Here’s a snippet on the Russo-Ukrainian War from an interview Joe Rogan did with former CIA officer Mike Baker last week.
Some takeaways:
Putin has been “pretty damn consistent over the years.”
If you look at what he did in Chechnya, if you look at what he did helping Assad in Syria, if you look at what he did annexing Crimea, if you look at Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia. 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.
We were too optimistic, thinking that he was thinking like we do in a rational process.
Intelligence on what Putin actually wants is hard because his inner circle keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Human intelligence is hard, and despite movies, blackmail or a honeytrap are rarely the most effective methods.
Putin was a KGB officer for 15 years, and he served in East Germany rather than the west. “He doesn’t really understand how we think.”
The collapse of communism 1989-1991 was a great opportunity for recruiting spies behind the iron curtain.
Putin thinks “You guys have disrespected me, fuck you all. I told you I want my spirit a sphere of influence, and I don’t care whether I have to break it.”
“He called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, and he’s he’s serious about that, he means that.”
He’s cut loose some of his own inner circle over the past couple of weeks.
“Was he given bad intel? Or was he given intel and choose to ignore it?” Like many dictators, Putin has a “thermocline of truth” (though Baker doesn’t use that phrase) between him and any possible bad news.
“They were gonna 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.”