Happy 4th of July! Today's episode is a special edition of Human Events Daily featuring military historian Patrick K. ODonnell and military historian Eric Prince. They discuss the ideals of the original Independence Day, and what it means to be an American today.
00:01:32.800May we profit for the experiences of our brother Republicans across the water and go forward steadily, avoiding all wild extremes.
00:01:41.020May our ultra-conservatives remember that the rule of the Bourbons brought on the revolution.
00:01:45.440And may our would-be revolutionaries remember that no bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy of the people and defeat him as the professed friend of both, Robespierre.
00:01:55.240There is no danger of a revolution in this country, but there is grave discontent and unrest, and in order to remove them, there is need of all the wisdom and probity and deep-seated mating and purpose to uplift humanity we have at our command.
00:02:10.180We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators.
00:02:19.740Those that are lying about our history, those who want us to be ashamed of who we are, are not interested in justice or in healing.
00:03:00.620And so we understand that what were the ideals of the original Independence Day, the ideals of 1776, the ideals of America back then?
00:03:10.440Well, that was the ideal of the revolutionary spirit of those Americans, the revolutionary spirit, Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson.
00:03:18.700But they also the understanding that this was a bloody and brutal war, a war that took the lives of many of the signers of the declaration that also took the lives of many of their families, even many of their sons on those British torture ships, the prison ships.
00:03:35.620They knew that by unplugging from the global system, the system of global empire and forming America as a nation state would be America's birthright.
00:03:46.720But of course, that's not the America that we have today, because the America that we have today is intrinsically linked to a global hegemony around the world.
00:03:56.280That America and that America and that system of globalism is now coming into contention with the rise of multipolarity and the rise of the global south in conjunction with China and Russia and the rise of the BRICS nations.
00:04:12.220The question before all of us, will this spill over into a global conflict?
00:04:19.900We know that Joe Biden is not all there.
00:04:25.060We know that Joe Biden is in a situation where he is not able to call the shots for this government, that he's not able to defend freedom.
00:04:37.600If you are one of America's adversaries, you got a free shot on goal right now.
00:05:41.300And once you understand that, once you understand what we're up against, what you understand that the stakes couldn't be higher, then you will be ready to maintain your independence forever.
00:05:54.460Ladies and gentlemen, one of the best ways that you can support us here at Human Events and the work that we do is subscribing to us on our Rumble channel.
00:07:01.360We saw our Commander-in-Chief the way you talked before and about your hypothesis that we're living through a step change in military warfare, a step change in warfare itself around the world.
00:07:16.840And with the status, the current status of the leader of our military, the leader of our government being what it is, it seems that the warning that you put out just a few weeks ago might be coming all too real here.
00:07:33.040And as people I know are celebrating their 4th of July, they got the hot dogs, they got the kids running around the barbecue.
00:07:38.320They're going to be doing some fireworks later tonight.
00:07:43.580Walk me through, if you're our adversaries right now and you saw that, what are some of the things that they could be doing next?
00:07:53.800Look, our problems start from the top.
00:07:56.580When you have leadership that does not inspire any kind of confidence or any kind of fear, any kind of confidence in our own people and any kind of fear from our opponents, it means they start to get creative with, let's say, adventurism.
00:08:10.420And when you see the massive change in how warfare can be done with lessons learned from the Ukraine-Russia battle, where you truly democratize the ability to deliver precision weaponry out to 10, 20, 30 kilometers.
00:08:29.360And then when Russia invaded in February of 2022, old weapons, new weapons were used in a desperate attempt to stop the onslaught.
00:08:45.900And one of the most innovative things was taking a small racing drone, a 7 or a 10-inch racing drone with the little goggles that you wear called an FPV drone.
00:08:55.180And they took either a grenade, an RPG round, or a fabricated beer can-sized charge that you could then drive into the enemy target.
00:09:09.980You know, the U.S. military spends hundreds of thousands of dollars per missile to deliver precision weapon onto a target.
00:09:19.000And now you can do that with a $500 to $1,000 racing drone out farther than what a U.S. anti-tank missile fires for a fraction of the cost.
00:09:31.120So true firepower has been democratized.
00:09:36.460And even Israel, as much as they have been on guard with very high-end air defenses from the Iron Dome to literally shoot down incoming rockets, to knock them out of the sky, to their anti-ballistic missile capability.
00:09:52.180But with the loitering munitions, effectively a higher-end kamikaze drone that Hezbollah has been launching, they're only intercepting 50% of those.
00:10:03.880And so they might have built a magnificent fence, but the gap at the bottom of that fence are the smaller, cheaper drones with 1 to 5 to 10-pound warhead capabilities.
00:10:15.200And it's causing real problems and real damage to the IDF forces.
00:10:22.300So that's obviously the Iranians sponsoring, stimulating Hezbollah to do that on the northern border.
00:10:27.660But it doesn't take much imagination to see where else you can take that capability and make the billions of dollars of high-end weapons obsolete.
00:10:36.960What the Houthis have done in Yemen, again, with Iranian sponsorship, they're using a Shahid-136 drone, which is $20,000 to $30,000 in cost.
00:10:49.320They've launched hundreds of those at U.S. Navy, British, French, Italian warships, trying to keep the Red Sea open, which has been a total fail.
00:10:59.300The U.S. Navy has acknowledged that they've spent a billion dollars in missiles.
00:11:05.080That's also a false number because it's a billion dollars based on costs from 20 years ago when they bought those missiles, not the $4 or $5 billion that they're going to have to spend to replace those missiles.
00:11:20.600And it's a complete fail of the Navy, our beloved Navy.
00:11:23.980I know you and I were both in the Navy.
00:11:26.020And the mission of the Navy is power projection and sea control.
00:11:29.560And right now they have lost sea control because you have one of the major waterways, one of the major shipping ways of the world completely shut off because of a bunch of dudes in flip-flops that have been supercharged by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
00:11:44.860And the administration lacks the spine or the resoluteness of purpose to school these guys.
00:11:55.460And really, the Navy has also lost the innovation or the ability to think creatively of how do you smash this unconventional asymmetric threat as practically and cheaply as possible?
00:12:09.960Because the Navy's answer is just shooting more $1 and $2 and $5 million precision missiles.
00:12:16.720And that's another reason the U.S. military has made itself more obsolete in these kind of theaters because they provide only the most expensive solution, which over the duration of Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan has proven that the high-cost DOD approach is clearly not solving and putting these fires out.
00:12:38.420And what we're seeing now is potentially the first naval blockade that's ever been successfully conducted from land.
00:12:49.800And in addition, an asymmetric, as you say, naval—just on that question, actually, Eric, let me pick your brain for a little bit.
00:13:00.120What would you suggest to the secretary or to the COCOM command?
00:13:05.460If you were looking at that situation yourself, at that threat package, rather than missiles, what are some possible counterinsurgency or counter-asymmetric methods that could be used, other than, say, electronic warfare, which doesn't quite seem to be there yet?
00:13:23.260Look, the Houthis are going to continue to shoot missiles until someone goes and puts a boot on their neck.
00:13:31.720And there's historical corollary for how this was dealt with in the past.
00:13:36.920In the 60s, actually, Egypt invaded Yemen, deposed the monarchy.
00:13:41.340And that really ticked off the Brits, and it really ticked off the Saudis.
00:13:46.760And they hired David Sterling, who was the founder of the SAS, the British SAS.
00:13:51.600And he took a 30-man or so unit and went and worked with the other Yemeni tribes, the Sunnis, and supercharged their capability.
00:14:04.180There is a way to do that now that would not require any U.S. forces and could solve that problem for a fraction of the economic damage being done.
00:14:15.320Egypt alone is losing $800 million a month just from no toll fees from the ships not going to the Suez, let alone the other knock-on economic damage.
00:14:25.540So, again, you've allowed a rogue state of Iran working through their proxy of the Yemeni Houthis to shut off one of the major waterways.
00:14:36.860In fact, Jack, they haven't even – it's not only that they shot ships in the Red Sea or in the Gulf of Aden.
00:14:42.520They've actually – two weeks ago, they hit a ship that was in the Mediterranean.
00:14:45.460So, they are striking targets at very long distance with the Iranian-provided weapons until someone goes and smashes them in the face for doing so.
00:14:56.460They will continue to do so, and they're going to feel ascendant, and they will feel even more adventurous.
00:15:05.980Deterrence I guess one of the reasons my podcast is called Off Leash is because our military should be like a big, scary attack dog waiting to be let off leash.
00:15:18.140And, sadly, they're not that scary anymore because we've over-lawyered and hyper-bureaucratized the command structure to where we have a military that doesn't want to hunt.
00:15:29.260Now, you mentioned the strikes on ships in the Mediterranean, the targeting of these vessels.
00:15:39.680Do you think at some point – and this is something that I think about in – and we'll talk more after this over the break – in other cases.
00:15:46.260But do you think that these types of drones, drone swarm attacks, or these other various types of – even if they – does it create a threat to the naval vessels themselves?
00:16:04.380Well, so the U.S. is – the U.S. so far, that we know of, has had a success rate of knocking down all these incoming aerial drones.
00:16:13.380The Russians have not had as great a success in dealing with naval drones.
00:16:20.340And, in fact, the innovated, effectively hot-rodded jet skis that the Ukrainians have been using has driven the Russian Navy out of the western half of the Black Sea.
00:16:44.860So the look of a U.S. Navy vessel getting hit by a cruise missile, a drone, a ballistic missile, is going to be a very, very bad look.
00:16:58.080And the fact that we continue to put sailors in harm's way and really preventing them from shooting back and hammering effectively, to me, is disgusting.
00:17:06.320And certainly the first thing that the U.S. could do – because the Yemenis are not targeting all these drones and missiles and everything else from land alone.
00:17:18.020They have – there are Iranian naval vessels.
00:17:21.560There has been an IRGC intel vessel floating around that area, and those ships need to go away.
00:17:28.620In the 80s, when the Iranians were mining the Persian Gulf and blocking oil ships, oil-carrying vessels from exporting crude from Kuwait and from Saudi Arabia,
00:17:42.520Reagan took very decisive action over a few days and annihilated pretty much all of the Iranian Navy that cared to put to sea and taught them a lesson.
00:17:53.480That kind of lesson needs to be taught to the Houthis and the IRGC again in a most decisive, most kinetic manner.
00:17:59.600Folks, we're talking with Eric Prince.
00:18:12.560When I grew up in the hood, I rolled with bloods, and them boys had a saying.
00:18:18.240You can't be listening to all that slappy whack, trimatazala, it's a bam ship, nippy bam bam, like Human Events with Jack Posobiec.
00:18:25.660Jack, it's live, Independence Day, 4th of July special, the future war.
00:18:34.900We're talking about the impact of drones, naval drones, and air drones, particularly on naval air,
00:18:44.200because as our guest Eric Prince has been walking us through, they've been devastating on many fields, including in the Red Sea.
00:18:52.580Now, Eric, as you and I were discussing, one piece that I want to add on there as well is that the U.S. Navy has already in the past faced asymmetric threat in the Middle East,
00:19:06.100in that very same neighborhood, because this was the Gulf of Aden attack on the coal that took place 24 years ago.
00:19:18.040Why is it that we're still here a quarter of a century later worrying about asymmetric attack when we know the threat that it causes to U.S. naval vessels?
00:19:27.480Of the military industrial complex and the beltway, I think, is to always go for the highest cost, most sophisticated solution for some of these problems.
00:19:40.380And I have a lot of familiarity with the coal attack, because the Navy came to us.
00:19:48.440That was our first government contract, our first big one, because the sailors that were guarding the ship that day were holding unloaded weapons that they hardly ever fired before.
00:19:56.200And it was so bad that at Navy boot camp, firearms were considered too dangerous, so they were shooting blanks or a laser simulator.
00:20:04.600That's how they were preparing to defend their ship.
00:20:06.920They'd optimized to fight at 100 miles, not at 100 meters.
00:20:10.320And so we ended up training almost 100,000 sailors after that to defend their ships vigorously from that kind of threat.
00:20:20.100Again, they default to that playbook of full-on state conflict naval warfare.
00:20:27.840It's up to the squadron, the Dejeron commanders, to drill and to force their crews to be ready for the myriad of threats, not just the one that comes with their playbook, but it requires them to be a bit devious and to think how else the enemy could slip one by.
00:20:48.500And certainly, those crews that have been very diligent in the last six, eight months of this conflict since the Houthis started taking potshots at us, and that's the problem.
00:21:01.180The Houthis are allowed to take potshots, and they're not suffering consequences.
00:21:04.940Because when they shoot one, we should deliver tons and tons of weaponry back on everything that matters to the Houthis so that they pay a price and they understand what those consequences.
00:21:15.600That you don't just get your shoe to a Navy ship and not expect you're going to get a two-by-four in the face.
00:21:23.860Like that situation, the fact that the U.S. military is in the U.S. Navy are fighting the way they are, fighting with almost like both hands tied behind their back at this point.
00:21:35.020And I want to take this out of the CENTCOM AOR and now into the Indo-Pacific AOR.
00:21:41.020Because all of the things that you're talking about, naval drones, air drones, cruise missile attack, swarm attack, the devastating impact this has at sea.
00:21:54.440I have to wonder, and I know for a fact, that China is taking a look at what's happening at the Red Sea right now.
00:22:01.780They're clearly paying attention to what's going on between Russia and Ukraine right now.
00:22:06.960And they see that Joe Biden is in a almost catatonic state.
00:22:13.800What does all of that equal for Taiwan?
00:22:16.740Well, you can almost see some coordination between Iran and Russia and China on these moves that they're making.
00:22:27.460Because the conflict brewing between Hezbollah and Israel over the northern border has pulled the carrier battle group away from the Gulf of Aden and pulled that back through into the Med.
00:22:45.420They've now pulled the entire carrier battle group away from Taiwan to cover down, to try to cover down on the Red Sea.
00:22:55.800So, look, as we're seeing, precision weapons have become the most prolific thing ever in the battle space, so that any target that is known can immediately be targeted by lots of cheap drones, lots of expensive, high-end, hypersonic cruise missiles, you name it, all kinds of stuff.
00:23:16.180You have a picture of a Predator Bee flying there.
00:23:20.400The Houthis have shot down five of those.
00:23:22.920So that system worked great over Iraq or Afghanistan when you had a very unsophisticated enemy, not so great when your enemy has surface-to-air missiles.
00:23:31.560So five of those PredBs have been shot down by the Houthis really with no consequence.
00:23:36.420What Taiwan needs, the best method of deterrence in a realm of a massive naval power and missile and rocket capability of the Chinese Communist Party, is first, a true home guard.
00:23:52.880If you truly democratize force and the ability for individuals to defend their house, their community, their town, that becomes a very difficult thing for the CCP to calculate in terms of taking Taiwan, because you have a lot of urban area and you have a lot of very rugged, steep jungle.
00:24:11.100And the thing that the CCP cannot afford is a long campaign, because they could not withstand the inevitable embargoes and blockades of energy and of the other things that you could expect to be put against them if they have a go, a kinetic go, at Taiwan.
00:24:30.720They should also, the Taiwan should be investing in the same kind of naval technology.
00:24:35.520I was going to say this has kind of been referred to as the hedgehog strategy, isn't that right?
00:24:54.760If you don't let your enemy know that you're going to be an easy target, it gives them pause.
00:25:01.880Because if Xi Jinping decides we are going to go for Taiwan, he's all in.
00:25:07.580Because if he goes for it and fails, then he's done as a leader.
00:25:11.100And, you know, he will get the 13 cent invoice from whoever succeeds him.
00:25:17.420And this is the big question, of course, is does he decide to go for it or not?
00:25:25.800Because and look, I've said this for a long time.
00:25:28.420I think it's a it's a question of the inverse relationship between whether or not he feels threatened in his position or not.
00:25:35.880I don't think that he particularly does feel threatened in his position.
00:25:38.380I know there's some other China analysts who who say otherwise.
00:25:41.700But at this point, he's remade the party by and large in his own image.
00:25:46.740He's had the massive the most massive purge since Chairman Mao in those days when in the days of the Cultural Revolution.
00:25:54.060And he's done the same thing with the highest echelons of the People's Liberation Army.
00:25:58.600And so the question that I would say is, is that the only thing I could think of is if Taiwan were to go into some kind of independent scenario, if the president there was going to declare independence, if if they were attempting to, you know, if they were trying to generate some kind of provocation at that point, you might see it.
00:26:20.260But then again, he could also want to be looking at his legacy and looking at that idea of I was the leader of the party, the leader of the country who brought Taiwan back into the fold.
00:26:36.220Yeah, look, we wonder, we as Americans wonder why is Taiwan?
00:27:05.580There's there's like 200 cities that are as big as Taiwan's population almost.
00:27:11.160So it's it's it's I guess we as Americans will never fully understand that.
00:27:19.980But the best deterrent strategy is to make themselves is to make Taiwan very prickly, not with high dollar weapons, but with the most basic stuff that would make an invading occupying force exceedingly unwelcome.
00:27:33.200And again, in America, as we as perfect as we're celebrating, as we're talking about this on the Fourth of July.
00:27:41.20030 percent of the American population of the colonies in 1776 were pro-crown, 40 percent in the middle were just trying to survive, 30 percent were pro-liberty, 10 percent of that 30 percent or 3 percent of the population actually took up arms against the British forces.
00:28:01.140So if you take just 3 percent of the Taiwanese population, the the marathoners, the civil defense people, the firemen, the the most motivated parts of their reserve forces, the CrossFitters, the the hardcore part of their society.
00:28:19.200And you give them the taste of a taste of a taste of the Second Amendment, not even really Second Amendment, more of almost like a Swiss model where they have access to the weapons, not not even necessarily in their home, but they could be stored at at civil defense centers at certain caches around the community.
00:28:36.100If you have the ability to disperse disperse power down to the people, because remember, when Ukraine was invaded February of 2022, the smartest thing the Ukrainian government did is they literally opened all the government arsenals, just said, hey, come and get it, come and get an AK, an RPG, an anti-tank missile, whatever, but take it and get it on.
00:28:59.720That really helped stop that initial invasion because it was not the Ukrainian army that did it.
00:29:06.860Now, I'll throw out that we actually talk about the the the back story of how Taiwan and the People's Republic have their split in in the book on humans here, how Taiwan was the the last readout of the Republic of China, the nationalist forces who were totally cut off by by Marshall and by Truman.
00:29:33.160The Soviets are backfilling the the Chinese Communist Party, the Red Army at the time.
00:29:38.100It was the Soviets who were given complete privilege there at Yalta because of a special top secret deal that was signed by FDR when he was basically an invalid.
00:29:48.960And all of his chief advisors and chief negotiators at Yalta were led by Alger Hiss, who was himself a Soviet agent.
00:29:57.220Eric, I'd love to talk more about this, man.