Bannon's War Room - WarRoom Battleground EP 1048： NATO Discussion With Geopolitical Expert David T Pyne, Deputy Director Of The EMP Task Force

00:00:00.000 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.

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00:00:17.180 The people have had a belly full of it.

00:00:19.080 I know you don't like hearing that.

00:00:20.540 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that,

00:00:22.280 but you're not going to stop it.

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00:00:24.460 And where do people like that go to share the big lie?

00:00:27.860 Mega Media.

00:00:28.780 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

00:00:34.660 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?

00:00:38.420 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.

00:00:44.820 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.

00:00:48.020 ben harrow at the helm on steve bannon's war room welcome this evening got a great guest

00:01:00.640 that we're trying to get on the show for some time david pine who's the national deputy executive

00:01:06.980 director of the uh task force on national and homeland security uh we'll be digging in a little

00:01:16.560 bit, not starting the show with this, but talking about the threat that the electromagnetic

00:01:24.280 pulse, the EMP, could pose to Americans.

00:01:31.220 We'll be digging on that in just a few moments.

00:01:34.820 First, however, the topical event in the news has been the NATO, the annual NATO summit

00:01:45.360 at Ankara.

00:01:46.560 In Turkey this week, everyone's seen President Trump there doing what President Trump does best, which is dominating the debate.

00:01:53.720 And I wanted to ask David Pine, who has a background in U.S. forces, former advisor to Senator Mike Lee as well.

00:02:06.600 I wanted to ask him what he thinks the dynamic poses to the United States' long-term relationship with America's European NATO allies and with the European Union as well with a newly dominant Turkey.

00:02:32.760 That I think is a hinge factor. Turkey, I think President Erdogan for a number of years has sought very hard to leverage his geopolitical advantages being there on the Bosphorus.

00:02:57.880 And he's trying to play a number of spheres off one another.

00:03:02.760 It's got continental Europe and the long-term strategic interests of Turkey

00:03:08.440 joining the European Union, which would be the first Islamic nation to do so.

00:03:17.920 And you might remember, folks, 15, 20 years ago,

00:03:21.200 Angela Merkel and Pope Benedict XVI were pushing very hard

00:03:25.260 on the christian democrat elements apart the the largest group in the european parliament the

00:03:33.200 largest political force in the european parliament in those days they were both pushing very hard to

00:03:38.660 let turkey in so you have on the one hand erdogan's desires to bring turkey into the european union

00:03:49.420 You also have his relationship with the Islamic countries in the Middle East.

00:04:00.760 And you also got the fact that he's a NATO member.

00:04:03.980 And I think he has done really very well.

00:04:06.540 I thought he'd done very well to balance all of these rival blocs against one another before this NATO conference.

00:04:15.420 conference david pine we've all seen just how well i think he's probably the only leader in

00:04:21.500 there apart from president trump to have escaped from president trump's lashing of nato the only

00:04:29.680 person to escape to that conference i think with a greater authority than when he went in tell me

00:04:37.760 you're an astute observer of these things where what do you how do you appraise

00:04:44.800 Erdogan's handling of these geopolitical dynamics and what's it mean for the United States

00:04:51.620 to come back to my question it's long-term relationship with Europe predicated around

00:04:59.000 a newly dominant Turkey hey Ben it's great to be with you thanks so much for having me on your show

00:05:05.080 Yeah, I think there was a lot of news that came out at the NATO summit. Turkey, as you mentioned, is led by President Erdogan, who's essentially an autocratic leader, who's suppressed his opposition and stayed in power for over two decades, really almost as long as Russian President Putin.

00:05:28.880 I think he came to power around 2002 or so. And he's been an Islamist leader. He's the only Islamist leader of NATO. Turkey used to be led by moderate, you know, Muslim leaders. And Erdogan is not that. 0.83

00:05:48.620 He has one of the biggest militaries in NATO, probably the second biggest military in NATO.

00:05:54.340 So I think President Trump respects that.

00:05:56.500 He knows that, you know, Turkey has a huge army.

00:06:00.160 Obviously, Turkey is a non-nuclear power.

00:06:03.400 So it's a medium power, but it's one of the strongest medium powers in the region.

00:06:06.760 and one that he views as successful in, of course, helping overthrow Assad and, you know,

00:06:17.540 put Syria in the hands of al-Shara, who is a very controversial figure. I personally have trouble

00:06:24.260 stomaching him, but many in U.S. foreign policy circles think that he's an improvement over Assad.

00:06:31.620 I would say that's not the case. But Turkey is, because Turkey does have this strong conventional

00:06:38.640 military, President Trump is talking about selling Turkey about five F-35s. That's something that

00:06:45.560 Israel, obviously Netanyahu, opposes. But Turkey is, you know, under Erdogan, it has been probably

00:06:53.040 more successful than ever before since the Ottoman days when it controlled, you know, areas from

00:07:00.080 Palestine and Syria and Lebanon and Iraq and part of Syria, much of Syria, that's never going to

00:07:10.560 happen again, obviously. But Turkey is more powerful, I think, today than any time that 0.75

00:07:17.960 it has been since 1918. Well, let's go back to Kamal Ataturk, the founder of modern, secular

00:07:25.440 Turkey and a very, a very convinced secularist.

00:07:38.540 Would you suggest that Erdogan now has brought, over the last 20 years, Turkey to a greater regional influence than it had in the days of Ototürk himself?

00:08:03.380 I think so. Yeah, Ataturk obviously was a hero in Turkey because he was able to regain control of modern-day Turkey, which was carved up at the end of World War I.

00:08:22.500 It was supposed to be carved up and into a much smaller state than it is today.

00:08:30.040 And, you know, he was able to reverse that through a successful war against the Greeks and other powers in the region.

00:08:38.700 So I would say that Erdogan is more successful and Turkey is more influential today than it has been, again, for over 100 years.

00:08:48.460 Let me ask you, because Erdogan was actually imprisoned, I think, in his younger days for his agitation in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, if I remember that correctly.

00:09:05.640 And a lot of people were suggesting that his convinced desire to take Turkey out of the secular fold and take it back into a more explicitly religiously Islamic mold was only going to last for Erdogan's duration in power,

00:09:31.880 and that it would revert to its secularist setting

00:09:37.240 that had pretty much governed the country

00:09:40.840 for the 80 or so years beforehand.

00:09:45.160 I think now that expectation looks a little bit optimistic.

00:09:51.140 What do you think about that?

00:09:52.100 Do you think there's any sliding back towards secularism

00:09:55.320 in the post-Erdogan future? 0.67

00:09:58.380 or do you think it's pretty much this is its new setting now as a quite a convinced islamic

00:10:06.020 country not of the same degree perhaps as the islamic countries in the middle east but at least

00:10:11.800 from the european perspective well i would argue turkey is part of the middle east of course

00:10:18.680 but yeah you're absolutely correct it's not as islamist as syria or iraq or uh or iran um

00:10:26.940 because it does have a secular tradition. I think that Erdogan's Islamist party has a pretty secure

00:10:36.140 hold on Turkey today. So my default prediction would be that that continues for the foreseeable

00:10:43.760 future. But of course, once he dies, it's certainly possible that maybe a US-backed

00:10:49.480 secular party could regain control. Obviously, Turkey was led by secular generals and

00:10:56.800 other autocratic leaders, but they were much more pro-Western. Erdogan has kind of, you know,

00:11:04.120 he's kind of hedged his bets. He's made very clear that he's enthusiastic about Turkey joining the

00:11:10.380 Sino-Russian military alliance and having its foot on both sides, essentially part of the NATO

00:11:16.060 alliance, which is led by the US, and the Sino-Russian alliance, which is the Shanghai

00:11:20.740 cooperation organization. So Turkey is a observer state, I believe. So it's kind of two runs down

00:11:29.140 the ladder to SEO membership. So that's something that's concerned in the US, that he has pretty

00:11:37.020 warm relations with Russia and Ukraine, I'm sorry, Russia and China, although he has sold

00:11:42.420 some kind of drone, I think, drones and kind of some level of weapon systems to Ukraine.

00:11:49.060 So, you know, obviously not super pro-Russian, but certainly much more pro-Russian than most NATO countries.

00:11:59.080 But, yeah, in terms of Turkey's post-Erdogan course, you know, it's hard to know for sure. 0.66

00:12:05.720 But I would anticipate that he would designate a successor and that Islamist successor would continue to rule Turkey in his absence.

00:12:13.980 I want to move on to the wider situation in NATO generally after this conference this week in Ankara. 0.60

00:12:23.420 However, on this point, 15, 20 years ago, when it was quite a more realistic proposition that Turkey was going to join the European Union.

00:12:33.340 And as I mentioned before, figures like Angela Merkel and Benedict XVI were quite heavily pushing in that direction.

00:12:43.980 And there was a lot of political pressure from the European Union and indeed the United States around that time on Turkey and on the Turkish military specifically to withdraw from power on the basis that the military's presence either actively ruling Turkey or the potential that it might intervene.

00:13:13.980 was destabilizing democracy.

00:13:18.660 And there were criticisms made at the time

00:13:21.700 that that was a somewhat naive intervention

00:13:24.980 for the United States and for Europe to be making,

00:13:28.160 because it was the very military that was underwriting

00:13:31.380 the secularist political power structure of Turkey,

00:13:39.040 and that too much democracy would allow exactly

00:13:42.420 what erdogan has done to happen just before we move on to the wider nato considerations do you

00:13:51.640 think with the benefit of hindsight the european unions and america's intervention there to

00:13:59.200 basically act in such a way that the turkish military was definitively castrated as a political

00:14:05.900 power in turkey was ill-advised absolutely ill-advised uh you know we kind of did the

00:14:12.380 same thing in iran by you know withdrawing our support from the shah when it was uh he was being

00:14:17.600 overthrown by uh the islamist currently islamist virginia the ayatollah khamenei um but um yeah i

00:14:23.640 think that was that was uh definitely ill-advised uh you know president bush kind of had a

00:14:28.540 democratization drive in the middle east and we saw the results of that uh one of the first

00:14:34.320 casualties was with the Turkish secular parties, which had governed Turkey, as you mentioned,

00:14:40.560 for some 84 to 86 years. And that was a big mistake because now Turkey is not firmly in

00:14:50.960 the Western camp. It's got relations with Islamist regimes that we are not super supportive of. 0.78

00:15:00.180 So, yeah, I mean, the question is, do you support, you know, Democrats wherever they are, you know, or do you support folks that are pro-U.S. and pro-Western? 0.75

00:15:11.640 And I would always go with the pro-Western regimes.

00:15:15.860 You know, that's I think in terms of U.S. national security interests, that would be the smart thing to do. 0.87

00:15:20.780 We'd rather have the shah, you know, an autocratic shah in charge instead of the illiberal regime of the Islamists in Iran. 0.89

00:15:30.480 And certainly that's the case in Turkey as well. 0.61

00:15:33.860 If the price of democracy is a less pro-Western, a less pro-West, pro-U.S. government of another country, I'll typically side with the pro-Westerners against the quote-unquote Democrats.

00:15:48.000 that's a perfect point uh just to pause on david bear with me i'm just going to give a quick shout

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00:18:51.420 slash bannon all right back with david pine david um so back to the nato conference president trump

00:19:01.180 has been quite clear

00:19:04.920 and his ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whittaker,

00:19:10.440 also holding the line here

00:19:12.140 that NATO members need to hoik up their defence spending to 5%.

00:19:20.320 How serious do you think this goal is for the US administration?

00:19:27.140 Because I have a follow-on question about this.

00:19:31.180 Well, I think that President Trump has an outstanding national security strategy that he issued in December and a national defense strategy in January.

00:19:40.300 And essentially what that document says is that the preeminent focus of U.S. national security strategy will be on securing the Western Hemisphere against foreign superpowers, encroaching superpowers like Russia and China.

00:19:55.600 Obviously, a secondary focus on the Western Pacific to deter Chinese aggression against our allies, including non-treaty allies like Taiwan.

00:20:05.660 But then in terms of Europe and the Middle East, it essentially says that we will outsource primary responsibility for the conventional defense and deterrence of the regions to European NATO allies and Israel, respectively.

00:20:21.600 So what that means in terms of NATO is that President Trump wants to see our NATO allies step up in terms of military spending to provide the bulk, if not perhaps even all of the ground forces, certainly, but also most of the air forces.

00:20:41.300 So the U.S., essentially what President Trump's overall vision is, and it's unclear if this will ever be fully implemented, is that by the end of, reportedly by the end of next year, he wants this transformation to take place.

00:20:55.600 And so we're envisioning the withdrawal of perhaps 20,000, perhaps a lot more U.S. troops, ground forces from Europe, air assets.

00:21:07.400 We've already started withdrawing some air assets from NATO.

00:21:11.060 And President Trump has made some, you know, and not just Trump, but also Secretary of War Hagsath and Vice President J.D. Vance have kind of made clear that the U.S., you know, the U.S. security guarantees for our European allies are not ironclad as they were under the Biden administration.

00:21:30.000 But they're essentially conditional on what's in the U.S. national security interest, meaning that if Eastern European NATO member states provoke Russia to attack them, perhaps by hosting Ukrainian drone attacks and strikes on Russia, that the U.S. will not necessarily come to their aid.

00:21:52.400 Certainly we will in terms of armed shipments, but in terms of actual ground fighting forces or, you know, defending them against any Russian incursions or invasions, that's not 100%.

00:22:06.920 And so I think that's very useful because that kind of encourages our European allies to realize that if the U.S., you know, certainly our nuclear brellis is still there for the most part, but in terms of conventional defenses, they need to rely on their own forces.

00:22:24.400 And so Germany obviously is saying that they're going to step up to the plate. They're talking about having the largest military outside of Turkey in the United States within Europe, talking about having the French maybe have a nuclear umbrella over Germany.

00:22:41.300 Poland has also expressed interest in the French extending their nuclear umbrella over Poland as kind of a backstop against the U.S. perhaps not coming to their aid in the event of some kind of war with Russia.

00:22:55.100 But another thing being talked about is that Whitaker, Ambassador Whitaker has stated, is that the U.S. is actually very interested in seeing Germany replace the U.S. as the supreme ally commander of Europe.

00:23:10.940 So a German general would replace us. That makes a lot of sense. Germany and Turkey are the two

00:23:17.840 largest NATO members in Europe outside of, obviously, the US. Turkey actually has more

00:23:26.040 people than Germany at this point. But Germany makes more sense because they're an entirely 1.00

00:23:32.360 European country, whereas Turkey is primarily a Middle Eastern country. And so I think that

00:23:38.420 would be very useful. And then probably the most important for me is that there have been

00:23:43.380 discussions, limited discussions within the White House that we could also pull out of NATO's

00:23:49.500 military command structure. So that makes a lot of sense if we're going to give up the NATO

00:23:55.040 Supreme Commander position. Would you like to see that? Would you like to see the United States

00:24:01.920 withdraw from the military command structure of NATO? Yes, I think that would be an excellent

00:24:09.980 decision that would put America first. I think that what I've been advocating since at least

00:24:16.240 2019 is the Europization of NATO, meaning that NATO would be transformed into a primarily European-led

00:24:24.140 alliance led by France, the U.K., and Germany primarily. And that would give, you know, the U.S.

00:24:31.980 could still come to NATO's defense in the event of war, but we wouldn't be bound, really bound to

00:24:38.360 do so if we're outside the military command structure. And this precedent occurred with

00:24:43.320 France, of course, from 1966 to 1991. You know, there were no NATO military bases in France because

00:24:51.260 was not part of the NATO military

00:24:53.860 alliance. They remained part of the NATO

00:24:55.960 of all.

00:24:57.880 Because General de Gaulle was extremely

00:24:59.940 skeptical, not

00:25:01.960 only of NATO as a concept, but also

00:25:03.880 American influence within NATO.

00:25:06.500 And I

00:25:07.560 would like to suggest that it

00:25:09.820 might have taken, what, 45 years,

00:25:11.880 40 or so years, to come to pass,

00:25:14.100 but anyone who was watching

00:25:15.320 basically, which was a NATO's

00:25:17.780 provocation of Russia to invade

00:25:19.720 ukraine to justify its own continued existence right um anyone who had paid attention to what

00:25:26.840 was saying um in in in the 50s and 60s will have uh will probably have a quite smile on their face

00:25:35.560 look let me just uh let me just ask you this right and we'll come back and pick this up after

00:25:40.680 the break but seeing as you mentioned russia and the presence of russia earlier on in your analysis

00:25:46.840 it's difficult to see what the what the existential need for nato is post fall of the

00:25:56.500 berlin war right because i get the idea the argument of pooling risk and pooling resources

00:26:03.800 but i don't see how that argument works when the risks are asymmetric and the resource contribution

00:26:11.240 is asymmetric as well and it's asymmetric in the wrong direction because the countries or the

00:26:17.600 country least at risk of being attacked say for example by russia is the country which is america

00:26:25.240 um it's almost inconceivable that russia would actually lay a direct attack on the united states

00:26:31.680 that country that's least at risk is paying by far the most of the amount of money into the system

00:26:39.140 So you have two asymmetric risks there.

00:26:42.320 And the countries that are most at risk are paying the least. 1.00

00:26:46.380 There is no shock that I think America can face where they're going to say, thank God, it's the Latvians.

00:26:53.660 They're coming to rescue us. We're saved.

00:26:55.660 It's not going to happen, folks. NATO is a hoax.

00:26:58.820 Back with David Pine.

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00:31:33.840 welcome back david pine um let me ask you this about the famous five percent

00:31:42.400 because i think it's a great ambition for america to have especially if it's going to seriously

00:31:49.800 pursue the in your words the europeanization of nato and i you know i think it'd be great

00:31:57.600 for nato it'd be great for america were that to happen and the five percent i mean i i frankly

00:32:05.320 don't think five percent of all the european nato countries is going to be nearly enough but

00:32:10.960 to cover the shortfall um but put that to the side one moment one thing i have being based here

00:32:18.760 in italy that concerns me when i asked you how seriously do you think the administration

00:32:24.780 is is really working towards this target

00:32:28.020 is how the europeans are quite successfully assuming that the america

00:32:40.940 aren't paying too closely attention to the details.

00:32:45.540 Let me give an example of what's happening here in Italy.

00:32:47.820 This is how they're going to make their 5%, 0.89

00:32:50.360 and I'm not inventing any of this.

00:32:53.540 They're now transferring over pensions

00:32:57.080 to people who served in the armed forces

00:33:01.800 as direct military expenditure.

00:33:06.460 They're transferring over the Coast Guard, the expense of the Coast Guard, to get up to this 5%.

00:33:17.460 They're building a bridge between Sicily and the mainland peninsula, and they're chalking that up to their 5%.

00:33:29.400 Oh, it's horrific, David. It's absolutely horrific.

00:33:31.740 And they're getting away with it because nobody in the administration is saying, hang on, let's open the books.

00:33:38.900 We're going to send over a few generals and a few accountants. 0.77

00:33:42.500 And we're going to look at exactly how you're getting yourselves to this 5%, which Germany can't do anyway, even if it has ambitions.

00:33:55.420 It's borderline in recession anyway.

00:33:57.680 um so coming back to my question to you is how serious do you think america is

00:34:04.140 about the europeans getting to five percent in order to get to that europeanization of nato

00:34:11.980 i would think if america is serious it really needs to be a little bit more engaged

00:34:19.600 on what the europeans are doing with look no one does dodgy accounting

00:34:24.240 better than europeans they are world experts at this um and my general if i could feed this

00:34:32.760 back over to you before we move on to the emp thing um it would be this they are going to run

00:34:40.080 the wily europeans are going to run rings around you unless you actually hold their feet to the 0.76

00:34:46.220 fire and work out what they're doing with their um their expenses because they can get to five

00:34:51.800 percent just through dodgy account no through through um fiddling the books right um it doesn't

00:34:59.640 mean that they're gonna really seriously take in their own hands their own responsibilities

00:35:06.440 responsibilities to defend themselves when they think that america being a military industrial

00:35:12.960 complex will hop over the atlantic at the drop of a handkerchief and bail them out again

00:35:21.260 Give me your thoughts and analysis on that, if you wouldn't mind, please.

00:35:25.740 Great question. Well, I first want to talk about what Trump envisioned for U.S. military spending when he came to power.

00:35:33.280 In March of 2025, he talked about cutting the U.S. military budget by 50 percent.

00:35:38.780 He envisioned these grand bargains, peace treaties with Russia and China.

00:35:43.400 He was going to end the war in Ukraine, obviously, within the first 24 hours of his presidency.

00:35:50.080 And obviously, it's almost 18 months. It'll be 18 months, I think, on the 24th of July.

00:35:56.660 And there's no end to that war in sight. But essentially, what you mentioned in the last

00:36:02.040 segment at the end was, I think, very insightful. And that is that President Biden made the

00:36:06.560 deliberate decision to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine. He was given the option on December 7th

00:36:12.440 of 2021 by President Putin, all you have to do is hand me a written guarantee that Ukraine will

00:36:19.160 never join NATO. NATO will never be expanded eastward. And he vetoed that with the full

00:36:25.480 knowledge that that would result in a Russian invasion. So what we have today is, as you

00:36:30.180 mentioned, you know, NATO leaders are trying to justify NATO's existence by provoking, you know,

00:36:36.760 war and military confrontation with the Russian Federation, which is the mightiest

00:36:42.520 nuclear superpower on the planet, despite the fact that Putin, just a month before 0.67

00:36:49.460 he invaded, actually it was two months, I think it was December 17th of 2021, he provided NATO

00:36:56.060 and the US with mutual security treaties, which would help to ensure peace between Russia and

00:37:04.700 NATO for many decades to come. And Biden told him to pound sand. Trump, I think, if he were

00:37:13.100 president at that time, he would have negotiated some kind of peace deal with Russia that would

00:37:18.400 have ensured that Russia never felt the need to invade Ukraine. And so I think more importantly

00:37:25.260 than 5% military spending is that we reduce our confrontation level with the Russian Federation

00:37:33.200 as a NATO alliance. And the way to do that, of course, President Trump had at one point,

00:37:39.640 he had, I think, a 28-point peace plan, which was pretty reasonable. Only three of those points

00:37:45.900 were probably unacceptable on their face to Russia. And then that got watered down into

00:37:52.020 the Zelensky plan. And then there was the Anchorage summit, and that went pretty well.

00:37:59.280 And then he had a confrontation with Zelensky in the White House in October, in which he told him to accept Russia's peace terms.

00:38:07.860 But I think that's really the key to NATO's ultimate security in avoiding World War III.

00:38:12.700 And I think Steve Bannon has been pretty much a leader on that, hammering home that point as well.

00:38:20.680 But in terms of the 5%, it is very important to the Trump administration, the White House, that European countries meet that goal.

00:38:28.020 I think that there's very little chance of that being done.

00:38:32.080 Certainly, as you mentioned, Italy is having some creative accounting to try to pretend that it's doing that, but it's still likely to fall short.

00:38:41.420 And I think that's pretty it's a pretty unrealistic objective.

00:38:44.540 The U.S., obviously, with one point five trillion, if we we do pass that budget for the Department of War, then we will get in kind of the five percent range.

00:38:54.480 My initial complaint is that we can't demand from our allies to do something that we're not willing to do.

00:39:01.240 And Trump is actually, to his credit, he's put his money where his mouth is, and he's trying to get us to 5% GDP defense spending as well.

00:39:11.080 Just to go back a bit, when you were talking about the origins of the war in Ukraine,

00:39:18.320 um some analysts think that the origins of that war more fundamentally took was about was about

00:39:27.940 six months before the before um putin was provoked into invading because of statements that you might

00:39:35.020 remember that emmanuel macron that the french president had said that nato was dead and on

00:39:40.340 life support basically because he didn't have a reason for existing anymore and lo and behold

00:39:46.120 Lo and behold, in the manufactured-provoked crisis, NATO is now front and center.

00:39:54.780 Just give me your take on that.

00:39:56.480 Is that crazy conspiracy theory stuff?

00:39:59.200 Would you actually draw the dots between that, David Pine?

00:40:05.620 Well, President Trump himself stated, according to John Bolton twice, he told his top cabinet members he wanted the U.S. to pull out of NATO.

00:40:13.420 So he was a visionary on that front.

00:40:16.120 he's kind of pulled back a little bit from that.

00:40:19.360 As I mentioned, he's talking,

00:40:21.060 he's considering pulling out of U.S. military command structure

00:40:24.000 but not pulling out of NATO itself.

00:40:26.500 But yeah, in terms of Macron,

00:40:29.340 he was making statements like that.

00:40:31.600 NATO was lacking a purpose

00:40:33.000 because we did have decent relations with Russia.

00:40:36.540 And President Nixon, Richard Nixon understood

00:40:39.300 that it's in every country's interest

00:40:42.680 to have good relations with your adversaries.

00:40:46.120 did you recall um i do i did i did have a comment um i actually think it would be

00:40:53.060 in the benefit of the united states and the european members of nato and of russia if america

00:41:02.040 did actually formally leave the alliance i i think nato now is a de-state post fall of the

00:41:10.540 Berlin Wall, I think NATO is a destabilizing influence for world peace. And I would cite

00:41:15.600 as exhibit A in the war in Ukraine. Of course, you suggest that President Trump has

00:41:23.000 backed down ever so slightly on his original goals. But let's remember that

00:41:31.540 the Senate passed

00:41:34.840 an act, Congress passed an act

00:41:39.020 promoted in the Senate, which was to

00:41:43.200 prohibit a US president's ability to

00:41:47.340 withdraw the United States from NATO. And the

00:41:51.240 primary sponsor of that legislation was

00:41:55.140 Marco Rubio, the present Secretary of State.

00:41:58.760 so i will just leave that i'll just leave that parked there come back to that at a later date

00:42:07.520 but i think president trump's original position was the superior one look we've got you on this

00:42:12.360 show not only to pick your brains on the geopolitics but also to talk about your day

00:42:17.720 job which we'll do in just a quick moment after the uh quick shout out once again to the show

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00:44:09.200 Okay, back to David Pine. Now, David, your day job, for many, many years, you've been working in Congress, in the then Department for Defense, in the Missile Defense Agency.

00:44:26.260 your area of specialization is preparing America for the threat of an electromagnetic pulse in the

00:44:35.800 MP. Tell us a bit about that. And do you still think after the years, because you are basically,

00:44:43.480 you are, I would quite comfortably say, one of America's leading experts on this issue,

00:44:47.860 national expert on this issue, with all that you've been doing over many, many years,

00:44:52.820 Do you think America is still slightly complacent about the risks posed by an EMP? And just perhaps say a few words to your fellow Americans, how such a thing might arise, what it would take, and what would the devastation arising out of that be?

00:45:19.360 Yeah, another great question. So, yeah, as you mentioned, I'm the deputy executive director of the Task Force on National Homeland Security. We've been in existence for 15 years as a congressional authorized,

00:45:30.860 Aggressionally Authorized Board to warn Americans and policymakers about the existential threat

00:45:37.980 posed by electromagnetic pulse attack by our enemies. Electromechanic pulse is, we found

00:45:46.660 out at the Starfish Prime Test in 1963 in the Pacific that it can take out, you know, electronic

00:45:54.480 systems, electrical systems from a great distance, 800 miles in that instance, and as few as one

00:46:04.480 super EMP warhead, which is essentially a nuclear warhead that's been specially designed to maximize

00:46:10.260 its EMP effects, which again are capable of taking out critical infrastructure in the United States

00:46:16.980 and other countries that they might be used against. Just one warhead could potentially

00:46:21.940 turn out the lights uh and shut down all of our electronic systems throughout the continental

00:46:27.260 united states so there are um you know we assess that up to four different countries have that

00:46:33.360 capability russia obviously foremost they developed that capability in the 1990s just

00:46:38.900 just just just wind that back a little bit right one nuclear warhead with a range of 800 miles

00:46:49.600 That's atmospheric. It doesn't need to be a direct attack on New York City.

00:46:55.400 This could be in the middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific or something like that.

00:47:01.380 One specially honed nuclear warhead maximized for EMP effects.

00:47:10.480 You said would basically take out the whole of the electric communications across the whole of the continental North America, right?

00:47:21.240 So there's no electronic banking. That's dead. No internet. That would be dead.

00:47:25.820 No cell phone coverage. That would be dead in a single instance.

00:47:29.320 um so that would be like massive impact for quite in terms in terms of the ratio between

00:47:37.880 cause and effect you'd get massive effect there from very little effort um tell me what can

00:47:45.880 because this is always bubbling around and people mention it and then forget about it and assume

00:47:51.840 that by forgetting about it it will never happen you know treating hope as a strategy um what should

00:47:58.160 america be doing in order to prepare itself for this and is it not the same preparation that would

00:48:04.720 eventually serve in any case from a natural electromagnetic pulse from a from a solar flare

00:48:12.200 or something like that which is arguably more probable yeah it is so first just to clarify

00:48:18.720 it would have to be a super emp warhead detonated about 285 to 300 miles overhead over the center

00:48:25.460 of the United States, so maybe Missouri or that region. And there are up to four countries that

00:48:31.640 we believe have super EMP satellites or orbital nukes or obviously nuclear intercontinental

00:48:38.260 range missiles that could accomplish that. So yeah, you're absolutely right. It could take out

00:48:45.540 all of our food distribution system, our power, our water purification and distribution system,

00:48:52.220 our internet, our communications. I mean, this is essentially a technology-destroying weapon

00:49:03.260 that could blast us back into the pre-electrical age, at which point, you know, in pre-electrical

00:49:10.000 age, it's like the 1880s. And the US only was able to sustain a population of about 38 million

00:49:16.500 people. So the EMP Commission, the Congressional Commission, determined that up to 90% of Americans

00:49:23.440 could die from such an attack. And there's, you know, President Trump has been, he's been the

00:49:28.540 best president we've ever had, the only one who's actually done anything to try to protect the U.S.

00:49:33.600 against EMP. Unfortunately, what I've assessed needs to be done is a presidential declaration

00:49:39.400 of emergency. We've seen the president declare emergencies with regards to the immigration

00:49:43.580 threat with regards to the fertilizer shortage and other issues, the border wall, things of that

00:49:51.900 nature. And I think maybe tariffs as well. But he also needs to declare a presidential state

00:49:58.800 of emergency for EMP attack and nuclear ballistic missile attack. And what that would do, that would

00:50:04.500 enable him to repurpose funding, congressionally approved funding that's maybe related, maybe

00:50:12.640 for our conventional armed forces or things of that nature to hardening the grid, our electrical

00:50:19.900 grid against super EAP and cyber attack, but also against what you mentioned, which is the threat of

00:50:26.240 super geomagnetic storms or solar flares that could also have the same and nearly as much of

00:50:34.600 an impact in destroying our critical infrastructure. And that's something that's

00:50:38.840 guaranteed to happen. You know, it's actually overdue is that we have kind of an 1859 Carrington

00:50:44.980 level EMP event that's naturally occurring. I think there was maybe a movie that was made in

00:50:52.100 the UK about that in the last decade or so. There's also a great movie called One Second

00:50:58.020 After that's coming out, I think, by December that the task force has been promoting.

00:51:03.500 shocking these are things that people really don't want to think about um first of all go to

00:51:12.800 my patriot supply and and prepare that way that's something that everyone can do right now david

00:51:19.780 pine where do people go to learn more about what an emp is what they can do to prepare about it

00:51:26.300 domestically and what they can do to help pressure their elected representatives to get their heads

00:51:31.580 and actually do something.

00:51:34.420 Our best website is

00:51:35.700 EMPtaskforce.us

00:51:37.840 There you can, your viewers

00:51:39.640 can go to volunteer or you can

00:51:41.440 donate to the task force and we need your

00:51:43.540 support.

00:51:45.480 David Pine, very, very grateful.

00:51:48.020 We'll get that screen up.

00:51:50.040 Very grateful for you

00:51:51.580 sharing your geopolitical

00:51:53.700 expertise with us. Come back

00:51:55.820 give us a further brief, especially on

00:51:57.480 all things to do with EMPs and NATO.

00:52:00.200 My thanks to Will at Real

00:52:01.400 America's Voice. I'm Vittorio Santifranco for putting the show together.

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Bannon's War Room - July 15, 2026

WarRoom Battleground EP 1048： NATO Discussion With Geopolitical Expert David T Pyne, Deputy Director Of The EMP Task Force

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