What happens when slogans hit hard limits—terrain, production lines, and the law? We sit down with Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and counterterror veteran, to strip the varnish off three volatile fronts: Venezuela, Ukraine, and U.S. dealings with extremist proxies. The result is a bracing tour through ground truth that media sound bites rarely touch.

We start where few policymakers do: maps and math. Johnson explains why a push on Caracas would be a nightmare—triple‑canopy jungle, high mountains, and urban choke points packed with ambush sites. Helicopter assaults would meet thousands of shoulder‑fired missiles; coastal ground convoys would crawl through kill zones. Factor in support from Iran, China, and Russia, plus porous borders with Colombia and Brazil, and a quick regime change fantasy turns into a widening regional war.

Then we follow the money and the missiles in Ukraine. Requests for twenty‑five Patriot batteries collide with the industrial reality of a handful built per year and missiles costing millions apiece, fired in pairs against swarms that can number in the hundreds. Intercept math becomes strategy: even optimistic launcher counts leave most threats untouched, and maneuvering hypersonics challenge Patriot’s effectiveness. Johnson walks us through the war’s timeline—Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka—and why a slower Russian mobilization now yields faster advances as trained manpower and logistics finally converge.

The final act asks the hardest question: what does it mean when Abu Mohammed al‑Jolani, Al‑Qaeda’s Syrian leader, is welcomed in Washington? Johnson traces a decades‑long pattern of U.S. support to radical Sunni groups, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to Syria, and links it to a bipartisan record of targeted killings that erode constitutional norms. If strategy ignores first principles—law, accountability, and the difference between optics and outcomes—blowback isn’t a surprise, it’s a certainty.

If you’re ready for clear, unsentimental analysis—terrain over talking points, production over promises—hit play, share with a friend, and leave a review with the one insight that challenged your view. Your take might shape our next deep dive.