers.
They do not like leakers and they will pro they will go after them like crazy. My theory is that like it was likely this guy was talking to the press, this general. Now, that being said, what he said last in the midterms, you know, uh Donald Rumsfeld, the uh the genius behind our war in Iraq, uh he lasted he didn't last that long either. Usually as Secretary of Defense, especially during wartime, it's a very stressful job. Now that being said, Secretary Hegsath has actually done some very impressive things for the military. I actually don't I have criticized him when he's done bad things. I have praised him when he has done good things. He has pioneered the idea of Fortress America, which sounds like a
sequel to Team America World Police. But the idea is all of our bases should have their own power and cyber and data centers and infrastructure so that if the electronics uh the electrical grid goes down in America, those bases will still be able to function and generate sorties and perform uh what we call now super intelligence activities against our adversary. Um, he's done a number of uh, well, he's returned America, the American military, to standards for height and weight. And in some cases, those standards weren't always adhered to. And yes, there's a lot of push button wars going on right now, but you still need to have good physical fitness because there are no rear lines. And
there are six American soldiers who died in Kuwait when a drone hit their command center. I guarantee you people who are in the rear were digging through that rubble pulling them out and you're going to need physical strength to do stuff like that. So he's done a lot of impressive things and then he says the word Wait a minute. How about you just do the good things and not do the crappy things? And I think that uh the problem is that the severity of the crappy things kind of overwhelms all of the good things. So he's going to last. You reckon? I think he's going to last because he is doing a good job. Yeah. And he is loyal to the president and I think the president values that loyalty.
Uh but unfortunately all we see are him saying things like beardos or fatties and it would be nice if maybe he would not do those things and just work on the good things. Ryan McBth, thanks very much for joining us on Around the Latest. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being on. That's all for today's episode of Around the Latest. We'll be back again tomorrow. Until then, goodbye. Thank you for watching this episode. For more of our quality international reporting, sign up for the Telegraph's cables newsletter. From Tehran to Kev, Washington, and Beijing, it's your daily briefing of global stories and in-depth
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