symbolic meaning to this beautiful painting then perhaps we just don't understand today. the search for answers starts july 7th on d. w. ah. last night should have looked at shouts. a computer in our computer is shut down the line and then a screen of death appeared on the staff computer. what is the typical machine, the flash? acceptable is the film cushioning? you monkey with the at 1st, we couldn't believe something was wrong with our software. you thought nation program them for dr. me doc, the companies software transmitted tax data to financial authorities. along on the system, they chose software that almost every company and ukraine use go a little to listen to the police. so i knew the we reported it to the cyber police said this, but they didn't come, hadn't i? finally, i went there myself. law filed a complaint and said you are required to respond. they get or what but it was too late. from here, the attackers were able to spread their malware to millions of computers. the name of the virus, not petula. they were asking for money. but if you paid that money was going to go nowhere, they couldn't actually unlock your computer. odessa, southern ukraine. here the computers of the world's largest shipping company, maersk, we're head in june 2017. none of its $130.00 offices could access their data and we're forced to using kellen paper even so it became a super spreader in the non pet jaffa demick. the estimated damages total $10000000000.00. it was most consequential cyber attack in history by pure cost and the scale with poor to louis and trust company. yeah, holly, if sir they came did their duty and had us all wonderfully arrested vantage in the night. they took out $150.00 servers. that was every thing the company had. somebody software had become a weapon, programmed by an invisible group of hackers called sandwich. look for so the whereabouts and were few people took nourishment, mostly people did not theatre at the book. the not pitcher was a diversion tactic to cover up the power they had over europe and american hopefully, i mean they're basically pretending to be criminal ah, to kind of cover their tracks at people for years. how many people do you think are behind this? i'm blown away by the it's just a handful of people. ah, ah, with ya mostly losing weight as i was sitting in front of the tv with my wife and son, almost watching a movie about edward snowden when suddenlink with the power went out to show us. yet he used to win the saucy me, yet only if can she live to shingle chaucer, it shall after an hour and a half a power outage for the water would have frozen and blown the promising. so even a disaster that would have taken about 6 months to repair the ball gordon. he took them an hour, but technicians at state own power company. oo coronel argo managed to flip the switch as mechanically just in time to prevent damage. the problem was no accident, it was the work of the send warm group when his line, when you're ready, when we don't know these people from me, we don't know their names or who they work for at the dealership, but they're not doing it for fun. poaching, they're being paid for in the pony to horrible. mm hm. the live, it was a large group of people were involved, because they were very fast and very actively working on several systems. alexia since ski investigated the incident on behalf of the state power company back in 2015, he had noticed unusual server failures at a media company when needed to hook them up, a jiggle is or oh, when we checked the log file. so various computers, we realized how dangerous the situation was. nation will don't wanna get on. the hackers had been penetrating ukrainian networks for months. they scouted out both companies and authorities planting their malware is covered in the infrastructure in the environment, which i don't know. it's some, some similar as if you tried to discover a house while being completely blind. so that tucker would need to go from one network to another. it's just like walking from one room to another, open in an opening, yet another door until you find that equipment or basically a room which you're looking for, which is hidden in behind. the located the skita control system. from there, the facilities machinery could be accessed directly. oh, with virtual access to the control room, the attackers could flip the switch is undetected. that's exactly what they plan to do. they place their code like a time bomb set to the date, december 17th, 2016. the model. these weren't individual action. so it was a well funded, well run organization was the attack on the $300.00 kilovolt computer controlled sub station was historic. if a computer virus directly attacks machines and systems, it's known as a cyber physical attack, carrying out such attacks is complex, expensive, and therefore rare. only about 10 such incidents are known to have taken place. the 1st occurred in 2009 when the u. s. in israel unleashed the stuck net virus on iranian nuclear facilities. it destroyed 1000 centrifuges in the uranium enrichment facility, a virtual attack with physical consequences. and it opened pandora's box from then on many countries would equip themselves with cyber armies. since then, everybody has really pursued this, this disruptive, destructive capability. ah, robert lee served for a long time in the u. s. air force. and briefly with the essay. after stocks night, he warned that the u. s. 2 was vulnerable to cyber attacks. as i kind of raise that point up in the government at the time just in the department offense in the air force, a lot of people are like, what are, what are controls us? what, what do you mean like, ah, all the stuff that we use, like, whenever we don't use the same stuff they use in iran. yeah, of course we do actually it's, it's ubiquitous. and, and you could tell, there was this moment for a lot of them were, it was just crazy to think about the blow back effect of creating a capability to do something that revealed vulnerabilities or issues and systems we depend on, on daily basis. ukraine became a testing ground for cyber weaponry. for the corner, the thing only gone means training campbell, where special military units are trained at the mall which furnished. we believed that in 20152016 of the whole of ukraine was a training ground for cyber attackers, sir, was this attack was not developed specifically for that sub station with work and any other countries around the globe. the sandwich group had long had access to us networks as early as 2014 cyber expert john hall quist had warned that u. s. energy suppliers were being spied on. there were a blog and i said look, i don't think they're in these companies to figure out what the price of gas is going to be right there. to prepare to destroy something. hold squished dubbed the groups and worm a reference to the classic science fiction series dune sand worms live underground . when the surface the consequences are devastating. in ukraine civilians for the targets of the attacks. the whole point is to stay below a level war. right, because nobody died, it was reversible, ranked, and, and named short her, you might make the argument that, that it was a design precisely not to be an act or to be an act that goes right up to the edge . cyber attack still take place in a gray area between war and peace, but that could change. it's an honor to be here. but i think it's more likely we're gonna end up. because when we end up in war, i real shooty more. when the major power could be as a consequence of a cyber ridge of great consequence. the question is, how can you fight an opponent that attacks out of nowhere ever since the 2nd world war, the mighty united states has been suffering painful defeats. despite its superior weaponry. we have the best military in the world. they were the best troops, the best training, the best technology, u. s. military has more money than the other top 10 biggest militaries in the world combined with. so what's the problem? above all conventional warfare is profitable for the arms industry. companies like lockheed martin and 1000000000 selling fighter planes like the f 35. it's a technical marvel that's invisible on radar and automatically scans the ground for targets. it's precise, lethal, fast and intelligent, but above all, it's expensive. the whole program costs us taxpayers and allies, $1.00 trillion dollars. this weapon has no utility, it's already obsolete. it's not deterring russia or china. it's not winning wars in iraq and afghanistan get, we're buying more of these things. so the f 35 is like the maginot lied in 1939. it's and it's an obsolete weapon built to win the last war and not the future war. for almost 20 years, the highly armed us forces and their allies had been fighting in afghanistan. but the best technology is useless without a clear strategy. fails. u. s. troops have also been fighting in iraq for years 3. 0 so they wanted to put on a big show of the american military driving tanks across the borders, going all the way to baghdad and taking saddam down, culminating with that totally p. r, fabricated saddam statue falling down and feared elsewhere in baghdad. in april, 2003. so the conventional stuff at the beginning was all a very carefully meticulously organized shall. ah, the united states and our allies have prevailed when they discovered that it wouldn't be peace loving unicorns are the political leadership had 3 awful choices. they could either leave iraq and afghanistan and seed the field to terrace. mm hm. they could have a national draft like vietnam to rape the army, big enough that would be needed to occupy these places for years to come. the 3rd option was using private military contractors and contractors in general to fill the gaps that the u. s. military could not film and that became the new normal u. s. troops supported by private contractors. by the end of 2020, a total of $4800.00 contractors would be working for the u. s. army and syria and iraq. and so by 2009 half of the american force in iraq was contracted. now of that, only about 15 per se were trigger polars. most of them were just making food and preparing vehicles. but the united states america had, you know, as a reliance strategically upon the private sector to sustain wars which is dangerous . ex navy seal, eric prince saw an opportunity with his company blackwater. he received contracts for personal security in iraq, but it didn't stop there. very quickly. prince, who was close to dick cheney comes up with this notion that they can create an off the books ah, a cia type squad that can do things that the united states needs done without it stamp on it without knowing that it was united states of america in the shadow of the media staged wars, the u. s. since special forces on secret missions, including hunting down terrorists, partly with the help of private mercenaries, the iraq war was really the moment when the most powerful nation in the world, the united states, put it stamp of legitimacy and approval on the notion that the nation state no longer has the sovereign control of organized use of force that it is acceptable for even veterans of the united states military to sell their us taxpayer funded knowledge and experience to the highest bidder. at the time, military veteran sean mc fate was studying at harvard university. i was running across campus late for us like a statistics and economics midterm study group. and i got a phone call and i literally went like this. you don't know who we are, but we know who you are. we have a job in africa that we think you can help us with. would you consider dropping out of harvard? i to do it will pay a flight ticket down to texas. we're headquartered. we'll talk about it in the 19, wendy's mc feet was a paratrooper in the u. s. army. he then studied political science at the renowned university. and i was like, you know, mid term exam here, going to africa to some really strange up here. so i left harvard and i, and 3 years later i, i'd spent, i was, i spent in africa basically building small armies for us interest for a private military company. that did work on that, the c i a and that the department defense didn't want to touch as part of its global war on terror. the u. s. entered into shifting alliances with other armed forces. like here in burgundy, sean rec fate was among those who carried out secret missions. with the help of the local military. he was tasked with preventing an assassination attempt being planned on bernice president according to ca, information it, but it didn't work. how i can't do it. he doesn't talk about his other missions. there are reasons for secrecy. when u. s. soldiers get killed, there does have to be reported. they have military funerals. there they, they come back in flag draped coffins when contractors die. nobody really cares for years. i used to track the number of contractor deaths and it was very, very difficult to, to do it. i mean, in some ways, i also knew that was being used for plaza deniability because i was doing very risky operations that they went poorly. the u. s. could disavow me, they said they never would, but we all knew that's easy for them rather than rescue me. they're called kite operations where you can cut away the kite elana float away. this plausible deniability is a central motivation for these sorts of shadow military operations. it's especially helpful when something goes wrong as it did in venezuela, in may. 2020. well, opposite. today we're presenting the confession of the 2nd us special forces terrorist. i'll avoid, i've heard of it. what's your name? my name is aaron seth berry. what was the goal of the mission to get madura is wife melanie very saw the video online. not a, it's something you can't imagine. that you're just shocked. even berry came to germany with the u. s. army. he fought in iraq and afghanistan, as well as like natalie joined the army right after high school was he always wanted to serve his country and to help other people that play. in 2013, he retired and worked as a tradesman inch find for germany. the amazon affiliate when you've been doing what he did for so many years, you miss it a little, including the camaraderie in late 2019. he signed up for a secret mission in columbia. ah, on the porter with venezuela among drug traffickers, spies and corrupt officials. very trained with special forces colleagues and deserted venezuelan soldiers, ah, the goal was to overthrow the government in caracas and bring self proclaimed interim president. one, why go to power? he wasn't president, you know, he was a guy running around saying, hey, i was for, i'm really the president. so they have all these meetings. they have shadow diplomacy going on. and then you have figures who had been involved with the intelligence apparatus and military apparatus in, in venezuela for years that are now part of the opposition who are sort of whispering and why dozier, all, you know, we can work with, with the mercenaries. we could arrest to maduro, but the venezuelan government already knew about state television even broadcast, the names of mercenaries, luc, aaron and jordan, already deleted. jordan keith drew was in the special forces with berry. he now sent his old comrade on a hopeless mission. yeah. when i'm gonna get the full of on may 3rd 2020. he announced via twitter. at 1700 hours, a daring amphibious raid was launched from the border of columbia deep into the heart of caracas. our men are continued to fight right now. but their attack was anticipated, even berry was arrested together with other mercenaries in the coastal village of ju oh, here's the issue with a merchant, i whirled a lot of mercenaries, our former vats. right? they got our rack or a gas and they do multiple tours. there they come home and they can adjust well civilian life, they, there, warriors, and they, they're looking for wars and now that mercenaries are now back on the table, it gives them optionality to do so. the promise they don't know what they're getting into. i had played with i just got information, nothing to do with our government, but i just got information on that. so what, what we'll find out with your 3rd about it, or whatever it is, we'll let you know. it was clear, the mercenaries were on their own. since the 20 he's been sentenced to 20 years. is it going to be that long? i hope none. ah, not all american mercenaries are deserted by their government. like aaron barry was in 2007 blackwater boss. eric prince had to answer to congress after his mercenaries killed 17 iraqis in a shooting spree in bagdad. u. s. president donald trump later pardon the shooters from the incident. after the scandal, the blackwater brand was tarnished. prince set up new companies under changing names. one of them is based in hong kong. he runs a company called frontier services group based out of hong kong, its own primarily by beijing. they do belt road initiative, stuff in africa to strengthen beijing's national interests. mm. so you, you have heard prince, mr. captain america, i'm ultra patriotic, going into business with powerful figures directly connected to the central committee of the chinese communist party. eric prince is working to become v global player in the world of shadow conflicts. the mercenary business is global. moscow to relies on highly trained military veterans, russia always as he was mercenaries, voice and particularly under vladimir putin potent comes out of the k g, b. the k g b was using unofficial assets left and right all over the world as the see i was, none of this is new. what is new, as the technology that used to be the spies would have to go and find these unsavory characters that could do the hit for you. now they have websites. for example, russia's wagner group founded in 2014, the mercenary company is active in many conflict regions, including syria, where russian and u. s. units sometimes come menacingly close in 2018 u. s. troops and kurdish allies. we're operating in the oil rich region, east of the euphrates river, to the west was territory controlled by the assad regime supported by russia and iran, on the night of february, 7th, more than a 100 mercenaries, reportedly crossed the river and came under u. s. fire. there are multiple narratives of, of what happened in that particular battle. and the narrative that the united states wants to put forward and did put forward in the form the pentagon going on the record about this was that the elite commandos from the united states had to take defensive action to preempt the threat that was being caused by russian mercenaries who were embedding with the syrian your regulars. and you have like a delta force. marines green. bray's. i with her there. i there kurdish allies in a defensive position around a gas facility. and they call in b 50 twos, at 15 strike giggles, a c 130 gun ships apache helicopters, drones, you missiles, you name it, the u. s. air force informed russia's military leaders about the impending air strikes. we were told there were no russia that was right off the d. confliction line. they said not our people. some wagner mercenaries were said to have been flown out following the battle from my studying of how mercenaries work you very rarely see hoards of mercenaries in a conflict. a handful of them go, but really the people doing the fighting. are the local people or their mercenaries hired from another country just to be hired guns? some of the shadow fighters were taken to local hospitals the next day. how many and what nationality they were was something neither side had any interest in clearing up. the reason it didn't go to war. war 3 is because both moscow and washington could disavow the entire thing. saying these varden group mercenaries are just mercenaries, a we don't care that much about mercenaries. so the world is tu