Speaker 1: And greetings. Hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast?
Glad you could join us. Today is Thursday, the twelfth
day of March, Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six.
My name is Tom Sullivan, and well we have we
have an update for you. Just get you marked down
on day thirteen of the war. Where oil. I think
the focus now is oil. That is the one thing
that the Iranians have that is the blocking of the
of the straight up horror moves and so oil and
oil prices are a big deal part of this. We
can knock them. You know, there's all kind of television
that is loving this because they've got all the things,
you know, being blown up here and blown up there,
and so you can blow up a lot of stuff.
But until you get that whilst it's not the it's
not the Ayatola, the new Wyatola, he's more or less
a figurehead. And there's a couple of people that are
referring to that today. It's really coming down to the IRGC,
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They run the country. They are
vicious and they know that by controlling the strait of
horror moves that they gives them the only thing that
they have. So we've destroyed a bunch of their weapons,
but that doesn't there. They're still able. I mean, I
don't know about you, but I'm still seen. Pick whatever
television company you want to watch. They're still showing. The
Iranians are blowing up ships and blowing up refined reason,
blowing up all kinds of things. So they're not out
of it. This is why people are starting to go, hmm,
I wonder how long this thing is going to go.
I thought that this would be a piece of cake.
I think some people did think that, but it's not.
War is never a piece of cake. So the things
that I've circled today is besides war is oil. And
we've talked a lot about oil yesterday and the day before.
There's another aspect to this, which is a sleeper cells.
And I know we've been warned about sleeper cells a lot,
but there are sleeper cells, and will they try to
create terror in our cities and our communities. Another part
of this, which we've talked about kind of as a tangent,
is cyber warfare. And know the Iranians, the Iranians are
very very good at the cyber war and so we'll
get up to speed on all of that as well.
And then finally, apparently what a lot of the intelligence
people are talking about is that the financial institutions here Israel,
Saudi Arabia, Arab countries, that the financial institutions are apparently
a target they think. So we've got a lot of
that to go off of. Let's start with a President Trump.
This is a clip of a bunch of different comments
he's made in the last twenty four hours about the
status of the war effort.
Speaker 2: Were it would be in very good shape, you see,
to what's happening, they are pretty much at the end
of the life. Doesn't mean we're going to end it immediately,
but they are. They've got no navy, they've got no
air force, they've got no anti air traffic anything. They
have no systems of control. We're just riding free range
over that country. When do we stop. We don't want
to let it regrow, and ideally would like to see
somebody in there that knows what they're doing. In other words,
they can build a country.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they don't have a lot of military assets,
but they have something, and they still keep blowing up things,
and they're still dropping missiles into various countries in the
Middle East, so they're not completely down and out. And
the other part, I know, the President keeps talking about
wanting to he wants to control whoever's going to be
the new leader of that country, and I think that
is just wrong. You've got to give that to the people.
You got to set it up so that the people
of Iran pick their own leaders. I mean, if you
go back to the Shaw of Iran was a puppet
of the United States. He was handpicked by our government
and I don't want to get into that mess again.
Let the people of Iran pick their leaders. Here's another
clip from the President within the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Add my administration is, you know, better than anybody, is
also working to keep the oil flowing. It's flowing all over.
We knocked out you know, they want to drop some minds,
very friendly people minds. So boats blow up and we
knocked out as of you know, every hour have to
change because they knock them out so fast. I've never
said anything think of it. They knocked out fifty four
ships in two days. They're real ships. Yes, our military
is amazing. We have the strongest military and there's no
question about it. But I don't want anybody to get
too confident. You always, always cannot, never underestimate the enemy.
I guess is what I was always taught.
Speaker 1: Other one just said it is a little excursion.
Speaker 3: Hand you said it is a war. So which one
gets it?
Speaker 2: Well, it's both, it's both. It's an excursion that will
keep us out of a war for them, it's a
war for us. It's uh turned out to be easier
than we thought. But think of it. They had thousands
of missiles, seven eight thousand missiles. We got many of
them before they got to lunch. They have drones all
over the place. We got many. Now we're knocking out
the drone plants. They started talking about mine, so we
hit twenty eight mind shifts as of this moment, twenty
eight like using the same weapon, the exact same weapon
that we use against the drug dealers.
Speaker 1: Well again, just I just caution, just don't underestimate the enemy.
We have knocked out a lot of their military assets,
but they still obviously have some. So let's get a
view of how oh strategists military strategists look at this.
Brett McGirk, who has served under four presidents and national security,
has these observations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so signal to noise. I think the signal here
is the military campaign which Sencom is implementing at the
beginning of this it is said to be a four
to six week campaign from the White House. That's about right,
and Senkom every day inside Iran is basically take methodically
taking a part Iran's what they call what the Sencom
will call power projection capacity. That's their missiles, it's the
production sites, it's all the component parts to be able
to produce the missiles and drones, and of course the
nuclear and the command to control. They have a target set.
They're going through it methodically. That has some weeks to
go if it's able to go to fruition. Iran is
trying to demonstrate they still have power projection, mainly in
the Strait of Hormos. So that is really the crux. Now,
I think we're actually getting after Iran's military industrial base
inside the country, and every day that goes by it
gets more difficult for her. But so long as they
control the Strait of Hormus, you have not degraded their
power projection because that is their their asymmetrical power projection.
I noticed the Secretary with you. Kate said, we will
get the straight of Hormus open, and we really have
to do that. And I have some experience with this.
In the Red Sea we did build a coalition.
Speaker 1: So in the past we have had the need to
build naval coalitions and Brett McGirk was involved in building
one back in the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, building a coalition is hard. Every country
has their own legal requirements, political constraints. You have to
go capital to capital. And what's good about that existing
coalition in the Red Sea is it has Denmark and
the UK and countries that actually have very good naval
missile destroying capabilities. This will take some time, but even
showing we're putting it together I think would help. You know,
the diplomacy of this is really key, and if you
don't build a coalition going in, there's still a lot
of work to do here. I mean, the administration is
doing some good things in the diplomatic front. At the
UN yesterday, the UN Security Council had a unanimous vote
Russia and China abstained, with one hundred and thirty countries
co sponsoring a resolution condemning these Iranian attacks in the
golf that initiative was led by Bahrain, a small golf
country on the front lines of this. Bahrain is a
part of that Red Seat coalition. So you could put
the pieces together here. I want to be clear, it'll
take time and you probably have to do some condition setting. Militarily,
this is hard, hard work. Aoran has drones, they can
fire from two thousand kilometers away missiles. It is difficult.
But to show that more countries are coming into this
is an international problem. It can be internationalized with US leadership.
I think that has to be an answer, because if
this ends with Iran being able to shut down that artery,
you have not degraded their power projection, which is a
whole point of the campaign.
Speaker 1: So Michael Waltz are un ambassador. I don't have a
lot of I don't know, they seem rather efeckless that
you win. But he's our ambassador and he has embraced
the job, and he really he talked about what Brett
McGirk was talking about was that all these countries around
the world are all pointing the finger at Iran and
saying you're the bad guy. Here's Michael Waltz.
Speaker 4: Well, what I've been using over and over again and
pointing out to all of the members there is that
this war started nineteen seventy nine, started forty seven years ago,
and President Trump is no longer going to just absorb
these attacks, whether it's the terrorist proxies has Blahuthi Hamas,
or attacks on infrastructure or you name it, the malicious
activity that Iran has been up to. He's not going
to kick the can anymore.
Speaker 1: He's going to end it.
Speaker 4: But can I just say that, you know, looking at
Trey yangst and others and what they're going through, the
Iranian strategy of sewing chaos, shooting in all directtions, hitting
its Gulf neighbors, even hitting countries as far away as
Turkey Andizer by Jean is absolutely backfiring. Yesterday in the
UN and the Security Council, we had a historic day
in the sense that all of the GCC countries, led
by Bahrain, uniformly and publicly denounced Iran. They were co sponsored.
This resolution was co sponsored by a UN record one
hundred and thirty five. And here's why it's so significant.
Number one, many of these countries have taken kind of
a neutral position over the years when it comes to Iran. Cutter,
for example, shares a massive gas field, the Pars gas Field,
with Iran that stretches across the stretches across the straits. There,
UAE has a massive free trade zone of Iranian goods.
Oman was just mediating and providing the kind of neutral
actor for us during the negotiations that Iran never approached
in good faith. They are in all now standing, they
are all uniformly, I got to tell you, and talking
to them on a personal level, furious, outraged. And the
fact that Iran is hitting hotels, resorts, ports, they're shipping
all of those, they're airports, all of those civilian infrastructure
has them squarely aligned with the United States. And if
you look at it, it's really kind of the Abraham
Accords coalition that's now in action and now it's unified.
And the other important thing yesterday, sorry, is both China
and Russia fair weather friends that they are. They abstained,
They backed away, they didn't oppose it, and they could
have they could have vetoed.
Speaker 1: But let's get back to the battlefield. Oil is not
flowing out of the Strait of hormones, and as a result,
oil prices have been climbing again. Now even though the
announcement was made by the IAE that they were going
to collectively with thirty one countries released four hundred million
barrels of oil. A the flow of oil, you can't
release four hundred million overnight. It's going to take probably
a month or two to get all of that oil
into the marketplace. And secondly, even if you do all
of that, why did the price go up when that
announcement was made rather than go down? And today, as
we're watching the oil prices bouncing around, it went back
above one hundred dollars. Right now as we're recording this,
it's up ninety six dollars and some change for a
barrel of oil. We were again and the high fifties
or low sixties. So this is fact. While I'm recording this,
let me look at the gas prices from triple A.
The average now three dollars and sixty cents across the
country three sixty. So Phil Flynn, who is an oil
trader at the CME in Chicago, he was asked about
the fact that most of the oil that goes through
the straight up HORNMUZ goes to Asia and China gets
a big portion of that. So what's going on with
China because they apparently have a pretty good sized strategic
petroleum reserve of their own.
Speaker 5: They really have been because they know how vulnerable they are. Yes,
they built up the biggest strategic petroleum reserve in the
world just in case something like this happened, but they
knew it was coming right and they know that that's temporary.
They know that a new Iran changes the world for them.
And unlike the United States, they are energy dependent. We
are energy are they're dependent, we're independent. And so that's
making a big decision, and this is going to really
change the power structure in the energy world. More evs,
more coal plants. That's where you're going to get out
of China. It's the only way they'll be able to
charge them. You know, I think you know, if you
look at the front end of the market, the stock market,
you look at the energy markets, you look at gold
and silver, they're showing the fear in the market. But
if you look at the big picture, they're predicting that
this is going to end quicker and as bold and
as Iran is trying to be at this point, they
have to know that they're on borrow time. And President
Trump listen that released from the Strategic Patrollum Reserve. That's
the biggest flood of oil since Noah. Okay, that is
going to have an impact. I know people are saying, Oh,
it's not going to matter. It is going to matter.
On top of that, the increase in oil price is
going to allow US producers to make more money. They
will produce more oil and be able to sell it
at a discount when prices come back down. So this
is going to be a win for the American people
as well. We've just keep the faith. I trust the
US military and when we win this, we're going to
get a big price break on oil.
Speaker 1: Well. I hope he's right. And the question, obviously nobody
has the answer to is is how long will this go.
Some people are worried it's going to go longer than expected,
But if you really think about it, the military all
along has been consistent. They're talking three to five weeks.
This is day thirteen, and they are saying that they
are actually a little head of schedule on going through
their target list and going through the process of dismantling
the powers of Iran. The question that still needs to
be answered is at some point when you've taken down everything,
and you've blown up all of their military assets, do
you still need to have a special operations military unit
go in to take the uranium that they have already
enriched that needs to be dealt with. So we'll see
when we get there. But right now they're going through
their to do list and they're checking it off. So
staying with the oil people and with the financial people
because the financial industry is being warned that they are
going to be attacked by somebody, whether cyber or whether
or not it's a missile or a drone. Let's start
with There's a guy by the name of Dan Murphy.
He works for one of the big financial firms. He
is in Dubai and this is what he's talking about.
Speaker 6: I wanted to update you on the situation inside the
regional financial centers because this is very much a live situation.
Iran says, US and Israeli linked banks and financial institutions
across this region are now legitimate targets, and major firms
here are taking that threat seriously. Goldman Sachs has just
ordered all regional staff to work from home. City Bank
is closing its offices and branches into the weekend. HSBC,
Standard Chartered and PwC are also putting measures in place
to try and keep their staff out of potential harm's way.
And the trigger here is a direct warning from Irani
telling civilians to stay at least one kilometer away from
any bank linked to the US or Israel. And for
the golf money capitals like the UAE and Saudi Arabia,
this is a real concern. Cities like Riad and Abadhabi
have spent the last decade positioning themselves as reliable and
modern and safe destinations for talent and global capital. That
proposition has been very attractive, particularly for dealmakers looking to
do business with the region's big sovereign wolfonds. So it's
too soon to say if we're going to see real
capital flight here or layoffs or firms actively considering relocating
because of the war, but the reputational damage is already
starting overnight. That threat also getting closer. We saw more
Iranian drones and missiles being intercepted here and three more
foreign ships being struck in the Golf that's according to
the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center. Of course, the straight
of Horn Moves is still firmly closed, and we saw
oil pushing through the one hundred dollars a barrel handle
again in early Asia trade today. The IA's record four
hundred million barrel reserve release yesterday is a positive step,
but it only covers about a quarter of the supply gap,
and analysts that I've been speaking to today say it
could take months for those barrels to physically reach the market.
Goldbn Sacks even says prices could blow past the two
thousand and eight peak of one hundred and forty seven
dollars a barrel if Ormuz remains closed for the rest
of the month. And the reality is there's probably no
policy response that can stop the oil price from going higher,
and that's because production shut ins across the golfer now
ramping up the pipeline alternatives ultimately can't carry the volume
to the market. And as one analyst also told me today,
you basically have a twenty million barrel a day problem,
a three million barrel a day solution, and a ninety
day delivery windows. So to quote that analyst, the math
is not mathing.
Speaker 1: So there's another guy who says this is going to
at least even if the military activity stops, it will
take months before all of the oil markets get their
business backed is normal. One of the financial traders in Dubai.
Her name is Amana Boker, and she's in the thick
of this thing, looking around and what she sees.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's right. We've had multiple attacks happen on vessels today.
And may I also add that we've had multiple attacks
happen across the Gulf region in Dubai where I'm staying
at the moment, but also in Bahrain in Doha, So
the attacks aren't stopping. And I mean prior to today,
I mean it was very clear that we're in a
very very dire situation here when it comes to oil
supplies around the market. We're still seeing flows from her
moves constricted. We're still seeing oil facilities and as well
as oil vessels around the area being targeted. So it
just escalates the level of risk which was already very
very elevated. And I think it's just going to take
the market maybe a little bit more time to realize
that how constrained supplies really are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So she's in Dubai. She is a financial crador.
I'm not sure if she's commodities or just general financial,
but she's Loickless. Listen to what she said. The attacks
are increasing, so all this Bravado talked about, Oh yeah,
we've wiped them out here and we've wiped them out there. No,
we haven't. We've done a lot of damage and we
reduced their assets, but they still have a lot of
firepower and they're using it. So she goes on talking
about I mean, she talking about price. The financial markets
are not realizing where this is going. The previous guy
who also was in Dubai talking about the peak was
one hundred and forty seven dollars. We're at ninety some
dollars a day. So in other words, everybody in the
oil business in that part of the world world is
looking for oil prices to continue to go up dramatic.
Speaker 7: I mean, in these kind of situations where you have
a complete blockage of her moves and this level of attacks,
plus no clear timeline on when this will end, a
lot of uncertainty around that, and prices are still hovering
in the nineties. I mean this this seems to be
kind of the The sentiment out there maybe is that
this will be over soon, but on the ground and reality,
we're we're just living a completely different picture. Well in Dubai,
they've been really good with the interception, so personally, I
do feel very safe here. However, having these multiple attacks
happen on a daily basis with with no stop and
again no communication on on on when this conflict desplit.
Despite President Trump's messaging over the past couple of days
that this conflict will come to an end soon, there
are no more target it's in an Iran and so on,
so we're not seeing that reflect over here in the
Gulf where it remains. I mean, it's just been a
playground for attacks.
Speaker 1: One more strategist watching the oil prices and also the
announcement yesterday about the four hundred million barrels coming out
of strategic petroleum reserves and whether it's having any impact
Asca said prices. When they announced that, you would think
prices would drop. Nope, they went up, David Goldman.
Speaker 8: Clearly not having an impact right now. I mean, what
John was just saying is so key. The only thing
that the oil market cares about is getting the strait
of Hormu's back open. This was an extraordinary release of
the strategic petroleum reserve and it didn't have an impact
at all on oil prices. The fact that we went
back above one hundred dollars last night is kind of
tells you everything you need to know. It's just not
going to help unless we get that straight back. Open
ration is key here because the longer this goes on,
the more pain for you and me. It's not just
that we're filling our tanks at three sixty today that
could go to four dollars, but truckers are filling their
trucks with diesel, which is closing in on five dollars,
and all the stuff that's on those trucks is going
to be more expensive for you and me. The businesses
that are loading stuff onto trucks, that costs more money
for them, and they're paying all these tariff costs. You
think that they're going to eat the cost of the
fuel surcharges. I don't think so. Those are costs that
you and I are going to pay to.
Speaker 1: He mentioned the truckers and having to fill their trucks
with diesel. Diesel today the average crishs of country four
dollars eighty six cents for a barrel of diesel oil
be blocked.
Speaker 8: Well, there is other oil in the world. I mean,
we're a huge producer of oil in the United States,
the largest in the world actually, and so there's a
point at which you know, you can't make oil more
expensive and people will continue to pay for it. Everyone
seems to think that one hundred fifty dollars of barrel
is the peak for this if the strait is just
permanently closed, So you know, that's five dollars gas. That's
maybe five to fifty dollars gas. So you know, you
have to wonder how much longer this is going to
go and if we're going to get to that point.
But that's about how high this could go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's talking about adding another two dollars or
so on the national average of gas today. If you're
in California, that means instead of well, let's take a
look here, what's San Francisco today. According to Triple A average
is five sixty three, So that would be say seven
sixty three for a gallon of gas if this keeps lot.
And again the question is duration and how long does
this keep locked down? Now we also have cyber warfare,
and we've heard about it, but I don't I have
an experience, did I I know that there are companies
that get cyber attacks on them, and somebody says, you
got to ransomware, You got to pay his money and
we'll unlock your computers for you. But David Kennedy, long
time tech guy especially in the cyber world, was talking
about it, and I thought I would share his observations
with you.
Speaker 9: You know, this group called Hondalas is tied to the
military intelligence group of Iran, and notoriously, you know, they've
tried to hack into our grid before in the past,
but they've never launched these types of attacks where we
call more of ransomware, but without the ability to recover.
If you look at traditional ransomware, you know, typically a
company has to pay a certain amount of money and
then they get decryption keys that allows them to recover.
Iran is using this as a method to put pressure
here in the United States to go after as many
companies as they can, to cause as much conflict through
cyber methods, to completely destroy the infrastructure that they're targeting
in an effort to put pressure on the Trump administration
to back off on the attacks and create a lot
of chaos here. And so we should all be on
alert right now, especially larger enterprises and they're being indiscriminated food,
the target. It doesn't matter if you're a hospital, water
treatment facility, energy grid, financial sector. They're going after everybody
right now, trying to create as much chaos back here
in the States. And this is also what we can
expect if you know, Taiwan does China decides to go
after Taiwan. China is focusing on getting footholds here in
the United States. Cybers being used as a major method
to curb you know, internal policies within the United States,
and so everybody needs to be on high alert right
now as these attacks are going on, and we'll definitely
see more attacks happening over the next few days of weeks.
Speaker 1: Well that's not good news. But the guys saying or
this it is. And the question is is the tech
industry ready for these kinds of attacks.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Over the past several years, ransomware has really stepped
up the security game in most enterprises. You know, corporations
are really trying to protect their organization, try to minimize
damage in the event that these types of things occur,
really try to segment off. You know, a lot of
the critical operations like emergency rooms, surgery centers, things like that.
Our water treatment facilities, energy grids have been subject to attacks,
so they have heightened alert. So we're prepared for this
within United States, but it's definitely not perfect. And I
ran just looking for those little tiny, you know, flaws
within our infrastructure that they can use to create as
much havoc as possible. So you know, over this next
you know, a few weeks to a few months, we
need to be on high alert, continue to step up
our security gain because we are going to see more
attacks against the enterprise.
Speaker 1: As you'd probably know, all it takes is one person,
one employee in a company to click on an attachment
and Bengo therein and there goes the entire infrastructure, the
entire it of the company. So what can you do
about it? Well, it's pretty simple, according to mister Kennedy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, multi factor authentication is probably one of the most
important things that you can do in cybersecurity. A lot
of these attacks happen either through phishing campaigns where they're
trying to social engineer you to open up a document
and then they capture your credentials, your user name and password.
And what multi factor authentication does, and I'm sure a
lot of us have seen this when you go to
your bank account and it sends you a one time
text message PIN to log into it. You know, enterprises
have this as well, but a lot of them don't.
And so what happens is if they're able to capture
you know, some credentials, they're able to then kind of
bypass your security mechanisms and then it opens up one
foothold into the environment, which then allows them to then
go to other systems within the Infrastructureal intakes you know,
access to one system that causes an entire cataclysmic downfall
of an entire organization because now they can start to
spread laterally across the environment. All their networking systems get
you know, much more inflicted damage across the enterprise. So
multi factor authentication is probably the number one most important
security thing you can do personally how to protect yourself
as well as an enterprise. And every you know, social media,
your financial institutions all have this option in the setting
section of your website to turn this feature on. It's
super simple, gives you a massive, massive protection.
Speaker 1: So basically, pay attention. I think, you know, the war
is way way over there, but it really is, and
it's right in your computer if the they're very good
at it. Iranians are very good at hacking, So pay attention,
be careful on what you're doing online. Some things about well,
First of all, as far as attacks, we had an
attack at a Michigan synagogue today. It appears to not
be associated with the war. There was one person, one male,
drove his car through the front doors of a synagogue.
The synagogue is in West Bloomfield, Michigan. And in the
synagogue they also have a preschool program and the car
did not get to where the preschoolers were, so none
of the kids were injured. There was a security guard
who got into some sort of gun battle with the guy.
The bad guy's dead and the security guard was injured.
He's in the hospital but expected to be okay. But
that was in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and it appears to
be anti Semitic, somebody who just wanted to do damage
to the synagogue and.
Speaker 2: The people in it.
Speaker 1: In other political news, Jim Cliburn the longtime super influential
congressman from South Carolina. He announced today he is running again.
He was first elected to Congress in nineteen ninety two.
He's young, chipper eighty five. Oh, he seems pretty sharp,
but he's eighty five. Man. These old guys and gals
just have a hard time giving that stuff up, don't they.
And then we've got some reports on the economy today.
There was the first time jobs claims came out two
hundred and thirteen thousand first time claims. That was slightly
less than what was expected. Continuing claims a million, eight
hundred and fifty thousand, that was about what was expected.
Housing starts much better than expected, up over seven percent
one million, four hundred and eighty seven thousand housing starts.
This is for the month of January. It wasn't single
family so much. In fact, single family starts were down.
It was mostly multifamily nor words, apartments and condos and
things like that. And then the trade deficit for which
we are waiting for some improvement. No, it's still bad.
We bought fifty four billion dollars more of their stuff
than they bought of ours. So even though we've got
tariffs and everything else on the table, the trade deficit
we were upside down last month by fifty four billion dollars.
Wall Street. Let's get to the numbers here. The Dow
It was bad all day long, but it was even
worse at the close. It was down about five hundred
points during most of the treading session. It finished down
seven hundred and thirty nine. The Dow at forty six
thousand and six seventy seven, the S and P big
drop for them, down one hundred and three, the Nasdaq
big drop there down four hundred and four. The price
of gold fell ninety six dollars, down to five thousand
and eighty two. And oil, Like I said that last night,
it went over one hundred dollars. It finished today up
nine dollars from where we started this morning, and nine dollars,
I'm sorry, ninety six dollars for one barrel of oil.
So it's going higher. That's it for today. Thank you
for coming by. We will be back again tomorrow and
I hope to see you then.