Speaker 1: A lot of the conversation around NATO, for example, is
Speaker 1: interesting where people who should know better think that, you know,
Speaker 1: if a country in Europe doesn't pay they're three percent
Speaker 1: GDP or whatever into NATO into defense, that we pick
Speaker 1: up the tab, that the American taxpayer picks up the tab,
Speaker 1: and it's like, know, the reality is that America pays
Speaker 1: something like two hundred, two hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: a year into NATO, depending on what exercises are run
Speaker 1: that year. It's a very low cost investment for US,
Speaker 1: and it's the most successful military alliance, maybe the most
Speaker 1: successful alliance America has had historically, full stop. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to cut costs, I get it, but
Speaker 1: like we'd be a little bit smarter about it. And
Speaker 1: if we are cutting costs, my question is where's my
Speaker 1: tax break? And I don't just mean that like ironically.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're like slashing the size of the
Speaker 1: government in half, then it stands the reason that the
Speaker 1: budget is slashed in half and that the American average
Speaker 1: American worker should be taking home more money, right, But
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that in the conversation anywhere.
Speaker 2: What's up, guys, Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics.
Speaker 2: We got a full crew today, Jason Lyons, Andy Milburgh, mcmulroy,
Speaker 2: Jack Murphy, and myself. A lot going on and chatting,
Speaker 2: a lot. I wish I could have played I could.
Speaker 2: I wish I could have recorded what we were talking
Speaker 2: about before. I feel like people would probably get a
Speaker 2: kick out of it. A lot happening as usual, the
Speaker 2: world's falling part of the scenes. It seems like thing
Speaker 2: that just popped off recently, like literally an hour before
Speaker 2: we kicked off. Pentagon informs European diplomats that the US
Speaker 2: will partially halt military assistant to Baltic nations and NATO
Speaker 2: states bordering Russia. All this happening, and uh, this is
Speaker 2: from Reuters. All this happening when we you know, for
Speaker 2: the third time in about a week, Russia's breached NATO airspace, Poland, Romania,
Speaker 2: and just recently Estonia. I think that was yesterday Estonia
Speaker 2: invoking Article four. Even though Article four was invoked by Poland.
Speaker 2: I think this makes history because the last time Article
Speaker 2: four was invoked I think was Turkey, and that happened
Speaker 2: like within a couple of months of like a few
Speaker 2: months of each other. This is like the most the
Speaker 2: quickest it's been invoked in like history. Andy, we spoke
Speaker 2: about it last week in article four. Is kind of like,
Speaker 2: you know, window dressing a little bit. I mean, does
Speaker 2: you know NATO did come up with the Operation Eastern
Speaker 2: Century and stuff like that. I'm assuming I guess Estonia
Speaker 2: wants to like kind of step that up a little bit. Uh,
Speaker 2: maybe they don't think it's going far enough. What do
Speaker 2: you guys make of US pausing or holding military aid
Speaker 2: to our NATO allies in the East while this is
Speaker 2: all happening, You guys can mud wrestle for who those first?
Speaker 2: Anybody make your own mute?
Speaker 3: Sorry, short sighted to say the least. I think I
Speaker 3: looked at it. The Baltic security initiatives only around two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars, which is a lot for
Speaker 3: you know, the dudes on this podcast, But it's really
Speaker 3: not that much when it comes to US national security,
Speaker 3: which is about one point one trillion dollars right now
Speaker 3: for the next defense budget. So if you really put
Speaker 3: that into it's it's not that much, but it's symbolically
Speaker 3: a big deal to cut it off right from these
Speaker 3: Baltic countries that are on the border of Russia, right,
Speaker 3: it's a Pole, and then Latvia, Lithuania and I think Estonia, right,
Speaker 3: So those those countries need to be bolstered, they need
Speaker 3: to be prepared. That's how you have a strong defense
Speaker 3: in NATO is to be ready. I think the US
Speaker 3: was right over a multiple administrations to push our NATO
Speaker 3: partners to do more from their own defense. But they
Speaker 3: are now. But it's not the time to just pull out,
Speaker 3: which is in many ways symbolic, but security for those
Speaker 3: countries to be able to get their stuff together. And
Speaker 3: you know, as you guys know, my son's deployed an
Speaker 3: hundred first out there right now and they are working
Speaker 3: to make sure that our NATO allies are ready to go.
Speaker 3: And you know it's anecdotal, of course, but everything I've
Speaker 3: heard is these countries aren't fucking around. They are quadrupling
Speaker 3: their defense budget. They are they're doubling the size of
Speaker 3: their military, they are spending money, they are basically doing
Speaker 3: everything I think we hauld ask them to do. That's
Speaker 3: not the time for US to then withdraw all our
Speaker 3: support for the very military alliance that fought side by
Speaker 3: side with US twenty years after we were attacked on
Speaker 3: nine to eleven, and not only in Afghanistan, going to
Speaker 3: Iraq with US, which had nothing to do with nine
Speaker 3: to eleven. So I know I get on the soapbox
Speaker 3: a lot when we talk about this, but this is
Speaker 3: just another indication that the United States has withdrawing from
Speaker 3: which been a privileged position as leader of the free
Speaker 3: world for you know, as long as there's been one.
Speaker 3: So I think it's pretty clear. I'm against said withdraw
Speaker 3: off support. We need to be increasing it now. The
Speaker 3: last thing I'd say, obviously throw it to the rest
Speaker 3: of the folks, is I do agree with the idea
Speaker 3: that Europe needs to stop buying energy from Russia. I
Speaker 3: think we should do the secondary sanctions to prevent countries
Speaker 3: like India and China and Turkey from buying Russian oil.
Speaker 3: But the fact that there's still European countries that are
Speaker 3: buying at the same time they're begging for US assistance,
Speaker 3: I think sends the wrong message. And it's the right
Speaker 3: message from the White House to tell them that they
Speaker 3: need to cut that off as well, because that's how
Speaker 3: we fund this war machine.
Speaker 4: Do you know, I think, first of all, and I
Speaker 4: you know, I hate.
Speaker 2: Jack. I think you're a little laggy. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 2: to be a little If you want to cuttack and
Speaker 2: maybe reset your internet and stuff and cut back in,
Speaker 2: will be here. Thanks. Yep, sorry, Andy, go ahead, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was all right.
Speaker 4: I hate to sound monotonous, but I agree with Mick.
Speaker 4: You know, I hate to agree with Mick that much,
Speaker 4: but I do. But you know, I think that I
Speaker 4: think the question really is why are we doing this?
Speaker 4: You know, rather than then it be in our court
Speaker 4: to rail about it again, it's really it's incomprehensible.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Mick pointed out the tiny amount of money that we
Speaker 4: spend on Baltic defense compared to our defense, our defense budget,
Speaker 4: and and then you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: look how much I know it's a bad example, but
Speaker 4: look how much we spent on futile wars in Afghanistan
Speaker 4: and Iraq, trillions of dollars right, let alone the bloodshed,
Speaker 4: and we got nothing out of it. And again in
Speaker 4: the proxy conflict against Russia that Ukraine has been waging
Speaker 4: the last three years, we and our NATO allies have
Speaker 4: gained a great deal and the cost only of money.
Speaker 4: And again a fraction of the money that we spent
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan. So where were all these critics during the
Speaker 4: twenty years in Afghanistan? Right from the same voices, were
Speaker 4: the same people going, oh yeah, you know, you know.
Speaker 1: We we.
Speaker 4: We're on the verge of victory over and over again
Speaker 4: every year for twenty years, you know. And I had
Speaker 4: a discussion the other day with the guy I can't
Speaker 4: really call him a moron. I mean, he's a West
Speaker 4: Point graduate. It okay, but let me continue on this.
Speaker 4: He's a PhD. And he made the same comprehensible statement
Speaker 4: to me. You know, first of all, why do people
Speaker 4: bring up politics and cocktail parties nowadays? So I just
Speaker 4: don't understand it. It's one thing for us to talk
Speaker 4: about geopolitics here, but we you know, we we've learned
Speaker 4: we stay clear of domestic politics just because it's become
Speaker 4: such a state, such a hot issue and a divisive
Speaker 4: issue among people who don't have enough maturity to to argue.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so this guy brings up politics at a
Speaker 4: at a booseless cocktail party, by the way, which is
Speaker 4: even worse. Yeah, and he says to me, you know,
Speaker 4: it's about Ukraine. So he knows my background, and it's
Speaker 4: probably not a good idea to defend Russia anyway. But
Speaker 4: he's like, you know, I'm just tired of seeing the
Speaker 4: Americans waste in American taxpayer wasting money on Ukraine. And
Speaker 4: then the second question thing, he said, I don't even
Speaker 4: understand what the war is about anyway, you know, it's
Speaker 4: just from the PhD. And then he went on a
Speaker 4: long monologue about you know, how much money it was
Speaker 4: costing this and that, and I'm thinking, dude, where were
Speaker 4: you in the last twenty years? I mean I was,
Speaker 4: I went easy on him, but he's not.
Speaker 1: Where is he today? We're still i mean, dumping money
Speaker 1: into Israel and nobody says anything about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just we just rodge it up to another
Speaker 4: six billion, right, six point four?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's but that's apparently not an issue, you
Speaker 4: know for the American tax pan.
Speaker 3: Well, what did you think we should be spending all this?
Speaker 3: I assume he was against the one point one trillion
Speaker 3: dollar defense budget, right, so where would he think it.
Speaker 2: Would be more?
Speaker 3: I know this is somewhat a rhetorical question, but I
Speaker 3: would be wondering if you asked him, like, then, where
Speaker 3: would we get a better bang for the buck than
Speaker 3: supporting Ukraine, who's fighting our most I think dangerous adversary.
Speaker 4: Right, you should ask that question, because he thinks that
Speaker 4: d C is deploying. Deploying the National Guarden military to
Speaker 4: places like d C is a greater use of our
Speaker 4: defense budget. You know, I mean, the math doesn't quite correlate,
Speaker 4: and you know that.
Speaker 3: Went to West BOYD thinks that happening soldiers pick up
Speaker 3: traction in DC.
Speaker 4: pH serious, I'm not. I'm not saying this just to
Speaker 4: vilify him. I'm saying sadly, sadly, this is not uncommon
Speaker 4: among people who you would think were educated to think better.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all know believe that.
Speaker 3: I think they're just repeating something I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: even think they believe it.
Speaker 4: I agree with you, I agree with you. But one
Speaker 4: thing that upsets me a little bit, I'm not probably
Speaker 4: doesn't upset Jack because he enjoys the controversy and the
Speaker 4: cun thrust of of vicious debate.
Speaker 1: Any anytime you can dunk on army officers, I'm here
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 4: No, I'm with you, but you for guys like you
Speaker 4: and me, normal human beings don't. Don't you find it?
Speaker 4: At times I view, I look back and I view,
Speaker 4: you know, obviously I look at view my military service,
Speaker 4: you know, without without regret. But he and we've talked
Speaker 4: about this, but I'm amazed how many of my former
Speaker 4: colleagues seem more caught up in this same kind of
Speaker 4: weird argument about our current foreign policy, that that Russia
Speaker 4: is no longer an enemy and that you know, Canada
Speaker 4: is or Venezuela is, or that China is no longer
Speaker 4: something to be concerned about, or Taiwan isn't something that
Speaker 4: we should even think that, you know, I mean think
Speaker 4: about defending or pretend to defend. You know, these are
Speaker 4: you know that you know that that's what's so from
Speaker 4: the norm among people that we used to think we're
Speaker 4: rational human beings. And alongside I.
Speaker 3: Used to say the exact opposite, like four years ago,
Speaker 3: and they're in their fifties. So they go from thinking
Speaker 3: that China and Russia is the main adversary actually participating
Speaker 3: in drafting the national security strategy, and then four years later,
Speaker 3: in their fifties, they decide that the US military should
Speaker 3: focus domestically that I mean, I have a problem with
Speaker 3: people disagree with me. I was in policy right now.
Speaker 3: That's fine, but I don't even believe that they believe
Speaker 3: what they're saying right now.
Speaker 1: You do have to wonder about the sincerity when they
Speaker 1: seem to flip flop every couple of years, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Is it just about keeping a job or do they
Speaker 3: actually have an ideology when it comes to US national security?
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Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah, you got to ask.
Speaker 4: Them, Yeah, yeah. It's al much as though their belief
Speaker 4: in a certain stance in domestic politics has driven Coman
Speaker 4: to admit unrealistic views of foreign policy that in their
Speaker 4: hearts they know that's little foundation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's like a lot of the conversation
Speaker 1: around NATO, for example, is interesting where people who should
Speaker 1: know better think that, you know, if a country in
Speaker 1: Europe doesn't pay their three percent GDP or whatever into
Speaker 1: NATO into defense, that we pick up the tab, that
Speaker 1: the American taxpayer picks up the tab. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the reality is that America pays something like
Speaker 1: two d two hundred and fifty million dollars a year
Speaker 1: into NATO, depending on what exercises are run that year.
Speaker 1: It's a very low cost investment for US, and it's
Speaker 1: the most successful military alliance, maybe the most successful alliance
Speaker 1: America has had historically.
Speaker 2: Full stop.
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you want to costs, I get it,
Speaker 1: but like we'd be a little bit smarter about it.
Speaker 1: And if we are cutting costs, my question is where's
Speaker 1: my tax break? And I don't just mean that like ironically.
Speaker 1: I mean if you're like slashing the size of the
Speaker 1: government in half, then it stands the reason that the
Speaker 1: budget is slashed in half and that the American, average
Speaker 1: American worker should be taking home more money. Right, But
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that in the conversation anywhere.
Speaker 3: Sure, And that's a good point, Jack, because it's not
Speaker 3: a country club, right, It's not that we have to
Speaker 3: make up for the dues, and it's about spending money
Speaker 3: on your own defense. So if we say, you know,
Speaker 3: some of the extreme views would be pull out of NATO,
Speaker 3: well we're not gonna save any money. We're gonna have
Speaker 3: to actually pay more money to build our own defense
Speaker 3: because we're going to be an island of one. So
Speaker 3: if you amass all the other countries in NATO, they
Speaker 3: actually have a pretty substantial military capablity capability and within
Speaker 3: five years it could be a substantial military capability, right,
Speaker 3: because they are like they are taking this stuff serious.
Speaker 3: So it isn't our own national security, It isn't charity.
Speaker 3: And at the same time that we're looking at whether
Speaker 3: we should have this alliance, and I agree with the
Speaker 3: Jack it's probably the most significant military alliance in history.
Speaker 3: Our adversaries are building alliances. They're going the other direction.
Speaker 3: Look at the conference they just had, the Shanghai co Operation.
Speaker 1: Russia keeps attacking NATO and trying to undermine NATO because
Speaker 1: it knows it's the biggest threat to.
Speaker 3: Them, absolutely, and they're trying to build their alliances, even
Speaker 3: including countries that have historically been more aligned with the
Speaker 3: West are now they're trying to build those So we're
Speaker 3: trying to withdraw at the same time they're trying to expand,
Speaker 3: and and we're ignoring the fact that the US could
Speaker 3: lose its place as the primary country, you know, the
Speaker 3: indispensal nation in the world because of our own actions, right,
Speaker 3: we're almost enhancing.
Speaker 4: And for those who are disinterested, I mean we've talked
Speaker 4: about this a little bit too, who think that we
Speaker 4: can take an early nineteenth century view of America first,
Speaker 4: and that are only concern ourselves with immediately what's crossing
Speaker 4: our borders. As all of these things turn south. It's
Speaker 4: about it's going to have an effect on the global economy,
Speaker 4: which is going to have an effect on the pocketbooks
Speaker 4: of every single American. I mean, do you think the
Speaker 4: Chinese are going to take Taiwan? I know, you guys know,
Speaker 4: do you think they're going to take Taiwan and the
Speaker 4: global economy will go on just ticking along as though
Speaker 4: nothing has happened. I mean, look what Taiwan is the
Speaker 4: source of all the chips. Then the video uses that
Speaker 4: micron technology uses come from Taiwan. Semi what's it, Semi Semiconductor, TSM,
Speaker 4: semiconductor manufacturer, it's anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, Andy. I mean, we have this game
Speaker 1: twice before, right, isolationism, and it didn't work out either time.
Speaker 1: Another interesting example is Japan. Japan self isolated itself for
Speaker 1: something like five or six hundred years, and because they
Speaker 1: did that to kind of preserve their own culture and
Speaker 1: not look outward, they felt so far behind technologically that
Speaker 1: when they came back into contact with the West and
Speaker 1: with other civilizations, they were so far behind. They were
Speaker 1: getting their asses handed to them. And that's why the
Speaker 1: Meiji Restoration happened and they disposed of the shogunate and
Speaker 1: restored the emperor and all this other kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was because isolationism just doesn't.
Speaker 3: Work, especially if there's a global economy.
Speaker 1: Right right, We're not in sixteen hundred either, right.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly. This is it's kind of odd that we're
Speaker 3: even having this debate. My point and then I'll get
Speaker 3: off it is I think a lot of the people
Speaker 3: were having a debate with don't actually believe what they're saying,
Speaker 3: because they didn't a year ago. So I don't understand
Speaker 3: how one could go shift your entire geopolitical view of
Speaker 3: the world, whether the US should be and shouldn't be,
Speaker 3: that that dramatically that quick without anything other than events
Speaker 3: like the invasion of Ukraine happening, right, the expansion of
Speaker 3: Chinese influence around the world withdraw of US foreign assistants
Speaker 3: being made up by our adversaries, especially China. I mean,
Speaker 3: one of the things that came out of the Shanghai
Speaker 3: Cooperation Organization was that they're going to come up with
Speaker 3: the Developmental Bank collectively, right, what is that going to do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: It's going to replace everything that we were doing these
Speaker 3: developmental countries to build allies and training partners right, that's
Speaker 3: what they didn't. They didn't just come up with that.
Speaker 3: They saw us doing it, they thought it was working,
Speaker 3: and then they saw us withdraw and so they're going
Speaker 3: to replace you know, the US with the Chinese version
Speaker 3: of that, you know, and now not just Chinese, it's
Speaker 3: with these twenty nations that went to China to have
Speaker 3: this song.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so what are you guys thinking in terms
Speaker 2: of like, uh, you know, in twenty twelve when we
Speaker 2: saw Russian Russian jets penetrate Turkish air space, Turkey shot
Speaker 2: down some shot down the jet. But a thought is
Speaker 2: a thought process or the analysis a little bit different
Speaker 2: now because Russia did go full scale invasion into Ukraine.
Speaker 2: They're not you know, maybe they're not. They're operating at
Speaker 2: a different level. Is our NATO allies the people that
Speaker 2: are on the front lines, whether it's Romania, Poland or whoever,
Speaker 2: are they more worried about like shooting down a Russian
Speaker 2: jet that breaches airspace for twelve minutes? As like are
Speaker 2: they worried about escalation wearing compared to when Turkey shot
Speaker 2: them down, like they you know, didn't do shit.
Speaker 4: I don't think the difference is overseas the differences here
Speaker 4: in the United States. So when you think about it,
Speaker 4: I mean it was it was the same I mean
Speaker 4: Trump administration when it was Yes, it was the Trump
Speaker 4: administration when when all those Russian contractors, we killed all
Speaker 4: those Russian contractors in Syria. But the difference was that
Speaker 4: you had you had Madison McMaster right, who were who
Speaker 4: were shaping the environment. I mean had you had adults
Speaker 4: who understood the rules of geopolitics and understood where the
Speaker 4: Russians were back down. You had guys like you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not blaming the current Sencom commander, but you had
Speaker 4: guys like a Hotel then who had sent kam who
Speaker 4: was able to to craft shape the decision making so
Speaker 4: that with the Russians across the red line, everyone from
Speaker 4: the President downwards was on board with a rapid response,
Speaker 4: and the Russians backpedaled rapidly after that. They never did
Speaker 4: it again. They lost some two hundred and fifty and
Speaker 4: by the way, it wasn't just contractors. They lost a
Speaker 4: few other active duty guys too. Grass him Off, who
Speaker 4: was the general in Syria, admitted to that too. So
Speaker 4: you know, it was if you're talking about escalation, killing Russians,
Speaker 4: not just mercenaries, but but members of that military. You
Speaker 4: would think would bring them to the point of escalation,
Speaker 4: but it did not. And I think the difference is
Speaker 4: just because the guys involved in the decision making and
Speaker 4: shaping the president's view on this had years of national
Speaker 4: security experience behind them and Russia and understood Russian mentality.
Speaker 4: We're talking, we're talking for Hotel, we're talking Thomas who
Speaker 4: had so calm McMaster moulroy, Nick mcmulroy exactly.
Speaker 3: And I was with all those guys if I agree
Speaker 3: with you on their on their capabilities and leadership, that's
Speaker 3: for sure. And the only thing Russia understands is consequence
Speaker 3: is right. So I'm not saying you should shoot down
Speaker 3: a plenty for flying in there five minutes, But I'd say,
Speaker 3: what do they not want to see? I want to
Speaker 3: see military build up on their border. So every time
Speaker 3: something like that's happened, they should say, Okay, cool, we're
Speaker 3: doing another excise or putting some more uh, you know,
Speaker 3: NATO assets on the border every time, every time? Right,
Speaker 3: So what do they and what do they look for?
Speaker 3: They look for weaknesses? What's weakness? We just talked about
Speaker 3: it's how we started the podcast, right, So we just
Speaker 3: withdrew from the Balkan Security Initiative or some of the funding.
Speaker 3: Why so it's going to send a Russia message to Russia. Great,
Speaker 3: keep doing what we're doing, right, because these guys are
Speaker 3: backing down. But every time they do an incursion, NATO
Speaker 3: should do something different that Russia doesn't like, doesn't like.
Speaker 3: That's what that's the only thing they get some attention
Speaker 3: they don't care about. We can compliment them all day,
Speaker 3: we can appease them all day. All that does is
Speaker 3: inspire them to go further. That's what they're looking for,
Speaker 3: you know. So bayonet cliche that I'm sure our audience
Speaker 3: is tired of hearing, but we need to.
Speaker 1: I think I might have been saying it the last
Speaker 1: time I was on here that Americans are just like
Speaker 1: they're not cynical enough to be effective at foreign policy.
Speaker 1: We have these like childish ideas that like we're just
Speaker 1: gonna pat Kim Jong un on the back and he's
Speaker 1: gonna be our friends. You know, he's gonna play basketball
Speaker 1: with Obama or Trump and it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 3: They just look for that as a giant side of weakness.
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems bullshit happened with like Putin and
Speaker 2: Russia and uh Trump meeting in Alaska a month back,
Speaker 2: and literally nothing's happened besides escalating and probing NATO you know, defenses.
Speaker 4: It just inspired him, just inspired me continue moving air
Speaker 4: defense systems closer to the border. I mean, with the
Speaker 4: borders of NATO and Russia and Belarus, engaging perhaps not
Speaker 4: manned aircraft, but certainly drones if they are hitting in
Speaker 4: the direction of NATO s space, because it show intent. All right,
Speaker 4: these are all things that are within the rules of
Speaker 4: you know, within within rational rules of engagement, and yet
Speaker 4: send a message to Russia they're not escalatory. What are
Speaker 4: we gonna wait until drones to it to you know,
Speaker 4: to include those that might be carrying payloads, explosive payloads.
Speaker 4: Are we going to wait they cross that border or
Speaker 4: are we going to announce our intentions beforehand and say, hey, listen,
Speaker 4: if they cross such and such line and they're heading
Speaker 4: towards NATO territory, we're going to make the assumption that
Speaker 4: they are they're going to violate NATO airspace and we'll
Speaker 4: engage them early. We make that announcement early and then
Speaker 4: we follow through. I mean, what is Russia going to do?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: I mean it's I don't know.
Speaker 3: Just since we've been talking, I was just texted to
Speaker 3: ask if I could talk about the decision of the
Speaker 3: US to pause Patriot sales to the European allies. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's true, But what the hell point?
Speaker 3: We're sellized, right, so now we're actually hurting our own
Speaker 3: defense industry. We're gonna pause sales.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Weapon so speak. I mean it's it's purely in a
Speaker 1: defensive capability, and.
Speaker 3: We're selling it, they're buying it. It's not even a giveaway.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it should be the least controversial decision is
Speaker 3: to sell something to an ally for defense. So it
Speaker 3: just looks like we're trying to play to Russia and
Speaker 3: we've gotten zero out of playing.
Speaker 2: Well, why are we playing in Russia? What's the fucking
Speaker 2: point in that?
Speaker 4: We've learned a ton? By the way, I can't answer
Speaker 4: your question, D, but we've learned a ton as far
Speaker 4: as research and development by using our weapons systems, the
Speaker 4: weapon systems being used in Ukraine against Russia. You know,
Speaker 4: we've learned a lot about air defense, tactics and the
Speaker 4: Ukrainians have been masterful at the use of at the
Speaker 4: use of Patriot and we've learned about the limitations of
Speaker 4: attackers and high mars and a lot of our GPS
Speaker 4: guided ps well for all our right precision guided weapons.
Speaker 4: We've learned about, you know, because the Russians have absolutely
Speaker 4: within a period of weeks found counters to all those
Speaker 4: systems as we trip fed them to the Ukrainians, and
Speaker 4: just barely enough quantities, not enough quantities to change the
Speaker 4: direction of the war, but enough for the Russians to
Speaker 4: adapt and come up with countermeasures. But we've learned about that,
Speaker 4: We've learned how ineffective a lot of these weapons are
Speaker 4: in an incredibly intense EW environment. The Russians have massive
Speaker 4: EW systems every ten kilometers along the front, and it
Speaker 4: has changed. You know, We've talked a lot about drones here,
Speaker 4: but it's not so much drones themselves, it's how they're
Speaker 4: used and the contin continuous adaptive cycle which is less
Speaker 4: than thirty days, thirty days of where either the Russians
Speaker 4: Ukrainians will adapt to a new tactic and then adjust
Speaker 4: their industry to be able to produce a platform with
Speaker 4: the technology that is already that is already the next step.
Speaker 4: I mean, we can't do that. I mean we should
Speaker 4: be learning so much from that. And now the Ukrainians,
Speaker 4: remember we talked about this a lot, and there were
Speaker 4: a fair amount. You know, when the Marines got rid
Speaker 4: of their tanks, it was such a hugely emotional decision,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. Well it was a little premature. But
Speaker 4: the era of the man tank is now over because
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians have come up with a non man tank
Speaker 4: that operates with AI systems. I mean, it's incredibly sophisticated.
Speaker 4: And they said they were going to do this a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago, and the Russians were losing, you
Speaker 4: know at that time, Russians. I don't know what the
Speaker 4: toll is. Now, if the Russians lost like two thousand,
Speaker 4: two thousand tanks, you know a lot of them too,
Speaker 4: handheld weapons systems, and and so the question was our
Speaker 4: tank's really obsolutely what the man tank is? And the
Speaker 4: Ukrainians now have moved to to the next generation of tank.
Speaker 4: It's not y M one A four. It is an unmanned,
Speaker 4: much smaller version. Because you start putting human beings in
Speaker 4: the thing. Now you've got a cater for them, and
Speaker 4: you make that you make that platform more expensive, lower,
Speaker 4: more vulnerable. But the Ukrainians now have a rolling gun platform,
Speaker 4: highly capable with both missile and UH and and and guns.
Speaker 4: It can do everything that a tank can do. It's
Speaker 4: less vulnerable, and of course it's it's relatively expendable. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's a lot of money, but it's not you don't
Speaker 4: have human beings inside. So these are all things that
Speaker 4: we should be learning from and thanking the Ukrainians.
Speaker 3: But have always had what they call it a we
Speaker 3: call an offset strategy, right, trying to get make technological
Speaker 3: leaps in front of our adversaries. You know, the first
Speaker 3: was the nuclear weapons program, the second was mostly GPS
Speaker 3: and precision guide ammunitions. That could be the third offset.
Speaker 3: That's what they've been talking about Pentagon for decades. Is
Speaker 3: this advance everything that Andy just said, right, so, the
Speaker 3: integration of AI robotics, potentially quantum computing, and it's all
Speaker 3: happening now. But the question is and who's going to
Speaker 3: find it? It's already there, and the question is who's
Speaker 3: going to embrace it? Because we have so many legacy
Speaker 3: weapons systems and thoughts on warfare that it's almost like
Speaker 3: holding us back. Not that we need to develop it,
Speaker 3: because it's being developed, it's already there. It's whether we
Speaker 3: embrace it or not that's going to really determine whether
Speaker 3: the United States has that offset, and the offset being
Speaker 3: that we advance beyond our adversaries, or whether we actually
Speaker 3: lag behind, which should be the first time ever in
Speaker 3: a significant issue.
Speaker 4: McK I, I can't see any alternative to us lagging behind,
Speaker 4: and we're already lagging behind. You know, we don't and
Speaker 4: for a number of reasons, one of which is our
Speaker 4: acquisition cycles so incredibly slow and creaky. Yeah, defense industrial
Speaker 4: complex doesn't serve the needs of defense anymore. And you know,
Speaker 4: you've got you've got a handful of large defense contractors
Speaker 4: who are not the best, the most adaptive when it
Speaker 4: comes to this new technology. And we don't have that
Speaker 4: integration with civilian companies that exist in other countries, you know,
Speaker 4: from Ukraine, Israel, China. We don't. It's almost an a
Speaker 4: a serial relationship with with the big civilian tech companies.
Speaker 4: Think about Google, think about Amazon. You know they're not
Speaker 4: they're not They're not meshed in with with DoD and
Speaker 4: those are things that we should be concerned about, not
Speaker 4: you know, the poultry amount of money that we're spending
Speaker 4: on Baltic air defense. Because when I'm talking about really
Speaker 4: is going to have repercussions for ability to defend ourselves,
Speaker 4: not against Venezuelan fishing boats, I mean against against real threats.
Speaker 4: And and last thing I'll say the you know this,
Speaker 4: this cliche topic of asymmetry, Things are about to get
Speaker 4: more asymmetric than they ever have been before. You know,
Speaker 4: we're having we're having glimpses of this, and we we
Speaker 4: talk all the time about swarms of drones blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: We still don't have a credible short range air defense
Speaker 4: capability against such things, especially when you think about now
Speaker 4: that they are programmed with AI, they're resistant to e W.
Speaker 4: We're we're far behind the power cove and those are
Speaker 4: things that our defense department I think should be really
Speaker 4: worried about. Yeah, I'll take him off mute.
Speaker 2: And thank you, and no, sorry, I thought Jack was
Speaker 2: gonna ask a question just for our I want to ask, like,
Speaker 2: because I'm a dummy, I don't know anything about like
Speaker 2: how NATO works in terms of like decision structure. Now
Speaker 2: let's say this happens again, they breach airspace and stuff.
Speaker 2: Who makes the decision to be like scramble jets make
Speaker 2: take it out if you need to. You know who,
Speaker 2: like is the US involved in that decision?
Speaker 1: I mean it would be that country. You know that
Speaker 1: the sovereign air space is being violated. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the Estonian military would have to respond to that. However,
Speaker 1: they don't have any Jonia gets attacked, they can invoke
Speaker 1: Article five, which then that drags all of NATO ostensibly
Speaker 1: into the conflict.
Speaker 2: Yes, but yeah, because that recent like breach, they've scrambled
Speaker 2: like Italian f thirty fives because Estonia doesn't really have
Speaker 2: an air force at all. I mean it's like three
Speaker 2: and a half million people in that country.
Speaker 3: Well, you say, yeah, sovereign state, you can always request
Speaker 3: allies to come in. Jack's right. It's it's you have
Speaker 3: to invoke the articles too, right, It's not just it's
Speaker 3: just not like triggered. So they have to ask for
Speaker 3: Article five and then if they're attacked then then it
Speaker 3: is it is required. But it's actually if you really
Speaker 3: dig into the article, what is required is not clear.
Speaker 3: You know, does it mean immediate military reaction, does it
Speaker 3: mean a strongly worded statement from the country, does it
Speaker 3: mean moral support. We've always and I always viewed it
Speaker 3: as a military response, but there's now plenty of people
Speaker 3: making the argument that it is not as ironclads, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, analyst has made it out to be, which
Speaker 3: is even more worrisome and sounds great to Russia whenever
Speaker 3: they hear US debating things.
Speaker 2: Like that, yeah, waters it down. Just to touch a
Speaker 2: little bit on like, so Taiwan are an arms deal,
Speaker 2: Our arms package was canceled or paused. That was where
Speaker 2: six point four billion we talked about it really quick.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it works hand in hand with
Speaker 2: what's going on when the Baltics are like, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of hesitant to help keep supporting Ukraine. If you're China,
Speaker 2: who's like our nearest peer rival, what are you thinking,
Speaker 2: I mean, are you thinking, hey, maybe now's the time
Speaker 2: or in the next eighteen months is the time to
Speaker 2: go into.
Speaker 3: Taiwan, So it'll be fair on both to both sides.
Speaker 3: Please of this argument, I think the White House would
Speaker 3: say they're going into negotiations specific with China, that this
Speaker 3: is something they can withhold until those negotiations and use
Speaker 3: some kind of leverage on the flip side. It shows
Speaker 3: that the US is willing to throw an ally under
Speaker 3: the bus. Not just an ally, but actually we have
Speaker 3: the Taiwan Relations Act tra it requires us to support Tailan.
Speaker 3: We impose it ourselves, but up to the point where
Speaker 3: they can defend themselves. So obviously cutting off military assistance
Speaker 3: would be directly contrary to the law that we actually
Speaker 3: passed and imposed. So I think it's I don't think
Speaker 3: it's going to change Chinese view of whatever it is.
Speaker 3: They're going to negotiate economic security wise with the US,
Speaker 3: so it's not going to have the diviired defect. I
Speaker 3: think it's going to that taken with our lukewarm support
Speaker 3: of Ukraine against Russia, is making it more likely that
Speaker 3: China would do something toward Taiwan, even if it wasn't
Speaker 3: a full out invasion of Mapel blockade or something like that.
Speaker 3: If we stop providing support and we show somewhat of
Speaker 3: indifference to our other ally that's under attack, it only
Speaker 3: inspires China more. And it is the opposite of competing with.
Speaker 2: Our near perier there. It's capitulation jak Andy gave me something.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only thing I would point out is
Speaker 1: that the difference between the two, I mean, they have
Speaker 1: a lot of similarities, but I think one of the
Speaker 1: big differences is with Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia is that
Speaker 1: if the Russians decide to mobilize on those countries, it's
Speaker 1: all over in twenty four hours. If they decide to
Speaker 1: do it, and once they're there, there will be no
Speaker 1: heroic American rescue. It will be a done deal. The
Speaker 1: difference with Taiwan is that it's not going to be
Speaker 1: over in twenty four hours. The first twenty four to
Speaker 1: forty eight hours will be pretty ugly, I think, but
Speaker 1: there's going to be a period of time where China
Speaker 1: is going to be lobbing ballistic missiles and doing airstrikes
Speaker 1: and hitting them with electronic warfare, and then at some
Speaker 1: point the amphibious landing is going to come and we
Speaker 1: don't know is that a week in, is it two
Speaker 1: weeks in, is it a month in? We don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, either way, they're both incredibly dangerous scenarios.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and actually took place, took part in the war
Speaker 3: scenario with China and Taiwan where the US did militarily
Speaker 3: interview complicated outcome, but essentially everybody's a loser. We win technically,
Speaker 3: I could, I could go down the list of just
Speaker 3: how much it cost us, but it was a pyrrhic victory. Indeed,
Speaker 3: I mean it, and and I'm not an economist, it
Speaker 3: destroys the international economy, right, so it is it is
Speaker 3: important to point out that this is nothing's taken in isolation.
Speaker 3: We could essentially win militarily against China's attempt to invade
Speaker 3: if we went all in, but we would lose a lot.
Speaker 3: I don't think the US popular. I don't think the
Speaker 3: US is willing to send men and women to die
Speaker 3: for this, so that's another issue. It's a political issue.
Speaker 3: But either way, everybody loses and the world economy is
Speaker 3: substantially affected negatively.
Speaker 1: And in that like tabletop exercise mix, how many warships
Speaker 1: does America lose?
Speaker 2: This?
Speaker 3: It was about a year ago, so I can't, I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get it wrong. I think it's that
Speaker 3: was actually published. There's an online version of it. If
Speaker 3: if I can find it, I'll send it to you.
Speaker 3: But it was I want to say six or seven, Okay,
Speaker 3: Japan itself, the actual country was devastated.
Speaker 1: How why did why does the why did the Chinese
Speaker 1: hit Japan? What's the but to hit the forward operating
Speaker 1: bases that we have there.
Speaker 3: So yeah, under the scenario which they have to make
Speaker 3: some assumptions that could be wrong, was that the US
Speaker 3: would actually militarily intervene, right once we did they hit
Speaker 3: our base, as you're right, Jack in Japan bringing in Japan,
Speaker 3: and Japan's a treaty at ally anyway, right, so then
Speaker 3: they're in and it's devastating.
Speaker 2: Japan.
Speaker 3: Taiwan is not even worth taking by the end of
Speaker 3: this thing, right, I mean, it's like why I even
Speaker 3: want it? And China loses a lot, and they throw
Speaker 3: mass amounts of people into it, and it teeters on
Speaker 3: a nuclear engagement which all sides, you know, the whole
Speaker 3: mutually assured destruction thing takes takes hold and basically into conflict,
Speaker 3: but ultimately nobody's a winner. It's in every sense of
Speaker 3: the world, the pureic victory that nobody wants, and the
Speaker 3: global economy is just completely devastated. So I think you
Speaker 3: can google it. I would assume it was it was
Speaker 3: the most recent one. But the US should pay close
Speaker 3: attention to that. And so what is the alternative, Well,
Speaker 3: it's the alternative is to put up such a united
Speaker 3: front that China doesn't try it. We want to avoid war, right,
Speaker 3: You avoid war by being strong and appearing strong, And
Speaker 3: that's I think what the US should do, not only
Speaker 3: in Europe but also in the Indo Pacific. Pulling back
Speaker 3: only makes war more likely that that we'd have to
Speaker 3: then join later after it's already started and have a
Speaker 3: lot to make up for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's another aspect to this that has to
Speaker 4: do with a view of deterrence that is more sophisticated
Speaker 4: than I think the American public understands, and that is yes.
Speaker 4: Oh and by the way, I'd like to point out
Speaker 4: that those six ships lost were all aircraft carriers at
Speaker 4: a total loss to the US government of seventy two
Speaker 4: billion dollars.
Speaker 2: All aircraft carriers, and or maybe two or three of them.
Speaker 1: How in the hell would we have six carriers in
Speaker 1: the Pacific?
Speaker 2: All the carriers I don't even remember. Continued we have
Speaker 2: on the show where Andy hates aircraft carriers.
Speaker 4: No, but I mean, but in defensive aircraft carriers. They're
Speaker 4: getting back to. The terrence is that you know are
Speaker 4: and and we talked about this with you know, the
Speaker 4: Marine Corps in particulate, but we we are primed to
Speaker 4: go to war. Our defense budget, our training, we prepare
Speaker 4: as though we're going to war with the near peer
Speaker 4: competitive competitor. Who's that near peer competitor? It is China?
Speaker 4: All right, everyone knows that. Okay, would we actually do
Speaker 4: that over Taiwan? Well, between the four of us semi
Speaker 4: cognizanti here, we know probably not. But the whole point
Speaker 4: about this, the terrence is the ambiguity. You don't admit that.
Speaker 4: You don't have to have a government say hey, we
Speaker 4: wouldn't really use all this ship because you just undermined terrence. Right,
Speaker 4: You keep the Chinese guessing whether or not people agree
Speaker 4: with you or not, whether or not ninety five percent
Speaker 4: of the American public goes, no, we don't want to
Speaker 4: go to war with that. You, regardless Democrat or Republican,
Speaker 4: never tell the Chinese that will never give indications to
Speaker 4: the Chinese that you are not one hundred percent prepared
Speaker 4: to go to war with them if they go off
Speaker 4: to Taiwan.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I.
Speaker 1: Try to like lay on people when this topic comes up,
Speaker 1: is you know this idea that we won't go to
Speaker 1: war for Taiwan and or we won't go to war
Speaker 1: over some rocks in the South China Sea that are
Speaker 1: just visible during low tide, right, that we're not going
Speaker 1: to do that, And that's probably there's probably some truth
Speaker 1: to that, but China may not see it that way.
Speaker 1: And if they start lobbing ballistic missiles at an American warship,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a carrier, maybe it's something smaller, and they
Speaker 1: sink that ship, let me tell you something. That's going
Speaker 1: to be the next to nine to eleven type event
Speaker 1: for Americans. And the New States are going to play
Speaker 1: or they're going to show the pictures of every soldier
Speaker 1: that died on that ship. There's going to be memorials.
Speaker 1: But people, and look, we were Americans. We know this
Speaker 1: country and we know what Americans are like. America will
Speaker 1: flip the fuck out over that. They will absolutely lose
Speaker 1: it and they will fight a war over that. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt in my mind.
Speaker 3: Well, harbor, there you go. Your isolation is still then.
Speaker 1: Right right up until you can't be anymore.
Speaker 2: That's right, It's interesting Jack that we would America would
Speaker 2: totally flip the switch.
Speaker 1: Yeah once, Yeah, all those people that Mick was saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, do you really believe this? They would flip
Speaker 1: the switch and it would go from isolationism to you know,
Speaker 1: let's nuke China. Yeah, they just yeah, absolutely emotional views, totally.
Speaker 2: All right, moving on, Uh, let's touch on a couple
Speaker 2: other subjects. Unless you guys have anything else, please bring
Speaker 2: feel free. Gaza. Israel started their offensive into Gaza City.
Speaker 2: I think they're trying to They were trying to move
Speaker 2: upwards of a million people out of there into the South.
Speaker 2: I think like thirty or forty percent of stayed in
Speaker 2: Gaza City. It's getting worse. If you can imagine that
Speaker 2: it could get worse. Uh, un recently deemed it a genocide.
Speaker 2: Editorializing for a second, I have it to agree. Uh,
Speaker 2: what are they looking to get out of here? They said,
Speaker 2: there's about three or four Thousandjmask guys in and around
Speaker 2: Gaza City. What is what's going on? Guys? You guys
Speaker 2: tell me. I don't know. I get too emotional with this.
Speaker 3: So it's about three hundred and fifty thousand left the city. Okay,
Speaker 3: so that leaves about six hundred thousand left. It was
Speaker 3: about un billion. I think you're right about the it's
Speaker 3: about three thousand Hamas. Israel has about three divisions now
Speaker 3: engaged in the fight, and they are really heavy handed
Speaker 3: when it comes to like preparatory fire. So they've been
Speaker 3: just taking out buildings.
Speaker 2: They're just knocking down fucking skyscrapers or whatever.
Speaker 3: So it's a complex military problem. I don't need to
Speaker 3: tell anybody on this podcast, but you know, you're fighting
Speaker 3: in buildings, you're fighting on the surface, the surface is
Speaker 3: completely obstructed because of the damage. Then you have the
Speaker 3: tunnels you have. You know, they believe it's the twenty
Speaker 3: remaining living hostages or basically human shields in these tunnels.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a super complicated military task that's going
Speaker 3: to take four or five six months, maybe hopefully. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm all for every Hamas person being stomped out, But
Speaker 3: there's a massive and we talk about a lot in
Speaker 3: this podcast, but I'm sure everybody knows it a massive
Speaker 3: humanitarian crisis and it's only getting worse. There should be
Speaker 3: around four hundred food to present points for the two
Speaker 3: million people. There's four and they're all in the south,
Speaker 3: so it's a it's an effort to move the population
Speaker 3: to the south. Whether they'll meet their objectives, I'm not
Speaker 3: even I mean, you can even look with the IDF statement,
Speaker 3: it's not even sure what the objectives are. Any you
Speaker 3: never stop a mess out. There'll always be some you know,
Speaker 3: person who joins an ideology but they've seriously degraded their
Speaker 3: military capacity to harm Israel. I would say, I'm positive,
Speaker 3: and then the last thing it's say on So as
Speaker 3: far as the UN declaration of genocide, it's important to
Speaker 3: point out that wasn't a vote of one hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety three members. It wasn't a vote of a forty
Speaker 3: seven members of the Human Rights Council. It was a
Speaker 3: commission of three people. Okay, it's an Australian, South African
Speaker 3: and Canadian Canadian, so with three individuals that decided that.
Speaker 3: So it's a I'm not saying that it didn't happen.
Speaker 3: They did. But it's also important to point out that's
Speaker 3: three people who've determined it. It's not the United Nations,
Speaker 3: even though they say, you know, Tonited Nations commission, but
Speaker 3: when you dig into it, it's three people it will
Speaker 3: have an effect in the sense that, you know, the
Speaker 3: ic J and the ICC will use it, you know,
Speaker 3: and they're investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we can you know, mince words in
Speaker 2: terms of like all right, maybe it's not a genocide,
Speaker 2: but like crimes against humanity, war crimes. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: clear they're starving these people. They still haven't given up aid.
Speaker 2: The GHF has to use Israeli food. It's like, bro
Speaker 2: open the fucking floodgates if you're gonna try and fucking
Speaker 2: smoke these people. And yeah, there's three thousand pieces of
Speaker 2: shit which are hamasque guys one hundred percent. I'm not
Speaker 2: a fan of Hamas and they should get clipped. But
Speaker 2: at what course is it at the cost of one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand civilians And at what cost is it like
Speaker 2: another thirty thousand fucking extremists. It can rebrand that, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're still gonna go after Israel. Bro If I
Speaker 2: was born in Palestine, in Gaza and I've been getting
Speaker 2: bombed my whole fucking life, I'm not a fan of Israel,
Speaker 2: point blank, end the story. And I'm probably fighting against them. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm getting fucking it. I'm getting fucking worked up. So
Speaker 2: I was like, Nick, I mean, you're totally right in
Speaker 2: terms of like the rational way of doing this, and
Speaker 2: it's like, it's completely irrational what goes on there. It's
Speaker 2: completely irrational. The IDF doesn't even believe in this shit.
Speaker 2: Mussa doesn't even believe in this shit. It's only that
Speaker 2: war cabinet. Andy, what do you got thoughts and comments? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, you know, I think back to in
Speaker 4: the immediate aftermath is seven October, more group of US
Speaker 4: Special Operations officers went over to Israel. They were sent
Speaker 4: there by DoD to kind of talk to the IDF
Speaker 4: about the upcoming Campaig. And these were guys, in fact
Speaker 4: there was a marine Tusar and that they've been involved
Speaker 4: in the campaign as was I. Not that I'm you know,
Speaker 4: pounding my chest here, involved in supporting iraqis offt going
Speaker 4: into Mosul, right, And so they were there just to
Speaker 4: kind of talk them through what an amazingly complex operations
Speaker 4: was going to be. I know that's over used, but
Speaker 4: that even when you are trying your hardest to minimize
Speaker 4: civilian casualties, you're going to cause a lot of civilian
Speaker 4: casualties of course, they had no idea that the number
Speaker 4: of civilian casualties were going to be on the scale
Speaker 4: that have occurring guards and Mozill was nothing like that.
Speaker 4: And Mozill was you know, the Islamic State arguably were
Speaker 4: a harder target, harder proposition than Hamas dug In as
Speaker 4: they were into Mosil, you know, a city of some
Speaker 4: say seven hundred and fifty thousand, but it was two million,
Speaker 4: you know, certainly at the outset of the wall. But anyway,
Speaker 4: my point is this. I saw in one of these
Speaker 4: guys when he got back, and he just he said,
Speaker 4: you know, we explained all this, and the Israelis were like,
Speaker 4: we don't care. You know, it's a different frame of rere.
Speaker 4: We just don't care. They civilian countualties not an issue
Speaker 4: for us. We're concerned about protecting our guys. And that's
Speaker 4: that's been their mentality. From the outset, Israeli casualties, military
Speaker 4: casualties and GAZA have been incredibly low, all right, And
Speaker 4: yet you know, and I'm using you know, guys, no,
Speaker 4: I'm writing a book and this doesn't make me an expert,
Speaker 4: but I'm using sources among the IDF as well as
Speaker 4: sources objective observers. You know, one of the problems here
Speaker 4: is that we talked about this on the show. The
Speaker 4: IDF falls short. Their infantry doesn't operate well at all.
Speaker 4: They're not well trained. They don't fight at night. They
Speaker 4: do not fight at night. Let me repeat that, they
Speaker 4: do not fight at night. They don't train at night.
Speaker 4: Now they're special operations do, but they don't. They don't
Speaker 4: clear and hold, they're not trained to clear and hold.
Speaker 4: None of these are excuses. I'm trying to explain, though,
Speaker 4: that there are a number of reasons behind the high
Speaker 4: number of civilian casualties. One is absolutely, absolutely one is
Speaker 4: a mentality of vengeance. We will show them, and you know,
Speaker 4: the head of Israeli intelligence, in military intelligence, caught on
Speaker 4: tape saying we will kill you know, and in fact
Speaker 4: they've killed more than that, but we will kill fifty
Speaker 4: at Palestinians. Forevery Israeli that died, and he said, and
Speaker 4: he's quoted as saying, I don't care if they're children.
Speaker 4: So this was a very widespread, this feeling of vengeance,
Speaker 4: coupled with the knowledge that their own infantry, their own military,
Speaker 4: were not good. They checkpoint soldiers, they've been operating in
Speaker 4: the West Bank. That's the only operation that they've focused in.
Speaker 4: And this is a niche just saying this, getting this
Speaker 4: from Israelis. They don't zero their weapons, they don't train
Speaker 4: at night. They pull back into these farbs every single day.
Speaker 4: That's why they have to go back and clear again.
Speaker 4: And when they clear again, they lead with fire always,
Speaker 4: so they're clearing the same area over and over again
Speaker 4: and flattening those areas. And you have civilians who have
Speaker 4: come back into those areas, perhaps overnight to retrieve things
Speaker 4: or whatever, thinking they're safe, and they are not. So
Speaker 4: there's a lot of things going on that may not
Speaker 4: be purposeful, but it certainly kind of from our point
Speaker 4: of view, targeting negligence. And then you have certainly an
Speaker 4: undercurrent of feeling that they're not dealing with real human beings,
Speaker 4: and that is prevalent a lot of people you talk to.
Speaker 4: It's amazing people who otherwise seem cultured and compassionate, and
Speaker 4: yet when they talk about Palestinians, it's at a different,
Speaker 4: different level, and it's a very much kind of a
Speaker 4: nuss and then mentality. Now, so that targeting methodology is
Speaker 4: different than ours. Their acceptance of collateral damage is off
Speaker 4: to charts different than ours in number of people that
Speaker 4: they are within their rules of engagement allowed to kill,
Speaker 4: to kill like a Hermas going after a her mass leader.
Speaker 4: You know, a hundred civilians And I'm throwing numbers around here,
Speaker 4: but one hundred civilians can die if you're going after
Speaker 4: well those that that formula. Two things have happened to it.
Speaker 4: The number of civilians accepted at every level of mass
Speaker 4: do that they kill has gone up, and and the
Speaker 4: decisions on who can make that the the threshold and
Speaker 4: who can make those decisions has been pushed down to
Speaker 4: battalion and brigade level, And so you get this mentality
Speaker 4: of I don't care how many guys die as long
Speaker 4: as I protect my soldiers. And frankly, I've seen that
Speaker 4: in US officers too, but it's not you know, and
Speaker 4: it's reprehensible whatever you see it. So you've got all that,
Speaker 4: and then I would say, yes, you've got you've got
Speaker 4: and I couldn't put a number on it. But you
Speaker 4: have purposeful war crimes sort of that have gone on,
Speaker 4: and there's enough evidence melting off that I'm talking about
Speaker 4: snipers shooting people in their head. You know, clearly unarmed
Speaker 4: and more than anecdotal weather, it's that children being brought
Speaker 4: in the hospitals with headshots, you know, from a distance,
Speaker 4: so it was a sniper through a scope, and there's
Speaker 4: no way they could have been mistaken for there is
Speaker 4: enough of that going on not being investigated. Ostensibly, there
Speaker 4: is a process that the IDF will tell you, because
Speaker 4: remember a lot of my sources coming from the IDF,
Speaker 4: they will tell you here, we have a process to
Speaker 4: investigate every time this stuff happens. That is true, but
Speaker 4: they haven't come up with a single conviction yet of
Speaker 4: a single soldier. And part of the reason is that
Speaker 4: the process works so slowly they can't find witnesses, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera. So you know, the last thing, I'll say,
Speaker 4: a lot of there's a lot of discussion. Make this
Speaker 4: all you know, this will resonance something we're writing, but
Speaker 4: a lot of discussion about the role of artificial intelligence
Speaker 4: and targeting, and the Guardian road a an article on it.
Speaker 4: There's a good West Point think Tank article on this too.
Speaker 4: They use a couple of systems. Lavender is one that's known.
Speaker 4: Another one is Gospel. Well, use of those artificial intelligence
Speaker 4: systems by themselves don't constitute a war crime. They are
Speaker 4: essentially I mean, it's very low level AI. It's the
Speaker 4: really decision point, a decision support mechanisms to narrow the
Speaker 4: field down when you're making a decision to pull the
Speaker 4: trigger or not. The problem is this, it's not in
Speaker 4: use of those employment of the systems. It's that the
Speaker 4: human being, that the human judgment in how those systems
Speaker 4: are being implemented has gradually got less and less, so
Speaker 4: that people are making targeting decisions based purely on what
Speaker 4: this decision support matrix is providing them without you know,
Speaker 4: without all the stuff that we put into it with
Speaker 4: you do we have do we have sufficient reason all
Speaker 4: right to go after this particular individual as an example.
Speaker 4: So you've got a lot of a lot of factors there.
Speaker 4: And I said that was the last piece of the
Speaker 4: last piece I'll say is when when it comes to
Speaker 4: starving civilians and the Israelis will tell you this is
Speaker 4: not a deliberate policy of ours from the idea point
Speaker 4: of view, that is true. From the idea point of view,
Speaker 4: this is about population control.
Speaker 2: You cut off.
Speaker 4: Food into one area to persuade the population to move
Speaker 4: out then you can move in right and find the
Speaker 4: hamask and it's it's a very crude form of population control.
Speaker 4: But they haven't been the way they implemented it has
Speaker 4: been incompetent, uh And I say that in that favor.
Speaker 4: It hasn't been that, Okay, we're going to wipe everyone
Speaker 4: out and starve their death. It's they the messaging to
Speaker 4: the local population has been cac handed. They've moved civilians
Speaker 4: back and forth back into free fire zones inadvertently. All
Speaker 4: kinds of things have gone wrong so that civilians are
Speaker 4: afraid to move, They're afraid to find food, they're afraid
Speaker 4: to move from sector to sector. So all of these
Speaker 4: things are combining, you know, to create what has happened.
Speaker 4: And then at the same time you have a government
Speaker 4: that is quite frightening in its in some of it's
Speaker 4: you know, the the thing, it's official comments that it's made.
Speaker 4: And you take guys, I know everyone wants to talked
Speaker 4: about Ben Gavier and Small Dridge, but when you have
Speaker 4: a photograph taken of yourself, you know, with the thumbs
Speaker 4: up in front of graffiti that says death to Arabs,
Speaker 4: and you are the you know, whatever Small Ridge is
Speaker 4: ben Gavier and you're the minister, you're you're a cabinet member.
Speaker 4: What message is that sending? And we've seen the way
Speaker 4: Ben Gavier has treated cases of police or security forces
Speaker 4: on the West Bank, reported for turning a blind eye
Speaker 4: when when Palestinian villages are getting burnt to the ground.
Speaker 4: So there's all all these factors at play, and it's
Speaker 4: it's a tragedy for Israel. They may be winning in
Speaker 4: the short term. They may you know, they've they performed
Speaker 4: well on the global stage as far as disabling Hisbolla,
Speaker 4: going after Iran, calling Iran's bluff, and as you guys
Speaker 4: have pointed out, reducing the threat from Hamas. But what
Speaker 4: about the long term strategic effect on the state of Israel.
Speaker 4: It can't it can't be good, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: as we talked about, for every every Palestinian killed, there's
Speaker 4: a family, and there's there's you know, young men who
Speaker 4: are going to grow up and with a tremendous amount
Speaker 4: of antipathy to it. So they're creating I would argue,
Speaker 4: problems down the line that no one seems to really
Speaker 4: be paying attention to. You can't wipe out an entire
Speaker 4: population such that you never have to worry about them again.
Speaker 4: Surely that it's a lesson of history.
Speaker 2: Whilstat who wants it, who wants it? Act make you
Speaker 2: guys like the Irishman, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know that I have much more to say than these
Speaker 1: guys have been really on target, And I just say that,
Speaker 1: you know, from my point of view, the massive civilian casualties,
Speaker 1: the demographic displacement, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure all
Speaker 1: appears to me to meet the definition of an ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, quite frankly, I'm just deeply ashamed of both
Speaker 1: the Biden and the Trump administration for making us complacent
Speaker 1: or complicit, I should say, with it make anything.
Speaker 3: There's never going to be an excuse for starving a child. Right,
Speaker 3: So you can both support Israel in any country's absolute
Speaker 3: right to defend themselves and to eradicate the world of
Speaker 3: terrorist organizations that want to kill your civilians did and
Speaker 3: you can condemn not being not being you know, taking
Speaker 3: the needful to avoid civilian casualties. Sixty five thousand dead
Speaker 3: right now in Gaza, and the use of food is
Speaker 3: any kind of leverage of war. It's up for a
Speaker 3: commission or to determine this. But that is why we
Speaker 3: have the Geneva Convention. I mean, it was one of
Speaker 3: the first things that was discussed when we talked at
Speaker 3: the end of World War two we saw eighty million
Speaker 3: people killed or two, right, was the first thing is
Speaker 3: you can't starve civilians. Certainly women, children, elderly were a
Speaker 3: military objective. So the extent that that's happening again, you
Speaker 3: can see it. People can make their own determination, but
Speaker 3: that needs to be investigated, and if that was in
Speaker 3: fact the case, there should be some people helped responssible.
Speaker 3: So I think you can both support Israel as I do.
Speaker 3: And it's also important to point out, I mean people
Speaker 3: act like Israel's homogeneous. There's huge differences of opinion inside
Speaker 3: Israel right now, and there's a lot of people don't
Speaker 3: support the continuation of this war, including in the Israeli
Speaker 3: defense forces all the way to the top. So it
Speaker 3: would be really good if this could come to an end.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well said, all right, last bit, Bogger Mair
Speaker 2: Base two point zero. Are we excited about this or
Speaker 2: what's going on? How do we feel.
Speaker 3: We actually signed that? I mean, the first Roup administration
Speaker 3: doesn't really shouldn't really matter which administration it is. US
Speaker 3: should obligate itself and then it's honored by every other one.
Speaker 3: But just since that doesn't seem to be the case anymore,
Speaker 3: the first administration did the Doha twenty twenty agreement, of
Speaker 3: which withdrawal of all US forces out of Afghanistan was
Speaker 3: a major part of it. I disagreed with that. I
Speaker 3: disagreed with how we left. I think we should have
Speaker 3: left a residual force. Obviously tried to keep our troops
Speaker 3: out of harms way as much as possible, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't just the counter terrorism effort. It was the strategic importance.
Speaker 3: Where it is so now to be talking about paying
Speaker 3: up with some a billion dollars to the Taliban to
Speaker 3: go back, I think validates my point then and now.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think
Speaker 3: of Taliban will allow it. But that the last I
Speaker 3: heard is that they're saying a billion dollars a month,
Speaker 3: which is basically saying, now, why we're talking about this
Speaker 3: out loud?
Speaker 2: I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is one of the weirdest grifts I've
Speaker 1: heard recently, Like where is the constituency for this. Where
Speaker 1: are the Americans that are like, we need to go
Speaker 1: back into Afghanistan. You just got out. Let's go back in, guys,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's give it the old college try
Speaker 1: one more time. Who is saying that? Fucking no one?
Speaker 3: It's I don't understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah it it.
Speaker 3: It goes to the point of making your argument then invalid.
Speaker 3: And now to Jack's point, I can't imagine anybody that thinks, uh,
Speaker 3: this is worth that or how it would actually work
Speaker 3: out we actually deploy people into the middle of Taliban country.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, yeah it look it looked weird as you know,
Speaker 2: it looked odd as fuck. I mean the memes were
Speaker 2: out there where they're showing like the C seventeen unloading,
Speaker 2: like the Barger King and stuff like that, like we're
Speaker 2: so back and stuff. Hopefully it doesn't happen. Uh So,
Speaker 2: I mean that it was it guys, incredible show. I know,
Speaker 2: mix gotta run, Jack's gotta go to brunch, and he's
Speaker 2: got to do bicep curls.
Speaker 1: Uh So we got a lot going on. I did
Speaker 1: high rocks training today. I gotta make sure I tell
Speaker 1: everyone that I did high rocks training today. Or I
Speaker 1: won't make any gains.
Speaker 2: It's nobody knows what that is.
Speaker 1: So okay, it's okay, I've thrown it out there. It's
Speaker 1: out there in the in the public sphere. So I
Speaker 1: actually legitimately exercised. Now it's efficial.
Speaker 4: What is what's high rocks?
Speaker 2: It's it's a.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's actually not it's a I think it
Speaker 1: might be Australian, but it's uh, it's like conditioning, exercise,
Speaker 1: endurance conditioning. So high Rocks is actually an event. I've
Speaker 1: never done the actual event, but like half of it
Speaker 1: is running and then there's like road machines and medicine
Speaker 1: balls and the ski machine and the all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So like as far as like the training
Speaker 1: for it, it's that it's like today, you know, sprinting
Speaker 1: three hundred meters and then a row machine sprint another
Speaker 1: three hundred meters. Uh, you know, do dumbbell lunges, sprint
Speaker 1: another three hundred meters and do the road at whatever,
Speaker 1: and it goes.
Speaker 2: On and on. I love it. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: the progression pictures. All right, boys, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Really, hey, guys, I want to tell all of you
Speaker 1: today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses
Speaker 1: both the Teamhouse podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the
Speaker 1: high Side News outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: The newsletter is gonna be once a week. It's gonna
Speaker 1: come into your inbox and you're gonna get the most
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Speaker 1: as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never
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Speaker 2: What you're gonna get.
Speaker 1: So this is a once a week email. It'll slide
Speaker 1: into your inbox and it will have you know the
Speaker 1: greatest hits of that week.
Speaker 3: It's really good man.
Speaker 4: Checking it out.
Speaker 1: The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast, dot kit dot com,
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Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You go there and you enter into your email lists,
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