Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Speaker 1: Eagle one from Eagle Speak at seer Shure your home
Speaker 1: for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime,
Speaker 1: and welcome board everybody, right, you can join us here
Speaker 1: for the new year, season sixteen of the mid Rats podcast.
Speaker 1: Well you appreciate you and who will are with us live,
Speaker 1: I'd like to invite you to go ahead and find
Speaker 1: the chat room if you will have it on during
Speaker 1: the course of the show, and if you have an
Speaker 1: observation you want to share or even a question you
Speaker 1: want to address to the three of us, that's a
Speaker 1: great place to do because we'll be watching it during
Speaker 1: the course of the show and we'd love to take
Speaker 1: your ideas on board. And as always i'll do the
Speaker 1: Aultar call. If you're with us live or you're new
Speaker 1: to mid Rats and you don't already, you can go
Speaker 1: over to iTunes, Spreaker, wherever you get your podcasts, look
Speaker 1: us up, find us and subscribe that way. If you
Speaker 1: can't join us live all the time, you can at
Speaker 1: least have us waiting for you when you have a time.
Speaker 1: Better of your convenience. And as I said, this is
Speaker 1: the sixteenth season. That means this is our fifteenth anniversary show,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing how fast time flies. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of a better way to have the fifteenth anniversary
Speaker 1: show then to bring on somebody that is as responsible
Speaker 1: or at fault as marking myself for mid Rats. And
Speaker 1: he really needs no introduction for the regulars. But if
Speaker 1: you want to know all the publicly available details about
Speaker 1: our guests, it will be on the show page and
Speaker 1: you can go click and all his good stuff there.
Speaker 1: But he's not just a friend of the show, but
Speaker 1: he's a personal friend to Mark and I a great
Speaker 1: author and a great company as well. Claude Barribey, Claude,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for helping us to share our
Speaker 1: fifteenth anniversary show together.
Speaker 2: Well Salad, Mark, I still can't believe it's been fifteen years,
Speaker 2: and you're right tempest fugit And when you think of
Speaker 2: when you started this and how it's evolved, I think
Speaker 2: what's really incredible is you guys have been so consistent
Speaker 2: about it. One of the things that I've told people
Speaker 2: over the years is that this is the c span
Speaker 2: for the Navy, because you all allow people time to
Speaker 2: answer there are no gotcha questions. I've in all the
Speaker 2: years that I've been listening to mid rats, I don't
Speaker 2: think I've heard one gotcha question. And you guys ask
Speaker 2: some solid questions, some broad based questions, and let the
Speaker 2: let the authors answer it. I think it's the same
Speaker 2: way that Brian Lamb used to do his interviews for
Speaker 2: book notes. And I appreciate that because you hear from
Speaker 2: the experts.
Speaker 1: It's that's a high compliment. I was a fan of
Speaker 1: Brian Lamb because it was not in your face. He
Speaker 1: didn't try to trip you up or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I am relatively mortal, so I couldn't
Speaker 1: help myself. But in preparation for the fifteen year fifteenth
Speaker 1: anniversary show, you know you and I, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked a few months ago about blogging and writing online
Speaker 1: and a lot of the players, like the folks we
Speaker 1: have here, are still added after a couple of decades,
Speaker 1: I went, you know what about on the podcasting point
Speaker 1: of view? And well, first of all, when you if
Speaker 1: you go to AI Grock and open AIS chat GPT,
Speaker 1: you have to remind them because they'll say, oh, the
Speaker 1: longest military related podcast. It's not a History podcast started
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Just you give him a problem, you sure
Speaker 1: you don't want to look deeper. And if you're looking
Speaker 1: at a podcast that has gone uninterrupted, we are the
Speaker 1: longest national security podcasts, which pret a little feather here.
Speaker 1: I guess we're just obstinate and pernicious about wanting to
Speaker 1: talk about the things we're passionate about. But when I
Speaker 1: was looking at it, that was twenty ten when Mark
Speaker 1: and the late Raymond otherwise z Owes is colern to a
Speaker 1: lot of folks and we started chatting here and you
Speaker 1: can find those they're all available online.
Speaker 2: You know, you go back.
Speaker 1: Fifteen years from there, that's nineteen ninety five, and in
Speaker 1: the context of you know, one of the things we
Speaker 1: want to talk about today is in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: besides the fact I was a lieutenant who was debating
Speaker 1: writing resignation letter more than once, the information space for
Speaker 1: those whether they're inside the government, outside the government, or
Speaker 1: just standardish at tech, if they wanted to read about
Speaker 1: naval issues, national security issues, there was a very very
Speaker 1: narrowed environment and sources that they could dive into. And
Speaker 1: here we find ourselves, you know, thirty years later from
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five. And it's not just people who are
Speaker 1: writing individually online. There's online newspapers almost there's lots of
Speaker 1: War on the Rocks is one example. Places that have
Speaker 1: lots of sources that you can dive into, quasi official
Speaker 1: ones like the Modern War Institute, which I think the
Speaker 1: Modern War Institute's spear started in twenty twelve, about two
Speaker 1: years after we did. I think they're the second longest
Speaker 1: running one continuously. And some people say there's too many
Speaker 1: places to get information. I don't think so, but that
Speaker 1: just in our adult part of our adult experience, it's
Speaker 1: amazing the amount of information that is available there and
Speaker 1: almost real time, concerning national security and defense issues. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious causes somebody who has seen this from not
Speaker 1: just a consumer but a producer. You've run a couple
Speaker 1: of podcasts, you've got a new one coming up. You've
Speaker 1: a prolific author and a writer online, but you're also
Speaker 1: a consumer, and you have worked on the political side
Speaker 1: of the spectrum and the official DoD side of the
Speaker 1: spectrum as an Intel officer. Yeah, look at that thirty
Speaker 1: year thirty year spread. You know, how do you see
Speaker 1: that with all those little hats that you wear in
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 2: You know, I actually liken it a bit too. When
Speaker 2: Brian Lamb started c SPAN to go back to somebody
Speaker 2: we mentioned, and he essentially democratized the process of listening
Speaker 2: in and contributing because he would have these columns. He
Speaker 2: didn't know where they were going to go, and sometimes
Speaker 2: they went really a arry. Now, the upside is that
Speaker 2: you have time with experts. The downside is you have
Speaker 2: a lot of non experts who think they're experts. So
Speaker 2: it's trying to sift through that. I think the way
Speaker 2: the national security ecosystem for all of this information has
Speaker 2: played out is directly proportional to how the legacy media
Speaker 2: has played out the past thirty years, along with how
Speaker 2: you have this proliferation of media, and we have to
Speaker 2: ask ourselves get back to the question of what is
Speaker 2: the media? Well, how do you define media? Is it
Speaker 2: simply CBS ABC In a new generation? It then became
Speaker 2: including CNN and MSNBC and Fox. And then you have
Speaker 2: this era of all of these outlets as the Internet
Speaker 2: provided outlets for them, Social media provided outlets, websites, blogs,
Speaker 2: and I wrote about this the year I think it
Speaker 2: was a year before midrat started and it was an
Speaker 2: article I wrote called shoot with the Navy can Handle
Speaker 2: the Truth creative friction, I think, sorry, it's been a
Speaker 2: while since I wrote it.
Speaker 1: Quite creative friction without conflict.
Speaker 2: Thanks, And in it I looked at what was then
Speaker 2: a PBS show called Carrier, which I thought was phenomenal
Speaker 2: because as it really showed sailors lives. You had bloggers
Speaker 2: like you all, and I mentioned at that time Van
Speaker 2: Avery who had Destroyer Man, and I mentioned the entire bloggersphere.
Speaker 2: And so what you had is a way for people
Speaker 2: to provide their expertise. Example, Dan Rather, I had a
Speaker 2: piece on President George W. Bush and a supposed letter
Speaker 2: that was detrimental regarding his National security National Card Service,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I think it was a
Speaker 2: blogger who had this one expertise, and his expertise was
Speaker 2: historical scripts or fonts.
Speaker 1: That was his.
Speaker 2: Baileywick and he was able to disprove Dan Rather and said,
Speaker 2: oh no, this font didn't exist in the year that
Speaker 2: this letter, So the letter is absolutely false. So I
Speaker 2: think what you're seeing is the benefit of democratizing media.
Speaker 2: But there's also a downside, and I'm going to use
Speaker 2: the late Raymond Pritchett as an example, also known as Galron,
Speaker 2: and I think Raymond was probably one of the most
Speaker 2: insightful naval analysts of the early twenty first century. Why
Speaker 2: he was completely outside of the system. I mean, remember
Speaker 2: when he was writing anonymously, people thought he must have
Speaker 2: been some current or active or retired captain based on
Speaker 2: his knowledge and the questions he was going at. But
Speaker 2: Raymond had this incredible ability to sort through the that
Speaker 2: was often sent out by different outlets and get to
Speaker 2: basic questions. And he would ask these these incredibly insightful
Speaker 2: questions and then provide an analysis based on what he saw.
Speaker 2: That's the upside. The downside is, and I'm speaking from
Speaker 2: my historian's cap here, I in one hundred years, it's
Speaker 2: very unlikely people will know about this. Here's why you
Speaker 2: and Mark and I probably remember driving cars that had
Speaker 2: eight track cassette players. Well, even if you get an
Speaker 2: eight track tape today, if you know what it is,
Speaker 2: you may not be able to find a player, or
Speaker 2: if you do, it's going to chew up your tape.
Speaker 2: In the same way, we think that everything that is
Speaker 2: going online today will be available in the future. So
Speaker 2: unless you have hard copies like the New York Times.
Speaker 2: I like the New York Times. I have a subscription
Speaker 2: because of the archive archival material available. It is a
Speaker 2: record for one hundred and sixty seventy years now. There
Speaker 2: are a few places like that that still print and
Speaker 2: that will be accepted into, say the Library of Congress. However,
Speaker 2: places like Galaron's website Information Dissemination, which had rich analyzes
Speaker 2: that was often counter to what was being submitted or
Speaker 2: promulgated by the Pentagon and other Navy adjacent organizations. His
Speaker 2: work may be lost to history, and I think the
Speaker 2: democratization is also a tragedy in that way from the
Speaker 2: future understanding our era better.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting perspective. As a guy who grew up
Speaker 3: with a newspaper reporter mother and a newspaper reporting brother,
Speaker 3: I'm very sympathetic to the print media. But the immediacy
Speaker 3: of the print media is not available as it is
Speaker 3: is the instant, virtually instant reporting we get in these
Speaker 3: days on things like X and and even these podcasts,
Speaker 3: which are much can be much more immediate than than
Speaker 3: the old print media. I don't know if it will endure.
Speaker 3: I don't know if if people just you know, they're
Speaker 3: going to tune into the things they want to listen to.
Speaker 3: And sometimes, you know, you you don't read the some
Speaker 3: some newspapers because they don't agree with you politically, and
Speaker 3: you're you know, you just can't stomach of reading them.
Speaker 3: But I'm pretty sure people will listen to different podcasts
Speaker 3: based on their own biases and all that, and that
Speaker 3: to me is, you know, that's one of the benefits,
Speaker 3: except that we don't always know. What we don't know
Speaker 3: is to paraphrase one of our firm I guess. So
Speaker 3: the good news is that you get immediate feedback and
Speaker 3: a lot of these on a lot of these other channels.
Speaker 3: So if you make a if you make a bonehead
Speaker 3: mistake on a blog post, just often somebody will point
Speaker 3: it out right away to you. Or if you do
Speaker 3: that on X god forbid, you don't just get one
Speaker 3: person giving you feedback. And I'll use the example of
Speaker 3: the mat Gets misspelling or misusing the word Marshall when
Speaker 3: he was talking about the imposition of martial law somewhere.
Speaker 3: You know, he got lasted for that. And I don't
Speaker 3: know him at all, and he may maybe he just
Speaker 3: is totally uneducated. But you know, that kind of feedback
Speaker 3: is something that the mainstream media did not get and
Speaker 3: hasn't gotten used to. So I think that that is
Speaker 3: an aspect of the current media, which is this electronic
Speaker 3: The speed with which it can be things can be fixed, corrected, adjusted,
Speaker 3: and the truth can be gotten out, I think is
Speaker 3: really important in terms of where the media is going.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the things that we've discussed
Speaker 3: over the years, everything from shipbuilding to the right of China.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of that wasn't getting reported by
Speaker 3: the people that were like the Washington Post. I don't
Speaker 3: think they were really covering what China was up to,
Speaker 3: you know, ten fifteen years ago, like we were.
Speaker 2: That's a really good point. And you know you mentioned
Speaker 2: this because when something I used to I used to
Speaker 2: show my students was a letter, an actual original letter
Speaker 2: from the early eighteen hundreds by a naval officer to
Speaker 2: his wife, and I had some for where he was
Speaker 2: sending things to other naval officers as well, and I
Speaker 2: explained to them, I said, look, you can understand they're
Speaker 2: a little bit of their mindset because you see in
Speaker 2: print what they're discussing with either their fellow naval officers
Speaker 2: or their wives. That's why, in a way we are
Speaker 2: in a dark age or what may be in the
Speaker 2: future referred to as a dark age of information, because
Speaker 2: everybody's texting each other. Those things are not person Well,
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some people who preserve those things, but
Speaker 2: those will not necessarily be preserved and available for future generations.
Speaker 2: So you don't know how people are interacting, who they're
Speaker 2: interacting with in a way that you could literally going
Speaker 2: back to the qunea form and the people using vellum
Speaker 2: and quills and every other device you had. To your
Speaker 2: other point about the availability of expertise, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I think, especially with the early Navy bloggers, you had
Speaker 2: people who were are experts in a way that somebody
Speaker 2: from the Washington Post, unless they were a naval officer
Speaker 2: or a Marine officer, wouldn't be able to understand. They
Speaker 2: might not understand the questions or the nuances about a
Speaker 2: ship or aircraft. So in that way, it's extremely helpful
Speaker 2: to have these podcasts and these websites where the experts
Speaker 2: are talking and explaining things, you know, folding right into
Speaker 2: that and where I think it has become what for
Speaker 2: a lot of us was either just a hobby or
Speaker 2: our therapy and writing has become essential.
Speaker 1: And that's because I was really trying to talk myself
Speaker 1: out of this observation a few years ago, and I
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, it's a fair observation. But there
Speaker 1: has been a general retreat by official Navy and their
Speaker 1: pos from engagement. You mentioned that mini series on Carrier,
Speaker 1: and I know you and I have talked about it before.
Speaker 1: There were some people and they were a minority, who
Speaker 1: got energized about it because they couldn't micromanage every two seconds,
Speaker 1: but it really showed our sailors in a great light.
Speaker 1: One of those things similar. It'd be great to have
Speaker 1: had a similar crew on board the Eisenhower the last
Speaker 1: year with Captain Hill as the CEO. He was really active.
Speaker 1: He kind of did it himself to show our sailors,
Speaker 1: and when you do that, it always turns out really well.
Speaker 1: But something has changed back to when we had the
Speaker 1: embeds back in two and three, things started to retreat
Speaker 1: from the general space. And I remember, I know y'all
Speaker 1: have had similar experiences working both directly and indirectly with
Speaker 1: public affairs officers, either in an official or unofficial way,
Speaker 1: and I am willing to put a stake in the
Speaker 1: ground that two of the best people that I saw
Speaker 1: on how they productively. When I defined productively, it is
Speaker 1: not productively for me, it's productive for the Navy productively
Speaker 1: interfaced with both traditional and also new people in the
Speaker 1: information space. That was Chris Servello and it was Charlie Brown,
Speaker 1: and those two people had an interesting intersection where I
Speaker 1: kind of draw the line where something happened. I would
Speaker 1: love to see the email exchange and the memorandums it
Speaker 1: took place. But in the transition from CNO. Richardson to CNO. Gilday,
Speaker 1: there was that whole experience with Admiral Moran. Charlie Brown
Speaker 1: was was pretty well engaged in the open on this.
Speaker 1: But after that experience, that's when a lot of the
Speaker 1: doors and the culture which had already been narrowing, really
Speaker 1: started to narrow. And you know, Claude, from your perspective,
Speaker 1: which is different than ours, I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: to speak for Mark either. He may have a different
Speaker 1: take on this, but at least for me, is that
Speaker 1: a fair observation? And how have you seen how pos
Speaker 1: have changed, not just from the three Invasion but let's
Speaker 1: just put a mark in the ground when we started
Speaker 1: the podcast in twenty ten, because it really really has
Speaker 1: gotten gotten more difficult, especially in the last five years.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to draw from more of my
Speaker 2: civilian experience from this, especially the three times I worked
Speaker 2: on the Hill, but also observing some other things. So
Speaker 2: I don't think it's just a po issue that you
Speaker 2: just suggested. Let's take a bird's eye view of the
Speaker 2: United States, and I think what you're seeing, whether it's
Speaker 2: the White House press secretaries, that's either administration, or the
Speaker 2: way individuals present themselves on Meet the Press or whatever
Speaker 2: there and organizations which have corporate communications officers. You have
Speaker 2: a brand, you have messaging for that brand, and you
Speaker 2: have marketing for that brand. The last thing you want
Speaker 2: to do is taint the brand, and so your messaging
Speaker 2: and your marketing is going to reflect that. So I
Speaker 2: have to wonder, with all the issues that were happening
Speaker 2: in the past sixteen fifteen years in the Navy, whether
Speaker 2: that was reflective of a greater proportion of major issues.
Speaker 2: You look at the Fat Leonard scandal, for example. I
Speaker 2: took a look at how various outlets were portraying or
Speaker 2: not reporting on the Fat Leonard scandal. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you're an entity that accepts corporate sponsorships, and part of
Speaker 2: that has to do with retired flag officers, are you
Speaker 2: going to be reporting on Fat Leonard in the same
Speaker 2: way that say, an article might appear in SIMSEK And
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the case. They're not going to
Speaker 2: talk about something negative. I mean, I've got, you know,
Speaker 2: a pile of emails and other things over the years
Speaker 2: where a message from a Navy organization was completely false
Speaker 2: and so and that went out to the media, and
Speaker 2: you know I had the evidence. No, no, this is
Speaker 2: absolutely not true. And you just have to, I think,
Speaker 2: in a way accept that because if you look at
Speaker 2: the media, whether it's the legacy media of the past,
Speaker 2: you know, fifty years or take newspapers of the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty familiar with those from my PhD, where he
Speaker 2: had Jacksonian and anti Jacksonian papers. The Jacksonian papers weren't
Speaker 2: going to say anything negative about Jackson, and the anti
Speaker 2: Jacksonian papers weren't going to say anything positive about Jackson.
Speaker 2: And I think it's simply the same case today with
Speaker 2: whatever kind of organization you have you're not going to
Speaker 2: see that. And that's why even I who as a kid,
Speaker 2: when the afternoon paper would come in, you know, and
Speaker 2: after my buddies and I had got been all playing
Speaker 2: football or baseball or whatever season it was ice hockey,
Speaker 2: I'd actually read the paper because I was kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, interestedly what's going on. I don't do that
Speaker 2: as much today. Part of the reason is because I
Speaker 2: have to start questioning and okay, well, who owns this
Speaker 2: and this. In the case of Maine, for example, we
Speaker 2: had the largest paper of Portland's Press Herald, which still exists,
Speaker 2: and at the time, let's see Shelley, Congressman Pingree's been
Speaker 2: in for I think twenty years as a member of Congress. Well,
Speaker 2: our husband, a billionaire, owned the Portland Press Herald. So
Speaker 2: you knew that anything coming out of the Portland Press
Speaker 2: Herald was going to be positive or at least not
Speaker 2: negative to Congresswoman Pingree. So what you're starting to see
Speaker 2: even in this state today, the local papers aren't covering
Speaker 2: certain issues, they're not doing investigative journalism, and so it's
Speaker 2: the rise of these outside entities that are trying to
Speaker 2: do it. As media influencers. I think I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that's probably what we're seeing today with the Navy as well.
Speaker 2: You're not going to see a recruiting ad for the
Speaker 2: Navy that says, oh, hey, join us. You know we
Speaker 2: really let us tell you about Fat Leonard. Now you're
Speaker 2: going to show football helmets and in the sky and
Speaker 2: you know, a ship going off to war. You're not
Speaker 2: going to talk about the negative. And I think as
Speaker 2: long as you understand where they're coming from, you can fat.
Speaker 2: You can look at alternate media outlets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, boy, you've touched on a lot of things. There
Speaker 3: the during the Vietnam War that the military got very
Speaker 3: wary of the newspaper reports. They didn't think they were
Speaker 3: getting fair coverage, and that you know that they cut
Speaker 3: off a lot of access. They there were the follies
Speaker 3: where they press was getting briefed by the by the
Speaker 3: professional briefers, and they didn't believe a word of what
Speaker 3: was being said. And you know that went on. That
Speaker 3: distressed of the media grew. That went through a whole
Speaker 3: generation or maybe two generations of people until Desert Storm
Speaker 3: when they began to embed reporters. You know, that works
Speaker 3: pretty well and as fine and dandy as long as
Speaker 3: the stories are good. But then you get you know,
Speaker 3: the concerns. You get an Abu grab or a or
Speaker 3: a you know, another Negati story, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: all these it's like turtles, you know, they had their
Speaker 3: heads stuck out, and all of a sudden they go
Speaker 3: back into full retreat. And then they only want to
Speaker 3: have good news. And then you see things like the
Speaker 3: classification of the Inserve reports. You see that that they
Speaker 3: don't want any negativity. So you you you get, uh,
Speaker 3: we don't get necessarily accurate stories about what the problems
Speaker 3: are with say the paint on navy ships. I mean,
Speaker 3: I would like to have CNO or the NAVCI or
Speaker 3: some of the condes says, yeah, we're restricted in their
Speaker 3: use of quality paint because of you know, the the
Speaker 3: ecological people that the say we can't use this stuff
Speaker 3: we were using because it hurts the environment. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I just that kind of of honesty, and
Speaker 3: I you know, you worry. I worry. I look at
Speaker 3: things like the the tilt rotor aircraft and nobody thinks
Speaker 3: they're safe, but they're gosh, we're still flying them. And
Speaker 3: I'm wondering, you know what General or admiral is going
Speaker 3: to stand up and say, uh, after we lose another
Speaker 3: one of those things and kill thirty or forty people.
Speaker 3: Uh you know, yeah, we knew that was bad, but
Speaker 3: we you know, needs of the needs of the service,
Speaker 3: we we have to kill a few every now and
Speaker 3: then just to just to make sure we're going to
Speaker 3: go for right. That is the you know that that
Speaker 3: is That's That's where I get stuck with this stuff.
Speaker 3: I want. I want the honesty, you know that an
Speaker 3: acknowledgement that Fat Lenard happened. But I also want the accountability.
Speaker 3: You know that the people that that were responsible Fat
Speaker 3: Leonard ought to be publicly humiliated of nothing else. And uh,
Speaker 3: you know we're not doing that kind of thing. So
Speaker 3: who's responsible for the for the failures of the lcs?
Speaker 3: You know, where's the accountability for that? Who's responsible for
Speaker 3: the changes to the constellation class free it that are
Speaker 3: causing it not to be being produced as rapidly as
Speaker 3: it should, you know, and we could that kind of
Speaker 3: cycle is where we I think we lose by not
Speaker 3: having honest information.
Speaker 1: Brook.
Speaker 3: Now, I understand because if you've worked in a corporation
Speaker 3: like I did, you have people you know there are
Speaker 3: all these strategy people now who come in and say,
Speaker 3: you know you're you're as is after the tile and
Speaker 3: all things. I guess you know your strategy has got
Speaker 3: to this is how you protect your brand. You're talking
Speaker 3: about protecting your brand. You know you you have to
Speaker 3: to these people who help you manage these disaster things.
Speaker 3: And you know, I find that to be really an
Speaker 3: appalling job when you get down to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mark, I think that's a really important example you
Speaker 2: gave was on the littoral combat ship because when you
Speaker 2: when you think about it, nobody from the Littoral Combat
Speaker 2: Ship program itself was noting all the issues along. Now
Speaker 2: were they doing it internally? Possibly? My guess is having
Speaker 2: worked for NFC a long time ago, unlikely for a
Speaker 2: variety of just human human conditions and predispositions. But who
Speaker 2: was taking a hard look at lcs? It was Galron,
Speaker 2: it was you, it was Commander Salamander in a way
Speaker 2: that exposed serious challenges with the program. And how long
Speaker 2: did it take for whether it was GEO or CBO
Speaker 2: or CRS to start looking at this seriously? And then
Speaker 2: did the Navy ever really acknowledge? I think quietly they
Speaker 2: acknowledged because they started decommissioning, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: class of lcs. But when you have an organization that
Speaker 2: is so focused on a positive brand, nobody else is
Speaker 2: ever allowed to critique that brand. And what happens is
Speaker 2: they either deny something exists or they attack the messenger.
Speaker 2: We see this in politics as well, certainly, and I
Speaker 2: think the result is that there is a consequential lack
Speaker 2: of self awareness and self critique, and consequently there is
Speaker 2: an inability and there's a difference between critique and criticism.
Speaker 2: You always want to reevaluate to see if you're on track,
Speaker 2: and if you take that out of the process, then
Speaker 2: you have an inability to improve or innovate, you know,
Speaker 2: And I think that's a danger. That's a flaw that
Speaker 2: we've had for going on probably fifteen or twenty years now,
Speaker 2: is that we are not allowed to critique anything coming
Speaker 2: out of official word. So you're seeing from a national perspective,
Speaker 2: outside of national security, a fundamental distrust of media that
Speaker 2: has according to their own polls, you know, ninety seven
Speaker 2: percent of one party and things that were said that
Speaker 2: were completely untrue. And then you start to look at
Speaker 2: what's happening in the defense world is how much can
Speaker 2: we rely on the individuals. So what you do is
Speaker 2: you look at the people who are really good. You know,
Speaker 2: I think of somebody like Chris Cavis. I would if
Speaker 2: there was an article positive or negative from Chris Cavis
Speaker 2: on an issue, I would listen to him because I
Speaker 2: think he has experience, he has authority, and he's an
Speaker 2: honest broker and that's really and he knows he really
Speaker 2: knows his stuff. I mean, Chris is just amazing when
Speaker 2: you know, I haven't talked to Chris in the ages now,
Speaker 2: but he knows the Navy, unlike probably most ninety nine
Speaker 2: point nine percent of people. And so you look for
Speaker 2: the people who are telling the truth on issues.
Speaker 1: And I think that's looking for people who are telling
Speaker 1: the truth. Let's pull the thread on that I've been
Speaker 1: using a lot more than I have in the past,
Speaker 1: the phrase a culture of untruth where you see those
Speaker 1: things just like you mentioned Claude, and where statements will
Speaker 1: be made by very official people about very official things
Speaker 1: that you know is not true, that's not a mistake,
Speaker 1: that's not a staffing error, that is at best spin
Speaker 1: and it's disheartening. And you have that culture of untruth
Speaker 1: when it comes to you know, what we try to
Speaker 1: do here with with our writing and our podcast is
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned Chris Cavis, which he's great if
Speaker 1: you talk to one on one because his personality is
Speaker 1: has the rough edges burned off of it, but he
Speaker 1: does his official stuff the same way. He's merciless. And
Speaker 1: that is one thing about this information space is when
Speaker 1: you're looking for information, if if somebody like if I
Speaker 1: put something out there that by an honest mistake, I
Speaker 1: get something wrong. You know, the SB twenty two has
Speaker 1: four tilt rotors. People go, no, you idiot, it is
Speaker 1: too and I go, oh, it's the type of that's
Speaker 1: my excuse. Anyway, there's a lot of self policing that
Speaker 1: goes on, especially when there are bad faith actors out there.
Speaker 1: That information might get out there that's from a bad
Speaker 1: faith actor or somebody who is not telling the truth.
Speaker 1: But then there are eight or nine people with a
Speaker 1: much larger whether individually or cumulative, public exposure, who'll come
Speaker 1: out and correct it, either nicely or with a with
Speaker 1: a bat to the forehead and.
Speaker 2: Fink.
Speaker 1: Some people said, you know this is just going to
Speaker 1: be you know, be a fad or this is eventually
Speaker 1: going to fade. But there's a reason why there is
Speaker 1: a whole collection of places for people to go, because
Speaker 1: I think even more than when we started in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: that this is the new reality. Because when you combine
Speaker 1: you talk about the Portland Press Herald, and it has
Speaker 1: its billionaire benefactor, and even even thirty five years ago
Speaker 1: it was a fairly left wing paper. Now it's almost spoofable.
Speaker 1: But the New York Times is underwritten by some some billionaires.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post is owned by what some people are
Speaker 1: calling a look art pretty close. You know, you have
Speaker 1: these large people owning these traditional institutions, and you also
Speaker 1: have I wrote an article a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: about the failure of the institutions, and you can see
Speaker 1: that a lot of the institutions that have been around
Speaker 1: a long time in the military information space, they tried
Speaker 1: and have tried to put their toe in the water
Speaker 1: in a more open You mentioned SINSEC that they've had
Speaker 1: a few challenges recently as they've tried to get the
Speaker 1: right people to give a sustained effort. But it'll right itself.
Speaker 1: That's a good example. I mentioned War on the Rocks,
Speaker 1: which is more of a commercial operation, but there's a
Speaker 1: broad spectrum of discussion there at War on the Rocks.
Speaker 1: But our traditional institutions they've stuck their toe in the
Speaker 1: water and then have either backed out or it produces
Speaker 1: something that is so not effective that it really doesn't
Speaker 1: break above the background noise because they just they just
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, can't can't get that when you do
Speaker 1: look at it, And a lot of the stuff in
Speaker 1: the press too, you have to ask questions because you
Speaker 1: have every time you step off the Pentagon Metro, you've
Speaker 1: got Lucky Martin bowing, somebody's trying to sell you something.
Speaker 1: But when you grab a lot of the traditional institutional
Speaker 1: publications and organs and activities sponsored by and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of discussions recently in a different sector of
Speaker 1: our economy about the influence of AG business on a
Speaker 1: lot of the Sunday morning talk shows and other coverage
Speaker 1: and how that and how they've influenced the USDA and
Speaker 1: government nutritional So influence is real when that money goes
Speaker 1: in there. When you pick up a when you pick
Speaker 1: up a publication or whether online or on dead Tree,
Speaker 1: and you're reading something and you look up at, oh,
Speaker 1: this is sponsored content. So that is something that I
Speaker 1: think it's a good check as best as we can.
Speaker 1: And Mark was spot on about bringing away the unclassified insert.
Speaker 1: We don't have many checks, but this is a system
Speaker 1: that's developed over time that is even going around the
Speaker 1: government and the traditional institutions, and it has the way
Speaker 1: to break news because people will reach out to folks
Speaker 1: that have podcasts. You know, Ward Carerols has has got
Speaker 1: a great aviation podcast. Salamar Cogliano a huge reach. I think.
Speaker 1: I think the knowledge of civilian mariners in the Merchant
Speaker 1: Marine by Salama Cogliano on YouTube, he's tripled or quadrupled
Speaker 1: it amongst decision makers simply because he decided to jump
Speaker 1: into space. And his information is good, and his information
Speaker 1: that is reliable and presentable, and it's presentable. And when
Speaker 1: I look, when I'm trying to look at, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen years from now, what will things look like in
Speaker 1: the defense base, the future is disaggregated. I don't see
Speaker 1: how you go back to that old model where if
Speaker 1: you were the somebody on the joint staff that needed
Speaker 1: to get a word out to the media, you made
Speaker 1: five or six phone calls and that's all you had
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me let me hop it there. I want
Speaker 3: to add one thing. One of the things we talked
Speaker 3: about when first started this show was that we would
Speaker 3: not have advertising during the show. We would now have sponsors,
Speaker 3: and you know, that's probably cost us who knows how
Speaker 3: much money over the years, but we've never had to
Speaker 3: cowtow to a sponsor or pretend or towe some line
Speaker 3: that they would demand that we toe, so you know,
Speaker 3: and I don't know how that's going to work in
Speaker 3: the future because everybody seems to be monetizing everything online
Speaker 3: as fast as they can. But I think it's important
Speaker 3: right now, and then they have somebody who doesn't really
Speaker 3: have to bend over to a power that can make
Speaker 3: or break them financially.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really important point because when you
Speaker 2: you know, you mentioned your podcast has never done corporate sponsorship.
Speaker 2: SIMPSEK to my knowledge, has never done corporate sponsorship, so
Speaker 2: they are truly inn independent form. In fact, that was
Speaker 2: a on the editorial board of an organization I don't
Speaker 2: know about twelve fifteen, twelve thirteen years ago, and I
Speaker 2: remember after a meeting telling the senior leadership pay this
Speaker 2: new junior officer organization SIMSEK. This is what they're doing.
Speaker 2: I really think you guys ought to work with them
Speaker 2: because they are into something and it was completely dismissed.
Speaker 2: They say, oh yeah, this will you know, fade away.
Speaker 2: It's online, it'll be a go gone in a year
Speaker 2: or two. And here they are still going strong now.
Speaker 2: I hope that future junior officers also participate in SIMSEK
Speaker 2: because they aren't bound by somebody. They can put something
Speaker 2: out there and they're responsible. You know, there's been a
Speaker 2: lot of changes in leadership, but I don't think at
Speaker 2: any time SIMSEK has been irresponsible in what they've put
Speaker 2: out online. And they've done so independently. And when you
Speaker 2: bring money into a situation, whether that is a media organization,
Speaker 2: a newspaper or a post or Portland Press Herald, or
Speaker 2: an organization that covers navy issues, there are going to
Speaker 2: be questions. And I want to I also want to
Speaker 2: add Selma Cogliano. Here's here's somebody. I think salas over
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube. It's probably more. I
Speaker 2: haven't checked in about a month or two, but Sal's
Speaker 2: ability to connect with viewership is really important. Sal could
Speaker 2: put out the same kind of information and it could
Speaker 2: be dry and nobody would listen to it or watch it.
Speaker 2: But it's Sal's personality that really helps drive that. And
Speaker 2: in the same way I think it's a positive, it's
Speaker 2: also a negative. And here's why you all remember h
Speaker 2: ros Buo. You know he when he left the race
Speaker 2: in I think in June or July nineteen ninety two
Speaker 2: as an independent, he was leading the candidates in the
Speaker 2: polls for a short time and his movement couldn't continue
Speaker 2: without him. Most political movements fade away after the individual
Speaker 2: who has been driving it go away. And Sal has
Speaker 2: done such a great job, and you got guys like
Speaker 2: John Conrad who's done g Captain. They've both presented this
Speaker 2: information that is now available to legacy media. So that BBC,
Speaker 2: I know, has called on Sal. In fact, they called
Speaker 2: me on an issue about a year or two ago
Speaker 2: and I said, no, no, no, the person you want to
Speaker 2: talk to here, you either call Sal or John. John
Speaker 2: Conrad said, these are the experts. So the expertise is
Speaker 2: getting out there. The hope is that there will be
Speaker 2: people after them who follow them, who can do the
Speaker 2: same thing. And I again say this to both of
Speaker 2: you guys, and whether it's worn the rocks or information dissemination,
Speaker 2: we've got to find a way that this counter, these arguments,
Speaker 2: or these checks and balances in media are not lost
Speaker 2: to history, because otherwise the only thing we're going to
Speaker 2: be left with is the official word, and that's the
Speaker 2: last thing you should.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know, there's been a number of
Speaker 3: instances where some people got disinvited from one of the
Speaker 3: major institutional publications that the Navy has looked at for
Speaker 3: years because they held opinions that were contrary to the
Speaker 3: people running running that organization. These are the board of
Speaker 3: directors or the whoever was in charge of and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, those those controversies that caused them to be
Speaker 3: disinvited were the same controversies that are occurring today in
Speaker 3: the in the in the public forums about matters that
Speaker 3: are pertained to how we treat people in this country
Speaker 3: and and how we deal with the issues of excuse me,
Speaker 3: my dog has discovered somebody out in my front door.
Speaker 3: Uh anyway, Yeah, so I think that you know that
Speaker 3: is that really concerns me, that that people were getting
Speaker 3: disinvited from participating in the activity of that of that
Speaker 3: one of the activities of that institution on the basis
Speaker 3: of opinions they expressed. You know, somebody could have argued
Speaker 3: against them, rather than just saying we don't want your
Speaker 3: kite here anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that goes to the earlier point.
Speaker 2: And Sally, I think we covered this on an anniversary
Speaker 2: show you and I did where I interviewed you what
Speaker 2: was it two or three months ago, back in July. Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh wow, sorry that far awhile. But one of the
Speaker 2: issues was that you've taken some very hard positions on
Speaker 2: some issues, and that there is a closure in some
Speaker 2: circles to what you say simply because of say one
Speaker 2: or two issues. I think it's important to not attack
Speaker 2: the messenger, listen to what is being written about, and
Speaker 2: encounter that if you so choose. I think that is
Speaker 2: one of the beauties of having you know, back when
Speaker 2: you guys had blogs, you had comments sections, and somebody
Speaker 2: could call you out on you know, hey, this is
Speaker 2: absolutely incorrect, and here are the reasons why that is
Speaker 2: really important, because then you reach out to two folks.
Speaker 2: I know, I've I know, I've had this on usually
Speaker 2: you may I've done I've been doing substack now for
Speaker 2: about six seven months. But elsewhere where somebody said no, no, no,
Speaker 2: here's what you got wrong. And I always try to
Speaker 2: make a correction on Twitter or Blue Sky saying hey,
Speaker 2: look here's what I wrote. I didn't know X so
Speaker 2: or not exits in Twitter, but X as in Y xyz,
Speaker 2: I didn't know X at the time. I am deleting
Speaker 2: my message as a result of not having that knowledge
Speaker 2: or being corrected, and that the information should be out there.
Speaker 2: So that's really important. I think that whether it's the
Speaker 2: blogg of sphere or what came after, is there is, Marcus,
Speaker 2: as you suggested, a self correcting ability something you don't
Speaker 2: see in legacy media overall. You know, my mother was
Speaker 2: in politics for thirty years, and if there was a
Speaker 2: correction to something that they got wrong that she pointed out,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't see that on page one anymore. You'd see
Speaker 2: it on page B seventeen. That's just how things go.
Speaker 1: And part of that self checking that we see in
Speaker 1: the podcasts and blog that I think is it's commendable.
Speaker 1: You see it in another presence. You know, we've had
Speaker 1: sal and Salm Marcagli I know, and John Conrad have
Speaker 1: been on here before, and they've reached out to us
Speaker 1: before as well, and especially like because I've done the
Speaker 1: same thing where people people will call and ask me
Speaker 1: a question and I will point them elsewhere. And this
Speaker 1: is something that's begin from the start, because when Mark
Speaker 1: and I started blogging back in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: it was a fairly it was a fairly small group.
Speaker 1: And the one thing that was so good about it
Speaker 1: is somebody, would, you know, ask me a question that
Speaker 1: was outside my area of expertise. So if it was
Speaker 1: an aw question, I was like, hey, go talk to
Speaker 1: Will Dawzel over Steel Jawscribe, or I would get an
Speaker 1: email from lex Lefon of Neptunius Lexus like hey, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to let y'all know this is going on.
Speaker 1: What do you think? And we would balance off each
Speaker 1: other and would collaborate, and you come up to today
Speaker 1: and you still see that there's not a competitive There
Speaker 1: isn't I'm going to hide things. It's an interesting culture
Speaker 1: that I think is why it's a little more nimble,
Speaker 1: it's a little more productive and interesting than some of
Speaker 1: these false starts, more controlling organizations have had. Is the
Speaker 1: fact that if you let the ecosystem work and such
Speaker 1: that you know, this person right here is unreliable because
Speaker 1: they don't do like Udoo Claude and say, hey, I
Speaker 1: described the two two they're wearing as blue. They're actually
Speaker 1: wearing a pink one. So I've corrected the record and
Speaker 1: I'll find a more accurate picture. That type of thing,
Speaker 1: that type of self correcting that goes on here produces
Speaker 1: a better and more nimble product that I don't think
Speaker 1: you see in a lot of institutions because they did
Speaker 1: don't want to have a mistake because then that makes
Speaker 1: them them look bad as opposed to hey, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that's easily corrected. And I think that
Speaker 1: also is part of a culture going forward fifteen years
Speaker 1: from now that I think is going to continue because
Speaker 1: of that feedback loop. It's I know that all of
Speaker 1: us interface with people. For instance, I'll use somebody who's
Speaker 1: been in my comments section since two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, A Byron. He has a multi
Speaker 1: decade experience as a shipfitter, and I would make some
Speaker 1: comment about a ship or a construction, and he would
Speaker 1: sometimes he's in me an email. A lot of times
Speaker 1: he put me on report right in the comments section.
Speaker 1: And that's okay because you need correct things, and you
Speaker 1: know you will hear things, and you'll call folks in
Speaker 1: industry who you've been communicating with for a while and
Speaker 1: they will they'll either say, yep, that's a valid concern,
Speaker 1: or you might want to give so and so a call.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in this environment, in the podcasting world
Speaker 1: and the blogging world and those that are influencers over
Speaker 1: in social media that cross pollonization. It's really really, I think,
Speaker 1: a lot more active then the consumers might be aware of.
Speaker 1: And they should be comfort in that because it's I know,
Speaker 1: I've been called out by people that I respect a lot,
Speaker 1: and I've tried to nudge people as well. It's a
Speaker 1: very active and welcome way that kind of a little
Speaker 1: bit of anarchy organization has taken place, and I think
Speaker 1: that part of it at least continues to get better
Speaker 1: as we've had some some newer players come into the
Speaker 1: information space to replace those that have gone to find
Speaker 1: other things to do with their time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would add to that that, you know, legacy media,
Speaker 2: I think tends to dismiss what's put out online, whether
Speaker 2: you know it's you guys as Navy bloggers or Warn
Speaker 2: the Rocks or whoever. I will say one in the Rocks.
Speaker 2: I've been a contributing editor since it's founding. I think
Speaker 2: almost since it's founding, maybe six months after, and I'd
Speaker 2: say maybe half of the articles I've proposed to them
Speaker 2: have been accepted, So there's no automatic publication. Number two
Speaker 2: that which is is heavily edited. I I post. I
Speaker 2: think War on the Rocks and when Strategy Bridge was out,
Speaker 2: they had the best editing processes. They were ruth I
Speaker 2: was just say ruthless. From a writer's standpoint, they're ruthless,
Speaker 2: but from also from a writer's point, I was like,
Speaker 2: you're the other right. You always listen to your editors,
Speaker 2: and I've always listened to the editors of Strategy Bridge
Speaker 2: and War on the Rocks. And it goes to show
Speaker 2: that online sources can be serious and credible. And I
Speaker 2: think the fact that Simpsex does this I now edit
Speaker 2: for Simsek, the fact that Warn of the Rocks has
Speaker 2: done this, the fact that you guys have been corrected
Speaker 2: in your comments shows more of a seriousness and accountability
Speaker 2: in a way that print media often can't be or
Speaker 2: won't be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's I think that's it. You know,
Speaker 3: you can write a letter to an editor, but the
Speaker 3: story that you're writing the the letter to the editor
Speaker 3: about happened a week ago by the time they put
Speaker 3: the letter you wrote in, so that that kind of
Speaker 3: lacks the uh, the the timeliness, and people forget what
Speaker 3: it is. You're right, you're writing about the we.
Speaker 2: Had to point out.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are a lot of guys like who,
Speaker 3: people who have been pointing out issues with the official
Speaker 3: version for a long time. And I'd like to throw
Speaker 3: a throw a colo over to Bill Rossio and the
Speaker 3: and the people over it at the Long War Journal,
Speaker 3: because you know, they've been they've been doing this Middle
Speaker 3: Eastern stuff for a long long time, and they have
Speaker 3: been Uh. It's a perfect example of somebody who has
Speaker 3: not been accepting the official line and very often has
Speaker 3: totally disagreed with the official line. And it's that kind
Speaker 3: of thing that that is really worthwhile in in in
Speaker 3: the kind of thing we're doing now, we are also getting.
Speaker 3: The good news is we're getting a lot of people
Speaker 3: in I don't know how often it happens to sal
Speaker 3: but we we get questions from people who are in
Speaker 3: positions and the government stuff who are interested in what
Speaker 3: we have to say. So we've you know, we we
Speaker 3: want to get and hope to get you know, some
Speaker 3: of these political guys on the show to about what
Speaker 3: they want to talk about, as you know, we don't.
Speaker 3: You know, we're not a gotcha show. They get the
Speaker 3: hour to talk just like everybody else. I think we've
Speaker 3: only had in the history of the show, we've only
Speaker 3: had one guest that we thought, is this guy ever
Speaker 3: going to stop talk?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't you. No, yeah, over you Claude.
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree. And then again I want to point
Speaker 2: out what you guys have done for I mean, fifteen years,
Speaker 2: that's extraordinary. Now are you guys going to be doing
Speaker 2: this in fifteen years? I hope so, but I don't
Speaker 2: know if you are. You know, like we said at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the show, tempest Fugit, time gets to
Speaker 2: us all and it flies, and I wonder what comes
Speaker 2: after after this? What are we going to see in
Speaker 2: twenty forty in terms of getting the word out? But
Speaker 2: also more importantly, what influence does it have? And this
Speaker 2: is something I've looked at over the years off and
Speaker 2: on about how magazine article. You know, you always as
Speaker 2: a writer, you want to have some sort of influence,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. I don't know what real effect
Speaker 2: things have. I know in the past that I said
Speaker 2: that they probably did, but in reality, some articles, whether
Speaker 2: they were mine or somebody else's, I don't know if
Speaker 2: they did. And it would be an interesting PhD dissertation
Speaker 2: for somebody to be able to try to tie actual
Speaker 2: articles with results, whether that's the way something has really changed,
Speaker 2: not the way that you're saying that things have changed,
Speaker 2: but the way that it really happened at a much
Speaker 2: deeper level than just you know, doing your your helping
Speaker 2: your own brand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, without getting into specifics. One thing that also as
Speaker 1: kind of almost from the beginning, though, I think it
Speaker 1: really started in earnest after maybe twenty twelve, twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: or so, and there's been a couple OFAs in the
Speaker 1: last year that had really been at is on occasion
Speaker 1: because we're we're fairly approachable and reachable. My you know
Speaker 1: the old phrase dms are open. Anybody can reach out
Speaker 1: and find Mark and myself and say, hey, can you
Speaker 1: give me your email address? Are you up on signal
Speaker 1: and you're off and running. And so people reach out
Speaker 1: to us, and there have been a couple of things
Speaker 1: that have come up that have come to me that
Speaker 1: I've gone, hmmm, this is something that if it needs
Speaker 1: to come out, it probably be best if it didn't
Speaker 1: come from me. And you know, this is where the
Speaker 1: quote legacy or the mainstream media comes comes into play.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned Chris has been in this information. Chris
Speaker 1: Cavis has been this information for a long time. I
Speaker 1: know other people have done this too. I have back
Speaker 1: probably two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, Lex
Speaker 1: and I did this together and said, nah, neither one
Speaker 1: of us should do this. Let's give it to this person,
Speaker 1: not Chris, just so I want to intentionally get them
Speaker 1: in trouble. But you can hand those off to people
Speaker 1: in legit. You can pick up the newspaper or the
Speaker 1: magazine at whatever newstand might still exist, or it shows
Speaker 1: up in the ap and stuff, and you kind of
Speaker 1: keep it to yourself. But I know I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one that's done that. A lot of the guys
Speaker 1: in the space have done that, and in a way
Speaker 1: it's almost a I hate to call this the minor leagues.
Speaker 1: But there are ways that when important things do come
Speaker 1: up that might now have come up otherwise into large
Speaker 1: exposure media that do via these new avenues. Because whether
Speaker 1: you're talking about comment section or you can have without
Speaker 1: too much specificity, you can have worker bees or even
Speaker 1: middle management bees who have tried to affect change internally
Speaker 1: and they can't, So they affect change x eternally, whether
Speaker 1: that is a policy or if that's an activity that
Speaker 1: might not otherwise be seen. And that's I think another
Speaker 1: very healthy in a free society mechanism that this media
Speaker 1: that we've watched grown over the last fifteen years is
Speaker 1: really really valuable. One podcast Geopolitics Decanted from Silverado. That
Speaker 1: guy has a great podcast. He doesn't come out and
Speaker 1: put out information as much as I wish. That's something
Speaker 1: else that is in the national security arena. That's a
Speaker 1: must listen to listen podcasts for me. And there's information
Speaker 1: that's come out from him, especially concerning Russia and the
Speaker 1: Russia Ukrainian World War, but also in the Middle East
Speaker 1: that might show up in the Atlantic a year from now.
Speaker 1: You might find in Foreign policy, cut by an editor
Speaker 1: by a third and interviews, some play that you would
Speaker 1: never see anywhere else. So I think that this medium
Speaker 1: is just going to get going to get better as
Speaker 1: people with that type of knowledge based background bring on
Speaker 1: some really informative players into the space that hopefully is
Speaker 1: getting in the ears of people that have their hands
Speaker 1: on the levers of power. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it was interesting that Simsek has been cited
Speaker 2: more and more over the past few years by members
Speaker 2: of Congress that they are reading them, and I think
Speaker 2: that's that's a positive because they're getting information from a
Speaker 2: very different source, and I know that people on Capitol
Speaker 2: Hill are pretty savvy. The second I've worked on the
Speaker 2: Capitol three times over the past thirty odd years. The
Speaker 2: second time I worked up there, I remember working there
Speaker 2: was an MLA from another Senate office, a military legislative
Speaker 2: assistant who was much older than me, and an op
Speaker 2: ed had come out about something that his office and
Speaker 2: my office were both dealing with, and I went over
Speaker 2: and chatted with him over a drink and I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: what do you think about this? And he gave me
Speaker 2: a very valuable lesson. He says, look at who wrote this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a think tank, but who paid him? This guy
Speaker 2: is notorious for being paid to write op eds, so
Speaker 2: you even even folks on the hill have an understanding
Speaker 2: that you have to understand who is credible and who isn't.
Speaker 2: And I just think that's that's really important to understand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one of the things that that I've
Speaker 3: tried to do, I don't I don't try I take
Speaker 3: on many controversial issues as some other people do, but
Speaker 3: you know, I do want to make sure that I've
Speaker 3: back can back up what I've said, either from personal
Speaker 3: experience or by the research I do.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I one of things one of the things that that
Speaker 3: I've enjoyed about having this podcast. I don't know how
Speaker 3: many books I've read that I probably would never have
Speaker 3: touched without having to prepare for some guest or another,
Speaker 3: but it's quite a few, and none of those have
Speaker 3: hurt me at all. And they've expanded, They've expanded a
Speaker 3: what would otherwise be a rather limited database. So that's
Speaker 3: that's one of the benefits of being a host or
Speaker 3: a or they get the asked the questions on the
Speaker 3: on a on a show like this is you do
Speaker 3: have to do the research to make it so that
Speaker 3: you know, you don't come across as a complete doofiss,
Speaker 3: which only happens about eighty percent of the time.
Speaker 2: Claudy still there, Yeah, I'm still here. I just you know,
Speaker 2: was settling in on you know, Mark referring to himself
Speaker 2: as a twofist.
Speaker 1: But hu though.
Speaker 2: Although another another point to the the issue of the
Speaker 2: Hill thing is that one of the tricks that one
Speaker 2: of the press secretaries taught me very early on thirty
Speaker 2: years ago, said all right, you know, here's here's what
Speaker 2: we do. We're going to feed this story to a
Speaker 2: trade publication that never puts out many stories. And then
Speaker 2: once the trade publication puts out the story, then what
Speaker 2: the press secretary did was like take that story and
Speaker 2: then go to somebody at say the Hill or no sorry,
Speaker 2: I think it was a real call. At the time,
Speaker 2: Hill didn't exist. I don't think until money three or so.
Speaker 2: I may be wrong, but they'd send it to the
Speaker 2: washing Post somebodys, hey, did you see this thing from
Speaker 2: X y Z trade publication, and then it becomes a
Speaker 2: story that you've actually initiated. I think after so many years,
Speaker 2: that's that's why you can be so cautious about what
Speaker 2: you're seeing and who's putting out information. And that's why
Speaker 2: I think that you know, a program like this is
Speaker 2: important because you guys aren't working on behalf of nefarious
Speaker 2: elements or positive elements. You're just asking simple questions of
Speaker 2: the folks who come on. You can agree with those
Speaker 2: folks or not. I mean, they're people that I've learned
Speaker 2: a lot from over the years on Midrants and there
Speaker 2: are a couple that I knew that were you know,
Speaker 2: Baghdad bobbing the whole situation. Yeah, we've had some interesting
Speaker 2: characters along the way, and you've been one of those
Speaker 2: interesting characters, but in a good way. From our first
Speaker 2: year what we've kept. Thank you for an hour, Claud.
Speaker 2: And now that you've relocated from Maryland to Maine, we
Speaker 2: know that you're just not spending all your time finding
Speaker 2: different ways to cook Labster.
Speaker 1: But tell the listeners if they want to keep track
Speaker 1: of you, where's a great place to do that. And
Speaker 1: you've got a few irons in the fire, so you
Speaker 1: bet b don't be stingy with your time. Tell everybody
Speaker 1: what you're working on, what you've got coming up, and
Speaker 1: what they should expect.
Speaker 2: Well, know that I've finished restoring a two hundred year
Speaker 2: old ship captain, So one room and one mistake at
Speaker 2: a time. I learned a lot over this process, pulling
Speaker 2: up carpets and refinishing floors and taking down wallpaper and
Speaker 2: dealing with horsehair plaster that I didn't know existed before
Speaker 2: before I did this project. We're just a you know,
Speaker 2: sow mainers are a frugal lot. You know, we think,
Speaker 2: why pay for double digit temperatures when you can get
Speaker 2: single digits for free? But the places we'll say. I've
Speaker 2: got a chapter in a volume about star trek and
Speaker 2: leadership that's going to be published we think later this
Speaker 2: year from an academic publisher, and that's going to be
Speaker 2: comparing Starfleet Academy to the Naval Academy of the positives
Speaker 2: and the negatives. I'm working on an article right now
Speaker 2: about naval education reform and why it can't happen. The
Speaker 2: book I'm working on now just started researching. It is
Speaker 2: on the Navy and the Pacific factors of victory for
Speaker 2: World War Two, and it's the nineteen thirty nine to
Speaker 2: forty one era. And I'm also starting a new Senate podcast, sorry,
Speaker 2: a new podcast called the Senate. It will be up
Speaker 2: and running later this month. I'm just in negotiations right
Speaker 2: now actually with an entity that I just wanted to
Speaker 2: wait until I had that. But that'll be a weekly podcast,
Speaker 2: not on politics, but on policies, the history, the procedures
Speaker 2: of the Senate and sort of demystify the organization and
Speaker 2: inform people in a way that isn't partisan and what
Speaker 2: we've become accustomed to over the years. Sorry, those are
Speaker 2: some of the projects that I'm working on. Are you
Speaker 2: going to buy the street Fighter? That's the question all
Speaker 2: of us want to know. Sea Fighter FS one. I
Speaker 2: cannot comment on that on air, but there's something I'm
Speaker 2: actually working on if if it is available. Uh, I'm
Speaker 2: really hoping it's I'm really hoping now that it's off
Speaker 2: the Naval Vessel Register, that I can do something for
Speaker 2: a particular entity and we'll see.
Speaker 3: Well, whatever happens, I want to ride. Yeah, well, you
Speaker 3: know we it wasn't the mid rap.
Speaker 1: For the quarterdeck all with them underwaytime. Man.
Speaker 2: I love that idea, You know that that was the focus.
Speaker 2: As you know that ship f F s F one
Speaker 2: sea Fighter was Siren in my second novel and third novel,
Speaker 2: Privateer and the Philippine Pact and I would actually love
Speaker 2: to be aboard and do a show on that.
Speaker 1: Have a theory, but I want to keep it to myself. Yeah, Claude, Claude, Matt,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's great talking to you, and I hope
Speaker 1: you survived the Winner okay, and being that you've got
Speaker 1: some other other irons and fire book wise, we haven't
Speaker 1: excused to have you on again in the future.
Speaker 2: Thanks, it's been a pleasure, guys, Seriously, congratulations. Fifteen years
Speaker 2: is remarkable in a media environment, and what you guys
Speaker 2: have been able to do in giving authors and experts
Speaker 2: and practitioners an opportunity to talk about what they do
Speaker 2: is very much appreciated. I know, I'm very grateful for
Speaker 2: every episode you've had me on to discuss, whether it
Speaker 2: was an article or a book, and I wish you
Speaker 2: well in the future.
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 3: Well. It's always a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1: And thank you everybody for joining us for another edition
Speaker 1: of mid Rats. Until next time, hope you have a
Speaker 1: great Navy day.
Speaker 4: Cherish done to reside, Paddy, Mike MANDONI.
Speaker 5: Wants to marry me and.
Speaker 6: All friend Bed You'll be to blame for long family,
Speaker 6: all me, silly, faulting your time.
Speaker 5: It's a long way to disper really, it's a long
Speaker 5: way to go. It's a long way to differ, really
Speaker 5: tough between.
Speaker 6: All Piccadilly, fair Well, Lewell.
Speaker 5: It's a long long way to differate. But my lie,
Speaker 5: my