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Nov. 15, 2023 - Viva & Barnes

02:01:24

Sidebar with History Legends! From Ukraine to the Middle East - Viva & Barnes

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Time	Text
	The Unusual Suspects about to go live.
	I'm here with none other than the Prince of Darkness.
	This is a video Inception.
	It's about to go down, baby.
	Agent Provocateur.
	Click on the link.
	Come watch us.
	David, how you doing?
	That was Inception right now.
	You like that?
	I'm going to post this too.
	It'll be my video.
	Guys, do they even realize this is history right here?
	Right?
	This is the guy.
	It's going to be airing at 6 o 'clock tonight.
	At 6 p.m. tonight.
	Booyah.
	Oh, and look at that right there.
	Okay, everything.
	Aw, yeah.
	All right, people.
	This is not to create competition for tonight's stream.
	And the reality is I had a better video to start with, but I'm going to save that for tomorrow because I don't want to waste too much time of the guest.
	Now, there may be glitching.
	There may be video issues.
	There's a storm.
	It's been pouring rain all day in Florida, and so the internet has been...
	We've been having...
	Like random blackouts, and when the blackout goes out for a second, the internet reboots.
	And now I'm looking and I see...
	I only see one section of the antenna of the three bars radiating thing.
	Let me make sure that we're live everywhere.
	We're live on Rumble.
	Hold on.
	Are we live on Rumble?
	Press play.
	I'm just going to do this here and make sure...
	Okay, we're good.
	Oh, no, look at that.
	I see I'm all potato-faced.
	Oh, cripe.
	I switched from YouTube.
	You look blurry.
	Yep, I'm blurry.
	Okay, well, let's just make sure that we're live also on vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
	We are.
	Okay, I might be blurry the whole time.
	I hope the guest and Barnes are not going to be blurry as well.
	I'm still at one bar of the interwebs.
	I need to do the sponsor before I bring in the guests, but I don't want to do a sponsor unless I'm looking beautiful.
	You are blurry.
	480p.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	Oh, no, no, no, no.
	So give me a second.
	Oh, that's just terrible the way I look.
	In fact, I believe it's now, it might be the...
	Okay, I got two bars.
	I got two bars.
	I got a full...
	Okay, quickly.
	Do the sponsor.
	People, while I've got stable internet connection, this is the...
	Oh, oh, oh, oh.
	Hold on.
	I might be a little manic and all over the place because the internet has been making me very nervous.
	Let me just make sure that I did what I'm supposed to do before going live.
	I did.
	This stream contains a paid promotion.
	Okay.
	Everybody, before we get into our guest of the evening, history legends, and I've been watching his stuff and listening to it for the better part of the day, we are going to thank the sponsor of the evening.
	You know them, people, because it's Field of Greens and because I drink it, I eat it.
	However, I don't know if you're drinking desiccated greens or drinking them.
	Field of Greens, people.
	You go to fieldofgreens.com.
	I'm going to put the link in there.
	I think I might have forgotten to include the link.
	I'll post the link in the description.
	Field of Greens, it's a little-known fact that you're supposed to have...
	How many servings of raw fruits and vegetables a day?
	You all know this because I talk about it all the time.
	Five to seven servings of raw fruits and vegetables a day.
	Most people don't have it.
	Most people have disgusting, dirty, bad dietary habits.
	They feel bad.
	They feel tired.
	They don't feel healthy.
	And they wonder why.
	Because you eat crap, you don't exercise, and you eat crap.
	One healthy way around that...
	Instead of having a disgusting Diet Coke or one of those sugar-packed energy drinks in the afternoon, you have one spoonful of Field of Greens, desiccated greens.
	It's pulverized actual greens, fruits and vegetables.
	Not an extract, not a supplement.
	Mix it with some water, drink it twice a day.
	Each spoonful is one spoonful of raw fruits and vegetables, equivalent with the nutrients, the antioxidants, all the good stuff.
	I'm still Canadian, so I didn't know that Thanksgiving is coming around, but Thanksgiving is coming around, and that means the...
	The special Black Friday sale is going to be on, and it's going to be incredible.
	You can get up to 30% off when you use the code VIP.
	Not Viva!
	This time, VIP.
	I hope it's VIP.
	It seems to look what it says.
	It's VIP or Viva.
	It's Viva.
	It's VIP.
	It's VIP.
	Either way, go to fieldofgreens.com.
	You get a container.
	They've got different flavors.
	They're delicious.
	They're sweet.
	It looks like you're drinking energy nutrient-filled water.
	You'll feel better.
	It's a healthy habit, and it will train you to be healthy in other respects as well.
	So go to fieldofgreens.com, promo code VIP for up to 30% off the Black Friday special.
	There was something else that I was going to mention in that.
	Oh yeah, it'll bring you to a website called Brickhouse Nutrition, but this is it right here, and it's good stuff.
	Tastes good.
	And when you go traveling and you can't get your greens and you have to go to a Subway and ask them just to give you a sandwich without the bread or the meat just so you can get vegetables.
	And the vegetables at Subway, they're not always good.
	Soggy, disgusting iceberg lettuce.
	Useless, useless lettuce.
	Not like the fruits and vegetables, nutrients in Field of Greens.
	Okay, that's it.
	Now my internet is back down to one street.
	It doesn't matter.
	We got History of Legends in the backdrop who has been doing analyses of...
	The war in Ukraine, Russia, however you want to call it, Russia's war in Ukraine.
	The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been doing detailed analysis of the conflict in the Middle East now.
	In my lifetime, the third cycle of violence involving Israel or Palestine-Israel.
	Hamas-Israel back in the day used to be the PLO, although I think in 2002 it was still Hamas.
	No, 2002 was PLO.
	We're going to get into it.
	Detailed, meticulous breakdowns.
	I want to ask him about his method, how he gets his information, his area of expertise, how he even got into this.
	I went all the way back and watched his first video ever called The Battle of Vimy Ridge, breaking down Montreal's contribution to the decisive battle in World War II, 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge.
	Oh yeah, standard disclaimers.
	No legal advice, no election for notification advice, no medical advice.
	Superchats, YouTube takes 30%.
	If you don't like that, we're simultaneously streaming on Rumble.
	I didn't put the pinned link up.
	I'll do that right now.
	Daniel Boone says, Hey Viva, I've been watching you since day one.
	First time live.
	I was a trucker at Convoy from Toronto.
	God bless everything you do.
	Keep up the great work.
	TCB4DJ.
	Let me see if I can get this.
	It's obviously something before Donald J. Trump.
	I'll get that in a second.
	Thank you very much for the super chat.
	We may not have our locals after party today.
	We'll see.
	But that's it.
	Okay, enough of an intro.
	Bringing in our guests.
	I'll bring in Barnes first.
	Hello, hello.
	Test.
	Okay, so I can hear.
	Robert, I think it might be you then.
	Try talking one more time.
	No, that's okay.
	He's muted for you too, right?
	History?
	Yeah.
	Okay, I'm going to call you HL.
	Hello, HL.
	HL.
	Okay, and by the way, you just did a symbol that brought up balloons on your screen.
	Are you using the new Microsoft OS?
	No, I'm not using Microsoft.
	I'm a Mac.
	Mac, that's what I know.
	Okay, so when you do like...
	Let's see if Robertson looks like he's getting frustrated.
	I don't hear you yet, Robert.
	No, no, no.
	You can hear me now.
	Oh!
	There we go.
	Good!
	At least it's not my boomer moment.
	Okay, we'll start.
	So for everybody, let me just make sure we're good on Rumble is the pinned comment.
	It is there.
	Okay.
	And...
	I should buy Field of Greens.
	I say this.
	I don't use things because I sponsor them.
	I sponsor things because I use them.
	Dude, I was telling Robert when I went to Texas with him, I couldn't get fresh fruits and vegetables anywhere.
	I mean, without driving for like 40 minutes.
	And then where I was recently driving from Montreal down to Florida and I needed fruits and vegetables and I had to go to a Subway and ask him for everything except the bread and the whatever, the cold cuts.
	History legends.
	Who are you?
	How did you get here?
	What are you doing in life?
	Whoa, whoa, whoa.
	That's all the big questions at once.
	The 30,000-foot overview.
	We'll get into the details after.
	So my name is Alex, aka History Legends Online.
	I'm from Montreal.
	And yeah, I'm covering the Ukraine war.
	Well, I was doing history videos before.
	I'm glad you mentioned that video of Vimy Rich that I hate in my first ever video.
	And it's during the pandemic that I actually decided to do it full-time.
	You know, I had a lot of time on my hands.
	I just graduated from Concordia University.
	And yeah, I decided to cover the history to historical video games, movies, just to have fun, you know, to mix history and public media.
	Just to get people interested.
	And eventually the war broke out in Ukraine.
	And I wasn't sure if I wanted to cover it, but I couldn't hold myself.
	And I guess it worked out.
	It paid off.
	What led to your interest in history and battles and all of that?
	Oh, that's because of my dad.
	This is the person you have to thank.
	Sometimes I mention him, but essentially since I'm like three or four.
	All the books at home are about military history, and this is how I learned how to read, you know?
	So this interest was always there.
	Now, it's funny because I don't think we appreciated the connection.
	You're from Montreal, and I ran for office in Montreal, and I think I might have been more recognizable when I had shorter hair and was a totally different person before I left.
	But when did you graduate?
	When did you graduate from Concordia?
	2020.
	And may I ask, in what?
	Software engineering.
	Amazing.
	So you graduate from Concordia.
	What was it like at Concordia?
	I mean, Concordia is back in the news now only because of stuff that's happening.
	Yeah, I saw you mentioned it, yeah.
	What was Concordia like for your undergrad?
	It was an undergrad, right?
	Very woke, honestly.
	Very woke.
	But since I'm in the field of engineering, you don't have time for ideology, honestly.
	I didn't feel any ideological pressure at all.
	People were doing math and science.
	It's hard facts.
	You can't twist words around.
	But I know that in some majors, it can get pretty bad.
	But other than that, it's pretty regular university.
	Programming.
	Yeah.
	So where was your exposure?
	You have a lot of videos.
	I think I was introduced to your channel through your discussion of various woke alternative versions of history and military history and colonization and its nature.
	When were you first exposed to sort of woke ideology?
	Oh, good question.
	All I know is that I'm preparing another video about it very soon.
	When was the first time?
	Honestly, I don't know.
	But I think it started when Trump came in.
	I think this is the tipping point where the public media just started going nuts.
	This is where we've seen the increase of this movement, in my opinion.
	Like starting 2016, I think this is the moment.
	Are you struck by how ahistorical wokeism is?
	In other words, they just make stuff up all the time.
	It's almost as bad as the pro-Ukrainian war propaganda has been on the Redditors and the rest.
	In fact, I was just watching Infographics, a popular YouTube channel that had 2 million plus views.
	Just from a few months ago about how Russia could never win the war.
	How, you know, the only question was, you know, would Ukraine be willing to let them keep Crimea?
	That, you know, it was Putin's folly and that the Russian people didn't want the war.
	It was a matter of time before he's gone and the war would end.
	That their military would be exhausted.
	A lot of these things, the sort of mainstream media perspective.
	But I mean, like, how much were you surprised?
	I mean, as you've done some of the videos and other topics, the degree to which there's a lack of...
	It's so propagandistic.
	It's not even close to either historically or from a military tactical perspective, correct at almost any level.
	You know, I'm glad I studied in a scientific field because it allows me to have one key advantage over a lot of people is the art of observation.
	Before making any conclusion, you have to observe the situation.
	And only then can you make some hypothesis about what's going on, and then you can form some sort of analysis.
	And what I observed, for example, in Russia, Ukraine, was simply not what the media would talk about.
	And, I mean, infographics, I don't want to trash talk any other channels, but you said it yourself.
	They discredited themselves.
	To an extent where it's a joke watching these videos.
	Because where do they even get their information from?
	I know a lot of people were preparing some parties in Crimea.
	I was one of the first ones to say, no, the offensive, this summer counteroffensive, would not be as pleasant as everyone thinks.
	It's not because of magical powers.
	It's just of a series of events, a series of...
	You ask where I get my information.
	It's all open source.
	It's not even as if I have some people that give information.
	It's literally open source information.
	It's all on Telegram, Twitter, even Western media articles.
	If you read between the lines, you can get a sense of what's happening.
	And as for the wokeism, I mean...
	So undergrad in engineering, did you ever study history in university?
	Or is this just purely...
	A side passion.
	It's a passion, but I think this is the strength because people that do undergrads in history, it's general history.
	I've met a lot of people that graduated in history that don't know really much.
	This is where the ideology kicks in.
	This is why I'm glad I didn't do it.
	I would have probably failed and got angry at a lot of my teachers.
	And I think passion is the most important when you do stuff like this because it's going to be hard.
	As you know, on social media at first, it's an adventure.
	It's the Wild West.
	And if you don't have the heart, it's going to be very hard.
	So I'm glad it worked out.
	I'm lucky in a way that it worked out.
	You started off, it was Vimy Ridge was the first video that you did on YouTube and I think you have been on Instagram and another social media platform before.
	Which got nuked.
	Why did it get nuked?
	Well, I had 80,000 subscribers, followers on Instagram and I don't like Instagram in the way that they penalize you for...
	Words you use, but in a historical context, the moment you bring up World War II or anything like this, they're going to remove posts.
	And I think the last post was about Russia-Ukraine.
	That's crazy.
	And they didn't like one of the headlines.
	And they said, yeah, your account is gone.
	And there's nobody you can talk to.
	I mean, so that's why now my account is on Instagram.
	It's HistoryLegends2 as a remembrance for the first one.
	Were you surprised at some of the reaction, in other words, as you did some of these videos, either the censorship effect or the troll impact?
	I mean, it sort of peaked in the Russia-Ukrainian conflict, but even before that, if you challenged these woke versions that were becoming very popular amongst the people who did get their Yale history grad.
	That, you know, the Native Americans and no indigenous people have ever been colonizers.
	It's like, okay, I guess nobody studied Indian history from the actual tribal perspective.
	But, you know, those kind of, and colonizing, whether it's, you know, Africa or other places.
	Which are much more complicated, complex histories than the simplified narratives that have been architected in a lot of our institutions of higher learning, as it said.
	But have you been surprised at some of the reaction?
	And then especially the Russia-Ukraine conflict that's brought out, you know, there's like a whole Reddit section dedicated to how history legends is just Russian propaganda.
	Oh, well, it's funny you bring it up because I think that this hate on Reddit stems from love.
	These Redditors used to love me during my video game reactions.
	And then they didn't like my Russia-Ukraine videos.
	So they liked me.
	And you can only really hate someone when you liked him at first and then you don't like him.
	So this is how I became famous on Reddit.
	And I paid them back the love, you know?
	But now it's...
	They've been more silent.
	Some of them retired because everything they said turned out to be false.
	And everything you said, I presume, or at least, you know, the better part...
	Not everything, but...
	No, no, but the assessment was more accurate over the long run.
	In a time of war, no one's going to get everything right all the time, period.
	The only question is not making massive errors of judgment.
	Oh, the internet's going down.
	No, it's fine.
	The question that I had, it had to do with Reddit.
	Oh, yes, the expression, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
	And they can only love you to the degree that they...
	They can only hate you to the degree that they love you.
	Yeah.
	But what sort of harassment did you get as a result of the Reddit hate?
	Well, I don't want to give them too much credit, but they would just start false rumors and...
	And use their little campaign to attack the people around me, whether it's sponsors or whatever, and they would make up lies.
	And they would say, oh, he told me this.
	And I'm like, I'm pretty sure I've never told you this.
	And they would come up with false narratives, false stories.
	And it would be this circle, you know, this echo chamber.
	But eventually, I mean...
	People came to the conclusion that maybe I wasn't that wrong.
	And the crazy thing is that, like I said, I'm using open source, open source data.
	Now, I think with the information available to me, I did a reasonably good job.
	I mean, this is why Robert Barnes mentioned me last time, I think.
	Thank you for the kind words again.
	But what's crazy to me is how people, for example, in certain military forces, which have access to much better information than me, got it wrong.
	I think this is the big question.
	Not me, but how did they get it wrong?
	I remember the Washington Post.
	They invited this retired general to talk about how Ukraine would kick Russia's ass in the summer offensive.
	And he drew big lines with his pencil.
	And I made a reaction to it, which got immediately shot down by the Washington Post, despite it getting 100,000 views in the first two hours or something.
	And they said, copyright!
	And it was a reaction.
	I'm allowed to reuse their content if I add my own thoughts and everything.
	I'm allowed.
	But they said, no, copyright.
	And I don't want to fight the Washington Post, right?
	So I put it on Patreon.
	But essentially...
	How come this general got it so wrong?
	Because he never actually studied the war.
	A lot of them, they just come up.
	They don't actually know what's going on.
	They only read news articles.
	They're not on Telegram.
	Anyone that tells me that he follows the Ukraine war and says he's not on Telegram, he's crazy.
	Everything is on there.
	Telegram has become the new live leak.
	I mean, I've discovered it for bad.
	It is where the not open source but first-hand accounts you still have to be careful but someone said you know they got it wrong not by accident but they get it wrong on purpose because they're trying to create a narrative not represent reality but you originally started off with just broad historical events explaining them out of passion is obvious then you started doing sort of breakdowns to scenes from movies other stuff like that and I noticed that the frequency of uploading It was a bit,
	then it was much less consistent.
	And then come Ukraine, it becomes a consistent thing.
	I mean, how did you decide to put up your first video on the Ukraine-Russia war?
	Well, the first thing is because Instagram was shadow banning me big time.
	Some of my posts were getting 500,000 views at one point, and then it just decreased to 10,000 and stuff like this.
	So I couldn't monetize my Instagram account.
	And I was like, okay, well, I have to get out of it.
	So I continued to get a little following based on YouTube and I knew that you could monetize your work more on YouTube.
	For example, on Instagram, you always have to make new posts and you're not paid for your time.
	I mean, I was a student, so it didn't matter much, but I wanted my time to be rewarded.
	And a video uploaded even three years ago could still be watched and bring some revenue eventually.
	So that's how I started.
	At first, I wanted to do these fancy animated battles, but it was a lot of work.
	So that's why it took long.
	And eventually I improved my equipment and everything.
	So that's how I could bring more videos into the funnel.
	And where did you learn to use Telegram and other open sources?
	Because, I mean, there's this whole open source intelligence group, but most of them were just political hacks.
	I mean, they started to be called the Bro Group instead of the, you know, Bro S-I-M-T.
	And there are people like you, Armchair Warlord, who we talked to in Defense Politics Asia, and some others that were using a broader sampling of information to be able to produce more accurate descriptions of what's going on.
	And what I always consider a very good proxy is the ability to predict within range of accuracy what's likely to come about.
	And I remember, like, back during the buildup to the summer...
	Counter-offensive.
	I don't know why it's called a counter-offensive.
	But the summer offensive by Ukraine to take back the rest of Ukraine that was going to lead.
	In fact, Polymarket had betting odds on it.
	I put a bet out on it to short it.
	But it said there was a 70% chance that right now Ukraine would be all the way to the Russian border.
	And I was like, I don't think that's going to happen.
	But that's where the odds were, because that's where the Redditors were, the OSINT people who claim to be doing open source intelligence.
	And instead, these are people reporting the ghost of Kiev that turned out to be Samuel Hyde, who's a magical air pilot around the world.
	And then there was a group of dissidents out there, like yourself, that were presenting a different take, a different perspective.
	One, what led to Telegram, but...
	What led to the independence of perspective?
	There's a lot of people that, if they were new to this space, didn't necessarily have some big pedigree behind their name, would have been, like all the so-called mainstream YouTube channels, the infographics, the kings and generals, a lot of channels that I used to find fun, I now have zero confidence in because of how bad their analysis was of the Ukrainian conflict.
	What led you to be willing to seek out independent information and voice an independent perspective?
	Well, like I told you at the beginning, it all stems from observation.
	But the second critical part of a scientific education is critical thinking.
	You have to question things.
	And what happened at the beginning of the Ukraine war, my analysis wasn't bad, but it was a bit all over the place.
	Because you have to filter the information.
	So at first, you look at different information channels and you see what they say.
	And eventually, with time, you rate the accuracy of their claims.
	And eventually, you get rid of some sources because they're just making stuff up.
	And that's happened a lot.
	A lot of people just make up claims.
	And eventually, you narrow the number of trustworthy sources and you build upon that.
	And that's how you can sort of...
	Get a current assessment, and only if you get a proper current assessment, then you can go on predicting what they would do next.
	However, knowing about military history as a whole also gives a whole new background on what's possible from a military perspective.
	So I know there's a lot of people that were soldiers that started making these videos, but I think it's a very different skill to be a warrior, a soldier on the field, than someone...
	That's a bit back.
	It's like a manager overlooking a battle or what sort of strategies could even be used.
	So I've learned more of this general military history and I've used that knowledge for the Russia-Ukraine war.
	And what's crazy is that a lot of battles during World War II took place at the same place as now.
	And I compared the Ukraine summer offensive to the German offensive Citadel.
	So the Battle of Korsk, I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but essentially the Germans for a month, they announced the exact position they would attack.
	And they waited for this new equipment, the Tiger and the Panther tanks.
	They waited for the good weapons to attack.
	And this is exactly what Ukraine did.
	They waited and waited for their offensive.
	They announced the entire world where they would attack.
	And they said, we need more weapons.
	And when they did attack, well, the Russians knew they were prepared.
	The Russians were prepared.
	And the Ukraine's got a bloody nose there.
	What we're going to do now, we're going to go over to Rumble.
	So I'm going to give the link one more time.
	The question I'm going to ask now to whet everybody's appetite to make sure they come over.
	The link is in the pinned comment.
	Is the aggregator of open source information, I don't know what you're using, you described it in today's video, Uh, survey all the headlines, all of the news outlets to see what they're reporting in order to do a comparison to get your info.
	So when you flesh that out over on Rumble, let's do that in three, two, one.
	Okay, Alex, so explain, explain what you do.
	Cause this is an amazing thing in terms of like getting all of the outlets that are reporting on any given, given subject.
	Are you using, is it a paid app?
	Is it something that's available to everybody?
	How does it work?
	What's the process of comparing how current events are being reported in various news outlets?
	Well, everything is free, and that's a crazy aspect of it.
	Everything is available.
	Open source.
	You can use certain maps.
	You can use news articles.
	You can use Telegram.
	There's Twitter.
	The art is to read through.
	And like I said just before, the art is to see what information is said and then compare it with what's happening on the ground.
	If you have a source that's constantly wrong, well, you put it at a lower ranking of trustworthiness.
	Whereas people that claim to have sources on the ground which are consistently right will have a higher ranking of trustworthiness.
	Like I said, I don't know anyone on the ground.
	So I don't have this bias, by the way.
	I think a lot of people get biased because they either go to Ukraine or they know people there.
	So they will be fed wrong information.
	I remember there was this French journalist, which I trolled a bit, because he went to Bakhmut.
	So the big battle during the winter where the Wagner Corps was attacking.
	And he went there in March somewhere and he said, yeah, I've talked to people that just came back from Bahmut and they told me the Russians are just about from collapse.
	The Russians are just about from retreating from the city.
	They're taking massive casualties.
	And he said, Ukrainians are going to win this battle at any moment.
	Three days later, the Russians broke through and this opened the last stage of the battle.
	And I'm like, Okay, this guy, this journalist thought he was actually holding proper information, but he was just fed lies by these people.
	He doesn't even know who these people are.
	They just said stuff and he reported it back.
	And this is what we call propaganda.
	And this is how news can get completely twisted.
	And I knew this was very sketchy because from the reports of the day-to-day analysis, I was like...
	No way this is going to happen.
	How much is this revolutionary in modern warfare?
	In the sense that we have people with their phones out.
	You have a degree of on-the-ground reporting available in a wider, diverse range of original sources, you might say, than maybe ever before in war to a certain degree.
	What have been your thoughts about someone in your position can do an informed analysis that probably during World War II would not have been possible if you were in Montreal and the war was waging in Ukraine?
	You're right.
	And I think that was the big problem of the Russian army in the early days.
	They still had this Soviet black box.
	Black box, sorry, way of operating.
	That means that soldiers had no phones, but it was really top-down.
	So the soldiers could only speak to the hierarchy, whereas the Ukrainians, they had a lot of civilians around, and the civilians would record positions and then send the information to the artillery, for example.
	They would say, yeah, in this village, this place bombarded, the Russians are there.
	So the Ukrainians made heavy use of phones at the beginning of the war, and this tilted the information war in their favor, because All the information was coming from them to show their successes.
	Of course, they would not show their defeats or their losses.
	They would only show victory after victory after victory.
	And the entire Western media was like, you guys are winning.
	And on the other side, the Russians were not showing anything.
	Eventually, this changed during the summer offensive when the Russians started having much more drones, namely these drones from Iran, but even South.
	made drones in from Russia.
	And this is when they've managed to show their own perspective of the fighting, their own success.
	I think this part of the information war is very important.
	People can be pushed from one end to another.
	So you're on Telegram.
	You're seeing some of the most rawest footage of battle that you can possibly imagine.
	Did you mention the accounts that you're following on Telegram?
	There's a lot of them, but most of them are Russian or Ukrainian.
	I don't know them by the top of my head.
	It's probably better off that people actually not see these things in any event.
	I started following...
	At least one account to see what's going on in Israel, and it's stuff you can't unsee.
	What is the best account now?
	I asked Robert this a couple of weeks ago, but maybe you can let us know what you think.
	What's the latest estimate on casualties, death and injury of Ukrainian soldiers in this battle, in this war?
	It's very hard, honestly, to say.
	I know that in Bakhmut, I know, I estimate, rather, that in Bakhmut, the Ukrainians had suffered hundred thousands.
	Killed or wounded.
	It's very hard to count casualties these days because a lot of soldiers that are wounded could be counted as dead.
	But if you're wounded, you can go back to fight, get wounded again, and then go back to fight.
	You know, a lot of guys, they do this over and over again.
	So the casualties is hard to know, but you just have to see how many people Ukraine is mobilizing to know how many soldiers are.
	That means that either dead or severely injured, meaning they can't go back to the fight.
	So I think they've been trying to get at least 100,000 people, could be more, probably more than 100,000, 150,000, could be something like this.
	We know the Russian number, that's for sure.
	There's a website financed by the BBC called MediaZona that screens Russian social media to find postings about We know that at this moment,
	I think it's around 37,000 Russian soldiers killed since the beginning of the war.
	37,000.
	The official number from the Ukrainian side.
	So Ukraine claims to have killed at least 350,000 Russians.
	Whereas we can only confirm 37,000 Russian soldiers.
	And this includes the Wagner guys.
	And it doesn't include the guys from the Donbass.
	So Donetsk and Luhansk republics.
	So we can add another 10,000.
	But roughly...
	45,000 to 50,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, whereas the media brought by the West is like 350,000 to 400,000.
	You see, the discrepancy is massive.
	So I prefer to stick to that number of confirmed people that we have and work around that.
	What do you think the strategy was?
	I mean, I get to a degree Ukraine thought that...
	As long as they could keep the money train going, that maybe they could exhaust, that the economic sanctions would kick in, and that would really...
	But I never...
	You just looked at the comparative resources of the two nations.
	Which one could produce lots of weapons continually?
	Which one was not in a position to do so?
	You look at manpower.
	I mean, you're talking about, you know, something like a 10 to 1 edge over time if you're talking about full mobilization.
	If you look at professional military skill, overwhelmingly on the Russian side.
	I mean, almost any of the measurements and metrics typically used by places like infographics or kings and generals when they were describing, you know, what happened with this, you know, all of a sudden.
	You have to look at who writes their scripts.
	Yeah.
	That's all I can say, okay?
	And look it up.
	What do you think the strategic objective was?
	I mean, was it just to keep the money train going?
	Because at times I'm wondering, are military-industrial complex people insane and really stupid?
	You know, when you look at the collapse of the great empires around World War I, they almost all misgaged what was going to happen, including the Russians at the time, that led to the Communist Bolshevik Revolution.
	But do you think it's that, or what would be your explanation for it?
	Do you think they really believed it, or was it just propaganda to buy time in the hopes that another strategy would work?
	There are a lot of information we don't know yet.
	And that's another aspect that I have to bring up.
	People don't want to admit they don't know information, so they make stuff up.
	There's no problem saying, I don't know.
	That's the honesty, right?
	And then a lot of stuff, there's fill in the blanks, right?
	Now, from what I've seen, the Russians messed up their initial invasion.
	They only brought 200,000 soldiers.
	They thought the Ukrainian government would just crumble and that Ukrainian troops would not fight.
	They would stay in their barracks and that Ukraine would welcome the Russians as liberators.
	Okay, it didn't turn out like that.
	And then the Russians were in a bad position.
	And I think from a Western perspective, when was the last time that the West has fought a conventional war?
	It's literally...
	World War II, maybe Korea if you want, but they don't have real experience fighting modern conventional warfare.
	It was only insurgency wars that required very little ammunition.
	And they went with this optics.
	When you see how they planned the summer offensive, you can see the failure too of NATO intelligence, ammunition, everything.
	It's because they had these programs that are...
	Just like games, and they do these simulations.
	But of course, if you play the simulation on easy, you have 70% odds of winning.
	And turns out the Russians are not on easy mode.
	And they managed to hide their army in plain sight.
	This is what I think happened.
	And nobody talks about it, but they managed to hide their army from NATO satellites.
	And this was the biggest problem for the Russians.
	The Russians were trying a lot of maneuver warfare in the early month of the war, but every movement would be detected by satellites and the Ukrainians would counter it in time.
	Then the Russians knew that their every move would be observed.
	So eventually they found a solution to hide their troops in plain sight with fake positions that the Ukrainians would bombard, but there would be nobody there.
	So they established this massive thing, massive scheme.
	So, yeah, I just think it also stems from...
	They disregarded their enemy thinking he was dumb.
	I think this often comes up.
	The orcs, stupid orcs, they don't know what to do.
	And we know that in Russian history, at the beginning, often they're not at the best, but they always come back.
	They're very resilient.
	And anyone knowing military history would know that.
	So let's say Russia deaths.
	37,000, but at a few, 10,000, so say maybe 55,000, 60,000, and they're winning the war.
	Ukrainian losses can't be measured, although people have thrown out figures of several hundred thousand.
	Where do things stand now?
	Now, for the first time ever, as far as I can tell, the West is talking about an exit ramp, negotiations.
	Where do things stand now currently with what's going on in the conflict?
	The problem is that you can't just ask for peace when the war is not going your way.
	That's not how war works.
	Now the Russians have paid a huge price and why would they stop now?
	That's the question.
	What's their incentive to stop now?
	Do they want to repeat this in 10 years, 15 years?
	We know it.
	It's easy to start a war.
	You don't know how it's going to end.
	We know there were peace talks in April 2022.
	The rumors are that the British ruined them.
	And they said, no, no, continue at all costs.
	All right, well, this is where we are now.
	The Ukrainian army is having trouble, lost some of its most elite forces in the summer, most of its Western equipment.
	And the Western equipment is not better than the Soviet one.
	And the West doesn't produce enough equipment to ship it to Ukraine, whereas the Russians produce their own stuff.
	And the Ukrainians, well, they sold off their entire arms industry, and we don't know what happened with all the money, right?
	They could have built.
	They lost a lot of their military factories in 2014 that were in now Russian-held territory.
	They could have built them again, but they never bothered.
	They had a lot of tanks.
	They had one of the biggest armies in Europe.
	But we don't know where the money went.
	Yeah, that's one thing that's always struck me is that there was almost never talk in the West of building up a Ukrainian military supply within the country.
	That it showed how much this was a military-industrial complex-backed conflict.
	that they seemed to go to great lengths to make sure Ukraine had the capacity to manufacture its own artillery, its own machinery, its own weaponry ever since the Maidan coup.
	And when they were they've been plotting this conflict with Russia, well, arguably a lot longer than that, but at least since 2014.
	And then and at the same time, I mean, maybe it was just delusional talk.
	They seem to think the Russians wouldn't be wouldn't have the capacity to quickly tune up and like it's it reminded me of the.
	And it's like, look at the industrial capacity of Russia and its historical capacity, as you note, to be able to bounce back quite effectively.
	Was that just a misassessment, or is it because there's other politics potentially at play that Ukraine does not have the capacity to manufacture its own military support and the great underestimation of the Russian ability?
	I mean, I don't know how many times I heard the Russians are almost out of artillery, almost out of artillery, almost out of this, almost out of that.
	It's like, what, they can't make more of it?
	I mean, where does this even come from?
	That was a big meme, honestly, that I kept repeating.
	I would bring up the weekly news article about how the Russians are just about to lose, just about to run out of ammunition, and it would go on forever.
	I think now they've stopped.
	I think now they've stopped.
	I think there's a lot of information that now we see that maybe...
	How can I say this?
	I think the West thought the sanctions would be enough to bully Russia into submission.
	And that didn't work.
	And the Russians thought that their military intervention would be enough to bully the Ukrainians into submission.
	And both failed.
	And then you have the unknown.
	You open the unknown, the Pandora box.
	And just like in World War II, where the French, British, and German armies ran out of ammunition after three months because nobody expected a massive war.
	And this is what happened in Ukraine.
	Both sides.
	The Ukrainians use so much ammunition, but nobody knows how much a conventional war requires when you've never had one.
	They're fighting like a war of old, in the woods, on the ground.
	It's not like just a shock and awe bombing building.
	This is hand-to-hand combat in forested areas, digging trenches.
	This is like old-school warfare.
	Well, not hand-to-hand, but it's mostly artillery.
	But you do have to attack.
	You have tanks and everything.
	You have a front line.
	This is what we call conventional warfare.
	This is not guerrilla warfare.
	And it's very bloody, requires a lot of manpower, requires a lot of ammunition, and it becomes industrial.
	And the Russians prepared this.
	They said, okay, if...
	Plan number one didn't work, so they worked on plan number two, which is bringing more and more men into the machine.
	And Ukraine, well, smaller nation, depends on the West for everything.
	It's getting hard.
	You know, the way you could see it from an American perspective is the war between the Union and the Confederate States.
	Politics aside, honestly, I don't want to talk about the politics.
	I'm just comparing the racial forces.
	It's approximately the same.
	Ratio of differences.
	And the Confederate States had a much smaller industrial base than the Union.
	Much smaller population.
	And even though they lost in 1963, the war, they kept on fighting for two more years.
	And this is what we could see in Ukraine.
	You know, the Gettysburg was, let's say, the turning point.
	Perhaps the summer offensive for Ukraine was the turning point too.
	Is it enough for people to stop fighting?
	Maybe not.
	But Russia has a big pool of manpower and they can replace their losses.
	They can replace their material losses.
	Which, by the way, we talked about information.
	There was this website called Oryx.
	And this was some Dutch-based open-source intelligence team that would just gather all the losses with picture evidence or video evidence.
	The problem is, Ukrainians and Russians use Almost the same equipment.
	And once your equipment, like a tank, is burned to the ground, how do you know if it's Russian or Ukrainian?
	Their methodology was simple.
	Any loss you don't know is Russian.
	And that's how the Russians got 5,000 tanks destroyed or damaged, whereas the Ukrainians got so much less.
	And the media loved this.
	They kept saying how many tanks Russia...
	How many soldiers they lost based on very flimsy information.
	Sometimes there would be a Ukrainian tank that would be destroyed and some people would do a quick paint job and say, oh, it has a Z, it's a Russian tank.
	And they would take it.
	Now, you describe what you see coming because this war has been a war of slow attrition.
	And that may have been deliberately at times by the Russians to attrition the best sources of Ukrainian support and Ukrainian artillery in the counteroffensive that went nowhere.
	I guess they got the one little town that they're still kind of trying to hold, but basically nothing of consequence other than massive casualties and massive loss of armored vehicles and of tanks and of artillery.
	But on the flip side, it seems like everything is so slow and that this won't necessarily...
	I still see some people predicting some quick resolution, that there'll be some tipping point that will, boom, it'll all be over within months.
	That doesn't seem likely to occur.
	I mean, but what do you think?
	The problem is minefields.
	This minefield problem...
	It's the biggest problem that both armies face.
	Mines are extremely cheap and cause massive damage.
	And if they're well positioned, well, it can really slow down any army.
	So to give you an idea, the Ukrainians that went on to train on German tanks, so Ukrainian tank crews that went on, so they went from a Ukrainian tank to a German tank.
	So it's not as if they had no experience.
	So they went on for one month special training.
	And they say, yeah, German tanks are great.
	Everything is automated, much easier than Soviet tanks.
	But then they ask their German instructors, they're like, but what do you guys do about minefields?
	And the Germans said, well, you just go around it.
	Whereas in reality, the minefield stretches for the entire front.
	There is no going around it.
	It's like a river.
	You have to cross it.
	And you need engineers, engineering equipment.
	Or troops.
	I've read stories where guys are literally with their stick just sticking their ground to see if they're mines.
	This takes a lot of time.
	That's why you're rushing forward.
	There's no point.
	It's just going to increase the number of casualties.
	Unless there is some magical...
	I was going to say a tractor that you push instead of you pull so that you detonate them before you go through.
	But you made the interesting observation and it'll be a good segue into the Middle East that you don't start a war and then when you start losing it say let's let's let's end this here and let's negotiate.
	Okay.
	In Russia, Ukraine, at the original stage of this conflict, in theory, for those who knew, and maybe I'm wrong, it was about the eastern Donbass region.
	If now the idea is, well, we've sacrificed a lot of men, we're not just going to say we've sacrificed all that for what we initially wanted.
	What more would Russia want?
	How could this...
	What would they demand or what would they expect in terms of a longer-term military operation?
	Well, look, the Russians promoted this recruitment ad where you have two Russian soldiers discussing buying real estate in Kiev and Odessa.
	And this was the propaganda ad, of course, but I think that the...
	Depends on what happens on the battlefield, of course.
	The Russians cannot claim territory that they did not conquer.
	This doesn't work at war.
	You have to conquer the ground.
	So everything they conquered by now, if the war stops, it's theirs.
	But I don't think they would stop before taking Donbass, entire Donbass.
	And I would say, from a strategic perspective, the most important town for Ukraine is Odessa.
	Odessa is a port on the Black Sea.
	And this is from where Ukraine has access to the world markets, world trade.
	Now, if Ukraine loses Odessa in this entire region, Ukraine would be a landlocked nation like Bolivia.
	And then would be dependent on every country around it for supplies, for trade.
	And then they would be, by default, a poor nation.
	How difficult would it be for the Russians to take Odessa?
	It will be difficult, but...
	The Russians have in their military doctrine, they're ready to pay casualties if the objective is worth the price.
	So if this means no more wars for the next 100 years, or even if it brings a better strategic position, it's worth having casualties.
	Because after this, for Ukraine, it's going to be very hard to survive as an independent nation.
	It will really depend on the others.
	But again, it depends on what Ukraine does, if they mobilize their entire population or whatnot.
	There's a lot of...
	Now that you mention it, there was a meme going around.
	Not that I don't trust certain sources, but I trust but verify.
	It was a meme of a purple-haired Russian woman soldier at the beginning proudly joining the Ukrainian military.
	And then they had an after where she's sobbing about how devastating it is.
	Do you know what I'm talking about?
	It was a Ukrainian female and she was part of a brigade of a NATO trained brigade.
	And that day they suffered heavy casualties.
	And she cried about the casualties on that day being the highest they've ever witnessed.
	I think she's legit.
	I think she's legit.
	I don't know how many casualties happened, but it must have been traumatizing enough for her to...
	To show herself doing that.
	But she's Ukrainian.
	Yeah, well, there's not much more.
	You know, what does it mean?
	Heavy losses.
	You know, during the war in Ukraine, a lot of people said, yeah, the Russians are using human waves.
	What is a human wave?
	From one person to another has a difference.
	If you're being charged by five men, is that a human wave?
	Well, for the guy, maybe.
	But for everyone else, maybe not.
	To what degree do you think the Russian military, from this whole experience, is going to come out stronger rather than weaker?
	Well, I think this is a good segue into what's happening in the Middle East, because the opening of the second front in the Middle East has completely diverted the attention from Ukraine to Israel.
	And this is bad for Ukraine.
	Because they depend, like I said, they depend on the West for military equipment.
	If they don't get military equipment from the West, they're almost doomed.
	And now we see that more air defense systems, more artillery rounds are diverted towards Israel.
	So it's going to be very interesting to see what happens now.
	Now you did a video on what you thought happened in terms of how the Hamas strike was able to succeed.
	Given the perceived Israeli immunity from that kind of, precisely that kind of attack.
	What was your ultimate, because different people had, you had all kinds of conspiracy theories rampant.
	You had everything rampant for trying to figure out, was it Israeli overconfidence?
	Was it Hamas being much more sophisticated than Israel military gave them credit for?
	Was it Iranian involvement that helped make something happen that otherwise wouldn't have?
	Was it an Israeli trap to justify going into Gaza?
	What was your ultimate takeaway from looking at it militarily?
	Well, the first thing I want to say is that the moment I posted this video, my account has been under very high scrutiny by YouTube, with almost every video being manually reviewed.
	It hasn't been fun.
	Yeah, it was a tough ride since that first video that got not only ad-limited but age-restricted because I think I had 200,000 views in two hours.
	This video was going wild and YouTube was like, no, this video is not going anywhere.
	And so that was my entry into the Israel-Palestine conflict and the emotions of this war.
	I've never seen something like this.
	It's unprecedented.
	Russia-Ukraine was bad, but Israel-Palestine, it's a whole new game.
	Well, dude, you're young.
	If you graduated with your undergrad in 2020, that means you're born in 99, give or take.
	This is like the third uprising that I've witnessed in my life.
	It's always like this.
	It always is impossible for discussion.
	But now we have the advent of social media, which is like adding crystal meth to an otherwise ordinary street fight.
	I mean, that's what it's like.
	What was the nature of the video?
	What happened with it?
	Well, by the way, there was the Concordia riots in 2002, I think.
	So maybe you were there.
	I know.
	I was at McGill, but I remember when they didn't let Baby Netanyahu speak.
	They banned a couple of MPs.
	No, I remember Concordia was always known for this, but it's different.
	It's more accentuated now.
	But no, yeah, that's when I was at McGill.
	And I'm looking at, oh, at least I'm not at Concordia.
	But it's not much better anywhere else now.
	But no, my video was simple.
	It was just talking about what happened.
	And from the videos, the past, can I say the words or are we censored?
	Dude, see what you mean.
	We're a rubble, so you can see what you want.
	I'm posting this to YouTube tomorrow.
	If they have a problem with it, we'll ask for manual review, but I don't care about that.
	Go for it, please.
	Okay, okay.
	Well, I was looking at the videos that Hamas posted about their attack, and it was quite sophisticated.
	That's the truth.
	So, no...
	From my perspective, it was something that was carefully planned for a long time.
	And from what I gathered, Hamas stayed on the low for at least two, three years, to the extent where the Israelis stopped listening to the radio intercepts.
	And they were shifting their focus on another group that was growing in Gaza.
	Perhaps it was all a stratagem to fool the Israelis.
	And when they attacked, it was bloody.
	For sure, some Israelis could have been warned about the attack.
	But what people forget in intelligence gathering is that they get reports like this almost every day or on a weekly basis.
	Oh yeah, this week they're going to attack.
	Nothing happens.
	No, no, it's this week.
	Nothing happens.
	If you have 10 months, 12 months.
	20 months of warnings of an attack and nothing happens, the trustworthiness decreases until you say, yeah, you're just making stuff up.
	And Hamas stayed on the low.
	I don't know how exactly they managed this, but I think they used tunnels to break the fences.
	They used these paragliders and they used some sort of blitzkrieg.
	Toyota...
	Sponsored Blitzkrieg.
	Oh, this is horrible.
	Horrible, horrible.
	This is a joke.
	And, yeah, they used Torioras, they used tractors, and they broke through the fences, and they pushed kilometers into Israeli territory.
	And then it was really bloody.
	It was bloody because they attacked soldiers that were not from regular combat units.
	They attacked guys that are computer guys.
	They attacked people that...
	that are cooks, truck drivers and stuff like this.
	This is where the questions that people ask is, okay, it's one thing to have failed to pick up on the planning, years in the making, some say up to four years in the planning.
	So fine, the human intelligence didn't pick up on the planning, then the breach.
	Okay, fine, they didn't pick up on the breach, even though some people say sophisticated, others would argue that a paraglider slowly flying through the sky of what is supposed to be the most secure border ever, Is not sophisticated.
	It's actually antiquated.
	And so you get failing to identify on the years of planning, failure to identify the breach, and then failure to respond to the breach.
	And I've been having this, not an argument, but people say, Viva, you don't know how long it took them to respond.
	From your understanding, Alex.
	What was the response time?
	Like, how many hours or minutes did it take for the IDF to get on-site, on location of these various attack locations, to actually attack and respond?
	Well, from what I remember, it was at least 24 hours, but you have to remember that there's a human factor and shock, you know, shock and awe.
	When the Egyptians attacked during Yom Kippur...
	It was a Jewish holiday, 1973.
	50 years to the day.
	To the day.
	And the Egyptians actually broke through Israeli defenses, and the Israelis didn't think it would even be possible to break through this barrier.
	I think they probably thought that even if Hamas is planning something, it would be very local, and that they didn't need massive response.
	And they were shocked.
	On the first day, Israel...
	I think lost 300 soldiers KIA.
	That's massive.
	I think the last time the US suffered that many casualties, I don't even know when.
	And you mean in 73 you mean right now?
	No, no. 300 on October 7th, 2023.
	They lost at least 300.
	And Israel delayed the number of casualties.
	So they reported every day more casualties.
	They didn't say right off the bat.
	On day one, how many losses?
	They said, yeah, every day, 50 more are killed and something like this.
	It's a real tragedy.
	The videos are horrifying.
	This is why the video got age-restricted because just the words I said from what I saw, observed, was too much.
	I didn't show anything gore.
	It was too much.
	And even me, now thinking about it, it's shocking.
	I don't know if you guys saw these things, but it was shocking.
	So now for the response, well, first of all, a lot of Hamas soldiers had Israeli uniforms.
	What do you do with that?
	How do you know what soldier is friendly or not?
	Your base is getting attacked.
	You have Israeli soldiers running away in all directions.
	From a helicopter, how do you know who's friendly or not?
	So I think the Israelis pulled back their forces to safe areas where they knew Hamas was not spotted.
	They gathered their reserves and they slowly sent in the special forces, the troops like this.
	But there's even a report of a special forces team that tried to liberate one of the villages, Be 'eri.
	And within a couple, within an hour, they were wiped out.
	A 30-man team, I think.
	Wiped out.
	Special forces, elite.
	They were brought by helicopters.
	So I think the Israelis tried to respond quickly.
	They don't want to talk about it much, but it failed.
	Their quick response failed.
	So, again, maybe some people knew something would be happening, but did they expect the scale?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think so.
	Now, you've been breaking down the attempts for Israel to respond to all this, go into Gaza.
	And I've been one of those people that's not a military expert, but just skeptical of the ability to achieve what they claim they're seeking to achieve.
	It was kind of like when Putin said he was going to denazify the Ukrainian military.
	I was like, well, how exactly do you do that?
	I mean, unless you're going to eliminate the Ukrainian military.
	Do you have like a list?
	It's these eight guys or something?
	You know, it sounded more like a propaganda statement than a tactical objective that was achievable in the way in which it was being implied.
	Robert, the beauty of such a term is that you can't quantify it.
	So you cannot say you failed in your objective when your objective is not quantifiable.
	So to say you're going to denazify the enemy, well, what does that even mean?
	You can stop the war at any moment and say, we achieved denazification.
	Yeah, from that point, it's a good strategic objective when you can redefine it well.
	But how much, I mean, looking at it from a military, the nature of, like one of the things you're mentioning is that Hamas was able to succeed in part with a low-tech strategy because a high-tech defense would actually not anticipate to a certain degree certain...
	Low-tech attempts to counter it.
	And we've seen the immersion of drone warfare in the drone use overwhelmingly in the case of Ukraine and Russia as another modern method.
	But to what degree?
	I mean, I'm skeptical for many reasons, but just looking at it, let's say their goal is to take out Hamas.
	I'm skeptical that Israel can go in and just permanently occupy all of Gaza.
	It didn't work before.
	It's why they pulled out before.
	It didn't work in Lebanon.
	It didn't work in other places where they've gone into over the past 30 years.
	They've ultimately withdrawn in every instance.
	You laid out in your video how they've been successful so far by being in regions that are not the most dense parts of God's trip.
	But now they're on the verge of...
	Apparently, going in, do you think tactically that is what they're going to do?
	Because there's some talk that tactically all they're really going to do is increase the border.
	They're going to take out some Hamas people that they can, but otherwise just make it a bigger border by the sea and a bigger border on the northern side.
	That's why they're just taking out neighborhoods.
	And they're not really going to go door to door in the city of Gaza itself.
	But there's a lot of talk as if they will because, you know, especially the war hawks are all like, we must kill all of Hamas.
	So how do you do that exactly?
	What are your thoughts on that?
	Well, just a little reference, you know, for the October 7th attack, you know, it's every house, for example, has security.
	You have entrance, you have security at the border, like gates.
	Some people have gated communities.
	And then you have your windows, your main door.
	But what if the guy comes from a tunnel?
	It gets right into your house.
	How shocked would you be, right?
	This is essentially what happened.
	You know, they bypassed the entire security barrier and they just were in your house.
	Let me stop you there.
	How do they do that?
	They're supposed to have installed seismic detectors to pick up on digging of tunnels.
	I mean, how does that even happen?
	Well, it's very possible that the seismic sensors only start at the Gaza border.
	So the guys building the tunnels made...
	Perhaps.
	I'm just...
	It's just...
	Perhaps, right?
	An idea.
	But maybe they only dug small tunnels that only reach behind the fence.
	So they cannot really be picked up.
	Because historically, Hamas' tunnels would go kilometers deep into Israeli territory.
	This is how they would pick them up.
	But if they stop right at the border and just leave the ground and open the gates, well, this is what happened.
	You see demolition teams.
	Honestly, you see in the videos.
	Teams of two, three guys, demolition squads that would appear behind the fence.
	How?
	Maybe with paragliders.
	Very possible that they use paragliders this time or with tunnels, but they appeared behind the fence.
	They blew it up and let everyone in.
	Now, for the Gaza thing, I'm really sad of the entire censorship about the topic because I was preparing a video about some predictions that could never be released because...
	Posting a video took two, three days of dealing with demonetization and everything.
	But at one point, when you saw how Israel positioned its tanks, I could see the axes of attack.
	And I said, in my script, I said, yeah, they're going to cut through right in between Gaza and the other cities to encircle only that part because it's the place where the open space is the best for Israeli tanks.
	In my video, I don't know if you, Robert, you've seen it.
	I don't know if you, David, you've seen it.
	But essentially, in my last video about Israel, what I say is that the Israelis preferred to go Bob the Builder than Rambo.
	So they went from one neighborhood to another and demolished everything.
	So there's no surprise.
	And the more open field there is, the more firepower plays a role.
	You know, if you're in the middle of tiny streets, your tanks can't see anything.
	And then they become targets.
	The Israelis just destroy one building after another.
	They look for tunnels.
	They're bulldozers.
	They put sand over the tunnels.
	They break them down.
	So it's very meticulous.
	And I can see they do it on the outside, but could they do that in Gaza itself?
	That's the big question.
	And I don't know their equipment.
	I was shocked to see how many bulldozers and engineering equipment they have.
	They seem to have been prepared.
	Perhaps the time that they waited before going in was good to cool off heads from being too angry and going head on.
	They went in.
	They did suffer casualties, but they had their plan.
	Now, how is it going to be inside?
	Nobody knows, because when you have your enemy with no exit, they're going to fight until the end.
	It's going to be brutal.
	So it depends.
	And there's a lot of civilians left in the city.
	So it's hard to say.
	In Mosul, one battle that is very similar to what we're seeing is the Battle of Mosul from 2016 to 2017 in Iraq.
	And the attacking force was the Iraqi army plus the U.S. and the coalition.
	It took them a month to take down 10,000 insurgents, Islamic State insurgents, despite a 10 to 1 ratio.
	So, month.
	So, it depends, you know, of many factors.
	I don't even know how many Hamas fighters are in Gaza right now.
	Or are they already gone?
	Or are they preparing some defenses somewhere else?
	We don't know.
	It was called BBD, blow up, bulldoze, and what was the...
	Wipeout.
	Wipeout, BBW, sorry.
	That's why you said don't Google it.
	Well, but why do you say don't Google it, actually?
	Okay, never mind.
	You'll get Big Black Woman.
	The BBD will get you something else.
	The BBC will get you.
	But, you know, when you say they're going in there, they're blowing up, bulldozing and wiping out.
	That really does add to some of the fuel of speculation that this was about expanding borders, maybe creating something of a demilitarized zone.
	We're not going to occupy, they're not going to expand into Gaza, but they're going to use that as an expanded border.
	The thing is, there's a lot of unknowns.
	Like I said, with Russia-Ukraine, it took a couple of weeks to know the feel of what's going on.
	A couple of months for Russia-Ukraine.
	It was much slower.
	Gaza, the situation goes much faster.
	The more dense the urban area is, there could be more tunnels.
	So the Israelis could be at the surface, but Hamas could be popping up somewhere where it was secured.
	They could come back and create more tunnels, for example.
	So it's very hard to know how effective the Israeli strategy is at this point.
	And it's going to be even harder once they get into these big buildings.
	You can't just demolish them with bulldozers.
	It's gonna be really hard.
	Now, if the Israelis really destroy the entire city of Gaza, that means that people are not gonna come back.
	And I think the fact that Israel is gonna win this battle is almost inevitable.
	The big question is, what is Israel going to do from a political standpoint to secure their victory?
	Because we've seen it many times.
	You can win militarily, but you can lose politically.
	For example, the Americans in Vietnam, they've never been really defeated, but politically they lost and they had to leave regardless.
	So in this case, what is Israel going to do with all the Palestinians?
	That's the big question.
	Are they going to occupy Gaza again, a population that is 100% Palestinian-Muslim, and go back to what they've been doing?
	It hasn't worked.
	They evacuated in 2005.
	Are we going to go through everything again?
	But the question is this.
	Half the population is kids now.
	In 10 years, they're going to be fighting age males.
	And they're going to remember how the entire city was destroyed.
	That was my response to a range of people.
	The US military couldn't conquer Vietnam.
	Couldn't conquer Afghanistan.
	Couldn't really even control consistently Iraq.
	Why is it that we think that Israel is going to be able to wipe out Hamas or control all of Gaza?
	That the problem is a political problem that isn't really capable of a military solution.
	Now, I mean, if it's a more limited strategy, just to expand the northern border, take out the tunnels in the northern border where they didn't have seismic detectives, things like that that they think will make them more secure.
	I could see that being a more sustainable objective without as much political blowback as if...
	It seemed like if you're Hamas, the reason why they videotaped everything was to provoke an overreaction by Israel because Hamas depends on Arab and Muslim sympathy throughout the world, and they need victim porn for that, and that Israel seems to be willing to accommodate them.
	Now, they haven't done it at the scale that...
	You know, could have occurred.
	As you noted, they let heads cool for a while and then have gone in more methodically than was originally discussed.
	But it seemed like if they actually took the bait and did a Ben Shapiro, you know, go in and just destroy Hamas forever, the only way to do that would be, you know, basically to take out the whole city of Gaza and never let the population return to Gaza or anywhere north of it.
	And sort of leave them as refugee camps on the Egyptian border in the Sinai, which is apparently the plan amongst some of those people.
	I don't see how that could politically achieve their objective, even if militarily they could do it.
	In other words, it would lead to such a disastrous...
	I mean, you had some Israeli generals yipping off about nuclear weapons.
	And it's like, what in the world?
	What are your thoughts on the limitations?
	Well, I'll try to be as quick as possible in this.
	I don't want to ramble on too much, but a lot of people right now in Israel that are in office are revisionist Zionists.
	So I don't know if you saw my last interview with a guy called Idris Aberkan, a very smart guy, but he said a lot of the leading people in Israel are Zionist revisionists.
	So let's say they're more hardcore.
	No deal.
	They want to have the entire territory.
	Now, some military leaders are like that too.
	Now, if they go really all in, the question is, is Egypt really going to get all these Palestinians?
	That's the first question.
	From a historical standpoint, I don't see why they would do this.
	I'll break it up.
	First of all, you have 2 million people to take care of when Egypt is already facing economic issues with almost 100 million people.
	Then you have most of Hamas is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt.
	So Egypt would host a population sympathetic to a political ideology that is hated by the Egyptian government and very lethal to their power.
	Sure.
	Then the third problem is historic.
	A lot of Palestinians went in the 1950s and 60s to Jordan, and there they continued the fight from Jordan into the borders of Israel.
	So Egypt would just be bringing the problem with Israel into their borders.
	So what if these refugees start firing rockets into Israel from Egypt?
	Then Egypt would be bombed by Israel, just like Lebanon is at the moment.
	You have Hezbollah within the borders of Lebanon.
	Lebanon is getting bombed.
	That's a sovereign nation getting bombed.
	But just because the guys are on the other side of the border.
	So pushing the problem away, I mean, yeah, for sure.
	Like I said, in 10 years, you have a new generation of fighters.
	And it's interesting.
	I got into fights with people who say the two-state solution is no longer a viable solution because you can't have the two states.
	You couldn't give back certain portions of land because it would just make Israel too susceptible to attack from those areas.
	But take over all of Gaza.
	Weaponry in 10 years' time is going to render whatever two miles or four miles they took absolutely meaningless.
	And forget Egypt absorbing the Palestinians.
	Just take Iran harboring...
	Continued resentment for Israel.
	And you don't need to have a tunnel under a border.
	You'll just have, you know, whatever, intercontinental ballistic missiles.
	You'll have other weapons in 10 years that you don't need to have a contiguous border to even be the threat.
	And so, killing a generation now, even if you go the Ben Shapiro way, will breed another generation immediately.
	But politically from other nations, and whatever weapons are going to be weapons in 10 years' time, it's...
	It's like you're digging up a tunnel to create the risk of a missile in 10 years from now, and it doesn't make sense to me.
	David, this is where knowing history is very important.
	For example, during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s, there were millions of Afghan refugees that went into Pakistan.
	Now, they were extremely poor.
	The men were fighting.
	In Afghanistan as Mujahideen against the Soviets, while the kids were getting special education, these kids became indoctrinated and became the people that would form Al-Qaeda just 10 years later, 15 years later.
	These are all the kids that were raised in these refugee camps.
	So, for sure, it's going to happen again.
	They're poor, they have nothing to eat, and if the...
	Only place where they can get food and learn how to read and write is at the place where it's the most indoctrinated.
	What do you expect?
	Now, the question is, what are they going to do?
	Honestly, I don't like talking about this topic because there's no solution for me.
	There's no peaceful solution.
	There's no magic hat trick for everybody to be forever happy at this point or past this.
	This is why this topic is so toxic.
	Because there is no solution.
	At least not a peaceful one.
	Speaking of another place that hopefully we don't see a conflict, but you did a breakdown of what a China-Taiwan conflict would look like.
	And I've heard different analysis that's also kind of all over the place.
	Because on paper you think China real big, Taiwan kind of small, China wins easy.
	But on the other hand, you have an island, you have a very dense, urban populated island.
	The degree to which how many people in Taiwan really hate China and vice versa is not all that.
	There's a lot of debate about that, of course, as well.
	But putting that aside, just looking at it from a military tactical perspective, assuming the Taiwanese would fully resist.
	Postulate that presumption, which I know is disputed, but just for the time being.
	Militarily, how difficult would China take over effort of Taiwan be?
	Look, if we're only talking about China versus Taiwan, Taiwan stands no chance.
	China has the resources.
	Now, the Joker, the card, the special card, is in fact Japan.
	Japan is the one that guarantees the independence of Taiwan at the moment.
	And nobody talks about it because the Japanese are pretty low-key, but essentially the Japanese don't trust the Americans.
	And the Americans wanted to make a special plan in the Asia-Pacific region.
	And the Japanese canceled this plan, which was essentially a Japanese version of the Iron Dome.
	And the Japanese were like, no, because we're on an island and the Chinese can literally...
	Bomb everything and saturate our Iron Dome and we're just going to get hit after hit.
	So the Japanese started building ships that could hit back at China.
	Now, these ships, the advantage is that these ships can actually go to defend Taiwan if necessary.
	You know, you need to cross the water and if the Japanese Navy comes in, it's going to be very hard for the Chinese.
	There's going to be a naval battle and the Japanese would be able to hit.
	Very strategic commercial ports in China, like Shanghai and stuff, and inflict deadly damage.
	Possibly Japan has a nuclear weapon too.
	They probably don't have it officially, but they could make it anytime.
	They know how to make missiles.
	They have nuclear energy.
	They're pretty smart.
	They can put one in one and make a nuclear weapon.
	The Japanese method is...
	A bit more aggressive.
	You know, it's like a big guy that you don't want to piss off because you know you're going to get punched too.
	So the Chinese are really considering their position.
	And this is the only way Taiwan can survive if Japan intervenes.
	And Japan has every incentive to intervene in Taiwan because this guarantees their own independence as well.
	And from a historical perspective, Taiwan was Japanese for...
	Almost 80 years.
	It was a Japanese colony and it was very successful as a Japanese colony.
	A lot of Taiwanese soldiers fought in the Japanese army during World War II.
	One of the presidents of Taiwan was a former Japanese soldier.
	They had a special relationship with mainland China.
	They've been separated since the 1870s or something.
	What do you guys think about the conflict in Israel?
	I'm the one rambling on, but I want to know what you guys think.
	I've been reading your tweets.
	Well, I'll be on next Tuesday with the Duran to talk about that and a bunch of other topics.
	My theory is that I don't think Israel can militarily achieve the political objective they claim to have.
	So maybe they have a different objective and that this is partially a feint or something else.
	And if they get the Arab and Muslim world scared that they're going to do mass, you know, really purge Gaza, then they don't.
	Maybe they think they can achieve their lesser objective if it's seen as a lesser objective than the true objective.
	But if they have some other objective in mind that involves making the same mistake they've made in the past.
	I mean, I think the...
	It's fascinating that this part of the world is aflame again in light of the failures of what was going on in Ukraine.
	That may lead to some speculation and conspiracy theorizing about what military-industrial complex people...
	You've got to have a war to sell those guns and sell everything else and the rest.
	Though poor Zelensky, I guess he's out of a little ammo for the time being.
	But he's got some nice retirement homes.
	All over Europe and in the United States, thanks to all that cash.
	So we'll see how all that folds out.
	Now, the other thing you comment a lot about are both video games and movies.
	What are some of your favorite...
	Well, before we get into some of your favorite war films and some of the worst ones, I saw your film, You Were Not Hopeful.
	About the forthcoming Napoleon film's military accuracy.
	Is that still what your current thoughts are from the more expanded trailers that have come out?
	Yeah, because Ridley Scott, you know, he probably saw the videos and he said, apparently, to every commenter, get a life.
	And I'm like, man, this is meme material.
	I'm feeding off of this, right?
	I don't think it's going to be historically accurate, but there is a topic that we can mention.
	It's the wokeness, the increasing wokeness in a lot of movies in general.
	For example, Hannibal is going to be played by an African-American.
	If you want to Google this, David, if you look at Denzel Washington playing Hannibal.
	Hannibal, Hannibal.
	Hannibal, like H-A.
	Yeah, yeah, no, Hannibal, Denzel.
	Denzel Washington.
	Yeah, there we go.
	It's coming up.
	Denzel Washington and Antonia Foucault.
	What is this?
	I'm not into...
	You children with your kids' stuff and your televisions, Denzel Washington to play Hannibal.
	I can only think of Hannibal Lecter.
	Who am I thinking about right now?
	Hannibal is...
	Carthage is Tunisia, so he was against the Roman Empire.
	But essentially, he was what a Berber would look like, a Semitic people that came from the Middle East.
	Now, he was 29 at the time of the war, and now he's going to be played by a 68-year-old African-American.
	No, but every show on Netflix, you have the Queen of England, black.
	Yeah, everybody's black.
	And they turn any white character into a black character.
	And honestly, I have no problem with it.
	But the opposite is never going to be able.
	You're never going to see a historical black character like Nelson Mandela be played by Chris Hemsworth, for example.
	No, why did I go straight to Woody Harrelson?
	Woody Harrelson must play Nelson Mandela.
	Woody Harrelson would be Nelson Mandela.
	Wouldn't it be cool?
	It would be cool.
	It's like a different version of retconning history.
	In other words, a lot of the woke history is sort of re-mythologized.
	Like a lot of, for example, Native American re-mythologizing, which often was to the legal detriment of Native American rights for a wide range of...
	But, you know, really it was starting in the 60s and 70s.
	You know, it was sort of white lefties re-scripting the, you know, Native Americans were all these peaceful, sitting around a village, didn't, you know, and all of a sudden the evil colonizers came and just mass slaughtered them all, rather than...
	Realities, most of the tribes that were here at the time had conquered the land they were part of and kicked out other tribes, including Cherokee and everybody else.
	They were in the land they were at because of military conquest.
	So it was part of the reason there was no unity of indigenous groups against Western encroachment.
	By the U.S. or the French or the Spanish or the British because they were often at war with one another.
	But yes, this is a new form of retconning where race and gender swapping.
	It's like the South Park joke recent series about stick a chicken and make her gay.
	Cartman's version of Kathleen Kennedy.
	It's very Orwellian, which is this idea that you saw a lot of it in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
	I see it in large aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
	At a minimum, you have no agreement as to what the history is.
	I think there is some objective evidence as to what the history is, and there's just patent denial about it.
	Well, the history is very important.
	We've seen it with Israel-Palestine.
	A lot of the anger comes from a historical standpoint, and there's a lot of...
	False stories going around about what's happening.
	And because of these false stories, people are angry.
	Oh, remember what you've done 70 years ago.
	Oh, but you've done that before.
	But you've done that.
	Okay, so history is very important because we see it right now.
	It can lead to actual wars.
	Walk movies can make people angry, for example, at a certain group of people by making them look evil.
	You twist the entire story and people will grow up.
	You think people will actually look up the history of Hannibal?
	No.
	It happened so long ago.
	They'll just watch the movie and that's it.
	You think they'll watch the documentary?
	I remember The Passion of the Christ when it came out and Mel Gibson's and everyone was like this.
	I remember a lot of people saying this is going to promote anti-Semitism.
	And I was like, what's the big deal about it?
	And I don't know.
	I can still sort of understand it.
	But at the end of the day, a movie is a movie.
	And if you're going to learn your history from a movie, you're probably an idiot to begin with.
	But it's a fair point, Alex.
	It inflames impassions.
	Yeah, and just nowadays, for example, the Swedish TV, national TV, showed the history of Sweden.
	It's all recent news.
	And they showed the first Swedish inhabitants as black people with blue eyes.
	And because some scientists said...
	Because the evidence is that they found a body from that period which had tanned skin and blue eyes.
	Tanned.
	But the people, the artists that made the reconstitution of it put a black man with blue eyes.
	And since then, it stuck.
	And then they said, look, Africans were always there.
	I just Googled this just to see what was going on.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Here you have it.
	The bearded men go up in the middle.
	This guy right here?
	Yeah.
	This is what they probably looked like.
	In the summer, something like this.
	Like a Semitic...
	Exactly.
	This is where they came from.
	And, you know, they went north from the Middle East and they got lighter as they went up.
	Now...
	Oh, go down, go down.
	I saw...
	Go down a bit.
	Go down.
	Okay, now, at the bottom, the right...
	Here, you have...
	No, up.
	One row up.
	And right.
	Yeah, this one.
	This is...
	No, the right one.
	The one on the right.
	No, left.
	No, this one?
	Okay.
	The third row.
	Yeah.
	The third row?
	This one.
	This is what the artist has done.
	You see?
	They changed.
	They made it look much darker than it actually was.
	And then from there.
	Oh my gosh.
	But what sense would it make if to the extent that...
	Because it's political.
	Yeah.
	Because it's like the BBC has done.
	Don't Google this.
	I'm talking about the British Broadcast Corporation.
	They made a lot of documentaries saying that black people were always part of British history and always there.
	They keep making documentaries about this.
	You see Roman legions made of black soldiers.
	And the reason, and that's a bit of the topic, why does it matter in the end?
	It's just movies.
	No, it's political ideology.
	We see there's mass migration to Europe.
	And this is to secure...
	The land.
	They say, it's actually our land.
	And we come back to the Middle East.
	Who does the land belongs to?
	And then you have people that say, that's my land.
	I was always there, actually.
	You're the new guy.
	And this is where it can become dangerous, you know, to say who has claimed to the land is the root of war.
	And have you been startled by the sense of...
	Part of this woke history that rewrites all kinds of history in all kinds of ways and retcons it in all kinds of ways for a politicized purpose, but particularly often the gap between Muslim conquest and non-Muslim conquest, or Muslim slavery and non-Muslim slavery.
	It's not an anti-Islamic statement.
	It's just reflecting the reality.
	In fact, it's part of the reason why Pan-Arab nationalism has a religious component to it that began in the late 19th century as the Ottoman Empire began to fall from where the Muslim Brotherhood originated in substantial part.
	It was a group of clerics who said, you know, we're falling apart socially and politically because we've abandoned our religious fundamentalist tenets.
	And they look back to the old caliphates of old as being the...
	As the example to follow.
	But you have in Western ideology that there's no Native American, no Native groups anywhere in the Latin Americas that were imperialist or colonizers.
	The Muslims somehow were not colonizers.
	Well, Robert, there's a good example, and I think David knows about it because of his favorite friend, Trudeau.
	Remember when, at one point, there was the story of bodies of native children that were found in some Catholic school.
	The residential school mass graves.
	They call it mass graves.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Turns out they looked and they couldn't find the body.
	As of now, they're still looking.
	But just this fake story or even this exaggerated story made people burn a bunch of churches throughout the country and Trudeau said, yeah, it's fine.
	We understand their anger.
	Imagine had they done this to any other religious group and we see what problems would have happened.
	I also think that when they made this Netflix documentary...
	This one right here apparently was never any form of a mass grave to begin with, period, let alone how he came there with a teddy bear in his hand.
	And many of what they were referring to as mass graves were actually cemeteries that had been weathered over time because they had wood crosses and sort of very, very temporary sort of structure that eroded over time.
	The other thing is they had the names and the number of all these kids back in 2015 with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and they didn't do anything with it until 2020 election time.
	So all politicized, all rubbish, and photo ops left, right, and center.
	It's a very good parenthesis because this shows you what woke ideology does.
	It's a political tool.
	So you have the media that pushes it, you have left and right.
	However, there is pushback.
	When, for example, Netflix pushed this story of a black Cleopatra, it didn't work.
	The Egyptians got really mad.
	The Egyptians got really mad that this story was false and they pushed back.
	But in Europe, they don't push back anymore.
	They've been pushed into submission and you don't see this type of resistance anymore.
	The North Africans are going to be pretty mad to see Hannibal depicted as a sub-Saharan African because it's just false.
	It's not part of their history.
	Soon you're going to have a Netflix documentary about Zelensky and he's going to be a black man too.
	At this point, this is the trend.
	But you see, it's all for a political agenda.
	Now, what is the goal?
	I don't know, but there's a lot of conflict.
	You see the boats coming into Europe.
	You see the border.
	In the United States too.
	Open border policy.
	I don't know what you guys see as you guys live in the States, I believe, but how come the border with Ukraine is so much more important for the US than their own border?
	Why is it territorial integrity?
	Mass destabilization, degradation of social morale, fracturing of allies within allies so that there is nothing but Shards of glass and burnt ash to rule over.
	That's the MO, in my view.
	Very poetic.
	Indeed.
	From our Locals channel, one of the questions in the Locals chat was, please ask History Legends if he has any alternate theories on what actually happened with Purgosian.
	I think the problem with Purgosian is that he became The Russians don't like heads that stick out like that.
	And they know that if he's allowed to do this, other people would do the same.
	And we saw in the Russian history is violent.
	You have the Bolsheviks.
	The Bolsheviks were only able to do what they did because the Tsar let the socialists, revolutionaries, take over.
	And the Bolsheviks were even more brutal.
	So the Russians, Putin knows his history.
	He's like, okay, well, it's very sad.
	They were friends, but...
	He couldn't be seen as weak.
	That's the thing.
	Putin could not be seen as weak by his people and the international community.
	It's very violent.
	So they gave him warnings, and when he trespassed, yeah, it's tragic.
	Well, I gotta say, if Purgosian was Jewish, therefore Putin, for having killed him, is anti-Semitic.
	Those are the rules now, people.
	I'll apply them equally.
	Robert, there was another one.
	Oh, USA Now from our locals community.
	Alex, you have a Rumble channel in addition to your wildly successful YouTube channel?
	Yeah, it's the same.
	I mean, the videos are automatically posted into my Rumble.
	For now, I'm still on the dark side, but who knows?
	First of all, you're killing it.
	Your videos, it's amazing.
	In as much as there might be some algorithmic suppression, I don't know if you're monetized more than not, but...
	You're killing it.
	And what's amazing is that there's a lot of people on YouTube who are watching it getting a good dose of reality.
	Thank you.
	I'm fighting against the machine.
	Well, speaking of machines, how far might the future of warfare go in terms of seeing how much success?
	Well, first of all, am I right in saying that there's been a lot of success?
	That the Ukrainian war has been an advertisement for drones.
	Like every drone manufacturer is cha-ching, cha-ching.
	And in the same...
	How much might that just keep going?
	Why might we just get fully automated warfare?
	You see, the drones are just an extension of something that already existed.
	It's called...
	Back in the days, it was recon cavalry guys on horse that would just go in front to see on the lookout.
	Then it was armored formations on the lookout.
	Now it's drones.
	But you always need a human because drones can be jammed.
	And if you have an entirely automated army, it can be jammed and hacked.
	Whereas a human, I mean, it's more complicated.
	So you need humans and you need boots on the ground regardless.
	Gaza, you need foot soldiers.
	This is why Israel gathered 300,000 reservists.
	You need boots on the ground.
	You can't only have machines.
	Machines are good to take the hits to attack, but then to hold the ground.
	For example, in Gaza, to make sure there's no tunnels in the buildings.
	How can the tank do that?
	You need soldiers to actually dismount from the armored vehicles and look.
	But at the same time, mechanized warfare is still the same.
	It's a bit different, but drones are for sure important.
	I was going to say, how much on the flip side has this been a bad advertisement for certain weapons manufacturers?
	You know.
	Which weapons turned out not to be so great that some stock took some major hit because it didn't show off so well in the Ukraine.
	Cluster bombs.
	It's got to be cluster bombs.
	No, Robert.
	You know, okay.
	So, you know, Bradley, you know, the Bradley IFVs made in America, they burned very easily.
	German Leopard 2 tanks, I mean, burned very easily.
	They blamed the Turks, the Turkish people in 2017, I think, for losing them in front of insurgents armed with RPGs.
	And they said, no, it's the Turkish fault.
	They don't know how to use them.
	They lost as many tanks in Ukraine, and the Germans have no excuse now.
	And now they don't want to send any more of their tanks to Ukraine.
	The US is rethinking about sending Abrams.
	I think in the end, the problem is that there's no mystery machine that's indestructible.
	The goal of these machines is to be destroyed at one point and to replace human casualties.
	The art of war is actually to be able to repair these machines.
	They're made to take hits.
	The art of war in the industrial age is to being able to retrieve this damaged vehicle, bring it back to the rear, repair it, have spare parts, and bring it back.
	So the loss is not a real loss.
	And how much like the old Russian battle of attrition theory as mechanized warfare began to take off in the early 1920s?
	Though the guy who...
	You know, helped create the theory, didn't get to live to see it implemented in World War II, because Stalin was a little paranoid and took him out.
	Yes.
	But it seemed like early on, I thought that, and some other commenters said that they thought that that understanding of modern warfare, mechanized warfare in particular, the battle of attrition understanding of it would frame a lot of how this war has turned out.
	And it seems like...
	Russia's done it a lot better than Ukraine has.
	That, you know, sitting back and just letting them exhaust their resources in places like Bakhmut and throughout their summer counteroffensive.
	It's just throw us, throw your best troops at us in our most favorable position, which you talked about before the counteroffensive even occurred, was likely what Russia was going to do.
	Turns out it is what Russia did.
	How much has it been a reaffirmation of that old theory in terms of what's taking place on the battlefield?
	So, the problem of the Russians for a long time is their lack of drones.
	So, their artillery would fire a bit blindly and they would waste a lot of ammunition.
	So, the strength of the Ukrainian army was its speed.
	And the moment that the front stagnated in Bahmut, that was perfect for the Russians because they had their coordinates for artillery.
	They could fire day and night on positions that would be manned by Ukrainian forces.
	And the troops, the units that would be...
	Suffering heavy casualties would be brought back to the rear.
	A new unit would be coming in into the meat grinder.
	We call it the meat grinder of Bahmut.
	So as long as the front didn't move too much, it was good for the Russians.
	And now the Russians have built up their forces.
	But you know, it's interesting because some stuff that happened in Afghanistan, in Iraq, could even foreshadow what we're seeing.
	You see when you had U.S. patrols in Afghanistan that would meet an ID, an improvised explosive device.
	How long would the column halt?
	Sometimes hours until that one section would be demined.
	But Ukraine is the same thing on a much bigger field with many more mines.
	It's the same thing.
	But you're not taking fire while trying to demine the field.
	That's a big difference.
	In Afghanistan, you had 20 drones.
	You had an entire army overlooking.
	You can't do that in conventional warfare.
	Alex, what is your schedule, your upload schedule like?
	You do long format interviews.
	What's your strategy?
	Every four or five days.
	Okay.
	I know you have a Patreon and PayPal.
	Where are those that can people support you with the YouTube war?
	Do you have a locals page yet?
	I don't have a locals yet.
	Ah, you should get a locals page.
	Yeah, they're great.
	But one, it's like Patreon and PayPal in terms of the ability to monetize content.
	But it's also, like, for us, it provides valuable insight.
	Like, I get a lot of source material, source information, you know, commentary, but also leads on stories, articles, ideas, cases, etc.
	So, you know, particularly, I don't think right now there's a good military locals one.
	I'm looking to it.
	Yeah, there you go.
	We can hook you up with those guys.
	By way of example, I discovered that apparently Ben Shapiro has threatened Candace Owen with, if you don't like our money, quit.
	I just saw this.
	I just saw this before this interview.
	What do you guys think about this entire Ben Shapiro coverage of the war in Israel-Palestine and Candace Owen's thing?
	He's very hawkish.
	I think Candace Owens has been getting a bit of unfair treatment where people are portraying posts which I do not think are pro-Hamas.
	They depict them as being pro-Hamas.
	I think the dichotomy between if you're either pro-Hamas or you're pro-Israel and any sort of nuanced question is verboten is getting old, tiresome, and it's why people don't want to discuss it on the internet, which is why the only people left discussing it are pro-Hamas or radically destroy all of Hamas.
	It's unpleasant, to put it mildly.
	Somebody asked about whether you'd ever seen the Odessa file.
	Speaking of which, what are some of your favorite films or video games that are accurate at capturing aspects of military history?
	Oh, well, it's funny because I'm actually working...
	Can I say it?
	Some spoilers.
	I'm actually working...
	On a little war movie, I suppose.
	And it's because of these videos I've done on movies and video games that someone approached me.
	They're like, oh, I'm a movie director.
	Not the biggest movie director, but he's like, oh, I want to do a historically accurate and entertaining war movie.
	And I think that's the key.
	People say it either has to be historically accurate or entertaining, but it can be both.
	And people are just lazy.
	When you read the actual epic stories of what happened, you don't need to make up stories.
	You can just follow what happened and it's already epic enough.
	And it can really make people go through this entire drama of cinema and movie making.
	Plus the historical aspect that is respected.
	But yeah, movies, there's a lot.
	It's fun.
	How can I say it?
	It's easier to remember those that are bad because they hit...
	You know, it's like bad comments.
	You remember them more than positive ones because it just hit you.
	Hamburger Hill.
	I remember Hamburger Hill from childhood.
	It was pretty good.
	No, I remember Full Metal Jacket was the greatest pinnacle of Vietnam War movies ever.
	Hamburger Hill, I remember thinking was a little exaggerated, but I haven't seen it since 1989.
	It's been a while.
	The other interesting aspect is, do you ever watch different countries?
	I find Russian military films often better than your average Western military film.
	Some of their tank films are fascinating.
	I've seen some.
	They tend to be good.
	Of course, one of the best historical movies is the one called The War and Peace.
	You have Waterloo.
	Done by the Soviets in the 1960s.
	Those, I mean, you have 20,000 extras in the movie, thousands of horses, Napoleonic era.
	So you can't recreate this nowadays.
	The scale that they managed to do is impressive.
	I don't think anything can be 100% accurate, and that's not the goal.
	But if the message is good, and they tried their best at least, it's good for me.
	But once again, you know...
	Saving Private Ryan, this is a movie that came out right before 9-11.
	Did it?
	But I think so.
	I think so.
	Yeah, yeah.
	98, I think.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And that's the generation.
	Yeah, 98. And that's the generation that grew up and that signed up in the U.S. Army right away because they grew up with this.
	You have Band of Brothers, too, which is good.
	But you have...
	This entire era of American movies that portrayed war as a walk in the park where it's like a video game where one group of characters can destroy an enemy army at will.
	And this is what war movies also should pay attention to.
	It's not a...
	Your life is there.
	You have skin in the game.
	What did you think about the Brad Pitt?
	You may have done a review on it.
	The Brad Pitt tank movie.
	Fury?
	Why do you have to bring back all this?
	You've done a number of videos of that.
	I see them, Alex.
	I think it was critical, but I'm not sure.
	Look, the honest assessment is that they ripped out the heart of this movie.
	It could have been the masterpiece.
	I actually had a look at some of the deleted scenes of the movie, and the movie would have been 10 times better had they been...
	Kept in the movie.
	They cut out all the dramatic parts, and they only kept the stupid battles.
	And then it's just dumb.
	It's just dumb.
	It just portrays the Germans are super dumb.
	Oh, Alex, look at you.
	Look at your little baby face with the little mustache.
	Oh, my goodness.
	How young?
	This is two years ago?
	Oh, look at this.
	Well, anyways, I know that you did a number of them.
	I haven't seen the movie Fury, but I remember it when it came out.
	The thing is, the problem is that it's always taking the Germans for dummies.
	They always miss their targets.
	It's like in Star Wars, you know, the stormtroopers.
	You know, you have the Jedi's arrive and they...
	The stormtroopers miss all their targets, and they portray World War II like this, but there's actual themes brought up in the deleted scenes that could have been interesting.
	For example, I'll give you an example.
	In the U.S. Army during World War II, once you enter the force in Europe, you cannot be rotated out and go home until you're in a coffin or wounded.
	That means that if you entered the war, you would fight the war until the end.
	Now, the guys from Fury in that tank were fighting since 1942, and now it's 1945.
	They've been three years into the war.
	And in these deleted scenes, you see that they're not there anymore psychologically.
	They're beasts.
	They want to die.
	They want to get out of this hell.
	This is why they're so reckless.
	But if the scenes where you see them cry and be completely...
	You remove the part where they explain how psychotic they are, like psychos, psychopaths.
	If you remove these parts, you don't understand their actions in the movie where they're so reckless.
	It's just because the US Army had this policy where if you go in the army, you have to stay until the end.
	And that's why the US Army had so many psychological casualties during World War II.
	Because these guys were considered the bigger threat to their own team.
	And there were cases where you had cooks, truck drivers sent to the front with zero days of training.
	And that would become a casualty two days later.
	Just because the US Army had to fill in the gaps.
	And that's the reality.
	And the movie shows this because the tank driver is actually a truck driver.
	But they had nobody else.
	But since they don't explain everything, just have to absorb it.
	And they cut out a lot of parts.
	And the movie...
	It's just a bunch of combat scenes that don't make sense, right?
	At least if they had this historical part and this dramatic aspect, I would have understood.
	But the battle scenes are ridiculous, yeah.
	What you're saying is the movie is a piece of shit.
	You're being very polite about it.
	I just knocked something over.
	Well, look, David, if I make YouTube videos that are at least 10 minutes long, I have to ramble on it.
	Now, you make me want to re-watch Das Boot.
	I'm not doing shorts.
	I'm not doing shorts, you know?
	And then what about video games?
	Because there's always a lot of criticism that video games...
	Minimize the nature of war.
	In the same way you're talking about Fury that could have captured the true psychological horror of the conflict and put those battles in emotional context and decided not to because of that.
	To what degree do you think video games minimize it versus how much are they accurate in at least the military components of the video games?
	A video game stays a video game.
	And in this part, I have to say it has to be entertaining.
	I've played myself.
	So you need a guy that survives against waves of enemies.
	Otherwise, you know, if you make a realistic war movie, video game, you're the soldier, you train for three weeks, you get to the trench and you're dead.
	That's the end of the video game, right?
	No, my problem is, again, the ideological part.
	I don't know if you've seen the movie 1917.
	Well, in that movie, for example, they show Indian soldiers speaking perfect English, mixed with British soldiers, and you see mixed, you see black British soldiers, mixed British soldiers, you even see Asians, and they're all fighting together.
	Yes, some of these were at the front, but in segregated units.
	That's what we don't say.
	The British even segregated Welsh soldiers from Irish ones, from Scottish ones.
	They would not mix everyone together.
	They tend to do this in video games a lot.
	They tend to switch history, make it more.
	Sometimes they talk about black soldiers, about how mistreated they are, and they make a fantasy story.
	And this is even more damaging almost than war movies because kids use these games and they're like, oh, this is what I've seen.
	And that's all they will know about it.
	And this is only one part of the puzzle, of the ideological puzzle.
	Like the very poetic description of David earlier, it's just one piece, and then you have another piece, and then another piece.
	Destabilize everything, you know?
	Now, so where can people follow you?
	Where can they support you?
	Where can they help you out and follow all the work you do?
	What has been the most rewarding part of this influencer lifestyle and of the whole experience over the last several years?
	So I'll start with the end, of course.
	The most rewarding part is to be free, and I think you guys know it.
	I wake up in the morning, and I'm happy to share knowledge with people.
	I don't have somebody looking over me, say, you have to be there at nine.
	It's about freedom.
	I want to be free of my travels.
	I want to be free of my movements.
	If I want to stop working today because I'm tired, I have the control of my life.
	And I think this is the greatest gift.
	During the pandemic, you know, you can do your own stuff.
	You're not forced to do anything.
	You're free.
	And I think if more people were free, it would be better, actually.
	Like freedom and not become forced to do stuff.
	So I'm happy of my life and to be in control of things.
	And to teach people.
	That's the second part.
	I always like to teach people about what I learn.
	Because, you know, you read all this stuff and you want to share your knowledge.
	If you're the only one, you go crazy, you know?
	It's amazing that you also have, like Robert, an understanding of the context of history, which most people can understand the words.
	I understand the words of how 9-11, how World War I got started.
	And now I've lived through 9-11.
	But no, it's an amazing thing to actually have an understanding of the context of history, which you seem to do, and may you impart it on the world because it's a unique skill.
	Yeah, and that's why I want to teach people debunk stuff.
	Just perhaps it can bring more peace, you know, to just tell people, look, there's not one bad people on Earth.
	Everybody's been through it.
	It's part of human history.
	If you look at slavery right now in the US, it's a hot topic.
	People think, yeah, white people came and took the slaves.
	They hunted them down.
	Well, it's more complicated.
	You know, you had African slavers that would capture other people from other tribes and sell them.
	And the Arabs did the same thing.
	And does it make it better?
	No.
	But you have to understand the context of how it happened.
	Otherwise, you're just indoctrinating people to be mad.
	Then you have people asking for reparations in the U.S. from everyone that is white.
	And what are they going to do?
	They're going to have a skin color grade, and they're like, oh, if you're this color, you have to pay, and if you're here, you receive the money.
	It's silly, but this is what tends to happen.
	So the name, are all the channels history legends in terms of...
	Yeah, so YouTube is the main one, History Legends.
	This is where I post the videos.
	I'm also on Instagram if you want to have some more private life stuff and regular life.
	It's History Legends 2 in remembrance of the first account that got destroyed.
	And I have History Legends underscore on Twitter.
	I'm trying to grow my Twitter because I think it's important and you can react to stuff.
	And I think this is how we talk.
	So I'm pretty happy and I've rumbled to where you are.
	If you want to see my videos, they're automatically downloaded there.
	I'm sharing the link everywhere in real time.
	Fantastic.
	And Alex, it's phenomenal.
	Here we go.
	To our locals community, I've screen grabbed all of the tips.
	I'll get to them tomorrow, the ones we didn't get to tonight, because this went longer than I thought it was going to go.
	It's amazing.
	Alex, you do amazing stuff.
	Everyone knows where to find you.
	We'll do this again.
	Just tease, everybody, before we end, what's your next video going to be about?
	About that Hannibal stuff and the movies, actually.
	So I had a practice run with you guys.
	I was thinking of what I could say, but I had a little training practice warm-up.
	So it's going to be about this.
	Fantastic.
	All right.
	And everybody, I'll put the links up.
	I always say I'll put them in the pinned comment.
	Send me all of the links, but I'll do it right when we're done so I don't forget.
	Alex, stick around.
	We will all say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone out there.
	Robert, are you...
	Your next appearance is the Duran next week?
	Yeah, next Tuesday, yep.
	Okay, next Tuesday.
	And we got our Sunday show, so that's that.
	Everybody, enjoy the evening.
	I will see you all, if not tomorrow, Friday.
	Alex, Robert, stick around.

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