In this episode, we discuss the growing isolationism in China's foreign policy towards the United States, and how China might be thinking about itself in terms of foreign policy and military affairs. We discuss China's decision to cut off diplomatic relations with Iran, and the impact this could have on China's relations with the rest of the world.
00:00:00.000Right now, the United States, in terms of where we are struggling in this war front, because a few big ships have been hit by Iranian missiles, is to defend China's economic interest.
00:00:17.240That's where their oil comes from, not ours.
00:00:21.000They're essentially trying to hurt China until the U.S. backs down over this.
00:00:24.840like the news says all of this without explaining it to people in stark terms would you like to know
00:00:33.140more hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to be talking about
00:00:38.360the signals that we have of a massive change in how china might be thinking about itself
00:00:46.120foreign policy wise no specifically they shut down their flights over taiwan where they used
00:00:53.860to have constant sort of military antagonistic flights over taiwan they said oh this is because
00:00:58.940you know we're going to have this upcoming meeting with trump or people have said well maybe it's
00:01:03.060because of oil prices it happened literally the the next sortie that was supposed to fly over
00:01:09.120after the first news of the bombing started so it's not the case well hmm and specifically what
00:01:18.240I want to talk about is not just this that happened with China, but in Iran, in Venezuela,
00:01:26.500and in another instance in Pakistan, Chinese equipment, which they had touted and perhaps
00:01:34.340believed internally to be top of the line and equivalent to US equipment, failed in a level
00:01:41.200that was beyond spectacular. You've got to keep in mind, Iran had a $5 billion weapons deal with
00:01:49.440China. And so they reportedly had some of the best equipment there. And not just that, we'll go over
00:01:57.460what analysts were saying, but you have Peter Zaihan calling Caracas a fortress, and impossible
00:02:03.940to invade. You have other analysts saying, Iran, there's just nothing you can do. It's
00:02:10.760completely impregnable and yet and i'd like to point out people like if if you watch something
00:02:17.340that's tainted by like the the the biased media sources you'll get a very bad understanding i
00:02:25.500think of what's going on right now and i think a lot of people when i hear them talk about what's
00:02:30.520happening for example in iran or what happened in venezuela for for context we lost only two
00:02:40.100planes and those were to friendly fire we have lost no boats okay and in terms of the the very
00:02:49.120light i think it's seven casualties now it's because of like random missiles of bases this is
00:02:56.640astonishing when you're talking about these attacks taking off the board within a matter of
00:03:01.360months venezuela iran and cuba which was reliant on venezuela but but the the point here being is
00:03:09.560china i think is now and we'll go into evidence of this why this would be sort of going back
00:03:17.120over the books and having to rethink like are we anywhere near the military power we thought we
00:03:23.940were okay hold on though we the u.s shot down two of our own planes it wasn't us it was another
00:03:33.040ally i'll get into it okay the no this is actually insane like at this point we have total air
00:03:40.840dominance in iran at this point which basically means we can fly wherever we want within what was
00:03:47.980one of the most hostile countries on earth to the united states until fairly recently all of this
00:03:55.580happened without china and russia actually has attempted to help a little bit with the iran
00:04:01.740situation but keep in mind if you go to ccp videos they would regularly talk about how the reason why
00:04:07.980the u.s hasn't done anything in venezuela is because we're afraid of china why has the united
00:04:11.920states held back for so long and still dared not really strike venezuela this whole thing is pretty
00:04:16.700strange this is warships were already deployed in the caribbean the threats were made loud and clear
00:04:21.560yet nothing actually happened because china is watching from behind and venezuela itself isn't
00:04:27.340easy to deal with either it has real backing from china money when it needs money supplies when it
00:04:32.380needs supplies that means if the u.s attacks it won't be anything like iraq maduro is actually
00:04:37.060quite clever he keeps saying china's victory is our victory deliberately tying himself to china
00:04:41.880and making washington even more hesitant to act
00:04:44.080that was the ccp talking position right oh interesting well what's also interesting too
00:04:53.680and why I'm really glad you're talking about this
00:05:21.000making us unable to potentially support Taiwan should China make a move that is okay so like
00:05:28.760we should talk about how embarrassing this situation is for China right now the way that
00:05:33.680Iran is trying to get us to stop attacking them okay is by doing enough economic damage that the
00:05:41.840U.S. feels it needs to pull back this the core way that they are doing that is attempting to
00:05:48.540increased shipping prices through the Strait of Hormuz. If that was cut off, the core country
00:05:55.300that's going to fail is China. Right now, the United States, in terms of anywhere where we
00:06:02.100have our back against the wall in this war front, anywhere where we are struggling in this war
00:06:08.360front, because a few big ships have been hit by Iranian missiles, is to defend China's economic
00:06:15.300interest. That's where their oil comes from, not ours. We don't get anything from the Strait of
00:06:26.580Hermione. That's China. Yeah. Had you contextualized that, Simone? Huh. Well, it's certainly not what
00:06:37.880people are talking about. So no, I wasn't thinking about it. It wasn't top of mind. I mean, people
00:06:42.320had mentioned like well the u.s isn't directly affected by the you know oil interruption but
00:06:49.020that doesn't matter because globalization means the u.s is affected if anyone else is affected
00:06:54.120yes and who is most affected china china is the country that is most affected by what's happening
00:07:01.580right now in terms of global powers it's it's so weird how they gloss over that they're like this
00:07:07.340could cause a global economic crash instigated obviously not by the united states because we
00:07:12.200now have a bunch more oil, but by outside powers collapsing. What outside power are you talking
00:07:17.880about there, buddy? Because I can think of one that depends on this strait being open a heck of
00:07:24.020a lot. And we've talked about this in other videos, but I think a lot of people do not contextualize
00:07:27.780how much China depends on this. Huge chunk. If the Strait of Malacca was closed, which would be a
00:07:33.300little bit closer, they're losing 45% of, and I've heard other estimates as high as 80% of their
00:07:40.260imported energy which would be devastating not only that but china is a net food importer and
00:07:46.360a net phosphorus importer which is doubly bad for china because we'll do a second video on this
00:07:52.860morocco did this play where it took the western sahara which is like they did a really good job
00:07:58.920of it as well you mentioned this they're just like quietly doing a land grab is that right
00:08:03.100vast majority of the world's phosphorus supply which is necessary to create fertilizer it isn't
00:08:08.400something we can create artificially yet all right they have like 13x the amount that china has
00:08:13.040and so another thing about this conflict which is interesting that you point this out
00:08:18.480is so not only is 17 of china's oil coming from iran and venezuela but a lot of the rest of their
00:08:26.800oil comes from countries that are now better friends with us because of this conflict
00:08:33.380specifically saudi arabia everyone out there who's like oh you know the united states is doing this
00:08:39.200because we're being manipulated by israel and the jews and everything like that yeah okay whatever
00:08:45.020you want to believe that but the reality of geopolitics is that this is as much something
00:08:50.380that saudi arabia wants as something that israel wants and saudi arabia has a lot of global
00:08:57.920geopolitical power specifically because of the concentration of wealth within the country which
00:09:03.100allows them to do things that other countries cannot do but secondarily because of their ability
00:09:08.280to cut off oil supply to other players if you have any degree of the control of iranian venezuela and
00:09:15.660saudi oil you control a huge chunk and then the u.s oil which is a huge chunk of of global oil
00:09:21.820supply just a huge chunk of the global oil supply so that's also super relevant to think about but
00:09:27.180i'll get into the points here in regards to where i think things are going in iran right now
00:09:32.840my my read of the situation is is a lot of if this ends up working out the way that trump wants it to
00:09:39.980work out too in a best case scenario is they need to when i say they i mean massad needs to kill the
00:09:45.460new ayatollah if they can successfully show that if you put in an ayatollah that is not willing to
00:09:53.160play ball will just be killing them eventually one of these ayatollahs because like the one that
00:09:57.860they put in actually let's talk about like the religious significance of what's going on right
00:10:02.420know so they put in an ayatollah that is the direct son of the last ayatollah which both the
00:10:09.140last ayatollah and the first ayatollah put in writing that they're never and that would make
00:10:14.380them a hereditary rural country again and they said that that was anti-islamic yeah and not only
00:10:22.140is this guy horrendously corrupt hundreds of millions in the uk right now in terms of like
00:10:26.280wandered estates and everything but in islam this is this is shown as happening in the quran
00:10:32.180when a country loses a war allah says i make you do that like like this happens to you because you
00:10:40.180are not being faithful to me in the right way and so this puts a bit of a mandate in heaven
00:10:46.600into what's going on in iran right now for the person who was elected ayatollah in an anti-islamic
00:10:54.840fashion um which is ironic that the former ayatollahs took that position because they're
00:11:01.700shia and the shia is a faction of islam that split came over wanting islam to be more yeah
00:11:08.900but whatever you know maybe they can get around it with that right you know but the the point here
00:11:14.600being is even if we just pull out people can be like well now iran is more motivated to attack us
00:11:19.640and it's like well they were certainly motivated to attack us before right most of the terrorist
00:11:24.340action that we have been dealing with globally, other than the stuff that's funded by the Saudis
00:11:30.200and the Wahhabis, was funded by Iran. And this is why support for the war is so strong in the US
00:11:35.740military. There were some recent polls about this. And I think it's because, you know, even though
00:11:39.620that they're the ones who are most directly impacted by having to go into action where there
00:11:44.180is action, they also realized that this has been the group that we've actually been fighting
00:11:49.140throughout all Middle Eastern conflicts that were just pussyfooting. But let's get into this.
00:11:54.340China significantly reduced its military aircraft incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification
00:11:59.220dome starting on February 27, 2026, marking an abrupt unexplained pause in what had been
00:12:05.720near daily operations. This halt lasted at least seven days initially, the longest such period of
00:12:11.520time since Taiwan began publicly tracking these before the 2020s. So note, this is the longest
00:12:17.780we've ever seen since the 2020s and this period of no planes was only ended by the resumption of
00:12:25.160just a two aircraft and these were surveillance not military aircraft or traditional like fighting
00:12:29.500aircraft on march 6th followed by minimal continued activity now a few interesting notes as to china's
00:12:36.520position right now and why this may have so much to see their equipment fail so spectacularly in
00:12:42.320a public context is China over the past year has reduced, actually I think it's over the past
00:12:47.920couple of years, has reduced its military purchases by 73%. And the reason they've
00:12:53.200reduced military purchases is because they went with this policy of we want to produce more
00:12:56.880internally. That makes sense. I mean, from a national security standpoint, you should be
00:13:01.180internally producing these things. Right. Unless it turns out that you can't make things internally
00:13:05.660or everything internal is corrupt. Then they have the secondary issue and see our video about the
00:13:11.460coup that happened was in china recently and i mean i still think the evidence points to this
00:13:16.260but one of the guys i love it that some of our people are like no no no this was just a totally
00:13:21.400normal thing for xi to illegally mind you this was illegal within the ccp because it was the top
00:13:27.140council and to take action against other members of the council required a majority vote of the
00:13:33.260council the problem is is that she was arresting the only two remaining members of the council
00:13:38.700other than him and the head of the secret police and so he couldn't have gotten a majority vote
00:13:42.920and a lot of people were like oh this may have just been a normal thing to have happen was in
00:13:47.860china or something like this so some side notes after that immediately they do this big announcement
00:13:53.520about this which they've never done before normally when they're doing corruption cleanups
00:13:57.280they don't immediately then be like this guy was a traitor to the nation like super strong wording
00:14:02.220in major publications and then withdraw it the next day which was really interesting as well
00:14:07.080like power stuff going on there it's really fascinating this happened simpson is you know
00:14:13.280what happened to that guy coming to the back dead oh just what murdered or just likely likely they
00:14:25.300said he had medical complications oh huh so this hasn't been announced officially but this is what
00:14:32.040the rumor mill is and there hasn't been any proof of his life which given that there is a rumor of
00:14:36.980this you think that if he was alive they would be like and here's proof that he's still alive
00:14:41.020sure but this matters a lot from chinese perspective it means their entire upper
00:14:44.720military barrace has been removed at this point right and there have been rumors that she actually
00:14:52.800wanted to go and try to take taiwan during this last u.s election cycle and that it was these two
00:15:00.680top generals that were keeping him from doing that saying this is a bad idea these are generals who
00:15:06.340per the previous podcast you did on this were more experienced they were some of the most they
00:15:11.820were yeah the only people with real experience like yeah like they've seen more before they've
00:15:16.560seen china involved in military action and they i guess had presumably the wisdom to say let's not
00:15:22.580do this yes and i if i was gonna suspect anything before i get further here what i think might be
00:15:30.780going through xi's head with all of this uh put yourself in in xi's position okay he takes out
00:15:37.040these two top generals because he sees them as blocking his ability to do what china needs to do
00:15:43.580which is just retake taiwan okay he thinks they're blocking him they're not really listening blah blah
00:15:50.060blah so he does that and keep in mind these people have been long-term friends of xi as well right
00:15:55.400like they were not in the anti-G faction these people were always in the G faction
00:16:01.160the inner circle and don't be stupid about this so he's likely having some internal feelings about
00:16:06.360this the point I'm making here is that I actually the G feeling very certain about all of this
00:16:12.460until you know he's killed one of his best friends for a long time and then all of the things that
00:16:19.060that guy warned him about and was the very reason he believed that guy was betraying him not just
00:16:24.660that guy but two guys um start coming true one after another and you start to think oh my god
00:16:32.040am i actually like with was i wrong to do this but also now you know he's responsible for what
00:16:40.260china does next he actually needs to because he doesn't have anyone else in the room anymore
00:16:44.640meaning and this is similar to what i say about relationships the reason why it's useful to
00:16:51.320structure relationship for a man to have all of the power is because when a man has to make final
00:16:57.280decisions and only has you to consult he's actually often going to unless he's a complete evil
00:17:02.560sociopath going to make decisions that are in your favor more because he doesn't feel that there's
00:17:07.720some alternate source there that's you know arguing against him and he needs to compromise
00:17:12.080he needs to think okay now i'm fully responsible for everyone and she may finally be in that
00:17:17.440position now that he's taking everyone who can disagree with him out of the room
00:17:20.080he needs to begin to model their opinions and he might not have been doing that before he might
00:17:26.800have been using them to model the opinions of the why would it be a bad idea to go directly after
00:17:32.680taiwan faction yeah immediately after he does this is when the venezuela thing happens which he had
00:17:39.180believed was impossible most of the world's top military analysts believed was impossible yeah
00:17:45.220then a few months later the iran thing happened and increasingly and this is also really important
00:17:51.040china has become isolated because of its reaction to these individual instances every time a chinese
00:17:59.700ally who china had promised they would protect comes into a situation like this and china does
00:18:05.900literally nothing but sends a strongly worded email that makes it so much less likely that any
00:18:13.080other chinese ally is going to come to their aid if a conflict actually were to begin and i think
00:18:20.960that this has become like dramatically starker in a modern context than it was before this
00:18:29.280so if you go let's go six months ago okay china attacks taiwan now china is going to be saying
00:18:39.100yes, America has allies in the region, you know, Japan, Korea, Australia, but, and I'm just here
00:18:46.720listing allies that I am fairly certain would militarily go to bat over this, right? But we
00:18:52.780also have allies, you know, throughout the globe, you know, Iran and Venezuela and Russia, and
00:18:58.780they're gonna put on either economic pressure or military pressure to help us. The problem is,
00:19:05.600right now it doesn't look like that it's very obvious iran isn't going to be able to do anything
00:19:10.760no matter what happens even if the war winds up in the like best possible scenario for them
00:19:15.180which really for them is the u.s uh what does iran want it wants the u.s to pull out without
00:19:23.600the new guy being killed and then no long-term geopolitical destabilization was in their country
00:19:31.340The problem is, is even that would be a win for the United States when contrasted with the previous status quo. Right. Iran basically just wants this to end or drag the United States into something long term that causes, again, geopolitical strife.
00:19:50.600but that geopolitical strife will be felt disproportionately by china right so again
00:19:56.060it's like a weird situation so in iran's best case scenario china is one of the primary people
00:20:01.060who suffers right i don't follow that and i think what iran wants is israel gone off the map and the
00:20:08.160u.s not involved i'm talking about realistic the path they could go from where they are now
00:20:13.380um china iran's strategy right now is like you know we punched him they're trying to like grab
00:20:21.960us and hold us in place to be like now you can't get out now you're entrenched within this this
00:20:28.040fight yeah they're just trying to basically last us out until this becomes too politically
00:20:33.500unpopular for us to continue and then we back out and then they just continue on with their current
00:20:38.380regime that's their plan for some idea of how bad things are and how potentially unrealistic this is
00:20:44.760for iran they just froze at some large banks i think all the civilian bank accounts meaning
00:20:50.480that it looks like the government is just going to begin to steal money from its civilian population
00:20:55.220because it does not have enough to pay to keep this war going that's their best case scenario
00:21:00.440but they're still geopolitically completely isolated after that at this point because they
00:21:05.180spazzed out and attacked every one of their neighbors. And the reason they did that is
00:21:09.100because they were trying to create economic damage. The problem is, is it geopolitically
00:21:12.620isolated them. And the core economic damage they're doing globally is to China, not to the
00:21:17.640United States, right? Like they're essentially trying to hurt China until the US backs down over
00:21:22.260this, which is a terrible situation. Like the news says all of this without explaining it to people
00:21:30.420in stark terms that really better gives you an idea of china's position so even in the best case
00:21:38.100scenario for iran china is in a terribly backseat position but anyway so china does decide it wants
00:21:45.140to go into this war now now the position that it's in is not china and taiwan and china asking
00:21:54.560does the u.s actually involve itself because i think with a lot of this this this you know
00:22:00.040historically, Biden said that we wouldn't. I think Trump has wavered on whether or not we
00:22:05.160definitely would try to defend Taiwan. I think that China is now getting the perception that
00:22:09.620the United States would try to defend Taiwan if they went in. You know, after seeing what
00:22:15.020happened in Iran and Venezuela, I think they're getting the idea of, oh, as long as Donald Trump's
00:22:19.600in power, it's a yes from the United States. Right. And the problem was a yes from the United
00:22:25.220States on Taiwan from China's perspective, after not backing its own allies, is Russia obviously
00:22:31.620isn't going to be able to do anything really differentially to support them. Iran's out of
00:22:36.220the picture, Venezuela's out of the picture, every regional power of relevance, except North Korea,
00:22:39.600which I'll get to in a little bit. And yet within the region, if the United States decided to do
00:22:45.140something, at the very least, Japan's going to jump in, especially with their current president,
00:22:50.800who says that margaret thatcher is her primary political inspiration and is a politician we
00:22:57.700should do a whole episode on just her she's awesome i like i think they also have invested
00:23:01.940more in the military they've increased their military spending if you look at animes recently
00:23:07.860like gate and stuff like that they've become incredibly more militaristic and jingoistic
00:23:12.760in terms of military fantasies japan wants to be and very core to their culture historically
00:23:19.260is brutal militarism and yeah so it's just no longer hashtag too soon like we finally got
00:23:25.700to the point where it's it's no longer hashtag too soon yeah yeah they are enough time has passed
00:23:31.400where they can like be military and not be creepy anymore yeah they're not like europe where europe
00:23:36.940is like oh you know what if like young men die in war or something like that or like imagine the
00:23:43.960burden to us that young Japanese men are like yeah like this is going to be awesome in part
00:23:51.760because the way that the history of World War II is taught to them and the way that the history of
00:23:59.320their own words is taught to them is so jingoistic that it's really either they're the victims or
00:24:06.260they're just winning winning winning right it's never like this is a morally complicated thing
00:24:10.800to be doing and with the united states on their back and potentially a moral reason to justify
00:24:17.380them going to war they're going to be quite excited about it would australia get involved
00:24:21.880maybe i mean china is they're hugely economically tied to china yeah it's a little bit harder to say
00:24:28.680on that front they're in a very fraught position yeah and in the past china has thrown its weight
00:24:32.980around with australia yeah same with south korea but why south korea is sort of irrelevant whether
00:24:41.120or not they get involved which is an interesting position is south korea like so china decides to
00:24:47.040go for taiwan the natural thing for them to do north korea recently has been doing major arms
00:24:52.880purchases of modern weapons and a lot of people think that they might be seriously considering
00:24:59.460an invasion at this point. I mean, the question is, is why would they be seriously considering
00:25:03.500one at this point? And it might be because it would be a jointly timed thing. If Xi Jinping
00:25:08.620has been planning to attack Taiwan, it may be a, a, a joint operation, right? That that's when it
00:25:16.060would make sense to do that. If both countries have this, you know, wishlist, I want to go in
00:25:21.400scenario, it could be dual triggered. The problem is that if South Korea doesn't get involved in
00:25:28.300the war right like suppose the china does go for taiwan and south korea doesn't get involved
00:25:32.600china's going to want to do everything as power to prevent north korea from attacking
00:25:36.100because that would immediately trigger south korean involvement and frankly south korea is
00:25:41.420just a lot stronger than north korea in in every as we've seen from the current wars that israel
00:25:48.700has been involved in the technological capability of a nation matters a lot and the level of
00:25:54.360corruption within a nation matters a lot. And a nation could take on much bigger opponents if
00:26:00.260those opponents are corrupt and can't manage decentralized military forces. And so the U.S.
00:26:08.560would take that card, bring North Korea into the war, but we get South Korea. Yeah, that's a great
00:26:13.220card to have, right? That's again why it's sort of irrelevant, the South Korea question.
00:26:19.320To go over the specific military equipment that was on display here.
00:26:24.580So Venezuela has long been one of China's biggest arms customers in Latin America.
00:26:29.900Since 2005, they bought systems including the JY-27A, a mobile range, long range anti-stealth radar.
00:26:39.540They bought the HQ-9 and the HQ-12 surface-to-air missile SAM batteries.
00:26:45.540and they layered these with russian s-300 palestiners i was going to make this episode
00:26:50.160talking about russia as well but i wanted to keep this focus on china they in terms of how they
00:26:55.240formed the how the systems performed they failed completely the u.s
00:27:02.200stealth helicopters and aircraft entered venezuela totally undetected gosh they had
00:27:07.400this total false sense of security like don't worry we bought the anti-stealth radar yeah they
00:27:13.540they were they were quickly blinded and jammed by ea 18g growler electronic warfare and none
00:27:21.400of the chinese or russian sams fired effectively keep in mind how scary that is if you're china
00:27:28.620now right it wasn't like the systems performed poorly they were just outmatched they were
00:27:36.560completely irrelevant it's it's kind of nice though i would appreciate it as china having
00:27:43.400all these test cases for our military technology better that better with iran and venezuela than
00:27:50.560with them in some scenario so i guess you know the best way to test your military capability is to
00:27:59.420have someone else pay for it basically iran and venezuela subsidized it by buying these things
00:28:06.020from them and then have them play test it in live scenarios this is no longer a fluke in terms of
00:28:13.160chinese systems this is the rule they are completely well documented that chinese military
00:28:18.640tech has failed consistently both in venezuela and iran when matched with american military tech
00:28:24.160correct yes and there's been separate failures in pakistan but that's a separate scenario i'm not
00:28:28.400going to go too deep oh wow okay so three three different locations yeah chinese military tech
00:28:34.620people don't understand how corrupt corrupt countries are in terms of like like how incompetent
00:28:41.980they can be i think a lot of people they see a big country they see shiny things and they think
00:28:46.520oh this country a good example is iran's military tanks for example they had something called the
00:28:52.820sulamans and i'll put one on screen here and they're very pretty tanks they're actually an
00:28:57.520american tank that's around i think 70 years old where they have just basically put metal plates
00:29:03.300over it it looked more angular they added skins yeah they added skins they added skins to old
00:29:09.840timey tanks that's amazing and people can be like well china isn't that look in china has good
00:29:15.820drones you know who had chinese drones was iran but on top of the chinese drones that that iran
00:29:23.440had i'm sorry i was gonna go over one of my favorite stories about china to give you an
00:29:27.520idea of what i mean and why people at the head of china can be so scared when you can go and you see
00:29:31.660the display and you think that this stuff works and then you realize it's all fake is for the
00:29:37.040olympic games when they wanted to look like very you know cutting edge and green and like we're so
00:29:41.820much better than the west and they had uh this is the sulaiman tank it does just look like someone
00:29:47.540put like cardboard or like i don't know like cool metal over a tank it like just they covered it it
00:29:55.260it kind of reminds me of like you know when like families at home make tanks out of cardboard like
00:29:59.980cause halloween costumes it kind of looks like that don't you think yes is it so much worse than
00:30:04.860you expected simone it's just about what you described actually so pretty good for our audio
00:30:10.140only listeners but the well speaking of the the so so during the olympic games they wanted to look
00:30:15.340really you know high tech and everything sure and so they had on street corners air-powered
00:30:21.220street lamps and it turned out that not only did they not work but they used electricity to spin
00:30:26.960the fans to make it look like they were working. That's adorable. So wait, people knew that
00:30:33.260because if there was no wind, they were still spinning. I don't know how people figured this
00:30:37.920out. I mean, the extent that you get this within Chinese culture, because it's so centralized,
00:30:46.580there's just so much room for grift. And so there isn't a good understanding at the top
00:30:51.600how much of their equipment actually works. And now that more and more of Chinese equipment is
00:30:56.900source from was in China, there is even more doubt. To give another example of one of their
00:31:02.780stealth detection systems completely failing, Israel sent in, this was a case where over Tehran,
00:31:10.380a Iranian fighter jet was downed by an Israeli fighter jet. And one, this is insane that they
00:31:18.840have that much air control of Tehran to begin with, right? But it's also insane the way it
00:31:24.480went down what the israeli fighter jet was and i'll put pictures on screen and you'll immediately
00:31:30.160see how comical this was it was a completely cutting edge stealth fighter like a best in class
00:31:37.180aircraft the iranian aircraft was an aircraft that was really made for training it had no chance
00:31:44.400against the israeli plane and a lot of people are like why did they even go off the ground why even
00:31:48.880waste a pilot on that right yeah and the answer may be that they couldn't tell it apart from a
00:31:54.200drone. With their tech or just with their knowledge. It's a Chinese tech. They can't tell
00:32:00.860Israeli fighter jet from a drone. That's really bad. Okay.
00:32:10.300Wow. And note here, they have taken down seven drones, American drones.
00:32:16.220Okay. No, no planes or boats, but a few drones. That's good for you,
00:32:22.820iran and and people here note like the constant lashing out of iran the damage to surrounding
00:32:29.440gulf countries infrastructure as like some sort of failure on america's part like oh they're still
00:32:34.440sending rockets it's like no that's further geopolitically isolating iran right like that's
00:32:40.200not earning them goodwill in the gulf right like the especially when a lot of these countries are
00:32:46.140protecting themselves like the uae with america-bought systems that's a good economic
00:32:53.980opportunity for the united states in the future to sell them more of those talk about you know
00:32:58.040depleted weapon surprise yes this has been a big sales pitch for american military tech
00:33:03.440and israeli these systems have failed marketed aggressively as equivalent to western technology
00:33:10.980by china up up until now so just there we were looking at venezuela there was the five billion
00:33:19.280dollar sign in secret with iran and the known equipment that it included is the cm302 anti-ship
00:33:29.440cruise missiles these are supersonic missiles with a range of 290 kilometers designed to skim
00:33:34.060the water surface at high speeds to evade ship defenses wow the hq and keep in mind none of these
00:33:41.220ended up hitting american ships a few commercial tankers maybe but no american ships hq-9b surface
00:33:48.500to air anti-ballistic missile system the hq-1b surface to air missile system the fn-6 man pads
00:33:56.320the lc-9b long-range surveillance radar and the type 305a air surveillance radar and the slc-2
00:34:04.040counter battery radar for locating artillery and they acquired sunflower 200 kamikaze drones
00:34:10.000and they acquired hq19 anti-satellite interceptor missiles i i think they did actually take down
00:34:17.340one satellite and these were things wait that venezuela purchased from china no these things
00:34:23.100iran purchased from china oh okay they and again these largely failed so we lost three f-15e
00:34:31.960strike eagle firefighter jets march 1st 2026 in a friendly fire incident involving kuwaiti air
00:34:38.120defenses near the ali al-sam air base all six crews survived after ejecting and the aircraft
00:34:44.780were valued at around 282 million and were destroyed we lost seven mq-9 reaper drones
00:34:51.680that were down by iranian fire but that's it kuwaiti defense yeah i think it was automated
00:35:00.340kuwaiti defense system probably systems we gave them okay so the system that shot down the american
00:35:06.020jets was indeed american in origin and what happened was is some of the only casualties
00:35:12.040on at least on the american side on this war had been recently killed in kuwait due to bombs that
00:35:18.720had gone into the country from from iran by the way for people who are wondering most of these
00:35:23.260bombs aren't flying anymore iran is like at five percent or something of the bombing that they were
00:35:27.820early in the campaign but anyway so the six american service members have been killed by
00:35:32.780one of these and so the kuwaiti operatives who were not as well trained as the americans but
00:35:37.180had american equipment were incredibly on edge and when they saw signals in the sky they shot
00:35:43.000reflexively so just i mean keep in mind these attacks may have been happening without kuwait
00:35:48.140knowing that they were going to happen all of a sudden you see a bunch of fighter jets
00:35:51.060systems may have been automated but the point being is
00:35:54.680it's not that our equipment is inassailable if you have competent equipment that like is
00:36:03.240american or israeli bought our equipment was able to take down our equipment right
00:36:08.460it's unassailable when going up against chinese and russian equipment