Speaker 1: I get the feeling, James. And this is a compliment
Speaker 1: that if we had just said at the beginning of
Speaker 1: this podcast, movies, you would have been able to do
Speaker 1: that for an hour without anyone else saying.
Speaker 2: Us, Yes, that's actually so.
Speaker 3: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
Speaker 3: what you can do for your country, mister Gorbachev, tear
Speaker 3: down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Speaker 2: Stephen Hayward. Today our guest is h R. McMasters to
Speaker 2: talk about the world, the war, then everything else. Philet'
Speaker 2: says was a podcast I.
Speaker 3: Voted thirteen times to open government. Back up Senator Schumer,
Speaker 3: my colleague eagerly, greedily wanted to become the face of
Speaker 3: the shutdown the American people and American people's opinion. Senator
Speaker 3: Schumer is a He's a wet match in a dark kave, Happy.
Speaker 4: Halloween and all that.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and sixty three.
Speaker 2: I'm James, Alex and Clammy Minnesota with Stephen Hayward and
Speaker 2: Sunny California and Charles C. W. Cook in Florida. Who
Speaker 2: knows what the weather is there? Who cares? Let's skip
Speaker 2: the throat clearing palaveror with which we usually commenced our
Speaker 2: shows and go straight to our guest. H. R. McMaster
Speaker 2: retired with Tenner General and former Assistants to the US
Speaker 2: President for National Security Affairs. He's a senior Fellow at
Speaker 2: the Hoover Institution, where he lectures and hosts the series
Speaker 2: Today's Battlegrounds and Good Fellows. Is the author of multiple
Speaker 2: best sellers, including Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds, The Fight to
Speaker 2: Defend the Free World, and most recently, At War with
Speaker 2: Ourselves My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House.
Speaker 4: Welcome sir, Hey, it's great to be with you, guys,
Speaker 4: James Stephen Charles, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: You know, we've got a whole bunch of questions. But
Speaker 2: I want to go right to Today's Battlegrounds because I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have thought this would be the case two years ago,
Speaker 2: but it is Ukraine. A lot of people are saying
Speaker 2: that we're looking at a seemingly two different worlds here,
Speaker 2: one in which Russia, by throwing more and more and
Speaker 2: more untrained conscripts into the meat grinders, actually making an
Speaker 2: inky inky out incremental progress, while at the same time
Speaker 2: Ukraine has engaged in a massive and brilliantly categorized and
Speaker 2: strategized destruction of the oil, energy, infrastructure, and transportation sector.
Speaker 4: What do you what.
Speaker 2: Do you see going on there? And what do you
Speaker 2: see happening in six months?
Speaker 4: Let's say, Well, what you're seeing is Ukraine is is
Speaker 4: I use using it. I think, you know, long range
Speaker 4: capabilities in a very smart way. They're going after military facilities.
Speaker 4: You saw how they've used drones for example, like to
Speaker 4: sink the Black Sea Fleet and to push it away,
Speaker 4: uh from from Ukraine. Uh and these deep strike targets
Speaker 4: on refiners is kind of the right target set because
Speaker 4: Russia has old infrastructure. It's got very few really big
Speaker 4: oil oil refiners that you can see. You can see
Speaker 4: them from space right and and uh and so they've
Speaker 4: identified you know, kind of the the the narrow point
Speaker 4: in the in the funnel here for for Russia. And
Speaker 4: and they want to bring the war home to Russians
Speaker 4: and way that you know, it doesn't really know place
Speaker 4: the Russian people at risk, like the Russians are placed
Speaker 4: in Ukrainians at risk with these massive onslaughts against you know,
Speaker 4: schools and and apartment buildings, as well as Ukraine's infrastructure,
Speaker 4: and it's starting to have an effect. You know, there
Speaker 4: are gas lines, you know, in Moscow. And so this
Speaker 4: narrative of hey, this is just a special military operation, well, hey,
Speaker 4: it's a special military operation during which Russia has incurred
Speaker 4: a million casualties dead and severely wounded, has wrecked the economy,
Speaker 4: and so I think this is putting a tremendous amount
Speaker 4: of pressure on Putin, who's in a very weak position
Speaker 4: at the moment.
Speaker 5: Hr' Steve Hayward out in California, And I distinctly recall
Speaker 5: the last time we had you on. I think it
Speaker 5: was I who raised the question we're all talking about
Speaker 5: the Middle East, of course, and Ukraine, and I said,
Speaker 5: what about Latin America? And so between then and now,
Speaker 5: as we know, the gerald Ford Aircraft Terrier strike Force
Speaker 5: has moved off the coastline. There's a whole controversy about
Speaker 5: taking out drug boats and so forth. But what's your
Speaker 5: reading on what's going on there? What's this all about?
Speaker 5: Is it about Guiana? Is it about we really think
Speaker 5: the Maduro has to go and we're ready to try
Speaker 5: and help with some effort.
Speaker 4: To do that, or how do you see that shaping up. Well,
Speaker 4: it is largely about the Maduro regime revery. This is
Speaker 4: a regime that has just destroyed that country between him
Speaker 4: and Javez, and they're eight million. They drove eight million Venezuelans,
Speaker 4: one third of the population outside of the country in
Speaker 4: the last election, seventy percent of Venezuela's voting to get
Speaker 4: rid of that jackass. And you don't. But he plug
Speaker 4: the power anyway, you know. So, but what's significant, I
Speaker 4: think from our perspective is this is a hub for
Speaker 4: you know, what I would call the axis of aggressors
Speaker 4: in the Western hemisphere. Chavez depends on Cuban and Russian
Speaker 4: security capabilities and Inteligen's capabilities. He relies on Chinese cash
Speaker 4: and for cash flow, and he relies on the Irritians
Speaker 4: to large degree. And of course he's aiding and at
Speaker 4: betting at Hesbula as part of that, because now with
Speaker 4: Hesbula you really decapitated and decimated by the Israeli defense
Speaker 4: forces and Israelian intelligence. The Western Hemisphere is their main
Speaker 4: money making enterprise for Hezbola. So so really Meduro is
Speaker 4: the nexus for these what I would call them far
Speaker 4: left progressive dictatorships in Latin America as well as far
Speaker 4: left progressive movements which he funds, and he funds them
Speaker 4: really through the illicit economy. We have some pretty significant
Speaker 4: sanctions on Maduro, but it's the illicit cash flow, largely
Speaker 4: through narcotics, that is a big source of strength. And
Speaker 4: this is what President Trump is going after, is his
Speaker 4: cash flow by trying to interrupt the trafficking of drugs
Speaker 4: to North America and to Europe. By the way, that
Speaker 4: this is, this is the trafficking network that Medua runs
Speaker 4: as the head of a major drug cartel.
Speaker 2: What what does our response look like? I mean, it's
Speaker 2: possible that something will happen and we'll never hear about
Speaker 2: it because there's simply a bunch of burly guys with
Speaker 2: face paint in the middle of the night who did
Speaker 2: the job and that's that. Or do you expect that
Speaker 2: there's more robust and kinetic action as they say in
Speaker 2: support of this again, who knows? But what what should
Speaker 2: we look for and what should we not be surprised
Speaker 2: not to hear about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, James, well, you know what I'd like to see
Speaker 4: and help. I'm what I like to barely not see
Speaker 4: you just have to make sure that's there is a
Speaker 4: comprehensive approach to this problem with clearly defined objectives. Are
Speaker 4: the objectives just to waken Maduro and to weaken his
Speaker 4: ability to support you know, Nicaragua and Cuba, you know
Speaker 4: the you know Petros in Colombia, his his his political movement, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, to Silva and in Brazil, right, I mean
Speaker 4: these are he's the patron for all these guys. Or
Speaker 4: is it to really help the Venezuelan people restore the constitution?
Speaker 4: So I would not even use the word regime change
Speaker 4: in our President Trump pays that to be with, but
Speaker 4: I mean this is helping Venezuela to restore the constitution.
Speaker 4: If that's the case, there should be a concerted effort
Speaker 4: to dry up his cash flow, which are seeing part
Speaker 4: of that now, But there could be other actions associated
Speaker 4: with that as well. There could be cyber actions in
Speaker 4: certain certainly financial actions and so forth. I think also
Speaker 4: what you want to do is you want to divide
Speaker 4: and the security forces that he relies on. And I
Speaker 4: think this is probably what you know what you know
Speaker 4: what our government agency that is involved in that is
Speaker 4: probably doing is probably trying to make an approach to
Speaker 4: some of these guys. Hey, you know, you're on a
Speaker 4: sinking ship. You know, if you want to get off
Speaker 4: the ship, you can get off the ship and maybe
Speaker 4: encourage some kind of revolt of the elites within within
Speaker 4: that security force.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: The third thing you want to be able to do
Speaker 4: is reach the population to kind of trace the grievances
Speaker 4: of Venezuelan's back to him. You know, he's at the
Speaker 4: top of these criminalized patronage networks. So a lot of
Speaker 4: people see Maduro as a patron but he's the one
Speaker 4: who's destroying the country.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then and then finally, you want to kind of
Speaker 4: work on this problem from the outside in to insulate
Speaker 4: him from sources external strength and support, whether you know
Speaker 4: really you know, as I mentioned before, China, Russia, Cuba,
Speaker 4: uh and and and Iran. And so I hope there's
Speaker 4: a comprehensive approach to this. And and I think the
Speaker 4: goal should be, you know, to weaken the regime, but
Speaker 4: also to ensure that what we're doing strengthens the opposition.
Speaker 4: And of course, you know, we had you know, the
Speaker 4: leader of the Venezuelan opposition opposition just received the Nobel
Speaker 4: Prize I think there's an opportunity to take advantage of
Speaker 4: that as well.
Speaker 5: But hr Steve again, I want to shift gears to
Speaker 5: the Trump White House here in Trump Too. I do
Speaker 5: want to preface it by saying that I never get
Speaker 5: tired of telling people that your Dereliction of Duty book
Speaker 5: is one of the five best books ever written.
Speaker 6: About the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And you know, our mutual friend Mac Owens and I
Speaker 5: talk endlessly to see who can want up each other
Speaker 5: about how great it is. But it's also a great
Speaker 5: book about the question of civil military relations, which you know,
Speaker 5: as you know, Mac is a great expert on You've
Speaker 5: been very candid but also measured in your observations and
Speaker 5: lessons from your time with President than Trump in the
Speaker 5: first term. And I sort of want to bring up
Speaker 5: that question of civil military relations because so much of
Speaker 5: the Trump cabinet in the second term is such unconventional people.
Speaker 5: There are very few people in the cabin who you
Speaker 5: recognize from a normal Republican administration. And of course one
Speaker 5: of the persons who's controversial is the Defense Secretary, but
Speaker 5: also the people he's put in charge of negotiations, like
Speaker 5: Steve Whitkoff, and his own son in law.
Speaker 6: Right, So, there's two forms of this question.
Speaker 5: One is is there a parallel between the problems of
Speaker 5: civil and military relations that you laid out in your
Speaker 5: great book from almost thirty years ago, or if you
Speaker 5: want to just answer the question in more general form,
Speaker 5: those thoughts would be welcome to.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 6: Hey, thanks, Steven.
Speaker 4: I am concerned about about dragging the military into partisan politics.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, you've had you've had visits to military bases or
Speaker 4: ships that kind of look like a rally. I think
Speaker 4: there should be more of an effort to make them
Speaker 4: not look like rallies. You know, for example, the at
Speaker 4: the president wears. You know, there should be no selling
Speaker 4: of mag and merchandise, you know, to to troops and
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. We know that that kind of
Speaker 4: thing has happened, and I think that that what you
Speaker 4: see happening is in I think the legitimate effort, an
Speaker 4: important effort to reverse some of the policies of the
Speaker 4: Biden administration, the policies associated with pushing what some people
Speaker 4: call woke agenda. I don't think that's a that's really
Speaker 4: useful word. But what I'm really talking about is is
Speaker 4: an approach in the military where they're advocating for equality
Speaker 4: of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. Uh, the associated
Speaker 4: kind of valorization of victimhood, you know, and and uh
Speaker 4: and this idea, this crazy idea that you should judge,
Speaker 4: you know, the soldier next to you based on their
Speaker 4: identity category instead of instead of their courage, their toughness,
Speaker 4: their commitment to the mission and to one another, which
Speaker 4: is associated with their willingness to sacrifice for one another,
Speaker 4: and their sense of honor. Right, that's how we that's
Speaker 4: how we judge our fellow soldiers and servicemen and women.
Speaker 4: So I think, in the process of applying it corrective,
Speaker 4: the Secretary of War now victory exits. I think he
Speaker 4: seems to me to be fighting a rear guard against phantoms.
Speaker 4: I mean, this idea. You know that there are woke
Speaker 4: generals and admirals. Hey, I'm telling you, Stephen, I don't
Speaker 4: know any woke generals and admirals. I mean there are
Speaker 4: probably a few, you know, professors, I know who are
Speaker 4: you can follow in that category, but not generals and admirals.
Speaker 4: And so the people who are pushing this agenda, besides
Speaker 4: the Auto pen and the Biden administration, were you know,
Speaker 4: we're the political appointees in the Department of Defense and
Speaker 4: in the White House, they're gone. Hey, you know, Prisident
Speaker 4: Trump won declare victory. And so I see that there
Speaker 4: is this misunderstanding that where all this nonsense came from.
Speaker 4: It didn't come from the military. It came from political appointees.
Speaker 4: And by the way, that's how the chant of command works.
Speaker 4: It goes from the President to the Secretary of War
Speaker 4: to the combatant commanders in the serchiefs. So, hey, I
Speaker 4: think that there's a to misunderstand. And I worry about
Speaker 4: I worry about like the left, you know, trying to
Speaker 4: label the military extremist, which is not. And I worry
Speaker 4: about the far right or some people on the far
Speaker 4: right trying to label the military as as woke. Just
Speaker 4: keep the military out of this nonsense. You know what
Speaker 4: what has afflicted our society. We don't want that coming
Speaker 4: in coming into the military. You know, a lot of
Speaker 4: what he's doing though, in terms of revert you know,
Speaker 4: you know, reinstating standards, you know, I mean, it got ridiculous.
Speaker 4: I mean there were people who were declaring themselves you know,
Speaker 4: some Norse religion, you know, so they could so they
Speaker 4: could so they could grow a beard, you know. And
Speaker 4: and and I'll tell you that the women soldiers, I know,
Speaker 4: they want general gender neutral standards and tough standing. They
Speaker 4: wanted the standards to drop, right. So so I think
Speaker 4: what the bid administration did in many ways was a
Speaker 4: disservice uh to women service uh uh to service women
Speaker 4: and and uh and and to minority leaders as well.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know this, if if you make it
Speaker 4: clear that you want a quality of outcome, what happens
Speaker 4: is when the best qualified person who happens to be
Speaker 4: a member of minority group gets gets promoted. Oh, people
Speaker 4: look might look at him or like, oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess I know why that person scattle. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's terrible. It's destructive to cohesion, and it
Speaker 4: had to end. I just don't want the cure to
Speaker 4: be worse than the disease, you know. And and uh
Speaker 4: and then the other thing that bothered me, I guess
Speaker 4: a little bit was this idea that when you're fighting brutal,
Speaker 4: unscrupulous enemies, that you should be equally as brutal, right,
Speaker 4: I mean it's our warrior ethos, you know, is based
Speaker 4: on you know, there's those principles I mentioned, right, our
Speaker 4: sense of honor, our commitment to one another, a willingness
Speaker 4: to sacrifice, you know. And but we're also committed to
Speaker 4: overmatching the enemy in every combat engagement, but also to
Speaker 4: employing you know, firepower with discipline and discrimination to do
Speaker 4: our best to protect innocence.
Speaker 2: And this is I didn't come up with that.
Speaker 4: I mean, Saint Thomas Aquinas came.
Speaker 2: Up with that.
Speaker 4: So I think I think, I think, you know, there
Speaker 4: are a few things that bothered me about the conclave
Speaker 4: and and and and you know the relationship of the military.
Speaker 4: But but on the other aspects of okay, what does
Speaker 4: the military owe the president and the surgery of war?
Speaker 4: They owe those two their best military advice. And what
Speaker 4: I'm concerned about is, you know, this this kind of
Speaker 4: idea that that they're that they're not going to get
Speaker 4: that because somebody in a senior military rank like worked
Speaker 4: for Mark Milly, who they hate people work for Mark
Speaker 4: Milly because the guy was the chairman man. It's not
Speaker 4: because you know, it's it's not because that they were
Speaker 4: they were against President Trump or something. There's no way,
Speaker 4: I mean, so I just think I we got to
Speaker 4: really work hard to keep that bold line in place
Speaker 4: between our military and partisan politics.
Speaker 1: Hi there, Charles kok K in Florida. I wonder if
Speaker 1: I can ask you about drones. I've been watching some
Speaker 1: of the footage coming out of Ukraine. I've read a
Speaker 1: little bit about developments within the china Es military, and
Speaker 1: perhaps I'm falling for the latest buzzwords and hype, but
Speaker 1: it seems to me that this could be huge. This
Speaker 1: could be a massive change in the way we fight.
Speaker 1: Am I right? And if I am right, is America
Speaker 1: keeping up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Charles, you are right, It already is a massive
Speaker 4: change in the in the way that we fight. America
Speaker 4: is keeping up in terms of the technology, you know,
Speaker 4: and our ability to develop drones that have the capabilities
Speaker 4: you want them to have. Of course, they come in
Speaker 4: all different sizes, with different payloads, and they have different roles, right,
Speaker 4: They have you know, reconnaissance rolls, deep strike roles, as
Speaker 4: you've seen with many of these like lower cost to
Speaker 4: head drones that have that have a great greater, greater range.
Speaker 4: And then but then also you have these tactical drones.
Speaker 4: And I think what has really changed the character of
Speaker 4: combat is is these first person view drones which are
Speaker 4: which are wire guided, but the but the wire guide
Speaker 4: is like thirty kilometers now instead of you know, six kilometers,
Speaker 4: which was maybe at the outset of the war. So
Speaker 4: what this has created, Charles, is kind of a no
Speaker 4: man's land that is reminiscent I think of World War One.
Speaker 4: So whereas this has really shifted in a significant way
Speaker 4: the character of warfare and combat, you know, there's also
Speaker 4: a lot of continuity there. It looks like World War
Speaker 4: One because remember World War One, the problem initially was
Speaker 4: machine guns and then massive artillery, you know what the
Speaker 4: Germans called materiel schlocked, and so to get around material shlock,
Speaker 4: they changed their tactics. They put in elastic defense, defense
Speaker 4: in greater depth, smaller outposts forwards. Sound familiar, That's what
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians are doing. And then the Germans with the
Speaker 4: Lutendwarf offensive in the spring of nineteen eighteen, which they
Speaker 4: launched simultaneous with unrestricted submarine warfare to try to knock
Speaker 4: France and Britain out of the war before the America
Speaker 4: came in. They used infiltration tactics, small groups to try
Speaker 4: to get around the front lines and then attack. You know,
Speaker 4: artillery and command posts and logistics facilities. That sounds like
Speaker 4: what's going on around Picross right now in Ukraine. But
Speaker 4: I think the fundamental conditions have not shifted in terms
Speaker 4: of having decisive capabilities, because the Russians have not been
Speaker 4: able to sustain those offensives and they're taking massive losses
Speaker 4: as they do it now. But to your question, hey,
Speaker 4: how does this change warfare? It changes warfare because these capabilities,
Speaker 4: along with some others like intelligence collection capabilities, especially those
Speaker 4: in lower Earth orbit You're like, like imagery and RSRF
Speaker 4: collection or radio frequency collection capabilities, have shifted the battlefield
Speaker 4: into the realm of more transparency, and so all forces
Speaker 4: have to act almost like as if they're in visual
Speaker 4: range of the enemy. So what this means for future
Speaker 4: war is we need countermeasures to that, and in the
Speaker 4: opening phase of the next war, I think we're going
Speaker 4: to have to apply a range of capabilities designed to
Speaker 4: blind the enemy, to blind the enemy shooting down drones.
Speaker 4: And you're seeing some of these countermeasures now coming out
Speaker 4: with drone against drone right drone v drone warfare where
Speaker 4: you know where swarms of drones are are kind of
Speaker 4: protecting you. But also directed energy capabilities and as well
Speaker 4: as the range of electromagnetic warfare capabilities which have already
Speaker 4: been employed against against drones. So those are all coming online,
Speaker 4: and so what you're going to see is this interaction
Speaker 4: like you always see in war between dueling capabilities, you know,
Speaker 4: machine gun, tank, tank, anti tank, missile, submarine, so onar,
Speaker 4: bomb er, radar. But the next war is obviously going
Speaker 4: to be fought also in cyberspace as this one has been,
Speaker 4: but in low Earth orbit for sure. The next war's
Speaker 4: going into space because to blind your enemy, you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to you're gonna have to dazzle or destroy their
Speaker 4: space based collection capabilities. So we're developing a range of capas,
Speaker 4: but we haven't done to get your question, how are
Speaker 4: we doing? We haven't been able to do it at scale.
Speaker 4: I mean what the scale of what Ukrainians and Russians
Speaker 4: are doing is astounding, and also the speed of innovation.
Speaker 4: I mean, what will happen is there'll be a countermeasure
Speaker 4: developed Ukraine is a Russian countermeasure. Ukrainians will detect it
Speaker 4: and then within certainly a couple of weeks, but often
Speaker 4: within days, they have an adaptation to their drones that
Speaker 4: that that mitigates the effect of that countermeasure. So I
Speaker 4: think also what we're learning is not only you know,
Speaker 4: the effect of drones, but also the importance of open
Speaker 4: architectures for weapons systems, so they can be they can
Speaker 4: be uh, they can be modified on the fly.
Speaker 2: It's all fascinating. Aybody who study in warfare and you
Speaker 2: believe and you hope that maybe one hundred starlings could
Speaker 2: be self propelled and nudge your Chinese satellite out of orbit,
Speaker 2: and that's our secular weapon, you hope, and you think
Speaker 2: that maybe we can develop an aujus system that will
Speaker 2: just clean them all out of the skies.
Speaker 1: But then you.
Speaker 2: Realize when you see some of these demonstrations in China
Speaker 2: that they have of just you know, sort of esthetic
Speaker 2: drones or they go into the sky and form great
Speaker 2: mini pictures. The ability to coordinate masses of these and
Speaker 2: the ability then to perhaps swarm and overwhelm defenses, and
Speaker 2: you start thinking to yourself, well, it's not that an
Speaker 2: insurmountable problem, but it is a problem. Now, what you've
Speaker 2: said is that the ideas are recognized, the threat is recognized,
Speaker 2: and what needs to be done and nimble we need
Speaker 2: to be to counteract that. That's that's all baked in already.
Speaker 2: But we've all seen sclerotic procurement. We've all seen how
Speaker 2: entrenched ways of thinking keep some people from adapting because
Speaker 2: it's the it's their fief to me, it's their bili wick.
Speaker 2: And you want to think that everybody is of a
Speaker 2: mind to realize that something has changed significantly in warfare
Speaker 2: in the last twenty years, the last two years. Is
Speaker 2: the Pentagon mindset now nimble and forward looking and impatient
Speaker 2: with those people who want to preserve this or keep
Speaker 2: this or naysay that, or is there a sense of urgency?
Speaker 2: I guess that's what I'm looking.
Speaker 4: For, James. I think there is, you know, and I
Speaker 4: think this has been a big change and a positive
Speaker 4: change in the Trumpet administration. And it's mainly because, you know,
Speaker 4: the Trump administration. You know, prisident Trump is unconventional, right,
Speaker 4: you know, he's very disruptive. Oftentimes he becomes, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe too disruptive and disrupts himself. You know, but let's
Speaker 4: set that aside for a second. But what what he
Speaker 4: what what he's doing is he's willing to kind of
Speaker 4: to break the process, put new processes in place. There
Speaker 4: are some policies they put in place already that I
Speaker 4: think are quite promising that allow for the rapid procurement
Speaker 4: of these capabilities. And what encourages me is the Deputy
Speaker 4: Secretary of Defense, Steve Feinberg, is he's not like a
Speaker 4: normal person to come into the Department Defense, right, He's
Speaker 4: you know, he was He's the founder of a big
Speaker 4: private equity firm, and and his skill set has been
Speaker 4: to develop companies, you know, and you know, and improve
Speaker 4: the effectiveness of companies, many of which have had defense
Speaker 4: or intelligence application. He knows how frustrating the process can be,
Speaker 4: and now he's in charge of that process as the
Speaker 4: Deputy Secretary of Defense. And and so I think that
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why we didn't have earlier, I
Speaker 4: think is because the same people kept coming into the
Speaker 4: Department of Defense.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: What happened is a Republican administration would come in, the
Speaker 4: Democrats would go to a think tanks, went back to
Speaker 4: the private sector, and then those same Democrat you know,
Speaker 4: sort of political appointees would come back and vice versa.
Speaker 4: So I think you have a new group of people.
Speaker 6: The one thing that I kind of.
Speaker 4: Worry about though. James is like, you need some of
Speaker 4: the exquisite capabilities and you know, the more expensive capabilities
Speaker 4: to get you into the fight. Right if you're if
Speaker 4: you were to carry like a little drone in your
Speaker 4: hand to the front, how did you get to the front.
Speaker 4: And then also, you know what we're seeing in Ukraine
Speaker 4: and what we see saw Gaza and urban warfare is
Speaker 4: that war is still about the control of territory, populations
Speaker 4: and resources. And you know, guess what you need to
Speaker 4: do that. You need infantry, and guess what you need
Speaker 4: to get your infantry into that fight. You need mobile
Speaker 4: protective firepower, you need tiar and layered air defense capabilities.
Speaker 4: You need the joint capabilities it can be brought to
Speaker 4: bear to disrupt the enemy in greater depth. You need logistics. Hey,
Speaker 4: that sounds like combined arms and joint capabilities to me. So,
Speaker 4: you know, I think of combat that's rock paper scissors.
Speaker 4: It's like the kids game rock paper scissors. And if
Speaker 4: you don't have the full compliment. You know, if you
Speaker 4: didn't bring scissors and the enemy brings out the paper,
Speaker 4: you're done. So I think it's important for us to
Speaker 4: have this range of capabilities, and some people were saying, hey,
Speaker 4: we don't need these exquisite capabilities anymore. Well, I mean
Speaker 4: that's easy for you to say, but when you're in
Speaker 4: close combat, you want that exquisite capability. I for one,
Speaker 4: enjoyed being in the seventy ton killing machine in Desert Storm.
Speaker 4: You know, I was grateful for General Dynamics man and
Speaker 4: all the people who gave you that beautiful that beautiful machine,
Speaker 4: you know. So so I think that you know, we
Speaker 4: do need, though, to develop these capabilities so that they can,
Speaker 4: as I mentioned, be upgraded very quickly. And we have
Speaker 4: some real new design capabilities now. So for example, like
Speaker 4: some of these new defense companies, instead of doing it
Speaker 4: the old way James, like where you don't get a
Speaker 4: request for proposal right then it'll create a spec document
Speaker 4: that's like thousand, thousands of pages, right I mean, and
Speaker 4: then and they'll say, okay, now give me money, give
Speaker 4: me money to build the prototype. And then they build
Speaker 4: competing prototypes. There's a down selection and then you know
Speaker 4: that takes forever. What some of these new companies are
Speaker 4: doing is they're just building it and are saying, hey,
Speaker 4: look at this thing I built you guys want it,
Speaker 4: you know, because I think it meets your requirement. So
Speaker 4: I think there are some significant changes happening. But also
Speaker 4: what we have to be cognizant of here, and this
Speaker 4: is a real danger, is we have allowed our supply
Speaker 4: chains to become too dependent on single points of failure
Speaker 4: controlled by China. And of course that's been very much
Speaker 4: in the news in the last several weeks, but it's
Speaker 4: been the case like since the nineties. Got it just
Speaker 4: got worse and worse in the two thousands and twenty tens,
Speaker 4: and we didn't do enough about that. So I think
Speaker 4: that's where we need a sense of urgency as well.
Speaker 2: I think when it comes to getting men into the theater,
Speaker 2: when it comes to using drones and flight capability, when
Speaker 2: it comes to using all sorts of suppressive firepower and
Speaker 2: the rest of it. I think in the future we're
Speaker 2: going to see where you take a man and you
Speaker 2: put them in a flying craft and the craft will
Speaker 2: have guns and r oh, just to the jet. I'll
Speaker 2: shut up now.
Speaker 5: Well, about the rocks you were mentioning a moment ago
Speaker 5: of rock paper scissors, We asked them one very specific question.
Speaker 5: There's been a lot of chatter about whether we should
Speaker 5: supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which would enable them to
Speaker 5: strike deep into Russia. And the debate reminds me in
Speaker 5: some ways of a debate I know, you know well,
Speaker 5: which was back in the eighties, long debates about whether
Speaker 5: we should give Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance against
Speaker 5: the Soviet Union then, and I think some of the
Speaker 5: same risk risk factors then are on our minds. Now,
Speaker 5: what do you say, yeay, r nay, Do you have
Speaker 5: an opinion on the tomahawk question?
Speaker 4: I say yay to it, because you really to be
Speaker 4: effective at countering this onslaught. I think it was seven
Speaker 4: herd and twenty projectiles of various types, all different types
Speaker 4: fired on Ukraine yesterday. Right, you need or you need
Speaker 4: to be able to shoot down those arrows, but you
Speaker 4: also have to be able to kill the archer. And
Speaker 4: what Ukraine has demonstrated is the ability to use these
Speaker 4: these long range capability, these you know, in a in
Speaker 4: a very disciplined manner, by going after military bases, by
Speaker 4: going after military targets as well as some of the
Speaker 4: infrastructure that's related to sustaining Russia's war making machine. Like
Speaker 4: the like the refineries that we were discussing earlier. So
Speaker 4: I think that, you know, I think providing those capabilies important.
Speaker 4: They already have some of these in limited quantities, like
Speaker 4: the storm shadows for example, and UH and and uh
Speaker 4: and the you know, the Taurus is the German version.
Speaker 4: But I think I think we should we should sell them,
Speaker 4: you know, as I guess as we're doing it now,
Speaker 4: sell them to the Europeans who can provide them, uh,
Speaker 4: to the to the Ukrainians. And I know there has
Speaker 4: been some discussion about, well, it's hard to teach them
Speaker 4: how to use it. I mean, the ukrates are demonstrated,
Speaker 4: they are incredibly they're ingenious at this stuff, and and
Speaker 4: and and uh.
Speaker 2: I think they can.
Speaker 4: Figure it out pretty quickly, you know, with uh minimal training.
Speaker 2: Well, we've covered a lot, and I think there's a
Speaker 2: few more things in the world that we could probably
Speaker 2: get a right too. But we know you have to
Speaker 2: go and we'll leave him for the next time. Unless,
Speaker 2: of course, piece is broken out globally and there's nothing
Speaker 2: to do but sit back and bask in the shine
Speaker 2: of it. All might not happen. Hr McMasters, it's been
Speaker 2: a great pleasure at war with ourselves. My tour of
Speaker 2: duty in the Trump White House is the book you
Speaker 2: might want to pick up, or any of his other fine,
Speaker 2: fine works. And it's been a pleasure talking to you, sir,
Speaker 2: and we hope to have you back again soon.
Speaker 4: Hey, always great to be with you, guys.
Speaker 2: Take care, take it bye bye, and Charles, do you
Speaker 2: have a drone?
Speaker 1: My seven year old has a little drone he got
Speaker 1: for Christmas. But it's a threat to anyone.
Speaker 2: We need to pot you up a bit. Your seven
Speaker 2: year old has a drone? Does is he skilled enough
Speaker 2: to be able to control it with one of those
Speaker 2: out you know things, with all the little toggles and
Speaker 2: the joysticks and the rest of it. Or does he
Speaker 2: use his phone to manipulate it? No?
Speaker 1: No, it has a remote control with the joysticks. It's
Speaker 1: not a phone based drone. But I tend to fly
Speaker 1: it because he tends to fly it into a tree.
Speaker 2: Yes, well that'll happen, Stephen. What kind is yours? I'll
Speaker 2: bet it's a DG.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I've got several of them. Actually, I've been
Speaker 6: a drone not from the very beginning.
Speaker 5: I've still got one of the big old giant ones
Speaker 5: from twelve years ago whenever, and now I'm just a
Speaker 5: drone nut.
Speaker 6: I'm the early adopter and.
Speaker 2: The equivalent of the satellite dish in the backyard and
Speaker 2: some you know, some mozart place. Yes, I have a
Speaker 2: little dj I neo that is packable, and I take
Speaker 2: it with you and fly about, and I'll still never remember.
Speaker 2: I forget standing on the shores in England and Suffolk
Speaker 2: and looking at the picture and admiring the view I
Speaker 2: had before I realized that I was sending it out
Speaker 2: to its death, to its doom. It was no idea,
Speaker 2: and it reached the limit, and it's sort of it
Speaker 2: pulled back and came back to me and the film
Speaker 2: of these because it has an automatic landing ability which
Speaker 2: just comes back to your hand. I don't know if
Speaker 2: yours does. It's just like watching this bird come back
Speaker 2: to a very worried parent that's happy to see it.
Speaker 2: And then of course I put it in a tree.
Speaker 2: So it's lots of fun, yes, But when you realize
Speaker 2: that these are indeed the instruments of war, that the
Speaker 2: very same thing that we play around with and have
Speaker 2: panoramic shots of our backyard are following men into trenches
Speaker 2: followed by a no signal indicates that there's a very
Speaker 2: horrifying and personal aspect to these that has changed a
Speaker 2: lot of the nature of warfare. I mean, men in
Speaker 2: combat in a trench never had to fear like a
Speaker 2: personal a personal demon that was set on them on
Speaker 2: harvesting their soul, which is what it feels like in
Speaker 2: some of these places. But then again, we've been predicting
Speaker 2: this war was going to come to a cracking point
Speaker 2: for years now and it hasn't shifting. Domestically. Checking my watch,
Speaker 2: do we have a government still shut down? I can't
Speaker 2: tell you, guys, what are you feeling about this?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think I've made this speech before that
Speaker 5: all of our other governments, including a lot of federal government,
Speaker 5: are still open, but certainly staken local government are open.
Speaker 5: My latest thought about this is that nothing will happen
Speaker 5: until at least next Wednesday, and that's pure politics. I
Speaker 5: think Democrats are expecting or hoping that they're going to
Speaker 5: sweep the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey and
Speaker 5: maybe some other races around the country, probably the Proposition
Speaker 5: fifty in California that will allow the Democrats to carve
Speaker 5: up the congressional districts to take out what few Republicans
Speaker 5: remain that will pass and maybe pass Handling, and that.
Speaker 6: Will give them a big talking point.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 6: Otherwise it's not gonna nothing will happen before Wednesday, but.
Speaker 1: Will I'm interested in this because I agree Steve that
Speaker 1: was my view as well. And then I read a
Speaker 1: really interesting piece this morning in National Review by Henry Olsen, who,
Speaker 1: oh yes writes does a podcast with Ricochet, and he
Speaker 1: says that, yeah, the Democrats are probably going to win
Speaker 1: those races, and yeah, they're probably going to get the
Speaker 1: sixty is it sixty percent they need in California or
Speaker 1: just fifty percent for the proposition to go through. But
Speaker 1: they're not walking away with it. In Virginia, they're not
Speaker 1: walking away with it in New Jersey. There is no
Speaker 1: blue wave wave, and you would expect to see a
Speaker 1: bigger reaction against Trump. So, yes, I have no doubt
Speaker 1: they'll say it. They've been pretending they didn't shut down
Speaker 1: the government. They'll say anything, but I do wonder whether
Speaker 1: they're going to be underwhelmed. And if somehow Citarelli were
Speaker 1: to win in New Jersey, that argument is going to
Speaker 1: fall on deaf is because that will then be the story.
Speaker 6: Yeah. No, it's a gamble on their part, for sure,
Speaker 6: but I think that's what they're hoping for.
Speaker 2: Charles, you had a fun tweet this morning here and
Speaker 2: it's almost a stick this one anywhere Charles W could
Speaker 2: tweet which consisted of nobody actually believes this, it's absurd.
Speaker 2: Now you're actually linking to something which is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite talking points about the culture in these social
Speaker 2: wars and all the rest of it. Some fellow, I
Speaker 2: don't know why you're referring to how many followers is
Speaker 2: this guy? What some low number of people are you
Speaker 2: engaging with? Oh, he's got to he's got one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty one thousand followers, all right, he said, sorry,
Speaker 2: quote some cultures are inferior to others. End quote is
Speaker 2: just racism with extra steps. So yeah, yeah, So tell
Speaker 2: me this conversation fascinates me. Tell me exactly why you
Speaker 2: thought this was absurd and that nobody believes it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you why, because both the left and
Speaker 1: the right in America clearly believe that some cultures are
Speaker 1: superior to others. So the right and I think This
Speaker 1: is probably not just the right, but it's most people
Speaker 1: evidently think that there are bad countries because they have
Speaker 1: been made aware in their lives of say Iran or
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia or Marley. There is a difference between saying
Speaker 1: the people there are inferior, or their skin color makes
Speaker 1: them inferior, or under all circumstances, irrespective of their surroundings
Speaker 1: they would be in which is the thing I very
Speaker 1: strongly do not believe, and saying there are cultures that
Speaker 1: are different than the cultures that obtain there that are better.
Speaker 1: So that is the obvious case. But the case that
Speaker 1: seals it for me is as applied to the left.
Speaker 1: What was the sixteen to nineteen project if not the
Speaker 1: assertion correctly in this particular, that say the Confederacy was
Speaker 1: an inferior culture than the Free North. They believe it too.
Speaker 1: If they didn't, they wouldn't go on all the time
Speaker 1: about their politics.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite favorite contradictions. They think it.
Speaker 1: For goodness sake, they think it. They never shut up
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: There's a Iram Kendy. I remember hearing an interview and
Speaker 2: I wish I could track this down, But what he
Speaker 2: was saying was that cultures that believe that they are
Speaker 2: higher archy, that there are hierarchies in the in the
Speaker 2: cultures of the world, are irredeemably bad. That those who
Speaker 2: believe in making a hierarchy of other cultures are inferior.
Speaker 2: And what he's saying then is that they are inferior
Speaker 2: to the cultures that do not make hierarchical judgments, which
Speaker 2: thereby establishes a hierarchy, right, the good one who doesn't
Speaker 2: and the bad one who does. So there's your just
Speaker 2: in America.
Speaker 1: Just in America. Do progressives really expect us to believe
Speaker 1: that they don't think Massachusetts has a better culture than Alabama.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's my view, right, but that is.
Speaker 6: Clearly their view.
Speaker 1: They talk about fly over country. They suggest that there
Speaker 1: are places in which people are enlightened and places in
Speaker 1: which they are not. They dream of an electorate that
Speaker 1: looks like the electorate of Washington and Oregon and California
Speaker 1: and not of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. That is quite
Speaker 1: clearly and in horse of the idea that there are
Speaker 1: good cultures and bad cultures.
Speaker 2: But separately from race, they're looking at the right and
Speaker 2: saying that the two examples that the right would use
Speaker 2: of cultures that are insuperior, to use one of my
Speaker 2: favorite non existent words to that of the West, would
Speaker 2: be would be Africa and the Muslim world. And because
Speaker 2: they they they would say that Africa's problems stem from
Speaker 2: only colonialism, which is the sin of the West, nothing else,
Speaker 2: and that Islam, which has now become a race, must
Speaker 2: be called blameless because it must be held a blameless
Speaker 2: and held up with a certain amount of valor and
Speaker 2: admiration because it is targeted by the people on the right.
Speaker 2: The reason that they love and embrace and get tingly
Speaker 2: over the multicultural aspects of Islam has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the preception things that might horrify them if they
Speaker 2: came from Christians. It's simply because they tell themselves that
Speaker 2: all those people in fly Over Country in Alabama get
Speaker 2: riled up about the Mussulman, and they're doing so for
Speaker 2: bigoted reasons. So it's not a particularly sophisticated view of
Speaker 2: the world. And it also just allies them with things
Speaker 2: that are so culturally abhorrent to them. In the treatment
Speaker 2: of what they regard as marginalized individuals in the West.
Speaker 2: That is an incoherent, stupid thing to say, and that
Speaker 2: it's said by somebody with one hundred and forty five
Speaker 2: thousand followers apparently has some sort of academic pedigree pedals.
Speaker 2: This nonsense just shows you there is no second order
Speaker 2: thinking to any of this stuff. It's just the proclamation
Speaker 2: of these virtuous little bits of twaddle.
Speaker 5: James, Well, James, you say it's a it's an understatement
Speaker 5: to say it's not a very sophisticated view.
Speaker 6: It's even worse than that.
Speaker 5: I mean, first of all, for the umpteenth time, I'll
Speaker 5: repeat that if the left didn't have double standards, they
Speaker 5: wouldn't have any standards at all. But beyond that, what
Speaker 5: you really see at work here is what the great
Speaker 5: late Roger scrut would call the culture of repudiation. What
Speaker 5: they really believe is that our culture is the inferior one. Right,
Speaker 5: anything that serves the hatred of Western culture is what
Speaker 5: they're for, So you'll elevate any other culture around the
Speaker 5: world over our own. And finally, I was glad you
Speaker 5: brought this up because I was going to bring up
Speaker 5: Charles National Review article about this. What touched this off
Speaker 5: was the original statement that some cultures are better than
Speaker 5: others was from the leader of the long suffering Tory
Speaker 5: Party in England, can be bad Knock, the daughter of
Speaker 5: Kenyan immigrants to England, who has fully assimilated to British
Speaker 5: culture and has been very forcefully attacking Wokeriy to you
Speaker 5: Shorthand for a very long time now. And boy, the
Speaker 5: left really wants to change the subject when it's say,
Speaker 5: person of color making these politically incorrect arguments.
Speaker 6: So anyway, he's off to you, Charlie. That was a
Speaker 6: great piece.
Speaker 1: And one of those arguments that Kemmy Badenock made was
Speaker 1: that cultures that engage in female genital mutilation are worse
Speaker 1: than Britain. Now, if you can find me a progressive
Speaker 1: who doesn't believe that, whether quietly or not, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a million dollars. That is uncontroversial thankfully in the West.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, unless you're talking about certain Northern European judiciary
Speaker 2: members who seem to believe that if your culture says
Speaker 2: it's all right to rape a thirteen year old, then
Speaker 2: how can you be held accountable for it in a
Speaker 2: Western country When you don't know what stuff like that
Speaker 2: makes people tear their hair out and then six years
Speaker 2: later there's riots in civil war or not. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was just in England, had a great time, kind
Speaker 2: of And it's always amusing because I go there. Before
Speaker 2: I go there, my feet is full of stabbings and
Speaker 2: horrible things and riots and Palestinian demonstrations and Bobby's knocking
Speaker 2: on the door because you tweeted something wrong and I've
Speaker 2: seen none of that in evidence. I granted, I spend
Speaker 2: my time in the banana in the bubble, but it's
Speaker 2: just amusing to see the complete and utter contrast between
Speaker 2: everything that I read and the life that I live
Speaker 2: TwixT London and Suffolk. So there's hope. There's hope. That's
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. But related to the subject is a
Speaker 2: recent piece by Helen Anderson Helen Andrews, I'm sorry, called
Speaker 2: the Great Feminization, which basically is saying, you know what nineteenth.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, no go that far. But
Speaker 2: what she does say is that we have moved almost
Speaker 2: completely now from a culture that used to prior that
Speaker 2: he used to prioritize, admire, uphold, depend upon what we
Speaker 2: saw is traditionally masculine aspects and it's been replaced by
Speaker 2: a cattery caddy little you know, hr covenant that has
Speaker 2: brought a new scent, sense of ideas and the way
Speaker 2: things go. And then it's not working out for us.
Speaker 2: It's stifling things, it's driving people apart, and it's turning
Speaker 2: us into a tiresome kindergarten where we're all being shussed
Speaker 2: by some officious nanny somewhere. Did I trust you fellows
Speaker 2: read the you guys? You read that one guys about that,
Speaker 2: about how the chicks are ruined and everything I did? Okay?
Speaker 1: Thoughts, Well, I think she made many points. I think
Speaker 1: she's very intelligent. I think that she, as she acknowledged
Speaker 1: at the end of the piece and then the speech
Speaker 1: she made that prompted it, she's arguing against interested one
Speaker 1: level because she's a woman, but not at another because
Speaker 1: she's objectionable. Those are her words. I think that her
Speaker 1: piece was misinterpreted in some quarters, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.
Speaker 1: She wasn't saying all women should be shunted away. She
Speaker 1: was saying that wokeness has female characteristics, and I think
Speaker 1: there is something to that. The most profound point that
Speaker 1: I thought she made and one that crystallized the view
Speaker 1: that I have held for a while but hadn't quite
Speaker 1: taken to its conclusion is that we do not have
Speaker 1: a situation now in which we have normal competition for
Speaker 1: both sexes, because it's illegal in some sense for women
Speaker 1: to fail. And so the federal government has guaranteed that
Speaker 1: we will have parity or greater than parity in women's
Speaker 1: favor in the workplace. And I hadn't thought about that
Speaker 1: like that, But that's true when you look at the law,
Speaker 1: because if there aren't enough women in a given workplace,
Speaker 1: it's a civil rights violation. But if there are more
Speaker 1: than enough I mean mathematically, not culturally women in a workplace,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter. And that's the part of this I
Speaker 1: think that really was driven home for me, because when
Speaker 1: you set that up as a civil rights question, what
Speaker 1: you are doing is putting your thumb on the scales
Speaker 1: and guaranteeing that you're going to have more workplaces that
Speaker 1: are kind in inverted commas than rambunctious and male. And
Speaker 1: that's where it becomes a problem. It's not a problem
Speaker 1: to have lots of places in America that are feminine.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, I quite like the fact that
Speaker 1: my children's school is dominated by female teachers, especially for
Speaker 1: younger grades. But I don't think it is good when
Speaker 1: you are mandating that everywhere ought to become like that,
Speaker 1: because there are lots of places that probably ought to
Speaker 1: stay male. The broader question of whether or not having
Speaker 1: lots of women running around is going to destroy the
Speaker 1: rule of law. I need to think more about. But
Speaker 1: that I thought was really on the money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of men read that, bes and do
Speaker 2: you know I should show this to my wife.
Speaker 6: Well, so, first of all, this article.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you caught this overseas trying to
Speaker 5: follow it from afar, but it has created a huge station. Ah,
Speaker 5: David French wrought a whole call them about it in
Speaker 5: the New York Times.
Speaker 6: That shows you right there.
Speaker 5: I have been following some of the reaction from what
Speaker 5: I call some of the smarter progressive, the sort of
Speaker 5: center left abundance liberals who are kind of interesting and thoughtful,
Speaker 5: and their reaction has been curious because on the one
Speaker 5: hand they all rush to say, we don't agree with
Speaker 5: Helen Andrews, but then the next sentence is, but she's
Speaker 5: actually right about a lot of stuff, And you know,
Speaker 5: for a very long time. I have pointed out, not me,
Speaker 5: the economist Mark Pair who's a good friend, that if
Speaker 5: you look at I should give a preface to this.
Speaker 5: You will occasionally hear feminists say there ought to be
Speaker 5: you know, a quote that fifty percent of leading professions should,
Speaker 5: like lawyers, doctors, legislators.
Speaker 6: Should be women.
Speaker 5: And then Mark Perry likes to point out and he
Speaker 5: has statistics that, let's see, ninety nine percent of garbage
Speaker 5: workers are men, ninety eight percent of telephone alignment are men. Right,
Speaker 5: you want to hard rock miners. Oh, and the fatality
Speaker 5: rates much much higher for men in occupations than women.
Speaker 5: How come we don't hear about, you know, demands for equity.
Speaker 5: Shouldn't we have fifty percent of garbage workers be women?
Speaker 5: And I've seen feminists presented with this question and their
Speaker 5: answer always is, well, the wait, we need equity in
Speaker 5: the professions to where the power is. Well, you know what,
Speaker 5: see what you think about power when your garbage doesn't
Speaker 5: get picked up. But I'll leave that aside for now.
Speaker 5: But you can see what's going on here.
Speaker 6: It is political.
Speaker 5: It is about power, and I think Helen has touched
Speaker 5: off a debate that's going to have some legs that
Speaker 5: are going to go for a while.
Speaker 1: They also play a game with that one because while
Speaker 1: you can comprehend the argument that this should only be
Speaker 1: applied where the power is. When you hear it, you
Speaker 1: think politician or banker, but they never apply that rule
Speaker 1: to say, schools, because teachers have an enormous amount of power,
Speaker 1: maybe the most power over people between the ages of
Speaker 1: four and eighteen. Women are overrepresented in those roles. They
Speaker 1: don't think that's a problem the other way around, And
Speaker 1: that's where I think feminists can sometimes play games with
Speaker 1: language that they only really define power in certain ways
Speaker 1: and they ignore.
Speaker 2: It in others. Yes, I think you're correct. Now let's
Speaker 2: grind all the gears and do something that is not
Speaker 2: weighty and does not affect the fate of the world,
Speaker 2: of the nation, of the culture, of the rest of it.
Speaker 2: It's a holiday weekend, of course, this podcast goes up today.
Speaker 2: Great because people here at tomorrow, Halloween is as dead
Speaker 2: as can possibly be on November first, and nobody cares
Speaker 2: the clammory realities of this new month. They are always
Speaker 2: upon us. But that doesn't mean that we can't say
Speaker 2: for the audience today what we believe to be the
Speaker 2: most frightening movie that we have ever seen in our life.
Speaker 2: And if they hear tonight they want to watch it.
Speaker 2: Good Charles, you go first. I know you've been cheeing
Speaker 2: away through the American uber for a long time. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll let you go second. Steven, I know you probably
Speaker 2: have something.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I saw a few of the slasher films that were
Speaker 5: popular a few, you know, ten twenty years ago, and
Speaker 5: really didn't like them. Party it's just function of age,
Speaker 5: just like them less. And so I'm going to do
Speaker 5: a very antique answer and then to a you turn
Speaker 5: on it. And you know, I saw The Exorcists when
Speaker 5: it came out in the mid seventies. I managed to
Speaker 5: like sneak into the theater because it was rated R
Speaker 5: and I think I was sixteen, and I found that
Speaker 5: pretty darn frightening, right, And later years when I watched
Speaker 5: that movie again, I was actually impressed with how theologically
Speaker 5: literate it is. They actually some of those scenes with
Speaker 5: Catholic priests and the medical doctors debating, and then the
Speaker 5: person who plays with father Damien I think is his name,
Speaker 5: a wonderful performance.
Speaker 2: I forget the name of the act, anguished, an anguished performance, correcked.
Speaker 6: I thought it was a terrific performance.
Speaker 5: And so although I'm still, you know, creeped out by
Speaker 5: the scenes of Linda Blair's had rotating and projectile vomiting
Speaker 5: across the room and all the rest of that, I
Speaker 5: look back on that now is actually a pretty darn
Speaker 5: good movie, but pretty darn scary, and maybe maybe because
Speaker 5: of its seriousness in a certain way, it becomes more
Speaker 5: has more weight to it.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, Charles, You've now had a few minutes, James.
Speaker 1: I hate horror movies. I hate scary movies.
Speaker 6: I mean to watch them.
Speaker 1: My roommate in Oxford for a while loved them, and
Speaker 1: he made me watch these movies, and I just can't
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: I'm well, define what you believe a scary Are we
Speaker 2: talking guts on the floor or are we talking creeping
Speaker 2: dread around the corner? Atmospheric hammer movies, Vincent Price's eyes
Speaker 2: alight with madness.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all, pretty much all of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even go near sore. I've never seen that
Speaker 1: in my wont.
Speaker 6: The hostile movies? I would ban those.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't watch that.
Speaker 1: I or horror slasher movies that make you job. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so weird because I'm a nut for roller coasters.
Speaker 6: I love er.
Speaker 1: There's nothing too scary for me with roller coasters. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to horror movies, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to probably make people laugh because I'm
Speaker 1: so innocent. But I think the most unsettling movie I've
Speaker 1: ever seen is The Shining. I find it really creepy.
Speaker 1: I can watch that because I love Kubrick and I
Speaker 1: love the performances, and I do think it's brilliantly done.
Speaker 1: I don't enjoy myself when I watch that movie, but
Speaker 1: I do think it's very unsettled. But my sample size
Speaker 1: is just so small. That's fine, You've chose in the exercist,
Speaker 1: and I do agree, but that's the Jesus out of me.
Speaker 1: I'm still.
Speaker 2: Shining is a deeply unsettling movie. Yes, And there's a
Speaker 2: man I have I know only from correspondence on Twitter,
Speaker 2: Lee Junkrachu's the director of Coco and a couple other
Speaker 2: Epixar movies who has put out a book about it.
Speaker 2: And there's an absolute master of the movie and what
Speaker 2: you know, you can tell, because there's I think it's
Speaker 2: in toy Story one. He actually slipped the texture of
Speaker 2: the of the of the carpet from the overloak hotail
Speaker 2: end of the movie. I mean the crazy theories about
Speaker 2: it that what Danny is wearing suggests that Kubrick was
Speaker 2: admitting his complicit nature in the faking of the Moonshine.
Speaker 2: The way that the sets never resolve somehow psychologically works
Speaker 2: upon you to make you uneasy, just with the whole
Speaker 2: physical manifestation of the place. The fact there's a can
Speaker 2: of baking soda that has an Indian head on it
Speaker 2: that's supposed to speak of a burial ground. I don't
Speaker 2: know the Indians got out that I had a big
Speaker 2: burial ground. I don't know. All these things crazy theories,
Speaker 2: but at the same time possibly so, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Except for the Kubrick one. It has about it an
Speaker 2: unreal nature, and Stephen King didn't like it. Stephen King
Speaker 2: was irritated by the movie. But it is so off,
Speaker 2: It is so wrong in so many ways that it
Speaker 2: is one of the greatest pieces of sustained discomfort that
Speaker 2: ending up with l Bowley singings. You know, Midnight and
Speaker 2: the Stars with you as we pan out from that
Speaker 2: great shot of nineteen twenty one. I just, I really
Speaker 2: really do. Can't say I love it that I admire
Speaker 2: the hale out of that movie. I have and because
Speaker 2: I'm doing the hosting thing and I controlled the mic
Speaker 2: and we'll shut down anybody whose interrupts. I have two
Speaker 2: and they're very different. The first is close to The
Speaker 2: Exorcist and the fact that the Exorcist in this movie
Speaker 2: introduced something that I don't like, which is called the
Speaker 2: body horror. But it's Alien. The first one I remember.
Speaker 2: I mean when I saw The Exorcist, I remember being
Speaker 2: scared before it started because of all the build up
Speaker 2: and all of the hype about it Alien. I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: credit in space movie, you've seen a off and awful
Speaker 2: lot of those black and white guy in a rubber suit.
Speaker 2: From the very opening flutes descending and the credits beginning
Speaker 2: on the screen, I was. I was filled with dread,
Speaker 2: and every single thing about it just compounded the dread.
Speaker 2: And nothing had really happened until something very horrible happened
Speaker 2: and it wasn't supposed to, and then something very happy
Speaker 2: there was definitely not supposed to happen in the hierarchy.
Speaker 2: Who gets knocked out in the movies, and every pin
Speaker 2: is knocked over, every expectation is sundered. It was just terrified.
Speaker 2: I've never been drained like that in a movie before
Speaker 2: or since. And it's a masterpiece. And I can't believe
Speaker 2: they keep churning these things out in the television show
Speaker 2: so bad. But there's something even scarier, And I think
Speaker 2: it's because you see it as a child. When everybody
Speaker 2: thinks it's a wonderful little story, it's a story of
Speaker 2: a little girl just trying to get home with her
Speaker 2: adorable companions that saw colorful. You know, The Wizard of
Speaker 2: Oz is an absolutely terrifying movie to a child, as
Speaker 2: it should, because we are convinced, I wrote, I wrote
Speaker 2: my free stuff subject this week about it. We are
Speaker 2: convinced that when that bony woman leans forward, you know,
Speaker 2: with all of her cackling and energetic malevolence fixated on
Speaker 2: this little girl and tells her that she's going to
Speaker 2: kill her, she's going to get her and kill her
Speaker 2: dog too while she's at it, that she means it.
Speaker 2: And when she turns over that hour glass for the
Speaker 2: first time in your short life. You understand mortality and
Speaker 2: the futile fear and wanting to call out to your
Speaker 2: loved ones and not being able to do so, and
Speaker 2: there's no one to come to save you, and no
Speaker 2: one does. There's something so terrifying about the Wicked Witch
Speaker 2: that I just think because we they expose it to
Speaker 2: us at an early early age, and it burns down deep.
Speaker 2: And that's why I the fact that Margaret Hamilton actually
Speaker 2: went to work with this woman, that that I knew
Speaker 2: in ear later life, and that one of my dearest
Speaker 2: friends grew up with Margaret Hamilton as her aunt, as
Speaker 2: Aunt Maggie. Who would be if you would come over
Speaker 2: and help with Halloween and open the door with the kids?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh great?
Speaker 6: I just love I just love James. Have you ever
Speaker 6: seen the It's all over the Internet? Apparently?
Speaker 5: A TV listing from TV guid somewhere some years ago,
Speaker 5: reads as follows the Wizard of Oz transported to a
Speaker 5: surreal landscape. A young girl kills the first person she meets,
Speaker 5: and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have seen that something had a good sense
Speaker 2: of humor about Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, also quickly adds something to your analysis here that
Speaker 1: I found interesting. My wife is much braver than I
Speaker 1: am with movies. She's less brave with reler custers, So
Speaker 1: I guess we've got the feel covered. And I said, recently,
Speaker 1: let's show the kids Chitty Chitty Bang Bang oh, And
Speaker 1: she said no, no, no, no, no, no, no what no,
Speaker 1: no no. The child catcher scared the hell out of
Speaker 1: her as a kid for the reasons you described in
Speaker 1: the US. She thought they could get them.
Speaker 2: Me absolutely enough.
Speaker 1: I wasn't scared of the child catches, So I don't
Speaker 1: know what's wrong with me. That's my Lacuna.
Speaker 2: Folks took me to see The Ghost and Mister Chicken
Speaker 2: because it got don Nts in it, and he's funny.
Speaker 2: Everybody loves don Knots, and I had to be taken out.
Speaker 2: I dissolved in that movie because there's a point where
Speaker 2: you come across in a dark night there's a portrait
Speaker 2: on the wall with garden shears through its throat and
Speaker 2: it's bleeding as this organ plays this tune by Vic
Speaker 2: Mizzy by the way upside down. I couldn't take it.
Speaker 2: And later they took me to see Mister Limpet, the
Speaker 2: amazing mister limpet who Don Nototts again turns into a
Speaker 2: fish in an animated sequence, and that disturbed me greatly
Speaker 2: that such a thing was possible. So if people wonder
Speaker 2: why sometimes I get pumped palpitations and go white is
Speaker 2: a sheet when maybe a RFD theme plays with the
Speaker 2: Andy Griffith Show, it's because of Don Notts. I'm deeply
Speaker 2: deeply starved by that keletal mannequin. Not really, folks, I
Speaker 2: hope you have been deeply scarved by the fact that
Speaker 2: we've been discussing movies on a political podcast. Oh horrors,
Speaker 2: But no, that's what Ricochet is all about, and that's
Speaker 2: why you should go to ricochet dot com and sign up.
Speaker 2: It's not just what you read in the main page.
Speaker 2: It's not just the podcast. It's the community that forms
Speaker 2: the members area as well, where you meet friends and
Speaker 2: you talk about and yes, I mean this absolutely everything
Speaker 2: under the sun. And if you are a fan of
Speaker 2: geomagnetic storms on Old Soul, we will talk about what's
Speaker 2: under the sun as well. Nothing is off limits, and
Speaker 2: it's civil and it's smart and it's great. And I've
Speaker 2: been there for as long as they plug that thing
Speaker 2: in and I visit it every single day, two three times.
Speaker 2: I'm their writing and hope to see you there in
Speaker 2: the comments and whatnot. And I know that Charles knows.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask him which version of the software.
Speaker 1: We're all four point fourteen point fourteen point two.
Speaker 2: You heard the man, Go there and see all those
Speaker 2: point two improvements while you can, because pretty soon be
Speaker 2: fourteen point three. Thanks folks, Steven Hayward, Charles, E. W. Cook,
Speaker 2: our guest, our producer, Perry, and EJ. Of course behind
Speaker 2: the board somewhere, and everybody who goes to Ricosheta listens,
Speaker 2: and everybody who goes and sign up, We thank you.
Speaker 2: Have a happy Halloween, as internally contradictory as that may be,
Speaker 2: and we we'll see you later. Bye,