TRIGGERnometry - Erik Prince - War Will Never Be The Same

00:00:01.000 What is the state of the Western world and its defenses at the moment?

00:00:05.000 How do you assess that?

00:00:06.000 I would say they're massively behind.

00:00:08.000 The revolution and war that's happened in Ukraine,

00:00:11.000 the acceleration with extremely cheap guided weapons,

00:00:15.000 whether it's a cheap drone, cheap missile,

00:00:18.000 all the legacy systems are much less useful in largely just targets.

00:00:24.000 So it's democratized precision strike to everyone.

00:00:28.000 When there's troops in contact in a valley in Afghanistan

00:00:32.000 and they have to call and talk to a lawyer 2,000 miles away for permission to drop a bomb,

00:00:37.000 you're not serious about waging war.

00:00:40.000 No one's been held to account.

00:00:42.000 Not one flag officer, all the super polished generals,

00:00:46.000 which are now serving on boards and hedge funds and universities and all the rest.

00:00:51.000 They all lost.

00:00:53.000 They were entrusted with our troops lives with hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:00:57.000 And they failed to deliver.

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00:01:31.000 Eric, great to have you on the show.

00:01:32.000 Nice to be here.

00:01:33.000 Thanks for coming on.

00:01:34.000 Listen, the first question we wanted to ask you,

00:01:36.000 something that we in Europe are increasingly concerned about,

00:01:38.000 which is what is the state of the Western world and its defenses at the moment?

00:01:42.000 How do you assess that?

00:01:43.000 I would say they're massively behind the criticism that Trump had in the first administration of only five of the 28 NATO countries actually spending 2% of their GDP on defense is even more stark now.

00:01:58.000 Even though that number I think is 11 or 12 of the 28 are spending 2%, but the revolution and war that's happened in Ukraine, the acceleration with extremely cheap guided weapons,

00:02:12.000 whether it's a cheap drone, cheap missile, long range missiles, etc.

00:02:17.000 Everything that the explosion of that AI on the edge on that individual device and its ability to guide targets has largely rendered billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of installed legacy military equipment largely useless or really just targets.

00:02:35.000 So talk to us more about that, because the vast majority of the people who watch our show and frankly, us, too, are not military experts.

00:02:42.000 So you say the revolution that's happened in this way, the drones we've seen, but tell us more about it.

00:02:49.000 You say it's made things obsolete. Is the tank useless now?

00:02:51.000 So the first strategic offset the U.S. had against the Soviet Union in the 50s and 60s was nuclear strike.

00:02:59.000 And then it became a big contest of who could throw more tons.

00:03:02.000 And then it shifted towards precision delivery, precision weapons.

00:03:07.000 And you saw that in the first Gulf War. You saw that in 2003 in the invasion of Iraq.

00:03:12.000 Aircraft from 25,000 feet putting a bomb through the window of a building.

00:03:17.000 Now you can carry a small drone on your back.

00:03:21.000 You can carry six of them that you can fly through the window of a building from 15 kilometers away.

00:03:26.000 So it's democratized precision strike to everyone.

00:03:30.000 And what that means is that anything that can be located on the battlefield, a tank, infantry on the move, a vehicle, is immediately targetable by dozens of different weapons systems.

00:03:43.000 So it's made survivability extremely difficult.

00:03:46.000 And you can't almost carry enough armor to protect yourself.

00:03:50.000 So you either have to deal with speed or extreme stealth again.

00:03:54.000 So it's shifted.

00:03:55.000 You said, is the tank obsolete?

00:03:58.000 No, it's different because there are so many weapons that can be sent at it.

00:04:05.000 And it's even made precision weapons much, much cheaper.

00:04:09.000 For example, a Javelin missile, which the U.S. has provided to the Ukrainians.

00:04:14.000 It's $200,000 for the launcher, $150,000 a shot.

00:04:18.000 The Ukrainians make a, I would argue, a better one for $29,000. 1.00

00:04:23.000 But now you can take a small drone that can carry a charge about this size and you put it together for a few hundred dollars.

00:04:32.000 You have a $500 drone, some better software for it with a charge and you're at two grand and you can kill a target out to 15 kilometers away.

00:04:41.000 That's what I'm talking about, that revolution, that acceleration.

00:04:44.000 So all the legacy systems are much less useful and largely just targets.

00:04:50.000 And the obvious question then is who's got the, who's a step ahead on that stuff?

00:04:55.000 Is it us?

00:04:56.000 Is it the Chinese? 1.00

00:04:57.000 Is it the Russians? 1.00

00:04:58.000 The Russians have certainly learned.

00:05:01.000 If you shot at the Russians with artillery two years ago, it would take them an hour and a half to shoot back.

00:05:06.000 And now they're shooting back in two to three minutes.

00:05:09.000 So their communications, their, their radars, which link, which literally look and spot the incoming round and do the telemetry back to its point of origin to shoot back on. 0.99

00:05:20.000 They have, you know, don't listen to the idiot U.S. politicians that say, oh, we're, you know, wiping out the Russian army. 0.97

00:05:25.000 No, the Russian army is much better, smarter and more lethal today than that, than it was two years ago. 1.00

00:05:31.000 Ukrainians have also learned and had to, to survive.

00:05:34.000 But now it's really a battle of, it's a war of attrition and math matters.

00:05:40.000 And the fact that the Russians can throw more bodies and we'll do a general mobilization is a big problem for the Ukrainians.

00:05:47.000 But I mean, on a technological level, in terms of the technology, the drones, the AI, the software, is the West, have we got the good stuff or is it other people have got the good stuff?

00:05:58.000 The China has certainly become a significant supplier of the Russian war machine, of the components to make up those drones, of the propellants needed to make the artillery rounds, etc.

00:06:09.000 I mean, look, the war has largely, not frozen, but it's really more of a trench warfare kind of thing because every, both sides have so much precision weaponry that any breakthrough can immediately be targeted by that many more systems.

00:06:25.000 Now you can even have drones that will deliver landmines ahead of a, of a convoy of tanks.

00:06:31.000 Um, the advantage the Chinese have is an enormous industrial base.

00:06:36.000 Okay.

00:06:37.000 I think it's important for, for the American audience to remember, we think, wow, you know, we won the war in World War II.

00:06:44.000 No.

00:06:45.000 Um, we lost 250,000, um, men in the European theater of operations, 250,000.

00:06:53.000 The Russians lost 22 million.

00:06:55.000 And while we were still messing around in North Africa, uh, in Morocco and Tunisia, the Russians had erased 800,000 men from the German order of battle at Stalingrad.

00:07:06.000 And they lost a million to doing that.

00:07:09.000 But what made it possible for the Russians to win was to mechanize their forces.

00:07:14.000 And that came from 600,000 vehicles from Detroit.

00:07:17.000 Yes.

00:07:18.000 And thousands and thousands of aircraft and ships and logistics supply.

00:07:23.000 The U.S. industrial base is a hollow fraction of what it was back then.

00:07:27.000 And that's where the biggest, uh, most obvious deficit is now.

00:07:32.000 So that would suggest that what we're in now is a world where, almost like in World War II, where we have these superpowers who are competing with one another for dominance.

00:07:43.000 Or would you refute that?

00:07:47.000 Um, look, there's always been a, uh, a competition for, for land, for trade dominance.

00:07:53.000 That's, that's, that's as old as people throwing sticks at each other.

00:07:57.000 But, um, uh, the, the, the free trade agreements that hollowed out the U.S. industrial base and moved that industrial base to China is certainly shown to not be an advantage to the United States or, or for Europe, for that matter.

00:08:12.000 And in both cases, the military industrial complex in the United States and in Europe has not done any favors by always trying to offer the most exquisite, most expensive, unique thing instead of the practical thing that actually lasts and works in battle.

00:08:29.000 And so, um, that, that balance is very skewed.

00:08:33.000 Like I talk about the $150,000 Raytheon missile versus the $29,000 Ukrainian missile.

00:08:39.000 Um, ultimately war is a battle of math as well and what's affordable.

00:08:44.000 And, and the U S literally shoots itself out of missiles in the first 10 days maximum of full on state on state combat. 0.97

00:08:53.000 And that's just, it's just, it's just an asinine position to be in.

00:08:56.000 Do you think part of that is because as with, you know, the NHS in this country where they're, they're overcharged for basic products, the private companies simply wouldn't countenance paying that amount of money for.

00:09:09.000 So the U S army gets overcharged continually for basic things.

00:09:14.000 Uh, it's, it comes down to a lack of competition amongst the supply base.

00:09:18.000 So in the nineties, the U S or the Clinton administration kind of pushed a consolidation of our defense industry from about a hundred defense contractors down to five.

00:09:29.000 And so that five for the last few decades has behaved like a cartel, uh, with less and less competition, uh, kind of a clubby approach to bidding.

00:09:39.000 And with the, with the demonstrable failed results.

00:09:43.000 And so antitrust that works across all industries, whether it's in railways or airlines or banking certainly has to apply in defense as well.

00:09:52.000 So a breakup of those big bloated companies.

00:09:55.000 And I would say even by leapfrog that there's a lot of great innovation happening at the small and midsize level, award more contracts to them and let those guys build and run hard to catch up because, um, big and bloated is, um, it embodies all the bad habits and, uh, it'll be hard for them to unlearn that.

00:10:16.000 And that puts the U S in a very fragile position because of one thing you don't want to be, well, you don't want anything to be big and bloated.

00:10:23.240 Let's be honest.

00:10:23.840 But above all, you don't want your military to be big and bloated because it needs to be nimble and agile, particularly when you're fighting in territories, which are not your own.

00:10:34.060 Particularly when, when the most expensive weapon system in human history, the F 35 has an operational readiness rate of 29%, 29%.

00:10:42.500 Come on, that's, that's bad because you have so many soul sourced.

00:10:47.960 Can I just stop you there?

00:10:48.840 What does that mean?

00:10:49.580 Uh, because there's people going to be listening to us who go out of a hundred aircraft.

00:10:54.220 If I say, jock up, we're going to war right now, 29 are ready to fly at fully mission capable.

00:11:01.560 But why is that?

00:11:04.340 Maintenance, vendor issues, software issues, over sophistication.

00:11:10.160 Um, and just, um, uh, they, they've had some that they produced that they couldn't do software upgrades to.

00:11:18.260 So the military is not even taking them and they're parked forever.

00:11:22.420 It's like, uh, Frankenstein's monster because they expected this aircraft to not just do air force, air superiority, but also to have it landed aircraft carrier.

00:11:31.560 And all the Marine Corps wanted one that could take off and land vertically.

00:11:33.900 So they expect all this out of one aircraft and it's an impossibly overpriced mass.

00:11:39.660 Again, the most expensive weapon system in human history, which is woefully deficient.

00:11:44.700 And when you look at other armies, how does the U.S. therefore compare to other armies?

00:11:49.500 We've talked about the Russians.

00:11:50.880 How much do we actually know about the Chinese army?

00:11:53.680 Do they have the same problems?

00:11:55.100 Because I imagine they must have the same challenges when you look at how many people are involved in it, et cetera.

00:12:03.940 It's, it's, um, a military consists of multiple things.

00:12:07.300 It's not just the hardware that's available, the quantity of hardware, but it's also the, uh, the hardware, right?

00:12:12.980 Of the, of the people, right?

00:12:14.180 There's an old saying, um, it's not the steel in the ships that makes a great Navy.

00:12:17.440 It's the steel in the men.

00:12:18.320 Um, it might've been a British Admiral that said that.

00:12:21.360 I'm not sure.

00:12:22.840 Uh, China has certainly, um, on the industrial base side, they have a lot of supply.

00:12:29.460 They can drive that cost very low.

00:12:32.280 They do have quality problems.

00:12:34.180 Okay.

00:12:35.280 Legitimately.

00:12:35.980 They have a leadership problem, even, even as bad as the U.S. military's leadership problem.

00:12:41.020 We have them because we have bureaucrats that have been promoted, not warriors.

00:12:44.920 The, um, the Chinese have a problem of corruption of those senior military positions are paid 0.97

00:12:50.860 for, okay?

00:12:52.100 Through graft.

00:12:52.780 And once they're in that position, they kind of harvest the, um, the fruits of their position.

00:12:58.720 Um, so it's not necessarily, you want the very best, right?

00:13:01.760 A military should be about lethality and merit, nothing else.

00:13:06.580 Uh, and the U S military has drifted from that course.

00:13:09.220 And I think Pete Hegseth is trying to take him back in the right direction of lethality and

00:13:13.360 merit.

00:13:13.560 China has its corruption problems.

00:13:16.920 Um, but ultimately I think military, when you look through history, generals make good

00:13:22.160 decisions, but it's the sergeants and the staff officers that carry it out at the bleeding

00:13:26.700 edge of battle.

00:13:28.680 And the, in the West, the, um, the empowering and the, uh, the decision-making that an NCO

00:13:35.360 will make, uh, is very, very good.

00:13:37.960 It's, it's, it's culturally good in the West because they'll make a decision.

00:13:41.320 They'll take a risk and go left, even though somebody might be saying go right, because

00:13:46.240 they're applying common sense with the most information at hand.

00:13:50.160 Um, the very, very top-down driven decision-making of Chinese culture is, is, uh, troubling in an 1.00

00:13:57.380 extremely fast-paced modern war.

00:14:00.160 And we saw that in, in the Russia-Ukraine war as well, initially, particularly when the

00:14:03.740 Russians were having a lot of problems organizing things, supply lines, et cetera.

00:14:07.640 Um, what I, I'd be curious to, to ask you, you mentioned lethality and merit.

00:14:12.840 But we talk a lot about, you know, wokeness and DEI on this show.

00:14:18.560 We have done, at least in the past.

00:14:20.900 You know, a lot of people in our space who are not military experts will say, well, obviously,

00:14:24.760 you know, if you have DEI in armed forces, they're not going to be good.

00:14:27.820 Is that wrong?

00:14:30.280 Again, if you focus on who, I don't care which bathroom somebody uses or who they sleep with,

00:14:36.640 how well can they drive that ship, fight that ship, conduct combat operations from their

00:14:42.420 aircraft, or lead a small unit in battle, that's what matters.

00:14:46.360 It's not what their skin color is.

00:14:47.920 It's not a importionment of, of the right people, of the right ethnic diversity, having

00:14:52.840 position of authority.

00:14:53.620 No, I want, um, uh, decisive, bold leaders, killers in those positions to make those decisions

00:15:02.880 because, uh, modern warfare happens at an even faster pace.

00:15:07.840 Well, no, that totally makes sense.

00:15:09.580 So I guess what I was asking really is, do you feel that prior to the, to the new administration,

00:15:14.560 the, the quality of the, of the armed forces was degraded by this process of trying to make

00:15:19.980 it inclusive?

00:15:20.500 Especially the senior leadership.

00:15:22.260 Yes.

00:15:22.780 A completely mal, uh, directed leadership when they're enforcing, when they're spending more

00:15:29.360 and more time doing diversity training, uh, instead of marksmanship, land nav, gunnery,

00:15:35.820 whatever the, the, the, the lethalities are simple examples of, um, U S Navy in the 2016,

00:15:45.180 17, 18 period killed more sailors by ship collisions by U S warships in the South China

00:15:52.180 sea or off Singapore running into commercial vessels.

00:15:55.360 Okay.

00:15:56.220 There's three collisions, two of them with multiple fatalities of a billion dollar Burke

00:16:03.200 class, uh, uh, destroyer running into a commercial ship in a seaway.

00:16:08.920 Okay.

00:16:09.360 Now this is something with a, with a half a million dollar combat surgeon, uh, uh, combat, um,

00:16:15.580 information center to fight the ship and organize it.

00:16:17.940 And yet you can't see a 50,000 ton cargo ship coming at you at 25 knots. 1.00

00:16:22.780 That's the kind of stupidity. 0.99

00:16:24.000 The bottom Richard, which was a, a helicopter carrier that started on fire while it's in 1.00

00:16:30.140 port in San Diego.

00:16:31.320 It took them an hour and a half to get first water fighting the fire in the bowels of the

00:16:36.460 ship.

00:16:37.180 The entire ship had to be written off. 0.99

00:16:39.180 So it's a billion dollar, you know, Oh shit moment. 0.97

00:16:43.000 Um, the Navy just, um, in December operations in the red sea, they're doing a lot of sorties 0.97

00:16:52.240 because they're shooting down all these incoming drones at the ships and, uh, a U S cruiser

00:16:57.700 fires, multiple missiles, shoots down one aircraft, shoots a second missile at another

00:17:04.400 aircraft.

00:17:04.980 He goes to burners and gets away.

00:17:07.280 But yeah, they, they literally shot down two of their own.

00:17:10.000 Well, shot down one, almost shot down a second.

00:17:12.420 And these were aircraft that were not 30 and 50 miles out on patrol.

00:17:16.100 They were on in the traffic pattern on final to land on the carrier.

00:17:20.640 These are the kind of, and this is in peacetime. 0.99

00:17:23.900 That's the kind of Oh shit moments you cannot have. 0.98

00:17:26.580 But are you right to connect this? 0.99

00:17:28.600 Look, I hate the eyes much as anybody, but are you right to connect this to stuff like

00:17:32.640 that?

00:17:32.920 Or is this just something that's kind of statistically speaking in a huge organization?

00:17:37.180 Someone is always going to wreck something.

00:17:38.820 For example, when those two ships, when they had the ship collisions, they had multiple

00:17:43.180 cases of crewmen, instead of manning their damage control station, were cowering in the

00:17:47.320 corners crying.

00:17:48.820 What?

00:17:49.140 That doesn't sound like that's what they should be doing.

00:17:51.020 That's fact.

00:17:51.300 Okay.

00:17:51.620 They had, the Navy had to change bootcamp to do resiliency training after that, to try

00:17:55.860 to toughen them out.

00:17:57.340 So that's a, that's a cultural problem.

00:17:59.520 And I would say that derives from either hiring the wrong people or providing the wrong training

00:18:04.460 to say, Hey folks, we are not a cruise ship.

00:18:07.460 We're a fighting ship.

00:18:08.820 And we're here to prepare to wage naval combat, which is brutal and fiery and violent.

00:18:16.820 And if you're not training with that mentality, you're in the wrong business.

00:18:20.540 That's, I mean, look, I've never been around war.

00:18:26.280 I'm not a military person in any shape or form, but to me that isn't that just common sense?

00:18:31.560 Well, your, your audience may not be military experts, but I hope they're common sense experts.

00:18:38.120 So there's a lot of this that comes down to common sense.

00:18:40.900 Because that to me, if you, the last, but in a crisis situation, whatever it is, whatever

00:18:46.380 your area of expertise is, that shouldn't be your reaction, whether you're a medic, whether

00:18:51.920 you're a firefighter, whether you're an ambulance, whatever you may be, but for the military, I

00:18:57.600 mean, that's unforgivable.

00:18:58.560 I wouldn't expect that of an actor.

00:19:01.160 Yeah.

00:19:02.200 I'm not making it up.

00:19:03.740 I wish I was.

00:19:05.320 And that worries me because that means that when you look at the superpowers like the Russians 1.00

00:19:11.400 and the Chinese, I don't know.

00:19:14.920 And maybe I don't know enough.

00:19:16.220 I can't imagine a situation like that happening and Chinese soldiers having a meltdown and starting

00:19:23.580 to cry.

00:19:24.080 It's, it's a culture of too many training timeouts where they say, oh, this is too intense for

00:19:28.760 me and I have to take a break from training.

00:19:30.440 No, it's, it's, um, you don't get to hit pause in a, in a firefight.

00:19:34.040 Do you feel that that's about to change all of this?

00:19:37.460 I think so.

00:19:38.600 I think Pete Hegseth as SecDef is, uh, setting the right tone.

00:19:42.900 And, uh, hopefully there's going to be some significant firings of a lot of people that don't

00:19:46.920 belong in the positions that they are anymore.

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00:21:10.400 Well, do you know what I found weird about this whole thing, Eric, is, and you emphasize

00:21:15.880 that it's senior leaders in particular that are causing all of this.

00:21:19.060 And I just think, like, how did we get to, you look at the history of America's military

00:21:24.540 from the generals that you had at the time of World War II and since to generals who are

00:21:29.200 now pushing DEI and talking about, you know, white supremacists and all of this stuff that

00:21:33.460 we've seen.

00:21:34.320 How did that happen?

00:21:35.400 When General Marshall took over as chief of staff in 1939, September, okay, the same

00:21:45.780 day that the Germans rolled into Poland, he took over the U.S. military, U.S. Army, and

00:21:50.580 he fired dozens of generals and colonels because they were ready to fight the last war.

00:21:55.360 They were still wanting to fight trench warfare or World War I.

00:21:57.960 And he prepared.

00:21:58.840 He kind of felt the fight coming and he made the moves to get it ready.

00:22:02.480 Um, the naval command that started, were in charge at the beginning of World War II were

00:22:10.200 not the ones that were in charge.

00:22:11.620 We started the global war on terror in 2001 and never was there a house cleaning.

00:22:16.720 So we had peacetime generals, flag officers, and all of those people stayed in and it kind

00:22:21.580 of became a self-linking ice cream cone because it was a managed war.

00:22:24.660 I would say a conflict of convenience, not of national survival.

00:22:31.540 And so no one ever said, well, wait a minute, I want only the most lethal, effective, um,

00:22:40.620 uh, commanders in this role.

00:22:42.740 And it all became a promotion game.

00:22:44.480 I mean, at some point the U.S. and Iraq had 93 flag officers on the ground, 93.

00:22:49.960 Don't imagine just their staff and their personal support and all the rest meant they had an

00:22:54.860 entire brigade of staff support supporting 93 flag officers in Iraq alone.

00:23:00.800 So it becomes very bloated, like the hardware side of things.

00:23:04.040 Horrifically bloated.

00:23:05.200 As overpriced and bloated and obese as the defense industry is selling highly overpriced

00:23:13.620 products, you can see the same thing in the flag officer corps.

00:23:18.040 And there's just too many of them.

00:23:19.520 Is that why, you know, we had Nick Freitas on the show, uh, a while back.

00:23:22.840 I'm good.

00:23:23.300 Um, and one of the things he talked about, and we've heard this from a lot of people

00:23:26.500 anecdotally, privately, as well as on the show, a lot of people lower down the ranks who

00:23:32.600 wanted to serve their country, who wanted to do that job leaving after a while because

00:23:37.540 they just got tired of all the BS.

00:23:39.500 Sure.

00:23:39.900 The warriors leave.

00:23:41.560 And, and, and, and another bad case, right?

00:23:44.340 So that you get a high utilization rate during the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts.

00:23:49.120 And normally the U S army promotes 75% of captains to majors, right?

00:23:54.660 From 03 to 04 for a while, they were promoting 95% or 99%.

00:24:01.420 Because everyone was leaving above them, right?

00:24:02.980 Sure.

00:24:03.480 And so when you're, when you don't cut out your bottom quartile of turds, the turds

00:24:10.240 eventually float to the top.

00:24:11.240 And so do that systemically across the organization for 15, 20 years.

00:24:16.200 That's what we have now.

00:24:17.440 Well, so again, there's some great people that are serving, but there's a lot of not

00:24:21.600 great ones.

00:24:22.320 And so it is time to, to window that down.

00:24:25.000 We have as many flag officers now in the military as we did in World War II, actually more, um,

00:24:32.100 in, uh, in World War II, we had 14 million men under arms in America.

00:24:35.960 Now we have less than 1.4, but the same amount of flag officers in an era of video conferences,

00:24:43.340 emails, right?

00:24:44.540 Instant communication where you should be able to run a flat and fast organization.

00:24:47.760 We have bloat upon bloat upon bloat.

00:24:50.520 And that's the, that is the winnowing, the rationalization that I hope Secretary Hegseth

00:24:54.840 does and cuts our flag officers down probably by 70, 80% is what the number that should come

00:24:59.720 off.

00:25:00.000 And how badly has the war in Iraq affected the morale of people in the army and people

00:25:09.160 especially looking to join?

00:25:10.820 Because I remember in 2003, there were marches on the streets of the UK and people were saying

00:25:17.460 this is an unjust war, which is then later proven to be true.

00:25:21.480 So how many people were actually going, I don't want to join the army because we were lied to

00:25:26.040 back then.

00:25:26.640 How can I trust the information that I'm being given now?

00:25:30.000 I wouldn't say that's not even the issue.

00:25:32.380 The issue is, um, is how, once you're there, how it's conducted and when you have politicians.

00:25:39.340 So we really allowed lawyers to infiltrate the military, to infect it almost like Zompolits, 1.00

00:25:45.940 like the political commissars were in the Soviet Union.

00:25:47.900 Okay.

00:25:48.320 In a, in a Soviet naval ship, squadron, uh, ground combat unit next to the commander would

00:25:55.960 be the Zompolit, the political officer who would enforce the will of the party.

00:25:59.820 We've allowed lawyers to second guess into undercut command authority at every level.

00:26:06.320 And so the issue is not what happened 20 years ago when this war started, it's how are we

00:26:11.580 getting it on and how are we fighting and how we'll be allowed to fight.

00:26:14.500 And when it's constant half measures, when, when there's troops in contact in a valley

00:26:20.920 in Afghanistan and they have to call and talk to a lawyer 2000 miles away in an air conditioned

00:26:25.980 cubicle in Doha, right?

00:26:28.740 At LUD Air Force Base, where the CENTCOM headquarters are for permission to drop a bomb.

00:26:33.100 You're not serious about waging war and it undervalues the value of the troops because

00:26:38.040 it's more important for some lawyer and their ass covering about whether you can drop a bomb 0.91

00:26:42.260 or not. 0.98

00:26:42.980 That's the thing that really pisses troops off.

00:26:45.580 Because it also compromises troop safety because when you're...

00:26:48.800 Unequivocally, when you over lawyer and you, and you prevent ground commanders from seeing

00:26:54.360 through and winning fights decisively, you get half-assed managed conflict for 20 years

00:27:00.140 in Afghanistan that ends in a complete blowout, debacle, collapse, embarrassment.

00:27:04.200 And again, no one's been held to account, not one flag officer, all the super polished

00:27:10.580 generals, which are now serving on boards and hedge funds and universities and all the

00:27:17.060 rest, they all lost.

00:27:19.800 They were entrusted with our troops' lives with hundreds of billions of dollars and they

00:27:24.980 failed to deliver.

00:27:26.100 And there's been no accountability for that.

00:27:27.660 The only guy that's been held accountable for Afghanistan is Lieutenant Colonel Stu Scheller.

00:27:31.960 Why? 0.94

00:27:32.220 Because he had the audacity on camera in a uniform to call bullshit on the officers to 0.92

00:27:38.240 say, hey, because at that point he was the head of the infantry training school at Quantico 0.95

00:27:43.160 for officers.

00:27:44.160 And he said, if some of my students go to the range and they lose their M-16, they're going

00:27:48.320 to be punished.

00:27:49.480 Who's punished for losing and for completely effing up in Afghanistan? 0.99

00:27:53.980 And they drove him out of the military for that.

00:27:56.400 I mean, no, like 18 or 19 years, no pension again.

00:28:00.640 So, yeah, there's some raw ire amongst the veterans.

00:28:05.260 And I have suffered this much compared to guys who have suffered their mental health,

00:28:11.400 their physical health, lost limbs, eyes, families, brain health.

00:28:15.680 It's ridiculous that we have no accountability.

00:28:19.520 And that's ultimately what rots the military. 1.00

00:28:22.020 More than than overpriced weapons and stupidity. 0.99

00:28:25.500 It is a lack of confidence in the leadership to, A, take care of their people, and, B, to get 1.00

00:28:33.140 the job done that they were hired to do.

00:28:34.880 Because it's about priorities. 0.99

00:28:36.860 And if your priority is covering your ass, then your priority- 1.00

00:28:40.500 You're going to cover your ass to the detriment of your people. 1.00

00:28:43.420 Yeah. 1.00

00:28:44.180 Then why should people trust you?

00:28:47.660 Because that's the number one thing.

00:28:49.180 It doesn't matter with any type of leader.

00:28:50.980 If you can't trust your leader, if you don't think that your leader has your best interests

00:28:55.000 at heart, why are you going to listen to them?

00:28:57.000 And especially, why are you going to follow them into battle?

00:28:58.820 And why should they be trusted on the boards that they sit now? 0.98

00:29:01.660 Because they fucked up what they did before. 0.87

00:29:04.920 Well, Eric, it's one of the things that you have, obviously, particular expertise in is 0.91

00:29:09.080 private military companies.

00:29:11.620 And this has become a thing that we see in Ukraine with the Wagner Group.

00:29:16.160 And I know you've talked at some points about the ability of these units to do a different

00:29:21.100 job or to do the same job as the main military better.

00:29:23.980 Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:29:26.680 By the way, I noticed you tense up as I asked the question.

00:29:29.000 Did I say-

00:29:29.460 Oh, God, no.

00:29:30.500 No.

00:29:30.720 I lifted too hard this morning.

00:29:33.560 That is the most alpha answer to that question, isn't it?

00:29:36.720 That is your friend.

00:29:37.320 That is the truth.

00:29:39.340 Yeah, I just pulled a muscle shooting a massive grenade launch.

00:29:42.840 Yeah.

00:29:44.640 Look, the private sector has been, I think it's a big misnomer for people to think that

00:29:48.140 PMCs are some new invention.

00:29:49.880 They're literally as old as warfare.

00:29:52.180 If you were laying siege to a city in Eastern Europe a thousand years ago and you needed somebody

00:29:57.740 to run the trebuchets or the battering ram, those were contracted professionals, those 0.66

00:30:01.880 engineers.

00:30:02.780 Right.

00:30:02.980 So, all through history, whether it's the artillerymen, the other specialties that gets pulled

00:30:10.560 into it.

00:30:13.580 As you get to, so I think a pendulum swinging back towards more use of private military contractors

00:30:19.800 is probably more along the historical norm.

00:30:22.160 When America was fighting for its independence, nine out of 10 ships taken in the American

00:30:26.860 Revolution were taken by privateers.

00:30:29.720 Private ship, private crew.

00:30:32.600 It was such a thing that it's actually written into the U.S. Constitution.

00:30:36.620 Before it even talks about Congress raising an army or a navy, it talks about a letter of

00:30:42.300 mark and reprisal.

00:30:43.080 So, there's even talk of bringing back the letter of mark as a way to go after cartels

00:30:49.160 in the physical world or the cyber world.

00:30:51.980 So, the idea of private organizations that can organize, and I guess an even simpler example

00:30:57.200 would be what Elon Musk has done in revolutionizing space launch.

00:31:02.120 If he tried to do that only through a government entity, it was constantly beating his head against

00:31:06.860 the wall against bureaucracy and nonsense, and he, obviously, he said, look, we're going

00:31:11.080 to lower the cost of launch by a thousandfold, and he's doing it.

00:31:16.100 In an era of vastly, of quick, evolving technology, the private sector is about the only thing that

00:31:24.660 can keep up at that pace of advance.

00:31:26.580 And so, skilled people that can organize the right people with the right mindset, the right

00:31:33.140 incentives with the right equipment, you'll find that more and more happening.

00:31:39.240 You could even say, even in Ukraine, the one smart thing that Zelensky did the whole war 0.89

00:31:43.660 was he opened up the arm race when the Russian invasion happened.

00:31:47.980 So, people could go grab an anti-tank missile, an RPG, or whatever, and they innovated.

00:31:52.860 And that's who really did the first FPV drones with the small charges that they just figured

00:31:57.500 out, out of necessity.

00:31:59.000 What you'll see, I think, going forward, you see a lot of countries that want investment

00:32:07.640 in struggling parts of the world, and people are reluctant to do so because there's no security

00:32:11.540 that goes with it.

00:32:13.320 And you'll see more and more a resource investment or an infrastructure investment that comes with

00:32:20.120 its own almost attached PMC, which is largely, it's not all expats.

00:32:24.940 There's a few expats, largely governing, managing local forces to secure that capability.

00:32:32.940 Almost the same way, you know, the first presence of Britain in the United States, the Massachusetts

00:32:39.580 Bay, Jamestown, Plymouth companies were listed on the City of London exchange.

00:32:47.200 They hired people like John Smith and Miles Standish, former professional British officers

00:32:51.580 that joined onto these companies and built this trading presence colony.

00:32:57.260 I mean, the ones up north were there to harvest tall trees for masts for Her Majesty's ships.

00:33:04.640 So, this is a reversion to what the historical norm is.

00:33:08.820 After the kind of all-government-all-the-time approach, after World War II for the last, you

00:33:13.580 know, 50 years, you're seeing a swing back towards a lot more private sector participation,

00:33:18.140 which, like I said, goes back a couple thousand years.

00:33:22.280 And can you give us some examples?

00:33:24.220 I mean, talk about infrastructure of situations where you really would want a private military

00:33:29.620 company involved versus the military trying to do it in a kind of...

00:33:33.500 The simplest thing is a PMC can organize much smaller footprint and significantly cheaper,

00:33:40.420 probably at 10% or less the cost structure of what a military can.

00:33:44.360 And I'll just give a simple example of a place that we took over in the Blackwater days.

00:33:50.440 It was a remote base that had to be secure in a very weird place.

00:33:55.800 And we replaced 166 soldiers with 25 of our guys.

00:34:00.140 Okay?

00:34:00.320 The Army had a 28-man rifle platoon, but they had to send 138 support people to support 28.

00:34:07.200 I sent 25 guys, and five of the guys were dual-hatted to keep the water, the power, the sanitation, 0.99

00:34:13.080 the food, and the vehicles running, and it all just worked.

00:34:16.920 And that's a very simple thing because a private organization has to know what its costs are.

00:34:22.940 You're doing a firm fixed price.

00:34:24.700 Versus the military, when everything is a free good, you tend to use a lot more free goods.

00:34:29.760 And so the taxpayers get the bill, and we realize it's really not so free.

00:34:33.080 Is the danger with this—obviously, there was a controversy with Blackwater in Iraq.

00:34:38.640 Sure.

00:34:39.020 But also, you see it with the Wagner Group in Ukraine, where Yevgeny Pregosyan,

00:34:44.160 the late Yevgeny Pregosyan, you know, really started to feel pretty powerful.

00:34:48.880 And, you know, guys who have private armies get a sort of sense of themselves

00:34:53.020 as potential political players and start to mess around.

00:34:55.880 Is there—you know, what are the trade-offs of this reversion to what you call the norm?

00:35:00.620 Well, when countries or companies hire this capability, they're doing a defined mission.

00:35:14.220 And I would say it's much cheaper.

00:35:17.280 It doesn't have the long-term cost in insurance and retirements that full-time militaries do.

00:35:23.240 Of course, you have to operate under some countries' letter of the law.

00:35:28.100 And you could argue that people can complain about PMCs not adhering to the law,

00:35:35.160 but you could also say, well, M23 or any of the 130 different resource gangs

00:35:41.220 that are operating completely without abandon.

00:35:45.020 I mean, 80% of the women in Eastern DRC are raped. 0.69

00:35:47.240 Okay, so people can complain about a private military company being out of control.

00:35:52.540 Well, I would say sending proven people that have served well in a real military

00:35:58.660 with real discipline and real honor before,

00:36:02.080 sending them to do a job is a better predictor of good behavior and future performance

00:36:07.340 than allowing the status quo of total insanity and meltdown

00:36:11.220 when you have 80% rape from 130 different resource gangs

00:36:16.540 and a nation-state sponsoring an attack like Rwanda having invaded the DRC.

00:36:21.820 Or in Haiti, where you have gangs controlling about 90% of the terrain of Port-au-Prince,

00:36:29.720 where not just gangs, they're cannibals.

00:36:31.420 So you have an entire country of 12 million literally held hostage 0.96

00:36:35.920 by completely drugged-out psychopaths.

00:36:40.880 There's a lot of countries that deserve better,

00:36:42.800 and I think the space created the last 50 years,

00:36:46.420 you've seen the U.S. government with USAID spending wildly and saying,

00:36:50.480 oh, yeah, we got this, and we can manage this, and we're great at it.

00:36:54.080 Clearly, they're not, and I'm happy to see Trump clip their wings on that,

00:36:58.680 and I think you'll see, again, a reversion to actual private sector efficiency

00:37:03.880 and accountability, and if people don't like that, they'll change vendors.

00:37:08.300 They'll find a different solution, but the all-government-all-the-time solution

00:37:11.060 has demonstrably failed.

00:37:14.220 Thanks to today's sponsor, Venice.

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00:39:14.700 And now, back to the show.

00:39:17.360 Eric, is there a danger that countries use private military companies

00:39:24.280 when they want to do certain activities, tasks, missions

00:39:29.700 that they don't want to associate with their military?

00:39:33.360 So, for instance, China would hire a private military company

00:39:36.720 to go somewhere in South America or Africa

00:39:40.540 to take out a hit against a group of people

00:39:42.540 which they know is illegal,

00:39:43.820 but it can't be traced back to their military.

00:39:47.200 Well, effectively, China did that in the last Mexican election cycle

00:39:51.180 because there was 37 political candidates assassinated in Mexico

00:39:55.180 by the cartels,

00:39:56.740 and they were all right-of-center candidates.

00:39:58.780 So, the same China that's been pushing fentanyl precursors

00:40:04.380 into Mexico, into Venezuela,

00:40:06.120 now fabricating fentanyl in Mexico

00:40:08.860 to make sure that the political scene

00:40:11.040 stayed friendly to the Chinese Communist Party,

00:40:14.040 they whacked that many political candidates. 0.94

00:40:16.740 So, whether it's whoever blew up the Nord Stream pipeline,

00:40:21.340 was it a PMC?

00:40:23.540 Was it an intelligence agency?

00:40:25.600 Who knows, but...

00:40:28.600 Do you have a theory on who did?

00:40:31.280 I think the Brits did it. 0.79

00:40:33.020 Really?

00:40:33.560 Because we think the Americans did it.

00:40:34.800 I don't think we're that competent, man.

00:40:36.080 I'm going to be honest with you.

00:40:39.180 Why do you think it's the Brits?

00:40:42.040 Because Britain has always taken... 0.87

00:40:44.000 If you look back 200 years of history,

00:40:45.800 Britain has always taken the opposite side

00:40:52.900 of the dominant land power in Europe.

00:40:54.320 Yes.

00:40:55.000 Well, there's been British policy for hundreds of years, right?

00:40:57.440 Exactly.

00:40:58.020 Yeah.

00:40:58.520 So, why not now?

00:41:00.580 And to clip...

00:41:04.740 Well, Germany has just gone so completely astray politically

00:41:08.480 that it's...

00:41:10.320 I hope they come back.

00:41:11.420 Well, there's different ways Germany can come back. 0.79

00:41:14.960 So, what I was going to say is the reason the people,

00:41:18.540 many think people, the Americans did it,

00:41:20.060 is that it's in America's economic interest

00:41:22.180 for Europeans to get their gas from America.

00:41:25.460 I cannot see anyone in the Biden administration 0.98

00:41:27.780 having the balls to authorize that. 0.98

00:41:30.440 That's interesting. 0.98

00:41:31.260 Yeah.

00:41:31.780 Well, I'm glad I asked anyway.

00:41:32.960 Yeah.

00:41:33.620 And just looking...

00:41:35.280 And to be clear, I haven't had a clearance

00:41:36.500 and I have no inside knowledge of it at all.

00:41:38.140 Yeah, sure.

00:41:38.660 You have no inside knowledge.

00:41:40.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:41.440 Glad we got those disclaimers out there, Eric.

00:41:43.960 But it's a very interesting world now

00:41:46.860 from a military perspective.

00:41:48.500 And we've had many guests on the show,

00:41:50.840 some of whom have got a military background,

00:41:52.700 and many of them have said this is the most fraught

00:41:55.120 that the world has been in a long period of time.

00:41:59.040 Do you buy into that or do you think...

00:42:01.000 Yes.

00:42:01.620 The acceleration of precision drone technology

00:42:04.860 is the biggest pendulum swing in military change,

00:42:09.920 really, since Genghis Khan put stirrups on horses.

00:42:14.320 And we know what that caused, right?

00:42:16.120 I mean, he created the largest empire the world has ever seen

00:42:18.880 from the Pacific coast to Hungary

00:42:21.040 because now you can stand up in the saddle

00:42:25.080 and fire your bow at a high rate of speed.

00:42:27.920 So it accelerated war from walking into battle

00:42:30.900 to now riding into battle.

00:42:33.120 So as they rolled across Asia, 0.97

00:42:36.020 he had a 150,000-man army with an extra 300,000 horses.

00:42:41.340 So each man had three horses in cycle,

00:42:44.640 so they could just move hundreds of miles a day

00:42:47.060 and deliver vast volumes of firepower.

00:42:50.760 And after they conquered some stuff in China,

00:42:52.420 he adapted siege works and battering rams

00:42:55.540 and all that stuff so he could take on fortified cities as well.

00:42:58.300 It was incredible.

00:42:59.440 And the amount of cheap precision weaponry now

00:43:01.800 is making those kind of black swan events

00:43:05.080 not just possible but likely.

00:43:07.100 I mean, look at what happened in Syria just a few weeks ago.

00:43:09.140 So, you know, the entire Syrian Arab army was wiped.

00:43:13.740 That was a combination of small drones,

00:43:16.640 Turkish intelligence, Turkish special operations

00:43:18.580 kind of hiding behind some.

00:43:20.760 That was not indigenous.

00:43:21.640 That was the Turks taking out Assad. 0.81

00:43:24.400 So that must mean that every country now

00:43:27.140 has seen what's happening,

00:43:28.740 particularly with the technology described,

00:43:30.700 and they're preparing, if not literally,

00:43:33.160 but they're certainly preparing mentally for war

00:43:35.000 because everything is more unstable.

00:43:36.940 I would say most militaries are too conservative

00:43:41.420 in the wrong sense of the word.

00:43:42.680 They're too slow and, I would say,

00:43:45.000 not fully aware of just how volatile the change is.

00:43:49.300 Because we had Douglas Murray on,

00:43:51.400 and he was talking about how the IDF

00:43:54.380 weren't prepared for the attack from Hamas,

00:43:57.040 which completely bears out what you're saying,

00:43:58.940 in that there was a complacency.

00:44:00.260 Correct.

00:44:00.780 They assumed that their SIGINT,

00:44:03.120 listening to everything that was going on,

00:44:04.940 in Gaza.

00:44:06.340 And they thought, ah, nothing's happening.

00:44:08.800 So what did Hamas do?

00:44:10.080 They learned,

00:44:10.820 and they had all their meetings face-to-face

00:44:12.360 and didn't send,

00:44:13.220 they kept on their normal activity

00:44:14.660 so there'd be no change.

00:44:16.500 And they went to face-to-face meetings

00:44:18.240 to completely uncollectible.

00:44:21.600 And on the morning of October 7th,

00:44:24.200 they went for it.

00:44:25.100 They used small drones with grenades

00:44:26.640 and dropped it on the very expensive watchtowers

00:44:30.380 with the cameras and the remote weapon stations,

00:44:32.160 and they took them out.

00:44:32.820 When we talk about hardware and heartware,

00:44:42.720 there was the head of the military,

00:44:48.080 the Shabak,

00:44:48.960 the Mossad,

00:44:50.340 met at 2 a.m.

00:44:52.060 the morning of October 7th,

00:44:53.740 because there was noise in the system.

00:44:55.660 They knew there was something happening,

00:44:58.160 but they weren't sure what.

00:44:59.020 And it was also a religious holiday.

00:45:01.760 Almost, what, 50 years to the,

00:45:05.520 no, from Yom Kippur.

00:45:09.040 So an anniversary of Yom Kippur holiday.

00:45:15.480 They met, didn't decide much.

00:45:18.980 They said, okay, let's meet again at 8 a.m.,

00:45:20.980 which was two hours after the attack happened.

00:45:22.860 The only guy that did something was the head of the Shabak, 0.69

00:45:25.840 and he sent a couple of 12-man teams to the south.

00:45:28.540 Not sure what to do.

00:45:29.960 Just, like, go and be ready.

00:45:31.660 If the military had said,

00:45:33.200 hey, wake all the troops up

00:45:34.320 and at least make them go to sleep with their guns,

00:45:36.320 or, you know,

00:45:38.340 put them on extra guard stations,

00:45:40.200 those bases would not have been overrun.

00:45:42.120 Very different outcome.

00:45:43.580 But again, the Shabak guy that sent the 12-man teams,

00:45:46.560 one of them,

00:45:48.200 on the north end of Gaza,

00:45:49.840 there's a road that goes north

00:45:51.080 to a city called Ashkelon,

00:45:52.520 which is like 300,000 people.

00:45:55.040 12-man team occupied a traffic circle,

00:45:57.320 and they fought to the last man.

00:45:59.480 Okay?

00:45:59.780 11 of the 12 were killed,

00:46:02.120 killing hundreds of Hamas guys 0.84

00:46:04.000 who were trying to get to Ashkelon. 0.98

00:46:05.560 Because imagine if 10 or 100 Hamas dudes 1.00

00:46:08.720 made it to Ashkelon,

00:46:09.880 the number of killed on that 12 or 7

00:46:11.900 would have been four or five times that amount.

00:46:14.160 So individual valor when the game is on

00:46:18.420 still matters as much or more than technology.

00:46:22.340 So, and again,

00:46:23.120 they were not prepared for drones

00:46:24.580 as much as the IDF

00:46:26.020 could shoot down incoming missiles,

00:46:28.900 shoot down incoming rockets with Iron Dome.

00:46:32.640 They had a hell of a time

00:46:33.780 with small drones coming from Hezbollah in the north.

00:46:40.260 50% of those were getting through

00:46:41.660 and smashing targets.

00:46:42.920 And again, military bureaucracy,

00:46:45.980 very slow to adapt

00:46:47.260 versus private individual initiative.

00:46:50.880 I have a friend there,

00:46:52.200 and he just said,

00:46:54.640 to hell with it, 0.98

00:46:55.520 I'm going to solve this problem. 0.75

00:46:56.980 He went and dragged

00:46:58.000 out of the Israeli Air Force Museum

00:47:00.560 an M113 with an M61 Vulcan cannon.

00:47:04.280 Now that's a,

00:47:04.780 it's a six barrel 20 millimeter minigun

00:47:07.000 that was designed from the 60s

00:47:08.880 as an air defense gun.

00:47:10.020 drags it out,

00:47:12.920 takes it to his shop,

00:47:14.020 puts a Tesla battery on it,

00:47:16.020 puts a new fire control system on it,

00:47:18.220 and makes it a fully automated anti-drone system,

00:47:21.160 which is still sitting on post

00:47:22.680 right along the coast,

00:47:24.280 shooting down incoming Hezbollah drones.

00:47:26.220 And he did it in like four weeks.

00:47:29.400 Extraordinary.

00:47:30.920 It was kind of the same kind of innovation

00:47:32.420 you saw in Ukraine

00:47:33.260 of adapting toy drones

00:47:36.200 or recreational drones

00:47:37.520 with small explosives.

00:47:38.780 He did the same thing

00:47:39.720 with an automated fire control system.

00:47:41.000 So the more innovation,

00:47:42.320 if you have smart people

00:47:43.140 and you turn them loose,

00:47:44.300 you're going to have some amazing creativity

00:47:46.040 when you need it.

00:47:46.700 Well,

00:47:47.100 it sounds like

00:47:47.600 what you're really telling us

00:47:48.580 is the entire technological

00:47:50.300 and AI revolution

00:47:51.940 that everyone's banging on about generally

00:47:53.620 is happening in the military

00:47:55.200 very rapidly as well.

00:47:56.740 But the thing that,

00:47:57.840 if you don't mind me asking this,

00:47:59.720 that interests me,

00:48:00.580 since we mentioned Israel,

00:48:02.300 you're a guy who's,

00:48:03.260 you know,

00:48:03.660 an expert in combat

00:48:04.680 and military

00:48:05.120 and all of that.

00:48:06.120 What do you make

00:48:06.960 of the claims

00:48:07.700 that Israel is committing genocide, 0.82

00:48:10.460 that this has been deliberate

00:48:12.440 targeting of civilians,

00:48:14.080 the casualties are off the charts,

00:48:15.500 et cetera.

00:48:15.980 Do you have any thoughts on that?

00:48:17.620 I went there

00:48:18.860 three weeks after October 7.

00:48:22.920 And I cannot claim

00:48:25.080 to be any combat expert.

00:48:26.740 I read a lot of military history.

00:48:29.140 But I also understand

00:48:30.960 military bureaucracies pretty well.

00:48:33.500 And I understand,

00:48:34.960 and look,

00:48:35.400 and I said this with great love

00:48:37.100 to my Israeli friends,

00:48:38.580 I've known a lot of Jewish financiers

00:48:40.020 of oil and gas projects.

00:48:41.140 I've never met a Jewish roughneck. 1.00

00:48:42.860 Okay?

00:48:43.100 The guy that's out there

00:48:43.960 working the rig.

00:48:44.600 So knowing that,

00:48:46.300 or knowing that the IDF

00:48:47.300 draws from its reservists,

00:48:49.160 they're not going to have

00:48:49.940 a lot of current experience

00:48:51.080 in running rigs

00:48:52.020 or what the current state

00:48:52.940 of technology is

00:48:53.920 of directional drilling.

00:48:54.940 And so I brought them

00:48:56.080 the very best in Texas.

00:48:57.580 The guy who does

00:48:58.420 all the drilling

00:48:58.940 for SpaceX

00:48:59.860 and for Exxon.

00:49:02.400 Okay?

00:49:02.680 Pretty sophisticated customers.

00:49:04.040 Mm-hmm.

00:49:04.980 Because

00:49:05.500 I think,

00:49:07.520 I think the IDF

00:49:08.540 walked into the exact fight

00:49:10.040 that Hamas wanted to have, 0.96

00:49:11.580 which was a conventional fight

00:49:13.100 in Gaza.

00:49:14.800 And Hamas prepared for that 0.96

00:49:16.020 by building,

00:49:16.800 what,

00:49:17.120 500 kilometers of tunnels

00:49:18.800 underneath,

00:49:19.720 which has been

00:49:20.260 a huge problem

00:49:21.660 for the IDF.

00:49:23.380 And so I said,

00:49:24.000 let's bring

00:49:24.600 great drilling technology

00:49:26.180 and just flood the hell 0.52

00:49:27.700 out of everything.

00:49:28.660 Everything below grade

00:49:29.720 is getting flooded

00:49:30.800 with seawater.

00:49:32.020 You can say,

00:49:32.720 well,

00:49:32.840 you're going to damage

00:49:33.320 the aquifer.

00:49:34.240 That's easier to fix

00:49:35.340 than 20,000,

00:49:37.480 whatever the tens of thousands

00:49:38.880 of civilian casualties

00:49:40.180 that would have been sustained

00:49:41.280 or deaths.

00:49:42.880 And so drilling rig

00:49:44.220 that can

00:49:44.780 drill a pilot hole

00:49:48.220 that big

00:49:48.780 with a cutter

00:49:49.840 that big.

00:49:50.840 So we had

00:49:51.440 turbine-driven pumps,

00:49:53.400 12,000 horsepower

00:49:54.340 that could deliver

00:49:55.040 60,000 gallons

00:49:56.340 a minute

00:49:57.000 to literally turn

00:49:58.780 everything underground

00:49:59.780 soaking.

00:50:01.320 Why does that matter?

00:50:03.060 Would have taken away

00:50:03.960 the enemy's ability

00:50:04.880 to maneuver.

00:50:05.920 They can't run,

00:50:06.820 hide, 0.56

00:50:07.160 pop up somewhere else.

00:50:08.620 All their underground

00:50:09.320 weapons caches

00:50:10.000 would have been destroyed

00:50:10.800 and it would have forced

00:50:12.260 all the hostages

00:50:13.140 to the surface

00:50:13.800 because Hamas does not

00:50:14.880 want dead hostages.

00:50:15.720 They can't negotiate 0.73

00:50:16.360 with those.

00:50:17.920 And so I think,

00:50:19.960 look,

00:50:20.540 there's some set

00:50:21.220 of the IDF

00:50:22.200 that just wanted 0.99

00:50:22.840 to kill 1.00

00:50:23.320 as many people 1.00

00:50:24.300 as possible

00:50:24.860 as a punitive raid.

00:50:27.280 But I think

00:50:28.520 it's set back,

00:50:30.220 I think the war

00:50:31.180 has set back

00:50:31.920 the image

00:50:32.480 of Israel

00:50:33.300 in a lot of parts

00:50:35.160 of the world

00:50:35.720 quite badly

00:50:36.720 by giving Hamas 0.86

00:50:41.600 the fight

00:50:41.920 that they wanted

00:50:42.320 to have.

00:50:43.040 I wanted to take away

00:50:44.160 Hamas's ability 1.00

00:50:45.500 to use tunnels

00:50:46.180 without the drama

00:50:47.440 of explosives.

00:50:48.520 Because who can complain

00:50:49.180 as much about water?

00:50:50.680 So why didn't they do that?

00:50:53.020 Senior bureaucratic

00:50:54.040 decision making.

00:50:55.180 Actually,

00:50:55.540 the people closest,

00:50:56.560 like the Yachalom, 0.88

00:50:57.460 the combat unit guys,

00:50:58.420 the ones that were

00:50:58.780 close to the field,

00:50:59.400 they were all about

00:51:00.360 doing it

00:51:00.860 because they saw

00:51:01.740 the merit

00:51:02.120 versus

00:51:03.860 it's the classic,

00:51:05.520 the closest you are

00:51:06.720 to the flagpole

00:51:07.500 and the senior leadership,

00:51:08.420 the more divorced 0.69

00:51:08.940 you are from reality.

00:51:10.460 And sadly,

00:51:11.180 they were listening 1.00

00:51:11.620 to other idiots 1.00

00:51:12.300 in the Pentagon 1.00

00:51:12.780 that said,

00:51:13.300 yeah,

00:51:13.420 don't do that.

00:51:15.160 I think

00:51:15.880 it's a bad look

00:51:17.420 for the IDF

00:51:18.780 to have to trade back,

00:51:20.260 to get hostages back

00:51:21.400 15 months

00:51:22.700 after October 7

00:51:23.820 and to see

00:51:24.820 a battalion

00:51:25.380 of Hamas guys

00:51:26.140 with their headbands

00:51:26.820 doing the happy dance

00:51:28.780 because for them

00:51:29.660 to survive

00:51:30.420 is a win for them

00:51:31.640 because there is still

00:51:32.680 thousands of Hamas fighters

00:51:34.640 in Gaza.

00:51:36.140 That's a problem

00:51:36.940 that has not been

00:51:38.220 dealt with yet.

00:51:40.040 But other than that,

00:51:41.420 I appreciate your idea

00:51:43.440 sounds really good

00:51:44.200 to me as a non-expert.

00:51:45.580 That sounds like a great idea.

00:51:46.580 But given that

00:51:47.820 the decision was made

00:51:48.840 not to do that,

00:51:49.740 do you think the way

00:51:50.380 that Israel has prosecuted

00:51:51.580 this war has been...

00:51:52.660 Look,

00:51:53.220 I think it's...

00:51:54.200 Fighting in urban areas

00:51:56.900 is the most difficult.

00:51:59.140 And it's even more

00:52:00.160 difficult when there's

00:52:01.060 civilian refugees

00:52:01.740 living there

00:52:02.440 and then you're

00:52:02.920 trying to strike targets

00:52:03.880 and you have an enemy

00:52:04.600 that's actively living

00:52:05.680 and hiding

00:52:06.200 and even using humans

00:52:07.500 for shields

00:52:08.060 to maximize civilian casualties.

00:52:09.800 So it's an impossibly

00:52:10.700 difficult task.

00:52:12.840 Of course,

00:52:13.680 if you're going to fight

00:52:14.480 in urban combat

00:52:15.260 with civilians there,

00:52:16.320 there's going to be

00:52:17.020 civilian casualties. 0.99

00:52:18.740 So Israel is damned 0.87

00:52:20.520 if they do 0.99

00:52:20.880 and damned if they don't. 0.91

00:52:22.300 I tried to take away 0.97

00:52:23.440 the need for that level

00:52:24.940 of energetics

00:52:25.700 by making it water instead.

00:52:27.580 I mean,

00:52:28.040 I remember having

00:52:28.740 an early conference call

00:52:31.100 with their smart people

00:52:33.800 from their version

00:52:34.840 of DARPA

00:52:35.300 and Bobby,

00:52:39.040 my lead drilling CEO

00:52:40.560 from Texas.

00:52:42.320 And they said,

00:52:43.120 well,

00:52:43.560 you know,

00:52:43.980 we tried directional drilling

00:52:45.160 six years ago.

00:52:45.960 It didn't work.

00:52:46.580 There was clay

00:52:47.240 and it took too long

00:52:48.340 and it wasn't very accurate.

00:52:49.440 And my guy got on the phone

00:52:50.660 and he goes,

00:52:51.100 well,

00:52:52.240 last year I drilled

00:52:53.560 from one side

00:52:54.040 of the Mississippi River

00:52:54.780 to the other

00:52:55.240 and we had a competition

00:52:57.620 amongst the boys.

00:52:58.380 I was aiming for a stake

00:52:59.300 and I hit the stake.

00:53:00.140 Is that good enough for you?

00:53:01.360 I mean,

00:53:02.200 it's miles

00:53:03.100 across the Mississippi River

00:53:04.700 towards the mouth.

00:53:05.660 It's clay,

00:53:06.720 it's mud

00:53:07.440 and he hit it.

00:53:09.300 And so,

00:53:10.060 yeah,

00:53:10.280 it was frustrating.

00:53:10.960 It was frustrating

00:53:11.500 to have a solution

00:53:12.500 and for the Israeli guys

00:53:13.940 to say,

00:53:14.240 well,

00:53:14.580 we tried drilling

00:53:15.320 and pumping. 0.94

00:53:15.980 Yeah,

00:53:16.100 they're pumping water

00:53:17.320 like this,

00:53:18.040 not this.

00:53:20.020 Size matters.

00:53:20.720 It's the most controversial

00:53:23.440 thing you said

00:53:24.100 all episode,

00:53:24.760 Eric.

00:53:25.580 But,

00:53:26.200 I look at the situation

00:53:28.520 in the Middle East

00:53:29.460 and we had Tony Abbott

00:53:31.280 on the show,

00:53:31.860 former Prime Minister

00:53:32.680 of Australia

00:53:33.540 and he made the point

00:53:35.280 that he thinks

00:53:36.100 that Iran 0.91

00:53:36.920 is a few months away

00:53:39.100 from being able

00:53:39.960 to produce

00:53:40.800 a nuclear weapon

00:53:41.900 and the moment

00:53:42.840 he said that,

00:53:43.780 I felt a chill

00:53:44.500 run down my spine

00:53:45.500 because this changes

00:53:47.100 everything,

00:53:47.660 doesn't it?

00:53:48.060 If they can do that.

00:53:49.260 Yes,

00:53:50.920 because they are 0.99

00:53:51.820 crazy enough 0.99

00:53:52.380 that they would do it.

00:53:53.100 They would use it.

00:53:54.460 Right?

00:53:54.660 When you have

00:53:55.280 nuclear non-aggression

00:53:57.440 treaties

00:53:57.920 and PACs

00:53:58.600 that you're,

00:53:59.020 you know,

00:53:59.240 when the US

00:53:59.800 was negotiating

00:54:00.760 with the Soviet Union,

00:54:01.620 we both had the assumption

00:54:03.320 that we had rational

00:54:04.280 leadership

00:54:05.200 that did not wish

00:54:06.240 to extinct

00:54:06.820 the other side.

00:54:09.020 You can't say that

00:54:09.900 about the mullahs.

00:54:11.680 So what do we do

00:54:13.100 if this intelligence

00:54:14.760 proves to be true?

00:54:15.880 If we know

00:54:16.660 that there are few months...

00:54:17.800 Do you think it's true?

00:54:18.440 By the way.

00:54:20.840 They're very close.

00:54:22.000 People have been saying

00:54:22.900 this for years, man.

00:54:24.100 So even though

00:54:25.040 Tony's a friend

00:54:25.800 and I trust him,

00:54:26.680 I don't know

00:54:27.760 what to think about it.

00:54:28.900 Every business owner

00:54:30.100 wishes they had

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00:54:31.700 to see what's coming next.

00:54:33.300 But while predicting

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00:55:28.500 Now,

00:55:29.360 back to the show.

00:55:30.680 when some of the exchanges

00:55:33.980 that were happening,

00:55:34.900 weapons exchanges

00:55:35.620 between Iran and Israel,

00:55:37.720 one of the ones

00:55:38.640 that was problematic

00:55:39.220 for me to see

00:55:40.000 was one of the

00:55:41.460 ballistic missiles

00:55:42.060 that came zorching through

00:55:43.180 with some kind

00:55:44.960 of a hypersonic

00:55:45.560 that hit inside Israel.

00:55:47.980 I think it hit

00:55:48.400 a parking lot.

00:55:49.880 But if that was

00:55:50.360 carrying a nuke,

00:55:51.820 that would have

00:55:52.440 clacked off

00:55:52.980 and that would have,

00:55:54.680 you know,

00:55:54.880 whether it's

00:55:55.840 100 meters

00:55:56.540 or a kilometer

00:55:57.740 from an apartment building,

00:55:59.860 it's going to leave

00:56:01.160 a mark

00:56:01.480 if it's a nuke.

00:56:03.100 So it's

00:56:03.480 so they

00:56:07.240 maybe have

00:56:07.980 the means

00:56:08.460 to deliver

00:56:09.000 a weapon

00:56:09.880 if they have it

00:56:10.440 or even a dirty bomb.

00:56:12.100 Also a big problem 0.96

00:56:13.060 because Israel

00:56:13.500 doesn't have

00:56:13.900 that much land.

00:56:15.880 What I've been

00:56:16.620 advocating for years

00:56:18.140 is that the

00:56:19.320 intelligence services

00:56:20.300 should have done

00:56:21.200 in Iran

00:56:22.780 what we did

00:56:23.460 in Poland

00:56:23.920 in the 80s,

00:56:25.140 which was largely

00:56:26.460 communications first.

00:56:27.820 You empower.

00:56:29.160 In that case,

00:56:29.600 they reached out

00:56:30.240 to the Solidarity Movement,

00:56:32.100 the shipyard workers,

00:56:33.240 the farmers,

00:56:34.700 the students,

00:56:36.000 the churches,

00:56:37.300 the other civil rights groups,

00:56:38.320 and you empower

00:56:39.020 other centers

00:56:39.740 of authority

00:56:40.280 that the central party

00:56:42.780 doesn't control.

00:56:43.780 In the case of Iran, 0.88

00:56:44.860 you have

00:56:45.220 the Baluch,

00:56:46.800 the Akwazi Arabs,

00:56:48.500 the Kurds,

00:56:49.960 the Azeris,

00:56:51.100 and of course,

00:56:51.620 Persians, right? 0.85

00:56:52.520 And the Iranian leadership,

00:56:54.940 even though

00:56:55.260 the supreme leader

00:56:55.900 is an ethnic Azeri,

00:56:58.480 the rest of them

00:56:59.520 are Persians

00:57:00.060 and the rest of the country

00:57:01.200 doesn't really like that

00:57:02.220 and they really hate

00:57:03.740 the IRGC,

00:57:04.640 the Iranian Revolutionary

00:57:05.420 Guard Corps,

00:57:06.400 because they're really like

00:57:07.420 the,

00:57:07.940 they're as hated

00:57:08.460 as the SS was

00:57:09.480 in 1940s Germany.

00:57:12.260 They're the guys

00:57:13.020 that make,

00:57:13.640 the more you sanction Iran, 0.63

00:57:15.160 the more money it makes

00:57:16.140 for the IRGC

00:57:16.960 to the detriment

00:57:17.800 of the rest of the population.

00:57:18.760 So empowering

00:57:20.660 civil groups,

00:57:22.560 ethnic groups

00:57:23.280 that are opposed

00:57:25.100 to the rule

00:57:25.640 of the mullahs,

00:57:26.600 that's what we should be doing

00:57:28.080 and take it down

00:57:28.860 from the inside.

00:57:29.540 I think history shows

00:57:30.760 that any time

00:57:31.340 that you attack Iran 0.97

00:57:32.440 from the outside,

00:57:33.520 from Persia,

00:57:34.040 from the outside,

00:57:35.500 it generally unites

00:57:36.320 the population more

00:57:37.200 and it congeals,

00:57:38.400 but it's like

00:57:39.500 putting a firecracker

00:57:40.240 in a hand.

00:57:41.240 It'll,

00:57:41.580 you need a lot less of it

00:57:42.440 to pop it

00:57:42.960 from the inside.

00:57:44.040 That's what I would do.

00:57:45.260 Because when we've seen

00:57:47.540 the war in Gaza,

00:57:50.400 we've come to this point

00:57:52.180 where you could say

00:57:53.620 how much has actually changed?

00:57:56.420 How much has actually changed?

00:57:58.000 Particularly when you think

00:57:58.980 that it's Iran funding

00:58:00.100 all of this.

00:58:01.080 Because we haven't solved

00:58:02.180 the problem of Iran 0.99

00:58:03.060 at all.

00:58:04.220 No.

00:58:04.760 Look,

00:58:05.160 you haven't solved

00:58:05.760 the problem of the Houthis.

00:58:07.320 Basically,

00:58:08.000 the Iranians supercharged

00:58:09.300 the Houthis in Yemen

00:58:10.320 and they have shut down

00:58:11.560 the Red Sea.

00:58:13.140 And,

00:58:13.160 I mean,

00:58:14.160 Egypt is losing

00:58:15.480 $800 million a month

00:58:16.960 by not having

00:58:18.220 all the Suez transit fees

00:58:19.660 because the Houthis

00:58:21.340 firing Iranian drones,

00:58:23.700 Iranian cruise missiles,

00:58:25.000 or Iranian ballistic missiles

00:58:26.460 at any ship

00:58:28.380 passing through

00:58:29.160 at,

00:58:30.760 they fired hundreds

00:58:31.720 of those

00:58:32.240 at U.S.

00:58:33.080 or other coalition vessels

00:58:34.380 trying to do escort duty.

00:58:36.420 The U.S. Navy said

00:58:37.240 that they've,

00:58:38.000 they claim

00:58:39.100 that they fired

00:58:39.640 a billion dollars

00:58:40.480 worth of missiles

00:58:41.160 knocking all this stuff down.

00:58:42.740 It's a wrong number.

00:58:43.420 It's more like

00:58:43.920 four or five billion

00:58:44.700 because they're counting

00:58:45.880 the inventory cost

00:58:46.880 from when they bought it

00:58:47.660 in the mid-90s.

00:58:49.080 To replace it now,

00:58:50.060 they're going to pay

00:58:50.620 four or five billion dollars.

00:58:52.080 So,

00:58:52.460 so yeah,

00:58:52.840 you have surrogates

00:58:54.060 from the Iranians 0.98

00:58:55.480 that have gotten stronger

00:58:56.640 and better.

00:58:57.880 Even Hamas 0.88

00:58:58.700 still surviving.

00:58:59.940 They have taken,

00:59:01.220 they've unquestionably

00:59:02.200 taken a blow

00:59:03.020 in Lebanon.

00:59:04.560 Hezbollah's definitely 0.98

00:59:05.140 been,

00:59:05.420 been degraded.

00:59:06.360 and again,

00:59:08.980 I don't take anything away

00:59:10.320 from the valor

00:59:10.980 of Israeli soldiers

00:59:12.000 trying to recover

00:59:12.980 their hostages,

00:59:14.680 but,

00:59:15.460 but leadership matters

00:59:17.280 and I think decisions,

00:59:19.300 some of the decisions

00:59:19.880 could have made differently

00:59:20.620 to have a better outcome,

00:59:22.020 both for resolution

00:59:23.640 of the hostage crisis,

00:59:25.620 meaning Israel wins,

00:59:28.100 Israel recovered

00:59:28.520 their hostages

00:59:29.120 and less civilians

00:59:30.220 would have died.

00:59:31.640 But in contrast to that,

00:59:32.580 the brilliance

00:59:33.280 of the pager strike

00:59:34.920 will go down in history

00:59:36.520 as one of the great

00:59:37.620 asymmetric wins

00:59:38.740 and I say compliments

00:59:40.260 to an,

00:59:41.000 to an institution

00:59:41.920 that could accept

00:59:43.420 that level of crazy idea,

00:59:45.360 right?

00:59:45.720 Imagine,

00:59:46.080 imagine what

00:59:46.820 probably junior staffer

00:59:48.380 showed up

00:59:49.420 at the Monday morning meeting

00:59:50.560 and said,

00:59:51.020 hey,

00:59:51.140 I got an idea,

00:59:51.980 let's infiltrate

00:59:52.860 the supply chain

00:59:53.760 and put explosives

00:59:55.220 in all their pagers

00:59:56.440 and clack off their hips, 0.96

00:59:58.420 right?

00:59:59.000 So that is brilliant

01:00:00.560 to have that level

01:00:01.480 of risk tolerance.

01:00:02.300 I wish the CIA

01:00:03.200 have that kind

01:00:04.380 of risk tolerance anymore.

01:00:05.560 We do not.

01:00:06.540 Well,

01:00:06.640 one of the interesting things

01:00:07.620 from J.D. Vance's speech,

01:00:09.260 not the one

01:00:10.160 that everyone's banging on

01:00:10.940 about in Munich,

01:00:12.000 but at the AI summit,

01:00:13.980 really seemed to me

01:00:15.160 like a total reset

01:00:16.320 of America's

01:00:17.400 relationship with risk.

01:00:19.560 He really talked

01:00:20.700 about the fact

01:00:21.320 that we've become

01:00:21.940 very risk-averse

01:00:22.800 as a civilization

01:00:23.540 and as a culture

01:00:24.540 and it sounds to me,

01:00:26.100 I was enthused

01:00:27.040 by that personally.

01:00:28.320 It sounds to me

01:00:28.940 like you think

01:00:29.500 that's the right direction

01:00:30.720 of travel.

01:00:31.160 Look,

01:00:31.960 what made America great

01:00:33.080 was wildcatters,

01:00:34.600 right?

01:00:34.860 People that would

01:00:35.600 bet it all

01:00:37.100 to make something happen

01:00:38.080 and, you know,

01:00:38.880 there's a great book

01:00:39.520 called The Texas Oil Patch

01:00:40.920 called The Big Rich

01:00:42.240 and it talks about

01:00:43.200 these wildcatters

01:00:44.540 that would hit it big

01:00:46.320 and then they'd hit

01:00:48.580 a rough patch

01:00:49.460 and then they literally

01:00:50.440 back down,

01:00:51.140 they'd go from a mansion

01:00:52.020 to living in the backseat

01:00:53.080 of their car

01:00:53.640 to invest their last

01:00:55.260 few thousand dollars

01:00:56.240 to drill another hole

01:00:57.240 and they'd hit it again.

01:00:59.400 Or I even admire

01:01:01.540 that when Musk,

01:01:02.840 right?

01:01:03.120 He's down to his last

01:01:05.040 few tens of millions

01:01:05.980 and he puts half

01:01:06.920 into Tesla

01:01:07.460 and half on SpaceX

01:01:08.820 and he goes out

01:01:10.080 to Johnson & Atoll

01:01:11.000 and he's got enough

01:01:12.220 to fire three rockets

01:01:13.260 and the first two blow up

01:01:15.280 and they hit it

01:01:16.000 on the third

01:01:16.460 and that gets them

01:01:17.620 the NASA contract.

01:01:18.980 But call it

01:01:21.740 a bet-it-all gambler

01:01:22.580 that believes in themself

01:01:23.640 to pursue an idea

01:01:25.940 to make something happen.

01:01:26.660 I truly laud that.

01:01:28.700 Yeah, it's that thing

01:01:30.560 that makes America great.

01:01:32.280 It's that enterprise.

01:01:33.800 It's that feeling

01:01:34.680 of we can do this,

01:01:36.560 which I feel

01:01:37.280 that we lack in Europe

01:01:38.540 and I think is very much needed

01:01:40.580 because we're going to need

01:01:42.540 to call on you again

01:01:43.600 and I really love

01:01:44.700 your opinion on this.

01:01:46.220 When you look at China 0.98

01:01:47.980 looking covetously at Taiwan,

01:01:50.400 how likely do you think

01:01:51.880 it is that China

01:01:52.700 is going to stage an invasion?

01:01:54.000 Demographically,

01:01:57.240 if the mainland waits

01:01:59.800 just another 10 years,

01:02:02.060 Taiwan will have collapsed

01:02:03.140 that much more, right?

01:02:04.300 Because they're way below

01:02:05.400 the replacement rate

01:02:06.260 with fertility.

01:02:08.640 China is too,

01:02:09.660 but they've got

01:02:10.140 a whole bigger stack.

01:02:11.000 Yes, they have a bigger pool

01:02:11.680 to draw from.

01:02:12.200 But they have also

01:02:15.560 the problems

01:02:16.240 of sex selection,

01:02:17.580 abortion,

01:02:18.320 and a one-child policy

01:02:19.440 when you have, what,

01:02:20.960 30, 40 million males

01:02:22.420 of marriage age

01:02:23.140 with no prospects

01:02:23.840 of marrying a female.

01:02:26.600 You know,

01:02:27.540 for Xi Jinping,

01:02:29.020 every general,

01:02:30.640 every senior general

01:02:31.340 has bought that position

01:02:32.620 and they bought

01:02:33.240 a lot of stuff

01:02:33.860 and they'll blow 0.73

01:02:34.420 a lot of sunshine

01:02:34.980 at them to say,

01:02:35.800 yeah, yeah, yeah,

01:02:36.160 we can do this.

01:02:36.740 Let's go, go, go.

01:02:38.260 If China is going

01:02:39.620 to physically,

01:02:40.860 forcibly seize Taiwan,

01:02:42.860 it is a very high-risk poker

01:02:44.480 because if Xi fails,

01:02:47.420 he'll die, okay?

01:02:48.920 He'll be replaced 1.00

01:02:49.760 with a bullet. 0.99

01:02:52.160 China imports 80% 0.68

01:02:53.700 of their hydrocarbons.

01:02:55.160 Most of it comes

01:02:55.820 through the Straits of Malacca

01:02:56.800 up to the East Coast.

01:02:59.220 So they're highly subject.

01:03:00.640 If they're going to go fast,

01:03:01.980 they cannot be

01:03:02.540 a two-year,

01:03:03.440 two-and-a-half-year

01:03:04.180 Ukraine war, right?

01:03:05.900 And again,

01:03:06.180 to invade Ukraine,

01:03:07.980 you've got to rev up

01:03:08.580 your tank and let the clutch out

01:03:09.760 and let it roll

01:03:10.280 across the border.

01:03:11.480 To do it in Taiwan,

01:03:13.140 you have to do

01:03:13.660 an amphibious invasion,

01:03:15.000 truly, demonstrably

01:03:16.120 one of the hardest

01:03:16.840 forms of combat.

01:03:18.900 Why is that?

01:03:20.220 Because you're just

01:03:20.960 moving stuff by sea

01:03:22.100 and it's another

01:03:23.060 huge variable

01:03:23.900 because weather

01:03:24.800 has an even bigger factor,

01:03:26.400 not to mention

01:03:27.220 there's not any

01:03:28.140 real good beaches

01:03:28.860 in Taiwan.

01:03:31.560 And so it's a

01:03:32.500 whole other thing

01:03:33.620 for an untested military

01:03:34.940 look,

01:03:36.700 the U.S.

01:03:37.420 had,

01:03:38.040 the U.S. and Brits

01:03:38.760 had,

01:03:39.120 we had our problems

01:03:39.920 doing amphibious operations

01:03:41.060 in World War II already.

01:03:42.880 That institutional knowledge

01:03:44.180 has been recorded

01:03:44.900 but largely forgotten.

01:03:48.340 There's only so much

01:03:49.220 you can do

01:03:49.840 in practicing

01:03:50.880 and trying to rehearse that

01:03:52.280 that would not be

01:03:53.340 blatantly obvious.

01:03:54.520 The Chinese,

01:03:55.240 just in the last month,

01:03:56.780 have fielded

01:03:57.340 some very obvious

01:03:58.660 amphibious barges

01:04:00.500 that are for nothing

01:04:01.880 other than crossing

01:04:02.660 the large mud flats

01:04:03.840 of the flat areas

01:04:05.160 of the tidal areas

01:04:06.200 of Taiwan.

01:04:08.140 So,

01:04:09.020 again,

01:04:09.440 if they're going to go,

01:04:10.280 they have to go fast.

01:04:12.060 What I've recommended

01:04:13.440 again and again,

01:04:14.460 and I'll do it here,

01:04:15.840 is the best thing

01:04:16.920 that Taiwan could do 0.97

01:04:17.680 is spend it on a home guard

01:04:18.840 because in an era

01:04:20.740 of precision weapons

01:04:21.720 where China literally

01:04:22.720 has tens of thousands

01:04:23.760 of precision missiles

01:04:24.640 aimed at every known

01:04:26.120 valuable point in Taiwan

01:04:28.100 to be targeted,

01:04:29.980 whether it's an aircraft bunker,

01:04:31.260 a command bunker,

01:04:32.140 a surface-to-air missile,

01:04:32.940 whatever,

01:04:33.640 what they can't calculate for

01:04:35.080 is the 3% of the population

01:04:37.600 that says not today.

01:04:39.140 Okay?

01:04:39.280 When America was fighting

01:04:40.280 for its independence

01:04:41.100 from the Brits,

01:04:43.220 you had 30%

01:04:45.240 that were pro,

01:04:46.080 that were loyalists,

01:04:47.980 40% in the middle

01:04:48.920 just trying to survive,

01:04:49.900 30% that wanted liberty,

01:04:52.180 10% of the 30%, 0.67

01:04:54.320 3% are the only ones

01:04:55.800 that took up arms.

01:04:56.620 If you give me 3%

01:04:58.540 of the Taiwanese population,

01:05:00.100 whether it's the marathoners,

01:05:02.580 the crossfitters,

01:05:03.700 the active policemen,

01:05:08.380 firemen,

01:05:09.320 some of the reservists,

01:05:10.500 most of the Taiwanese military 0.85

01:05:12.080 is lousy.

01:05:13.360 It's woke and soft

01:05:14.680 and not serious at all.

01:05:16.480 What?

01:05:17.220 The Taiwanese military is woke?

01:05:19.780 Yes.

01:05:20.360 How did that happen?

01:05:21.720 Look,

01:05:22.280 their drilling,

01:05:23.720 their training

01:05:24.500 largely consists of sweeping

01:05:26.320 and picking up cigarette butts

01:05:27.880 and it's not

01:05:29.600 any kind of seriousness

01:05:31.380 of training.

01:05:32.440 Okay?

01:05:33.240 But,

01:05:33.660 if you find

01:05:35.020 the most interested engaged

01:05:36.660 Yeah.

01:05:38.840 and you train them

01:05:40.040 and you then send them

01:05:41.160 back to their homes

01:05:41.820 and you have now

01:05:42.680 thousands of cachet sites

01:05:44.160 in police stations

01:05:46.520 and civil defense bunkers,

01:05:47.740 et cetera,

01:05:48.040 where every small village,

01:05:49.980 every urban block

01:05:51.460 becomes another fortified area

01:05:54.200 of roadside bombs,

01:05:56.660 small drones

01:05:57.600 run by a fiber optic cable,

01:05:59.540 so even in a jammed environment

01:06:00.620 it works,

01:06:01.960 sniper rifles,

01:06:02.960 RPGs,

01:06:03.680 you can make the seizure

01:06:04.980 and holding

01:06:05.700 of Taiwanese territory

01:06:07.600 exceedingly difficult.

01:06:09.600 That's the variability

01:06:10.860 that Xi could not tolerate

01:06:13.180 to say,

01:06:14.600 go,

01:06:15.940 he can't afford

01:06:16.660 a two-year,

01:06:18.760 one-year

01:06:19.280 protracted campaign

01:06:20.360 because they import

01:06:21.220 a lot of food

01:06:21.920 and they import

01:06:22.920 almost all their energy.

01:06:24.200 This is one of the interesting

01:06:25.380 things about the Taiwan thing

01:06:26.680 because I hear

01:06:27.580 a lot of media people

01:06:29.080 and politicians

01:06:29.800 go,

01:06:30.320 oh,

01:06:30.460 Taiwan,

01:06:30.940 it's inevitable.

01:06:31.720 And,

01:06:31.960 you know,

01:06:32.100 you talk to Australians,

01:06:33.080 they all think it's inevitable.

01:06:34.780 Even very serious,

01:06:35.940 credible people.

01:06:36.400 A billion dollars spent well

01:06:37.800 would build a credible home guard

01:06:40.240 which would be

01:06:40.800 a very difficult

01:06:41.940 thing to calculate.

01:06:43.400 Well,

01:06:43.540 this is what I was going to ask

01:06:44.440 because when I listen

01:06:45.160 to military people,

01:06:46.780 they all go,

01:06:47.680 I wouldn't want to be

01:06:48.560 in charge of that operation

01:06:49.660 if I was Chinese.

01:06:50.680 Like,

01:06:50.800 that is a pretty hard

01:06:51.720 thing to do.

01:06:52.760 Amphibious invasion 0.96

01:06:53.580 across that body of water,

01:06:56.000 you know,

01:06:57.000 that's tough.

01:06:58.480 Like,

01:06:58.780 I've never heard anyone say

01:07:00.240 that's...

01:07:00.640 You have certain months

01:07:01.940 of the year

01:07:02.280 where it's largely impossible

01:07:03.360 because you get some big wins

01:07:04.780 through the straits

01:07:05.540 and the same way

01:07:06.820 that Eisenhower

01:07:07.420 had to delay

01:07:08.160 the Normandy invasion

01:07:09.460 from June 4 to June 6

01:07:10.700 because of big wins,

01:07:11.620 you don't want to do

01:07:12.240 an amphibious invasion 0.97

01:07:13.080 in big shitty wins 0.96

01:07:15.080 or an airborne operation 0.96

01:07:16.160 even worse.

01:07:17.980 So,

01:07:19.040 I guess the question is

01:07:20.180 why has Taiwan,

01:07:21.620 they know they're under threat,

01:07:23.740 they know that

01:07:24.920 China is looking at them, 0.98

01:07:27.260 why haven't they gone

01:07:28.320 all in on

01:07:29.240 revamping the army,

01:07:30.540 training them properly,

01:07:31.920 investing the money?

01:07:33.060 It's not a poor country,

01:07:34.260 it's a rich country.

01:07:35.280 It's a rich country,

01:07:36.080 it's a lot of them

01:07:38.480 just believe that

01:07:39.320 Uncle Sam

01:07:40.040 is going to bail them out.

01:07:42.460 Which,

01:07:43.460 even if Uncle Sam

01:07:44.200 wanted to bail them out,

01:07:45.720 the tyranny of distance

01:07:46.940 and logistics

01:07:47.700 across,

01:07:48.600 to move enough

01:07:49.380 combat power

01:07:50.260 across the Pacific

01:07:51.740 to get to Taiwan

01:07:52.960 is exceedingly difficult.

01:07:54.920 So,

01:07:55.260 again,

01:07:56.500 pre-staging

01:07:57.140 tens of thousands,

01:07:59.380 hundreds of thousands

01:07:59.940 of small arms,

01:08:01.140 of small

01:08:02.320 partisan weaponry

01:08:03.400 to make it

01:08:04.160 an unholdable place

01:08:05.460 for the CCP,

01:08:07.280 that's the answer.

01:08:08.380 Well, Eric,

01:08:08.780 you've been very generous

01:08:09.480 with your time.

01:08:10.880 One thing we didn't tell you,

01:08:12.380 so it'll be a surprise,

01:08:13.160 is the last question

01:08:14.220 we always ask is

01:08:14.900 what's the one thing

01:08:15.660 we're not talking about

01:08:16.900 that we shouldn't be?

01:08:17.880 And then we'll go to

01:08:18.720 questions from our audience

01:08:19.780 on Substack.

01:08:20.420 What should we be talking about?

01:08:22.800 Before Eric answers

01:08:23.940 a final question,

01:08:24.980 at the end of the interview,

01:08:26.300 make sure to head over

01:08:27.080 to our Substack.

01:08:28.200 The link is in the description

01:08:29.360 where you'll be able

01:08:30.560 to see this.

01:08:32.520 What are your thoughts

01:08:33.220 on Elon Musk and Doge

01:08:34.320 in terms of transparency

01:08:35.320 and the impact it could have

01:08:36.620 on spending for private

01:08:37.700 military contracts?

01:08:39.580 When you watch the news,

01:08:40.540 what are the main things

01:08:41.400 you think the old

01:08:42.560 and new media

01:08:43.720 misunderstand about war?

01:08:46.120 Does Eric regret

01:08:47.080 selling Blackwater?

01:08:49.000 What should we be talking about?

01:08:52.220 So,

01:08:52.940 I think

01:08:53.360 in an era of AI

01:08:55.000 and the amount of data

01:08:57.980 that is collected

01:08:59.000 and

01:08:59.520 I've paid a lot

01:09:00.620 of attention

01:09:00.980 to what's called

01:09:02.280 surveillance capitalism.

01:09:03.680 Tell us about that.

01:09:04.620 After 9-11 happened 0.67

01:09:05.840 when the U.S. government

01:09:06.720 rightly is looking

01:09:07.540 for other people

01:09:08.980 fitting the program,

01:09:10.040 the profile

01:09:10.600 of the 19 hijackers,

01:09:13.380 they start working

01:09:15.340 with ad agencies

01:09:16.020 who's harvesting

01:09:16.920 commercial data

01:09:17.840 and then fast forward

01:09:19.060 a few years

01:09:19.540 so that creates

01:09:20.060 an industry.

01:09:21.600 Then,

01:09:22.060 as smartphones arrive,

01:09:23.760 that kind of hooks

01:09:25.160 to collect

01:09:26.960 where you go,

01:09:28.340 what you buy,

01:09:29.260 who you call,

01:09:29.940 what you browse

01:09:30.640 embedded in your smartphone

01:09:32.020 so that every smartphone

01:09:33.360 you use

01:09:34.160 is basically

01:09:35.400 a constant feed

01:09:37.380 phoning home

01:09:38.240 every night

01:09:38.900 to collect

01:09:40.620 and use that data.

01:09:42.260 And so,

01:09:43.200 it's pervasive.

01:09:44.440 The average kid

01:09:45.000 in America

01:09:45.480 by the time they reach

01:09:46.720 the age of 13

01:09:47.360 has had 72 million

01:09:48.420 data points

01:09:48.980 collected on them.

01:09:49.780 Okay?

01:09:51.760 By advertising.

01:09:53.200 Whether it's

01:09:53.580 color preferences,

01:09:54.440 sports,

01:09:55.240 food,

01:09:56.160 everything profiled.

01:09:57.740 So now,

01:09:58.240 in an era of AI,

01:09:59.760 they can really,

01:10:00.720 it allows the machine

01:10:02.400 to digitally profile you.

01:10:04.140 So we tried

01:10:05.940 to do something

01:10:06.320 about that,

01:10:06.800 especially after

01:10:07.300 the 2020 election

01:10:08.200 and seeing how

01:10:09.080 big tech was

01:10:09.880 very much in cooperation

01:10:11.380 with big government

01:10:12.260 and throwing people

01:10:13.260 off of app stores

01:10:14.020 and kind of

01:10:14.560 stopping free speech.

01:10:16.160 We said,

01:10:17.420 we're never going

01:10:17.660 to make big tech

01:10:18.240 better by complaining

01:10:19.080 only if we could

01:10:19.880 compete with it.

01:10:20.900 So,

01:10:21.860 we started something

01:10:22.860 called an unplugged phone.

01:10:24.720 We built,

01:10:25.120 it's our hardware,

01:10:25.800 it's our device.

01:10:27.660 It runs on

01:10:28.680 regular phone networks,

01:10:29.860 but it gives you

01:10:31.940 a very different option.

01:10:34.400 At our root core,

01:10:35.700 we're about privacy.

01:10:36.680 We don't have

01:10:37.080 an advertising ID.

01:10:38.700 So,

01:10:39.160 the same way

01:10:39.800 that apps

01:10:40.300 sit on your phone

01:10:41.260 and collect and harvest

01:10:42.200 everything you do,

01:10:43.300 our phone blocks that.

01:10:45.320 Okay?

01:10:45.460 I've had a lot of people

01:10:46.040 I've talked to

01:10:46.540 who said,

01:10:46.900 yes,

01:10:47.100 I was talking to my wife

01:10:48.540 about needing

01:10:49.700 a new mattress

01:10:50.380 in our bedroom

01:10:51.400 and the next day

01:10:52.680 they're getting

01:10:53.080 advertising for mattress ads.

01:10:54.960 Imagine that,

01:10:55.980 the device

01:10:56.600 sitting in your nightstand

01:10:57.700 listening to pillow talk

01:10:58.760 or whatever else

01:10:59.660 might be going on

01:11:00.420 on the pillows.

01:11:02.460 Yes,

01:11:02.900 this phone

01:11:03.620 prevents that

01:11:04.640 and so we kind of,

01:11:06.360 we take the first

01:11:07.100 and fourth amendment

01:11:07.700 seriously in America,

01:11:09.660 free speech

01:11:10.220 and the right to privacy

01:11:11.400 and yeah,

01:11:13.140 so we...

01:11:13.660 I couldn't help noticing

01:11:14.540 at the bottom there

01:11:15.320 there's a self-destruct button.

01:11:16.620 I hope that's not one

01:11:17.280 of those Australian ones.

01:11:18.620 That's correct.

01:11:20.140 But if someone says,

01:11:21.720 give me your phone,

01:11:22.620 I'm here to inspect it

01:11:23.420 and you can enter a code

01:11:25.980 and you hand them a brick.

01:11:27.440 It's an instant hard reset.

01:11:29.320 We have a kill switch,

01:11:31.520 right?

01:11:31.700 You can't switch

01:11:32.400 your phones off.

01:11:33.620 It's constantly listening.

01:11:34.700 That's why you can find

01:11:35.440 your phone

01:11:35.980 even when your phone

01:11:36.740 is off.

01:11:37.720 This one physically

01:11:38.660 separates the battery

01:11:39.540 from the electronics

01:11:40.200 so that off means off.

01:11:42.420 So again,

01:11:42.980 we have 10,000 apps

01:11:44.580 in our app store

01:11:45.200 so it allows you

01:11:46.280 to communicate,

01:11:48.140 navigate,

01:11:48.980 bank,

01:11:49.980 airlines,

01:11:50.740 sports apps,

01:11:51.540 games,

01:11:51.980 social media,

01:11:52.640 all the normal stuff

01:11:53.360 but we don't give

01:11:54.860 the super personalized thing

01:11:56.120 because we're not harvesting

01:11:57.080 and personalizing

01:11:58.640 all your stuff.

01:11:59.520 Our customers

01:12:00.320 actually find

01:12:00.980 they use

01:12:01.520 significantly fewer

01:12:03.840 megabytes a day

01:12:04.720 because their phone

01:12:05.780 is not spontaneously

01:12:08.660 phoning back

01:12:09.380 to the mothership

01:12:10.080 exporting their data.

01:12:11.860 Well, you've done

01:12:12.220 a great job

01:12:12.880 selling that, man.

01:12:13.740 Yeah.

01:12:14.020 I can't lie.

01:12:15.020 All right,

01:12:15.440 head on over to Substack

01:12:16.560 where we ask Eric

01:12:17.320 your questions.

01:12:19.840 If you had the power

01:12:20.740 to reform the private

01:12:21.640 military industry,

01:12:22.980 what changes

01:12:23.540 would you implement

01:12:24.380 to ensure both

01:12:25.180 effectiveness

01:12:25.940 and ethical standards?

01:12:27.560 Broadway's smash hit

01:12:41.640 The Neil Diamond Musical

01:12:42.960 A Beautiful Noise

01:12:44.480 is coming to Toronto.

01:12:46.080 The true story

01:12:46.840 of a kid from Brooklyn

01:12:47.900 destined for something more

01:12:49.420 featuring all the songs

01:12:50.580 you love

01:12:51.200 including America,

01:12:52.640 Forever in Blue Jeans

01:12:53.660 and Sweet Caroline.

01:12:55.340 Like Jersey Boys 0.99

01:12:56.300 and Beautiful,

01:12:57.140 the next musical

01:12:58.080 mega hit is here.

01:12:59.420 The Neil Diamond Musical

01:13:00.720 A Beautiful Noise

01:13:02.040 now through June 7,

01:13:03.420 2026

01:13:04.200 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:13:06.360 Get tickets

01:13:06.840 at murbush.com

01:13:08.220 Broadway's smash hit

01:13:12.400 The Neil Diamond Musical

01:13:13.700 A Beautiful Noise

01:13:15.220 is coming to Toronto.

01:13:16.820 The true story

01:13:17.580 of a kid from Brooklyn

01:13:18.660 destined for something more

01:13:20.180 featuring all the songs

01:13:21.320 you love

01:13:21.960 including America,

01:13:23.400 Forever in Blue Jeans

01:13:24.400 and Sweet Caroline.

01:13:25.580 Like Jersey Boys 0.99

01:13:27.040 and Beautiful,

01:13:27.900 the next musical

01:13:28.840 mega hit is here.

01:13:30.160 The Neil Diamond Musical

01:13:31.460 A Beautiful Noise

01:13:32.800 now through June 7,

01:13:34.160 2026

01:13:34.940 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:13:37.120 Get tickets

01:13:37.580 at murbush.com

01:13:39.140 the Neil Diamond tradicional

01:13:40.600 the Neil Diamond船

01:13:41.260 and Alice in Boughtiro

01:13:43.200 in Bridge de d' nouns

01:13:43.740 is the answer

01:13:45.080 for the show

01:13:46.240 the call to come

01:13:48.100 near David

01:13:49.300 we find a won

01:13:49.580 new links

01:13:50.420 at murbush.com

01:13:51.460 whoosh

01:13:52.180 and RealThits

01:13:52.300 the entendeu

01:13:56.340 won

01:13:56.980 ours

01:13:58.400 the

01:13:59.360 Mark

01:13:59.600 and

01:14:01.060 the

01:14:02.100 Michelle

01:14:02.300 and

TRIGGERnometry - February 26, 2025

Erik Prince - War Will Never Be The Same

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