# Iran is Making MORE Oil Money Since the War Started | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 12 Mar 2026, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/70592348/iran_making_more_oil_money_after_war.mp3

We break down the latest developments in the war with Iran, including strikes on key targets, the mining of the Strait of Hormuz, and the growing economic impact on global oil markets. The discussion dives into Iran’s black market oil trade with China, the rise of IRGC power inside the regime, and whether the U.S. actually has a clear strategic end state. We also examine drone warfare lessons from Ukraine and what the conflict could mean for China, Taiwan, and the broader global balance of power. Jon Hackett's Book:⬇️ https://a.co/d/082z28uY Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Subscribe to our new newsletter!!!! https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join Whitefish Security Summit ⬇️ https://whitefishsecuritysummit.com/ New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Check out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ Lobo Institute ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ Twitter ⬇️ https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCA LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.social Mick’s publications ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/ Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.social Find Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?u Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 Start\War Update: US Strikes Iran & Strait of Hormuz Tensions 02:30 Iran’s Oil Sales to China & Black Market Tankers 06:20 IRGC Power Grab & Iran’s New Supreme Leader 09:40 Is There a US Strategy or End State for the War? 15:35 Political vs Military Risk in War Planning 21:30 Drone Warfare Lessons from Ukraine 29:40 Boots on the Ground? SOF Missions & Iran’s Nuclear Sites 50:00 China, Taiwan & the Global Consequences of the Iran War Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey, what's up, guys. This is d Do us a
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[0:37] Speaker 1: you guys listening. Thanks a bunch. Hey everybody, welcome to
[0:42] Speaker 1: another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Andy
[0:44] Speaker 1: Milburn and Jonathan Hackett. Back again our resident are Ran
[0:49] Speaker 1: expert Mark p will be joining us soon. I think
[0:52] Speaker 1: he's on the road. He should be home soon. So
[0:55] Speaker 1: very excited for that. Two Greeks, two Marines. I think
[0:58] Speaker 1: we could win a lot happening. You know, if you
[1:03] Speaker 1: guys are you know, people who watch and listen to
[1:05] Speaker 1: this show are as glued to what's happening and monitoring
[1:09] Speaker 1: the situation. I've seen those memes and they're fucking hilarious.
[1:13] Speaker 1: You know, a man can only monitor so many situations.
[1:15] Speaker 1: You know, it's like never ending. Some of the most
[1:21] Speaker 1: recent stuff is Scentcom said that we've hit over five
[1:23] Speaker 1: thousand targets, which is great. I don't know if, like,
[1:26] Speaker 1: is the regime still there? I think so. Also, I
[1:30] Speaker 1: wanted to bring up I didn't talk about this with
[1:33] Speaker 1: Jonathan before, Like we we struck that girls' school that
[1:36] Speaker 1: killed one hundred and eighty kids. Uh, no, bueno. Just
[1:41] Speaker 1: want to make sure we acknowledge that fuck up. Some
[1:46] Speaker 1: of the more recent updates are you know, they started
[1:49] Speaker 1: mining the Straight of Hord Moves with small like their
[1:51] Speaker 1: speedboats or whatever they have. I know they have a
[1:53] Speaker 1: lot of those. Even though we're saying that we destroyed
[1:55] Speaker 1: their navy and all that stuff, which is probably true.
[1:57] Speaker 1: But last number I saw in terms of the navy
[2:01] Speaker 1: was about like forty two percent of the navy was
[2:04] Speaker 1: knocked out. You know, there's still a good amount more.
[2:10] Speaker 1: Everyone can tell the oil prices have gone up. There's
[2:13] Speaker 1: no real end insight to this. President Trump did say
[2:17] Speaker 1: yesterday in some statements, like he was talking about how
[2:21] Speaker 1: I don't know if he's floating the idea that this
[2:23] Speaker 1: is going great and it's like we're done, We've achieved
[2:25] Speaker 1: our objectives, and he's gonna declare victory and just you know,
[2:28] Speaker 1: go home without thinking of like the reverberations of this stuff.
[2:35] Speaker 1: A couple other things that came out yesterday as well.
[2:40] Speaker 1: During the nuclear negotiations, Steve Wickcoff and Jared Kushner didn't
[2:44] Speaker 1: have a nuclear like expert with them in the room,
[2:48] Speaker 1: which you would think, you know, anybody with some wrinkles
[2:52] Speaker 1: in their brain would have somebody in the room that
[2:53] Speaker 1: knows what they're talking about in terms of, like of
[2:55] Speaker 1: the technical specs of what's happening. Yeah, so just I
[3:02] Speaker 1: just dire, you know, puked out a bunch of stuff. John,
[3:04] Speaker 1: What are you tracking as far as what's happening.
[3:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, So what's most interesting to me is the economic
[3:10] Speaker 2: impact of the conflict, because that's obviously the driver of
[3:13] Speaker 2: how long this can go on for the United States
[3:15] Speaker 2: as a capitalist country, the US is beholden to the
[3:19] Speaker 2: world economy. The interesting part of that economic angle is
[3:24] Speaker 2: that Iran is actually shipping and receiving more revenue than
[3:28] Speaker 2: before the conflict in oil sales to China, both in
[3:32] Speaker 2: actual like real volume and in dollar returns on those
[3:36] Speaker 2: oil sales. And to put it in perspective, there are
[3:39] Speaker 2: ten vessels currently inside the Persian Gulf that are moving
[3:42] Speaker 2: eastward out into the Ocean from Iran. There are zero
[3:47] Speaker 2: vessels from other countries doing the same. These vessels are
[3:50] Speaker 2: bound for China, so China is continuing to obtain oil
[3:54] Speaker 2: from Iran despite what's going on. This is because, for
[3:58] Speaker 2: some reason that is inexplicable, Iran is able to pass
[4:01] Speaker 2: through these supposedly mined and dangerous areas unmolested, while other
[4:06] Speaker 2: ships cannot, and the US is unable to guarantee that
[4:09] Speaker 2: those vessels could move, just like these falsely flagged vessels
[4:13] Speaker 2: and might say falsely flag. For example, one vessel has
[4:15] Speaker 2: the flag of Cameroon and it's not actually so. Normally,
[4:19] Speaker 2: when Iran tries to move these vessels, they'll get a
[4:22] Speaker 2: flag of some country in Africa, typically in West Africa,
[4:25] Speaker 2: which is where these flags typically issue from. Well, these
[4:28] Speaker 2: flags aren't even from those countries. They're actually fake. They're
[4:30] Speaker 2: not even from those countries. They've just put them on
[4:33] Speaker 2: the vessel to move through, and they've turned off their
[4:36] Speaker 2: AIS systems, which are the systems that tell the world
[4:38] Speaker 2: where they are, but they're still being tracked by two
[4:40] Speaker 2: European agencies that are monitoring. This is why we know
[4:42] Speaker 2: that they're there. And each of these vessels has around
[4:45] Speaker 2: two million barrels of oil on it. And if you
[4:47] Speaker 2: do the legit oil price, which right now is around
[4:50] Speaker 2: eighty dollars, that's a one hundred and sixty million dollars
[4:53] Speaker 2: per vessel. But these are not being sold in the
[4:54] Speaker 2: legit market. They're being sold in the black market. So
[4:56] Speaker 2: you can increase that perhaps by double or even more
[4:59] Speaker 2: per vessel. That is going to go into the pockets
[5:02] Speaker 2: of the regime. And the important thing is when we
[5:04] Speaker 2: think from a Western perspective, we think, oh, the oil
[5:06] Speaker 2: sales happen in China and the money goes back to
[5:09] Speaker 2: the country that sold it, Iran. That's not how it works.
[5:11] Speaker 2: It actually goes into banks in Hong Kong, for example,
[5:13] Speaker 2: which is most common, and from those banks in Hong
[5:15] Speaker 2: Kong goes to banks in Europe and the United States
[5:18] Speaker 2: and Canada. And this is how the regime stores its assets.
[5:21] Speaker 2: From these oil sales, because you can't take a suitcase
[5:23] Speaker 2: full of dollars back to Iran, because Iran doesn't belong
[5:27] Speaker 2: to the swift banking system. Because we kicked them out
[5:29] Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, which basically pushed them wholesale into the
[5:32] Speaker 2: black market. Instead of a little bit in the black market,
[5:34] Speaker 2: they had no other place to go, so they completely
[5:36] Speaker 2: moved into the black market. So these dollars and pounds
[5:39] Speaker 2: in euros are going to banks that we consider friendly.
[5:42] Speaker 2: The regime also has banks in France. There's a bank
[5:46] Speaker 2: in Hamburg, there's a bank in London, part of the
[5:48] Speaker 2: Bank Melli network. Bank Melli is actually the official bank,
[5:52] Speaker 2: the state Bank of Iran that's underneath the Central Bank
[5:54] Speaker 2: of Iran that is still operating one hundred percent in
[5:57] Speaker 2: all these places I just mentioned in other countries as well.
[6:00] Speaker 2: And there is a London branch of Bank Mellaly in
[6:02] Speaker 2: Hong Kong, so it's not the central bank's direct branch.
[6:05] Speaker 2: It's a subsidiary of the British Bank in Hong Kong
[6:08] Speaker 2: where this money goes into the UK. And I'm sure
[6:11] Speaker 2: people have seen the headlines about Muchabah, the new Ayahtola,
[6:15] Speaker 2: who is miraculously put into the position by the IRGC
[6:18] Speaker 2: rather than the process that's supposed to exist in the system.
[6:21] Speaker 2: He has one hundred million dollars or pounds of real
[6:24] Speaker 2: estate in London that he uses to generate income. Very
[6:28] Speaker 2: interesting that someone who's grown up in a charitable capacity,
[6:31] Speaker 2: who has never worked and had income, has one hundred
[6:33] Speaker 2: million pounds of real estate London. So I just want
[6:36] Speaker 2: to put that economic spin on it, because this is
[6:38] Speaker 2: part of the conflict and you cannot exclude economics from
[6:42] Speaker 2: brand strategy. We always learn this in the military, that
[6:44] Speaker 2: there's diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and.
[6:47] Speaker 3: Political components to a grand strategy. And a lot of
[6:50] Speaker 3: what we're seeing in the media is the military instrument
[6:52] Speaker 3: of national power. And I think it's very important to
[6:54] Speaker 3: bring the economic instrument into this, especially in an oil
[6:57] Speaker 3: commodities based conflict, where the price of a commodity effects
[7:02] Speaker 3: not only the outcome of the war, but the length
[7:04] Speaker 3: of the war.
[7:06] Speaker 4: John, when we're talking about and and this, you know,
[7:10] Speaker 4: this is more than semantics. When we're talking about the
[7:15] Speaker 4: now the Iranian administration owning these assets, we're really talking
[7:21] Speaker 4: about the IRGC, right, And and then in the wake
[7:24] Speaker 4: of this, the appointment of the new Supreme Leader. I've
[7:30] Speaker 4: read articles that assert that this really is kind of
[7:34] Speaker 4: a solidification of IRGC's power. All right, it's a not
[7:42] Speaker 4: even a I mean a subtle shift in a sense
[7:45] Speaker 4: from from the last vestiges of the revolution and the
[7:48] Speaker 4: Muller's right lock, stock and barrel into the hands of
[7:51] Speaker 4: the IRGCS. So maybe that's, you know, it's a questions
[7:55] Speaker 4: that perhaps one unintended consequence of this of the Confery
[8:00] Speaker 4: talked about the downside of decapitation, right, that might be
[8:02] Speaker 4: one of the downsides of removing Klomeny from the chess board.
[8:07] Speaker 2: You're right, cho yeah, the four D chests that we're
[8:10] Speaker 2: all pawns in. So basically you're you're right, And what
[8:14] Speaker 2: it is is kind of the veil has been removed.
[8:16] Speaker 2: So there was this pretense that the clerics were ruling
[8:18] Speaker 2: the country. It's an Islamic clerically ruled country, et cetera.
[8:22] Speaker 2: Although at the same time it was actually run by
[8:24] Speaker 2: the IRGC, which we have spoken about many times in
[8:26] Speaker 2: the show and that many others have.
[8:27] Speaker 4: That veil is gone.
[8:28] Speaker 2: There's no longer the pretext that oh, this is actually
[8:31] Speaker 2: a clerical regime. Now we see that it's actually the
[8:34] Speaker 2: IRGC ruling the country inside and out.
[8:39] Speaker 5: What do you see rushing back from DC? Sorry, I
[8:42] Speaker 5: had to do some some TV very early in the morning,
[8:44] Speaker 5: which I'm sure none of you watched, because you don't
[8:47] Speaker 5: watch TV at five in the morning.
[8:50] Speaker 4: If I'd known you are on Mark, I would have
[8:52] Speaker 4: said exact sadly doing good.
[8:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, I did BBC at one am. I'm surprised, my god.
[9:03] Speaker 4: But the BBC doesn't pay, did they No.
[9:06] Speaker 2: They pay you in exposure.
[9:08] Speaker 1: Oh that's what they say.
[9:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's implied.
[9:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, I got you. Okay, Well it's the same thing here.
[9:17] Speaker 5: I don't.
[9:18] Speaker 1: I don't pay anybody here.
[9:21] Speaker 2: Cash.
[9:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that is.
[9:24] Speaker 4: That is these hook too, though, for various shows, I
[9:28] Speaker 4: will pay you an exposure and it works you get
[9:31] Speaker 4: some big names.
[9:32] Speaker 1: Yeah. No, we don't, I mean for teammates. We don't
[9:34] Speaker 1: pay for guests.
[9:36] Speaker 5: I've never heard of that before, paying for you know,
[9:40] Speaker 5: podcast paying for guests. But maybe people do. Certainly I don't.
[9:43] Speaker 5: When I go on as a guest, I don't get paid.
[9:45] Speaker 1: I don't think. No, I mean, we don't do it.
[9:47] Speaker 1: I don't think big you know, it would be we're
[9:51] Speaker 1: not even a big podcast. But if you're going on
[9:52] Speaker 1: a podcast, you know, that's massive exposure. I mean, you
[9:56] Speaker 1: see an MSNBC. Sure there's people watching. I guess maybe
[10:00] Speaker 1: look at this.
[10:00] Speaker 5: Do your very in my my Sponi skills. I snatched
[10:03] Speaker 5: a mug from the studio today.
[10:05] Speaker 4: That's been our skills.
[10:07] Speaker 1: That's what I taught you at the farm.
[10:08] Speaker 5: Yeah, that's one of the cameramen's like take it. I'm
[10:12] Speaker 5: not watching. I'm like, I'm taking it. I'm good.
[10:16] Speaker 1: All right, So, hey, Andy, you were going to say something.
[10:20] Speaker 4: No, Actually I had another question for for both John
[10:23] Speaker 4: and Mark now so and and obviously we're all outside.
[10:31] Speaker 4: We're all outside, thank goodness, the you know, the planning,
[10:35] Speaker 4: decision making, execution process here, all right. Uh. Someone asked
[10:40] Speaker 4: me a question the other day that really kind of resonated,
[10:45] Speaker 4: which is, hey, on the military side, right, we always
[10:51] Speaker 4: learned that at the st you know, the next sus
[10:54] Speaker 4: between at that strategic leadership nexus, right between political leadership
[10:58] Speaker 4: and the military. The the obligation of military leaders is
[11:02] Speaker 4: to give best military advice, right, What's to give best
[11:06] Speaker 4: military advice? But then not necessarily just stand back and say, hey,
[11:10] Speaker 4: I advise them right. So you know, the question really
[11:15] Speaker 4: is this and I know the answer. But we all
[11:19] Speaker 4: know that this plan has been around for a while.
[11:22] Speaker 4: You know, the execution of this plan didn't just emerge
[11:25] Speaker 4: in the last few months. It's something that all of
[11:27] Speaker 4: us have been somehow connected with in our previous lives.
[11:34] Speaker 4: But connected with this plan has always been end conditions
[11:37] Speaker 4: and then state envision, right, and that was the best
[11:40] Speaker 4: military advice. Hey, this is the best way to get
[11:43] Speaker 4: to this end state. Do you, guys, from what from
[11:47] Speaker 4: your informed speculation background, do you think that conversations taking
[11:51] Speaker 4: place right now as in, hey boss, we can't get
[11:55] Speaker 4: there from here, or hey, another another week and we
[11:59] Speaker 4: should have achieved those conditions, those end conditions. I mean,
[12:02] Speaker 4: do you think the administration, based on that advice, has
[12:05] Speaker 4: a very clear picture of where it sends or do
[12:08] Speaker 4: you think perhaps there's a little bit of static in
[12:12] Speaker 4: that in that nexus between political and civilly and leadership.
[12:15] Speaker 4: Now where the military leaders are saying, hey, this campaign
[12:19] Speaker 4: is designed to do X, it's not designed to do Y.
[12:23] Speaker 4: And the conditions for X we will know, uh, and
[12:27] Speaker 4: we will let you know when they when they're happening,
[12:29] Speaker 4: and we advise you know at that that that point
[12:32] Speaker 4: that the campaign has reached, it's it's natural termination, right,
[12:36] Speaker 4: it's it's achieved its instint.
[12:39] Speaker 2: I'll jump in first on that. On the operational level,
[12:42] Speaker 2: and you know, building the campaigns, as you mentioned, Andy,
[12:45] Speaker 2: so the component commander and the forward commanders, you know,
[12:49] Speaker 2: the set comp commander for example, will have those strategic
[12:51] Speaker 2: end states for the campaign, but he can't set the
[12:54] Speaker 2: strategy for the overall connection of campaigns together. And we
[12:58] Speaker 2: can see, you know, there's always the air campaign, the
[13:00] Speaker 2: ground component, and the c component, all these things coming together,
[13:04] Speaker 2: which at the operational level can be set by that
[13:07] Speaker 2: said com commander. But the President sets the policy objective,
[13:10] Speaker 2: which is that grand strategy objective, and the sun com
[13:14] Speaker 2: commander can't come and shake the President say please give
[13:16] Speaker 2: me an end state. Instead, he's got to operate off
[13:19] Speaker 2: of what he expects that end state to be based
[13:20] Speaker 2: on what the signals are from the OBAL Office of
[13:23] Speaker 2: National Security Council whoever else is setting policy to the
[13:26] Speaker 2: best of his ability. And at the operational level we
[13:28] Speaker 2: see the campaign plan. It's actually kind of easy to
[13:30] Speaker 2: do that, to make those inferences, but the problem is
[13:33] Speaker 2: those inferences might not be accurate because politics change much
[13:37] Speaker 2: more rapidly than campaign's plans change.
[13:39] Speaker 4: Ah, And now I've got to follow up with this
[13:41] Speaker 4: question exactly right. So this happens a lot. We saw
[13:44] Speaker 4: it happen in Afghanistan, we saw it happen in the
[13:46] Speaker 4: Rock and what we saw I thought was this kind
[13:51] Speaker 4: of attitude of well, I gave my advice, you know.
[13:55] Speaker 4: Whereas for me personally, having you know, background as a
[13:59] Speaker 4: military officer of thirty one years, I think there's more
[14:02] Speaker 4: to it than that. It's hey, boss, I just want
[14:06] Speaker 4: to tell you know, these are the risks of continuing, right.
[14:09] Speaker 4: It's not simply hey, I'm trying to guess what you want, boss,
[14:12] Speaker 4: and is the campaign it should be. At some point, sir,
[14:17] Speaker 4: I need to talk to you about what your goals
[14:19] Speaker 4: are because this is what I've given you. But I
[14:24] Speaker 4: can't go I can't go beyond that, and we can't
[14:27] Speaker 4: achieve anything beyond this. You've got to tell me what
[14:30] Speaker 4: you want. Yet.
[14:31] Speaker 2: I think that also shows the difference between military risk
[14:34] Speaker 2: that we think about like risk to personnel and risk
[14:36] Speaker 2: to mission versus political risk, which are two totally different things.
[14:40] Speaker 2: And I think back to historical example Operation Eagle Claw
[14:43] Speaker 2: to rescue the American hostages at Desert One, and if
[14:46] Speaker 2: you look at the operational plan for that, it's exceptionally risky.
[14:50] Speaker 2: It's one of the most risky plans I have ever seen.
[14:53] Speaker 2: And the reason it was approved was not because the
[14:56] Speaker 2: president was willing to take on the military risk. It's
[14:59] Speaker 2: because he thought as a political risk problem, and he
[15:03] Speaker 2: basically subordinated the military risk to the political risk factors
[15:06] Speaker 2: that were in his mind. And that's a president who
[15:08] Speaker 2: was probably thinking through this more clearly than presidents that
[15:11] Speaker 2: came after him up until now. And the question is
[15:15] Speaker 2: now looking back to Trump one. For example, I remember
[15:18] Speaker 2: when we received a list of three dozen cultural sites
[15:22] Speaker 2: in Iran that the US was going to strike after
[15:24] Speaker 2: the Solamani assassination, because Iran had retaliated and struck all
[15:28] Speaker 2: Aside Airbase and some other targets, and we were getting
[15:31] Speaker 2: ready to strike all those targets inside of Iran in Sentcom,
[15:35] Speaker 2: and there was a lot of discussion about the political
[15:37] Speaker 2: risk of doing this versus the military risk of doing this.
[15:41] Speaker 2: The military risk was actually relatively low for a short
[15:44] Speaker 2: term view that the regime wouldn't be able to do
[15:47] Speaker 2: very much at that time, but the political risk was
[15:49] Speaker 2: considered too high, and so the president actually backed off
[15:52] Speaker 2: because of the political risk balance, which is an interesting
[15:54] Speaker 2: inversion of what we're talking about right now, where it
[15:57] Speaker 2: seems that the president's more willing to take political risk now,
[16:00] Speaker 2: which is pushing the military or forcing the military into
[16:03] Speaker 2: a position where there is no strategic end state that's
[16:05] Speaker 2: been announced, which is a challenge for forming the end
[16:07] Speaker 2: states of those campaign plans that are supposed to fit
[16:09] Speaker 2: into those strategic end states.
[16:13] Speaker 5: So the one thing I would add on this is
[16:15] Speaker 5: that you know, under normal circumstances, you know, a military
[16:19] Speaker 5: campaign just does not, of course, only have the military
[16:21] Speaker 5: component you have there's a diplomatic component too, and you know,
[16:25] Speaker 5: these things are usually planned, and I don't think it's
[16:27] Speaker 5: happened now, And that's why I think you see this,
[16:29] Speaker 5: you know, this tactical military success, but then the strategic incoherence.
[16:33] Speaker 5: But it's usually planned with a national security process where
[16:36] Speaker 5: you have all elements of US power. It's diplomacy, it's
[16:40] Speaker 5: the State Department, and obviously it's the it's the US military,
[16:42] Speaker 5: the intelligence community. You have kind of the Department of
[16:46] Speaker 5: Treasury others, but they are part of a very kind
[16:48] Speaker 5: of sequence set of meetings. The National Security Advisor, the NSC,
[16:54] Speaker 5: you know, shairs this and everything comes into kind of
[16:56] Speaker 5: focus together, so you have a coherent plan that uses
[17:00] Speaker 5: is just about every tool in the US government and
[17:02] Speaker 5: everyone is on the same page. And in these discussions
[17:05] Speaker 5: there will be you know, a policy process and in
[17:09] Speaker 5: an end state, you know, what are we here to achieve?
[17:11] Speaker 5: Where can how can each element of US power achieve this?
[17:14] Speaker 5: And I think that this doesn't necessarily exist in the
[17:18] Speaker 5: in the Trump orbit. I think they sit around. I mean,
[17:21] Speaker 5: maybe this is a little dramatic, but the you know,
[17:23] Speaker 5: they kind of come up with stuff on a on
[17:25] Speaker 5: a napkin. In the oval, you have a quarter of
[17:28] Speaker 5: the State Department is gone gone under under this administration.
[17:35] Speaker 5: You have an NSC staff that's been hollowed out. The
[17:38] Speaker 5: National Security Advisor, Mark Rubio wears fourteen hats. And there's
[17:41] Speaker 5: nothing more fun than watching all the you know, the
[17:43] Speaker 5: memes on social media when you know whether he's today,
[17:46] Speaker 5: I think he was in a mind layer out there.
[17:49] Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, I mean, come on, other times he's the
[17:52] Speaker 5: grand you know, Viceroy of Venezuela, uh and so or
[17:56] Speaker 5: he's the old Shah and kind of dramatic Iranian guard
[18:01] Speaker 5: but you know, where is he on this? And so
[18:04] Speaker 5: I don't think there's a process in which Andy the
[18:06] Speaker 5: things that you asked about. You know, why is this
[18:09] Speaker 5: not kind of more cohesive? I think it just doesn't exist.
[18:12] Speaker 5: And then and you get you know, and the perfect example.
[18:14] Speaker 5: There's so many examples of this. But you know how
[18:16] Speaker 5: in the world, if you serve in embassies overseas, you know,
[18:20] Speaker 5: one of your core functions in the country team meeting
[18:23] Speaker 5: is ensuring the safety of Americans. And how we kind
[18:25] Speaker 5: of screwed up the evacuation of several hundred thousand American
[18:28] Speaker 5: citizens is incredible, I mean, and so that was not
[18:32] Speaker 5: done correctly. And then you go to the mixed messaging.
[18:35] Speaker 5: I mean, every day there are three or four different goals.
[18:38] Speaker 5: That Secretary of War, Secretary of Defense, whatever you want
[18:41] Speaker 5: to call him, Pete Haggzeth, and then Marco Rubio with
[18:44] Speaker 5: all of his hats and Trump they all say different things.
[18:48] Speaker 5: And then you have you know, sencom Chief coming out
[18:50] Speaker 5: and saying, you know, these are our three objectives as well,
[18:53] Speaker 5: so everyone and no one's on the same page, and
[18:56] Speaker 5: you throw On top of that, a president who is
[18:59] Speaker 5: just you know, bases his decisions on kind of the
[19:02] Speaker 5: whim of the day, and so he might just decide,
[19:04] Speaker 5: let's just call it quits now. Oil prices are too high,
[19:07] Speaker 5: energy infrastructure targets are being hit that you know, now
[19:09] Speaker 5: we have to deal with. I don't know if you
[19:10] Speaker 5: guys talked about already the mining of the Strait of
[19:12] Speaker 5: our moves. How does the US you know, Navy conduct
[19:16] Speaker 5: this kind of you know operations. If you remember in
[19:19] Speaker 5: the eighties when we were escorting ships through this, I
[19:22] Speaker 5: think we escorted one ship a week. It would take
[19:26] Speaker 5: about three years to get the three hundred ships clogged
[19:29] Speaker 5: in the strait right now through. But again it's it's
[19:32] Speaker 5: but these things, I mean, all these kind of problem
[19:34] Speaker 5: sets that are now out there, like we should have
[19:36] Speaker 5: been addressing this earlier, and that that I mean, I
[19:38] Speaker 5: sound like a bureaucrat and I was one, I guess,
[19:41] Speaker 5: but that should have been addressed earlier and in normal
[19:43] Speaker 5: policy planning meetings. And you know, I was very critical
[19:47] Speaker 5: and I was involved in meetings that you know, in
[19:49] Speaker 5: the Obama era with Nationalist Curity Council staff that had
[19:51] Speaker 5: four hundred people in it, and I wanted to rip
[19:54] Speaker 5: my hair out. Maybe that's why I don't have any left.
[19:56] Speaker 5: But now I don't know if any of these things
[19:58] Speaker 5: are going on. And so you know, ultimately, I think
[20:00] Speaker 5: that it's a lot of the dysfunction is because of
[20:03] Speaker 5: really this unique nature of the administration. And so it
[20:06] Speaker 5: gets you know, there's there's just and and again it's
[20:08] Speaker 5: a president who at any time they were done. Now
[20:12] Speaker 5: noos are going to go crazy with this because they
[20:14] Speaker 5: want to keep going. And I think the increase Israeli
[20:17] Speaker 5: strikes or a function of they're getting nervous now that
[20:21] Speaker 5: Trump is just going to start getting really really nervous,
[20:24] Speaker 5: really worried about uh, the US economy, and and I
[20:28] Speaker 5: don't know, do I apologize again I was late, but
[20:30] Speaker 5: you know, one item to talk about is how administration
[20:33] Speaker 5: officials are openly manipulating the oil markets. I mean, the
[20:37] Speaker 5: idea that I think it was that was the Energy
[20:39] Speaker 5: Secretary or someone came out yesterday and said that we
[20:41] Speaker 5: actually were escorting a ship through US Navy was through
[20:45] Speaker 5: the straight upour moves, which was false. Oil prices dropped
[20:48] Speaker 5: after that. I mean, this is not even like they're
[20:50] Speaker 5: not even hiding it. And I think that's a reflection
[20:53] Speaker 5: of how nervous they are.
[20:54] Speaker 1: They're buying the dip.
[20:56] Speaker 5: I mean, it's crazy, you know.
[20:57] Speaker 4: This, Yeah, I mean, I Mark, Yeah, I mean I
[21:01] Speaker 4: think that was a great, you know, great greater summary.
[21:05] Speaker 4: I and I you know, my my point is not
[21:09] Speaker 4: an argument against that. It is simply I think we've
[21:12] Speaker 4: got used to four stars being just very docile in
[21:17] Speaker 4: this process. Right, So, you know, think back to the
[21:22] Speaker 4: shellacking that McKenzie, General Mackenzie took in the aftermath of Cabul,
[21:27] Speaker 4: which you know, I think it was justified, all right,
[21:30] Speaker 4: It wasn't. It wasn't that everyone was blaming him for
[21:32] Speaker 4: political errors. It was the fact that people were blaming
[21:35] Speaker 4: him for not speaking up when plans were clearly not
[21:39] Speaker 4: going to work in his best military judgment and result,
[21:42] Speaker 4: and and and the probability of bad things happening from
[21:47] Speaker 4: the way things were evolving was high, and that he
[21:49] Speaker 4: is the is, you know, the senior military commander, had
[21:54] Speaker 4: an obligation to to voice his reservations, and because those
[21:58] Speaker 4: reservations were so serious, to offer his resignation. If it's
[22:03] Speaker 4: you know, so that's I'm not suggesting we're at that point.
[22:07] Speaker 4: But I'm suggesting that I am saying that there is
[22:10] Speaker 4: a there is a gap here, right, there's a void,
[22:13] Speaker 4: and that military leadership has a role when there is
[22:18] Speaker 4: such a void to speak out.
[22:20] Speaker 5: It's also uni president. I mean, so you know, I mean,
[22:22] Speaker 5: you know, the I think that tendency is you know,
[22:25] Speaker 5: everyone is so this is this is just human nature.
[22:28] Speaker 5: People want to keep their jobs, and you know, and
[22:32] Speaker 5: Trump is he is over praise as the Chairman of
[22:34] Speaker 5: the Joint Chiefs over and over and over again. I
[22:36] Speaker 5: mean that starts to get to your head. I'm sure
[22:39] Speaker 5: you do. Hear reports that Kans has provided counsel to
[22:42] Speaker 5: Trump that perhaps there's some courses of action he shouldn't take.
[22:44] Speaker 5: But I would have go back to the responsible person,
[22:48] Speaker 5: and this should be the National Security Advisor. He is
[22:50] Speaker 5: the one who is supposed to kind of correlate all
[22:53] Speaker 5: different views and ask for dissenting views. But I mean,
[22:58] Speaker 5: I don't know, Like there's reports in the press that
[23:01] Speaker 5: everyone's wearing the same type of floor shim shoe because Trump,
[23:05] Speaker 5: you know, is asking that everyone wear this shoe. You know,
[23:07] Speaker 5: you guys know what I'm talking about.
[23:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that.
[23:09] Speaker 5: Yeah, and so you know, uh, there's there's pictures of
[23:14] Speaker 5: Marco Rubio wearing these oversized shoes. People are zeroing in
[23:17] Speaker 5: on it. I just don't know if there's the ability
[23:18] Speaker 5: to to provide dissent to Trump because he's so mercurial
[23:21] Speaker 5: and so andy. Perhaps you're right on that, but I
[23:23] Speaker 5: also think that at senior level's careerism comes through. It's
[23:27] Speaker 5: just human nature. It's not great. You should never you should,
[23:30] Speaker 5: you know. I like when I hear stories of leaders
[23:33] Speaker 5: who walk into a position of seniority who have a
[23:35] Speaker 5: resignation later typed out in their desk and they're safe.
[23:39] Speaker 5: They have to be able to look at themselves afterwards.
[23:41] Speaker 5: But a lot of times people don't do that. And
[23:43] Speaker 5: that's across all all administrations too. I mean, I I've
[23:47] Speaker 5: lost count how many times I've been disappointed when people haven't,
[23:49] Speaker 5: you know, done the right thing. I had an old
[23:52] Speaker 5: Boston mine at CIA, you know, and she gave me
[23:55] Speaker 5: some tremendous advice, and she it was just simply that
[23:58] Speaker 5: just do the right thing every time, period. And if
[24:00] Speaker 5: you've got to leave, you've got to quit, that's okay.
[24:03] Speaker 5: You gotta be able to look at it. Yeah, but
[24:05] Speaker 5: I don't know. If I'm not it works, I.
[24:07] Speaker 4: Would go back to so, yes, absolutely, when you've got
[24:10] Speaker 4: an administration where everyone's wearing the same shoes, you do
[24:15] Speaker 4: have to rely on the one guy who's word one
[24:18] Speaker 4: core frames all his life, right, which is that's where
[24:21] Speaker 4: I'm getting back to sometimes that that guy who who
[24:25] Speaker 4: is not even part of the administration but happens to
[24:27] Speaker 4: be a four star component, I mean a fourth uh
[24:32] Speaker 4: four star combatant commander. He's he's the guy in that
[24:35] Speaker 4: hot seat, right.
[24:38] Speaker 2: The challenges that these are senate confirmed positions, and especially
[24:42] Speaker 2: within the last year or so, generals that have been
[24:44] Speaker 2: put into three and four star positions rely on those
[24:47] Speaker 2: positions because of their political views more than their military stature.
[24:51] Speaker 2: At that point, you know, the one star and a
[24:53] Speaker 2: two star, Yes, there are some politics in the background,
[24:55] Speaker 2: but once we crossed that two to three, now it's
[24:58] Speaker 2: it's really about politics.
[25:00] Speaker 4: Which emphasizes again why the military needs to be you know,
[25:04] Speaker 4: that very obvious point, right, because you want a guy,
[25:06] Speaker 4: regardless of political background context, who is just saying, hey,
[25:12] Speaker 4: is this is not going to turn out?
[25:14] Speaker 2: Well?
[25:14] Speaker 4: I mean, I'll give you just just examples. Mark already
[25:18] Speaker 4: brought up a couple but the drone threat right, the
[25:22] Speaker 4: drone threat was clearly and John, I'd love to hear
[25:25] Speaker 4: your thoughts on this, but we should have anticipated that,
[25:29] Speaker 4: There's no doubt about it. There should have been a
[25:31] Speaker 4: contingency plan. This isn't me being smart after the fact.
[25:34] Speaker 4: Before the fact, I know that drones were no one
[25:39] Speaker 4: cares about. I mean they do, but blistered missiles are
[25:42] Speaker 4: not such a threat. Cruise missiles not such a threat,
[25:44] Speaker 4: specially when you're talking the distances from Iran. You would
[25:47] Speaker 4: think that given the distances from Iran, like over a
[25:50] Speaker 4: thousand kilometers towards their targets, that slow moving drones might
[25:55] Speaker 4: be easy to intercept, but recent experience, to include from Ukraine,
[26:00] Speaker 4: shows that they're almost impossible to intercept when you have
[26:03] Speaker 4: a launch enough inventory.
[26:05] Speaker 2: Actually, Andya, that's an excellent point. It's a very rare
[26:07] Speaker 2: opportunity to see something like that used in combat and
[26:11] Speaker 2: evaluate it from an intelligence perspective before this conflict, and
[26:14] Speaker 2: we were able to do that, or we had the
[26:15] Speaker 2: opportunity to do that in Ukraine when Iran built the
[26:18] Speaker 2: Alabuga facility in Russia and we could actually see what
[26:22] Speaker 2: combat level production capacity looks like for an active arm conflict,
[26:26] Speaker 2: which was obviously Ukraine, where they're able to produce four
[26:28] Speaker 2: hundred to six hundred drones per month. So we could
[26:31] Speaker 2: actually see what a production levels look like in wartime,
[26:34] Speaker 2: and then we could actually create intelligence assessment. Okay, in
[26:37] Speaker 2: the future if we go to war with Iran, we
[26:38] Speaker 2: can expect this level of productivity, even though during peace
[26:41] Speaker 2: time it's lower obviously, so we're not surprising ourselves by
[26:45] Speaker 2: this tripled output during wartime. And I think Israel put
[26:49] Speaker 2: out some intelligence saying there were eighty thousand of these
[26:51] Speaker 2: drones already produced before we kicked off, right, And of
[26:55] Speaker 2: course in wartime the Iran is absolutely going to produce
[26:58] Speaker 2: more than they normally would produce, so we can expect
[27:00] Speaker 2: them to be replenishing those very rapidly. The other challenge,
[27:03] Speaker 2: I don't know if you've seen the imagery of the
[27:05] Speaker 2: GPS jamming around the Gulf, So the GPS jamming is
[27:08] Speaker 2: a big problem. If you have GPS in your equipment,
[27:11] Speaker 2: you don't have GPS, you don't need to worry about it.
[27:13] Speaker 2: And some of these smaller drones don't have GPS, they
[27:15] Speaker 2: have pre programmed positions some of them are just going
[27:19] Speaker 2: in a specific direction that's set before they launched, without
[27:21] Speaker 2: even writing exactly. And I actually saw these in action
[27:25] Speaker 2: in twenty eleven in Afghanistan. There was an Iranian drone
[27:27] Speaker 2: over our base that lost contact with its handler, but
[27:30] Speaker 2: still had pre programmed activities it was supposed to do
[27:33] Speaker 2: in flight and did those activities without any control from
[27:35] Speaker 2: the controller over the horizon. And that was fifteen years ago, right,
[27:39] Speaker 2: And they've been modifying these, obviously and using them to
[27:41] Speaker 2: great effect and learning combat errors in Ukraine and adjusting
[27:45] Speaker 2: those errors not only in production but in the capacity
[27:48] Speaker 2: of those drones to move through air defense systems. And again,
[27:52] Speaker 2: this is something that we could evaluate and hopefully had evaluated.
[27:55] Speaker 2: I don't know if we have or how we've used
[27:56] Speaker 2: that evaluation in this current conflict.
[28:00] Speaker 4: So there is an exact example of where military leadership
[28:05] Speaker 4: has failed to give best military advice. Hey, boss, I
[28:08] Speaker 4: want you to know this is what could happen because
[28:11] Speaker 4: and again this is where I kind of push back
[28:13] Speaker 4: a little bit on the distinction, because there isn't always
[28:16] Speaker 4: a clear distinction between military and political risk, and here
[28:19] Speaker 4: is one area where they both combine, right that that gap,
[28:23] Speaker 4: which was significant, although perhaps not in terms of casualties,
[28:28] Speaker 4: not even in terms of infrastructure destruction, it was a
[28:31] Speaker 4: significant military and political risk because of the threat to
[28:35] Speaker 4: Golf Cooperation Council Company GCC countries. Right exactly are our
[28:42] Speaker 4: regional allies, I.
[28:43] Speaker 2: Mean, especially those partners close in.
[28:46] Speaker 5: I mean, this is it's not a this is not
[28:48] Speaker 5: a huge kind of analytics stretch. I mean maybe the
[28:52] Speaker 5: four of us here know a thing or two, but
[28:54] Speaker 5: I mean the idea that we are unprepared for this,
[28:56] Speaker 5: for the drone warfare after seeing what happened in Ukraine
[28:59] Speaker 5: is extraord to me. And so it's not you know,
[29:03] Speaker 5: is the US military who is unprepared? Were about the
[29:05] Speaker 5: intelligence community? I mean again, when you go through these
[29:08] Speaker 5: operations and things are presented the National Security Council, there
[29:11] Speaker 5: are you know, cost benefit assessments. This is what could happen.
[29:13] Speaker 5: You do all the left of boom planning. I mean,
[29:16] Speaker 5: this is just basic. I mean any one of us
[29:18] Speaker 5: could have said this off the top of our heads. Hey,
[29:20] Speaker 5: we got to get Americans out of the region. The
[29:22] Speaker 5: Iranians are going to use drones. Look what happened in
[29:25] Speaker 5: uh Uh in Ukraine. This is tough. Are we ready
[29:27] Speaker 5: for this? I mean, this is not rocket science. So
[29:30] Speaker 5: I think that's one of the things that really surprised
[29:32] Speaker 5: me that we weren't as well prepared for this. But
[29:34] Speaker 5: there's there's another thing that I think for both for
[29:37] Speaker 5: Andy and John to comment on. It has to do
[29:39] Speaker 5: with this notion of boots on the ground. And I
[29:41] Speaker 5: was laughing. There was I can't remember if it was
[29:44] Speaker 5: on Fox or Newsmax or one. You know, they had
[29:46] Speaker 5: someone come on and said, well, you know, the use
[29:49] Speaker 5: of special operations forces that doesn't count as boots on
[29:51] Speaker 5: the ground. It kind of does if you're one of
[29:53] Speaker 5: those forces who are what on the ground? You know,
[29:55] Speaker 5: we've kind of been there, like you know, if you're on,
[29:57] Speaker 5: if you're if you're you know, you're walking around, maybe
[30:01] Speaker 5: you're not wearing your army boots, maybe you're wearing your
[30:03] Speaker 5: Solomon's because you're a member of some Tier one unit.
[30:06] Speaker 5: But you're in or on, I don't know, even if
[30:10] Speaker 5: it's for a couple of hours. Uh, what are your
[30:12] Speaker 5: thoughts on that? Because and I think that's it's most
[30:16] Speaker 5: important when we think about two things. One is what
[30:19] Speaker 5: to do about uh, the the Iranian nuclear program, you
[30:24] Speaker 5: know is that and again we're not sure if that's
[30:26] Speaker 5: a goal anymore. Uh uh, because they keep changing. But
[30:30] Speaker 5: the idea of you know, how do you get to
[30:31] Speaker 5: that that highly enriched uranium do we have to have?
[30:34] Speaker 5: And you all both you guys know this, you can
[30:36] Speaker 5: address it. There are you know, are are are kind
[30:38] Speaker 5: of top soft units are trained in this, whether it's
[30:42] Speaker 5: you know, dev group or or or or delta. Uh,
[30:46] Speaker 5: you know, do you expect that to happen?
[30:49] Speaker 4: Uh?
[30:49] Speaker 5: And then I think on the on the other part
[30:51] Speaker 5: has to do with and I know we're going to
[30:53] Speaker 5: get in the weeds, is about you know, how to
[30:54] Speaker 5: kind of deter this the Iranians potentially or they are
[30:57] Speaker 5: mining the straight up hor moves. What about carg Island.
[31:00] Speaker 5: There'll be some kind of effort of us to take that,
[31:02] Speaker 5: which I think is the kind of a huge you know,
[31:06] Speaker 5: kind of the locus of Iranian export capability. So what
[31:10] Speaker 5: are your guys' thoughts on that?
[31:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, So I always tell this anecdote. I actually used
[31:14] Speaker 2: to teach a class on military diplomacy and about why
[31:18] Speaker 2: the boots on the ground thing is so contentious. So
[31:20] Speaker 2: we're in Syria with Mars SoC we're in Syria and
[31:23] Speaker 2: Obama comes on and he says, we have no boots
[31:25] Speaker 2: on the ground in Syria. And we look at our
[31:27] Speaker 2: boots and they're on the ground in Syria, and we're
[31:30] Speaker 2: like looking at each other, like what And you know,
[31:33] Speaker 2: and it's funny because you know, on the ground level,
[31:35] Speaker 2: as a force there, you're not part of this big
[31:38] Speaker 2: political discussion. You're just you're just there doing the thing
[31:41] Speaker 2: that you're supposed to do, you know. And there's actually
[31:44] Speaker 2: reasons they say boots on the ground, and they're like
[31:46] Speaker 2: legal distinctions between what does it mean to be deployed
[31:49] Speaker 2: and anyone who's had to be a command position to
[31:52] Speaker 2: have to put forces out there, you've had to sign
[31:53] Speaker 2: something called the boots on the Ground letter or a
[31:55] Speaker 2: BOG letter that says we have X number of forces
[31:57] Speaker 2: in this country. The Chief Admission approves that of folks
[32:00] Speaker 2: based on NSDD thirty eight, which is something that Ronald
[32:02] Speaker 2: Reagan put into place, where the Chief of Mission is
[32:04] Speaker 2: the one that gets to say how many forces are
[32:06] Speaker 2: in the country. But if those forces aren't there for
[32:08] Speaker 2: military reasons, they're there for something else, they don't count
[32:10] Speaker 2: for the boots in the ground number and there are
[32:12] Speaker 2: all these different ways you can push these levers to
[32:15] Speaker 2: get that Tier one unit in there without actually saying
[32:17] Speaker 2: legally that they're even there, which is kind of fascinating.
[32:20] Speaker 2: We had the problem in Libya as well, when we
[32:21] Speaker 2: said when Obama said there are no forces in Libya,
[32:24] Speaker 2: there was a Marsoc unit rolling across the airfield with
[32:26] Speaker 2: their weapons out, which they weren't supposed to have in
[32:29] Speaker 2: the newspaper. So there's all these examples of when we
[32:32] Speaker 2: say that and it's not true. But of course there's
[32:35] Speaker 2: reasons for that, obviously, operational security reasons and many other reasons.
[32:38] Speaker 2: But on your point about the Carg Island, I just
[32:41] Speaker 2: want to jump on that because if you look at
[32:43] Speaker 2: a satellite image of Carg Island, it's not very large.
[32:46] Speaker 2: It's a very obvious oil refining or oil shipment point.
[32:50] Speaker 2: There's nothing else on the island except these vats of
[32:54] Speaker 2: oil and gas on the island, which to me is
[32:56] Speaker 2: like in a conflict where oil and gas are at
[32:59] Speaker 2: the center of the conflt as far as the Gulf
[33:01] Speaker 2: is concerned, legitimate military target. If the regimes is selling
[33:05] Speaker 2: this on the black market to China and to no
[33:07] Speaker 2: one else, there are no other benefactors of this oil.
[33:10] Speaker 2: It's just screams to me, strike here, like there's like
[33:12] Speaker 2: a big X on it, like hit this spot. And
[33:15] Speaker 2: for some reason, that has been one spot the US
[33:16] Speaker 2: has not touched at all. And I just don't understand
[33:19] Speaker 2: why it doesn't make sense to me.
[33:23] Speaker 4: I think, I think so A couple of couple of
[33:27] Speaker 4: comments on that. One is the difference between a certain
[33:31] Speaker 4: number of boots on ground on the ground and more
[33:33] Speaker 4: boots on the ground is not such a big difference, right,
[33:36] Speaker 4: so that you know John Tyr point about I'm familiar
[33:40] Speaker 4: with the bog report that that that went through endless
[33:45] Speaker 4: machinations to make it look as though we had fewer
[33:47] Speaker 4: guys in for instance, of Rock and then Syria and
[33:51] Speaker 4: oi r. Right, But it's a it's a huge significance
[33:54] Speaker 4: between no boots and some and and and you know,
[34:01] Speaker 4: while all of us understand that politically there's no difference
[34:03] Speaker 4: between conventional and soft or covert boots on the ground,
[34:10] Speaker 4: in practice, I mean politically there isn't, but in practice,
[34:15] Speaker 4: of course, there is. Because we just over the last
[34:21] Speaker 4: three or four decades, the United States has had just
[34:24] Speaker 4: not good experiences of putting mass boots on the ground, right,
[34:28] Speaker 4: flooding the zone. Whereas we when we're doing things a
[34:32] Speaker 4: little more with a little more precision and we're using
[34:34] Speaker 4: soft or using the agency, we've had generally a much
[34:39] Speaker 4: better record, right all the way back to you know,
[34:41] Speaker 4: you name it, I mean, back to El salvad or
[34:43] Speaker 4: Plant Columbia. But so, but but it's an emotive term,
[34:52] Speaker 4: and we've seen how this hit the media. Right, So
[34:55] Speaker 4: did you see the headlines a couple of days ago
[34:59] Speaker 4: the President does not rule out boots on the ground. Well,
[35:02] Speaker 4: we're really it was it was the Secretary of War
[35:05] Speaker 4: and the press secretary saying, hey, we don't want to
[35:08] Speaker 4: rule out anything because that that helps the enemy.
[35:12] Speaker 2: Right.
[35:13] Speaker 4: So but having said all that, all right, I don't
[35:17] Speaker 4: you know, as a lengthy way of saying, I don't
[35:20] Speaker 4: think we as a plan to put conventional troops on
[35:22] Speaker 4: the ground, but I could be proven wrong. I wouldn't
[35:26] Speaker 4: be surprised if there was a plan for soft or
[35:29] Speaker 4: there were covert plans. And I just hope that those
[35:31] Speaker 4: plans on linked linked in the practical term to strategic
[35:35] Speaker 4: against state And for instance, I hope we're not putting
[35:38] Speaker 4: all our eggs in the Kurdish basket, right, and I
[35:41] Speaker 4: hope that we're going to replicate the We're going to
[35:44] Speaker 4: take what the SDF did and replicate that in Iran
[35:47] Speaker 4: because all of us here. Again, no, that doesn't happen.
[35:50] Speaker 5: I think these Kurdish friends turned that off fit on
[35:57] Speaker 5: through a fit. So I'm not sure that's going to
[35:58] Speaker 5: happen with the courage. I think these are doing it,
[36:00] Speaker 5: but I don't know if we're going to do it. Man,
[36:01] Speaker 5: who knows?
[36:02] Speaker 4: Can I practical the practical missions for you know a
[36:08] Speaker 4: mank You mentioned essentially b DA right on the nuclear facility.
[36:12] Speaker 5: How do you secure the highly enrisied uranium? I mean
[36:15] Speaker 5: that's you know you obviously I'm not saying anything secret.
[36:17] Speaker 5: It's out in the press. I mean we have our
[36:19] Speaker 5: our you know, Tier one units are there are specific
[36:21] Speaker 5: units trained for this. If we really wanted to make
[36:25] Speaker 5: sure that iron is not a nuclear threat, we have
[36:26] Speaker 5: to find that that that remaining h EU and presumably
[36:30] Speaker 5: I hopefully they know where it is.
[36:32] Speaker 2: So the thing is, there are like two dozen locations
[36:34] Speaker 2: that we have publicly disclosed have some of this uranium
[36:37] Speaker 2: and other materials. So that's not just the uranium itself.
[36:39] Speaker 2: It's also the centrifuges, the the computer equipment that's used.
[36:43] Speaker 2: All this has to be taken not only because of
[36:45] Speaker 2: the technological capacity that it provides the regime, but also
[36:48] Speaker 2: because it's actually radioactive. We have to remove some of
[36:52] Speaker 2: this this material from the country, and places like Isfahan,
[36:55] Speaker 2: for example, have huge amounts of uranium. You can't just
[36:58] Speaker 2: send a small team in with the pack and take
[37:01] Speaker 2: it out. You have to have logistics and sustainment behind
[37:03] Speaker 2: them moving it out safely. You know, for example, the
[37:06] Speaker 2: United States, when we move nuclear material around, we have
[37:09] Speaker 2: security forces, the Marine Corps and Air Force as well
[37:12] Speaker 2: that actually go with that material and transport it on
[37:14] Speaker 2: the ground wherever it's going. Not Tier one units doing this,
[37:18] Speaker 2: but regular forces doing this because it has to be
[37:20] Speaker 2: escorted so that there's no possibility. If you've ever seen
[37:23] Speaker 2: the movie Broken Arrow with back in the day, that
[37:26] Speaker 2: was a great movie, and that's the thing you don't
[37:28] Speaker 2: want to happen, is that this nuke just makes its
[37:30] Speaker 2: way out somewhere, or that the uranium makes its way
[37:31] Speaker 2: out somewhere. And that's only one mission though, because there's
[37:35] Speaker 2: the uranium counter WMD mission, But there's also the uw
[37:39] Speaker 2: FID mission, which if you were using Kurds or a zeries,
[37:42] Speaker 2: those are two separate missions under two separate authorities, which
[37:45] Speaker 2: introduces a lot of complexity because you can't have the
[37:47] Speaker 2: same commander doing both activities. So now you have two
[37:51] Speaker 2: task forces in there managing that, plus external actors like
[37:55] Speaker 2: the Agency and Department of Energy and others who are
[37:57] Speaker 2: going to be also playing a role in this. As
[37:59] Speaker 2: well as keep mentioning these you have to think about
[38:01] Speaker 2: all these layers of bureaucracy that are being added when
[38:03] Speaker 2: these two simultaneous operations are occurring, rather than just one
[38:06] Speaker 2: of them or the other.
[38:07] Speaker 5: Do you think it's going to happen? Do you think
[38:09] Speaker 5: that that soft units will be involved in such a
[38:11] Speaker 5: you know, such a an operation against the rack Runnian
[38:15] Speaker 5: nuclear program.
[38:17] Speaker 2: I think in a normal political atmosphere it would be
[38:20] Speaker 2: easier to answer that question, but because of the whipsaw
[38:22] Speaker 2: in nature of foreign policy right now, it's very hard
[38:24] Speaker 2: to say.
[38:26] Speaker 5: Uh Andy, quick question for you, and I'm going to
[38:30] Speaker 5: get certainly in trouble. This morning, when I did a
[38:33] Speaker 5: TV hit, I said Steve Wikoff is the worst US
[38:37] Speaker 5: envoy in diplomatic history.
[38:39] Speaker 1: I think that's fair. I think that's fair.
[38:41] Speaker 5: But but and it's because I'm What I'm going to
[38:43] Speaker 5: ask you about is one he actually said yesterday. He
[38:46] Speaker 5: said that we're taking Russia's assurances that they're not providing
[38:50] Speaker 5: targeting assistance to the iraniance. That gave me and a
[38:53] Speaker 5: lot of other people. I think, you know, post traumatic
[38:55] Speaker 5: costs from from Helsinki a couple of years ago. When
[38:59] Speaker 5: you know, when Jonathan Lamaier is a friend of mine,
[39:01] Speaker 5: asked President Trump, you know, who do you believe about
[39:04] Speaker 5: Russian interference? And Trump said, well, I believe putin. What
[39:08] Speaker 5: do you think of Witcoff's comments on that? And I'm
[39:10] Speaker 5: asking you only because of your Ukraine experience too, and
[39:12] Speaker 5: Alcoff has kind of bumbled through through Ukraine. But the idea,
[39:16] Speaker 5: I mean, this is a this is the kind of
[39:17] Speaker 5: this is a frankly a more influential UH member of
[39:22] Speaker 5: Trump's team, more so than Marco Ruby. I think giving
[39:25] Speaker 5: the Russians a pass, I mean I was, I think
[39:27] Speaker 5: everyone was astounded at this.
[39:30] Speaker 4: I think it does not all go well for wit
[39:34] Speaker 4: Costs understanding of this is a vast understatement, right, So
[39:41] Speaker 4: where I'll go from here. I think it's part of
[39:43] Speaker 4: a larger problem, right that my concern, and I don't
[39:48] Speaker 4: know this is the case, but that this administration is
[39:51] Speaker 4: kind of so set against Lensky and Ukraine and and
[39:56] Speaker 4: so inclined to give Russia a pass that it that
[39:59] Speaker 4: this wasn't their only this wasn't the only erar right
[40:03] Speaker 4: that now the Russians are in a position where they're
[40:05] Speaker 4: doing targeting, and of course the Russians are doing that,
[40:08] Speaker 4: and of course they will justify it ethically because they
[40:12] Speaker 4: are defending an ally under attack from the United States.
[40:15] Speaker 4: And after all, we did that with the Ukrainians, right,
[40:18] Speaker 4: we helped the Ukrainians.
[40:20] Speaker 1: With That's one thing for the Russia, but it's another
[40:23] Speaker 1: thing for the President to be on our.
[40:24] Speaker 4: First one justifying. I'm not justifying what the Russians are doing.
[40:28] Speaker 1: What I'm saying what the administration's doing.
[40:31] Speaker 4: What I'm been saying is that we're willing to overlook
[40:33] Speaker 4: acts of war from Russia because we're so set against Ukraine.
[40:39] Speaker 4: The other but perhaps even the more serious aspect of
[40:42] Speaker 4: this is we didn't consult with Ukraine before doing this,
[40:46] Speaker 4: and now Middle Eastern countries are saying are contacting the
[40:50] Speaker 4: Ukrainian government directly. Indeed, the Ukrainian governments agreed to send
[40:54] Speaker 4: mobile training teams to the Middle East and countries the
[40:56] Speaker 4: United States billions. The United States not part of this
[41:01] Speaker 4: right in order to help with their short range air defense.
[41:04] Speaker 4: So we have failed on to it, first of all,
[41:07] Speaker 4: because we have known for a long time that we
[41:10] Speaker 4: have a gap in our short range air defense.
[41:13] Speaker 2: Right.
[41:13] Speaker 4: We've known this and we've never closed that gap. We've
[41:17] Speaker 4: never closed that gap, and we haven't the Ukrainians have.
[41:21] Speaker 4: The Ukrainians are everything from drone target acquisition and I'm
[41:26] Speaker 4: not going to get too technical, mainly because I'm hanging
[41:28] Speaker 4: up on my fingernails here, But.
[41:30] Speaker 1: Why are you know?
[41:31] Speaker 4: Drones are a different problem set than crewis and ballistic missiles.
[41:35] Speaker 4: You can use Patriot and FAD, but first of all,
[41:39] Speaker 4: you're mismatching your inventory. It's not cost effective. Secondly, you're
[41:44] Speaker 4: running your magazine slow. And thirdly, Patriot and FAD are
[41:47] Speaker 4: not the best interceptors for small drones with a I
[41:51] Speaker 4: mean for drones, slow moving, low altitude, low radar cross section. Okay,
[41:57] Speaker 4: this has been our problem for a long time, from
[41:59] Speaker 4: acquisition to engagement. Using integration of ew and other means
[42:04] Speaker 4: to short term kinetic defense. We have a massive gap,
[42:09] Speaker 4: and that's no secret. It's been a gap for a while,
[42:12] Speaker 4: and we made no effort as we plan this to
[42:14] Speaker 4: reach out to Ukraine to try and close that gap.
[42:16] Speaker 4: We lost credibility with our partners because of that. Now
[42:20] Speaker 4: they're saying, hey, thanks very much for your help the
[42:23] Speaker 4: United States. We're going to reach out to the experts direct.
[42:26] Speaker 1: So what's funny is yesterday Axios came out with article
[42:29] Speaker 1: saying US dismissed Ukraine deal for anti Iran drone tech
[42:32] Speaker 1: last year, seven months ago, Ukraine officials try to sell
[42:36] Speaker 1: the US their battle proven technology for downing Iranian madrones
[42:40] Speaker 1: and they said, no, thanks.
[42:42] Speaker 4: Could that have been useful.
[42:45] Speaker 1: I'm not a military expert, but I'm gonna say yes,
[42:48] Speaker 1: we'll never know.
[42:49] Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to shift just one quick thing here
[42:52] Speaker 5: because I thought there's there and I'm going to defend
[42:54] Speaker 5: Pete Hegseth on this and the Pentagon.
[42:58] Speaker 4: You're always doing that, well, that's the thing I usually do.
[43:00] Speaker 5: There was a there was a controversy or maybe something
[43:03] Speaker 5: about about you know, the millions of dollars spent on
[43:06] Speaker 5: steak and lobster. And all I will say is, when
[43:09] Speaker 5: you're in kind of shitty places, if you can get
[43:13] Speaker 5: a good meal of steak or lobster, it's a glorious thing.
[43:15] Speaker 5: So I will, I will back up the D O
[43:18] Speaker 5: D and whatever they want to spend on this kind
[43:19] Speaker 5: of stuff. You guys have been there, and I will
[43:23] Speaker 5: I will add one other thing too. They didn't talk
[43:24] Speaker 5: about the agency budget, but CIA always had it. Every
[43:27] Speaker 5: war zone based great food. We had great chefs, and
[43:30] Speaker 5: that is important.
[43:31] Speaker 1: I can't even imagine how you know, the level of
[43:34] Speaker 1: like getting ripped off the CIA is getting for like
[43:37] Speaker 1: chefs and cooking fucking cares excuse saying like I'm saying
[43:40] Speaker 1: like they're probably super excited, like, oh fuck the CIA.
[43:44] Speaker 4: You ever did you ever have to fill out a
[43:46] Speaker 4: missing gear statement trango time in the agency?
[43:49] Speaker 2: No?
[43:51] Speaker 5: Are you getting me?
[43:52] Speaker 4: I have more to pay pay for a lost punchot
[43:55] Speaker 4: liner too.
[43:57] Speaker 1: So I think the issue with that was last month,
[43:59] Speaker 1: this last month of d D spent ninety three billion,
[44:02] Speaker 1: the most since two thousand and eight, when we were
[44:04] Speaker 1: actually in a war.
[44:07] Speaker 5: I don't care that, I mean, and you've got to
[44:10] Speaker 5: agree with me, right, I agree with you we.
[44:12] Speaker 2: Actually had lobster and steak on the Navy birthday in Afghanistan.
[44:14] Speaker 2: I remember it. It was like, I don't care whose
[44:16] Speaker 2: birthday it is, having stake lobster, bring it.
[44:19] Speaker 5: On beneath the MRIs, you know. And so I thought
[44:23] Speaker 5: that was funny.
[44:24] Speaker 1: What's interesting is they said it was ninety three billion,
[44:26] Speaker 1: and then they listed a bunch of stuff that was like,
[44:29] Speaker 1: all right, you're listening a ton of stuff that's like
[44:31] Speaker 1: not adding up to ninety three billion, right, you know,
[44:34] Speaker 1: it's adding up to maybe a few hundred million. And
[44:36] Speaker 1: it's like, should we actually look at what the d
[44:39] Speaker 1: D spending except besides like state the bullshit like that,
[44:43] Speaker 1: Like it was just the story to you know, to
[44:46] Speaker 1: get viral, to go viral. Yeah.
[44:48] Speaker 5: So anyway, so I'll defend the Pentagon and the Secretary
[44:51] Speaker 5: of Defense on that. Bring on the lobster.
[44:54] Speaker 4: I thought it was, uh, you know, if when you
[44:58] Speaker 4: are when you have a bunch of stuff that is
[45:02] Speaker 4: happening or not happening that is quite serious and contains
[45:07] Speaker 4: to national security and global stability and all of this,
[45:12] Speaker 4: I thought it was delving into minute shit. Start going
[45:16] Speaker 4: after right meals? Right, how about you know the topic
[45:22] Speaker 4: we just discussed the short range air defense. Now that
[45:25] Speaker 4: is that is that that is potentially criminal negligence, right,
[45:30] Speaker 4: I'm over using the term criminal. I don't mean literally
[45:33] Speaker 4: a criminal, but it's negligence of the high order that
[45:36] Speaker 4: we ignored this opportunity to destroyed.
[45:38] Speaker 1: Didn't one of our big radar domes get destroyed in Kuwait?
[45:42] Speaker 1: That's costs you know, a couple billion by rain. Sorry,
[45:45] Speaker 1: that cost a couple of billion dollars and can't just
[45:47] Speaker 1: easily be replaced, you know.
[45:50] Speaker 2: I think that's why they don't want to talk about it,
[45:51] Speaker 2: because it seems like the narrative coming from the Department
[45:54] Speaker 2: of Defense, which by statute it's still called Department of Defense, right,
[45:58] Speaker 2: is that they don't want to to reveal any weakness
[46:01] Speaker 2: in their narrative, so they're unwilling to acknowledge that there
[46:03] Speaker 2: are combat losses, even in losses of life if you
[46:06] Speaker 2: see the way that they describe losses of life an injury.
[46:09] Speaker 2: General Kane did a good job of it during his
[46:11] Speaker 2: press conference last week, but the civilian side is doing
[46:14] Speaker 2: very poor job of acknowledging any cracks whatsoever, which I
[46:16] Speaker 2: think is also a mistake because it looks a lot
[46:19] Speaker 2: like hubris, which is one of the most dangerous errors
[46:21] Speaker 2: that perhaps is the most dangerous error you can make
[46:23] Speaker 2: in combat operations.
[46:25] Speaker 5: And we've seen this before. I mean again, you know
[46:27] Speaker 5: the the you know the the in the twenty years
[46:29] Speaker 5: of the GWAT in Afghanistan, in the rock, there was
[46:31] Speaker 5: a lot of bullshit spewed at press conferences. I do
[46:34] Speaker 5: think Cain, you know, is an interesting figure. Again, he's
[46:37] Speaker 5: the chairman, so he's the President's advisor in military affairs.
[46:40] Speaker 5: But you know, and these when they do these joint
[46:42] Speaker 5: press conferences, you know, you go through the cringeworthy moments
[46:44] Speaker 5: of Hegseth when he's acting like a JV football coach
[46:48] Speaker 5: using all of his kind of the same crap that
[46:50] Speaker 5: you guys probably heard when you were you know, young
[46:53] Speaker 5: in your careers from you know, you're from a second
[46:55] Speaker 5: lieutenant or a captain. But and then Cain comes out
[47:00] Speaker 5: and he's much more sober uh and uh uh and
[47:03] Speaker 5: and kind of I don't see I don't see him
[47:06] Speaker 5: acting with the hubris that certainly Hegseeth is just kind
[47:09] Speaker 5: of spewing forward all the time. And that gives me
[47:12] Speaker 5: some some hope. But again, as you noted before there's
[47:16] Speaker 5: the military aspect of this, but then there's also the
[47:18] Speaker 5: you know, what are our goals? And so perhaps that's
[47:21] Speaker 5: something that Cain, you know, I mean, it's not his
[47:23] Speaker 5: job to be the National Security Advisor. His job is
[47:27] Speaker 5: to go out and try to tell the truth of
[47:28] Speaker 5: the American public. And I've you know, I mean, you know,
[47:30] Speaker 5: I think when he's he was even asked about, you know,
[47:32] Speaker 5: how's the war going, and he's, you know, he said,
[47:33] Speaker 5: he said that the Iranis were fighting back. You know,
[47:35] Speaker 5: the enemy does get a vote, and so I think
[47:38] Speaker 5: that's important.
[47:40] Speaker 2: That's what concerns me too, about if the US pulls
[47:43] Speaker 2: out right now and stops, just turns it off and says, yeah,
[47:46] Speaker 2: if you saw Caroline leave it said that Trump will
[47:48] Speaker 2: define what the unconditional surrender looks like, which is a
[47:52] Speaker 2: very interesting new way to look at how a war ends.
[47:56] Speaker 2: And I just think about the enemy gets a vote,
[47:58] Speaker 2: and especially now Iran is in a position and to
[48:00] Speaker 2: react in ways that we probably hope they had never acted,
[48:03] Speaker 2: and especially if we look back in the war in
[48:05] Speaker 2: Iraq when they activated she and militia and they were
[48:07] Speaker 2: using explosively foreign penetrators. That is a small drop in
[48:10] Speaker 2: the bucket to what a dying regime will use. They
[48:12] Speaker 2: will do anything right, And I think that that's the
[48:15] Speaker 2: scariest type of enemy is one who's not constrained by
[48:18] Speaker 2: any rules anymore. And we've given them the opportunity to
[48:21] Speaker 2: remove those constraints. In fact, we have removed them ourselves
[48:23] Speaker 2: from them, right, And I think that's that's perhaps what
[48:26] Speaker 2: is scary to me is that if we say it's over,
[48:30] Speaker 2: it's actually not over, and it's worse.
[48:33] Speaker 4: We've also given our adversaries, Russia in China a kind
[48:40] Speaker 4: of the moral high ground for for siding with Iran
[48:45] Speaker 4: openly now right, for a number of reasons.
[48:47] Speaker 2: I mean, I'm.
[48:51] Speaker 4: I'm not criticizing execution of the plan because I think,
[48:59] Speaker 4: you know, I mean, it's a it's a complex question.
[49:01] Speaker 4: Was the war just fight? Wasn't it justified? But the
[49:03] Speaker 4: bottom line is again that those of us here Noah
[49:06] Speaker 4: Rance being a bad actor, a bad regional influence for
[49:09] Speaker 4: some time, inevitably something had to be done about it, right,
[49:14] Speaker 4: you know, even if it was just mowing the grass,
[49:17] Speaker 4: That's not what I'm critiquing. But but again, it's the
[49:21] Speaker 4: being sure of your n state, being sure of your goals,
[49:25] Speaker 4: being open and transparent with the American people, and of
[49:30] Speaker 4: course they're elected representatives about what those goals are. That
[49:34] Speaker 4: is how a democracy fights a war, and that is
[49:36] Speaker 4: the way. Those are the things that concern me.
[49:39] Speaker 5: I agree, and having go ahead growth.
[49:41] Speaker 2: Sorry, John, I was going to say, having end states
[49:44] Speaker 2: publicly announced does nothing to operational security. And it sounds
[49:47] Speaker 2: like that's the excuse a lot of the administration folks
[49:50] Speaker 2: are trying to say, is that if we say what
[49:51] Speaker 2: we want to do, it's going to disrupt what we're doing.
[49:53] Speaker 2: And I look at history and I think that that's
[49:55] Speaker 2: never happened, and you can make and end states are
[49:57] Speaker 2: typically quite nebulous. They just kind of point in a direction.
[50:00] Speaker 2: They don't actually say, on this date, at this time,
[50:02] Speaker 2: this is happening. I think World War One was the
[50:04] Speaker 2: only time that we actually picked the date that it's
[50:06] Speaker 2: happening and people were still shooting at each other when
[50:09] Speaker 2: we have the armistis signed. And I don't think that's
[50:11] Speaker 2: what Americans are looking for. And looking at the approval
[50:14] Speaker 2: numbers for the war, I think it's like twenty six
[50:16] Speaker 2: percent of Americans approve of it well, you can get
[50:19] Speaker 2: those numbers up if you communicate. When there's an unknown,
[50:23] Speaker 2: people aren't going to be comfortable with that unknown for
[50:25] Speaker 2: a variety of reasons. Some of them are not even political.
[50:28] Speaker 2: Some of them just want to know what's going on
[50:30] Speaker 2: in their country. And I think that might be contributing
[50:32] Speaker 2: to the negative decline of that approval rating.
[50:36] Speaker 5: Hey are you guys concerned about again? And I think Andy,
[50:40] Speaker 5: you just raised it. So we are now now mired
[50:43] Speaker 5: again in a Middle Eastern war kind of extraordinary as
[50:47] Speaker 5: you know the Trump the campaign and is kind of
[50:51] Speaker 5: this whole kind of reason for being on foreign policy?
[50:53] Speaker 5: Was this not to happen? But when you think about,
[50:56] Speaker 5: you know, what's the long term pacing threat to the
[50:57] Speaker 5: United States? And I think a lot of maybe I
[50:59] Speaker 5: don't know if you guys agreed, but there's it used
[51:02] Speaker 5: to be in the national defense strategy. It's not anymore.
[51:04] Speaker 5: But China was that, you know, with with the amount
[51:07] Speaker 5: you know we're spending a billion dollars? Is it a
[51:09] Speaker 5: billion a day? Their numbers are extraordinary. But with you know,
[51:13] Speaker 5: all sorts of stocks now being reduced with our I mean,
[51:17] Speaker 5: I can you know our our fleet of aircraft carriers
[51:20] Speaker 5: are going to be going to need serious retrofitting after this.
[51:25] Speaker 5: Are we you know, how dangerous is this moment?
[51:27] Speaker 1: Now?
[51:28] Speaker 5: As China looks at this and says the US actually
[51:31] Speaker 5: where the US military is, I think we would agree
[51:33] Speaker 5: the most powerful, you know force on the planet, We're
[51:35] Speaker 5: going to be exhausted after this. Is there some danger
[51:39] Speaker 5: in that? Have we left the Pacific you know way
[51:42] Speaker 5: uh uh, you know exposed in in what's happening now
[51:46] Speaker 5: in the Middle East.
[51:48] Speaker 2: I think looking at our defense industrial base for a
[51:50] Speaker 2: long time, it's been clear that we are not able
[51:52] Speaker 2: currently to sustain an actual conventional conflict with China. I
[51:56] Speaker 2: think this is kind of well known, right, and China
[51:59] Speaker 2: is currentlyvaluating how we're reacting to a much lesser adversary
[52:03] Speaker 2: in Iran and probably getting very positive feelings from that evaluation,
[52:07] Speaker 2: especially considering the further logistical challenges across the Strait of Taiwan,
[52:11] Speaker 2: which is much further it's almost ten times further across
[52:13] Speaker 2: than the Gulf is, and the ability of the US
[52:17] Speaker 2: to resupply and continue the conflict in that smaller space
[52:22] Speaker 2: ponentially more difficult. It's not a geometric difference it's an
[52:25] Speaker 2: exponential difference across the Straits. And that's just the Straits,
[52:28] Speaker 2: that's not the smaller islands like the Spratleys and the
[52:31] Speaker 2: Cross Islands and things like that in South China Sea,
[52:33] Speaker 2: which will be also a major theater of conflict if
[52:35] Speaker 2: we had a war of China, and we have Guam
[52:38] Speaker 2: very far away, very far away from the actual weapons
[52:41] Speaker 2: engagement zone that we would be inside of if we
[52:44] Speaker 2: were fighting against China. Not only that, we've also pushed
[52:46] Speaker 2: away our allies and partners in the Pacific, starting with
[52:49] Speaker 2: the National Security strategy that recently came out, excluding those
[52:52] Speaker 2: partners and allies from the strategy. If we looked back
[52:55] Speaker 2: at the Biden strategy mentioned to allies and partners something
[52:57] Speaker 2: like two hundred and seventy times and only twenty pages, right,
[53:00] Speaker 2: it doesn't mention them at all in the National Security
[53:03] Speaker 2: Strategy now, which is our strategy. That is what the
[53:06] Speaker 2: policy position is of the United States. It's not like
[53:08] Speaker 2: there's some secret policy somewhere else, like this is the strategy,
[53:11] Speaker 2: and China reads that. China understands that, and China probably
[53:14] Speaker 2: believes it. I would imagine it would be smart for
[53:15] Speaker 2: them to do so. So I think they're looking at
[53:17] Speaker 2: at this and probably feeling a little more confident than
[53:20] Speaker 2: before the war kicked off, that they'd be able to
[53:22] Speaker 2: actually take Taiwan and suffer less resistance from the US side,
[53:25] Speaker 2: at least, not talking about the Taiwanese themselves, but from
[53:28] Speaker 2: the US. I think they're feeling more confident. Probably.
[53:33] Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say this, and I don't. I'm not
[53:35] Speaker 4: a China expert, but I would say that g undoubtedly
[53:39] Speaker 4: has a plan, undoubtedly, and I think this simply this,
[53:46] Speaker 4: this is validation, reduces the risk on that plan. And
[53:50] Speaker 4: I would guess, of course, I don't know, but I
[53:53] Speaker 4: would guess that that plan includes step one consolidation in
[53:56] Speaker 4: the South China Sea, all those places John that you mentioned,
[54:00] Speaker 4: others right where they were. China's been pretty aggressive anyway
[54:03] Speaker 4: and has pushed ahead despite protestations, but from the from
[54:10] Speaker 4: the Vietnamese and the Filipinos and amongst others, they will
[54:13] Speaker 4: continue to consolidate that. And then step two, I would guess,
[54:18] Speaker 4: would be a kind of an Anaconda policy on Taiwan
[54:23] Speaker 4: right beginning with political infiltration or affecting the parties manipulating
[54:30] Speaker 4: Taiwan's elections as much as possible, and they don't. China
[54:34] Speaker 4: knows they don't have to do of stuff as complex
[54:37] Speaker 4: as what Russia did in twenty sixteen in the United States.
[54:41] Speaker 4: I mean, you're talking about similar cultures, you're talking about
[54:46] Speaker 4: the same language. They're very, very understanding of party politics
[54:51] Speaker 4: within Taiwan and how they influence it, and that would
[54:55] Speaker 4: be step one, combined with economic incentives and disincentives. I
[55:00] Speaker 4: don't think they even have to get to the blockade point,
[55:02] Speaker 4: but I'm sure that's on their you know, their their
[55:05] Speaker 4: escalation of force, and then what you're talking about actually
[55:09] Speaker 4: crossing the straits, you know, by that time it comes
[55:12] Speaker 4: to a decision on that, I think it would be
[55:13] Speaker 4: almost the fate of complete we'll be seeing a pro
[55:16] Speaker 4: China great perhaps not a pro Chinese government overtly stronger
[55:21] Speaker 4: pro Chinese government in Taiwan, but certainly a lot of
[55:24] Speaker 4: pro Chinese sympathy and and mobilized right that mobilized political
[55:37] Speaker 4: forces within Taiwan that favor unification.
[55:41] Speaker 5: Was it wasn't there. The Indo pe com Chief or
[55:44] Speaker 5: I know it was Bill Burns too, said, you know
[55:45] Speaker 5: there's this mythical twenty twenty seven date. But we're coming
[55:48] Speaker 5: up close to it. That was That was when I
[55:50] Speaker 5: guess the consensus in the military and intelligence community is
[55:52] Speaker 5: that Chinese would be ready to do something. Well, it's
[55:55] Speaker 5: I don't know, it's March of twenty six is coming up.
[55:58] Speaker 5: And that didn't even take into account out a very
[56:01] Speaker 5: tired and exhausted us a military. So I think I
[56:06] Speaker 5: need to.
[56:06] Speaker 2: Add on there.
[56:07] Speaker 5: What's that?
[56:07] Speaker 2: So I just want to mention. So I worked in
[56:10] Speaker 2: the South China Sea quite a bit with Marstock as well,
[56:13] Speaker 2: and I was inside the nine dash line right on
[56:15] Speaker 2: the tip of the Cow's Tongue in Natuna Basar, which
[56:18] Speaker 2: is a very small island that's actually an Indonesian island
[56:21] Speaker 2: and it's Indonesia's only physical territory inside the nine dash line.
[56:25] Speaker 2: And while we were there, this is twenty fourteen, So
[56:27] Speaker 2: twelve years ago, China was doing daily two ship overflights
[56:31] Speaker 2: with fightered aircraft, interfering with Indonesia's airspace every single day,
[56:36] Speaker 2: and Indonesia could do nothing about it, and neither could we.
[56:39] Speaker 2: And this is really important to understand because China is
[56:42] Speaker 2: not a democracy. Obviously, their strategic outlook is far longer
[56:46] Speaker 2: than ours. Not because they're brilliant or special, but because
[56:49] Speaker 2: of the way their political system domestically is set up,
[56:51] Speaker 2: so if they pick a strategy twenty years ago to
[56:54] Speaker 2: do something, there's no disruption to that strategy politically. It
[56:58] Speaker 2: remains in place, and it has been in place. Like
[57:00] Speaker 2: I said, it's been in place for decades. They've been
[57:02] Speaker 2: thinking about this for a very long time, since they
[57:04] Speaker 2: entered the World Bank back in the early two thousands.
[57:07] Speaker 2: And you know, they became this new economy within the
[57:10] Speaker 2: international system, which I think a lot of people don't
[57:12] Speaker 2: remember this that China was not always economically viable, even
[57:16] Speaker 2: in the recent memory. This is a new thing. It's
[57:19] Speaker 2: a new entrance economically, and China does not want to
[57:22] Speaker 2: let go of that. South China see is a major
[57:24] Speaker 2: part of that. The internal island chain, the first island
[57:26] Speaker 2: chain is very important to that, which includes Taiwan. The
[57:28] Speaker 2: second island chain is Japan and all the way down
[57:31] Speaker 2: through to Okinawa, and the US doesn't really understand. Some do.
[57:35] Speaker 2: There are some people within the government that understand this
[57:38] Speaker 2: important kind of philosophical outlook that China has in the Pacific.
[57:42] Speaker 2: This is a strategic opportunity right now for China to
[57:46] Speaker 2: leverage that that doesn't necessarily mean using the military instrument
[57:50] Speaker 2: of national power. In fact, they probably won't. They'll probably
[57:52] Speaker 2: use a combination of diplomatic information and at economic levers
[57:56] Speaker 2: and avoid the military lever at all costs because it
[57:59] Speaker 2: is extra xtremely expensive with disparate impacts to use the
[58:02] Speaker 2: military instrument. I have a friend who's in the Taiwanese
[58:05] Speaker 2: government now mentioned to me about in Taiwan on TV
[58:09] Speaker 2: and at like gas stations, for example, they have little
[58:11] Speaker 2: screens at the stations. There's Chinese propaganda all the time
[58:14] Speaker 2: on all of those screens right now that the Taiwanese
[58:17] Speaker 2: government's unable to do anything about China has already been
[58:20] Speaker 2: doing the informational instrument. And this is something again to
[58:22] Speaker 2: those who've been watching it, they know this, it's obvious,
[58:24] Speaker 2: but to I think the general public is not something
[58:27] Speaker 2: understood that it's not going to be a salvo of
[58:29] Speaker 2: ballistic missiles like we have with they're on right now.
[58:31] Speaker 2: It's a war that has already begun, has already been
[58:33] Speaker 2: going on for decades.
[58:34] Speaker 5: And that, of course, if they do it, and that's
[58:37] Speaker 5: kind of slower methodical measure. And let's say they did
[58:41] Speaker 5: it under this administration that almost guarantees the US doesn't
[58:44] Speaker 5: respond in any fashion.
[58:46] Speaker 2: Right, And if we're looking at this from a grand
[58:49] Speaker 2: strategy level, what they want, what China wants to happen,
[58:52] Speaker 2: No shots fired. They want a government in Taiwan that's elected,
[58:56] Speaker 2: that opts to join China. This is the goal. It's
[58:59] Speaker 2: not a war. And I think for us in the West,
[59:02] Speaker 2: we're thinking like it's always about war. No, it's about
[59:05] Speaker 2: the easiest and cheapest way possible to achieve the objective
[59:08] Speaker 2: that this country has, and that is a domestic choice
[59:11] Speaker 2: to rejoin the mainland and.
[59:13] Speaker 4: The well positioned to do that. Yeah, the well positioned
[59:16] Speaker 4: to influence. And there's nothing right now the United States
[59:20] Speaker 4: is doing to counter that, you know.
[59:22] Speaker 2: I mean, we've actually turned this figot down in the
[59:25] Speaker 2: last let's say seven years or so.
[59:26] Speaker 1: Good God, guys, things are going great.
[59:29] Speaker 5: Hey, do I have some good news for you?
[59:32] Speaker 1: I'll tell me some Red Sox bullshit.
[59:36] Speaker 5: This is the sign of my age. I actually went
[59:38] Speaker 5: out and I bought some sketchers, like the shoes, the shoes,
[59:42] Speaker 5: the slip on sketchers.
[59:43] Speaker 1: Congratulations, Isn't that that is a sign?
[59:46] Speaker 5: I just got back from Florida. So I was hanging
[59:48] Speaker 5: out with a lot of old folk, and so I'm
[59:49] Speaker 5: not going to wear some sketchers around.
[59:50] Speaker 1: How do you like that full retiree mode. It's incredible,
[59:56] Speaker 1: guys as usual. This is not give me any confidence
[1:00:01] Speaker 1: with the world today.
[1:00:03] Speaker 4: Perhaps you should have different people on the podcast.
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, it might be right. I might just have like
[1:00:07] Speaker 1: a good news podcast or something. Just so like, so
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: I'm not depressed every time we do this, John, one
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: quick question, what's like, if you know, like, in terms
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: of internal polling in Taiwan, what are are people for
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: reunification against it?
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: Like?
[1:00:21] Speaker 1: Where's where's it at?
[1:00:23] Speaker 2: So the competing party right now that's possibly going to
[1:00:26] Speaker 2: take over in the next election is pro Mainland And
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: this is kind of a crazy thing to believe that
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: this is possible. Let's say it was ten years ago,
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: you wouldn't have believed I'd be saying that. But there's
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: been such incredible pressure from Mainland on domestic politics in
[1:00:42] Speaker 2: Taiwan that they have been succeeding and gaining significant ground
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: to the point where this person I know who's in
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: the current government is concerned that they're going to lose
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: the election to this Party, and I think that is
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: what China wants. That I mean, like that exact outcome
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: is what they've been pushing toward, an investing resources into,
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: and they're very likely to succeed.
[1:01:03] Speaker 1: Right now. When is the election next year? Twenty twenty seven? Great,
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: this is going great, guys, Jesus Christ all right? Anything else?
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: All right? Do us a favor. Get everyone's books. Everyone
[1:01:19] Speaker 1: here has a book except for me. I haven't coming
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: down in September. Actually I'll drop that.
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: But it's not the Book of Business.
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right yeah, John Hackett. Links are in the description,
[1:01:30] Speaker 1: Mark p link or in the description Andy Milburn. Of course,
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: links are in the description. There's something else I wanted
[1:01:39] Speaker 1: to say, Oh, Teamhouse Patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse.
[1:01:43] Speaker 1: Help support the show so I can pay these guys eventually.
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: Thanks guys, as always.
[1:01:50] Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks everyone, Thank you.
[1:01:52] Speaker 5: See you next week, guys.
[1:01:55] Speaker 6: I want to tell all of you today about a
[1:01:57] Speaker 6: new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team
[1:02:00] Speaker 6: House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high Side
[1:02:05] Speaker 6: news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.
[1:02:08] Speaker 7: H The newsletter is gonna be once a week.
[1:02:11] Speaker 6: It's gonna come into your inbox and you're gonna get
[1:02:13] Speaker 6: the most current podcasts on eyes On and the Teamhouse
[1:02:17] Speaker 6: and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So
[1:02:21] Speaker 6: it's another way for us to get the information out
[1:02:23] Speaker 6: to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and
[1:02:27] Speaker 6: you never really know what you're gonna get. So this
[1:02:30] Speaker 6: is a once a week email. It'll slide into your
[1:02:32] Speaker 6: inbox and it will have you know the greatest hits
[1:02:34] Speaker 6: of that week.
[1:02:35] Speaker 7: It's really good checking it out.
[1:02:38] Speaker 6: The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com,
[1:02:43] Speaker 6: slash Join Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join.
[1:02:48] Speaker 6: You go there and you enter into your email list
[1:02:51] Speaker 6: or you enter your email into the little thing on
[1:02:54] Speaker 6: the website and you're good to go and that'll be it.
[1:02:58] Speaker 7: So we really appreciate your support and I hope you'll
[1:03:00] Speaker 7: consider signing up.
[1:03:01] Speaker 5: Where's the link.
[1:03:03] Speaker 7: The link will also be down the description if you're
[1:03:06] Speaker 7: looking for it there, and
[1:03:07] Speaker 6: That's Teamhouse Podcast dot Kit, k I t Kilo India
[1:03:12] Speaker 6: Tango

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