The Houthis are back in the news, advancing down the Red Sea coast and threatening to take control of Bab-el-Mandeb strait, though they have apparently reassured Washington that they mean no harm to international trade, at least for now. 

Zineb Riboua is a research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. On Counterweight she explains who the Houthis actually are — Ansar Allah from Saada, a Zaidi movement that is indigenous and still tied to Iran — then walks through this week’s coastal push, the Southern Transitional Council fight with Saudi Arabia, and why Riyadh sees a window now that IRGC support is thinner. She traces the Saudi–UAE split through Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya; reads the Mecca Pact with Turkey and Pakistan as a deconfliction channel still being written; and argues Trump is unlikely to open a second major front in Yemen while the energy market and midterms dominate. On the Red Sea she spells out why Bab el-Mandeb matters more for Egypt, Europe, and Asia than for U.S. trade — and how Chinese satellite firms supplied Houthi targeting data while Chinese and Russian ships were spared, which flipped the old “include China” playbook. She closes on China’s failed Gulf mediation, the bite of enforced sanctions on Iran’s revolutionary-proxy model, Iraq’s September 30 militia demilitarization test, and Gulf preparations for a much weaker Islamic Republic — including the absence of Arab-capital street defenses of Tehran.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Zineb Riboua: @zriboua · Hudson Institute

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

Follow Counterweight (twice a week): Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

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Site: https://www.counterweightpod.com

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open — Saudis never allowed to win; Houthis steal the aid

2:31 Who the Houthis are — Ansar Allah, Zaidi, indigenous and Iran-tied

5:05 Coastal ops — STC, UAE, and Saudi’s post-Iran window

8:47 Bab el-Mandeb — Iran’s interest and Houthi diversification

10:48 Why the Saudis struggle — Washington never let them finish it

12:35 Saudi–UAE split — Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya

16:47 Mecca Pact — Turkey, Pakistan, and a still-unwritten deal

19:06 Trump, Houthi strikes, and Abraham Accords leverage

21:07 Bab el-Mandeb for trade — Egypt, Europe, Asia; not mainly America

21:58 China armed the crisis — satellite targeting data for the Houthis

24:04 China’s double game with the Gulf and Iran

27:45 Sanctions hit Chinese oil buyers and the shadow banks

30:23 How badly Iran feels the bite — a revolutionary state without cash

33:58 What America should do — energy market, missile shield, proxies

37:15 Iraq’s militia deadline — the Sep 30 test

40:04 Preparing for a weaker Islamic Republic

40:56 No Arab street defense of Iran — and why that matters

43:57 The perpetual counterterror bill vs tying the Gulf to the U.S.

As Israel stands on the brink of another pivotal election, tensions are high and the stakes have never been clearer. In this episode of Counterweight, political analyst Hadar Hazony joins host Will Chamberlain to decode the intricacies of the Israeli political landscape, revealing why the upcoming October 27 elections could reshape the nation’s future.

Hadar Hazony, a leading voice on Israeli politics, dives into the crucial dynamics between the key players: Benjamin Netanyahu, the long-standing Prime Minister from the Likud party, and Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff now running on a centrist platform. Discover how their similar platforms are complicating the race and what it means for voters caught between tradition and change. You’ll uncover the phenomenon of satellite parties and the unique electoral list system that allows smaller factions to influence the balance of power in ways American voters might find surprising.

You'll learn about:

• The critical role of satellite parties in Israeli elections and how they can sway outcomes.
• The implications of proportional representation in shaping party dynamics and coalition-building.
• Insights into Gadi Eisenkot’s rise as a formidable opponent to Netanyahu and what his leadership style represents for the future of Israel.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Hadar Hazony: @HA Hazony

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

Follow Counterweight (twice a week): Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod Site: https://www.counterweightpod.com

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open — Israelis credit Netanyahu for winning the war

1:23 Oct 27 election — Bibi, Eisenkot, and their political camps

4:16 Why satellite parties exist

7:25 How party lists work

12:07 Joint lists and the electoral threshold

15:48 Gadi Eisenkot — how he became the alternative

23:12 What happened to Naftali Bennett

26:42 The Haredi draft and its salience

31:50 UK West Bank sanctions

35:47 Itamar Ben-Gvir

39:42 Iran — how Israelis read the war

42:25 Greater Israel - real or fake

47:01 Did Netanyahu fund Hamas via Qatar

Will Chamberlain talks with Curtis Yarvin about the AI doomer thesis, why Yarvin thinks it is more political and cultural than technical, and what actually matters for AI safety in the real world. The conversation also digs into hacking, biosecurity, institutional competence, and the sociology of the rationalist and effective altruist scenes.

In this episode:

• Yarvin steelmans the AI doomer case as the orthogonality hypothesis, then argues it fails because current AIs have no real intentions
• He says smarter systems are becoming more controllable, predictable, and useful for sensitive tasks, not less
• He frames AI doomerism as a recurring human trope rooted in myths about rebellious machines and takeover scenarios
• The Hugging Face incident is presented as a human negligence problem, not evidence of autonomous AI agency
• He argues the real government priorities should be cyber defense and biodefense, especially modernizing vulnerable legacy software
• He makes the case for safer programming approaches, including moving away from unsafe languages and imperative programming
• He argues hacking is effectively a solvable, even “dead soon” problem if software systems are modernized properly
• On biosecurity, he says AI can help with pattern recognition, but wet lab reality is still the hard limit
• He pushes back on the idea that intelligence alone creates power, saying physical, political, and institutional constraints still dominate
• He critiques the sociology of rationalism and effective altruism, arguing that their worldview creates mission-driven overreach and political capture

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Curtis Yarvin: Gray Mirror · @curtis_yarvin

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

02:12 What is the AI doomer thesis?

03:19 Why AI systems don’t have intentions of their own

09:32 The Hugging Face incident and the sandbox failure

13:19 The real policy challenge: cyber defense

17:10 Biodefense and the limits of intelligence

21:13 Why more capable models can be more controllable

29:35 The politics and incentives behind AI doomerism

36:36 Rationalism, status, and self-perception

40:39 Security hardening versus restricting AI access

45:40 Politics, power, and institutional competence

53:31 Silicon Valley’s blind spots about Washington

58:43 Concerns about centralized control of AI

Randy Barnett: A Latin King confessed to a grisly triple murder, then told him he’d kill one of the victims again if it was a "sure thing."

That exchange helped put the man on death row.

Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center and faculty director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. He has authored more than a dozen books and argued Gonzales v. Raich before the Supreme Court in 2004. Before any of that, he spent four years as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in the late 1970s and early 1980s Chicago.

On Counterweight he walks through those years: Harvard Law to the arraignment court where he watched the John Wayne Gacy closing; Judge John Crowley teaching him what “bullsh*t” meant in a misdemeanor call; the bond-slip racket and crooked jury courts; the chop-shop case that exposed “Dollars” Devine and fixer Eddie Jensen; night shifts on Felony Review deciding, in police stations at three in the morning, which cases became felonies; the one-stab domestic that never became a charge; and the Juan Caballero confession that helped bring a death verdict. He closes with his take on the Lindsay Clancy mistrial and why the insanity defense gets criminal justice theory backwards.

His latest book, Felony Review, is the record of that education. The stories are true crime from the inside, and they still explain how charging, corruption, and courtroom power actually work.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Randy Barnett: Georgetown University Law Center · Felony Review

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

Follow Counterweight (twice a week):

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Site: https://www.counterweightpod.com

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open — Caballero: “I’d a killed Michael for sure”

0:58 Host intro

2:04 Randy Barnett

3:09 Harvard Law to Cook County prosecutor

8:13 Judge Crowley and learning what “bullsh*t” means

13:05 Bond slips and corruption in the misdemeanor courts

17:47 The chop shop — Dollars Devine and Eddie Jensen

28:07 Felony Review — 24/7 charging calls in the police stations

33:17 One stab wound — charge or let go

38:12 Juan Caballero — the confession that brought a death sentence 46:40 Lindsay Clancy and the insanity defense

Brian Chau: The AI doomers always believed superintelligent AI would become a malevolent god and wipe us out. People used to think he was exaggerating. Now they say it in public.

This week Jacob Coxon’s Anthropic resignation thread went mega-viral, and Bernie Sanders is staging AI’s “extraordinary dangers” on the Hill.

Brian Chau is an AI engineer, publisher of Effort.News, and co-founder of Alliance for the Future, the pro-AI advocacy group that fought Biden-era AI controls and helped unwind the institutional machinery that survived repeal. On Counterweight he maps the AI doom thesis—Yudkowsky, the orthogonality claim, and why every step of the chain fails—then follows the money: Sam Bankman-Fried, Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy (now Coefficient Giving), Jaan Tallinn, and the Future of Life Institute. He walks through a Guardian story where the publisher, the reporter, the subject, and the experts were paid by the same donors; the Coxon amplification machine; anti-data-center funding; hardware kill switches sold as a China tool; TIME’s AI 100 with a majority of profiles written by Open Phil–paid journalists while Jensen Huang was left off; and what Senate staffers should ask Geoffrey Hinton and Ajeya Cotra next week.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Brian Chau: Effort.News · @brianchau57 Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

CHAPTERS

0:00 Teaser — they want to ban AI because they think it causes the apocalypse

0:48 Host intro

2:16 Brian Chau

2:20 Background — from AI engineer to Alliance for the Future

4:58 Coxon goes viral — who the doomers are

5:37 Why Chau welcomed the panic — now we fight on honest ground

7:41 The orthogonality thesis — and why the apocalypse chain is wrong

8:52 Their claim — AI becomes God, God is malevolent

10:53 Why every step fails — S-curves, narrow intelligence, the cult’s dark triad

19:02 Funders — Bankman-Fried, Moskovitz, Tallinn, Future of Life

21:43 The distorted media ecosystem

23:17 True believers vs regulatory capture — Anthropic and Amodei

27:48 Coxon’s thread as the product of the nonprofit machine

30:14 Cloaking the thesis — deepfakes, China, and data centers

31:21 Anti-data-center money — Singham vs the larger doom ecosystem

34:09 Why now — political timing more than sudden AGI panic

37:05 Policy endgame — treating NVIDIA GPUs like controlled arms

38:00 Kill switches — destroy the industry, sell it as beating China

42:26 TIME 100 — 58% of profiles paid by Open Phil; Jensen Huang left off

43:46 What senators should ask

46:24 YouTube ad bidding that steers recommendations

48:14 Undisclosed AI-doom sponsorships of creators

49:12 Effort.News — mining legal and financial records for the money trail

Richard Goldberg: America is winning the Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz is moving on U.S. orders, and the escape hatches are closing.

The harder question is how you turn that pressure into an end state before Tehran finds a way to wait you out.

Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He ran Iran weapons-of-mass-destruction policy on the National Security Council in the first Trump term, helped stand up the National Energy Dominance Council, and was sanctioned by Iran in 2020 for the maximum-pressure campaign. He has been one of the public architects of the blockade-plus-sanctions strategy now running as Operation Economic Outcast.

On this episode of Counterweight, Goldberg walks through what “winning” means six months in: nuclear and missile setbacks, ships running dark through Hormuz, the cash crunch and gasoline rationing inside Iran, and why Treasury closing escape hatches still leaves a harder problem. How do you go from economic suffocation to victory without a ground war, and what should “maximum support” for the Iranian people actually look like before the midterms?

Listen / watch:

https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Richard Goldberg: Foundation for Defense of Democracies · fdd.org

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

CHAPTERS

0:00 Teaser — Hormuz on U.S. orders, hatches closing

0:55 Host intro

2:38 Richard Goldberg

2:57 What winning looks like — nukes and missile breakout

11:24 Hormuz no longer Iran’s — blockade plus Outcast

13:01 Ships running dark through Hormuz

17:27 Trump’s vibe shift — no more MOUs

18:03 Why the MOU happened and why Project Freedom went underground

27:53 Demining and whether America was stringing Iran along

29:02 The MOU as Iran’s surrender of Hormuz

29:51 Gas lines and the cash crunch inside Iran

31:27 How real is the squeeze — subsidies and the house of cards

40:10 Can economic pressure alone topple the regime

42:00 Maximum support — arming Iranians and naming an alternative

52:41 October surprise risk before the midterms

Judge Glock: data-center construction is up about twenty times in three years. Of course the counties are panicking.

Loudoun County takes about 45 percent of its tax dollars from those buildings and cut the homeowner rate by about 40 percent. He called it a free government.

Judge Glock is an economic historian, the research director at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor at City Journal. Judge is his name, not a title. He lives next door to Loudoun County, Virginia, the data-center capital of the world. This spring he wrote the Loudoun case in City Journal.

On this episode of Counterweight, Glock walks through what is actually inside those buildings, why Loudoun became ground zero, whether other counties can still copy that deal, and why a local zoning vote will not decide the future of AI. The frontier labs spent a year talking as if they were going to eat half of the white-collar jobs, and maybe the planet. A lot of people are treating a county board meeting as a vote on the apocalypse.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Judge Glock: @judgeglock on X · manhattan.institute

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Teaser

1:07 Host intro

2:52 Judge Glock

2:56 What a data center does

4:11 Why AI needs them

5:14 Cooling and power

6:28 Construction jobs

8:41 Neighbors

12:56 The twenty-times boom

15:14 Loudoun

19:34 Loudoun pushback

21:54 Who pays for power

24:06 Can other counties copy

25:18 Where the backlash comes from

28:55 How counties should bargain

32:15 Federalism

35:47 AI doom talk

Rahul Sidhu: a San Francisco gangster said Flock cameras and drones ended his drive-bys.

The Right turned on the company anyway.

Rahul Sidhu was a Los Angeles cop, then a reserve officer. He founded Aerodome, sold it to Flock Safety, and is now Flock's chief strategy officer. Flock puts cameras at public intersections in more than 6,000 communities. The cameras read plates, not faces. The city owns the data. Sidhu says the systems helped find more than 10,000 missing people in 2025 and supported more than a million criminal investigations.

On this episode of Counterweight, Sidhu walks through why agencies buy Flock, why a warrant on every plate search would collapse case clearance, and the Milwaukee cop who ran a girlfriend's plate 124 times. He says officers already abused DMV and criminal-history databases. Flock is the system that leaves a log. The company has no ICE contract. Local agencies that want to share with ICE can share. He wants audits written into law and jail time for the officers who abuse the tool. He does not want the cameras taken down.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Rahul Sidhu: @rahul on X

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Flock Safety and Rahul Sidhu

02:39 Rahul's Background and Flock's Mission

04:41 How Flock's ALPR Cameras Work

05:16 Hardware vs Software in Flock’s Products

07:24 Flock's Positive Impact on Public Safety

09:07 Why Flock Became News: Controversies and Criticisms

11:07 Political and Public Concerns About Flock

13:04 Regulation, Law, and Privacy Debates

17:42 Common Critiques: Abuse, Misuse, and Misunderstanding

22:15 AI and Auditing for Police Accountability

27:26 Data Privacy, Ownership, and Sharing Policies

30:24 Use of Flock Data in Different Jurisdictions

36:27 Flock's Capabilities During Emergencies and Lockdowns

38:50 Addressing Concerns of Data Abuse and Government Overreach

45:01 Conservative Perspectives and Misunderstandings

48:29 Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

Mike Howell: The Amnesty Lobby is coming for Trump - pushing farm worker amnesty and the DIGNIDAD Act into the midterms. Trump needs to stand firm.

Mike Howell is president of the Oversight Project at itsyourgov.org, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, and a partner in the Mass Deportation Coalition. He is a Virginia lawyer, a Duke and Emory Law graduate, a former House and Senate oversight counsel, and the first Trump administration’s chief legal point of contact at DHS for congressional investigations.

On this episode of Counterweight, Howell walks through the machinery that keeps a real deportation program from scaling. A Senate that treats interior enforcement as a favor to trade. An ICE pause on vehicle stops after Susan Collins called it in. Religious-in-name-only NGOs that still siphon money after Kristi Noem cut the main pipes. An immigration bar that files a habeas petition every time an alien is arrested. The legal fights on no-bond detention and TPS are real. The numbers problem is still a numbers problem. Howell’s midterm advice is worksite enforcement, sanctuary farms and factories on notice, and no victory lap that hands Washington a Gang of Eight sequel.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Mike Howell: @MHowellTweets on X · Oversight Project @ItsYourGov · itsyourgov.org · massdeportation.com

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Intro

0:10 Teaser

1:08 Host intro

2:29 Mike Howell

4:27 Who sets the frame

6:23 Sanctuary cars

13:30 Detention and the courts

18:32 Midterms and worksites

23:21 The NGO machine

31:30 The amnesty trap

Former prosecutor TJ Harker: Derek Chauvin is affirmatively innocent. Minnesota changed its theory of George Floyd’s death in the middle of the trial.

American Scapegoat ships October 27 from Passage Press.

TJ Harker spent twenty years as a lawyer. A graduate of Michigan Law, he served as a New Jersey deputy attorney general and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee. He prosecuted billion dollar frauds and espionage cases. He wrote a law review article arguing that prosecutors, in the main, do their jobs honestly. Then he dug into the Chauvin file and concluded the case never should have been brought.

On this episode of Counterweight, Harker walks through what the State actually did. Prosecutors ruled out an air choke the day after George Floyd died — the autopsy showed no damage to the neck. They rode a blood-choke theory through opening statements, then dropped it after their own witnesses said you cannot kill a man, or even knock him out, by compressing one carotid artery. Mid-trial they pivoted to positional asphyxia, the theory they had already disclaimed in the charging complaint. Hennepin County’s medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, did not agree with asphyxiation, carotid compression, or positional asphyxia. The first two county prosecutors withdrew rather than charge second-degree murder. Harker’s finding: Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death.

A federal pardon leaves the Minnesota sentence standing. The book is the case for the public.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

TJ Harker: @TJ_Harker on X · Amicus Republicae on Substack

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Teaser

0:46 Intro

3:01 TJ Harker

6:27 Why he wrote the book

8:51 The State changed its theory of George Floyd's Death

14:37 The blood choke theory collapses

20:05 The prosecutors who withdrew

24:04 Tobin's fanciful positional asphyxia theory

33:22 How "neck compression" ended up in the autopsy

45:05 How Floyd actually died

49:50 The EMS delay

53:10 What now for Chauvin?

59:34 American Scapegoat