Breaking News: The Chief of the Capitol Hill Police Department has resigned on the basis of our exclusive report that a man was detained in the very room where President Donald J. Trump was on the night of his State of the Union address, and a man had been detained with a gun inside the capitol the very same day that President Trump was inaugurated in the rotunda. Breaking News: Meanwhile, a radio talk show host in Delaware filed a letter with the U.S. District Court for Delaware asking that the court unseal the search warrant applications and the affidavits in the Hunter Biden criminal case.
00:20:08.320Almost 10 years ago, Donald Trump, in an interview, expressed a concern about Syria, saying that although he did not love Assad in every regard,
00:20:21.280that he feared that if Assad were to be toppled in Syria, what would come afterwards would be much, much worse.
00:20:30.280Tulsi Gabbard, who is now the director of national intelligence, then a Democrat congresswoman, expressed the same concern.
00:20:38.720She visited Assad, as did, by the way, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and at the time, she expressed concern about the potential mass slaughter of Christians if Islamic extremists were allowed to retake control of the country.
00:20:56.960Now, for anybody who can see, that is precisely what has happened.
00:21:02.120The footage that we're seeing of video and reports from Syria, very reminiscent of the mass slaughter in Libya, assess for us what is going on in the ground today in Syria.
00:21:21.840This is what has been a multi-faction, multi-party civil war.
00:21:28.740It is an absolute mess, and one of the reasons we really should not have gotten involved, the, yeah, Assad was a thug, and I'm not in any way advocating for him, but we really, the Biden team really created this mess.
00:21:50.400They were just obsessed with toppling Assad, and then what?
00:23:09.540I saw it just before we began the show.
00:23:12.000President Trump putting pressure on the Russians last week, saying that if they did not come to the table, that he would resort to sanctions, and worse.
00:23:24.760Said that on his Truth Social posting.
00:23:27.780So much for the idea that he is in bed with Putin.
00:23:32.080What do you think our prospects are of a negotiated settlement, or at least a negotiated ceasefire at this point?
00:23:39.920Well, I, I think it's, he's making 101, is you can't, you can't do it unless both sides are interested in cease, ceasing a conflict.
00:25:53.520And foreign policy is defined as meeting and talking with foreign leaders.
00:26:01.060Do you agree with me that this is, if, if an investigation proved that they did indeed meet with either as a group or individually,
00:26:10.040or speak with Zelensky prior to his meeting with Trump, that they're, they have seriously violated the law and they ought to be prosecuted.
00:26:19.000Yeah, well, the Logan Act is just one of those laws that is only invoked or has meaning if it's being used against somebody with an R behind their name.
00:26:31.940Yeah, I think we should absolutely, the whirlwind of activity by the, just the lightning movement of the different Trump appointees in the departments and agencies.
00:26:45.600I think Pam Bondi should make this a priority and give it as a tasker to, ask Patel to investigate.
00:26:56.700They played this game against General Flynn, who was not violating the Logan Act.
00:27:03.600He actually was the incoming national security advisor, very reasonable for him to have, have some engagements with foreign powers.
00:27:13.320And here they are just, I mean, I, you know, we got to throw in Eric Ciarmella, you know, one of the just thugs of the, of the whole coup when he was inside CIA.
00:27:29.060Now he's, uh, he was, uh, an advisor to Ukraine and he was getting paid, uh, with taxpayer dollars.
00:27:37.120So another, a variation of the laundering campaign.
00:27:41.740Every one of these need to be investigated.
00:27:43.260And of course he was, as we now know, the so-called whistleblower, uh, who came forward or was recruited by Adam Schiff to pull together the Ukrainian impeachment hoax.
00:27:55.140You, you, you wonder whether there's going to be any consequences for these people.
00:27:59.440I just pulled up President Trump's exact, uh, uh, posting on True Social.
00:28:04.860He says, uh, based on the fact that Russia is absolutely pounding Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I'm strongly considering large-scale banking sanctions, sanctions, and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached.
00:28:21.440To Russia and Ukraine, I say, get to the table right now before it's too late.
00:28:27.320So much for the idea that Donald Trump is somehow controlled by Vladimir Putin.
00:28:32.880Uh, you are, uh, an expert on cyber security.
00:28:37.160Uh, a U.S. tanker was on fire in the North Sea, one of only 10 that supports the Department of Defense.
00:28:43.660Uh, I think this shows an extraordinarily weak maritime position.
00:28:52.040Well, I think that is absolutely something that has to stay on the table, just like the Baltimore Bridge.
00:28:59.980Maritime cyber security is a very weak and nascent area, and, and we're also weak and nascent in maritime, uh, you know, we're the largest economy in the world, have the smallest merchant fleet in the world.
00:29:16.200Uh, we have no representation at the key UN body, the International Maritime Organization, which is totally bat guano crazy on woke issues.
00:29:27.900But cyber security is a very, it's a very nascent issue, and it's just not being, uh, addressed.
00:29:35.120But let's go back to the evergreen ship that, uh, decided to take a hard left turn and got stuck in the Suez Canal.
00:29:42.740You think that just came out of nowhere?
00:29:45.160Uh, we, our folks don't even know how to look for indicators of cyber intrusion in these different maritime systems.
00:29:53.340So, you know, the Boston, or excuse me, the Baltimore Bridge episode of last year, you know, within seconds, uh, you had the FBI typically saying, no foreign, uh, involvement.
00:30:05.360How do you even know within 30 seconds of such a catastrophe, uh, whether there's a, you know, you, you, these are absolutely reasonable concerns.
00:30:14.800You can push malware through radio frequency to download onto a ship, and a ship, uh, one of the basic, uh, uh, systems that is used, that has been shown it can be spoofed over and over again is AIS, uh, the Automatic Identification System, which is essentially the equivalent of ADS-B for aircraft,
00:30:38.620which we now know there was issues with ADS-B on the air crash in, uh, Washington, D.C.
00:30:45.540But, uh, yeah, I mean, who, look, the Portuguese tanker T-boned and ran at speed into a, a moored.
00:30:56.640We were at, uh, the American tanker was at, uh, at, it was at anchor.
00:31:01.060Uh, and the Portuguese tanker ran right into it, T-boned, uh, and whether it did not appear, visibility did not appear to have been an issue,
00:31:09.800I think it's absolutely reasonable to be concerned, and my understanding is that the, uh, that the new office in the White House is absolutely keeping this on the table in the investigation.
00:31:22.040Uh, folks, if you're just tuning in, we're talking to Colonel John Mills.
00:31:26.760He is the former director of Cybersecurity Policy Strategy, uh, for the, uh, and International Affairs for the U.S. Department of Defense.
00:31:36.100He's also a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy.
00:31:41.040Uh, we've been talking about the situation in Ukraine.
00:31:44.480Uh, we've been talking, uh, about, uh, our cybersecurity.
00:31:49.280Uh, and when we come back, we're going to continue this discussion.
00:31:52.380Colonel Mills believes that our Navy needs a lot more ships by 2030.
00:31:57.900I'm going to ask him to tell us why and what can be done to bolster the strength of our Navy.
00:33:18.820And we're back with Colonel John Mills.
00:33:22.400Colonel John Mills is a national security professional.
00:33:25.940Uh, he is, uh, as I say, the former director of cybersecurity, policy, strategy, and international affairs for the U.S. Department of Defense.
00:33:34.440He's currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy.
00:33:37.740And again, he has a very lively and informative column at Substack.
00:35:42.280I think it takes a comprehensive maritime strategy.
00:35:45.200The first and foremost, it actually focuses on the civilian size, because the reason we were able to create the arsenal of democracy in, uh, World War II was because we had a pretty robust manufacturing capacity in the United States.
00:36:08.540Yes, that's a priority of President Trump and Dr. Navarro.
00:36:11.760But we're, we're going to have to think things differently, but we're going to have to focus on the civilian side and the civilian infrastructure.
00:36:18.440We're going to have to do things like targeted capital gains, tax cuts, targeted corporate tax cuts.
00:36:25.660We're going to have to do things like, you know, be careful about government money, but this is one where we create what are called government owned contractor operated, uh, yards, where we do use government money to create absolutely brand new sparkling facilities.
00:36:44.900Uh, but then we're going to have contractors operate, operate them.
00:36:48.300And that's actually been a very good model, despite the dysfunction of the Department of Defense and many other ways.
00:36:53.980We're going to have to leverage key foreign partners, such as South Korea, the world's largest shipbuilder and Taiwan.
00:37:02.960And if it means they, they make, uh, parts of our ships and then they are brought over here on what are called float on float off vessels.
00:37:12.580It's just like the, the Japanese auto industry saved America in the seventies.
00:37:17.180The big three were an absolute mess, producing everything the customer didn't want and doing it very inefficiently.
00:37:24.780The Japanese came in and totally, uh, turned around the American car system.
00:37:30.380We may have to do that, but also we have to focus on new types of approaches to the defense industrial base,
00:37:38.280not the classic big companies that have evolved because they, they can, they can accept and survive in the absolute dysfunction of the Department of Defense acquisition process.
00:37:50.680We're going to have to bring in new companies that actually innovate.
00:37:54.340And, and yeah, I will shout out one and a real is, is, is a model for this.
00:37:59.620They are, they make incredible defense products.
00:38:03.180And then if they, if the government Watson, the government can go and get them, but they don't sit there.
00:38:09.060And they have not focused on, on, um, hovering over and, uh, uh, fawning over the Department of Defense in the current dysfunctional process and trying to, you know, get the government to pay them to develop something that they want in the dysfunctional process.
00:38:27.120But we're going to have to think differently on how, on this buildup.
00:38:31.540I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there.
00:38:33.400I want to thank our guest, Colonel John Mills.
00:38:35.760I urge you to check out his lively writing at substack.com.
00:38:41.160Uh, and thank you, Colonel Mills for joining us in the stone zone.
00:38:45.540Again, uh, the breaking news today, the police chief of the Capitol Hill police, uh, resigned after it was revealed here on the stone zone that on two occasions, both during the inauguration, uh, and during the state of the union, a man was apprehended with a gun inside the Capitol.
00:39:03.340The Capitol Hill police chief, the Capitol Hill police chief, Thomas Manning, uh, has resigned.
00:39:08.540Uh, we thank you again for joining us in the stone zone where we always try to bring you the inside story on what's happening in our nation's Capitol and across the country until the next time.