Bryan Dean Wright: The President’s Daily Brief Podcast

BUCK: We’re joined now by our friend Bryan Dean Wright, my brother from Langley, former CIA operations officer, host of The President’s Daily Brief podcast on iHeart. Bryan, great to have you, man.

WRIGHT: Such a pleasure, gentlemen.

BUCK: So, yesterday there was this warning briefing that came out from MI5 and the FBI — so Britain’s domestic intelligence agency and the closest thing that we have in a sense, right, our federal law enforcement agency — on the growing threat from China. And I think it’s important for people to know, Bryan, they didn’t mean in this theoretical, “Well, South China Sea could be a military flash point sense,” which is very real, but that’s not something we’re feeling every day. They were talking about active Chinese subversion, influence, and espionage operations at the U.S., at the U.K., and in all of our allies. I wanted you to put this in perspective for everybody.

WRIGHT: Yeah, look, it is an absolute nightmare, not only here but obviously in the U.K. and Europe. So, what we know in this country is the FBI opens up hundreds, if not thousands of counterintelligence cases every single day. Hands down, the number one threat to this country — certainly the British folks are saying the exact same thing — and what we know is this is not a new threat. In fact, going back all the way to the 1980s President Reagan tried to stand up to Beijing to say, “Look, you guys are stealing our stuff through espionage operations.”

And now we go from the 1980s until now, and we have cyber operations. So we have 40-plus years of the Chinese doing this. And they are stealing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property every year, and it puts us at a disadvantage because they steal our stuff, and then they make a much cheaper version of it, and they take over market share. That means people who listen to this program who had jobs in some of these industries don’t have some of them or can’t get the wages that they might otherwise get. So that’s why this is a really big story and it’s a really big deal.

CLAY: Bryan, appreciate you coming on with us. I was reading this morning, and I know Buck’s on it. I’m not super active, but I bet a lot of kids and grandkids are out there, on TikTok, and I’m wondering how much concern should there be in the United States government and also certainly in the counter-intel universe about the power and scope of influence that China could potentially have using TikTok and how popular it is in the United States with the information that they’re gleaning?

WRIGHT: Absolutely. Look, so, there’s two sets of this. One is, if you are, let’s say, a U.S. soldier or an airman, if you are a Marine, et cetera — if you work for the United States government — they can and in some cases will use that data that they can collect on you against you, right, in terms of blackmail. So that might be what you post, what you like; all of that goes back to Beijing, and they start building profiles on you. And they build that, plus other ways that they’ve hacked you or they’ve found other pieces of information against you.

So they put that picture together using data from things or places like TikTok. That’s why, from a national security perspective, it’s a really big deal. But if you’re just an average citizen out there, should you be worried about using TikTok? And I think the first response to that is, do you really want to support in any way any company that helps the Chinese? They are our number one enemy. Economically they’re trying to destroy us. Geopolitically they’re trying to destroy us.

So do you want to support in any way any Chinese company? I think that the answer is probably no, or it should be. But then the second question is, “Well, how could they use that? If you’re not a spy or a soldier, how could they use that against you if you’re just an average citizen?” Well, some of that we don’t yet know. But they’re gonna have the information on you to be able to use it against you someday because it could be you know somebody that they want to get in front of so they start using this data against you in that way even though you’re not directly connected.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA operations officer, host of The President’s Daily Brief podcast, which is on iHeart. Listen to it the iHeart app. Bryan, I’ve gotta ask you how you think the situation in Ukraine has been handled by the Biden administration up to this point. In the early days, there was a lot of people posting their six Ukraine flag emojis and the Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island and all this stuff, and now it’s faded into the background despite the fact that the war drags on. What are you seeing right now in that area of conflict? And what are your concerns about either U.S. mission creep or just the continuation of what we’re already doing?

WRIGHT: So, let’s dive into this, because it’s such a big story. A couple things. First, black market weapons. We got word late last week from the Pentagon that they’re not tracking any of the weapons that they send into Ukraine — and that’s, you know, small arms stuff, you know, guns of different kinds, but also Stinger missiles. And those can take down airplanes! We’ve had over a thousand of those sent into Ukraine. So we got no auditing of that, no verification of any kind that it’s actually being used in a way that we intend.

So that’s the first big piece. The second is natural gas wars. So we know that Russia is clamping down on the amount of natural gas that’s going into Europe. That’s a big deal because Europe is our biggest export market. So once the European economy goes into the toilet, our factories can’t send as much stuff as before. Factories aren’t chugging away. People who worked in this country suffer accordingly. And it also means that, of course, our good friends in Europe, they are gonna have huge challenge this winter keeping their homes heated.

In fact, there’s a lot of discussion right now from France and Germany. They’re saying, “We’re gonna have to ration hot water.” So all in all, this is an absolute mess. But here’s the last big piece. Late last week the Biden administration, there was a leak of their classified assessment about what’s gonna be happening next in Ukraine, and the bottom line is that the Biden administration doesn’t think that Ukraine can win even with all the weapons that we can’t even keep track of — and that’s a really big deal.

Why are we dumping all these weapons in, and the European economy is collapsing that we need to be a part of, we want to export or stuff to. So a lot of really bad things are happening right now. And I’ll tell you, one of the biggest concerns that I have is what happens geopolitically in the world when we and our European partners no longer have the leverage that we once did to reach out to economies around the world, countries around the world, former allies that are now getting into the back pocket of Russia and China?

CLAY: Can this last?

BUCK: How long can this situation last?

WRIGHT: We got a war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine. That’s really us. So how long can it last? However long that the Russians can hold up in terms of selling their oil to China and to India, and that’s not going away. So, they’ve got a really great war machine they’re funding right now, and gobs and gobs of oil. So how long can we stand it? How long can we pump out the tens of billions of dollars to prop up Kiev?

That’s really the question right now, because Kiev, by the way, is losing so many of their professional soldiers. We have some units over there that are losing up to 80%. So, at some point it’s gonna become a question of, “Do we supply soldiers?” and right now, that conversation is happening within the Biden administration. They don’t know how long Ukraine will be able to put up the kinds of soldiers that they need to fight this war. That’s the big question: When will we step?

BUCK: Bryan Dean Wright. Check out The President’s Daily Brief podcast. It’s doing great. A lot of people loving it. Bryan, thanks so much for being with us, man. Come back soon.

WRIGHT: You got it.