Hey, all Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Scottsdale, Arizona. Since we started the Russian Reach series, a lot of you have been writing in with little tips, information that you’ve got from within the government system right up into the white House, which is kind of crazy. And, alternative theories that might match the facts in front of us. 

And one of these, I think, is worth exploring a little bit. It’s called Christian nationalism. Or really, what it is, is ultra nationalism. It’s the idea that there’s this global cabal out there that is working to undermined and eradicate the white race. It tends to be obviously wildly racist, opposed to immigration in pretty much all forms, unless they’re white people, very violent and, distrust any sort of large organization. 

So they generally hate Catholics, specifically the Pope, Muslims or worse. And as a rule, they think that, Western civilization has been corrupted or controlled from within by these larger forces. And so all of Western civilization needs to be torn down to the studs have been rebuilt with a fusion of church and state. Of course, there’s no agreement as to what church means. 

So really, it’s just a cover for people to be wildly racist and say that white people should be in charge. 

Powerful white people, specific, Powerful white people. Within the American administration, the four biggest adherents would be, Russell Vought, the OMB. Elon Musk, of course, on the outside looking in is Peter Thiel. And then JD Vance, the vice president, is a member of this general. 

It’s not even a club, but worldview. And that kind of gives you an idea of just how flexible, the ideology of Christian ultra nationalism is. It’s, you know, JD Vance is a Catholic, although a practically evangelical Catholic. Elon Musk is practically agnostic. Peter Thiel is gay. So there’s all it’s kind of a big tent with a lot of ideas. 

All I can really say that kind of draws it all together is there’s nothing about it that’s actually Christian. 

I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that there’s a nice hot spot on the other side of the veil for people who try to actually put this into practice. Anyway, there are some commonalities here that kind of run the rainbow with this group that everybody agrees on. There are two countries in particular that they’re just obsessed about. 

And the first is South Africa, because here is a country that white people brought civilization to. And clearly, with the end of apartheid and the return of majority rule by blacks. Clearly this is part of an effort by the globalist cabal to test out white genocide. So when Donald Trump picked a fight on a random Tuesday with the South African government, it didn’t just completely come out of the blue. 

It was routed on by these groups, specifically Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa. The other country that the Ultranationalists are really obsessed with is Russia. They see Russia as fighting the good fight and its demographic collapse as a warning to white people everywhere of what could happen if the Muslim hordes were allowed to rise up. 

And as a result, Christian Ultranationalists are pretty much pro-Russian, no matter what the Russians do. So, for example, if they attack another Christian nation, Ukraine, that’s fine, because they’re just trying to hold the torch for the rest of us. And it’s just it’s kind of silly because the Putin government, one of his chief pillars of support are the ultra violent Muslim Chechens who carry out pogroms against Christians regularly and the Russian military forces when they went into Ukraine. 

 One of the first groups that they attacked were American evangelical ministers which is one of the reasons why it’s kind of just a shade in the background. It’s people using religion as a cover to do horrible things. 

Not that we’ve ever seen that before. 

But the reason it’s worth talking about is not only are some of these people very well placed within the current administration, but, there’s a lot of overlap between Christian nationalism and Russian propaganda these days. The Russians are very well aware of this trend, and they’ve worked to encourage it across Europe and the United States for quite some time. 

And a lot of their useful idiots throughout the US and European political systems fall into this Christian nationalist camp. I’m sure you can all come up with a few names yourself if you put your mind to it. The idea that Russia is beleaguered and needs assistance and should be respected is something that dovetails very nicely with the Russian mindset. 

Every country has their own reason why they think they’re better than everyone else, and for the Russians, they have superiority complex that is based on an inferiority complex. The idea is that we have suffered so much. Therefore, you should do things our way. It’s very powerful, for motivating Russians. And now it’s being repeated basically by these Christian ultranationalists. 

And so whether the issue is going after U.S. intelligence, part of the cabal, going after the European Union, part of the cabal, or simply trying to give the Russians, what they want in places like Ukraine fighting back against the cabal. The Russians have done what they can to dovetail their existing propaganda with these forces. 

So yeah, it can be both. Not just the Russians, but trying to dovetail with a more domestically oriented group that is trying to use a bastardization of religion to achieve its political goals.

Forthcoming…

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here. You are about to watch a video on a series that I’ve put together called The Russian Reach, which examines the role of the Russians in manipulating the current white House as well as the US government in a broader sense. 

For anyone who signs up for my newsletter for watching any video for the remainder of the month, any sense that you would have normally given me for the next three months is going to a medical charity called Med Share. 

But your steps in to help out communities who, through no fault of their own, have temporarily lost the ability to look out for themselves. So, for example, if the Russians are bombing your power grid and the Americans are no longer providing the tactical intelligence so you can anticipate the missile strikes and position your air defense and the Americans. 

Furthermore, have stopped all financing to help you repair said power grid. In the aftermath, Medicare steps in to help hospitals with things like diesel generators. This QR code will take you directly to the Ukraine page, and that is where all of the donations will be going. 

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Let’s see. Let’s start with the Defense Department. Secretary Hegseth, has said that the reports that he gave the order to stop cyber operations, defending and defending against Russian cyber operations or disrupting their cyber operations was not actually true. Didn’t say the statement. He just retweeted somebody else’s, newspaper article. I have no way of confirming that personally. 

But I will point out the original report came from within the Department of Defense. So I have my doubts. But for the moment, let’s just take folks off at his word. Good. Because the Russians have certainly not stopped hacking us. But if you look across the rest of the US government, the trend is definitely in the direction of just lying back and let it happen. 

So there’s something called, let me show you this. Right. See, so the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, this is the group that prevents, the Russians from hacking the elections. Either going after the hardware or participating in misinformation. It wasn’t disbanded. It’s just all the people were fired, and, no one has been brought in to do the work since then. 

Second one comes out of the Justice Department, which, Pam Bondi is the secretary of Justice now, and Task Force Klepto Capture, which was designed to go after foreign assets held primarily by Russian oligarchs. They basically stopped that work altogether. So it doesn’t matter where you got your money. If it’s from theft or criminality or whatever else. If you’re Russian, you’re in the clear. Now. Investigations have stopped, and the third one is at the FBI, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Basically, if you’re in the United States and you’re a citizen, you’re going to be doing the work for foreign government. You have to register of doing the work for the foreign government. Well, not anymore. 

Donald Trump’s team has fallen, a foul of this act. Many, many, many, many, many times, for either not reporting or reporting after the fact. And now you just don’t have to do it at all. So we’re on a one off for China mean it’s not going to be enforced. 

 Want to work for Russia? Go for it, Turkey. Take your pick. Okay. What’s next? 

All right, let’s talk about what’s going on with the federal bureaucracy for in terms of hiring and firing. So first, some good news. The Trump administration has reinstated the people who were disassembling nuclear weapons. The people that he fired while the weapons were disassembled, the check on, you know, safety and maintenance of the so-called those people are back at the jobs, thank God. 

Okay. However, overall, in the last eight days, the rate of firings has increased dramatically. We’re probably up to about 70,000 people have been fired. That’s about two, maybe 2.5% of the workforce. Keep in mind, these people aren’t really gone. Because, Trump doesn’t have the legal authority to fire them. So, in the time that since Trump has come in, which is we’re in week setting, I think, most of these people have been been reinstated by labor boards and especially courts. 

Thing to keep in mind is that the premier authority in the United States is not the president’s Congress. Congress, establishes the bureaus and the departments and pays for them with taxpayer funds. And it’s up to the president to manage them. Now, the president does have a huge amount of autonomy and how to do that. But there are limits. 

And so in this specific case, what we’re seeing is the people have basically been reinstated by the courts, but the Trump administration is not letting them back to work. However, Congress has mandated that the services that they were providing still be provided. So we’re starting to see large scale hiring of contractors to do the work. So, basically, we’re paying for everything twice now. 

So budget deficit goes up. And if this sounds familiar to some of you, that’s because this happened also during the first Trump term. So he apparently either didn’t learn his lesson or thought that if he did it on a grander scale with less competent subordinates, he would get a different outcome. And he does get a different outcome. 

It’s costing more. Okay. What’s next? 

Okay, let’s talk tariffs. On the 4th of March, when we launched the series, Trump had just announced a 25% tariff on Canadian Mexican products. Two things going on here. He instinctively believes that a trade deficit is something that, is unfair. And so he wants to get that down to zero. And we do have large trade deficits with both countries. 

But keep in mind that, every Canadian province and every northern Mexican state trades more with the United States, and they do with the rest of their country, which is another way of saying that their industrial plant is fully integrated into ours. And so we get all the benefits of their industrial plant without having to pay for their Social Security equivalent, their health care system, their infrastructure, their education, any other maintenance. 

So we get the results of all the good stuff without having to pay for all the stuff that comes from running a government. This is a really good deal. Anyway, Trump has, of course, modified his position and say, now it’s all about illegal migrants and, fentanyl. Keep in mind that fentanyl is not actually controlled by the drug cartels. 

It’s a mom and pop operation where three guys in a garage can make tens of thousands of doses very easily. Also, the precursor materials come from China. That’s why the Chinese have their own tariff structure now, which is now at 20%. 

But, those precursor materials are shipped largely through the US mail to the United States, where they are repackaged and then shipped on to Mexico. So if you’re looking for the low hanging fruit and how to, destroy fentanyl is a problem, and you don’t want to go after demand in the United States, going after the post office is a much cleaner, simpler, cheaper method. Because as long as we have these tariffs going on and often enough. Oh, sorry, I forgot to say, on the sixth. 

Yeah. On the sixth, Trump had, conversations with both. Claudia, shame on the Mexican president and Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. And the tariffs, for the most part, were deferred for another month. So they were originally put on in February. They were pushed a month. They took effect for 48 hours. They have been pushed another month. And this back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, has generated so much geopolitical and regulatory uncertainty that inward investment of the United States, it’s basically frozen, especially for American companies, because they just don’t know what the rules of the game are going to be. 

And so even if you’ve got a stronger tariff today, against China, you really don’t want to move your industrial plant if you don’t know what the rules of the game are going to be. There’s one other problem is that, you know, one of my favorite quotes, the enemy gets a vote. The Canadians, did a first round of small tariffs, to counter Trump on the fourth. 

They haven’t pulled those back. And Ontario, which is the largest, most populous, most industrialized, most integrated in the United States province, their premier, premiers kindof a governor in the American parlance. Ford has announced that on Monday, which will be the 9th of March, I believe that a 25% tariff will go into place on all electricity exports to the United States, and that primarily affects New York, Minnesota and especially Michigan. 

So Detroit was already freaking out. Because the tariffs that Trump put into place affect anything that crosses the border. And the integration between Detroit and Ontario sees products go back and forth across the border on an average of like 6 or 8 times. And so they be terrified each time, which would add somewhere between 4 and $10,000 a vehicle for the final product. 

For automotive. Doug Ford is basically taking a page from the Trump book and saying, fine, you want to be crazy, you want to put in tariffs that have nothing to do with the trade situation. Fine. Here’s one on electricity. You have fun with that. And he indicates he’s going to keep that in place until this terrorist situation is completely put to bed. 

Whether or not I believe him, I don’t know. I’ve never had a chance to meet the guy. This is a new thing for him, but the dude, is is arguably the second most powerful person in the Canadian system because Ontario is so big relative to the rest of the country, it would be like Florida, Texas, and California all wrapped into one, with a much bigger industrial plant relative to that size. 

All right. What’s next? 

Okay. NATO. Well, no. Two in the European Union. Don’t have perfect overlap. The countries that are in the European Union that are not in NATO, like Austria and Ireland, are generally neutral, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they love the Russians or anything like that. They’ve just choosing to not shoot anyone anyway. Things are changing. The Trump administration’s basic abrogation of NATO leadership and, retreat on Ukraine, which is really the only issue that the Europeans care about right now, has forced them to do something that is honestly long overdue and, expand their defense spending. 

We did a video already on the German situation, which is its own, ball of wax. But now the European Union nonmilitary organization is getting into it, too. And, basically, they’ve got this thing called a debt break. Where you can deficit spend up to 3% of GDP. Do any more than that, you get in trouble and you start getting fined by the European Commission. 

So what they’ve done is they this is a condition for the monetary union. Otherwise they were afraid that some countries would just print currency like mad and deficit spend like mad and, wreck everybody’s plan. So limits. Anyway, in the last four days, the EU ministers met and they agreed to suspend the 3% limit. If what puts you over is defense spending. 

And the thinking is that this by itself will free up about 6 to €700 billion, which is about 630 to 750 billion USD, for unspent defense spending. And if that is all spent in the next 2 or 3 years, basically you’re looking at the European Union countries roughly increasing the collective defense spending by somewhere between 50 and 100%. 

So significant margin, is it enough for them to carry the water on Ukraine and everything else with it, the United States? No. But it’s a step in the right direction. And if you know, nothing else good comes from what’s going on right now in the world. Having the Europeans have some more capabilities on the surface seems good, but you know, there’s 27 EU members and each have their own story. 

So that is a very dangerous blanket statement to put in there. Something that I addressed in the German video that I think went out yesterday, having a hard time keeping track of time. Okay. What’s next? 

On March 7th, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced before the Polish parliament that Poland would be withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty on the Banning of Landmines and the Dublin Treaty on the Banning of Cluster Munitions, in order to build out a defensive capacity that allows them to defend better. They’re also going to do a nationwide draft of all men of military age to prepare for the war with the Russians, because they know that they are next after the Russians are joining with Ukraine. 

And furthermore, he announced that the government is formally considering starting the exploration process to build its own independent nuclear weapons system. Because ultimately, that’s the only thing that’s going to be able to hold the line. It takes years to build up a conventional military. And while Poland has a head start, it’s not going to be able to stand up to the Russians on their own. 

Certainly nothing without United States assistance. And we should expect many, many other European countries to follow these broad guidelines, especially when it comes to nukes. With Finland and Sweden being at the top of the list, Romania probably being right there with Poland, and shortly thereafter the Germans will have no choice but to consider doing it themselves.

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here. You are about to watch a video on a series that I’ve put together called The Russian Reach, which examines the role of the Russians in manipulating the current white House as well as the US government in a broader sense. 

For anyone who signs up for my newsletter for watching any video for the remainder of the month, any sense that you would have normally given me for the next three months is going to a medical charity called Med Share. 

But your steps in to help out communities who, through no fault of their own, have temporarily lost the ability to look out for themselves. So, for example, if the Russians are bombing your power grid and the Americans are no longer providing the tactical intelligence so you can anticipate the missile strikes and position your air defense and the Americans. 

Furthermore, have stopped all financing to help you repair said power grid. In the aftermath, Medicare steps in to help hospitals with things like diesel generators. This QR code will take you directly to the Ukraine page, and that is where all of the donations will be going. 

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan, here it is early in the morning on March 8th. March 8th? We’re deep into the series on the Russian reach right now. And while it has only been, oh, my God, four days since we launched it, so much has evolved. So this video today is going to be an attempt for me to get you caught up on everything that’s gone down in the last 96 hours. 

This is Loki. He’s my copy editor. 

This week, the Trump administration sent a delegation to Kiev to speak with the opposition, which in of of itself is not all that odd. The United State maintain a bipartisan boring you. Yes. So US maintains a bipartisan foreign policy, and that’s not just a Democrat Republican thing. 

It’s an us and them thing. The idea being that you never know who is going to be across the table from you after an election. So you maintain good relations with both sides. So whenever we’re visiting another democracy, if there is time, Secretary of state or whoever tends to carve out at least a little bit of time to meet with the other side to keep everybody in the loop in an agreement, at least until this week, because the only topic that the Trump team wanted to discuss in Kiev and then even bother going to speak to the government was, how do we get rid of Zelensky specifically, how do we get early elections so that he can be gone now to God? This is a very Russian thing to do. In fact, Russia is the only country where we don’t have this sort of bipartisan approach because there is no opposition. Every democracy in the world is going to look at this and see the United States playing favorites and willing to tilt the electoral balance like they did in Germany recently. 

And it’s going to put a chill on relations with everyone for everything, unless it happens to be a one party state, in which case they’re going to take their own lessons from it. Right now, to their credit, the people who the Trump administration met with turned him down flat. They’re like, guys, we’re we’re in a war. 

We’re under martial law for good reason. And Zelensky, while he’s our political opponent, is doing a decent job. I mean, the only people who think he’s a crook are the Russians. And you. So, you know, kudos there. But this is definitely going to have reverberations for U.S. policy moving forward everywhere. All right. What’s next? 

All right. Next up is Russia. Vladimir Putin, on the 6th of March, preemptively rejected every version of every ceasefire plan currently under discussion, saying that none of them even remotely addressed Russia’s concerns. Keep in mind that the Russian goal here is not simply to destroy Ukraine, but it’s to carry on the war until it reaches a more defensible perimeter that includes all of the territory of Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and at least the eastern half of Poland, or at least the north eastern half or quarter of Romania, basically getting all the way to the Vistula River, the Danube River and the Carpathians, and probably now including Finland. 

Now, now that I think about it, the Russians will settle for nothing less than the complete demilitarization of Kiev. The extradition of Zelensky and absolutely no foreign peacekeepers on Ukraine territory at all, because they want to be able to restart the war after a cease fire once they’ve had a chance to rearm and get more equipment from China, North Korea. 

And right now, the Russians feel absolutely no compunction to negotiate on everything because the American administration is basically using Russian talking points on everything, calling Zelensky a dictator and a criminal, saying that the Europeans are the actual war party here, not the Russians who are the rapists and murderers and so on. So, yeah, good luck with those negotiations. 

Okay, What’s next? 

All right, let’s talk about what’s going on. On the ground, on the war in Ukraine. A couple days ago, the United States stopped all intelligence cooperation with Ukrainians, making it much easier for the Russians to bombard Ukrainian cities, because no longer are they getting early warnings about the attacks, they can’t position anything. It also prevents the Ukrainians from going after Russian logistics because they don’t know where they are now. 

In addition, on the sixth, the United States banned all private companies from selling any sort of recon related information, including satellite images, to the Ukrainian government. So basically, we took what was a gutting and turned it to a complete blackout. And on the seventh, the Russians claim that they have achieved a series of breakthroughs in Kursk province. 

That’s a little chunk of Russia to the northeast of Ukraine that Ukrainians have established a foothold in over, last summer and into the winter. Basically, the Russians are now able to maneuver without any problem, they’re not being seen. Or more to the point, they’re not being seen by the Ukrainians. And so the Ukrainians simply can’t move troops to where they need to be. 

So the United States has basically fully sided with the Russians here. And for the Russians to achieve some sort of breakthrough on this short time frame, you know, less than 72 hours after the original information cutoff. The Russians are slow, so there is no way that the Russians could have moved that far that fast, with that sort of achievement, without some act of collaboration on behalf of the US government. 

So it’s not that the United States is neutral in this. It’s not that the United States is siding against the Ukrainians. It’s the the United States is now actively assisting the Russians in the war. Okay. What’s next? 

Okay. Final one. In the last five days, the US government has launched a pretty significant assault on its own ability to gather and publish information. I’m not just talking here about things disappearing from online websites, although that is a big deal. But more specifically, the Trump administration has dissolved the federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, which basically helps put together the data for things like GDP and, inflation and employment. 

They’re gutting several of the committees that work to do the work on these things. Within the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is the platinum standard for government statistics on a planetary basis, and in general, going after the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics as well. Noah has been. That’s the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Basically, whether for the federal government has basically been so pared down from staff, it can’t function. And it’s removed all of its climate data, which is making the farming community freak out because, you know, I don’t know if you knew this, but weather’s kind of important to farmers. And then in the census, they’re stripping out anything that has anything to do with, undocumented populations. 

Keep in mind that the census counts these people not because they’re citizens or because they’re going to qualify for services, but so that urban centers and states have some idea of what the population complexion is in their state so they can make educated decisions all in, it’s generally blinding the US government at all levels to the reality of the situation on the ground, making policymaking difficult. 

And just to make it a little bit worse, the Trump administration wants to rejigger how GDP is calculated so that the actions that they’re taking right now, aren’t reflected in GDP data officially. The idea is that we’re trying to pare down the federal government. And so that would make it look like we are having a recession when it’s really a one off. 

But really, this is more of an Argentina style Potemkin bullshit, where if you know, the statistics are going to be bad, you change the way that they’re generated so they don’t look nearly as bad as they really are. That’s a lot. We’re going to continue to try and keep you updated. Hopefully I won’t have to do anything this long every single week. 

But there is so much going on and there is so much breaking. As I said in the series, we’re seeing an active deconstruction of American power here, and the events of just the last 96 hours are kind of mind blowing that any of these things have happened, much less all of them.