You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins.

That's me.

On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, in our society.

Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's-eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals.

Greetings. As many of you are aware, there is a growing situation in the Middle East between

Israel, Palestine, and beyond to Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the broader Middle East, and the

wider world. I'm not an expert on this area other than to obviously know the importance of this region to the rest of

the world. Half to two thirds of the world's remaining oil reserves are within a thousand miles

of Israel. And there are increasingly countries choosing sides.

So I don't know enough about this to speak intelligently to it.

So I invited my colleague Chuck Watson for a special episode to discuss what's going on and what it means.

Chuck has been on this show three times before to talk about nuclear war, nuclear weapons,

the outcome of a nuclear exchange and the broader perspective of a future using a military lens.

Chuck has a long career in military and intelligence work.

His specialty is natural and human-made disaster modeling. He worked

for the U.S. Air Force and was a special attach to U.S. ambassadors to the Middle East, Robert

McFarland, and later Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a Soviet expert.

Chuck has worked as in the military or as an advisor to the military for over four decades

with a particular emphasis on big data, open source intelligence, with an emphasis on the

Soviet Union and Russia.

Chuck joins me today to integrate what's going on in the Middle East into a broader global risk assessment.

I'll caution that our conversation is not uplifting, but it's one that I feel is important for more people to understand and integrate into their thinking and their planning.

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