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00:00:10Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Myers Report Roundtable.
00:00:14It is Wednesday, March 18, 2026. Our subject tonight is how China is reacting to what is
00:00:25going on with the U.S. and Iran. Tonight we have with us Rob Brownsword, who is an expert in,
00:00:35he's a military veteran, a retired captain. He is an expert in asymmetrical warfare,
00:00:44psyops, and he is currently working as a contractor in the Philippines. He is very
00:00:53knowledgeable about the Far East. He has family in Korea. He has been based just about everywhere,
00:01:00including Europe. And Rob, is there any place, I'm not sure that there's any, where haven't you been
00:01:06based? But basically almost the entire world. We also have with us Navy Captain, retired Garland
00:01:16Gary Kennedy. He is an expert on submarine warfare and naval capacity. He commanded one or more nuclear
00:01:28attack submarines and a boomer. And also we have with us one of our longtime favorite friends,
00:01:38Paul McGonigal, who's a former diplomat and international banker, and he's an expert on
00:01:43country risk. He was a diplomat for the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, specializing
00:01:53again in country risk. During the Reagan administration, he had the, you were in what,
00:01:59the highest level, you were in charge basically of fiscal policy. And then he became an international
00:02:06banker handling country risk for major banks, including Chase. Okay, so let us get started.
00:02:18Rob Brown, oh, there's one special thing. We've got a special surprise for Gary Kennedy.
00:02:26David, can you put up the first picture? Do you guys remember the This Is Your Life TV show?
00:02:32Yep. Okay, some of us are. How you doing, Hal? Good. Hi, Gary. Hi, everybody. Hey, Hal. How you doing?
00:02:44Good. Hi, Gary. Hello, Rob. Hello, David. Hello, Paul. Okay. How's it going? Okay. Gary, do you know what
00:02:54that is a picture of? It's a picture of my submarine getting launched? The guardfish. Guardfish, right.
00:03:04Okay, well, wanted to make you feel welcome and at home. We'll get into that in a bit. Rob,
00:03:13what, with the U.S.'s incredible, incredibly successful air attacks on Iran, Venezuela, and then Iran again,
00:03:22how is China going to sell their radar and other aircraft defense systems? If you were a sales rep,
00:03:30and you are a defense sales rep, what would you do?
00:03:36I think I'd be looking at changing careers. I think there's, you could look at it. I'm sure,
00:03:44I'm sure their counterpoints are overwhelming Western tech and poor execution, poor training
00:03:57by those that use the Chinese systems. But it doesn't excuse the fact that when you sell military
00:04:05hardware, you also sell the training package and you have advisors.
00:04:11And the maintenance package as well? Yeah. And the spare parts package and all that.
00:04:16So really, you can't really fall back on that as an excuse. They will try in the media.
00:04:23And there's also the discussion of, well, are they really exporting their top of the line equipment?
00:04:29No, I don't think anybody really does. We don't do that. But still,
00:04:35their equipment is doing horribly. So I think it's causing quite a shakeup to their client states. I
00:04:43wouldn't call them allies. I would definitely call them client states. And I think it's,
00:04:49there must be a lot of conversations going on out there of what's the point of having the Chinese
00:04:54Chinese on our side if, if they don't come to our aid and they, and they give us this junk.
00:05:00Has the Russian equipment hasn't worked much better, has it?
00:05:05Not really. No. I think the Ukrainians have demonstrated that a lot of the systems that we
00:05:11in the United States and NATO have feared, like the SA-300 type system. Just, we gave them a little
00:05:22bit more credit than they're due. Or we've become that much better. I'm not sure. Maybe both.
00:05:29Well, as I understand it, in some places, there was a question as to whether or not the equipment
00:05:34was set up properly at all? Yes. But in Iran, in the case of Iran, they actually have, we know
00:05:44for
00:05:44sure that there were three Chinese radar technicians on the ground because they were just killed
00:05:51in an airstrike. So clearly the technical expertise is on the ground. Now, whether or not they were,
00:06:00trained to employ these assets, uh, properly, that remains to be seen. Um, I guess we'll find out.
00:06:09So, Rob, how is the, uh, war with Iran impacting the Philippines, which is where you are right now?
00:06:16Well, it's, it's interesting that, uh, I think it was yesterday or the day before,
00:06:21it was brought to my attention that the Philippines government is considering,
00:06:26considering, they're still conversing amongst themselves, but they're considering reaching
00:06:30out to Russia, uh, for, uh, an oil solution. That kind of blew my mind, uh, because that's
00:06:39not really how the Philippines is aligned at the moment, since they're, they're cozied up
00:06:45to the United States. And, uh, I'm still thinking through the potential political ramifications
00:06:51of that, but I think, uh, I was just up in the Cagayan Valley in the Northeast section of
00:07:00the main island of Luzon. And there, there's really one main, um, supply route. There's a
00:07:08couple other secondary tertiary supply routes, but there's one narrow road that winds up through
00:07:14the mountains. It takes several hours to get across, about 10 hours to get across. And all
00:07:18the supplies that go into that part of the country, you have to be dragged across this road. And
00:07:24they've just instituted a, I would say a measure of, uh, fuel, um, uh, restrictions. I wouldn't say
00:07:35that they're rationing yet, but, uh, fuel prices have gone up substantially and you are only authorized
00:07:41X number of leaders, uh, at a time. So we are two weeks into the war and, and, uh, Philippines
00:07:50is already, sorry, I just got an alert that distracted me. Um, the Philippines is already,
00:07:57um, in placing some control measures. Um, and, and they, they made the announcement, uh, I think it
00:08:05was yesterday that if the war does not end within two weeks, that it will have a dramatic effect on
00:08:11the Philippines economy. And my thinking is, well, the war won't end in two weeks, but let's say it
00:08:17did for the sake of argument, it would still take weeks for any, uh, volume of ships, uh, carrying fuel
00:08:25from, uh, the Persian Gulf to make it here. And it's time to run that off of the past. So
00:08:31I think
00:08:32the, the Philippines has accepted the fact that, that they're going to run into some pretty
00:08:38serious, um, economic trouble here pretty quick. Hence the discussion to reach out to the, to the
00:08:44Russians. It would seem to me that if the Philippines were to reach out to the Russians, several things
00:08:50happen. First off, it's got to hurt the Chinese badly because there'll be other competition for the,
00:08:57for the oil that they're not getting. And, uh, couldn't this be a bargaining chip, uh, try and
00:09:06get a settlement between Russia and Ukraine? Because if there's a settlement there, everybody
00:09:11wins except the Chinese.
00:09:15Well, I, I, I would, uh, I'd like to hear what, what Paul has to say about that. But I,
00:09:20I think
00:09:21that the first, the first time I read that I, I was concerned, uh, that, uh, Russia is, um,
00:09:32you know, currently the Kremlin is, is kind of at odds with, with the white house. I'm not sure
00:09:38with other presidents. I don't know how reaching out to Russia for oil would go over. I would say that
00:09:43would, I would say historically the white house would take a dim view to that. But I think, uh,
00:09:49uh, president Trump is a very different thinker and I think he's very pragmatic and I, I think
00:09:54he, he likes out of the box solutions. So, you know, he's, uh, he's not going to have a real
00:10:00problem with the Philippines reaching out for Russian oil because we are too, in a sense. Right.
00:10:08But, but if, if, if Cargill is, uh, we're, we're allowing the, uh, if Cargill is, if Cargill is,
00:10:14if Cargill is, if Cargill is, if Cargill is, if Cargill is, if Cargill is, if Cargill is, if Cargill
00:10:14is,
00:10:14then the Straits of Hormuz are moot. It's over.
00:10:19What's that?
00:10:20If you can't load oil to Russia or to, to China, take out the loading, it's over.
00:10:27But the, the Iranians are running their own vessels out of there and they're sending oil to China.
00:10:32That.
00:10:32And some of us carry in Russian oil.
00:10:35Concert will be take out the loading. There's no oil to move.
00:10:43But the, yeah. Yeah. But some of that oil is being loaded in Russia.
00:10:49It won't be if they take out the loading island.
00:10:52You're talking about Cargill.
00:10:54You're talking about Cargill.
00:10:55Cargill, yeah. Then it's over. It's actually over.
00:11:00It's over in a lot of ways. It's over for the world economy if that happens.
00:11:03Let them worry about it if they don't want to help, right? Let them worry about it.
00:11:07Well, tell that to the American consumers. They're going to be paying $8 a gallon.
00:11:10No, but we got the oil to keep our prices down. They got the problem.
00:11:14Okay.
00:11:18Rob, what else, what are the Chinese doing in the Philippines in terms of, in general?
00:11:24Generally speaking, they're employing all manner of soft power efforts.
00:11:31Which, if you explain soft power.
00:11:32Well, I, uh, investment, um, anything from media to, uh, to power, uh, to, um, limited manufacturing, uh, that persuades,
00:11:53changes, or influences the attitudes of the Philippines, uh, or the, the, the attitude of Filipinos about China.
00:12:02Yeah, to, to put China in a favorable light, uh, so that, um, Filipino voters are more likely to vote
00:12:11for a pro-China president coming up in the next election year, next, I think, two years.
00:12:20Well, as of, as of, as of what, about a year or so ago, we knew that the Chinese had
00:12:25about 10,000 military-age guys that were trained, equipped, and funded by the Chinese.
00:12:31They were military-age, uh, and the intent, I, I, what's happened to those people?
00:12:38Because they were put there to obviously hurt the Chinese, the, um, Filipino government.
00:12:43Well, I, I would say that, uh, if these, if these guys are still here, these Chinese nationals are still
00:12:50here, and, and, and they might be, um, I would say that that is the, uh, that's plan Z.
00:12:58Z. It's at the end of the list, you know, for a lot of people would say, well, China is
00:13:03never going to attack Taiwan.
00:13:05They'll never attack Philippines.
00:13:07It doesn't make sense to go over to the United States with, for all the reasons, uh, a through, uh,
00:13:12whatever.
00:13:12But I, uh, but at the end of the list, way at the bottom, if the math, if the math
00:13:17dictates that they feel they have to, to, um, to carry out military operations, then they'll do it.
00:13:25Uh, and, uh, I think what they would prefer to do is get a pro-Chinese, uh, president in, like
00:13:33Sarah Duterte, the, the daughter of the, uh, of the, the previous president, who's now in the Hague.
00:13:41Uh, I think he's still in the Hague anyway.
00:13:44Um, or somebody else from that.
00:13:46Is she visiting there or is she in prison?
00:13:50Rodrigo Duterte, uh, her father is, uh, I believe is still in, um, and in trial.
00:13:59Uh, I don't know if he's been remanded to prison yet.
00:14:02One of the points that you made, you've been making for the past several years, is that if the Chinese
00:14:08were going to make a move, uh, before they would hit Taiwan, they would go to the, they would make
00:14:14a move on the Philippines.
00:14:15Do you still feel that way?
00:14:16Yeah, absolutely.
00:14:17I, I, I, I believe that the, uh, the road or the path to Taipei is, is through Manila, uh,
00:14:26because it could be captured, uh, or controlled, dominated, um, without firing a shot, without any gray ships crossing, uh,
00:14:39uh, a body of water where they can be, uh, intercepted.
00:14:42I, I, I think, um, if you can get a pro-Chinese government here in the Philippines, like Duterte, who
00:14:51declared a great divorce from the United States.
00:14:54Um, and we saw, um, six years with no joint military exercises and very, very little involvement with the United
00:15:02States in an ushering in, of, of Chinese nationals, Chinese businesses and equipment.
00:15:10Um, and who knows what they were sneaking in in 40 foot containers for six years and distributing around the
00:15:16country and hiding.
00:15:16Um, if you were to get a, uh, pro-Chinese president that would cancel the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Act with
00:15:24the United States or replace the United States with China,
00:15:29and then you could populate on the Northern Islands, the Batanes Island group, um, north of the main island of
00:15:37Luzon, roughly halfway between Taiwan and Luzon, a myriad of anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and, and all the
00:15:46things you would need to protect those.
00:15:48You could effectively have Taiwan surrounded, um, and, uh, and if you frighten the, the Chinese or the Taiwanese enough,
00:15:58you might be able to get a referendum to, uh, to vote, to, uh, to join the, uh, uh, mainland
00:16:06China.
00:16:07How likely do you think that is, Rob?
00:16:10I would say that that is far more likely than, um, than any prospect of, of, of,
00:16:18of, a direct assault.
00:16:19Direct on Taiwan.
00:16:21Yeah.
00:16:22I think that, I, I think there's a lot of bravado.
00:16:25There's a lot of, uh, talk from the Chinese that, that they can do it.
00:16:30I think we see a lot of demonstrations on a routine basis of their, of the, the Chinese army, navy
00:16:36forces, uh, plus their air force, plus their fishing militia, um, which is a massive, massive fleet.
00:16:47Of, um, civilian commercial, but their, their government.
00:16:52Yeah.
00:16:52But what you're saying is short of invasion, they can turn Taiwan into a client state.
00:16:57Yes.
00:16:57Yes.
00:16:58And I, and I think, yeah.
00:17:00So I, I think if, if they can subvert, uh, Philippines, uh, get, that's how it's going to be done.
00:17:07Right.
00:17:07It's, it's the weakest point in the whole plan.
00:17:09And right now I would say that the Philippines is as politically divided right now as, as the United States.
00:17:16Um, and you know, voter fraud happens here.
00:17:19Also, uh, I would imagine that the Chinese are going to put, I mean, this time, this next election, they're
00:17:27really going to give it their all as far as, uh, influence operations here in the Philippines.
00:17:32I think it'll range from, uh, I mean, you, you could even see, uh, political assassination at one end of
00:17:44the spectrum and the lower end of the spectrum, just constantly bombarding social media and tick talk about this is
00:17:50how great China is.
00:17:52And this is how terrible the United States is in, um, what, what, what kind of election technology does the
00:17:57Philippines have?
00:17:59I mean, do they have hackable systems that the Chinese could subvert?
00:18:03I would say that every system that the Philippines has, has been hacked.
00:18:09Um, the Philippines armed forces, the Philippines government uses Gmail.
00:18:14They don't have any type of red net.
00:18:17There's no secure, um, means of communication.
00:18:20Uh, the United States military really doesn't like communicating by email with the Philippines because we know that the Chinese
00:18:30read everything.
00:18:32So if that's the case, then I would imagine that all other systems are, um, are also compromised.
00:18:41Gary Kennedy got a question for you.
00:18:44Uh, with your expertise, obviously with the Navy and submarine warfare, uh, do you, how likely do you think that
00:18:54the Chinese could be successful if they tried an amphibious invasion of Taiwan?
00:18:59I think it would be a very costly endeavor for them with, because they don't really know how many submarines
00:19:06we have in the area.
00:19:07Uh, uh, if we get our aircraft carriers pulled back from where they are now, or we get the others
00:19:12positioned, that's visible.
00:19:14But if there's nobody there, there's usually somebody there.
00:19:19Well, one of the questions obviously is with the concentration of our, of three aircraft carriers in the Middle East,
00:19:26uh, does that leave us without significant naval assets in the Far East?
00:19:31No, I don't think so.
00:19:33I think that, uh, we've got this, the submarines will be a deterrent against the direct invasion, but, um, not
00:19:41against the subversion of the Philippine government.
00:19:44Not much you can do about that from a submarine.
00:19:50Okay, so, uh, what kind of submarines, you know, what kind of submarines do we have that could, that could
00:19:57affect, uh, a giant, that could distract or sort of take the place of aircraft carriers?
00:20:03Well, taking, uh, taking out of the equation any, uh, nuclear warheads, so we don't get into a global nuclear
00:20:11war, which means we can all bend over and kiss ourselves goodbye.
00:20:16Um, the attack submarines, we got about 50 of those, and there's usually about a third of them in, in
00:20:23repair.
00:20:24Uh, there should be fewer in repair now than there used to be because, um, the reactors last longer, so
00:20:31that's what takes time is refueling the reactors.
00:20:34Uh, so we've got 50 of them all nuclear, all very capable submarines.
00:20:40We've got about half of them are Los Angeles class and half of them are Virginia class, uh, within the
00:20:46Virginia class.
00:20:47The big difference there is the, the later, uh, 688s, the Los Angeles class and the Virginia class have a
00:20:54vertical launch tomahawk system on them.
00:20:57So they can attack ships.
00:21:00They can attack land.
00:21:02And, uh, they pose, I think they pose a real deterrent there, but the Chinese are working hard to get
00:21:09their submarines.
00:21:10It's up to date, but they're way behind us.
00:21:13Is it possible?
00:21:14Well, it's one of the things that strikes me is the Chinese have a problem.
00:21:19Uh, they have, we've discussed this in previous, in previous calls.
00:21:24Uh, they have a built-in system of corruption, corruption when they build things.
00:21:29Uh, their concrete is substandard.
00:21:32In many cases, their rebar people, our people have seen them, uh, seen rebar bent with people's bare hands.
00:21:39And the, uh, they've had, their bridges aren't staying, aren't standing the test of time.
00:21:46Uh, and they're, the largest dam, the three gorgeous dam is moving because nobody thought to, uh, tie it into
00:21:55the bedrock.
00:21:55So, uh, a submarine or an aircraft carrier is far more sophisticated to build.
00:22:04So, and plus, both of them, particularly the aircraft carriers, I guess, have a culture of operation, which you don't
00:22:11build overnight.
00:22:12And I gotta think that the Chinese military procurement system is just riddled with corruption.
00:22:19Well, everything we've heard is that it is.
00:22:22Yeah.
00:22:23It's like their entire system.
00:22:24Right.
00:22:25That's something, that's something that's a dangerous assumption.
00:22:30Uh, it's hard to prove, but if we assume that and it's wrong, then they're, I think.
00:22:36But we don't know because their military is largely untested.
00:22:39Well, I, I expect their submarines.
00:22:41Unlike ours.
00:22:42Yeah.
00:22:43I, I think our submarines are, um, their submarines are going to be superior to the dams they built and
00:22:50other things like that.
00:22:51Because I think it requires such highly skilled labor to make them even work at all, that they'll probably do
00:22:58a pretty good job of it.
00:22:59I don't think that's how they'll attack Taiwan.
00:23:03They will blockade Taiwan.
00:23:05They will use their shore relationship to Taiwan as the bulwark.
00:23:10And our problem will be to go after targets that are, that are in, into their country beyond their border
00:23:18to weaken them, to be able to reinforce their own shore attack on Taiwan.
00:23:24We will handle the rest of it quite well, in my opinion.
00:23:27I think that they know damn well they have no chance if they try it.
00:23:31It might be bloody for a couple of days, but there'll be, they'll be totally obliterated if they try it.
00:23:37Are you sure that the U.S. today would even react?
00:23:42Well, if Trump's president, we will, but I don't know about who else.
00:23:49We're pretty submarine and ship wise in the Pacific.
00:23:53Rob would know better than I.
00:23:54I think we're, we haven't weakened our.
00:23:57No, it's, it's a political question, not a military question.
00:24:01Yeah, politically, I think that there wouldn't be any doubt about it if there's actually a hot war attempt on
00:24:06Taiwan.
00:24:06Well, wouldn't the, wouldn't the Japanese and Koreans get involved, particularly the Japanese?
00:24:13I don't have any doubt about it.
00:24:14I agree they will.
00:24:16And the Japanese are already in nuclear power.
00:24:20They became, they had all the materials for nuclear weapons back in the 90s.
00:24:26So were the Koreans.
00:24:28Yeah.
00:24:29Well, I, I, I always hope to contribute the thought that there may be some wacko, screwy leader in the
00:24:37world that would pull the nuclear trigger.
00:24:39But even in that relationship with Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the mainland Chinese intention to take Taiwan, I think Xi
00:24:49at least is smart enough to know that it isn't worth the price.
00:24:53I think you're right.
00:24:56I certainly hope you're right, but I also think you're right.
00:24:59Yeah, I think we would be, if we wanted to bring any force to bear on the Straits, on the
00:25:08Taiwan Straits, we would not use surface ships.
00:25:13Because it's too narrow and they're too vulnerable.
00:25:15I agree.
00:25:15I think a more likely outcome is a gradual strangulation of Taiwan via the Philippines in the conversion of that
00:25:22country into a client state of China.
00:25:24Yeah, I think that's more sensible.
00:25:27And way less whiskey for the Chinese.
00:25:31That's also much more prolonged, though, and, and would cause them to have to be very well prepared for a
00:25:37long haul.
00:25:38Yes.
00:25:39I mean, the Philippines is not just one little island with a million people.
00:25:43No, but being prepared for the long haul is one of China's strengths.
00:25:48Well, one of the problems, don't the Chinese need our trade?
00:25:54And if you bomb your best suppliers or you bomb your best customers, that creates a problem.
00:25:59And the Chinese economy is already on the ropes.
00:26:05How much more of this can they take?
00:26:07Well, you ask a good question.
00:26:10And, Rob, you've heard the last 60 seconds of our commentary.
00:26:16Is the Philippines that cohesively capable of going one way or the other?
00:26:24There's a lot of argument on who is the right partner.
00:26:29Right now, because of Marcos, the country has moved in a pro-U.S. direction.
00:26:38And before Rodrigo Duterte got scooped up and taken to The Hague, he had a parting shot trying to get
00:26:48the southern island and its overall region abandoned now to break away.
00:26:54Fortunately, fortunately, it failed.
00:26:57But had that succeeded, we'd be having a very different conversation right now.
00:27:03I'd probably already have been kicked out of the country.
00:27:05But, you know, on the subject of domestic politics, there is a fair amount of sentiment in Taiwan for cuddling
00:27:12up to China.
00:27:15No, that's true.
00:27:16Just like there was a large contingent of folks in Hong Kong that saw no problem.
00:27:23That didn't work out well for the people in Hong Kong at all.
00:27:26No, you mean like the fairly large sentiment of Americans that would like to get in bed with Iran?
00:27:31Yeah.
00:27:32Yeah.
00:27:33Something in the world.
00:27:34Yeah.
00:27:35I don't know what it is.
00:27:36Something like that, right?
00:27:38Gays for Iran.
00:27:39Women for Iran.
00:27:42Makes no sense.
00:27:43But the logic of the discussion is appropriate.
00:27:46The Philippines, I think, for Americans, and Paul will know and so will Rob better than I do.
00:27:53But that's a very large archipelago of islands and disparate relationships of just their indigenous population to be managed.
00:28:05And a pretty good slug of Islamic terrorism.
00:28:08And I don't know how the Chinese can manage all that if they decided to jump off.
00:28:13Well, one of the things, Rob, you said that the Chinese were also trying to make up with the Vietnamese?
00:28:21Yeah, I think they reached out last week.
00:28:24Are they being successful?
00:28:26I don't know.
00:28:27No, that's a relationship that would take years to repair.
00:28:34But everything they make now has to be shipped to Vietnam to get relabeled to ship to us.
00:28:40That's right.
00:28:41Yeah.
00:28:42So I guess they're definitely working together then.
00:28:46But we also, I believe we have a fairly large consignment of combat vehicles, American combat vehicles, in storage in
00:28:58Vietnam.
00:28:59I seem to remember reading something about a contract.
00:29:04You're talking about new equipment or stuff back from the Vietnam War days?
00:29:08No, no, no.
00:29:09This is U.S. equipment.
00:29:12I think it's a battalion set, maybe a brigade set.
00:29:17I'm not sure.
00:29:19It's called Pankus.
00:29:21It's that preposition to armament capability.
00:29:25And it's pretty substantial, as I understand it.
00:29:27That's interesting, because you never say never.
00:29:29Who would have ever thought that the U.S. and the Vietnamese would have such a military relationship, right?
00:29:35It blew me away when I heard it, because guys in my industry were competing for the contract to maintain
00:29:43the stuff.
00:29:44I would imagine Amentum has the contract or something like that, anyway.
00:29:52So I think Vietnam is trying to play their cards to the best of their ability.
00:30:01They also are equally at odds with China over the South China Sea, over fishing rights and territorial rights and
00:30:11undersea mining.
00:30:13And really, when China is talking about dominating the South China Sea, including the Philippines portion of it,
00:30:21they really mean they want everything from below the ground up to the bottom of the ocean,
00:30:29to the top of the ocean, and the airspace up to 30,000 feet and probably a couple hundred miles
00:30:36out into space.
00:30:37They really want that whole volume for themselves.
00:30:43Undersea mining, fishing, oil and gas exploration, air and sea dominance, the ability to completely shut down that corridor.
00:30:52One thing that's been noticed here in the last couple months, but really in the last couple weeks especially,
00:31:00is this huge fishing militia, this huge fishing fleet of Chinese boats.
00:31:07And I don't know if they're all exactly the same type, but they're all painted blue and white,
00:31:13and they all move in conjunction to each other.
00:31:15They sail out together like a fleet, and they return like a fleet.
00:31:20And the last time they were out, it didn't seem they were doing any fishing at all.
00:31:24And it was described, they were described as forming two giant L-shapes, which to me sounds like an ambush.
00:31:33And so this is over hundreds of kilometers, and all of these ships moving in formation.
00:31:39And a lot of folks trying to figure out, well, what exactly were they doing?
00:31:43Are they demonstrating to us that they have this secret navy or the secondary navy?
00:31:50Were they collecting information?
00:31:52Were they practicing a potential blockade?
00:31:55Are they showing us that they could weaponize these and either man them with humans
00:32:03or use them as an unmanned system or a system of unmanned systems?
00:32:09There's a lot of thinking, a lot of postulating as to what exactly they're doing with this fishing fleet.
00:32:18Now, over the last couple of years, they used the fishing fleet to intimidate and harass Filipino fishermen.
00:32:24And I would imagine they're doing the same thing to the Vietnamese, excuse me,
00:32:30and others from the different island nations here.
00:32:35But really, we hear the most about Philippines because they're the ones that are really standing up to the Chinese
00:32:41the most.
00:32:43I've got a question for you, Rob, and also for Gary.
00:32:48Gary, the Chinese have not been involved in an armed conflict since 1979.
00:32:55The last general that commanded anything larger than a regiment was recently fired by Xi.
00:33:03So they've got a military that is largely unblooded for almost 50 years.
00:33:12Am I doing that right?
00:33:13Yeah, 20, 46, 45 years, 46 years.
00:33:18How effective can a naval force be if they don't have any practical training
00:33:24and they don't have any leadership either in the cadre level of the non-commissioned officers
00:33:32or in the general staff level?
00:33:35Great question. Great question.
00:33:37How long does it take to build an effective fighting force of Navy people?
00:33:42You should tell NATO that when it comes to the Straits of Hormuz.
00:33:50Well, they've already told us they can't handle it or won't handle it.
00:33:54Yeah.
00:33:55So, Gary, how long does it take to build up an effective naval tradition that works?
00:34:03We did it pretty fast in World War II.
00:34:08That was a more direct threat than we had.
00:34:11But we had little warning.
00:34:13And in April 1940, 1941, you know, we hit Tokyo.
00:34:23You just do the best you can.
00:34:25And we had a few leaders left over from World War I.
00:34:29But most of them, that was very few.
00:34:32The cadre itself, I mean, we were drilling soldiers with broomsticks
00:34:36because we didn't even have the weapons.
00:34:38But that was World War I.
00:34:41I mean, World War II.
00:34:42That's what I'm saying.
00:34:44In World War II, we reacted very quickly and came up to speed really fast,
00:34:49industrially and economically.
00:34:51And that was because we had commercial leaders.
00:34:54And they don't have that, or at least not that I know of.
00:34:58Their society is not built on that kind of experience.
00:35:02I mean, if it hadn't been for Ford and Chrysler and those people,
00:35:06we wouldn't have been able to do what we did.
00:35:09But we had Ford, Chrysler, and we had those companies.
00:35:12We also have something else that the Chinese do not have.
00:35:16And that is a spirit of individuality and individualism, which, you know,
00:35:23say what anybody wants when they say that American exceptionalism doesn't exist.
00:35:29I tell them they're wrong.
00:35:31They don't understand our history.
00:35:32We trained our soldiers for the sergeant to take over if the lieutenant was killed
00:35:38and the private to take over.
00:35:40And so our soldiers basically, because of our society and the way we're geared,
00:35:46that's one of the reasons that we won, I think,
00:35:48is because we came up to speed really fast.
00:35:50Yeah, you can contrast that with the Russian situation, can't you?
00:35:54Say that again?
00:35:55You can contrast that with the Russian situation,
00:35:58where the typical NCO has no authority whatsoever.
00:36:01Right.
00:36:01They just take orders.
00:36:03And if you kill them, you decapitate them like we're doing in Iran.
00:36:07It's amazing how fast they fall apart.
00:36:10Yep.
00:36:10I'm going to show my age.
00:36:12I remember a Newsweek article in 19, about 1950-something.
00:36:20You are showing your age.
00:36:22What can I tell you?
00:36:23I was reading Newsweek cover to cover when I was five years old.
00:36:28You are a weird guy.
00:36:30Well, yeah, I was.
00:36:31You must have had better things than doing that.
00:36:36Let's not go there.
00:36:37Be that as it may, I remember an American trainer, Air Force trainer,
00:36:45asking how the Luftwaffe, the German pilots,
00:36:51compared to their fathers in World War II.
00:36:55And the answer was that they were very good.
00:37:00However, they had a weakness.
00:37:02They would follow a leader, a squadron leader,
00:37:05who would take them straight into a mountain,
00:37:07whereas an American pilot would say,
00:37:09this guy's nuts, and they wouldn't follow him.
00:37:12It's this ability of individuality to know when something makes no sense.
00:37:20Gary, well, you have to have an order.
00:37:25People have to follow orders.
00:37:27But there is this fail-safe type of system
00:37:30where people know when something is dangerous and doesn't make sense.
00:37:33Yeah, well, maybe it works to go around it or over it
00:37:37instead of running right straight into it.
00:37:39That's true.
00:37:41That's true.
00:37:42That's true.
00:37:43One of the things that I know saved us from nuclear war,
00:37:47interestingly enough, that occurred with us and the Russians separately,
00:37:51is two guys who were not necessarily important, theoretically.
00:37:56They weren't high up on the chain of command.
00:37:59And this has happened at different times.
00:38:01One was Russian, one was American, if not more than once.
00:38:05They saw a potential...
00:38:07The computers were saying there's a threat coming in over the poles,
00:38:11there's danger,
00:38:11and these individuals knew that it wasn't
00:38:15and didn't pull the trigger.
00:38:17But this is the kind of thing that we've got.
00:38:21And thank God, you know,
00:38:23somebody had common sense also on the Russian side, too.
00:38:26But the point is that this is common.
00:38:30Am I wrong that individuality is a common thread throughout our military?
00:38:36I think it's throughout our society.
00:38:39Well, there's that.
00:38:40That's what I meant.
00:38:43Because there used to be a phrase that no one talks about anymore called American ingenuity.
00:38:48We figure out how to fix something, how to make it work.
00:38:52And if it doesn't work, we figure out a way to somehow how to do it.
00:38:58Rob, what's your feeling on that?
00:39:01I believe that 100%.
00:39:05There's something distinctly different about the United States and Americans and the U.S. military and how we operate.
00:39:13It does make us different.
00:39:15I think others recognize that, too.
00:39:17And they embrace that as a positive or for whatever reason.
00:39:22There are folks on this call that have way more military experience than I do, which was limited to a
00:39:27mere four years.
00:39:29But even in that four years, one of the things that struck me is that corporate America could take some
00:39:34lessons from the military.
00:39:36The military is really good at producing a corporate culture, so to speak, and getting people from diverse backgrounds to
00:39:47head in the same direction.
00:39:55When I retired from the Navy, I used to catch a lot of guff from my friends because they would
00:40:01accuse me of doing things the Navy way instead of doing things their way.
00:40:05And my answer was, that's because the Navy way is better.
00:40:12What about the Army way?
00:40:14Well, I don't know much about the Army way.
00:40:17I'll reveal my age.
00:40:18I remember Pearl Harbor.
00:40:20I wasn't told about it.
00:40:22I remember it.
00:40:23I was four years old when that happened.
00:40:25Well, another interesting point is I think you may be the only person on this call that witnessed a nuclear
00:40:32test.
00:40:34No, I don't know if anybody else did, but that was a spectacular.
00:40:37That taught me you don't ever want to go nuclear.
00:40:40Yep.
00:40:40And I was one of two people that had charge of 16 missiles that would have the equivalent of about
00:40:48a megaton each.
00:40:52And first time I walked into the missile compartment, I'd been on attack submarines all my life, all my career.
00:40:57And when I first walked into that missile compartment, it really, I felt it look down between the Sherwood, we
00:41:09called it Sherwood Forest.
00:41:10And now that submarines have missiles that are far more capable.
00:41:15I mean, each of those ballistic missile submarines, they carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles.
00:41:27I think nuclear war is not going to come into it because even if a country is failing economically and
00:41:34about ready to go under, they're not going to trigger a nuclear war because that's Armageddon.
00:41:39I mean, that's the end of everything.
00:41:41I would posit a thought that Nagasaki and Hiroshima prevented a nuclear holocaust.
00:41:51Had those bombs not been dropped, I don't think anyone could have visualized the destruction that they caused.
00:42:00I agree with that.
00:42:02I did a term paper in college on the after effect of the bombs and I took, I had a
00:42:09whole bunch of photographs of what happened there.
00:42:12The one that impressed me the most was the one where there was a shadow of a person on the
00:42:21side of a bridge.
00:42:23He was vaporized, but he shielded the bridge from enough radiation and heat that it didn't burn it as badly.
00:42:32And so there was a picture of the sky on the thing.
00:42:34And when I saw that, I don't know if you've ever looked at it, but you could look it right
00:42:39up.
00:42:39It's called Starfish Prime.
00:42:41You just look it up on the Internet.
00:42:43That's a nuclear test in 1962.
00:42:46I was about 900 miles west of that launch site when they put up a 1.2 megaton bomb at
00:42:54about 100 miles.
00:42:56They were testing for electromagnetic pulses.
00:42:59And it was about 10 o'clock at night, if I remember correctly, when they did it, 10 o'clock
00:43:03our time.
00:43:06And we were told not to be looking east when it went off.
00:43:10And so we were looking down at the water.
00:43:12But it was a pitch black night.
00:43:13You couldn't see anything.
00:43:15And when that thing went off, I could see fish underwater.
00:43:20And 1,000 miles north of the bomb in Hawaii, it blew out 300 streetlights,
00:43:27knocked the communications out between Oahu and the island just north of it.
00:43:35And it was much more powerful.
00:43:40And the EMP will destroy our electrical system.
00:43:45Two EMP bombs above the east coast and west coast.
00:43:50And we're cooked.
00:43:51The tactical juxtaposition of the debate or the argument over the threat of the use of nuclear weapons boils down
00:44:02to whoever uses it against an entity that has also nuclear weapons.
00:44:11That's the problem.
00:44:13That's the problem.
00:44:15That's the problem.
00:44:15It's the response if it's nuclear.
00:44:17It may not be if it's singular, but if it's dual, that is Armageddon.
00:44:22That's why we called it mutual assured destruction.
00:44:26It would not only be dual, but it would be multiple on both sides.
00:44:32Exactly.
00:44:35Well, I don't know if you've ever watched the movie On the Beach.
00:44:39Yes.
00:44:42That's a very realistic movie.
00:44:45Yeah.
00:44:48I get that.
00:44:50So let me ask you guys this.
00:44:53The way I'm looking at it is that China has got a serious economic problem.
00:45:02Their population is basically upside down.
00:45:06They've got a belt and road initiative that is not doing well.
00:45:12They can't collect money from it.
00:45:15And in some countries where they've got the belt and road with the loans in default and such, they may
00:45:23lose it just by the nationalization of the host country.
00:45:30They are currently, 10 years ago, they were using about 10 and a half million barrels of oil a day
00:45:40and producing about 3.5.
00:45:43Now, they're up to using 16 and a half million barrels of oil a day, and they've only added on
00:45:50800,000.
00:45:52So their deficit is getting worse.
00:45:55So they're going to be paying a lot for this.
00:46:01So the question is, what is the way out for them?
00:46:06I see nothing but weakness, and I don't see them being successful at all.
00:46:12I think the strongest thing they have is that Chinese don't look at themselves as a nation.
00:46:19They are a culture.
00:46:21They are one.
00:46:22If you're not Chinese, you're not one of them.
00:46:26And that's a big strength, because they will fight like a beehive.
00:46:32Well, I'm not sure that I would agree completely with that, because you have a ruling class, and you've got
00:46:39a military that has to be policing the majority of their people.
00:46:43That's probably their biggest weakness, yeah.
00:46:46Now, the other thing is, it seems to me that it goes against their culture to try and conquer the
00:46:53world, because if they really were expansive in nature, they would have discovered the new world long before Columbus.
00:47:01But they didn't.
00:47:02Well, I think the reason, well, I don't know, they could have.
00:47:06They came close to it.
00:47:08They were trading all the way around the, all the way down in the Indian Ocean, all the way down
00:47:13to the tip of South Africa.
00:47:17Yeah, they were here along.
00:47:19Navy force, and what they did was they changed, they got the leader of the dynasty, died.
00:47:25I still think there's a Middle Kingdom syndrome there, and their activities abroad are designed largely to secure resources to
00:47:34supply the Middle Kingdom.
00:47:35Well, they are an empire, and they don't get the same criticism for it.
00:47:41So, the Chinese may be one people now, but China, as it is today, is a bunch of other gobbled
00:47:50-up, extinct kingdoms.
00:47:54But it is, but ethnically, they're basically Han Chinese.
00:47:58They're basically one people.
00:47:59That's right.
00:48:00Now.
00:48:00Now.
00:48:01Now, yeah.
00:48:02Yeah.
00:48:02But I think it's ironic.
00:48:04This is a separate discussion.
00:48:05I don't want to distract us, but I think it's ironic that in the day of hating on,
00:48:10you know, the anti-imperialism, that China somehow gets a free pass.
00:48:17Well.
00:48:18Oh, yeah.
00:48:20Well, how did we get by with letting them build islands in the South China Sea?
00:48:24Still going on to this day.
00:48:26Military bases on them.
00:48:27I mean, that's.
00:48:28And what's going on with the Belt and Road is classic colonial behavior.
00:48:33Yeah.
00:48:34Well, how about the.
00:48:35Including the fact that the labor that's being used in most of these products is being exported
00:48:40from China, which seems to be employing large amounts of local labor.
00:48:44Right.
00:48:45Well, it seems to be backfiring on them.
00:48:47Yeah.
00:48:49Well, the other question, which in terms of the hypocrisy, is that their treatment of
00:48:56the Uyghurs is as bad as anything that the Nazis have done, particularly with the organ
00:49:03harvesting.
00:49:04And that's ghastly.
00:49:07Taking people's organs while they're alive and selling them.
00:49:11I mean, this is just.
00:49:12And no one's talking about it.
00:49:14Well, the media is dominated by the left right now, assuming that's the case.
00:49:20They're not likely to criticize.
00:49:24Other leftists.
00:49:27Well, I can't argue that.
00:49:29OK, so even I don't even view the Chinese as being left.
00:49:36I believe that government is not so much less left, but just completely dictatorial.
00:49:42I think it's not it's not it's not even a leftist ideology.
00:49:47It's just like, you know, in Iran is not really is really just a dictatorship with.
00:49:54A religious source of legitimacy, they call on Chinese is just a dictatorship.
00:49:59OK, does no philosophical legitimacy, they call on Iran, except the promise of economic
00:50:05growth and prosperity.
00:50:06If you leave it and leave us alone from a political standpoint, sometimes sometimes it
00:50:11might be useful.
00:50:12People to ponder big is not better.
00:50:17They have grown and grown and grown and they've stretched themselves so thin.
00:50:24Their military seems to be problematic right now.
00:50:29Z's.
00:50:30But they're growing in the fundamental.
00:50:32They've got gas lines all over the country right now because.
00:50:36They're growing in a fundamentally unsustainable manner.
00:50:38Exactly right.
00:50:39And so I just basically think in a way, part of our foreign policy with respect to China
00:50:44ought to be leave them alone.
00:50:45They're they're they're doing their own damage.
00:50:47You know, there's a there's a limit to which the rest of the world is going to eat their
00:50:51exports.
00:50:52Exactly.
00:50:55Does any how much military support is the Chinese giving Iran right now?
00:51:04Can they do much, if anything?
00:51:06If you if you take into account the disinformation that our press in America seems to be hovering
00:51:11over, I think it's all bullshit.
00:51:15Can you tell us what you really feel?
00:51:18No, because they can't do anything.
00:51:20Our eyes in the sky are no better or no worse than theirs.
00:51:23I mean, Gary, you can comment on this.
00:51:26I mean, I think that's just disinformation that's going on right now.
00:51:29I think we have two big weaknesses.
00:51:32One is that we change leaders every four years or eight years, depending upon what we
00:51:39said with someone last year.
00:51:42I think a whole lot of people were glad to get rid of Biden.
00:51:44So I don't think that and there's a whole lot of people out there now to be glad to get
00:51:48rid of Trump.
00:51:49So that's right.
00:51:49And that's one of our dangers is policies can shift abruptly.
00:51:54I mean, look at January 19 or 2025.
00:51:58I knew that the Soviet Union was going to fail long before it died because their fundamental
00:52:07premise was wrong.
00:52:09Our fundamental premise is that man is corrupt and you've got to protect against concentrations
00:52:16of power.
00:52:17Theirs was just the opposite, that man is perfectible and you can trust a small elite
00:52:23group to do the right thing.
00:52:24I was in the Soviet Union a couple of times before the thing crumbled.
00:52:31And as I got around the country, I said to my colleague, this is nothing but a highly
00:52:36militarized LDC.
00:52:39It's a developing country.
00:52:40You get out of Moscow, the roads fall apart.
00:52:42There's nothing about outhouses.
00:52:44There were parts of the world parked all over Belarus when I was in there.
00:52:48It was just awful.
00:52:49Hey, Paul, it hasn't changed much.
00:52:52I haven't been there in a long time, so I don't know.
00:52:56Well, again, from what I understand, this is a different subject, which we'll go into in
00:53:03another time, is that the Russians in general, particularly the Russian government, does not
00:53:09see that they have anything in common with the Chinese other than us as a potential enemy
00:53:18or a potential trade partner.
00:53:22With that being said, I'm going to ask a closing question for everybody.
00:53:29With everything going on with Iran and with everything happening everywhere in the world,
00:53:38do you see, Rob, from your perspective, do you see a positive outcome in the wind?
00:53:47And, Rob, yes, I don't know, I don't know how, how we're going to end up handling the next
00:54:02phase of, of our operations in Iran.
00:54:06But, uh, China's definitely watching.
00:54:11They, this is, this is the second attack on Iran that they've paid acute attention to.
00:54:17Very important point.
00:54:19Good point.
00:54:19Absolutely.
00:54:20And before that, of course, uh, Venezuela and the, the, uh, quintessential snatch and grab,
00:54:28uh, that, that we performed there with the Nicolas Maduro.
00:54:32So, um, I, I think what we're going to see here is they're going to, they're going to
00:54:38ratchet up the rhetoric and they're going to ratchet up the, uh, soft power influence
00:54:42for sure.
00:54:44And they're going to, uh, they're going to focus on the next Philippines election.
00:54:48And that's how they're going to attempt to seize dominance over, uh, the Taiwan Strait,
00:54:55South China Sea, all the way down to the Strait of Malacca.
00:54:59Now that's the first time I'd ever thought about that, but that scares me.
00:55:03Yeah.
00:55:04Yeah.
00:55:04That would work.
00:55:05It might take some time, but it would work.
00:55:07Yeah.
00:55:07See, that's always been the modus operandi of our enemies.
00:55:12Out live them.
00:55:13Out, out, just let them alone.
00:55:16Be patient.
00:55:18That's what happened to us in Iran.
00:55:20They just said, be patient, be patient, be patient.
00:55:23Americans don't have the will, don't have the gumption, don't have the balls.
00:55:28To get after it and put their foot down.
00:55:31And I think what Rob said is a very prescient point.
00:55:34I agree with you.
00:55:35There's a, there's a lot of, uh, historical precedents to prove that that's probably right.
00:55:40Yeah.
00:55:42No, all I can say is that we've demonstrated in Venezuela and in Iran, a military and intelligence
00:55:50capability that has no equal in the world.
00:55:54The question is whether we can manage that to an acceptable political outcome.
00:56:00And that I'm not sure.
00:56:02Well said.
00:56:03That's what we did in Iraq.
00:56:04We won the war and lost the peace.
00:56:06Yep.
00:56:07Exactly.
00:56:08Well, Paul, that being said, are you optimistic or pessimistic about what's going to happen
00:56:17in the next few years?
00:56:19I, I, I consider myself cautiously optimistic and we're going to, we're going to get, we're
00:56:24going to get through the Iranian thing.
00:56:27Um, and, uh, I don't, I have no idea how that's going to go, but, and there's going to
00:56:32be some pain in between now and the ultimate resolution of that, including for Americans.
00:56:38Um, and the fact that we're energy self-sufficient really doesn't matter from a political standpoint.
00:56:46No, from a political standpoint, it doesn't.
00:56:48Oil is a global commodity.
00:56:50Um, and I just, just give you one market indicator.
00:56:54The correlation between West Texas and Brent is just about perfect.
00:56:59What do you mean?
00:57:00It's $10 difference.
00:57:02They move together, but they move together.
00:57:05They move together.
00:57:06Yes, they do.
00:57:08They do.
00:57:08Which means that domestic energy prices will be affected when international energy prices
00:57:13go up and they already are.
00:57:14That's what I said.
00:57:16Shut down Cargill Island and the, the Strait of Hormuz issue is moot.
00:57:22And let the rest of the world, let the rest of the world, maybe not.
00:57:25I don't know.
00:57:26I know.
00:57:26Let the rest of the world pay $120, $130 a barrel for their oil and see how they like it.
00:57:31Much of the oil that we produce here, we can't refine here because our refineries aren't
00:57:37set up to do it.
00:57:39And so we need to import to fuel our refineries and we export the stuff that we can do here.
00:57:43Hold on.
00:57:44Hold on.
00:57:44Hold on.
00:57:45I'm not sure you're right.
00:57:46If Paul Valenti is still with us, he's the guy that can answer that question.
00:57:50If you're on here and you're wrong, we have all kinds of refining capabilities.
00:57:57We can take, we can take the heavy crude, McGonagall, to process heavy crude.
00:58:04Paul, let Valenti talk, please.
00:58:07Go ahead, Paul.
00:58:08Paul, we can take the heavy crude that Venezuela has.
00:58:14We can take the light crude.
00:58:15We can take the oil shell, sands oil coming down from Canada.
00:58:23We can take anything.
00:58:25We just have to modify some things because our refineries are so old, they were used to refining
00:58:33anything.
00:58:33Right.
00:58:34My understanding is that that refineries require quite some time to get retooled to
00:58:39do this.
00:58:40No, no.
00:58:41Well, you know, the time is they can switch from light to heavy.
00:58:48Some of these refineries can switch from light to heavy within months.
00:58:54And we already, and our BP whiting plant in whiting, Indiana.
00:59:00They can take anything.
00:59:02I mean, they're processing tar sands.
00:59:04They can take the heavy.
00:59:06Yeah.
00:59:06And they're taking the tar sands.
00:59:08I know.
00:59:09Assuming the Canadians will continue to sell it to us.
00:59:12But that's not the question.
00:59:14Sure they will.
00:59:14But my point in starting this.
00:59:16No, my point is vulnerability.
00:59:18You call it, guys, one at a time, gentlemen.
00:59:20My point in starting this little discussion was a tongue in cheek.
00:59:23The fact of the matter is over time, whether it's a week or a month or six months, we can
00:59:29manage this thing and the rest of the world better look out because if they think they're
00:59:33so cute on their foreign policy, feel good, anti-Trump, whatever their sentiments are that
00:59:41they can't handle, they're going to end up, be careful what you pray for.
00:59:46I agree with you.
00:59:46Because at the end of the day, it's practical.
00:59:49It has nothing to do with politics in France or Germany or England.
00:59:52It's practical.
00:59:54When they have to pay $110, $120, $130 a barrel because they didn't help us with the Straits
01:00:01of Hormuz, if that's really the issue politically or practically, then I think ultimately the
01:00:08problem is Americans aren't going to be patient enough.
01:00:12That's the problem.
01:00:13Well, there's something that the Iranians are counting on.
01:00:16I agree.
01:00:17That's right, Paul.
01:00:18Right.
01:00:20Or somebody in Iran, but we don't know who.
01:00:25Right.
01:00:25And history will tell us they're right.
01:00:27It could be.
01:00:28I don't think they will be, but it's a risk.
01:00:31It's a big risk.
01:00:31It is.
01:00:32We walked away from the Vietnam War and 2 million people died as a result.
01:00:37Sure.
01:00:37And six months later, we would have won the war because Washington was being intimidated
01:00:41just like Europe is being intimidated.
01:00:44And how did we do it?
01:00:45That's why these elections coming up in November are so important.
01:00:48Because the reason we did it was not because we decided to do it or our leaders decided
01:00:53to do it.
01:00:54It's because Congress defunded it.
01:00:56Yeah.
01:00:57And if we lose either majority in the House or the Senate in November, these guys are going
01:01:04to start defunding things that this whole thing pivots on, and it's going to turn upside
01:01:09down.
01:01:10Well, I don't, even if it's a divided Congress, it'll be okay for until the presidential.
01:01:15But after that, that's the problem.
01:01:17Okay.
01:01:18So now that we've gone this route, I want to enter one other point that no one seems
01:01:25to be looking at.
01:01:26It's a very early on, one of the first things that President Trump did in his new administration
01:01:32was to loosen up energy requirements, but also in particular to loosen up access and use
01:01:40of coal, and we have enough coal in our country to supply all of our needs for at least 2
01:01:47,000
01:01:47years so that that coal also can supplement petroleum if there's any shortages.
01:01:54But let's get back to the final question that I tried asking with everything that's been said.
01:02:01Okay.
01:02:02You sound like Al Gore.
01:02:04Al Gore.
01:02:06Al Gore.
01:02:06Al Gore.
01:02:07Al Gore.
01:02:34and ask the closing question again after all of this.
01:02:38Gary Kennedy, do you feel that we're optimistic or pessimistic
01:02:43over the next year to two years?
01:02:45I feel optimistic.
01:02:49Rob Brownsword.
01:02:53I'm always optimistic about the United States.
01:02:57Paul McGonagall.
01:02:58I feel pretty good.
01:03:02Former Congressman Hal Dobb.
01:03:04Out of the park.
01:03:05Out of the park.
01:03:06On the way.
01:03:08I think that we are heading for a golden age in our country,
01:03:12and I think it's because everybody is going to be wanting to invest here,
01:03:19and I guess see all sorts of positive things happening.
01:03:23I am very much a believer in our country because of our culture,
01:03:27and I think that the left is doing such outlandish things.
01:03:31It's only proof positive that they're losing ground.
01:03:35Gary, I'm going to put a little humor into tonight's.
01:03:39Be my guest.
01:03:40Did you hear an hour ago that Norway just decided they would send ships
01:03:44to help us with the strains of hormones?
01:03:47Norway?
01:03:48No, Norway made that decision some days ago.
01:03:51Yeah, but they committed today to doing that.
01:03:54All right.
01:03:54Okay.
01:03:55And the question is, how big is the Navy in Norway?
01:04:00Well, unless I look, there were eight rowboats.
01:04:03I don't know.
01:04:03But it's a NATO, it's an interesting development.
01:04:08It might seem very strong right now, or small,
01:04:10but what Rob said in the beginning of our conversations,
01:04:14what Gary has talked about strategically, it's interesting.
01:04:18Remember, everybody, the foreign policy of this administration,
01:04:22I actually think as criticizable as Trump has been with the left saying he's appeasing Putin
01:04:33and the Ukraine juxtaposition against the Iranian war or conflict.
01:04:41What if this thing's over within about two to four weeks
01:04:46and the Straits of Hormuz is actually irrelevant?
01:04:51When you say over in two to four weeks, you're talking about the Russia?
01:04:55We're done.
01:04:56We're gone in the Straits of Hormuz and the cargo is gone and they can't load ships
01:05:02and Russia and China can't get their oil.
01:05:05Neither can India.
01:05:09They're all going to have to decide.
01:05:10They're going to have to decide.
01:05:12It's not us anymore.
01:05:13I think it's brilliant what Trump's doing.
01:05:14He's saying, oh, NATO, you love us, but you don't love us.
01:05:17I mean, I think politically it's quite brilliant.
01:05:23Gary Chapman, you had a comment, a question?
01:05:28No, just that Trump tested NATO and NATO failed.
01:05:34And so he knows who he can trust and who he can't trust to help him when we get in
01:05:39trouble.
01:05:40Yeah, yeah.
01:05:42So Barry, Barry is...
01:05:45Well, don't forget he went to war without consulting NATO.
01:05:49That's true, Paul.
01:05:50That's true.
01:05:52I'm not sure I would have anyway.
01:05:55Well, then you don't turn around and ask him for help, right?
01:05:59Oh, thank God you're not president, Gary.
01:06:00Okay.
01:06:01Me or Paul?
01:06:03Different times, different politics.
01:06:06Remember, we went into Grenada without consulting Great Britain.
01:06:14And Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had a good laugh about it after.
01:06:18So it's just different times.
01:06:20This is a little bit different.
01:06:22Yeah.
01:06:24But philosophically, theoretically, that's a good, very good point, Rob.
01:06:27That's right.
01:06:28Didn't seem like a big deal, right?
01:06:30Well, would we have expected NATO to join us in invading Grenada?
01:06:34No, but it's the...
01:06:35Now we...
01:06:36The entire world is gripped and leftist versus other...
01:06:40Let's remember that NATO was a defensive alliance.
01:06:42And the only time Article 5 has been invoked, as everybody here recalls, was in 2001.
01:06:48Okay, guys, let me ask you this.
01:06:51Who wants to stay on this call for the next two hours?
01:06:53Hey, Paul, I'm going to poke your bear.
01:06:56Go ahead.
01:06:59Okay.
01:07:01I don't mind being poked.
01:07:03I'm a big bear.
01:07:04Okay.
01:07:06Yes, go ahead, Gary.
01:07:08I have a question.
01:07:10If you don't watch it regularly, I recommend you go find somewhere on the internet,
01:07:15Mark Levin's show last Sunday.
01:07:19His monologue was a perfect chronology of what you're talking about.
01:07:23It was all the times that we've used...
01:07:25We've gone to war without consulting Congress since the nation was founded.
01:07:31It started with Jefferson.
01:07:33There's a whole bunch of them, I know.
01:07:35He ran through 15 or 20 minutes, time after time after time, why we did it,
01:07:41why the president did it on his own, and where he got the authority from,
01:07:45and nobody complained about any of those either.
01:07:48That's right.
01:07:49Well, we didn't have Schumer.
01:07:51You know, all these things that we did, we took out the Barbary pirates,
01:07:55and we're still fighting those guys.
01:07:59Well, you know, Chuck Schumer never saw a camera he could resist.
01:08:05Barry Tappen, you had a question?
01:08:06Just a quick comment.
01:08:09Venezuela and Iran were two unique military situations where you can't spend weeks debating it.
01:08:19Otherwise, you'll lose the element of surprise, and the mission will be unsuccessful.
01:08:25And if you debate it with even one person that's outside the circle of trust,
01:08:30it's going to leak out.
01:08:31That's true.
01:08:33Exactly.
01:08:34That's the problem.
01:08:36Okay.
01:08:37With that, I want to say thank you to everyone.
01:08:40Be well, stay safe, and God bless America.
01:08:44Hey, let's sign up to come to Chicago.
01:08:48Yes, those notices should be going out tomorrow.
01:08:52We're going to have our event in Chicago,
01:08:54and we're going to have people coming in from different parts of the world.
01:08:59It's going to be quite the event.
01:09:00And I think one of the things we should do is a discussion on Iran within the next two weeks.
01:09:08If it still exists by then.
01:09:12It'll be there.
01:09:14Okay.
01:09:15Anybody want to make a bet about the Russia-Ukraine war getting settled?
01:09:21Yes, it's soon to be settled.
01:09:24I agree.
01:09:25Putin wants out.
01:09:27Yep.
01:09:28Well, it's not only that Putin wants out, so do the Ukrainians.
01:09:32And as I understand it...
01:09:33But Putin wants out.
01:09:33You know, I've been reading that the net military transfer between the U.S. and Ukraine
01:09:40is in favor of the U.S. now.
01:09:43Yep.
01:09:44Yep.
01:09:44That's right, Paul.
01:09:45As I understand...
01:09:47No, they're providing to us some pretty important drone technology
01:09:50that they've developed in their war with Russia.
01:09:53As I understand it, and I've been speaking to people who are, you know, who I think would
01:10:00know, that the Russia-Ukraine war could have been settled three times.
01:10:06The first time was in Anatolian Turkey.
01:10:11I'm probably not pronouncing it right, the city, where the Russian, as I understand it,
01:10:16the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers agreed to a settlement, and Biden told them
01:10:22not to, and then about, that was within 14 days of when the war started, and then about two or
01:10:28three
01:10:29weeks later, they met again, I think it was in Ankara or Istanbul, I'm not sure.
01:10:38But the point is, they had again were ready to settle things, and then Boris Johnson stepped in,
01:10:45and then in the infamous Oval Office meeting with Zelensky and Trump on February 26th,
01:10:52as I, the people that I've spoken to said, we had a deal done by the 12th of February,
01:11:00and at the day of the meeting, which was on the 26th of February,
01:11:07Zelensky stopped off and spoke to the Democrats, and they said, don't do the deal, and Trump was
01:11:12blindsided, but it's, it's, this has got to get settled, and I think everybody wins.
01:11:18It does have to, it does have to get settled, but I, I, it's hard for me to believe that
01:11:25the
01:11:25Russians, for example, would do something just because Biden or Boris Johnson told them to.
01:11:30No, it was the, it was Zelensky that did it.
01:11:34You know, when they did the Minsk agreement, the Russians had violated that agreement within a day.
01:11:42We have someone who's on the call now, I could ask,
01:11:49Andre, Andre, do you think that there is a good possibility that
01:11:52we could see a settlement between Russia and Ukraine soon?
01:12:00I don't think he's on anymore.
01:12:02He's on.
01:12:04Andre?
01:12:06I'm sorry, my, my English is very bad, I'll translate, have to translate online, I'm sorry.
01:12:17It's okay, your English is a lot better than my Russian, which is non-existent.
01:12:29Do you think that there will be a settlement soon?
01:12:34Здесь, Денис, my, my son.
01:12:39Is Dennis, Dennis, what do you think?
01:12:42Translate, please.
01:12:43Да, да, да.
01:12:45Денис, переведи, пожалуйста.
01:12:51Те заявленные цели, заявленные цели Путиным, они не достигнуты.
01:13:01И самое главное, внутри страны большинство народа не воспримет,
01:13:07если сейчас на тех границах, которые сейчас закончится война.
01:13:17Да.
01:13:18He said that...
01:13:24Денис.
01:13:26Да, да, да.
01:13:30That the Russian conditions of the settlement haven't been reached.
01:13:38I told you about the, these four regions, they are already in the Russian constitution,
01:13:46so if Ukraine won't left them, we don't think that Russia will stop.
01:13:56It's interesting.
01:13:59It seems that the territories that were in question...
01:14:02In Russia...
01:14:03I'm sorry.
01:14:05In Russia...
01:14:09In September...
01:14:10In September...
01:14:11In September...
01:14:11In September...
01:14:12In the Государственную Думу.
01:14:13In the Nile Pala of Parliament.
01:14:15...
01:14:18And...
01:14:18In the Republic...
01:14:20It's not worth it for Russia...
01:14:23In the Republic...
01:14:24In my view...
01:14:24It's not worth it for now...
01:14:26This war is over...
01:14:27...And on the borders, on which Russia is now...
01:14:32Russia Ukraine he said that in September this year we will have the elections in
01:14:42our parliament and for the government it's not profitable now to stop the
01:14:51war because the majority of Russian population won't be a happy with this
01:15:04like if the Russia will stop at this territories which one already under our
01:15:16you understand what I mean I'm not I think I do
01:15:23that's because as I see it and as I've been told that the the land that Russia that Russia wants
01:15:32and the land that Ukraine is willing to give up uh is the same yeah no they're different
01:15:41okay from the my understanding is Russia wants land that it doesn't currently control as well
01:15:47as that yeah you're right you're right you're right and uh if it will it if it stop for example
01:15:56today
01:15:56or like in the summer uh it won't be enough
01:16:04well this is one of the things we will be discussing about what comes next in our June conference
01:16:09and uh if I may get to the the last point uh there is no agreement or agreeing agreeing between
01:16:20the land
01:16:21given to Russia okay Ukraine thinks one way and it's presented in this 20 points plan
01:16:30uh peace plan uh what was presented like uh two three months ago and it's now it's missing nobody talking
01:16:40about it and Russia wants still the same as it want all the way all Donetsk area some other areas
01:16:48and forget about what they say in constitution they can't say tomorrow something else also I don't think
01:16:54that andrei uh means that or maybe it makes sense um anyway we'll we'll this is we'll be hopefully by
01:17:09the
01:17:09time we get to June it'll be settled and we'll be one of the topics we're going to have is
01:17:15what comes
01:17:16next uh because uh I still I have always believed that Russia's future is tied to the west and not
01:17:24the east
01:17:27um for its prosperity safety and I think it's good for us in any case we are way over our
01:17:35time
01:17:35yes it's true and I can also confirm that most of the Russians think that our future is related to
01:17:47the west and not the east
01:17:49yeah he said that he can agree that the Russian history and the Russian future is
01:17:56mostly connected with the west not the east
01:17:59and that's where that's the commonality and that's why we have to have there has to be a peace
01:18:05and I think that once the war is settled everybody wins
01:18:11everybody wins except the big loser is going to be China
01:18:14yes
01:18:14does anybody care about China being the loser
01:18:18nope
01:18:18I don't
01:18:20Rob do you care
01:18:22Gary
01:18:25all right guys on that note I want to say thank you
01:18:30it's I it's been a pleasure and uh what Gary
01:18:34Gary King you got on mute Gary
01:18:39you have to unmute
01:18:40I spent a month in Belarus and I spent about three weeks in Ukraine
01:18:46and uh I discovered that the way Stalin held the Soviet Union together was economically
01:18:57as I was on a train in Belarus we passed a field of beautiful tractors red and green tractors
01:19:05but there were no engines in no engines because that's because Belarus manufactured the bodies
01:19:12and another one of their provinces manufactured the engines and they had to they had to stay together because
01:19:21now that they're two independent countries there's a border to cross and in customs and taxes and and all kinds
01:19:30of controversies
01:19:31and it doesn't work economically so I think when what follows needs to be we tie these things together
01:19:38economically
01:19:39Trump said what he was going to do was he was going to start investing in southern Ukraine
01:19:46and and making business deals and getting Americans involved there
01:19:50so if the Russians attack Ukraine they're attacking us
01:19:53and they won't do that
01:19:56and that I think is what we've got to do is we've got to work to get everybody
01:20:00so that we depend on each other
01:20:02and so that we're independent enough so that we can survive
01:20:05but we're not so independent that we don't act in everybody's best interest
01:20:11so we build a commonality of economic interest customers and providers customers and consumers
01:20:19that was the whole rationale for creating the European Union
01:20:24which is to embed Germany in a larger system
01:20:30and now that Germany is aggressively re-arming
01:20:35the Europeans are kind of remembering that
01:20:41do you really think that Germany is a threat to any part of Europe
01:20:45it's not what I think
01:20:47that matters
01:20:51that's a very good point
01:20:53one last thing
01:20:58in the 70s during Vietnam
01:21:00I was in the Navy
01:21:02you know developing systems and things like that
01:21:05and some of the people that I referred to Vietnam
01:21:09as our research and development center east
01:21:17and when you take a look at that
01:21:19when you take a look at Venezuela
01:21:21when you take a look at Ukraine
01:21:24we're testing
01:21:25we're doing a lot of R&D
01:21:27to test and validate weapons systems
01:21:30and we're benefiting from some of the stuff that Ukraine has done
01:21:35and we're also honing our skills
01:21:39you know as we go along
01:21:41with this new warfare that's been developed
01:21:45based on the technology that we've got
01:21:47you know who would think you could stop people
01:21:50with microwaves and infrasound
01:21:55well that's
01:21:56it's also taken the cost of knocking
01:21:59a drone down from
01:22:00a couple
01:22:02from a two million dollar missile
01:22:04yeah
01:22:04it's also
01:22:05yeah but the cost of producing them has also gone down
01:22:08like Ukraine is making like seven million of these a year
01:22:11I mean
01:22:14in the kill zone
01:22:15in between Russia and the Ukraine
01:22:17has expanded dramatically
01:22:21because of the impact of drones
01:22:24and then of course
01:22:25we have undersea drones now
01:22:27don't we Gary
01:22:32Gary
01:22:34can't hear you
01:22:35we call them UUVs
01:22:36and what
01:22:37how do they work
01:22:39same way they work
01:22:41an aerial drone
01:22:43well how do they communicate
01:22:44in fact
01:22:45in fact the Mark 48 torpedo
01:22:46was kind of an underwater drone
01:22:48we can guide that thing out to about 10 miles
01:22:51yeah that was the first UUV
01:22:53I imagine
01:22:54yeah that
01:22:55and that baby goes faster than any submarine out there
01:23:00interesting
01:23:03the bottom line of it is
01:23:05I think that
01:23:09I think we need each other
01:23:11and I think it's
01:23:11I don't think that's
01:23:12I don't think that's a Pollyannish view
01:23:16because
01:23:17peace is a lot more profitable than war
01:23:22and the other thing that strikes me
01:23:25is
01:23:27we've got a really good space program apparently
01:23:30particularly with SpaceX
01:23:32which is interesting with
01:23:34Elon Musk
01:23:35you know
01:23:36there's been a revolution in economic theory
01:23:39in the 80s and 90s
01:23:41because prior to then
01:23:42it had been assumed
01:23:43the typical economic agent
01:23:45was rational
01:23:45and would behave that way
01:23:46and the whole thing was
01:23:47the whole
01:23:48the whole economic paradigm
01:23:50was built around that
01:23:51and the revolution was
01:23:54the discovery
01:23:55that people aren't
01:23:57rational
01:23:59and
01:24:00so what you just said
01:24:02essentially assumes
01:24:03that people are rational
01:24:04and they'll do the right thing
01:24:07because it's in their interest
01:24:08but people aren't
01:24:09necessarily rational
01:24:10and they do things
01:24:12for very irrational reasons
01:24:15that's why I think that
01:24:17Iran was a unique case
01:24:20they're not rational
01:24:21because they are not rational
01:24:23of everybody around
01:24:24they are not rational
01:24:25they do not have an economic
01:24:27goal in mind
01:24:29they have one goal
01:24:31and that's world dominance
01:24:34in the preservation
01:24:35of their own
01:24:40religion
01:24:41right
01:24:42that's what I'm talking about
01:24:42they've all gotten
01:24:43you know
01:24:44the guys at the top
01:24:45have gotten very rich
01:24:47yes
01:24:49and
01:24:49and
01:24:50and they kind of like it
01:24:51the way it is
01:24:52not quite this way
01:24:53but
01:24:56they have no interest
01:24:57in broader
01:24:58economic engagement
01:24:59with the west
01:25:00because that implies competition
01:25:01and that hurts them
01:25:02well that's one of the reasons
01:25:04we're having trouble
01:25:04getting some things
01:25:05like the save act
01:25:06to pass
01:25:06because the current
01:25:08politicians got elected
01:25:10without it
01:25:10and they don't want
01:25:12to change that
01:25:12right
01:25:15both sides
01:25:17what
01:25:18both sides
01:25:21yes
01:25:22it's not just the democrats
01:25:24it's also some of the republicans
01:25:27and that's a shame
01:25:29I do believe
01:25:31this is a whole
01:25:32another discussion
01:25:34we could still
01:25:35go on here
01:25:36I'm good with it
01:25:37if you guys want to
01:25:38I can't
01:25:39I gotta go
01:25:40you're in Hawaii
01:25:42on vacation
01:25:43exactly
01:25:44by yourself
01:25:46exactly
01:25:47that's why
01:25:47he's gotta go
01:25:49no I can do this
01:25:50or I can go snorkeling
01:25:51come on now
01:25:55Andre
01:25:56it's
01:25:57it's good to see you
01:25:59and
01:26:01just take it easy
01:26:03be well
01:26:03Andre
01:26:04let's talk
01:26:05in the next couple of days
01:26:08and
01:26:08everybody
01:26:09thank you very much
01:26:10and I
01:26:11I hope you
01:26:11found this
01:26:13discussion useful
01:26:15Andre
01:26:16nice to meet you
01:26:17man
01:26:17okay
01:26:18good to meet you
01:26:19thank you
01:26:20bye guys
01:26:22bye
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