Black Budget Tyranny, $37 Trillion Time BOMB & Pearl Harbor 2.0 | Scott Horton • 344
Julian Dorey · 10 Oct 2025 · 3h 4m
Guest: Scott Horton · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
This conversation is a long-form tour through the modern history of American foreign policy interventionism, led by a guest who has spent years writing about war and the national security state. The discussion moves from the CIA's structural unaccountability and its black budget, through how presidents and Congress have shifted war powers to the executive since Korea and Vietnam, to the post-Cold War doctrine of permanent U.S. military primacy in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Substantial time is spent on China's rise and whether its debt-financed influence campaigns are comparable to American military interventionism and IMF-style economic coercion, on the broken postwar promises to Russia about NATO expansion, and on the collapse of the Soviet Union, including claims that the Bush administration initially tried to preserve it. A detailed section reconstructs the Yemen war, tracing how U.S. drone strikes, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and shifting alliances with both al-Qaeda-linked and Houthi factions produced a prolonged humanitarian catastrophe, with claims that the war continued under Trump partly to benefit defense contractors. Later segments dig into the ideological and personal networks connecting neoconservatism, Cold War Trotskyism, and pro-Israel advocacy, including the Project for a New American Century and the run-up to the Iraq War. The episode closes with a revisionist debate about Pearl Harbor and whether American entry into World War II was manufactured through deliberate provocation.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- CIA as an unaccountable force
- Guest's path into foreign policy criticism, Iran-Contra
- Erosion of congressional war powers
- Post-Cold War unipolar doctrine and NATO expansion promises
- China's economic rise vs. U.S. military interventionism
- Soviet collapse and broken promises to Russia
- CIA scandals, torture program, and oversight failures
- The Yemen war, Saudi/UAE bombing campaign, and Raytheon profits
- Neoconservative networks, Israel lobby, and the Iraq War buildup
- Pearl Harbor revisionism and debate over WWII entry
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“No, they are absolutely the destructive force. And what? Cuz it's unaccountable power. They got a black budget. By definition, their job is to break the law.”
“The CIA didn't even know the Soviet Union was falling apart because the CIA was too busy lying that they were 12 feet tall so they can justify American militarism.”
“the reason that they kept the war going was so that they could keep funneling money to Rathon. The war was important for Rathon. They were making a lot of money off.”
“Israel is just our kind of Fort Apache out there holding the barbarian east at bay for us and all that.”