Name: Ex-CIA Operative Mike Baker Gives His Analysis on the Israel-Hamas War
Uploaded: 2023-11-16T19:15:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ex-CIA Operative Mike Baker Gives His Analysis on the Israel-Hamas War' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-11-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ex-CIA Operative Mike Baker Gives His Analysis on the Israel-Hamas War' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-11-16. Transcript available.

the Joe Rogan experience from an intelligence perspective how did that
October 7th thing not get detected I mean doesn't the IDF don't they have
agents embedded in Hamas don't they don't they have like the most intense
security system ever and surveillance system ever they do yeah and it was a
massive intelligence failure and in part it was a very it was a very I don't
say sophisticated sophisticated is the wrong word but in terms of the planning
of this if you're conducting an operation or you're conducting any intelligence
really the concern then the first thing you need no need to worry about is need
to know right so how do you limit information how do you limit how do you
limit the dissemination of information about what you're doing and that's
just good opsec that's good operational security now that's what they did they
displayed extremely sophisticated I suppose operational security over this
because
you're right there's human sources that the IDF and and Shin Bet and others in
Israel have within Gaza there's the communications intercepts signals
intelligence you know there's just general surveillance that they're doing of
the
region in terms of movement of goods but most of that movement of goods
happens on the ground and 300 maybe 300 miles of tunnels in Gaza that they've
built using money by the way using money that was probably meant for clean
waterworks and other infrastructure and improving schools and hospitals that's
a
whole different angle to talk about but yeah I think the security side of
things by
doing that by limiting who knows about the operation and by because again there
you
could legitimately argue the political leadership of Hamas they had a sense you
know I'm sure at some point they approved a large-scale operation but the
people who
who really knew about this were the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps the IRGC
which
is is an organization with the Iranian regime and they're kind of the liaison
partners for
Hamas and Hezbollah they manage a lot of the training issues they funnel a lot
of the money that goes to
these organizations that are Iranian proxies and so you can count on the fact
that a
limited number within the IRGC were aware of the planning and the training
because
they did train Hamas operatives in Iran prior to 7 October so I think yeah that
it
was simply a matter of them saying all right this element this cell will have
knowledge of this during the course of training this these guys over here will
know this these people will know this and maybe a handful of people will
understand the full picture and we'll understand when we're going to do this
and it's all designed to keep it away from from Israeli intelligence and it was
ridiculously successful in that regard so you know and and and also you could
argue intelligence is a human operation so they are an endeavor so you're going
to
have failures on occasion you just don't want them to be this massive
you just don't want them to go there were occasional comments about the inclination
of Hamas to do something bigger no details no specific details and Hamas also
spent a great
deal of time leading up to this can I mean years convincing the Israeli
government through
their words through their actions or lack of actions that it was a new day and
that what they're
looking to do is create a different dynamic or relationship with the Israeli
government and so
the Israeli government became complacent and when they became complacent to
some degree over
Hamas and the fact that there hadn't been any strikes or hadn't been any
terrorist actions for a
period of time then what you saw was then they kind of turned inward and people
talk about the
political divisions within Israel and the fact that the government was in a bit
of disarray and there was it was a little dysfunctional a lot
of arguments going on that in part was because uh you know they had the not the
luxury but the ability to
kind of turn in on themselves because they didn't feel necessarily that that
except that threat outside
was as bad as it had been right and that they thought perhaps it's diminishing
perhaps you know Hamas is
changing its tune and that was a deliberate attempt by Hamas to lull them into
that state right and so
there were a lot of things going on at the same time but yeah there's no way
around it it's a massive
intelligence failure the most cynical and conspiratorial take on it is that
they let it happen because
this is the best way to destroy Hamas but they knew it was going to happen so
they allowed it to take place
yeah that's that's pretty cynical um
yeah i mean if you can get your head around that idea that they said yeah we're
going to let
Hamas or you know somehow encourage Hamas to come in and slaughter all these
women babies children men
um i suppose that's you know if someone can get there then god bless them that's
that's their right
but uh i'm not buying it um you know i've seen i've seen intelligence failures
before i know it can
happen no matter how many cameras you've got up no matter how good your signals
intelligence intercepts
are they to dumb that down right i'm not calling anybody on the phone because i
know you're going to
pick that up right i'm not going to talk about this anywhere right i want to
hand a note to my cousin
you know who runs a you know a part of a battalion in in Hamas you know they
got whatever two dozen
battalions so but i'm going to keep that communication as stupid as i can that's
what al-qaeda did right
and then and they dumbed it down and it becomes much more difficult they limit
the number of sources
who know about it that limits your target pool of of assets who can tell you
something um from a human
perspective and you know but again people are gonna i've seen some pretty wacky
conspiracy theories
come out of this since 7 october right and you know i'm i'm not buying that one
yeah the the most conspiratorial was that uh netanyahu was kind of on the way
out with the people
and that this is uh the way for him to sort of galvanize everybody and get
support and maintain
power and and then do what he actually wanted to do go in there and attack Hamas
yeah yeah well it's
it's it's one theory um but uh whenever you have something this chaotic you're
always going to have
a bunch of wacky theories yeah yeah and and you know i get that um because you
have a lot of people who
you know still refuse to believe that you know Hamas doesn't give a about
Palestinians and again
i keep going back to the same thing which is well take a look at Gaza you know
and uh tell me what
Hamas has done for the people of Gaza because again Palestinian people aren't
lined up 100 behind
them you know in fact there's you know there's been reports of looting of Hamas
uh facilities since
they've been losing their grip on on power um the Hamas leadership structure is
enormously wealthy
right they've they've stolen billions of dollars um that was theoretically
intended for Palestinian
improvements can you explain that like how did they get a hold of the money and
how is the money
allocated like say where is the money coming from when they get money for the
improvements in
sanitation and education and schools and all that it comes from it comes from a
variety of sources
look i think the the eu the european union is i think the largest donor still
to the palestinian
uh people and it comes through various um uh organizations so uh the united
nations the refugee office
uh unrw um the usaid usa id um and other and some ngos and well quite a few ngos
so money is donated or allocated by governments and the u.s is u.s is given
billions of dollars um to
through these organizations for the uh improvement of uh palestinian lives
right for and and part of that
came out of the oslo accord um the idea being you know band together um improve
the infrastructure for
the palestinians create this because that will march towards more stability and
eventually maybe that
allows for a solution a final you know that that will eventually come about and
whether it's a two
state solution or however it's worked out so that money flows in but since 2007
hamas controls what
goes it's like it's like when we give money to uh the taliban now giving money
to the taliban in
afghanistan and we like to pretend like they're going to use it for good causes
we like to pretend we
know where it's going or how it's being handled but this money flows into these
various organizations
and hamas controls what happens right so one way or another they get their
hands on that money and they
decide what they want to do with it and for the most part it has been for the
uh for the betterment of
hamas as an organization in part because that's what iran expects them to do
and iran also provides them
with funds um not the palestinian people iran directly funds hamas so over the
years
they have the leadership and particularly the political leadership who all
basically live outside
the of gaza in doha and in qatar um you know some reports and they're confirmed
by the u.s treasury
it's not just the israelis saying this you know they're billionaires at this
stage of life and you
know one of them's got a couple of kids who are on instagram right and they're
flying on private jets and
they're you know they probably went to the world cup when it was in doha and it's
it's it's ludicrous
because billions of dollars that literally were meant to provide clean water or
better schools or
whatever and people just you know continue to shake their fists and say it's
all israel's fault how is
the money allocated and where does it go and how does hamas get their hands on
the money like what what
is what's the expectations when they're giving this money and how i mean i don't
understand if they
know that it's going to hamas why are they still sending money well in part
because um that's
that's the purpose so so the u.s funds say the u.s says okay this year we're
giving whatever 400
million dollars uh through these various aid organizations now the aid
organizations at some
point on the ground right have to make a difference right they have to so money
has to go somewhere it
has to go to uh middlemen it has to go to somebody running a business who's
then going to provide
resources whatever that is uh grain something whatever transportation trucking
to move things
around gaza whatever it is and hamas um it's like it's like a criminal gang
right it's like an extortion
bracket almost they they take their cut um they tax uh the uh resources that
are brought in right um most
of those things have to move most efficient way to move goods and services
through gaza at this point
because of all the work they've done in the tunnels is the tunnels so they tax
goods moving through the
tunnels they make their money right and i don't want to i'm not equating hamas
necessarily to a to a mob
but it's kind of what they've been doing and so now the money that comes from
iran that's a different
that's that's that's direct that's direct to hamas again they take their cut
right i have it off but
then they spend it because they're beholden to iran they spend it on what they're
supposed to which is
you know more weapons uh more gear uh paying their their fighters um and so
yeah i just i keep coming back around to to this notion that
you know the palestinian people have been getting screwed you know left and
right there's no doubt
about it right and um civilian casualties are are tragic and sad right but we
live in a very
pragmatic world you know hopefully we're not i mean you can't rule this thing
by feelings and hope and
you know positivity it's not it's hamas chose a certain path and they have to
be dealt with right
because um if you stop and allow them to say okay well hamas is still there
they're still running things
nothing nothing changes doesn't improve the lives of the palestinians right
continues to fuel and fund
terror so okay fine if you feel better about a ceasefire and kicking the can
down the road but you're not
it don't don't pretend like you're solving something you know so so when the
money gets allocated it's like
say if there's money that's being sent to palestine for clean water and all who's
receiving that money
well it goes it's funneled through the organization so like that money is is
is think about it like a bank account it's deposited with the un refugee office
they decide they allocate um because they have essentially vendors right who
are saying okay we're
going to provide whatever penicillin or we're going to provide hospital beds so
they they're parsing
this out to a variety of vendors both in in uh and you know there's an attempt
to try to ensure that
it's uh palestinian businesses and hamas also runs enterprises overseas right
so or sorry outside of gaza
so they run you know businesses uh in uh turkey and a variety of other
countries right um so sometimes
that money is going to a hamas control business right to then purchase what
theoretically purchase
whatever is necessary um we shouldn't imagine that hamas is they're not like al
qaeda they're not
sitting in a cave somewhere right they've been doing this for a while and um
you know it's
it's a bit like uh it's a bit like the ira ira started out with a very clear
mandate
right eventually an element of it was just about drugs and and guns and you
know money um so
yeah keep coming back around to hamas they they realized they got a good thing
going right
stability is not going to keep that gravy tan running so
Thank you.

Ex-CIA Operative Mike Baker Gives His Analysis on the Israel-Hamas War

the Joe Rogan experience from an intelligence perspective how did that
October 7th thing not get detected I mean doesn't the IDF don't they have
agents embedded in Hamas don't they don't they have like the most intense
security system ever and surveillance system ever they do yeah and it was a
massive intelligence failure and in part it was a very it was a very I don't
say sophisticated sophisticated is the wrong word but in terms of the planning
of this if you're conducting an operation or you're conducting any intelligence
really the concern then the first thing you need no need to worry about is need
to know right so how do you limit information how do you limit how do you
limit the dissemination of information about what you're doing and that's
just good opsec that's good operational security now that's what they did they
displayed extremely sophisticated I suppose operational security over this
because
you're right there's human sources that the IDF and and Shin Bet and others in
Israel have within Gaza there's the communications intercepts signals
intelligence you know there's just general surveillance that they're doing of
the
region in terms of movement of goods but most of that movement of goods
happens on the ground and 300 maybe 300 miles of tunnels in Gaza that they've
built using money by the way using money that was probably meant for clean
waterworks and other infrastructure and improving schools and hospitals that's
a
whole different angle to talk about but yeah I think the security side of
things by
doing that by limiting who knows about the operation and by because again there
you
could legitimately argue the political leadership of Hamas they had a sense you
know I'm sure at some point they approved a large-scale operation but the
people who
who really knew about this were the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps the IRGC
which
is is an organization with the Iranian regime and they're kind of the liaison
partners for
Hamas and Hezbollah they manage a lot of the training issues they funnel a lot
of the money that goes to
these organizations that are Iranian proxies and so you can count on the fact
that a
limited number within the IRGC were aware of the planning and the training
because
they did train Hamas operatives in Iran prior to 7 October so I think yeah that
it
was simply a matter of them saying all right this element this cell will have
knowledge of this during the course of training this these guys over here will
know this these people will know this and maybe a handful of people will
understand the full picture and we'll understand when we're going to do this
and it's all designed to keep it away from from Israeli intelligence and it was
ridiculously successful in that regard so you know and and and also you could
argue intelligence is a human operation so they are an endeavor so you're going
to
have failures on occasion you just don't want them to be this massive
you just don't want them to go there were occasional comments about the inclination
of Hamas to do something bigger no details no specific details and Hamas also
spent a great
deal of time leading up to this can I mean years convincing the Israeli
government through
their words through their actions or lack of actions that it was a new day and
that what they're
looking to do is create a different dynamic or relationship with the Israeli
government and so
the Israeli government became complacent and when they became complacent to
some degree over
Hamas and the fact that there hadn't been any strikes or hadn't been any
terrorist actions for a
period of time then what you saw was then they kind of turned inward and people
talk about the
political divisions within Israel and the fact that the government was in a bit
of disarray and there was it was a little dysfunctional a lot
of arguments going on that in part was because uh you know they had the not the
luxury but the ability to
kind of turn in on themselves because they didn't feel necessarily that that
except that threat outside
was as bad as it had been right and that they thought perhaps it's diminishing
perhaps you know Hamas is
changing its tune and that was a deliberate attempt by Hamas to lull them into
that state right and so
there were a lot of things going on at the same time but yeah there's no way
around it it's a massive
intelligence failure the most cynical and conspiratorial take on it is that
they let it happen because
this is the best way to destroy Hamas but they knew it was going to happen so
they allowed it to take place
yeah that's that's pretty cynical um
yeah i mean if you can get your head around that idea that they said yeah we're
going to let
Hamas or you know somehow encourage Hamas to come in and slaughter all these
women babies children men
um i suppose that's you know if someone can get there then god bless them that's
that's their right
but uh i'm not buying it um you know i've seen i've seen intelligence failures
before i know it can
happen no matter how many cameras you've got up no matter how good your signals
intelligence intercepts
are they to dumb that down right i'm not calling anybody on the phone because i
know you're going to
pick that up right i'm not going to talk about this anywhere right i want to
hand a note to my cousin
you know who runs a you know a part of a battalion in in Hamas you know they
got whatever two dozen
battalions so but i'm going to keep that communication as stupid as i can that's
what al-qaeda did right
and then and they dumbed it down and it becomes much more difficult they limit
the number of sources
who know about it that limits your target pool of of assets who can tell you
something um from a human
perspective and you know but again people are gonna i've seen some pretty wacky
conspiracy theories
come out of this since 7 october right and you know i'm i'm not buying that one
yeah the the most conspiratorial was that uh netanyahu was kind of on the way
out with the people
and that this is uh the way for him to sort of galvanize everybody and get
support and maintain
power and and then do what he actually wanted to do go in there and attack Hamas
yeah yeah well it's
it's it's one theory um but uh whenever you have something this chaotic you're
always going to have
a bunch of wacky theories yeah yeah and and you know i get that um because you
have a lot of people who
you know still refuse to believe that you know Hamas doesn't give a about
Palestinians and again
i keep going back to the same thing which is well take a look at Gaza you know
and uh tell me what
Hamas has done for the people of Gaza because again Palestinian people aren't
lined up 100 behind
them you know in fact there's you know there's been reports of looting of Hamas
uh facilities since
they've been losing their grip on on power um the Hamas leadership structure is
enormously wealthy
right they've they've stolen billions of dollars um that was theoretically
intended for Palestinian
improvements can you explain that like how did they get a hold of the money and
how is the money
allocated like say where is the money coming from when they get money for the
improvements in
sanitation and education and schools and all that it comes from it comes from a
variety of sources
look i think the the eu the european union is i think the largest donor still
to the palestinian
uh people and it comes through various um uh organizations so uh the united
nations the refugee office
uh unrw um the usaid usa id um and other and some ngos and well quite a few ngos
so money is donated or allocated by governments and the u.s is u.s is given
billions of dollars um to
through these organizations for the uh improvement of uh palestinian lives
right for and and part of that
came out of the oslo accord um the idea being you know band together um improve
the infrastructure for
the palestinians create this because that will march towards more stability and
eventually maybe that
allows for a solution a final you know that that will eventually come about and
whether it's a two
state solution or however it's worked out so that money flows in but since 2007
hamas controls what
goes it's like it's like when we give money to uh the taliban now giving money
to the taliban in
afghanistan and we like to pretend like they're going to use it for good causes
we like to pretend we
know where it's going or how it's being handled but this money flows into these
various organizations
and hamas controls what happens right so one way or another they get their
hands on that money and they
decide what they want to do with it and for the most part it has been for the
uh for the betterment of
hamas as an organization in part because that's what iran expects them to do
and iran also provides them
with funds um not the palestinian people iran directly funds hamas so over the
years
they have the leadership and particularly the political leadership who all
basically live outside
the of gaza in doha and in qatar um you know some reports and they're confirmed
by the u.s treasury
it's not just the israelis saying this you know they're billionaires at this
stage of life and you
know one of them's got a couple of kids who are on instagram right and they're
flying on private jets and
they're you know they probably went to the world cup when it was in doha and it's
it's it's ludicrous
because billions of dollars that literally were meant to provide clean water or
better schools or
whatever and people just you know continue to shake their fists and say it's
all israel's fault how is
the money allocated and where does it go and how does hamas get their hands on
the money like what what
is what's the expectations when they're giving this money and how i mean i don't
understand if they
know that it's going to hamas why are they still sending money well in part
because um that's
that's the purpose so so the u.s funds say the u.s says okay this year we're
giving whatever 400
million dollars uh through these various aid organizations now the aid
organizations at some
point on the ground right have to make a difference right they have to so money
has to go somewhere it
has to go to uh middlemen it has to go to somebody running a business who's
then going to provide
resources whatever that is uh grain something whatever transportation trucking
to move things
around gaza whatever it is and hamas um it's like it's like a criminal gang
right it's like an extortion
bracket almost they they take their cut um they tax uh the uh resources that
are brought in right um most
of those things have to move most efficient way to move goods and services
through gaza at this point
because of all the work they've done in the tunnels is the tunnels so they tax
goods moving through the
tunnels they make their money right and i don't want to i'm not equating hamas
necessarily to a to a mob
but it's kind of what they've been doing and so now the money that comes from
iran that's a different
that's that's that's direct that's direct to hamas again they take their cut
right i have it off but
then they spend it because they're beholden to iran they spend it on what they're
supposed to which is
you know more weapons uh more gear uh paying their their fighters um and so
yeah i just i keep coming back around to to this notion that
you know the palestinian people have been getting screwed you know left and
right there's no doubt
about it right and um civilian casualties are are tragic and sad right but we
live in a very
pragmatic world you know hopefully we're not i mean you can't rule this thing
by feelings and hope and
you know positivity it's not it's hamas chose a certain path and they have to
be dealt with right
because um if you stop and allow them to say okay well hamas is still there
they're still running things
nothing nothing changes doesn't improve the lives of the palestinians right
continues to fuel and fund
terror so okay fine if you feel better about a ceasefire and kicking the can
down the