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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Hear

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weekday Afternoons on the Drive last had
Brad Taylor on with the release of his

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novel End of Days. Once again, his protagonist Pike Logan is back,

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this time in a thriller known as
dead Man's Hand. Good to have you

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along, Lieutenant colonel retired with a
twenty one year veteran of the United States

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Infantry and Special Forces. Brad Taylor, how are you. I'm doll well,

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thank you for having me. Well, how is your protagonist Pike Logan

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doing? He's doing better. Now
Now I'm the books done, I'll tell

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you that I imagine. So now
a lot of what this deals with is

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is as timely as if taken from
today's headlines the Ukrainian conflict and putin yeah,

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definitely. Honestly, I never write
about current events precisely because they're current.

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Yeah. And the flash to bank
for a book takes about a year,

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so you don't know what's going to
happen in between that year. And

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I decided to write on this one
knowing the risks involved, and I sent

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my publisher here's three risks of this
book. If I write this book,

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here's three things to go sideways,
and the book will no longer be valid.

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Well, let's get into the adventure
that Pike Logan gets involved in in

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Dead Man's Hand. Yeah, I, like I said, I was doing

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research on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, not because I was writing a book,

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but just because I stay on top
of that because I still do security

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consulting. And during that research I
found I ran across the perimeter system inside

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Russia. They have a system for
nuclear deterrence that came out of our own

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SDI in the eighties. I was
going to ask the system was putting.

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The system was put in place when
Reagan. President Reagan said, we have

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SDi's Strategic Defense Initiative cloacally known as
Star Wars. We can knock every missile

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into our country out of the air. And that scared the heck out of

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Russia because at the time we had
the deterrence was mad usually assured destruction.

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So if you attack us, we're
going to attack you and we're both gonna

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die. And that kept us from
firing. And they said, well,

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they think they can knock every missile
out of the air. That renders mad

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mute, there's no they'll be inclined
to do a first strike. And so

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they came up with a perimeter system, which was a bunch of censors around

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Russia. Was like first generation artificial
intelligence. So if all these sensors were

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met, if they had sizing sensors
for earthquake noticification, they had communication censor

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to the Krimlins not talking. If
all that met, then a computer actually

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collated all this and said we're launching
the missiles anyway. And that was our

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way of defeating us or deterring US
from doing a first strike. And that

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system still exists inside Russia. It's
kind of like you know, you're running

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on five and a quarter floppies.
Had he checked the batteries in this thing.

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So that was enough for me to
say I can make a story out

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of that. It just unfolded right
in front of you. Absolutely, And

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so in the book I actually change
it from it's not a nuclear strike,

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so the perimeter system is based on
a nuclear strike. All these different systems

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have to work to make sure this
thing goes off correctly, and in the

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book I change it to just putin
himself. He says, look, if

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I go if I fall out of
a window by drinks some plutonium lace tea.

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You need to launch these missiles,
and that's what I change it to.

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Brad Taylor, Lieutenant colonel retired and
his new book is dead Man's Hand.

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I'm laughing because that was my next
question. If Putin is involved,

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someone's going to get a little too
close to a window, right, Absolutely,

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that's true. So this is all
in an effort to try to calm

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things down in Ukraine, and Pike
Logan is at the focal point of all

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this. Yeah, So it's basically
a band of partisans in the Ukraine,

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which obviously have a bunch of them. They say, look, this is

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a stalemate. We've been fighting back
and forth. The only way we're gonna

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end this war is get rid of
Putin. And Mike Logan would like to

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help him, but now he's in
the horns of a dilemma. He's got

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a moral dilemma, and so he
finds out about the dead Man's Hand and

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he's like, if I get if
I help the Ukrainians get rid of Putin,

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I'm gonna engender nuclear war. But
I really don't want to help Putin

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survive this. So he's got a
dilemma going on. Yeah, that's I

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was going to ask you to the
significant of dead man's hand. For those

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who don't know that folk card hand
is allegedly what wild Bill was holding when

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he got shot aces and eights,
but in this particular context, it refers

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to the name of the operation.
Yeah, well, the dead hand.

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So the perimeter system I just abscribed
to you was it's known as a perimeterive

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system in Russia, but it was
known as the dead hand in NATO.

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It still is known as the dead
hand for obvious reasons. Yeah, the

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missiles only launched when everybody's dead,
So there's a dead hand on the switch,

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and Putin changes it to the dead
man's hand, meaning it's not a

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nuclear strike that causes this thing to
go off, it's my death. Okay.

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Back in the day, they used
to have a dead man clutch on

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lawnmowers, which meant if you let
go of it, they stop trans Yeah,

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they had there was a dead man's
so that we called it the dead

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hand in NATO because it's a there's
nobody at the switch. If this thing

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initiates, it means we have killed
everybody in the Kremlin, and that's why

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we call it the Dead Hand.
Now, this is why Brad Taylor's works

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are so fascinating and fun to read, because even though it is fiction,

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you know he's done his homework and
you know, to a certain extent,

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he's lived it. His new book
is Dead Man's Hand. Is there a

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solution to the Ukrainian problem right now? Optimistically, I'd say the solution is

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that Ukraine kicks him out of all
the you know, provinces, oblost and

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all that that they own. Pessimistically, I think the solution is going to

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be that Russia ends up with some
part of Ukraine. I just don't see

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how they mass has a quality all
its own in warfare when you have ten

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to one ratio which Russia has in
the industrial base and the soldiers and everything

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else. It's just very hard.
You have to have a political calculation,

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which is actually what the book's about. If Putin left and somebody came in

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and said we're sick of this,
we're pulling out, that's what has to

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happen, and he does kind of
deal with that in Dead Man's Hand.

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It's a Pike Logan novel, and
Brad Taylor is with us on the drive.

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So is not putin at the same
time bankrupting his own nation. He

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is not yet. I mean,
he's got a lot of work arounds.

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There's a lot of ways he could
do that. And they have not felt

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the crunch yet. And they felt
it a little bit, but not nearly

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as bad as I mean. You
have to remember back in the Soviet Union

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days. You know, everybody stood
in line to get a loaf of bread,

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so they're kind of used to it. I mean, it would take

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a lot of economic pressure to get
that got it altered for the population to

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say I am now against putin.
Brad Taylor dead Man's Hand is the book.

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It's out Now. When you do
compose something like this, do you

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have to run it by some Pentagon
officials or have you been separated enough from

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the operation where you don't have to
worry about that as much. Now the

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every organization has their own pre publication
review process. So CIA has THEIRS,

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DD has THEIRS, FBI has THEIRS. They all have. One state department

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has their own and for the Department
of Defense, fiction does not fall into

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it. If I was going to
write a memoir of my life, if

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I was arrogant enough to think everybody
we want to read that that would have

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to be reviewed. If I was
going to write about special operations inside Syria,

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even though I have not served in
Syria, I know enough about that

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that I could actually actually write about
what's going on there, that would have

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to be a reviewed. But fiction
does not. I mean, where do

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you draw the line? Just because
I was in classified units and I've signed

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non disclosure statements. But if I
wrote a police procedural about a detective in

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New York City, does that have
to be reviewed? I mean, why

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would that have to be reviewed.
I've never been a cop in New York

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City. Well, say the cop
was now a next SF Guide, Now

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does it have to be reviewed?
I mean, where do you draw the

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line on that. I could write
a book about Navy seals. I've never

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been in navy. Does that have
to reviewed? So they don't do fiction?

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Lieutenant Colonel retired Brad Taylor. His
newest creation, dead Man's Hand,

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is out now. If you love
these kind of thrillers like I do,

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it'll be next on your reading lists. Brad, thank you for joining us,

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Thank you, thank you for having
me, Thanks for listening to Later

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with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews podcast
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven and
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