hello and welcome to the Winston Marshall show with me Winston Marshall I sat down with former State Department official Mike band we discussed the mechanisms behind the counterop populism movement we discussed America's foreign policy the difference between that of Biden blinc and Trump we talked about the Deep State what is really going on this was quite an exceptional conversation not one I've had before on this show we went extremely deep special attention to what is happening in Ukraine Russia are we on the brink of
World War II what happened in 2014 how does this all link together Mike has done exceptional work exposing the censorship industrial complex he's done exceptional work exposing the quote unquote blob the American state department and all its tentacles all of that and a lot more but before you hear from Mike I ask if want to support the show all you need do is press subscribe if you subscribe I can have more phenomenal guests like Mike Benz discussing the issues you want to hear about but without further Ado here he is Mike
Ben Mike great to speak with you too I want to understand about your time in in the state department because you know you've come out as very much anti The Blob The Blob as I've understood it in your terms is the state department it's the CIA it's foreign or overseas facing aspect of the American uh would you say deep state or just the state I guess Empire The Empire what do you mean by the Empire well what I mean is America comprised of two components there's the American Homeland which is where US citizens live
and there's the American Empire which are all of our sort political vassal States all of our natural resource Havens uh all of our export markets for our us companies uh all of our you know sourcing for critical supply lines uh all of our trade partners and the argument at the outset of American Empire uh we can sort of trace the lineage of all this from the 1800s to present but effectively uh the United States our national security State deep state if you will has had this compact with the American people since
the end of World War II that they would have a license to do dirty things abroad you know they would call it internally the department of dirty tricks back in the 40s and 50s this ability to go out and do things in the rest of world that would effectively create a prosperous American Empire but it would redown to the benefit of citizens the US Homeland because if we for example um you know uh want cheap gas prices well you're going to need source that gas you and before the fracking Revolution for example in the
early 2000s which is fraught with its own concerns most of American Oil came from came from Mexico and Canada South America and Saudi Arabia places like well what happens if there is a uh political leadership in that country that decides to nationalize the oil or cut off us access Partnerships we need a mechanism to be able go in and overthrow government or put pressure or leverage in order to allow us uh exploit those natural resources the same thing with trade uh and labor issues the same thing with you know any
number of you know every plot dirt under under our feet has some resource in it whether that's copper or aluminum or fruit or sugar oil titanium there is and your ability to ract that or to get favorable business terms is dependent on your ability to negotiate with the political leadership in charge of that territory so we've needed this Empire for the benefit of Homeland but now we're in this place where there's a big conflict of interest between those two because there's so much energy and so many secrets that
need to be kept in order maintain this Empire and it's coming at the cost of trillions of dollars debt and hundreds of billions dollars every year in foreign Aid so to speak which is effectively bribery payments in uh foreign regime change operations which we simply call democracy promotion uh in foreign militarism and the military-industrial complex and so at the same time American institutions are failing we are you know a second almost third world country at this point in terms of our education and Pisa scores our infrastructure is falling
apart uh you know our cities look inferior to you know even Second World countries in many ways and so there's now this moment that populism has stepped into I want to get into populism thing but I still want to hold back one moment well firstly you talk about this sense of protecting the Empire I immediately thought of the Opium Wars because actually that's what the British military was sent in to protect trade interests of British companies um in that case trading tea and opium um so it's not unique to America uh that
that there's this sort of infrastructure that's been built there um but I still actually before we get too deep into what's going on I want to understand about your role in the state department itself I want to understand your story because I also think that's helpful for listeners to to get a bit of context because it's quite remarkable that you would become from that and then come out start very publicly criticizing it and taking it apart so i' I'd love to know what your involvement was with the Trump Administration and the state department
yeah so you my technical title was Deputy assistant secretary for international Communications and information technology which is you know a long way of saying it was just colloquially referred to as the Cyber desk it was because touched on cyber commerce effectively for the most part there was a little bit of National Security things related to that you know I think you know technically I oversaw three divisions at State relate one relating to bilateral um you know uh bilateral cyber policy uh I think bilateral and Regional which is
effectively you know our information technology diplomacy one-on-one with other countries or as a regional block the second one was multilateral Affairs which has to do with the US participation in multilateral um organizations like the uh International telec Communications Union the itu which is I think oldest multilateral you know organization in the world it was created I think in the 1850s when countries had to communicate around you know with each other around telegraphs and the sort of international regulation of early
Telegraph messaging and then when subc cables and all that it became an international thing there now that's sort of an internet policy Forum um and then the third related to security and and issues around China and uh certain great power competition issues um but from my perspective the state department was really the locus of internet censorship story and a lot of people um didn't understand that and are only now really beginning to understand it uh I did not understand it at first when I started off my journey in you know
trying to write a you know my great you know sort of Bible know the entire censorship industry at the time I really looked at it as a domestic thing because we were experiencing censorship domestically I thought you know um when saw Trump supporters getting censored in the 2016 election and you know it was very easy to say oh there's a you know pink-haired ambig gendered you know BLM Hamas supporting person in the trust and safety team they pulled the lever and you go okay this is just a culture War thing this
just uh left versus right this is a sort of you know woke versus anti-woke um and I think that's way most people have understood censorship up until quite recently um uh and that is the way for the first I don't know probably two years I was looking at it but every time lost you were there this is I'm saying from 2016 to 2018 um but you know I came to the state department with a knowledge of the state Department's huge role in Internet censorship and it was you know my ambition to try reform so why would why did they bring you in
pretend that you were did hide your opinions or were you brought into because you had these opinions well I think it was because um you know I a speech writer primarily on technology and um and international Affairs you already Trump speech writer yeah at that point why what how did that happen did you get to be become his speech writer well I was a you know technology lawyer I knew the issues you know inside and out um you know I knew people in the administration and had you know been doing private briefings and
things like that I people sort of knew me as the The Tech Guy you know and also the censorship guy and they also knew me as the guy who was a bit of a zealot when it came to the role of state department um in uh you know Internet censorship at a time when lot of people didn't even appreciate that censorship was happening and in 2020 for example it was you know very uh there were still house hearings about whether censorship was even real and whether it was you know even had a political bias or where it was coming
from and you know these things were all um denied frankly all the way up until Trump's deplatforming in 2021 um and then it became a question not of whether it's real or not but whether or not it's a good thing you know it's like things you it's conspiracy theory uh you know to to okay um it might be happening to it's happening and it uh it's a good thing you know that all happened um over the course of several years but uh I I think that was something I'd wanted to do IID be in a policy role um so you got the job
working for Trump uh as speech writer would we know any of the speeches you were involved in uh yeah I think I've talked about a few of them for example you know I think you there was there were ones uh around you know free speech with the state attorney generals and uh there's some sort of funny stories around that I don't know how appropriate it is for me to you know to talk about some of the inner minutia of the uh of speech writing office you know in this setting but um you know there were a lot that you know technology was a really
important part of Trump's economic engine you know there was a really am amazing moment where uh I think the Trump Administration was aware of the threat that censorship posed but U not as aware perhaps they should have been but there was a real tension because Trump was campaigning on um on the economic record fact that there were more you know job growth was as you know was higher than it ever been the Dow in the SNP had broken alltime records uh famously Paul Krugman the Nobel prize winning New York Times
columnist had wrote um when Trump on his campaign Trail promised I think a 4% quarterly GDP growth and Paul Krugman I think famously said that that'll happen when pigs fly and freeze over in Hell simultaneously or something it's basically saying it was completely impossible for it to happen and then lo and behold he hit the 4% and but a lot of that was powered by the technology companies you we live through this transition in the past 10 years where big Tech overtook Big Oil you know in the 20th century and early 2000s
largest companies in the world were exgon mobile and Chevron gazprom in Russia they were the oil and gas companies and a lot of the story from the Industrial Revolution into Modern Age was the story of big oil and the Rockefellers you know who played such a big role in you know the American you know the American Prosperity story you can argue um but then that all changed with the rise of micros Apple Google Amazon and I say it those companies in that order because um the Trump campaign actually defined Maga at the height of
censorship EP epidemic in 2019 2020 the Trump campaign was calling Maga Microsoft Apple Google and Amazon um because they were sort of a Golden Goose that were juicing the stock market which was validating Trump's sort of successful economic policy and so I think from the Trump administration's perspective taking those companies on was kind of killing the Golden Goose that was justifying and I'm imputing this by the way I no one told me this this is not Insider knowledge and I might be wrong about you know the
the theory at play here but the you know the Trump Administration um for a number of reasons uh I think did not understand the root of it extent it until Trump himself really started to get censored because a lot of this it all started way below Trump Fringe groups and then specific Niche communities and then it was uh you know and then it started to hit sort of mainstream institutions but not the bigname ones like Fox not the shows that Trump himself would watch and then started to hit Trump directly he started to get hit with these fact
checks you couldn't access things on his Twitter account without being hit with a fact check or sometimes it would be hidden totally and then by the end these posts would just get deleted entirely and I think it was really only when started to affect the higher highest level Inner Circle that they began to really appreciate the threat it posed existentially nationally on policy grounds um but you know like I said had been the crazy person doing my morning Mecca Walking The Halls of the White House knocking on every door
telling everyone that you know the sky was falling and it wasn't until started to fall that um you know I think folks began to um appreciate the power of the thesis that I was bringing conversation I think what you're describing here is the early warning signs or rather the early indicators of this existing and growing censorship industrial complex that you've written about which is it's almost a separate topic to the foreign policy blob thesis you have although they're linked but those are sort of separate thesis am
I am I right sort of in thinking that yes I would say that they are hopelessly inter interl they are they're part of the same sort of grand thesis but they are separate threads in it if you will that is there a you know are there are these sets of Institutions that it's fair to describe as a complex um and then there is this foreign policy establishment and the institutions effectively serve this establishment and so that you know they you can you analyze them both separately you know can sorry to hammer on this but I just am curious about
your time in the state department so you end up in the state department are you do you bring in a team are alone and are you what's the atmosphere are surrounded by people who are part of uh this counter Trump anti-trump populist you know we talk a lot about the Deep State we hear a lot of from from like conservatives and Transporters vake ramaswami is constantly talks about dismantling the Deep State you had a little time in there what is it that's going on there yeah it's everything that's alleged about it and
more uh you there's certain things that I I'm not sure it's appropriate to necessarily air publicly because I don't want to set off a news cycle of you know set off a new cycle Let's Do It um it was let me say one thing upfront which is that the people at state department are some of the sharpest um and most intellectual people I think in all of our federal government um they there is an appreciation there of America's role in the world and the the bigness of Empire sensitivities the necessary diplomacy and sort of linguistic framing
techniques that are needed to be rolled out to justify certain actions uh you know the state department is sort of quarterback if you will of all these different institutions of influence that we have you know we a Central Intelligence Agency that does plausibly deniable covert operations and intelligence in support of US foreign policy objectives and covert diplomacy work but it's coordinated by the state department they answer to the state Department the CIA sort of has same relationship with the state department
as our FBI does with the justice department it's not a you know it is standalone agency so to speak but it really answers to the US ambassador in the region and the assistant secretaries and Deputy assistant secretaries have to be apprised of what's happening on the underbelly of our work in order to have the you know to be able to synthesize our policy be able to formulate our negotiating posture to be able coordinate all the different assets and operations in the region to bring it bear in order you know um make the in order to advance
us interests in the country or region so you know there's between all the different financial institutions uh and USA the intelligence side and the dod roles in this and all the different Nos all the different state department grantees you know there's a whole chessboard of pieces at play and folks at the state department um are very sharp and very intellectually minded in terms of the Strategic vision how to accomplish that and also how to do so in a way that minimizes political blowback or public perceptions of some the darker
elements of what is actually happening there so U go on sorry um I but I was just going to say and there are a lot of um good people there and are a lot of people who are neutral and almost amoral um in how they see some of these issues but the incentives to do worst possible thing are overwhelming and um like what well take our US national champion Doctrine you know we've had a doctrine of diplomacy arguably for two centuries you could say but um certainly you can you can argue since World War II where there's this concept of US national
champions as an instrument of statecraft and as a what does that mean I don't know what US national champion a national champion is a US Corporation or financial firm that is based in America and its profitability is said to advance US national interest so for example we mentioned like Egon mobile you know this is a big American Oil and Gas Company employs a lot of Americans uh if exgon mobile does well around the world in theory that is more for Americans that is that more Americans having a middle class lifestyle that is more
Americans able to buy a home that is more Americans able to put money in a you know what we have a 401k savings account um what makes a successful prosperous Society is effectively the the College of Corporations and financial firms that are how people get employed and how GDP is transacted you know all of that money Americans then get because an American company is doing well means Americans are now spending that money on consumer products so that means our you know consumer product and retail stores are now more successful because of this
everything is interconnected that way and if you define the success of our US national champions as being National interest because this is what our state department and I presume the UK foreign office operates under as well is this sort of concept even if a country is not presenting a national security threat as our military defense department you know is tasked to LEAP into action if there's a security threat even if we're not in danger from Guatemala or subsaharan Africa or Central Asia we still have a national interest in the F and
financially profiting from trade and natural resources and Export markets cheap labor markets in that region and so the rather than having military go in we have the state department go and apply carrots and sticks for you know incentives you know rewards and punishments to the local government or to different institutions there is that where foreign aid comes in it's where foreign aid comes in uh which is used both as a carrot and stick you know carrot in the sense that it is a positive reward offering to do something
but when you've been giving a country or institutions or industrial sectors within a country that carrot for so long the threat of withholding that carrot becomes a stick that is you can now sort of get them to do things because they are reliant on that because those institutions might collapse without that Aid and US Aid alone is $50 billion a year right so you I think it technically gets more money than the CIA itself and so you have a this situation where the incentives of people at the state department is to uh
is to serve either these US national champ