1269: Venezuela | Out of the Loop

1269: Venezuela | Out of the Loop

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks.

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That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today. Another out of the loop episode on Venezuela, little Venice, big oil, bigger Mess. You probably heard the headlines and thought, all [00:01:00] right, socialism, corruption, oil.

Got it. But that's kind of like saying, Hey, Titanic, boat hits thing. The real story here is how a country with some of the largest oil reserves on Earth turned that resource into a regime. ATM hollowed out its institutions, banned civilian firearms, and then watched normal people get crushed between politics, cronies, and criminals.

To the point where folks were literally staying in bed to avoid burning calories. And now it matters to Americans because Venezuela is not just a tragedy. It's energy migration, transnational crime, and great power chess, sitting uncomfortably close to the Panama Canal with China and Russia sniffing around like it's an open house.

Or as I like to say, little old Taiwanese ladies at the buffet in Vegas. If you know, you know today, my friend Ryan Macbeth joins me once again and we're doing a short history of how Venezuela got here, what their former leader Hugo Chavez actually got right early on when the revolution stopped being about reform and started becoming about extraction.

Why Maduro? The guy we kidnapped was less supreme leader and more traffic cop for [00:02:00] competing mafias. And what happens next from the best case managed transition to worst case, Libya vibes. Here we go with Ryan Macbeth out of the loop on Venezuela. Ryan Macbeth, thanks for coming back on the show, man. Now that I think about it, every time you're on the show, there's a major world event or disaster.

Coincidence? I think not.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. I would like to know why I'm always Out of the Loop. I don't get my own show with a little picture of my face, a little painting.

Jordan Harbinger: I'll give you some show art at some point. Don't worry.

Ryan McBeth: Now we've got to talk about Venezuela.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's talk about Venezuela, because I think people, they're like, Venezuela, this Maduro guy.

There's a lot of oil at the end. People don't know that. Venezuela essentially was part of a federation that was essentially Gran Colombia back in the day led by Bolivar. Can we do a little bit of that? The 19th century kinda stuff?

Ryan McBeth: It's actually a really fascinating story. These are very proud people, so Venezuela was home to numerous Native American tribes until [00:03:00] 1522 when Spanish colonizers claim the region, and Venezuela actually means little Venice because the Spanish saw like these houses on stilts in the water, and it reminded them of Venice. Then in the 1800s, this whole independence movement gained traction South America.

Back then, Venezuela was part of Gran Colombia, led by Simone Bolivar and Gran Colombia was Panama and Venezuela. Venezuela became a republic in 1830, I believe. So Germane saw during like the 19th century where these chieftains, uh, SI think they're called, who dominated like politics,

Jordan Harbinger: Cadis, I think s where everyone's

Ryan McBeth: cringing at Spanish.

You know

what I, uh, I, I can speak Arabic a lot better than I can

speak Spanish.

Jordan Harbinger: Well just say Cadis and it'll be good enough.

Ryan McBeth: Car S Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Pringo

style

Ryan McBeth: oil was discovered and production started to kick off in like 1922, and the [00:04:00] country became like a pretty wealthy and prosperous democracy in Latin America.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. And then Cold War changed that, or,

Ryan McBeth: uh, it was actually fairly stable during the Cold War. What changed? It was a coup in 1992. So Hugo Chavez, who at the time was a colonel in the Venezuelan army, he started a coup against the government and the coup failed, and he was actually thrown in jail. Then he was released, I believe two, three years later, and then he ran for president.

You can actually imagine that happening like in America, right? You go to jail for trying to overthrow the government and then you become president. And Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998 and he immediately started rewriting the constitution. And a lot of people liked this guy because like he promised to redistribute the oil wealth.

And he challenged the old elite rulers of the country and he started what they call the Bolivar and Revolution, which [00:05:00] was kinda like a combination of social welfare or state control of key industries like oil and anti-establishment rhetoric. And for a lot of people, it brought tangible benefits until

one day it kind of didn't.

Jordan Harbinger: Is this kind of president that runs for election and goes, we don't need those pesky elections anymore. You got the right guy in charge. We're not doing that again until I die.

Ryan McBeth: Not initially, you know, Hitler was voted in as well. People like this guy, and there were some benefits with social programs, but have you ever heard the term Dutch disease?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, but I don't know what it means.

Ryan McBeth: Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Sounds like an STD.

Ryan McBeth: Absolutely. Right. Dutch disease is this concept where when you suddenly discover oil or, or really any kind of mineral, right? Any country that extracts minerals as their primary income, when they get this sudden influx of cash, a lot of times they start spreading it around and they start all these social programs and that is great until the price of [00:06:00] that commodity suddenly collapses.

And that's kind of what we saw in 2010. Where you had all these social programs, the economy suddenly collapsed because oil prices felt investment dried up and corruption started to spread. This led to hyperinflation medicine, shortages, crime and mass migration. And this was only exacerbated by Maduro when he eventually came into power.

But I I bet you're going to ask me to get to that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. Good call. I think a lot of people are probably wondering, okay, but I'm working in Michigan, or Ohio, or Nebraska. Why should I care about Venezuela at all right now?

Ryan McBeth: So the short answer is oil, right? That's the answer. A lot of people understand, oh, Venezuela has oil, but Venezuela is actually a very strategic.

Region for the United States, and that is because we are looking out at a time horizon of 2027 or [00:07:00] 2028 when we are likely to be at war with China over Taiwan. China is likely to invade Taiwan in 2027 or 2028. Xi Jinping has told his army to be ready by 2027. My estimate is it'll be in May or October of 2028 because those are the two windows where the sea state is calm enough to allow for an invasion.

And it's also during a presidential election. And America can be very indecisive during a president election. But if Venezuela, who has been leaning towards China, been leaning toward Russia, been leaning toward Iran, is filled up with Chinese weapons, then it becomes a very strategic location because they can launch those weapons at ships that are trying to transit the Panama Canal.

JHS Trailer: I see.

Ryan McBeth: So if we're trying to move ships from the Atlantic over to the Pacific, we're going to transit the Panama Canal. And Venezuela could launch Chinese anti-ship missiles at those ships. They could also host things like Chinese [00:08:00] container ships. There are Chinese container ships that open up the tops, open up, and there are missiles inside those shipping containers.

Jordan Harbinger: So they could become like the Houthis of the Panama Canal. Right?

Ryan McBeth: Absolutely. That's an excellent way of putting it. They could become the Houthis of the Panama Canal, and a good portion of our oil refining is done on the Gulf Coast. I don't know whether it's the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America, but we're just going to call the Gulf Coast Galveston, new Orleans, Houston.

So if you're close enough with long range cruise missiles and long range precision fires, you could fire missiles at America and hit some of those oil plants. That's why I've said it's about oil, but it's not necessarily about Venezuela oil, it's about our oil. 'cause we have so many refineries on the Gulf Coast that are within striking range of intermediate range missiles.

Or even cruise missiles or long range drones from Venezuela or from ships operating outta Venezuela.

JHS Trailer: Okay,

Jordan Harbinger: so this is like Cuban missile crisis stuff, right? You can't just [00:09:00] have weapons, military bases, resources in our own backyard.

Ryan McBeth: You're absolutely correct. It's long-term thinking. A lot of people criticize President Trump, and don't me wrong, there's plenty of things to criticize him about, but this believe or not, is actually not one of those things.

He said in his speech, we're going to take the A, we're going to make sure the oil is okay. But before he said that, he said, we need to have good neighbors, and that's the part that you need to remember. We need to have good neighbors. We're trying to make sure that South America is essentially an American lake.

Caribbean is an American lake, and we want Chinese influence and Russian influence and Iranian influence the heck out of there. So we don't have our back door open

when this war in Taiwan comes.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Yeah. So Venezuela is like energy migration, maybe some other transnational crime depending on the drug stuff, if that exists or not.

And great power competition basically in one box.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah, you're absolutely correct. There is drug stuff going on. For the longest time, [00:10:00] Venezuela actually allowed the farc, which was a Colombian terrorist organization to kind of hang out inside of Venezuela. I think in 2021 and 2022, there were clashes on the border because the FARC wanted to run this drug route.

And I guess they didn't pay off the local Venezuelan commander. And so there were clashes and Venezuela went in with their army and they got their butts handed to them by the farc.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Ryan McBeth: So that didn't work out too well for Venezuela. But that's kind of one of the issues you have when you have a military.

That's what's called a, um, palace Guard or Internal Security military. They're not an offensive military. That's one of the reasons people ask me, don't do a video on Venezuela, maybe invading Guiana. There's no way in heck they would ever invade Guiana. They don't have the calories. To physically march across all that jungle to actually, uh, occupy the logistical base or any combat experience really to undertake [00:11:00] an operation like

that.

Jordan Harbinger: Right? 'cause their job is just to keep Maduro in power and that's all that they're trained to do.

Ryan McBeth: You're absolutely correct. I've often said there's four kinds of armies in the world. There's expeditionary armies, of which there's really only four and a half the us, the uk, France, Russia, and to a lesser extent, China.

They're the half. There's defensive armies. Most of the armies of Europe are defensive. You have internal security armies. Most of the army is South America is internal security, and they mainly fight rail bulls. And then you have your Palace Guard armies, and a lot of the militaries of the Middle East are palace guard armies.

They're there to make sure the leader stays in power in Venezuela is case's kind of a hybrid between the internal Security Army and the Palace Guard Army.

JHS Trailer: Gotcha.

Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Does China get a lot of oil from Venezuela?

Ryan McBeth: Only about 4%. It's not a lot, but it's not a little either. And if we essentially turn that off, it actually gives us a lot of negotiating leverage when negotiating trade.

[00:12:00] With China, we can turn that oil on anytime we want. They have to go out on the open market and find that 4%. They're not going to get it from Russia. Russia is pumping as much oil as they physically can. Because they need the hard currency. Russia is maxed out and more and more of their derricks keep breaking every single day.

Jordan Harbinger: And so it's 4% of Chinese oil is from Venezuela, but how much of Venezuela's oil goes to China? Does that question make sense?

Ryan McBeth: It's roughly between 80 and 90%.

Jordan Harbinger: So most of Venezuela oil goes to China, and that's where they get most of their money from. But China, it's not going to be an existential crisis for China.

If they can't get Venezuelan oil,

Ryan McBeth: it's not great, right? Like if I have to go and find 4% of anything, right? If you assume you're running at a hundred percent capacity right now when it comes to fuel and factories and energy and I have to go find that 4%, that's not great. What are you going to turn off until you find that?

And it's going to make things more expensive on the open market for everybody? Well, in the short term, you might see slight price rises. [00:13:00] But over the long term,

I think it'll

kind of stabilize.

Jordan Harbinger: What about Cuba? I assume Cuba probably had a robust business with Venezuela 'cause they don't have that many neighbors that think that you should have a dictator forever.

Ryan McBeth: Cuba's in a lot of trouble. Venezuela exported most of Cuba's oil, about 90% of Cuba's oil, and they're at the point now where they have brown ounces. The power is only on for a couple hours a day. Turning off that spigot to Cuba is a major problem for Cuba. 'cause they don't have a lot of places they can go for oil and they don't have any hard currency.

One of the reasons Cuban cigars are so horrible is that they are pumping anything. Whatever they can manufacture cigar wise, whatever crap they can manufacture, they're throwing that out the door because they need that hard currency. That's one of the. Few things

they can produce that the world will buy.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Because I remember Cuban cigars were supposed to be amazing. Wasn't that what they were famous for?

Ryan McBeth: They were. At one point, and here's the other funny [00:14:00] thing. This is when you look at something like Communism, American cigars, I know a little bit about cigars. I have a humidor right behind me. A lot of cigars are made in Miami, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua sometimes put cigars or draw tested.

They put 'em on a machine. They make sure that you can actually suck through the cigar before they ship it. So there's a machine that actually sucks on the cigar for you before they cap it and put it in a box.

Jordan Harbinger: We're going to have to talk about that after the show. I might need one of those. My friend might need one of those for reasons.

Ryan McBeth: So what's fascinating is that when you choose not to innovate and invest back into your company, because you're trying to grab all the hard currency you can, you tend to fall by the wayside, and that's why. Dominican and Honduran and Nicaragua cigars are now superior to what Cuba is putting out, even though they have some of the best soil in the world

for growing cigars.

Jordan Harbinger: What do people consistently misunderstand about Venezuela? Because [00:15:00] people will see the words oil and socialism or communism, whatever, in a headline and just lose their mind. And a lot of people, let's say on Reddit are like, oh, America hated it because they were distributing all the oil wealth to the people.

And I'm like, last die check, people were literally starving to death in Venezuela. So where's that oil money going again? Come on.

Ryan McBeth: It's basically going into the pockets of the regime. Now, Venezuela is actually one of the largest producers of Bitcoin, believe it or not. And that's because the government subsidizes electricity.

So it's very cheap to mine for Bitcoin inside of Venezuela. But for a while, I want to say it was in the 2010s.

It was never

the kind of famine that you might see in Ethiopia, but there were people who were choosing to lay in bed all day, so they didn't expend any calories getting up and moving around. It was literally that hard to find food.

The security situation there is pretty bleak. People don't really have any rights to assemble. There's these [00:16:00] units, and I'm probably going to pronounce it wrong, in Spanish collectives. Ugh,

Jordan Harbinger: nailed

Ryan McBeth: it. Which are, these are motorcycle gangs with guns that are sponsored by the Maduro government, and these collectives will drive around intimidating people so they don't protest.

Or if there's a vote, they might intimidate people to not vote for the opposition.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Ryan McBeth: So the

situation there is pretty darn bleak.

Jordan Harbinger: We've got listeners down there and they've said to me that the colectivos, they'll just shoot you. If you're out in the street and you're holding a Venezuelan flag and they think like you're celebrating Maduro getting kidnapped, they'll just shoot you.

They're not going to ask you anything. They'll shoot you and all your friends, they don't care. And I was like, what do these people do? And he said, day to day, they're just criminal gangsters that sell drugs or do human trafficking, but they'll take a check from the police or the government as well. And they have zero accountability.

And some of 'em probably just do it for the love of the game. If you're enough of a psychopath, just go around killing teenagers that you don't like. Why not? If you're a crazy [00:17:00] fool?

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. I mean, it's easy money. I mean, I know when people were leaving Venezuela, traveling over Colombia, Maduro sent all these collectives over to the border to just steal from them as they crossed the border.

Right? Just take from them. And Cuba did the same thing when people left Cuba. You know, people packed their suitcases, packed their bags, and the Cubans would just take everyone's suitcases as they left. The Cuban government did that as people pled the country. So yeah, the colectivos are some pretty bad

news.

Jordan Harbinger: Venezuela's collapsed. This is multifactorial, right? This is corruption up to the gills. There are few solid institutions, for example. There's no courts keeping the government honest or anything like that. In fact, I think during the election that was stolen, he basically took out any judge that said, Hey, this might not be right.

It was like, we know that you're fired, right? There's sanctions, there's mismanagement, there's brain drain, mass, immigration, just all stacked together. And the fact that Maduro was still in power was only because he was shooting anybody who decided that maybe they should say something about that. [00:18:00] And I find it crazy.

I mean, the amount of immigration, something like 24% of the population has left since the late nineties. That is just nuts.

Ryan McBeth: It is absolute madness. And a lot of those people, they would try to go somewhere and send money home, but in a lot of ways, I think Maduro saw this as a safety valve. Let those people leave.

They can send money back home. That makes me even less accountable. To make sure that my people are being treated well or they have the education

power and needs met.

Jordan Harbinger: If it gets bad enough, your nephew will leave and he'll go get a job at Texas and send you all of his money. What do I care if he's starved now?

That's a good thing. It encourages him to leave. Right? So it's actually almost like an economic engine on, look, I don't want to dwell too much on Hugo Chavez, but this guy was military colonel. Really? He was super charismatic. Do you know about this TV show he had?

Ryan McBeth: I actually do not. You should tell me about this.

'cause apparently you do. I I mainly do weapons, so this sounds [00:19:00] fascinating.

Jordan Harbinger: I think every Saturday he had a TV show that was literally like five hours long sometimes. And he would go on and chat with people and sing songs and dance and chat about whatever. And he just performed and he just entertained people.

This is the president of the country. Okay.

Ryan McBeth: This is Chavez or Maduro?

Jordan Harbinger: This is Chavez. Hugo Chavez TV show. Hugo Chavez Aló Presidente. So like, hello, president, 1999 to 2012. It was a long-running, unscripted talk show hosted by Hugo Chavez. Former president of Venezuela was broadcast on Venezuela's State television and radio channels on Sundays from 11:00 AM until mid to late afternoon.

The show is used to promote Chavista socialist principles to supporters in Venezuela and beyond. Many additions were filmed outdoors before large audiences featuring a local farm, factory school, hospital, housing project, or other public investment. Chavez typically appeared on television several times a week, but this was his opportunity to reach most families on their day off.

The show is criticized for his lack of seriousness due to low production [00:20:00] values, spontaneous announcements, random contributions from audience members. Colorful informality and outright tedium.

Ryan McBeth: He died in 2012.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. The reason the show is not on anymore is because he died, that that was the only thing that got the show off the air was that he died.

And I remember watching some of this out of curiosity a long time ago, and it's silly. It's ridiculous, especially given that it's the president of the country. Anyway. I don't know why he even brought that up. But basically this guy was like this charismatic military leader who was also just like a total goofball, which makes him endearing until he kills your family for dissent or something like that.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, uh, FDR had fireside chats, right? I don't know how long they were. I don't know if they were five hours long. I don't think he was doing any dancing

Jordan Harbinger: Chavez, in '99, rewrites the Constitution. He's granting powers or authority basically to issue laws by decree. And I think he did a bunch of these.

He did like one round in 2000 or something, and he [00:21:00] did 50 decree laws. He basically just said, I don't need this National Assembly thing anymore. I'm just going to make the laws myself.

Ryan McBeth: They still have the national assembly, but he has a lot more power to grant decrees. I believe Between 2000, 2001 there were 49 decree laws.

And then in 2004, 2005, he started packing the Supreme Court with supporters, which allowed him to appoint judges that would be more favorable of Chavez. So I think it was in 2008. Another thing Chavez started doing was he started implementing new gun restrictions. There was an assassination, I believe two years earlier, an attempted assassination, and he was definitely afraid of civilians with firearms 'cause he did not want to get taken out.

So he implemented, I want to say it was in 2008, they started gun registration and creating a master list, and then by 2012, all civilian firearms ownership was banned, which the beginning of the end for any kind [00:22:00] of ability for a

mass civilian uprising.

Jordan Harbinger: That is what Second Amendment guys in the United States talk about all the time.

This is what authoritarian regimes do. They make sure nobody else has any guns because they're scared.

Ryan McBeth: That was the playbook in Cuba. You know, "Arma? Pourquoi?", right? "Arma? Pourquoi?" Am I saying that correctly? That I don't know. Supposedly one lieutenant asked Castro, "Will we be allowed to keep our firearms?" And Castro said, "Arma? Pourquoi?"

"Guns? For what?"

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so you, you're mixing French with Spanish now. All right. Okay, got it. I was like, what on Earth? I think it's probably "Armas? Para Que?"

Ryan McBeth:  "Armas? Para Que?" Yeah. I, sorry. I like ¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!. I, you're

Jordan Harbinger: the guy who speaks Spanish.

At least that was Spanish. Yeah. How did Maduro come to play? Look, I know Chavez died, but Maduro was a bus driver.

And I know that it's a socialism thing. Like, oh, I'm going to pick a worker. Okay. But maybe a worker who knows how to run an administrative office instead of just a bus driver. Now, if there's anything wrong with bus drivers, but they don't have a lot of political experience generally,

Ryan McBeth: well, you're in the right area here.

Maduro started out [00:23:00] as a bus driver and then he became like a union steward, like a shop steward. And then he was the leader of the transportation workers union. And then he got elected to Congress to their, uh, assembly. So he did know a little bit about labor and organizing and all that. And Chavez really liked the guy.

In fact, Maduro's father was like a socialist labor organizer as well. So there was some synergies there. And Maduro became vice president and he moved in. Into the presidential office when Chavez

died. So who is Maduro loyal to? I mean, he's not loyal to the people of Venezuela 'cause he's not given them most of the benefits here.

Jordan Harbinger: Is he like an ideological socialism's a real deal? Or is he kind of like, look, I'm the leader now. I'm going to become a billionaire. I don't really care what happens to everybody else.

Ryan McBeth: That's an excellent question. I mean, I, I can't see into the man's heart. I'm sure that if you're espousing beliefs as a socialist and you started out as a labor union organizer, you do tend to believe in socialist principles.

I'm sure that's still [00:24:00] there, but I think maybe he kind of forgot about the whole distributing the wealth of the people thing and he basically enriched himself and enriched his cronies and enriched certain people in the army and the security forces. One of the things you have to understand is that in any kind of authoritarian state, you have to essentially satisfy three factions.

You have to satisfy the ruling elite. The military and you have to satisfy the police intelligence services. 'cause any of those three organizations can bring you down. So I'm sure that he started out as genuinely believing in socialism, but at some point when you see all of that oil money, billions of dollars in oil money, right, for the taking, I can certainly see how that might push someone's beliefs more toward kleptocracy.

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Jordan Harbinger: Don't forget about our newsletter, y'all, Wee Bit Wiser. It comes out every Wednesday. It's a short message from us to you.

It's about a two minute read maximum. It's actionable, it's specific, it's practical. You can apply it right out of the box. Again, it comes out every Wednesday. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. I would love to know a little bit about everyday life for normal Venezuelans under Chavez in Maduro, because my best friend was Venezuelan when I was growing up as a kid.

This is like the eighties and early nineties. His dad was like a wealthy dude, and he said back home things were pretty normal. His mom, of course, had been to Venezuela. She wasn't Venezuelan, but she'd been there. She was like, I was nice and like. Very modern and clean and things were running well. This is like the eighties.

It was like a wealthy, normal place to go. It was people were not starving in the streets and lighting things on fire. Widening inequality clearly [00:28:00] happened at some point.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the inequality slowly began because there was a difference between people who were connected and people who weren't connected.

And a big portion of that was hyperinflation. So hyperinflation hit in like 2016 and this hyperinflation was over 800%. And you can just imagine if you think that something that's going to cost more tomorrow than it does today, you're probably going to buy that thing today. And what does that lead to? That leads to shortages.

Remember when during COVID there was no toilet paper on the shelves? So why are people buying toilet paper? Oh, there's toilet paper there. Better buy it. 'cause there might not be any the next time I'm in the store. And in a situation like that where there's all this hyperinflation, you have somebody in power such as a police officer or even just someone who might grant a permit, like a driver's license.

The corruption doesn't become, someone stole money. A lot of corruption in the US is of the [00:29:00] someone stole money, pay to play kind of thing, or I'm going to steal money from this organization. Corruption in Venezuela was more like, the system won't function unless you grease my hand a little bit. I think in some ways a lot of that is intentional because Iran is a similar example.

I know a woman who's Iranian and she has been trying to get a passport for years now. 'cause she has a piece of property in Iran and she can't sell it unless she gets a passport and goes to Iran and is able to complete this transaction. In order to do that, she needs a birth certificate. In order to do that, she has to send away for it and then go to the consulate.

And I think a lot of those runarounds, that bureaucracy does two things. The first is it staffs the government with people who will support the government. 'cause at least it's a job. And the second thing is that job becomes an excellent opportunity for graft. Oh, you want your birth certificate? You have to pay me.

I can expedite it if you pay me. There was a [00:30:00] factory owner and this guy, he couldn't find toilet paper. And the union contract that he had with his workers required that he provide toilet paper and all the bathrooms. So now you got a guy running around the city trying to find toilet paper instead of actually running his business.

'cause if he goes into breach of contract with the union, the government can take his business. Oh my God. And if you have someone running around just constantly doing busy work all the time to satisfy these little tiny bureaucratic states, then it makes it a lot harder. To go protest or fight against the government.

Like I can't protest against the government. I got to freaking wait in line for food. I can't protest against the government. I need to renew my driver's license, and that takes two days. So I think a lot of this is intentional. So the average life of a person in Venezuela is just dealing with all this BS and dealing with people who are in the government who want a payment just to do their jobs.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Venezuela, man, they [00:31:00] got 300 billion barrels of oil or something like that. How does having massive oil reserves, how does that make the problems worse? Because a lot of people are like, there's so much money there. This place should be paradise. But the problem is all these oil states, except for Norway, it's a curse, basically.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. Any country that primarily relies on pulling minerals out of the ground tends to become corrupt because then there's no incentive to be accountable to taxpayers. You and I, we pay money to the federal government, or in some cases the state government. And for the most part, if the government doesn't do what we want them to do with that money, we unelect them.

I complain a lot that I get taxed 6% where I live in Maryland, but I can go online, I can renew my driver's license online, right? I don't have to go into the DMV. There's, I do actually get a lot of services, but if there's no incentive to be accountable to the taxpayer and you have things like foreign [00:32:00] contractors providing a lot of the expertise for mineral extraction, then all you really need to do is provide the labor, which is mostly unskilled or semi-skilled labor.

So you don't necessarily need to make sure your people are educated. You don't necessarily need to have hospitals other than maybe maternity hospitals, right? 'cause you still need to keep that birth rate up to keep creating those semi-skilled or low-skilled workers. You need those people. And then you need a small group of people who are the elite, the doctors, the lawyers, the technocrats to help the country run.

But you don't necessarily need that big middle class that's well educated because those are the people that can go protest or might get upset if things go wrong. So mineral revenue is basically the prize that makes corruption worth it.

Jordan Harbinger: I've done shows about this. I remember talking with, oh man, his name is Alistair.

He wrote the dictator's handbook. Remember

that guy? Yeah. I've been quoting stuff from there. Yeah. When I said the three people that you need to [00:33:00] satisfy. Yes, exactly.

This is like straight outta the Dictator's handbook. And the reason that he, so I went in depth on like why. Oil and mineral extractive regimes are usually authoritarian shit holes where people get shot in the street.

Just generally it's the default unless you really have a lot of momentum going in the other direction, like your Norway and one of the most sort of progressive societies in the world and you have oil and then like you mentioned before, Dutch disease, high oil prices, good times. Everybody gets a government program so that they don't have any problem with the government, but then the party stops because the game of musical chairs goes to shit because the oil price falls.

And it's not only are you not getting free education, you aren't getting food 'cause there's no diversified economy and you got major problems and other businesses can't even get talent 'cause it's all going to the oil company.

Ryan McBeth: The other issue is businesses, they have a hard time competing with oil or mineral extraction, right?

So if I have a factory and I make widgets. [00:34:00] And I can pay you $10 an hour, but the oil fields pay $12 an hour or where are you going to work? Some people will work in the widget factory 'cause maybe it's easier work, but eventually that widget factory is going to have to raise their

uh, wages. Yeah. This is the problem that Rush is having right now.

Jordan Harbinger: I've got friends there and basically everybody works at a defense contractor, like everybody. Yeah. They still have teachers and doctors, but

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. And the defense contractors are competing with the army. So the army raises wages or they raise the bonus. So the defense contractors at the raise their bonus and that's why you see 20% inflation inside of Russia.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I don't mean like defense contractors per se, but defense related industries I should say. So like everybody's doing something. 'cause that's where all the money is, like all of it. Okay. Oil production. I was shocked by this. They have the, what is it, first or second largest oil reserves in the world. I

Ryan McBeth: think they have the largest oil reserves,

Jordan Harbinger: but they produce less than a million barrels a day, which [00:35:00] makes no sense to me until you read that.

Those oil derricks are rusty, right? They haven't been cleaned out since Chavez, which is what, 1997.

Ryan McBeth: They haven't had a lot of reinvestment, right? You're trying to steal as much as you can before you retire. I'm going to use a Dukes of Hazzard analogy here. Did you ever watch a Dukes of Hazzard, that TV show?

Jordan Harbinger: Hell yeah, of course.

Ryan McBeth: So Roscoe

Coltrane, the sheriff, he was actually a fairly honest sheriff, and then a bond issue failed that would pay for his pension. And he had three years before he was going to retire. So he had three years to make all the money you could steal. And so with something like this, when you're a dictator, the clock on the wall is ticking, right?

Are you going to die? Are you going to get deposed? So you have to make as much money as you can steal. Before that clock hit zero. So why would you reinvest into repairing your oil rigs or buying new stuff or finding new fields when you could take that money? Because [00:36:00] one of two things is going to happen, right?

You're either going to get deposed and you get killed, you're going to die in your sleep. Or maybe three things you might get deposed and be able to get on a plane and go to Russia and play Fortnite with Assad for the rest of your life.

Jordan Harbinger: I was going to say, Putin is collecting dictators. Like my grandma used to collect those Maka dolls.

The nesting dolls, and I was thinking, man, Maduro, he got kidnapped. But if he had gotten to his safe room or whatever, and the if Army started closing in the special forces would've had to leave without him. But man, I could just picture Putin screaming. Assad cleaned your room. Maduro might be coming over and he's definitely sleeping with you.

Clean your room anyway though. 'cause Khomeini might be coming over and he's not sleeping with me. If you run an authoritarian state right now, someone in Putin's palace is sweeping the floors and tucking the sheets in and giving you your Star Wars bedding all set up. They are ready for your arrival.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah, I mean, uh, you're absolutely correct. Uh, what really [00:37:00] surprises me is that Maduro didn't take the off ramp. There was a theory that maybe this was something we used to do in Iraq, where someone was going to self-surrender, someone was going to inform on, uh, terrorist organizations in Iraq. And instead of them walking to our Ford operating base, we would tell 'em, just don't worry about it.

We'll come to you. And then one night we kick in their door and we grab 'em. We put a bag over their head. He knows it's all for show, but the neighbors don't. And so that was one thing that people said, oh, maybe Maduro actually. Self surrendered and they had to do it in a certain way. I don't think so. I

don't believe that's the case.

Jordan Harbinger: Nah. If he was going to do it that way, they would've done something where like his plane took off and the Air Force escorted it to Florida with very little expense, little fanfare, not a big deal like it was over international waters. Oh my gosh. They wouldn't send special forces into Caracas after bombing the crap out of the air defenses and do [00:38:00] this super risky thing to get him and his wife out of there.

There's no way that I do not believe that.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah, you're absolutely correct.

Jordan Harbinger: They did give him an off ramp to, I believe it was Turkey, and he basically said, go fly a kite. That's not happening. And then he went on TV and started mocking and dancing and like laughing about it. And I think that just pissed off Trump and his buddies enough where they were like, kick this door in extra hard.

Ryan McBeth: I said it was going to happen A couple days before the events, I actually came out with a Ryan Macbeth 2026. Bingo card.

Jordan Harbinger: I saw that,

Ryan McBeth: you know, I had Venezuela as the free space, but Maduro, he was done. The president cannot drive an aircraft carrier into the Caribbean and put all those ships. I think we have about 20 Navy ships there, plus Coast Guard vessels without looking weak in front of Russia and China.

The president back down Maduro was going one way or the other. I knew it was only a matter of time.

Jordan Harbinger: I think you and I talked over the holidays and you were like, eh, it won't happen before January. I can't [00:39:00] remember because Congress isn't in session and it needs to get Congressional approval to do anything like this.

And then that's not what happened, is it?

Ryan McBeth: It's not. Our president rolls. One of the things we probably should have done was get a general authorization for use of military force just for that area, but unfortunately I am not a lawyer. I am not a congressman. I'm not on the Supreme Court. I can't say whether this particular act, you're the lawyer.

You should be

able to tell me whether this was legal. I'm only one of those things and I can tell you that this was definitely not legal, but it doesn't matter because nobody's enforcing anything. That's the bigger problem.

Yeah. I mean, I guess that's the thing. There's what is legal or illegal and then there's what you can get punished for.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly.

Ryan McBeth: Speeding is illegal, but I can speed as long as I don't get caught.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. I want to talk about the Venezuelan military, 'cause one of the things I thought was Wow that happened was this is a massive operation. 40 people were killed somehow. 32 of them were Cubans, according to Cuba. So I want [00:40:00] to hear about that.

But then also we had to repaint one of the helicopters 'cause it had a bullet hole on it and everybody else was totally fine. We absolutely smoked this mission. The Venezuelan military, are they competent at all? I mean, clearly they don't stand a chance against American soldiers or Marines or special forces at all, but is it just they just do internal security but isn't internal security, I don't know, controlling your airspace?

They have all these Chinese or Russian air defense units. Hey, you might want to plug those in guys.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah, I mean, so war is hard

right there. There's that war is hard to start with the air defenses. One of the air defense units they have is the Russian S 300. It's an older system, not the best system. Ukraine still uses that system.

Russia still uses that system, but we have ways of not only jamming that system with electronic countermeasures, aircraft like the Growler, the EF 18 growler, which [00:41:00] effectively jam these systems so that either they can't lock on to aircraft, or once they fire that missile goes someplace else. We also have something called seed or suppression of enemy air defenses, where when we notice that the enemy radar is emitting, we fire a missile toward that enemy radar, and that missile is called a harm anti radiation missile.

And missile goes after the radar signal, so it hones in on the actual radar dish that is sending out radio waves tracking a jet. Now they have two choices. They can turn the set off and hopefully move. If they do turn it off, the missile remembers where it is and goes there anyway. They can turn the set off or they can keep it on in the hopes that they can either shoot down the incoming missile or still shoot down some of the jets.

It is doing anti-aircraft work. It's an art, not necessarily a science 'cause You can have different units where they turn on their radar and then turn [00:42:00] it off really quick and have another one turn on their radar and turn it off really quick. But when you're facing masked forces over 150 aircraft, I would imagine quite a few of those were suppression of enemy air defense aircraft.

I think they had 18 surface air missile launchers. So 18 of those drilling all those suppression of enemy air defense aircraft, that's going to be a major problem.

Jordan Harbinger: So they were prepared for an invasion from OSA or Turks and Caicos, not an invasion from the United States.

Ryan McBeth: It can certainly give you a false sense of security, and that's not saying they can't get lucky during the war in Serbia, Serbians shot down an American F1 17 Nighthawk.

With a anti-aircraft system. The guy who was doing the, uh, air defense, he was just really good and he was able to wait until the stealth fighter opened up its Bombays. When that happened, the stealth characteristics were gone and he was able to shoot during that time. Took a lot of patience, but he was able to do it.

Jordan Harbinger: My buddy's army unit [00:43:00] captured the pilot from the United States. It was this guy, Lieutenant Colonel Dale Ko in 1999. This FF one 17 Nighthawk was down. This was the Yugo SL slash Serbian army, and my friend was like, we felt so bad for that guy.

Ryan McBeth: The proximity warhead on a missile doesn't care if you're invisible,

right?

Jordan Harbinger: The guy I lived with in Serbia went up on a billboard and they spray painted in Serbian. Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible.

Ryan McBeth: That's pretty funny. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: they're pretty snarky. It was kind of funny. Yeah. Serbians a good, it's a good time if they're not shooting at you. Yeah. And maybe even if they are, I don't know.

Ryan McBeth: They actually have some really good military equipment. The Serbs, in a lot of ways because almost kinda like the South Africans, 'cause nobody would sell them. Right. So the Serbians had to develop a lot of their own military equipment like the Lazar, which is a normal personnel carrier. But I know we're here to talk about Venezuela.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You had mentioned the troops and you know, for the most part, if the [00:44:00] troops are essentially just being used to put down protesters, they're not very skillful. When you have special forces guys, they built a compound. They built Maduro's compound, and they practiced again and again. And in order to execute this mission flawlessly.

Ryan McBeth: So when you're going up against operators who've practiced for four months to kill you, and they know every single corner. You might be able to get a Locky shot in, but these guys really are the best of the best.

Jordan Harbinger: I read about this and they said that Maduro, when this was all going down, they knew exactly where he was.

They knew what he had for breakfast. They knew all the places he was going. They knew what kind of pets he had. They knew his night schedule, his morning routine, everything. Of course. 'cause the CIA was on the ground, they said that when they caught him, finally he was already in a safe room trying to close the door.

So like that was a close call also. What was their plan if he got in that room and shut the door? Because it sounds like they had 32nd basically window that they almost didn't get him. Were they just going to drop [00:45:00] a bunker buster on that thing and then they didn't arrest him, he just turned into pink mist or what?

Ryan McBeth: They have charges with him. You blow that door there. There'd be ways to get through that door. Look, any safe is really a time delay, right? The question is, how much time do we have in order to penetrate this room? One of the things that I had mentioned. A video I had done was that President Trump, it was on October 15th.

He said, we have CI assets in Venezuela. And everyone went,

oh my

God. Why would he say we have CIA assets in Venezuela? What an idiot. He didn't say it for Americans, he didn't say it to brag. He did it to let the Venezuelans know we are coming and you can open the door for us, or you can be under it when we kick it in.

Jordan Harbinger: Now next time he says there's CIA on the ground in Iran. Now when he orders that phrase, it means I'm getting arrested at best in 90 days.

Ryan McBeth: It's probably a little bit easier to put ca a on the ground in [00:46:00] Venezuela. I don't know how many Persian, uh, special operators or ca a agents we have.

Jordan Harbinger: We for sure have that.

Are you kidding me? Go to LA. You can find a few guys there. The one, just go to the ones that aren't selling necklaces. I love my Persian friends. Go to find one that's not a dermatologist.

Ryan McBeth: First we arrest him, then we sell on the carpet.

Jordan Harbinger: We have Persians. Come on man. And if we didn't just talk to Israel, the Mossad is probably half Persian or Persian passing.

Guys,

Ryan McBeth: I got to tell you, when I was in Israel, there were quite a few of the guards at the Knesset. I was there with a news channel I work for, and quite a few of the guards. You, you could tell they weren't Ashkenazi, right? So I, I would assume they're either Christian or Arabs and they look like straight up

killers.

Jordan Harbinger: There's a unit that I used to know some guys in Israel, and the name is something like Mishta and it basically means living among the Arab. And they're Sephardic Jews, so Arabic Jews. You ever see Fada? [00:47:00] Remember that show? Yeah.

Ryan McBeth: Excellent show.

Jordan Harbinger: You know how the guy speaks fluent Arabic and he convinces everybody, he's a Palestinian from the West Bank or something like that.

It's flawless. These are guys that like grew up in Yemen and their families from Yemen, and they Yemeni culture. They happen to be Jewish. They could go into Yemen and people would be like, oh yeah, you're one of us. Of course you got the local accent from our town. It's just completely amazing how well these guys can infiltrate stuff.

It's absolutely bananas. Anyway, that's a tangent. All right, we got Maduro. What's going to happen to that guy? Is he sharing a cell with Diddy? Exchanging. Petroleum for baby oil.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. I mean, I, I guess we took both of their oil.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. That's, that's

right.

They're having their own oil party in Rikers Island.

Okay. We left the VP Rodriguez, Delsey Rodriguez, I believe is her name. She's still in charge, so a lot of people are saying like, Hey, what good does this do? The whole regime is still in place. The armed forces are still in place. The VP's still in place. Are we just thinking they're going to be more amenable to getting [00:48:00] bribed or whatever, or to the carrot or the stick to do what the United States wants Now?

Ryan McBeth: I think that the idea is Delcy Rodriguez is mainly a technocrat. She did run the oil side of the oil exploitation side of Venezuela for quite a few years, and she was the vice president. She manages a lot of that stuff. She knows where all the bodies are buried and how the oil extraction process works in the country.

One of the issues that we had in Iraq, and I guess in Afghanistan as well, we listened to people like Noelle Malachy and Iraq and Hammad Karzai, and these people said, oh, the people love me. The people want me back. The people want me here. And what happens when we arrive in Iraq, the people don't know who no Alki is.

He hasn't been here. And Hammad Karzai was basically the mayor of Cobble. So the thing was in [00:49:00] 2024, Edmundo Gonzalez, he won Venezuela's last election. And Maduro essentially said, no, you didn't. And he was a stand in for a woman named Maria Carina Machado. And both of those people left the country and Maria Carino Machado, she was one who won the Nobel Peace Prize and thanked President Trump thinking, oh, he's the guy who is going to bring me in.

The problem is that if either Gonzalez and Machado, if they walk off of the C 17 escorted by Marines, the Venezuelan army and the Venezuelan police are not going to respect them, they're going to consider them to be American puppets.

Jordan Harbinger: It's going to look bad if we put our own people in charge after arresting the leader,

Ryan McBeth: especially people who've been out of the country, haven't been risking their butts like everybody else in Venezuela.

Like I said, almond Karzai and Noelle Malicky go, oh yes, I'm going to go in and they're going to be throwing roses at me. And that didn't work out. So I [00:50:00] think we, for once we learned our lessons, and actually I will tell you this, going back to military stuff for a second. We fought an insurgency for 20 some years.

One of the things we're really good at is finding where a bad guy is kicking in the door and grabbing him. That's something we essentially practiced for 20 years. This was absolutely inevitable, and that's one thing we learned from the Global War on Terror, along with maybe we shouldn't take the outsider and put them in a position of power.

Jordan Harbinger: Nothing says. We'd love to work with you in a mutually beneficial relationship. Quite like Delta Force blasting down your steel reinforced doors at four o'clock in the morning. Fighter jets and crack commandos don't come cheap though. So let's prop up our economy by supporting the amazing sponsors that support this show.

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We are happy to surface codes for you 'cause it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of our out of the loop here with Ryan Macbeth, one thing that's interesting is they did indict him. Right for drug trafficking, narcoterrorism related charges. And they're also hitting them with this possession of a machine [00:54:00] gun essentially.

Which is funny because, so the way this charge works, it's, this is like some stupid lawyer thing, but whatever. Maybe nobody else thinks this is funny, but in order to get this charge, you don't have to have a machine gun. If I get hit with that charge, it's not like I have the machine gun in my hands or in my kitchen.

It's that somebody associated with me in whatever crime I was doing, whatever criminal organization, they had a machine gun that they were using in the crime of drug trafficking or narco terrorism. So you're taking this guy who controls a literal army with a Navy and Air Force anti-aircraft missiles of like thousands of weapons and rockets and everything, and you're like, Hey man.

I know you had a machine gun when you were doing those crimes and you're like a mach. Yes, I, yes. I had a machine gun. I have thousands of them and grenades and missiles and everything in a boat that launches them. So it's this sort of funny add-on charge that you see when you, you hit like a Crip with this or a guy in the Bloods when he's dealing drugs and possession of a machine gun and it's, damn, there's three [00:55:00] extra years on the sentence and we're adding that to Maduro.

It's kind of like charging somebody. You have done capital murder and you're a serial killer and we found a bag of weed in your car, so you're getting life plus two and a half months. It's just a silly, stupid add-on charge That kind of looks funny even in the indictment. You're like, what? Why bother with that?

I dunno. This is silly.

Ryan McBeth: That's a good one. I know that the charges were actually filed in 2020. One of the last things that the Biden administration did was increase the reward from Maduro's captured at $25 million. That was kind of interesting when Vice President Harris went on Twitter and said, how dare Trump grab Maduro?

Wait a minute.

Wasn't one of the last things your government

did increase the um, reward by $25 million? That's one of the issues that I can kind of see with this country now, even if you know we should take the win on this one, everyone in America should go like, good job special forces. We got a bad guy out of power.

We have the [00:56:00] potential for degrading China's influence and our hemisphere. Yeah, this should be something both Republicans and Democrats. Should agree on was a good thing. And honestly, Biden probably

would've done it if he had thought of it first.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Ryan McBeth: He is the guy who raised the reward.

Yeah. I think we need to stop sharp shooting each other and come together as Americans

for the win.

Jordan Harbinger: Can we sort of steal, man, what people are saying? Like this is really terrible, this is bad. We shouldn't have done this. 'cause I'm with you. Where I'm like, I love a good, bad guy take down. But I'm also like, okay, people who say this is terrible in an escalation, they have a point. Well, I think

Ryan McBeth: what's terrible is that we didn't get an authorization for use of military force.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I agree with that. That sets a really bad precedent because President Trump won't be in office forever. And the next guy who is in office who decides, you know what? I want to invade this country over here without authorization of Congress. He might actually do that. He or she might actually do [00:57:00] that.

Ryan McBeth: And that authorization for use of military force. Is necessary because then the president has to go to Congress and make the case. I sat in a couple of my videos. I don't mind doing this because of the China connection, but the president needs to make the case. The president needs to get the authorization for use the military force, and Congress has not done its job.

They've been asleep at the wheel when it comes to the checks and balances that our nation depends

on. Yeah, I completely agree. There's certainly a portion of this I'm thinking, that basically wanted to signal to China, Hey, we don't care if you have influence in our backyard. We're not going to allow that.

Jordan Harbinger: And also to Russia, you have influence in our backyard. We don't like that. And by the way, your weapons are trash.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. I mean, if there was a nail in the coffin, it would certainly be this, at least when it comes to surface stair missile system because the Iranians are using Russian made surface stairs, missile systems as well.

If Russia ever recovers from their war in Ukraine, nobody is going to buy their [00:58:00] stuff. If I were in a democracy or even like a semi democratic country where people really are accountable in the legislature and someone said, Hey, we should buy these Russian T 72 tanks. I know that if I agree to that the next time I'm up for election, people are going to be showing footage of Russian tanks blown up, but their turrets popped off in Ukraine and they're going to go, Senator Bongo wants to buy this horrible Russian equipment, vote for this other senator.

So when you look at the performance of Russian equipment in Venezuela, that doesn't really bode well for the Russian arms industry and that Russia can ever recover and actually export arms again. 'cause right now everything is going towards Ukraine. They essentially can't export anything.

Jordan Harbinger: I do think Russia actually took a bit of a win here because they can now go, yeah, we invaded Ukraine, but look, they went and arrested Maduro.

They're no [00:59:00] better than us. I see key differences in these two things, but they're going to say, Hey, the international law that you guys talk about all the time, you clearly don't care about that either.

Ryan McBeth: You're absolutely right. There is a woman, she's a Russian American. Her name's Ksenia Kova. I've worked with her on various projects before and Ksenia keeps an eye on the Russian news media and she said that Russia has already been showing their citizens, look, this is what America does now on the world stage, I don't really think it matters because.

It's not like other countries are going to go, oh look, America did it so Russia can do it too. Kinda like that Tyler Perry movie. I can do battle by myself. Russia doesn't need an excuse. Russia can do battle by themselves. So can China. China doesn't need an excuse to take over Taiwan. But from an internal standpoint, this really is a win for Russia because they can say to their people, look, America is no different.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Although ignore the part about how they didn't [01:00:00] lose anybody and it took three hours and we're in Ukraine for three years and we're on 500,000 dead or whatever the heck it is at this point.

Ryan McBeth: Not just that, but look at when Russia tried to take over hostel airport. They performed an air of salt, really similar to what we did in Caracas, and they flew into Hostel airport, which is a little bit northwest of Kyiv, and they had to do it at Dawn because they didn't have enough night vision goggles for their pilots and their men, and they didn't have enough training flying at night.

Whereas the 60th SOAR, which is the night stalkers, the unit that flew these operators in, that's all they do is fly it. These guys fly at night all the time. Imagine looking through two rolled up magazine tubes that are tinted green and uh, and trying to fly a helicopter. I've flown a helicopter before.

It is very hard. It's very hard. And these guys, they're the kinds of guys that can hover inches off the [01:01:00] ground and keep it steady while their operators jump out. 'cause they don't want to land 'cause they don't know if the roof will collapse or there might be a mine on top of the ground or whatever. I mean, these guys are really that good.

And Russia, look, you get what you pay for. If you're not constantly training like the one 60th does, you're just not going to see that level of performance

outta your pilots. I would love to count other people who say this is just about oil. 'cause yes, we do need the grade of oil, the Venezuela pumps. It's the kind we are set up to refine in the United States, but it's going to take eight years to get that stuff back up online.

Jordan Harbinger: This infrastructure is just trashed right now and digging wells, especially offshore stuff and deep enough in pipelines and infrastructure to the ports and the containers. I mean, this is not something, even if you work 24 7 at rapid pace as fast as you can, you're talking about half a decade before you've really ramping this stuff up.

It's going to be crazy. It's going to take forever.

Ryan McBeth: You're absolutely correct. When you look at it, you have companies like Exxon [01:02:00] and I'm sure it would be great to go down to Venezuela, but we got plenty of capacity coming from fracking in North Dakota. So why would we go down to Venezuela and invest money in something?

It's going to take five to seven years to get any kind of return on investment,

Jordan Harbinger: and it might get seized again by the next guy who gets elected in Venezuela, which they've done before.

Ryan McBeth: That could theoretically happen and in five years, assuming there's no third President Trump term, which I, I don't think is going to happen, but let's say the White House flips and you have a person who enters the White House, who doesn't feel like we need to have the same sort of done row doctrine.

Those oil companies might be outta luck. So there's going to have to be some incentives for them to go down there and pump some oil, as well as some security guarantees as well.

Jordan Harbinger: It still seems like this chess move makes sense even if Venezuela was exporting. Avocados, [01:03:00] strawberries.

Ryan McBeth: Absolutely. And that's something a lot of people don't seem to understand because people go, oh, the oil, and again, president Trump didn't help when he goes off script and goes, we're going to take the oil and we're going to, oh God, why did you say that?

It's just the fact that we're cleaning house in our own hemisphere and denying China and Russia and Iran access to that. There were Iranians who were coming to Venezuela. They get that diplomatic passport. Now you have Hezbollah guys who can travel all around the world on a diplomatic passport issued by Venezuela.

That is not a situation that we want going on in our own backyard.

Jordan Harbinger: What happens next, man? A little bit of oil volatility maybe, but probably not too much of that. What about opposition parties in Venezuela is the era of socialism over. I know Iranians are like, Hey, we're protesting over here too. You want to drop in with your night stalkers and help a brother out?

I mean, I see that kind of talk online as well.

Ryan McBeth: That would be a little bit harder. You know, Iran is [01:04:00] fairly mountainous. I can tell you that probably the most realistic outcome is a managed transition where you have security forces mostly staying intact 'cause they honestly want the paycheck and eventually some sort of negotiated political settlement where they hold free and fair elections.

Maybe even with American observers, you have free and fair elections and those people who are elected can then move toward weaning Venezuela off whatever socialist experiment they were in. That is the most realistic, best outcome.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I was going to say that's the good outcome. What else could happen?

What's the worst case scenario?

Ryan McBeth: Oh boy. The bad outcome is, let's say in a power vacuum. So Maduro is gone and maybe oil revenue isn't going out like it was. Or maybe different people have to get paid off. Now you have these motorcycle gangs. These guys essentially become free agents. [01:05:00] And now you don't see Venezuela turn into Iraq because in Iraq there was a lot of secretarian violence.

SUNY and Shia, the Sunnis were a minority, but they were in power. The Shia were a majority, they were not in power, and they were, Iraq was essentially a civil war for, uh, probably about six years. Now, you're not going to see that in Venezuela. You're not going to see a civil war because there, there's really no secretarian divide there.

But I can easily see it turning into Libya with all of these fiefdoms run by warlords, probably most likely narco warlords, right? Because they're getting their funding somehow. And then you have this legitimacy crisis where you have the president who is essentially the mayor of Caracas. Everyone is afraid to go out into the jungle because that's where all the gangs are.

I can see that as a possible, uh, worst outcome.

Jordan Harbinger: Geez. Oh my gosh. I hope it works out better than that. The reaction from Venezuelans has been interesting. There's people in [01:06:00] Venezuelan celebrating, there's Venezuelans in United States celebrating, and there's no polling data on this or anything, but like the majority of people are doing, did they see this as a liberation, chaos, foreign power meddling that they'd rather not deal with?

'cause if you're suffering and you've been starving and stuff like that and you have no medical care, you might feel a little bit hopeful. But if you're an older person who is just thinking you have five more years and maybe you can survive it, this might not be a shock to the system that you really needed.

Ryan McBeth: I think you're seeing a wide range of possibilities here. For 25 years, Venezuela's been socialists, right? You have people who've never seen democracy. Maybe some of the older people might be cautiously optimistic about what might happen. The younger people might kinda wonder, what is this whole democracy thing?

How does that actually change? I've got my TikTok, I've got my friends. I never get in trouble with the police. What's the big deal? Maybe it's not a big deal until you want a family or [01:07:00] you want a stable job. You want a good job after you get an education. And I think if you're risk sensitive like you're an elderly pensioner or something, you're probably going to fear any kind of instability, especially if consumer goods start flooding back into the country.

Sanctions get lifted. Consumer goods start flooding into the country. Now you might see prices rise, 'cause now you have money chasing, you know, more oil, money gets produced, more money chases those new consumer goods. I think you might be able to see prices rise, and so pensioners might go crap. It might not be as bad as 800% hyperinflation, but if you have a certain dollar value to your pension, there's not a lot of elasticity there.

If you're in the regime, that's a good question because one big problem that we had in Iraq was what we called deification. The bath party was Saddam Hussein's party. And Paul Bremmer the genius that he was, and I said that sarcastically [01:08:00] after the, on the third day of the occupation, he said, if you're in the bath party, you're fired.

And essentially, everybody who knew how the water treatment plant worked, walked off the job. So if you're in the regime, you're probably going to be thinking like, I need to play along, no matter what happens. You don't want to rock the boat too much. I don't really see people grabbing their AK one oh ones and going and fighting for Maduro.

Uh, 'cause Maduro wasn't really fighting for Venezuela. AK 1 0 1, uh, yeah, I believe that's their, uh, assault rifle that they use in the Venezuela Army. Huh.

Jordan Harbinger: Because I know there's 47 in, I know there's 74. 'cause I play Call of Duty. I never heard of the 1 0 1.

Ryan McBeth: So, uh, boy belongs to the AK 100 family. Uh, it's uh, kind of a, a new rifle floating barrel developed in 1994.

Uses 5, 5, 6 by 45. So yeah, it's a smaller cartridge, intermediate cartridge. And I believe Venezuela [01:09:00] bought, or I think they have a licensed manufacturing. They manufactured like a million of these things. So there's a heck of a lot of these things floating around South America,

at least floating around Venezuela.

Jordan Harbinger: You can probably get one real cheap right now if you want one for your collection. I didn't mean to derail you. This is an interesting and very sort of frankly fascinating developing situation. Do you think we're going to continue to drone boats coming outta there or is that kind of over.

Ryan McBeth: I

don't

really

know if that is a, a really good question.

Jordan Harbinger: I guess we'll see. But it seems like the point of that might've been to like rattle Maduro a little bit now. He's already, he's gone.

Ryan McBeth: Yeah. I honestly,

that's a tough one. It might've been to rattle Maduro. I could see us not striking these votes anymore because their objective has been realized. Maybe that won't happen anymore.

I don't know what kind of debt we put in the actual drug market by destroying

20 boats. Oh, none. No, I read up on the narco traffic from Venezuela. It's a drop in the bucket. It's not a real player. [01:10:00]

I would imagine it would be more Colombia for the processing. I know. It is a fact that the FARC engages in cocaine production and trafficking.

Some of the jungles near the Colombian border, that is 100% obvious. I often thought those boats that we were hitting, they might have been going out to a mothership, right? There's an oil tanker that's headed over to Europe. I'm going to carry a bunch of bales of drugs, pull up next this mothership. We're going to throw these bales onto the mothership.

The Filipinos are operating the ship. They don't care as long as they get paid. Bring whatever you want, and they put that stuff in the hold and it goes over to Europe. So I'm not sure how much of a dent we really made in the drugs being imported into the us, but it could have been done to rattle Maduro.

You're absolutely right. That was actually one of the big issues that I had with this whole venture, was that we never really explained why this

was necessary. Yeah. All right. Last question. When Trump said [01:11:00] something's got to be done about Cuba, what do we think is happening here? Are we actually going to do something about it, or is it just like, I got a chance to scare the shit outta Fidel Castro and his cronies, like, I'm going to do it.

Yeah. We saw that movie, the Bay of Pigs. Yeah. You know, I could see

us perhaps giving Cuba a little push right now. We're coming off a high. Right. That raid was so amazing, and then two days later, the president's talking about invading Greenland. Yeah. Take the win. Take the W, right? Yeah. Now

we're talking about Greenland.

It's certainly possible that we could give Cuba a little

bit of a push, but I don't know how ready the Cuban people might be to accept any kind of Yankee imperialism. They might know that their lives aren't that great. But they've had to deal with the US sanctioning their country since I believe 1963.

Was it since the nine, early 1960. Right. [01:12:00] We've sanctioned Cuba. In fact, I think one of John f Kennedy's last things he did was he bought a thousand cigars from Cuba before he signed the order sanctioning Cuba. So he was good, at least for the rest

of his life. Yeah. It's interesting the Cuban people might not be ready for Yankee imperialism with the Venezuelans ready for Yankee imperialism, or you just think it's a different situation?

Jordan Harbinger: 'cause

Ryan McBeth: I think it's a different situation because they've

experienced wealth and democracy. That's true. Nobody alive in Cuba has experienced any sort of prosperity at any point really.

That's probably accurate. I guess as Americans, we have this conceptualization that everyone wants to be free and people are imagining like, oh, wouldn't it be great if I could speak my mind?

And that's one of those things that sounds good to us. But for the average human who just, they need to get to work and they need to find food, and they need to do this, oh, it's democracy now, okay, does this mean I get food? There could be that whole [01:13:00] situation where democracy comes and you have winners and you have losers, and you look at Russia, right?

I mean, there were some real winners and some real losers. In fact, there were a couple of winners in the rest of the country was the loser when all those pyramid schemes came out after the fall of the Soviet Union. I would certainly imagine that if we push Cuba over into some sort of fall of the Cuban regime, it's the Pottery Barn rule that Colin Powell mentioned.

You break it, you buy it, you break it, you own it, and Venezuela might be able to take care of themselves, but Cuba is a freaking basket case.

Jordan Harbinger: It is, my God. I went there and I'll never forget the things. That they told us versus the things that we saw with our own lying eyes. It was just like everyone has free healthcare and you get free clothing and you get free school.

Alright, we're going to stop at this bathroom over here and bring pencils because the kids here don't have any. Why is everyone naked? They don't really have clothing. What the hell, man?

Ryan McBeth: Yeah, I've heard when you run the Havana [01:14:00] Marathon is tradition to give your shoes to somebody at the end.

Jordan Harbinger: That doesn't surprise me at all.

The things I saw there. And then our tour guide was like, you don't understand. You don't understand it. And I was like, maybe I don't understand, but I don't know. I'm, this is what I'm seeing. And then three years later he escaped to the United States. I emailed him and I was like, so mostly bullshit. And he's like, what do you want me to do?

I'm a tour guide for the government of Cuba. Anyway, Miami's nice these days. I'm happy to be here. That was really, uh, really crazy to see. Ryan, thank you so much man. This is fascinating. I'm so. Curious what is going to happen next with this. And I just, I really hope that the positive outcomes that we outlined are more on the menu than the disasters that could come out of this.

We'll see.

Ryan McBeth: Uh, I'm going to use my Arabic

and say in Shaah. Mm-hmm. There we go. Thank you very much. Thank you. You are about to hear a preview with Ken Burns who says The real American revolution wasn't a clean break from Britain, but a messy, violent civil war whose contradictions we are still debugging 250 years later.

JHS Trailer: A good story neutralizes [01:15:00] the binary. Yes and no. You know, you're bad, left, right, young, old, rich, poor, whatever the dialectic is you're involved in. A good story can sort of neutralize it and go, oh wow, I didn't know that. There's no test. We'd share with you our process of discovery. So all the stuff I've said about the revolution, I had no idea going in.

And I am so overwhelmed with the joy of acquiring it, that giving it away feels even better. The ideas are. Really, really powerful At the heart of this, the idea that you could be a citizen, that you could have a say in your government after your family has worked the land for a thousand years for somebody else, and all of a sudden you come here and you own some land and farm and you can do this.

And literate democracy is a really messy form of government, but it's better than all the other forms because the other forms involve a kind of tyranny or authoritarian certainty. Democracy's messy 'cause you actually have to listen to people that you disagree and you have to compromise. [01:16:00] When that breaks down, then you lose the possibility of, of having that.

America comes out of violence, it's born in violence. What would you guys do? What would I do? Would I be a loyalist? Would I be a patriot? What would I be willing to fight for? What would I be willing to give my life and all that I've accumulated in my life? My fortune would I do that? We mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Jordan Harbinger: For more on what else we've been getting wrong about our own origin story. Check out episode 1238 with Ken Burns. This episode forces you to confront the version of America you didn't learn in school. Alright, if there's one takeaway here, it's that Venezuela didn't collapse because of one villain or one policy.

It collapsed because oil rents replaced. Accountability. Institutions got hollowed out, competence got replaced with loyalty, and once the money dried up, the regime compensated with control. And for Americans, Venezuela isn't a distant cautionary tale. It's a pressure point. Energy markets, migration flows, criminal [01:17:00] networks in a strategic backyard problem right next to critical shipping lanes and the Gulf Coast refining complex.

That mix doesn't stay contained just because we want it to. As always, we'll keep watching what happens next, whether this turns into a managed transition with an off ramp for the people who currently hold the guns and the keys, or whether the vacuum turns into a gray zone free for all, where ordinary people get squeezed between politics and criminals.

Show notes on the website, advertisers deals, discount Codes, ways to support the show on the website as well at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about our newsletter Wee Bit Wiser and our Six Minute Networking course as well. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

If [01:18:00] you know somebody who's interested in geopolitics of Venezuela South America Oil dictators, definitely share this episode with 'em. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.