00:00How should we think about that number, more than $7 billion in just six months spent on this blockade?
00:06We're talking about tens of billions of dollars for the war as a whole.
00:11The blockade is a component of that.
00:14But $7 billion, you know, you can buy a nuclear submarine for that much.
00:18And a three-quarter of a nuclear aircraft carrier.
00:21It's a significant amount of money in a time where the Navy is sort of struggling to figure out how
00:28to build more ships
00:29and, you know, how to refill its arsenals.
00:31I'll just ask you straight up, has the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz made the U
00:35.S. more vulnerable to other attacks,
00:38given the amount of resources that are being expended there and diverted there?
00:42The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is a lot more complicated,
00:48because there's not really any sign that there's a major adversary of the U.S. waiting to, you know, pounce
00:55somewhere.
00:56China has military problems of its own.
00:58Is China ready to start a big war in Asia?
01:00No, probably not.
01:02Is Russia in any position to start a war other than the one it's already got its hands full with
01:07in Ukraine?
01:08No, probably not.
01:09There's no sign that there's going to be some kind of an imminent big conflict.
01:13But if there were, the U.S. would be in worse position than it was before.
01:18And I think that's the key point, which is if there were to be something in the future,
01:22the U.S. is in a less advantageous position than it had been.
01:26So to put a finer point on it, in a lot of the war games that I've run looking at
01:31a potential U.S.-China conflict,
01:33the U.S. would run out of munitions in the first few days of a conflict,
01:37first few weeks even, if they were being really, really smart about their strategies.
01:42And that assumed stockpile debt that just doesn't exist today and isn't going to exist into the near term future.
01:51And that can be slightly problematic when you are looking at theories of deterrence
01:56and how it is that you would be able to deter and, if needed, defend against potential aggression from another
02:03potential adversary.
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