Rick Hoppe

Retired Intelligence Officer | Author of *Eight Stages: A Primer on Modern Revolution* | Counterintelligence Veteran

Rick Hoppe spent 32 years inside the U.S. intelligence community, first as an Army counterintelligence agent and later as an analyst, including a tour through the Iraq surge. He is the author of *Eight Stages: A Primer on Modern Revolution* (Koehler Books), a framework built out of that career for reading revolution as a repeatable process rather than sudden chaos.

On Space Tomatoes S3-EP8 ("Eight Stages of Revolution"), Rick walked Havok and LX through the real mechanics of legitimacy and rupture: why a coup is not a revolution, what the color revolutions actually changed in Kyiv, why Iran's center of gravity is not its missiles, and why you cannot bomb your way to freedom. He explains how algorithmic information cages and psy-ops reshape the ground a revolution grows in, and where he believes North America sits on the eight-stage ladder right now.

He now writes both nonfiction and fiction about how systems fracture and how people behave under pressure, and publishes regular analysis on Substack.

Find Rick: https://rickhoppe.substack.com/
Grab *Eight Stages*: https://www.amazon.com/Eight-Stages-Primer-Modern-Revolution/dp/B0GZJH36G7/
Publisher page: https://www.koehlerbooks.com/writer/rick-hoppe/

8
Aug. 21, 2026

Eight Stages of Revolution - Intel Vet Rick Hoppe Maps the Path from Grievance to Rupture S3-EP8

Retired intelligence officer and author Rick Hoppe joins Havok and LX for a deep, no-BS breakdown of modern revolutions. From his 32 years in the intel community (including the Iraq surge) to the eight-stage process that every successful (and failed) revolution has followed since the mid-1700s, Rick lays out the real mechanics of legitimacy, rupture, and why you can't bomb your way to freedom. We dig into coups vs. true revolutions, color uprisings, the Iran situation, algorithmic cages, and wha...
Guest: Rick Hoppe