Episode 92: Dr. Scott Shumate Profiles Russian President Vladimir Putin

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Loop.Com hi, I'm Matt Devoe, CEO of OODA and on this Oodacast we're talking with Scott Shumate who has 30 plus year career in profiling interesting individuals, whether they be national leaders, terrorists or insider threats. So Scott, welcome to the oodacast and love for you to give our watchers and listeners a bit about your backgr.

Okay, thanks Matt. It's good to be here. I've actually had a very intriguing career. Actually I've been very lucky. But I worked first in the career for 19 years with the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover officer doing operational psychology. And you know, when I say that most people think okay, a psychologist sitting at a desk, smoking a pipe and rubbing his chin or and listening to people talk about things and you can remove all of it except for listening to people talk very much out in the field and have had the opportunity to meet literally thousands of people of interest to the United States government and, or you know, a recruited asset and, or ones that we were trying to recruit. And what I can tell you is I know, I see these things that people believe that, you know, like narcissism is the. And number one reason why people become spies. And I can't tell you how fervently I disagree with that. But so I worked for the agency for 19 years at the very end, got involved with the enhanced interrogation techniques and terrorism suspects and then got an offer from the Department of Defense for a senior executive position. And so I left DO or I left CIA and went to DOD and started working for them in counterintelligence, which is not intelligence. And, and it was quite a wrap up to get on top of everything. And the other thing that I found fascinating is the DoD people can hold complete conversations without ever really using a recognized word of English because they have all of the brain fog like you were talking about earlier.

All the acronyms and complexity.

Yeah, acronyms. So I did that for four years and then retired from the government. And then I was walking around downtown just kind of wandering around and ran into a guy that I served with the agency that was an FBI agent. And he said, hey, what are you doing? And so we started talking and he said, would you be willing to come on contract to the FBI? And I said yeah. What they were wanting to do is increase their assets, being able to recruit assets to provide information. That's right up my bailiwick. And so I worked for the FBI as a contractor for seven years. And we got involved in a variety of fascinating cases with them and got to know many of the FBI agents. And now I'm putting together a book on insider threat. And I view it very differently than what most people see it because I was in essence involved in creating insiders and foreign governments. And a lot of the assumptions that are currently believed to be absolute truisms I don't agree with. And, you know, it was actually kind of interesting because when I first started at the agency, the thing that I found most fascinating is that I'd gone through a very good doctoral program, and in fact, so good that after 19 years with the agency, I went to take the licensing exam and passed it. Which, you know, it said more about my education than it does about me. So, you know, it was a very good university. But anyway, the, the thing that I found fascinating is I'd been trained to look at pathology. And so then you start to work at the agency and you're targeting high level people in foreign governments and a lot of other people, and the overwhelming majority of them are, you know, quote, unquote, normal, high functioning people. And, you know, psychology defines the personality disorders, you know, in certain criteria. And how normal is determined is by the absence of pathology. Well, if you've ever had any kind of scientific training, you realize that that is an absurd concept. And so, you know, you really had to learn what it means to be normal. And, you know, how do you make distinctions? And so I came up with a different way over, over the years, I came up with a different way of looking at people. And I really don't tend to use personality disorders because it's so rare to really come across those people. And I know a lot of people will argue against that, but, but, you know, narcissism is oftentimes used to try to describe Vladimir Putin. And I've never met Vladimir Putin, but I have watched him, you know, on TV and, you know, read about him and so forth. And so, you know, if you want to look at it, is he narcissistic? Well, yes. Is, is he a narcissist? Probably by the definitions that have been researched and so forth. But you have to understand that the personality disorders that have been researched only account for about 9% of the population. And so you got really 91% of the population that is in essence normal because they lack pathology. And if you get to know most of us than that 91%, you begin to recognize there's a lot of pathology, but we just don't see it in the same light. And so in that way, you know, Putin is narcissistic. But what I like to see it is, you know, what has changed in his context. And context is everything that goes on in the world around him or any of us, as far as that goes. And I guess the. And then you come into a situation, and what happens is you rely on past experiences to understand how to cope with a new problem or new issue, a new set of circumstances. You use those as previous examples or experiences that you had to try to understand what to do. I'll give you a quick example. I was coming back to the States, and I arrived late at Dulles one night, and so I was going through Tyson's Corner, and a light wasn't working. And I'm sitting there, and literally, there's no traffic from any direction. So I'm sitting there waiting for that light to change.

And.

And it. And I didn't really want to get a ticket for a variety of reasons. And so the. So I'm sitting there, and finally a police officer pulls up next to me, and he's waiting for the light to change also. And so, you know, I thought he probably had recognized that I'd been there for a while. And so I finally looked at him and kind of went, you know, like, you know, the light's broken. It's broken. And so I thought he registered what I said, and so I took off. Well, he immediately turned on his lights and pulled me over and gave me a ticket. But that's a perfect example of how do you confront a situation that isn't resolving the way that you're thinking it's going to resolve. You look for past experiences to try to understand what to do. And we do that all the time, constantly. In fact, we use people to help us understand what to do, not just by talking to them, but also mostly by watching them. So with context, we get these situations that we have to deal with, and so we have to try to figure out what to do. And an example that certainly my generation, and I believe even the younger generations of today, have probably watched a classic movie called Animal House, and I kind of like that movie, but they have a scene in there that is kind of fascinating. It's kind of a provocative thing. But what I like about it is it shows how we try to evaluate each situation. Basically between two poles, is it a good idea or is it a bad idea? And in that movie, they have Pinto, which was one of the characters, and he has a young gal who's been inebriated passed out in his room, and he's trying to make a decision what he's going to do, the right thing or the wrong thing. And they represent that by having an angel and a devil, one on each shoulder, yelling at him about what he ought to do. And what makes it funny is that's exactly what's happening in most circumstances. I don't know about the angel and the devil, but the idea that you're trying to evaluate between a good idea and a bad idea, and what should you do? Is your actions good or bad? Well, in Putin's case, you know, his context had changed considerably. I mean, he. He eventually, you know, gets himself into a lot of power and is able to finagle the system so that he's kind of the president forever and, you know, rules with an iron fist, and that is something else. And we'll talk about that kind of stuff here in a bit. But so, you know, he's got himself into a lot of power. People are scared of him. They don't want to speak up. And so what, you know, they don't want to go against what his wishes are because they're fearful of the repercussions to their career or even potentially their life. And so they tend to, you know, squelch dissent and so forth. And he sees power as very important. And generally, humans, when you get power, you cherish it, and you don't want to give it up. You want more power. It's kind of an unending cycle. And so he's gotten himself into a position of a great deal of power in Russia. And then he's looking out at the world, his context, because he's a world player. Maybe not to the level that he would like, but that's another story. But he's a world player, and he is watching things around the globe that are happening that are like Pinto, you know, positive, negative. Is this good, bad? How do I want to evaluate it? How do I want to engage it? And he sees some very powerful things happening that have tremendous influence, and I think they have tremendous influence on him today. Some of it has to do with the United States. Some of it has to do with NATO. Some of it has to do with Russia itself and the economic conditions. Who knows exactly what the political conditions are in Russia right now and how much that's important in his decision making. But, you know, he looks at it and he sees the United States, which has been his primary enemy forever. In fact, Khrushchev, back in the early 60s, late 50s, made the comment that you know, we would take down that the Russians would. The Soviet Union would take down United States without ever firing a shot. And the way that they were trying to design it is to get us to be divided and go after ourselves. And if you're from that model Soviet Union, now Russia, you don't understand democracy, because all you see is somebody who's got power and they willed it completely. You're not going to get any arguments from people in counter positions and so forth. If you do, you remove them. Well, here in the United States, we see democracy is a messy affair. This is what he grew up with. This is what he knows. He was a KGB agent, or actually FSB agent, which is under the KGB counterintelligence. That's what he grew up with. And he sees the United States, he's always disliked the United States. He thinks that we're soft and we are misguided and so forth. He sees some fascinating things happen. He sees President Obama, the first African American to be elected into the White House. Well, if you're Russian, and especially if you're of the ruling elite, you're extremely bigoted. And, you know, they tend to look down on African Americans and have a very pejorative view. And so all of a sudden, here's this African American, he was extremely bright, got great educational background in the White House. He's probably going to see that as a sign of degradation in America in some way. Then he sees a variety of other things occurring. He sees that the election of Trump right after that, who comes across in very strong terms or tries to look strong, and I'm not trying to get into politics here in the United States, but quite the opposite of just about any president that we'd had previously and how he went about things. As it turns out, he develops a very peculiar relationship with Putin. Actually, I think Putin just built that relationship up with Trump, and I can see why Putin would. And some people alleged that Trump was an asset of Russia. It'd be hard to ever figure that out. But there certainly was a very cooperative kind of relationship with Putin. And Putin was probably involved at some level with Trump's decision to kind of grate on NATO and cause additional satisfactions and conflicts there. And so NATO all of a sudden gets weak. Well, the Russians hate NATO and have hated NATO because of what it represents, a guardrail to them. And so all these things are taking place, and then all of a sudden, here it is, Covid time, and you get isolated. Well, the worst thing for anybody is to get isolated, because if you're prone to love your own thoughts. After a while, you really have a love affair going on because all you got is your own thoughts. And if you've got thoughts of ruling the world. And I don't know if Putin has desires to rule the world, but he absolutely has a couple of thoughts that are very important to how he functions. One is that he wants to see the reestablishment of the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical player. And he also, you know, like anybody, you know, he's now, I guess, in his late 60s or early 70s, he, you know, he recognizes that time is starting to run out on his being able to, you know, establish himself as one of the great rulers of Russia. And, you know, he idolized Stalin. He really didn't like Lenin. His dad evidently worked for Lenin. But he desperately wants to be seen as an historical figure for Russia or the Soviet Union. And so, you know, he fixates on this while he's isolated, and he's a smart man, and he gets himself revved up, and nobody's there to tell him that what he's thinking is probably not doable, at least not the way that he wants. And then, so Covid continues, he sees divisions in the United States, and he sees January 6th. I mean, he must have been celebrating when January 6th occurred. And finally, I think one of the other major events externally to Russia was the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. It did not look good as to how that took place. And he would see all that as weakness. Here he goes, he decides that he's going to take over Ukraine. And, you know, from all accounts, it looks like he believed that he could do that pretty rapidly and that he'd actually be welcomed into Ukraine. And he wasn't. He wasn't welcomed. And here we are now, and we got. What I find fascinating about it is most politicians, at the ultimate heart of it, Putin's politician. And he needs to survive to be able to keep ruling, keep that power. He doesn't have any apparent offer. And that makes him a very dangerous person in this situation, because the worst thing for a guy who thinks the world of himself and wants to become one of the most important people in the history of Russia, Soviet Union is all of a sudden to have defeat, humiliation. And so I think he's a very dangerous man at this point because it's evidently not going well. And I think we're going to see him continuing to press. And so, you know, it's the. It's the context that drives the behavior and in his world, as he sees the context as he's viewing it. And what's fascinating is we all, as people, don't say, okay, let me take in all the data. Now, some people say they do, but believe me, they don't. Some take in more. Some take in very little, which is also kind of fascinating. But what ends up happening is they look for selective information in the environment and use it in their particular way that they're going to. Because all of us have cognitive biases. These biases that we rely on are, in essence, subroutines. There's shortcuts. And so when we see a little bit of information, we can jump to a conclusion. And that conclusion is based on our cognitive bias. And we have multiple, many cognitive biases that each of us have in different ways, different ratios. And so some people see a situation and they see danger. Some see things and see it as exciting opportunity. There's literally hundreds and hundreds of recognized cognitive biases that we as humans have, and they're very resilient. What ends up happening is we interpret the world based on if you're a big geopolitical player or if you're just somebody living wherever in the world. We interpret what's going on around us through these cognitive biases because if we didn't, we'd be overwhelmed. There's just too damn much information. And in fact, nowadays there's a hell of a lot more information that easily, you know, found and received. And yet you. With all this added information, we get spoofed by, you know, these. I'm blanking this morning, for some reason, competitive, you know, these. These theories, the conspiratorial theories, conspiracy, there we go. And we get spoofed by them even though we've got, you know, information at the ready on the Internet. And you'll see people, they'll. They'll go digging for information, and what do they bring you? They bring you, you know, something that is.

App supports the bias.

Yeah, it just supports bias. It's just trash, you know, and nobody else is, you know, jumping on it except for a few people. And because they kind of associate loose groups, you know, with this stuff, they see it as being reified that they've got this, you know, magic information that. That no one else is paying attention to. But it's all these cognitive biases that get in the way. And so for him, you know, his bias is that he wants to be in charge and he desperately wants to be, you know, idolized and to be seen historically important. And the other Thing that is also true. And, you know, we see the reporting. You see it on tv. You say, how could he do this? How could he be so cruel? How could he do this? Well, having lived and spent most of my adult life overseas, what I can tell you is, and we all fall prey to it, we say, there's no way they could do that because that's not what I would do ever. Use yourself as a barometer of normalcy. Because I'm telling you, you know, it's astounding how people see things very differently. And in his world, being Russian, as many Russians have said to me, we're not like you. And as you get to know him, you recognize they don't. They aren't exactly like us. Are they human? Yeah, of course. We're all human on the Earth. And so you'd sit there and say, well, or there may be a few conspiracy theories that allege that there's some aliens living here, but. But for the best knowledge of everybody, we're all humans here on. On the Earth. And, and so. Because we're all human, you know, we bleed the same, we live the same more or less than we die, but other than that, we're very different. If you're Russian, you believe in power, you don't have a great deal of concern about individual life like, you know, in the United States. I mean, it's astounding. And you hear people overseas that they're way impressed or, you know, can't believe it, but they'll, you know, all of a sudden there's a air attack, some kind of bombing and, or, you know, cruise missiles or whatever, and, and a child or, you know, a family will get killed. Innocent collateral damage. And, you know, the US Military takes it very seriously, and the United States government tends to take it very seriously. And so, you know, other people around the world can't understand that. It's like, why do you spend all that time. Right?

So it seems like, you know, from. From what I'm hearing, that a. He's got. He's got power within Russia, he has money, more than he'll ever spend, even despite the sanctions. There's no way that that's going to be financially impactful to him over time. But what he doesn't have is the legacy. So now he's hitting 70 years old, looking to establish some sort of legacy, and that that could be a primary motivator for his behavior. And as you mentioned, is a narcissist and has surrounded himself, at least by people who believe he's A narcissist. All you have to do is watch Putin play hockey to recognize the fact that kind of the deference that the people around him provide him. He scores 10 goals and is the star of the game. And it's just kind of ridiculousness almost on par with what we see out of North Korea. So do you think from his perspective that given his legacy in the Soviet Union as an intelligence officer, encountering the United States and then seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the impact that had on personally his ability to manipulate the system and rise to power and put himself in kind of permanent power, do you think that he views himself as at war with the west, or is this just a simple how far can I push the boundaries in order to establish some sense of legacy?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And I don't know exactly how far he takes it, but I do believe that he has aspirations. Now will he go after that? You know, we'd need up to date intelligence to determine this, but I do believe that he would like to reconsolidate the Soviet Union. Yeah.

And that would be his legacy.

And that would be his legacy. Now, would he want to expand further out? Like I said, power is corrupting. Absolute power, you know, dangerous. And in Russia, you know, he's, I mean, he, he's got a self feedback loop that is only reifying everything that he believes. There isn't going to be somebody who's going to stand up and say, boss, I'm telling you, I think you're 100% wrong. I think, you know, this is not the way to go. They're not going to do that. Why? It's politically dangerous, it's physically dangerous. He removes opposition. Yeah, right.

He. Do you think that he'll be escalatory given that he doesn't appear to be suicidal? I mean, you watch him sitting 30ft away from people and seems to have developed some paranoia around his personal safety. Do you think that'll lead him to be constrained within this kind of ground or cyber war perspective? Or would he escalate to the point where he would start to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons if it fit into this narrative of building a legacy and reuniting the Soviet Union?

Yeah, absolutely. Valuable question, but he's not likely to commit suicide. Okay. The only place where he would be most likely to commit suicide is when things start to get to a point of humiliation of him and you know, we're not there. He doesn't look effective. He doesn't look all that powerful right now. But he is not a high risk for suicide.

Yeah, it was more suicidal behavior. Right. Something that would escalate to the point of no return. So you don't think he's at that stage yet?

No, no. I think the only time that that will could potentially come into play is if he starts to have to retreat and he gets nothing out of this. And there is increased opposition at home and, and you know, he looks weak and ineffective. That's when there may be potential for, you know, him taking his own life. But in between that, before that he wants to strike out. And you know, he seems to have very few guardrails around him. And what is really fascinating about human behavior is we need guardrails. If we don't have these guardrails that will kind of keep us in the playing field, we will go astray very rapidly. And having seen people in chaotic combat kind of situations, and most military leaders recognize this is you start to see movement away from what is acceptable behavior, you know, culturally. And so you always have to put the guardrails in place structurally to keep people from going too far astray. And his guard rails appear to be loose. And so I think that he is. I think he's a very dangerous man right now.

He seems to be intentionally removing the guardrails as well. For example, with regards to the economic sanctions, him stating that those are akin to an act of war seems to open up the guardrails for counter actions against the United States and other. And I'm particularly interested in the cyber domain. It seems really the best non escalatory path that he has with regards to countering the sanctions is to engage in cyberattacks against Western infrastructure, in particular the financial infrastructure. If I can't have access to the global economy, neither can you. Do you think that he'll stay within those kind of comparable guardrails or will he escalate further given that he's articulated this is akin to an act of war?

Yeah, once again, very good question. Speculative on my behalf, but. I think he will certainly engage. He probably has already engaged at some level with cyber attacks and in the financial markets, especially as those sanctions really grab hold. I believe that it will become increasingly likely that the companies and countries will get hit by the cyber warfare that the Russians are pretty good at. We're pretty good at it too, and we don't read about that, but it.

Speaks to that different Hartney and it's not comparable. And this kind of gets to your never evaluate others based on our own conditions in which we live In, I think the Russians probably view themselves as much more resilient to cyber warfare because the Russian people are more resilient, whereas the US Is considered to be soft and would be more impactful. So there's a little bit of a disproportionate impact there that I think is perceived from a cyber perspective. So I'm very curious. It's been interesting that he hasn't escalated the cyber attack aspects to date and kind of waiting for what is that trigger you mentioned? The humiliation. He's certainly being humiliated in the world. He's been able to insulate the Russian citizens from that humiliation. But, gosh, I mean, my teenage kids come home with new Putin jokes every day. There are memes, and there's definitely an activity in our global activity to kind of get under his skin or demonstrate that he is not powerful, that this is not going well for him, and even just generally insulting towards him. So obviously he's not reading the Internet and seeing what jokes teenagers are sharing, but this is this kind of global, global concerted disrespect for him that is driving some of that humiliation. It feels like.

Again, he got an opportunity to view the world and distort it in his mind the way that all of us do, but in the way that he does for himself. And he's looking. And he sees that the United States and Western Europe in particular are having problems getting people to wear masks. Right? And he sees that. And, you know, he's going to see that as, these people are just weak. They can't. They can't adapt. They don't know what life is really like. You know, life is hard. They get upset because they have to wear a mask. And so he sees these kind of things, and that influences him further as to that he's going to be able to manipulate the West. And. What exactly the relationship was with Trump, we'll probably never know. But he probably sees it as that he looked absolutely strong. He's got the American president, who appears to be unusually cooperative with, you know, a Russian ruler who's doing all sorts of stuff, cyber attacks and getting away with it and so forth, and at least, you know, not being redressed about it. And so, you know, he probably sees us as weak in wanting to take advantage of that. And, you know, I mean, the thing that you saw, we strike me about Soviets is, you know, you know.

You.

Know, if you came, brought into the States or, or whatever, and you'd say, well, let's get some cheese, and, you know, they would be just astounded you know, because if you go into a grocery store or deli, you know, you know, did you want it grated, you want it sliced, you want it diced? You know, do you want it yellow, you want it white? You know, what flavor? How much of it do you want? Because when you're, when you were in the Soviet Union, you went to the cheese shop and you said cheese, and whatever the cheese was that day, that's what you got, right? And you know, for us, you know, we had. It has to be pre sliced. You know, somebody has to do that for us. You know, you look, you're in a different situation and you're, you look different. And so, you know, he's got a very biased view about the west and about us. And, you know, one of the other contextual things that happened is Angela Mark Merkel stepped down. And, you know, she's a fascinating woman, you know, very bright woman and, you know, very, very good leader. And she was born in the west western Germany, and her father was a preacher and moved to East, East Germany when it was under communist rule. That's where she grew up as a teenager, you know, and early adulthood was in East Germany. And so she knows the communist way, she knows the Soviet bloc way. And so she resigns or steps down, retires. And for him, he had to see that as a green light.

Yeah. So there's lots of factors, as you mentioned, coming into play. The sense of legacy, the isolation from COVID the world, kind of global stage, the removal of troops from Afghanistan and kind of how that was botched. But I think, if we're being honest, I think our tolerance for his current activities is only in place because of the fact that they're in nuclear power. And he seems to increasingly want to demonstrate that fact to the world. He's having parades with nuclear weapons on display. Do you think that he might escalate that demonstration or reminder to the world that they are a nuclear power and engage in maybe an atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon or something that is a little bit not used in targeting another country, but is a reminder to the globe of the fact that they are a nuclear power and that allows them basically to project power in regions of interest to them? Do you think we'll see increasingly erratic demonstrations of power, even things that step into that realm of global condemnation with regards to testing nuclear weapons in unexpected or unanticipated ways?

Yes, the short answer is yes. I mean, it's not only that he has nuclear weapons, but he also has delivery systems that are Very problematic because that increases his reach and his abilities. And yes, he will use it. And yes, he is threatening. And of course that, you know, for NATO and for the United States right now, when he threatens Britain's nuclear, you know, offhanded. Looks like an offhanded comment, but nothing's offhanded. He's doing it for. With intent or I believe. And it's a deterrence.

Right. I mean, it's classical deterrence to remind us or to demonstrate that he's still enamored with the fact that they are a global nuclear power.

Yeah, he's sending a message saying, you know, be careful.

That is the only reason, in my belief, that we don't enforce a no fly zone over the Ukraine or haven't been more active in helping defend the civilian population. There is the fact that he is a nuclear power. So it seems like he'll want to increasingly remind us and demonstrate that fact.

Well, yeah, no fly zone is a real problem. I mean, if I was a Ukrainian and in Ukraine right now, I'd really wish there was a no fly zone. But in reality, for the rest of us that aren't there, I mean, this thing could really turn into World War Three. Yeah.

Do you think he's a rational actor at this point, or have we reached the point of no return? Is there ever a situation where he comes to grips with the reality that he's confronted with, or do we continue to see just increasingly irrational behavior?

Okay, before I answer that, which is a good question, but before I answer that, I wanted people to realize that humans are not logical. Okay, fair enough.

Yep.

Okay. Some people, you know, will say, oh, I'm very logical. Well, okay, well, you know, you know, a variety of things that they're doing that are not logical, but people are not logical. Now, that's not the same as rational. Being rational means is that you have control of your faculties, that you have the ability to evaluate information. And once again, I've already pointed out that humans have a disposition of limiting what information they look at and then accept. And some people have a very low openness to new ideas, openness to new information and so forth. Is he rational? Yes, he is rational in the sense that evaluating info, he can evaluate the info that's being put towards him. Does he have biases? Does he have disruptions in being able to look at it and say, what am I really doing here? Because the thing that I really have a hard time understanding, and this is why I think some people think that he may not be rational, is he doesn't have an apparent off ramp. Right. I mean, he's got himself, you know, caught in between a rock and a hard place right now. And so, you know, what's he going to do? Is he, is he going to stand up and also say, oh, sorry guys, I messed up? You know? No, he can't do that. He can't do that because he has ego for one, two, it would completely humiliate him or he'd humiliate himself, really. Right. And so, so he can't do that. So his only other course of action is to keep doubling down. And doubling down is scary when you see somebody who has nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them. And so you have to take those threats seriously, even if, quite frankly, I believe most of it is an attempt to influence and not a serious offer.

Yeah, that's interesting. So, I mean, basically we're at the point of no return then with Ukraine. They're going to be in a protracted war with Russia until it's resolved in some capacity.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you think his ability to control the information flow to the Russian people gives him a potential on ramp? They are, they're not seeing the reality of what's happening in the civilian targeting and kind of moving away from what he articulates as the primary mission in the Ukraine. Do you think that he could just declare a win and say, hey, we went in and we secured the Russian population in these regions and we're happy with how things went and now we're withdrawing? Obviously he would be humiliated on the global stage, but it seems like that he could manage the level of humiliation amongst his own population. Or is that something that's just not going to be taken into consideration now over this sense of legacy and the fact that he would be humiliated globally, if not within his own country, because he controls the information flow?

Well, if you're trying to establish a legacy, you know, has to be an accomplishment. There has to be an accomplishment. I mean, because if you lay it out on a weak set of cards that are not going to win many hands over time, it will be clear that those were weak hands and there's no way that's, you know, what it actually got accomplished. And you know, the idea of how influential propaganda is, I mean, he is using propaganda very well. I mean, that's a Soviet strength. I mean, they, and now Russian strength is that, you know, they really use propaganda, their people, the vast majority of them. Again, you can get exposed to the truth, but when you grow up in a world where you don't really know what the truth is. It's hard to determine what the truth is.

And you're already biased, right, from your lifetime.

Yeah. And. Yeah. You know, and so people believe what they're being told. And, I mean, you saw that in the January 6 thing. I mean, if Americans ever have questions about the effectiveness of propaganda, I mean, we, too, got played from the propaganda. Right. And it's very powerful. And. And I would say that Putin and the people he's got in place are very good at orchestrating and grooming the message that goes out. And so what you end up seeing is people. You know, I saw a guy on the television last night who called his father in Russia, and he was living in Ukraine, and trying to explain to him the father disregarded completely what the son was saying and believed with the state media. Right. And so you sit there and you say, wow, that's powerful. That's very powerful for that to happen. So.

Yeah, definitely. Fascinating. I. We met first in a counterterrorism context back in the Terrorism Research center days. I'm sure we could have a whole separate conversation on that. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk about Putin and share your insights, given that it's so timely in impacting us all. Any parting words or. One thing that I always like to ask as well is if there's a book that you would recommend or something that you've read recently, whether on this topic or another topic that you would like to share with the audience.

Well, as far as books go, I actually just got. Just finished reading why Democracies Die, and that was, you know, it was a good book. I mean, there were sections in there that I thought it was a little too germane to American political situations. But. But I thought it was a good book. And. And what it really tells you, and. And they're very good at describing this in all sorts of conditions around the world, is if you don't have guardrails, you know, systemically built in, people get past them, those boundaries, and once they're past those boundaries, it's really hard to come back. Yeah. And so that book is. I think it's a good read. And so, you know, I would certainly recommend that book, but just that we are in a very dangerous situation here. And. I don't know if the American people are fully aware of how dangerous and how many tripwires there are that could ignite not only Russia, because they're the aggravator here, China and a multitude of other smaller countries. And it's dangerous.

I agree. Thank you for sharing your perspective. Appreciate it as always and look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Okay Matt, thanks for having me. Good luck. Thanks for listening to this OODA Loop Production for the latest analysis on cybersecurity technology and global risks, please visit www.ooda loop.com.