Name: Former CIA Officer Mike Baker on Ukraine and Putin
Uploaded: 2022-03-19T17:00:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Former CIA Officer Mike Baker on Ukraine and Putin' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Former CIA Officer Mike Baker on Ukraine and Putin' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-19. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan experience the Putin thing scares the shit out of me though
because he's a you know
when it comes to
Warlords he's a legitimate warlord. Yeah, who is in charge of I didn't know
that they had
More nukes than us. I mean, I guess it's kind of a moot point right because
Everybody's got a need. Yeah, how many everybody's got enough to kill everybody
how many times over? Yeah, isn't it something crazy?
Like ten times over yeah, they did the math and it was it was in double digits.
It's not good. It's not it's not good
But it's look if you if you step back everybody's everybody's thinking okay,
how did this you know?
How did this fucked up situation happen? Well, it's been building obviously
right?
I mean we have how much news coverage did we have of well
They're adding more troops to the border with Ukraine wonder what they're doing.
Could it be military exercises?
So there was a tremendous amount of speculation
Leading up to what the fuck is going on
which in a sense points to how
Lacking the intelligence is on on Putin on plans and intentions right and he's
like that's a heavy lift right to come up with that sort of Intel
Because ideally you're gonna want a human source
You know, you can get so again
You can get whatever you could you can gather intelligence from a variety of
sources
But you really want human access people who can tell you you know what I had a
meeting with him and
Boy, I tell you what he was pissed off or this is what he said or this is how
he looked
Without that without knowing what plans and intentions are or you know being
able to gather intel on say the command staff
Everybody was kind of speculating will he won't he what's he going to do?
Well stepping back if you look at what he's done
He's been pretty damn consistent right over the years
And so I guess you know in a part a lot of it was optimistic thinking okay
He's he just wants the eastern part of the country
He's just gonna go in there and take that because you know, maybe he's he's
already got it
He's declared those two republics legit. Maybe that's all he wants. He's
already taken crimea
And so that I think that was optimistic thinking hoping that you know
The guy's not gonna lose his shit and go all all the way through the country
Well, that's what he's done and in part because again
If you look at what he did in chechnya if you look at what he did helping asad
in syria if you look at what he did
Annexing crimea if you look at georgia abkhazia south of seshia
every step of the way
He's been following in his mind
This stated desire that he's made very public over the years
To rebuild his sphere of influence, right?
so
In part you could argue we kind of miss the obvious, right?
We didn't see the obvious in front of us because we were all kind of hoping and
mirroring our values on onto
Putin who doesn't deserve to have our values mirrored on to him
Because we're thinking maybe maybe he just wants a little bit
Maybe he's just trying to make a point. Maybe he just wants them to sign a
charter saying they won't be part of nato
So anyway, uh, I you know, my point being twofold, I guess we we missed the
boat on that
We missed it in part because we were always trying to be optimistic and trying
to think okay
Well, maybe they think like we do maybe there's a rational process there and
then part of it is
Intel was lacking and when it comes to intel when you're talking about like in-person
intel
How difficult is that to get on a guy like putin?
It's really tough
It's I mean that you know look it's a it's a very heavy lift the higher they go
up the food chain
um
Because the the smaller your pool of potential access points are right so, you
know
You've got some mid-level person floating around, you know, a government office
somewhere in some target country
And you know, maybe you've got lots of options. Okay, who do they socialize
with right?
Who can I get access to who who might you know be next to them, you know, do
they have a driver?
Can I recruit the driver? There's things like that, right? It's sometimes it's
very simple, but
Putin's had a
Increasingly small circle of of close advisors and the people that he he counts
on and trusts
And part of that may be you know
The fact that that was accelerated through the two-year pandemic where he
Decidedly was shutting himself off because he was he was you know paranoid like
a lot of people were about covid
Do you remember when there was a guy who suicide drove into putin's car and putin
wasn't in it?
Yeah, that when was that that was a few years back. Yeah, some guy
There was oncoming traffic and he timed it
Right when there must have been someone communicating with them letting him
know where putin's car is
But putin wasn't even in it. Yeah, and turned right into oncoming traffic and
used his car as a weapon and killed the both of them
Yeah, yeah, I think killed the both of them
Um, yeah, I'll get we'll get you to look up when that when that was seen you've
seen the video
Yeah, it was it was a while back though. It was uh four or five years. Yeah, um,
but he's
You know people have been talking about is he is he losing his shit? Is he you
know, is he going crazy?
I don't think he's I don't think it's any of that right
He like gets on a table when he negotiates and talks to people. He's like 40
feet away. Yeah, yeah
and so he but he and
That assessment was was clear during the course of the pandemic. He was he was
isolating himself
He was being you know, very very cautious, but I mean and so maybe that had
something to do with it
But he anyway point being is is it's tough to
When you've got a small potential well of targets you can go after when you're
talking about recruiting somebody who's got access to a high priority target
That's you know, that's that's probably one of the heaviest lifts we've got
How do you get like how does someone get access to like a driver do you use a
girl?
um, is that the best way to do it? No, not really. I mean, you know what it's
Because what you're looking to do this is not to fall into like, you know, spy
talk and recruitment 101, but
um
the movies and beach books and everything will have you believe that you know,
the best way to
Hook somebody to recruit somebody is you know blackmail or or a honey trap or
something, you know, there's right usually
You're working on on something else. You're not necessarily working on the
ideology
But you don't want to start from a negative basis, right because rig
in even in normal terms in the best of circumstances when somebody's recruited
to
Spy on their country to spy on on their organization, whatever it may be
There's a clock starts ticking, you know, and because because things start to
decay, right?
The person starts to decay. It's very wearing on a human, right and for a
variety of reasons
Uh, and so, you know that window is going to close at some point and it may not
end well
So you're trying to optimize that and if you start from a negative perspective,
right?
If you if you're you've got someone cooperating with you because they're blackmailing
They're under the gun here and and and they hate you and they hate, you know,
what they're doing
That's not what you're looking for
You're looking for a more and it sounds weird, but you're looking for a more
positive
So, how do you do that? Like how would you get a driver to be your buddy?
well, um
it's like
There's a there's a recruitment process a cycle that you go through, but
I hope everyone's taking notes, uh, but you, uh
First of all, you got to know what information you're looking for, right?
And and so that that tasking gets set, you know outside the the building if you're
talking about the agency or or really any head intel service
Theoretically the administration of power is setting priority tasking
So they send over this and they say hey, we need this is a priority target for
us
This information so you look around you go. Okay. Well, who's got access to the
information?
Um, all right, you build up that world then you figure out who might be
accessible, right?
Because maybe you you're interested in in you know, uh, a target here, but he
never leaves that country
You know, it's a denied area and uh
So then you find out who's got the access to the information who might be
accessible
Why might they be minded to talk to you? Can you create a scenario where you
can get next to them?
Uh, and then you're looking for points of leverage, right?
You're really looking and that doesn't necessarily mean you're looking to find
a negative, right?
You're looking for something that drives them what makes it are their kids the
most important thing to them, right?
Do they do they have a kid who you know needs medical attention?
Um, do they have a kid who they desperately want to send away to college, but
they don't have the money, you know
So you're looking for something like that that may
Again, it sounds strange because you're talking about recruiting somebody for
espionage, but it's a positive rather than a negative
And that creates then a longer shelf life in a sense for that asset if that
makes sense
It does make sense
But it would have I would imagine that when you're dealing with someone like
say kim jong-un or putin or you know some
dictator
Like they they have to be prepared for things like this, right?
So they probably are very cautious on who gets into their inner circle
Yeah, and that's that's a counterintelligence issue, right? So every you know
every government out there
um, you know, they're worried about that
that very thing, right? And so
I mean look and putin he was a kgb
officer for 15 years, right?
Yeah
Now interestingly going back to putin he
He served in east germany. I think for about half a dozen years
Uh, never really had an exposure to the west so that's also something when you
when you're talking about trying to assess his
Mindset understand where he's coming from part of it is look if he had if he
had been exposed to the the west in a much bigger way
Maybe he served in new york, you know, or he served in wherever, you know
London someplace where he had more exposure
But you look at that guy and you go he doesn't really understand how we think,
right?
And so that's an important thing
You got to tick that box and put that in there when you're doing an assessment
of his personality and trying to because that's part of
Understanding why he's doing what he's doing. You don't think he understands
how we think?
In what way?
Well, I know fundamentally. I mean if you look if you live in an environment,
right?
If you
You know if you go to china you live in you're wherever you know shenzhen or shanghai
or basing
And you're there for a few years you're gonna understand the culture the
mindset much better than you know
Somebody who's never lived there and is you know, just you know sitting in washington
in a think tank talking about what the chinese regime may do next
So it's that immersion. It's that exposure. It's dealing with those people
Um, it's the contact that you have
Um, look, I'm you know, i'm old enough that I remember we uh
When the when the wall started to fall, uh, when when the soviet union was
collapsing
From our perspective, right as a as a as a government as an intel service,
right?
We saw that as an opportunity there's chaos there, right and what did you have
you had
Intel officers like putin right kgb gru officers who saw their world collapsing
around them because
At the time before the the the soviet union collapsed they were living the good
life, right?
They were the elite in a sense, right? They were they were pampered their kids
were going to get the best education
They were set for life their kids were set for life
All of a sudden the soviet union starts going to shit, right and you could see
it and you know, so what did we do?
Well, we were out there busy, right working over whatever targets we might have
access to trying to see if
Maybe they think you know, maybe there's another option here. Maybe there's an
alternative. Maybe I can uh, you know
Save myself my family
You know, perhaps put aside some money by working for the other side and that's
a natural thing to do right every service is going to do that
If there's chaos on the other side, so
I remember you could see the confusion and the humiliation right and the fear
in some of these guys
As this was happening
And so putin went through that same process again
It's one of those things that you do you you put all that together to try to
create this profile of this of this individual, right?
So i'm not buying the talk when you know people get on tv and go. Oh, he's
going crazy. He's losing his mind. He's a
I'm not buying that there's a reason why he's he's he's driving the way he is
and again
He's being somewhat consistent. He's never given a shit about civilian
casualties, right?
Never bothered him before I mean that that
Yeah, that situation in chechnya when they went in there, right?
And I mean that was that was yeah, I have to argue there was the other side was
you know
Was different as well some of the chechen separatists were and some of the shit
that they were pulling
But at the same time, he didn't care whether he was killing civilians or you
know separatists and you know members of their
militia and military so
I don't know. I think it's it's one of those things where I think with with putin
we've got to uh
We got to be really pragmatic here. We got to understand. I don't think he's he's
not crazy
He's not gonna say okay. I'm in a corner
I'm gonna I'm gonna push the button and fire off a couple of tactical nukes,
right?
I think what he's gotten to the point is is you know, you guys have disrespected
me
This is how he thinks right you've disrespected me. Fuck you all
I told you I want my spear of in a sphere of influence and I don't care where
that to break it
I'm gonna have it when you say sphere of influence. Do you mean he wants to
reclaim?
What is the former soviet union?
Yeah, he said that he said he said publicly in the past
He called uh, the collapse of the soviet union the greatest tragedy of the 20th
century
That's and he's he's serious about that. He means that
So he's not he's not fucking around
Um, and and again
If we look at it, he's being consistent, right? He's being consistent over the
years
He's is a you know, he's uh, he's a dictator. He's a despot
He's looking increasingly more like, you know, he's isolating himself
which
You know, that's that's a danger
In a sense to
All those people around him, right?
He's already cut loose some of his inner circle just over the past couple of
weeks, right?
Has he?
Yeah, he's gotten rid of his is uh, well, he put under house arrest a couple of
his fsb
uh, uh senior command
Why do you do that?
The domestic service because
Because the intel was so bad
Because going in
Oh, because of ukraine?
Yeah, because of ukraine. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, because of ukraine
So they went in and the assumption wasn't and now again
This is where our intel is lacking
Was he given bad intel or was he given intel and he just chose to ignore it?
But it appears as if
What he believed and what the top military commanders some of whom have also
been let go
um
Or possibly reassigned. I don't think that's a good thing in in russia
uh, is
That they were going to they were going to get in there maybe within 48 hours
They were going to have control of kiev. They would be welcomed by the
population in ukraine
And they would be able to establish
A puppet regime a new government. I mean they moved the previous president that
was a you know, russian backed
They moved him from russia to uh, minsk
Uh in preparation it appeared to move him down to take over the government
Which is in a sense batshit crazy because he was kicked out during the during
the last revolution, right?
But that was 2014. Yeah, that was that orange revolution that they had
Thank you.

Former CIA Officer Mike Baker on Ukraine and Putin

The Joe Rogan experience the Putin thing scares the shit out of me though
because he's a you know
when it comes to
Warlords he's a legitimate warlord. Yeah, who is in charge of I didn't know
that they had
More nukes than us. I mean, I guess it's kind of a moot point right because
Everybody's got a need. Yeah, how many everybody's got enough to kill everybody
how many times over? Yeah, isn't it something crazy?
Like ten times over yeah, they did the math and it was it was in double digits.
It's not good. It's not it's not good
But it's look if you if you step back everybody's everybody's thinking okay,
how did this you know?
How did this fucked up situation happen? Well, it's been building obviously
right?
I mean we have how much news coverage did we have of well
They're adding more troops to the border with Ukraine wonder what they're doing.
Could it be military exercises?
So there was a tremendous amount of speculation
Leading up to what the fuck is going on
which in a sense points to how
Lacking the intelligence is on on Putin on plans and intentions right and he's
like that's a heavy lift right to come up with that sort of Intel
Because ideally you're gonna want a human source
You know, you can get so again
You can get whatever you could you can gather intelligence from a variety of
sources
But you really want human access people who can tell you you know what I had a
meeting with him and
Boy, I tell you what he was pissed off or this is what he said or this is how
he looked
Without that without knowing what plans and intentions are or you know being
able to gather intel on say the command staff
Everybody was kind of speculating will he won't he what's he going to do?
Well stepping back if you look at what he's done
He's been pretty damn consistent right over the years
And so I guess you know in a part a lot of it was optimistic thinking okay
He's he just wants the eastern part of the country
He's just gonna go in there and take that because you know, maybe he's he's
already got it
He's declared those two republics legit. Maybe that's all he wants. He's
already taken crimea
And so that I think that was optimistic thinking hoping that you know
The guy's not gonna lose his shit and go all all the way through the country
Well, that's what he's done and in part because again
If you look at what he did in chechnya if you look at what he did helping asad
in syria if you look at what he did
Annexing crimea if you look at georgia abkhazia south of seshia
every step of the way
He's been following in his mind
This stated desire that he's made very public over the years
To rebuild his sphere of influence, right?
so
In part you could argue we kind of miss the obvious, right?
We didn't see the obvious in front of us because we were all kind of hoping and
mirroring our values on onto
Putin who doesn't deserve to have our values mirrored on to him
Because we're thinking maybe maybe he just wants a little bit
Maybe he's just trying to make a point. Maybe he just wants them to sign a
charter saying they won't be part of nato
So anyway, uh, I you know, my point being twofold, I guess we we missed the
boat on that
We missed it in part because we were always trying to be optimistic and trying
to think okay
Well, maybe they think like we do maybe there's a rational process there and
then part of it is
Intel was lacking and when it comes to intel when you're talking about like in-person
intel
How difficult is that to get on a guy like putin?
It's really tough
It's I mean that you know look it's a it's a very heavy lift the higher they go
up the food chain
um
Because the the smaller your pool of potential access points are right so, you
know
You've got some mid-level person floating around, you know, a government office
somewhere in some target country
And you know, maybe you've got lots of options. Okay, who do they socialize
with right?
Who can I get access to who who might you know be next to them, you know, do
they have a driver?
Can I recruit the driver? There's things like that, right? It's sometimes it's
very simple, but
Putin's had a
Increasingly small circle of of close advisors and the people that he he counts
on and trusts
And part of that may be you know
The fact that that was accelerated through the two-year pandemic where he
Decidedly was shutting himself off because he was he was you know paranoid like
a lot of people were about covid
Do you remember when there was a guy who suicide drove into putin's car and putin
wasn't in it?
Yeah, that when was that that was a few years back. Yeah, some guy
There was oncoming traffic and he timed it
Right when there must have been someone communicating with them letting him
know where putin's car is
But putin wasn't even in it. Yeah, and turned right into oncoming traffic and
used his car as a weapon and killed the both of them
Yeah, yeah, I think killed the both of them
Um, yeah, I'll get we'll get you to look up when that when that was seen you've
seen the video
Yeah, it was it was a while back though. It was uh four or five years. Yeah, um,
but he's
You know people have been talking about is he is he losing his shit? Is he you
know, is he going crazy?
I don't think he's I don't think it's any of that right
He like gets on a table when he negotiates and talks to people. He's like 40
feet away. Yeah, yeah
and so he but he and
That assessment was was clear during the course of the pandemic. He was he was
isolating himself
He was being you know, very very cautious, but I mean and so maybe that had
something to do with it
But he anyway point being is is it's tough to
When you've got a small potential well of targets you can go after when you're
talking about recruiting somebody who's got access to a high priority target
That's you know, that's that's probably one of the heaviest lifts we've got
How do you get like how does someone get access to like a driver do you use a
girl?
um, is that the best way to do it? No, not really. I mean, you know what it's
Because what you're looking to do this is not to fall into like, you know, spy
talk and recruitment 101, but
um
the movies and beach books and everything will have you believe that you know,
the best way to
Hook somebody to recruit somebody is you know blackmail or or a honey trap or
something, you know, there's right usually
You're working on on something else. You're not necessarily working on the
ideology
But you don't want to start from a negative basis, right because rig
in even in normal terms in the best of circumstances when somebody's recruited
to
Spy on their country to spy on on their organization, whatever it may be
There's a clock starts ticking, you know, and because because things start to
decay, right?
The person starts to decay. It's very wearing on a human, right and for a
variety of reasons
Uh, and so, you know that window is going to close at some point and it may not
end well
So you're trying to optimize that and if you start from a negative perspective,
right?
If you if you're you've got someone cooperating with you because they're blackmailing
They're under the gun here and and and they hate you and they hate, you know,
what they're doing
That's not what you're looking for
You're looking for a more and it sounds weird, but you're looking for a more
positive
So, how do you do that? Like how would you get a driver to be your buddy?
well, um
it's like
There's a there's a recruitment process a cycle that you go through, but
I hope everyone's taking notes, uh, but you, uh
First of all, you got to know what information you're looking for, right?
And and so that that tasking gets set, you know outside the the building if you're
talking about the agency or or really any head intel service
Theoretically the administration of power is setting priority tasking
So they send over this and they say hey, we need this is a priority target for
us
This information so you look around you go. Okay. Well, who's got access to the
information?
Um, all right, you build up that world then you figure out who might be
accessible, right?
Because maybe you you're interested in in you know, uh, a target here, but he
never leaves that country
You know, it's a denied area and uh
So then you find out who's got the access to the information who might be
accessible
Why might they be minded to talk to you? Can you create a scenario where you
can get next to them?
Uh, and then you're looking for points of leverage, right?
You're really looking and that doesn't necessarily mean you're looking to find
a negative, right?
You're looking for something that drives them what makes it are their kids the
most important thing to them, right?
Do they do they have a kid who you know needs medical attention?
Um, do they have a kid who they desperately want to send away to college, but
they don't have the money, you know
So you're looking for something like that that may
Again, it sounds strange because you're talking about recruiting somebody for
espionage, but it's a positive rather than a negative
And that creates then a longer shelf life in a sense for that asset if that
makes sense
It does make sense
But it would have I would imagine that when you're dealing with someone like
say kim jong-un or putin or you know some
dictator
Like they they have to be prepared for things like this, right?
So they probably are very cautious on who gets into their inner circle
Yeah, and that's that's a counterintelligence issue, right? So every you know
every government out there
um, you know, they're worried about that
that very thing, right? And so
I mean look and putin he was a kgb
officer for 15 years, right?
Yeah
Now interestingly going back to putin he
He served in east germany. I think for about half a dozen years
Uh, never really had an exposure to the west so that's also something when you
when you're talking about trying to assess his
Mindset understand where he's coming from part of it is look if he had if he
had been exposed to the the west in a much bigger way
Maybe he served in new york, you know, or he served in wherever, you know
London someplace where he had more exposure
But you look at that guy and you go he doesn't really understand how we think,
right?
And so that's an important thing
You got to tick that box and put that in there when you're doing an assessment
of his personality and trying to because that's part of
Understanding why he's doing what he's doing. You don't think he understands
how we think?
In what way?
Well, I know fundamentally. I mean if you look if you live in an environment,
right?
If you
You know if you go to china you live in you're wherever you know shenzhen or shanghai
or basing
And you're there for a few years you're gonna understand the culture the
mindset much better than you know
Somebody who's never lived there and is you know, just you know sitting in washington
in a think tank talking about what the chinese regime may do next
So it's that immersion. It's that exposure. It's dealing with those people
Um, it's the contact that you have
Um, look, I'm you know, i'm old enough that I remember we uh
When the when the wall started to fall, uh, when when the soviet union was
collapsing
From our perspective, right as a as a as a government as an intel service,
right?
We saw that as an opportunity there's chaos there, right and what did you have
you had
Intel officers like putin right kgb gru officers who saw their world collapsing
around them because
At the time before the the the soviet union collapsed they were living the good
life, right?
They were the elite in a sense, right? They were they were pampered their kids
were going to get the best education
They were set for life their kids were set for life
All of a sudden the soviet union starts going to shit, right and you could see
it and you know, so what did we do?
Well, we were out there busy, right working over whatever targets we might have
access to trying to see if
Maybe they think you know, maybe there's another option here. May