In this episode, Gav and Dave tackle the continuing problem of bear attacks in Japan, by looking at a recent incident involving a smarter than average bear. As rural communities shrink and bears push into populated areas, the country continues to struggle with all of the conflicts that ensue from overlapping habitats. Dave and Gav discuss why the problem keeps getting worse and why Japanese politicians continue to struggle with their ursine neighbors.

We covered the increasing bear attacks back in Season 3, which is here: https://onthefringepodcast.substack.com/p/bonus-episode-one-bear-of-a-problem

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All the best from both of us!

Dave and Gav

In this episode, Dave and Gav look at the rise of the irrepressible Bishnoi Gang and what it says about the continuing evolution of transnational crime.

They trace how a gang rooted in northern India developed reach far beyond its home turf, and connect that story to scandals surrounding Cricket Canada, where allegations of corruption and questionable leadership have cast a dark shadow over the sport.

The result is an episode about the depressing ease with which institutions can be bent to serve interests they were never meant to protect and harm those they are intended to represent.

If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to share, subscribe, and leave us a comment. We always appreciate the support from our growing On the Fringe community.

Thank you, as always for listening to On the Fringe. We sincerely appreciate it!

All the best from both of us,

Dave and Gav

This short episode follows up on part 1: We’re living in the age of the Terminator

In recent weeks, autonomous drones flown by the Sudanese Armed Forces (and likely the Ethiopians) went head-to-head, marking the first record event of two autonomous weapons facing off. Both drones came from the same manufacturer, Bayraktar, a Turkish defense company.

Could this be a sign of how future wars are fought? One supplier sourcing material to two opposing sides, or autonomous weapons leading combat operations? Listen in and find out!

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All the best from both of us On the Fringe,

Dave and Gavin

Will algorithms be better decision makers than humans when it REALLY counts? Some countries are betting on it, while others are taking baby steps.

We’ve got a short episode about what autonomous weapons are, what they do, and why they could be consequential to the future of war and humanity, much like other parts of the AI boom that we are living in.

Please do us a favor and share or drop a comment. We love hearing from our audience!

All the best from both of us On the Fringe,

Dave and Gav

In this episode, Dave and Gav sit down with Dr. Ralph DeFalco, author of The Counterfeit, to talk about Chinese influence campaigns, economic coercion, and the blurry line between fiction and forecasting in the intelligence world. Dr. DeFalco is a U.S. national security operative with more than fifty years of experience.

Their conversation explores how speculative fiction can function almost like strategic modeling, where imagined crises have a habit of becoming uncomfortably plausible a few years later. Dr. DeFalco talks about plotting a novel as a labour of love and how he drew from history to create a believable and authentic environment. On the Fringe also taps into how influence actually works in practice and why democracies continue to struggle to respond to slow-moving forms of pressure.

One thing I (Dave) forgot to mention in the interview is that I felt the book shines a light into Chinese society under the CCP, specifically about how the Chinese Communist Party secures the Chinese state, how Chinese intelligence operations are conducted, and how information is tightly controlled in China behind the great firewall.

If you’re hooked, here’s a link to bookshop.org to purchase the book.(we make ZERO commission)

As always, thanks as always for joining us On the Fringe and don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe, and share.

All the best from both of us,

Gav and Dave

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A former Google software Engineer, Michele Spagnuolo, got arrested and charged by the Feds in New York for wire fraud, insider trading, and a laundry list of financial crimes for using his position as a software engineer at Google to make crooked bets on Polymarket.

The boys dive into the ongoing legal saga surrounding prediction markets and financial regulations in the United States, and make a long-term bet that this is still going to all wind up in the Supreme Court. But ol’ Michele’s going to jail.

What’s your take on the future of prediction markets? Will they be state, or federally regulated?

If you enjoyed the episode, restack, share it, and let us know. We sincerely appreciate it!

All the best from both of us On the Fringe,

Dave and Gav

In this episode, Dave and Gavin dive into a wild tale, and what may be the biggest counterintelligence failure in the 21st century. Former officer David “Gold Bar Dave” Rush, who allegedly worked in the agency’s Science and Technology Directorate, was recently arrested after fabricating his time sheets, and likely worse—hoarding 300 kilograms of gold bars from the agency for several months.

After his arrest, the FBI also discovered several million dollars in cash, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxury watches in his house. Moreover, it’s now been discovered that Rush had weaved an intricate web of lies that the agency and DoD (now the Department of War) had fallen for (or ignored) for over a decade, including lies about every credential he had for almost two decades. He had also joined the Senior Executive Service (SES) as one of the top civil servants in the U.S. Government.

Here is the affidavit outlining Rush’s charges.

If Rush’s charges are factually true and he is deemed to be guilty, these events point to critical missteps and tremendous failures that may lead to incredible damage to the United States once (if) the full story ever comes out, and, it should be a serious wakeup call for the U.S. intelligence community about how they vet Officers working with some of the most sensitive information, in some of the most sensitive positions in the country.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe. We sincerely appreciate your feedback and our growing Substack community!

All the best from both of us,

Dave and Gav

In this episode, Gav and Dave dig into the stagnant security environment in the Gulf, where stranded cargo ships collecting barnacles have become a symbol of a region stuck in limbo, with trade still moving but nobody feeling particularly good about it.

This week’s conversation connects maritime insecurity and rising shipping costs to the growing role of Pakistan as a formal military partner for Gulf states that is trying to convince parties outside the region that it’s a neutral third-party mediator. Dave and Gav also get into why negotiations keep going nowhere, talking on how the major players all want wildly differing outcomes and operate under political systems that reward displays of dominance and over the top claims more than compromise, leaving the region trapped in a crisis everyone claims to want resolved and nobody seems to want to settle.

In this episode, Gav and Dave speak with Ramon Perez, AI technology executive and military veteran from the Digital Democracy Project about the misaligned incentive structures shaping modern politics in America.

Rather than treating misinformation or polarization as isolated failures, the discussion focuses on how platforms, lobbyists, media organizations, and representatives are rewarded for behavior that undermines trust and pushes the national discourse toward conflict.

The result is an environment where bad incentives become self-reinforcing, moderation becomes risky and systems built to increase engagement slowly start influencing how institutions govern themselves, an alarming foundation for public life. But there’s hope—as long as we’re actively involved and actively participate in the process.

Go to https://vote.gov/ to register to vote if you haven’t!

To find out more about the Digital Democracy Project, go to: https://digitaldemocracyproject.org/

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All the best from both of us On the Fringe,

Dave and Gav

If you’re going abroad, moving abroad, want to build new personal relationships, or are looking to level up your life, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

In this episode, Gav and Dave sit down with David Ramos, a graduate of the Bush School of Government and Public Service who has turned language acquisition into what appears to be a competitive sport. David has 12 OPI certifications and picked up languages like Afrikaans and Swedish on a whim…and shares how you can do the same. The OPI is a foreign language interview exam that is used as a gold standard by the U.S. government, military, and private companies, to test proficiency in a language.

Drawing from their shared background in Peace Corps language training, Gav and Dave talk with David about how he got pulled into polyglottery in the first place, the psychology of learning fast, and what actually separates people who eventually become conversational from people who spend three years proudly knowing how to order coffee and ask where the bathroom is. The conversation also digs into identity and the ability to interact with the world through different ways of talking about it.

David can be contacted here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdramos7201/

If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a comment, subscribe, and share it with your friends. We always appreciate the support from our growing On the Fringe community.

All the best from both of us,

Dave and Gavin