Background Briefing: October 11, 2018

On By gram

 

Fingers Point at Saudi Arabia’s Impetuous, Arrogant and Violent Crown Prince

We begin with the growing pressure on Saudi Arabia as it becomes increasingly clear that the impetuous, arrogant and violent Saudi Crown Prince known as MBS, ordered the grisly assassination of a critic employed by The Washington Post on Turkish soil. Graham Fuller, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA and author of “Turkey and the Arab Spring: Leadership in the Middle East”, joins us to discuss the uncomfortable predicament President Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner find themselves in because they are so close to the young Saudi leader they have championed, in spite of his reckless and catastrophic war in Yemen and his ill-considered and unsuccessful blockade of neighboring Qatar, demanding that the Qataris shut down their influential Al Jazeera network. We assess how effective Turkey’s intelligence service the MIT appears to be based on the leaks of a lot of information incriminating the Saudis, and conversely how sloppy the Saudis have been. We will also address the larger issue of the competition underway in the Islamic world between Turkey, which champions their version of political Islam the Muslim Brotherhood, and the medieval monarchy Saudi Arabia clings to while propagating their reactionary, austere and xenophobic Wahabbi version of Islam.

 

The Grounding of the Ultimate Boondoggle, the F-35

Then with the grounding of the world’s most expensive weapons system, the F-35 fighter, and the release of a GAO report that some of the most expensive and cutting-edge weapons in the U.S. military’s arsenal can be easily hacked, we speak with the primary designer of the F-16 fighter and the A-10 ground attack jet, Pierre Sprey. He joins us to discuss the essential fraud that stealth technology is since the Russians, using World War 11 radar, can easily detect our aircraft, which cost so much more to both buy, fly and maintain, with the F-35 the ultimate example of a Military Industrial Complex boondoggle.

 

How the Internet Has Become the New Battlefield of the 21st Century

Then finally we speak with Peter Singer, a strategist and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and co-author of the new book, just out, “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media”. He joins us to discuss how the Internet has become the new battlefield in the 21st century as we enter a frightening future where the truth is the first casualty as fake news becomes a non-kinetic, but violently manipulative and effective weapon in hybrid war which Russia has pioneered using tools invented in America.