Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College. All Things
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Speaker 2: They now have the chance that is around to permanently
Speaker 2: abandon their nuclear ambitions and.
Speaker 3: To join a new path forward. We'll see if they
Speaker 3: want to do it. If they don't, where they worse Nightman.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'll just keep blowing them away, unimpeded, unstopped.
Speaker 3: Well, there's not a thing they can do about it.
Speaker 3: They can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll tell you if they could, If they could,
Speaker 1: you'd be hearing about it.
Speaker 3: You'd be hearing about it.
Speaker 4: You don't hear anything about it. Born and Glory and
Speaker 4: even Grace America.
Speaker 1: I'm you, Hewitt. That was President Trump in the cabinet
Speaker 1: the meeting about an hour ago. I begin today's program
Speaker 1: with Jim Garrity. If National Review also a calm for
Speaker 1: the Washington Post you ought to be getting. He is
Speaker 1: Morning Daily jolt. You ought to be listening to him
Speaker 1: on the Editors and the three Martini lunch Jim, I
Speaker 1: have been following you on the Editors. You're in the
Speaker 1: category of boy. I wish he'd explained it more clearly
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I understand that. But we're just crushing
Speaker 1: these people, these bad guys, and we're not killing civilians.
Speaker 1: I think this is going very well, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a pivot point in history.
Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
Speaker 5: Militarily it is going really well. It dawned on me
Speaker 5: the other day, Hugh. Have we had casualties since the
Speaker 5: initial we had the plane.
Speaker 3: The C seventeen that went down.
Speaker 5: We had the initial casualties and a strike on one
Speaker 5: of the Gulf states.
Speaker 3: Have we had military and uniform casualty?
Speaker 1: We have lost thirteene we have not. There are some
Speaker 1: seriously wounded, one of whom may have died. I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit confused on what happens. Or it might be fourteen.
Speaker 1: Israeli has lost another one yesterday. Their death toll is
Speaker 1: up to eighteen. In our golf out, I lost twenty.
Speaker 1: So among all of the Allied power powers and those
Speaker 1: who have been attacked. The death toll is somewhere around sixty.
Speaker 5: You and I from our haircuts, people can tell are
Speaker 5: on the longer side. I have good memories of the
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety one Gulf War. Somebody went back and looked
Speaker 5: at the number of US planes shot down.
Speaker 3: During the Persian Gulf War.
Speaker 5: This is nineteen ninety one, and there were more planes
Speaker 5: shot down over Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the technology
Speaker 5: available then. I'm from a small town in New Jersey
Speaker 5: called Mtuchen, and one of the POWs, Bob Wetzel, was
Speaker 5: from Mtuchen, so that really kind of brought everything home there.
Speaker 3: So militarily is doing quite well.
Speaker 5: I think if you had more ships going through the
Speaker 5: straight of war moves, I think everybody feel a lot
Speaker 5: better about this. This is in the one card the
Speaker 5: Iranians have had to play, and they've played it pretty effectively.
Speaker 5: They are effectively charging a toll to go through the
Speaker 5: straight of hor.
Speaker 3: Moves, and this is one of their demands to end
Speaker 3: the war.
Speaker 5: I would point out that this is you know, shooting
Speaker 5: drones and shooting rockets and shooting missiles and fast boats
Speaker 5: and mines.
Speaker 3: This is the only card they have to play.
Speaker 5: If the US can get enough mind sweeping equipment out there,
Speaker 5: and if we can eliminate their drone launchers and all that,
Speaker 5: they don't have a lot.
Speaker 3: That they can do.
Speaker 5: I do think the ballistic missile that they launched that
Speaker 5: was aimed at Diego Garcia.
Speaker 3: That was a bit ominous.
Speaker 5: No, I've heard folks saying that it Actually they did
Speaker 5: that by taking out all the extra explosives and putting
Speaker 5: an extra room for fuel. Of course, that just proves
Speaker 5: that the regime was lying when it said it did
Speaker 5: not have missiles that could strike anywhere near that. That
Speaker 5: does put you know, London in Paris are either right
Speaker 5: outside the range of those missiles or a little bit
Speaker 5: for a little bit, you know, beyond it. You take
Speaker 5: out the explosives, on the one hand, it's not going
Speaker 5: to be nearly as powerful. On the other hand, if
Speaker 5: I throw a school bus going at like mock fourteen
Speaker 5: into the middle of a city, it's still going to
Speaker 5: do some damage.
Speaker 3: So, you know, militarily, it's going very well.
Speaker 5: I think we can take The real question is the
Speaker 5: straight That's what's causing the gas prices, that's what's causing
Speaker 5: oil prices.
Speaker 3: That's you know all that stuff.
Speaker 5: I would point out, according to Triple A though it's
Speaker 5: been at three ninety eight for the national average for
Speaker 5: the last three days.
Speaker 3: That's that's not great, but that is kind of indicating
Speaker 3: we may they may have hit.
Speaker 1: A ceiling there right in California where my sign is
Speaker 1: with his family at six and a half dollars a gallon,
Speaker 1: But we're used to that in California because of the
Speaker 1: crazy air quality stuff and the mix that they've got
Speaker 1: to use.
Speaker 3: We're actould say only six and a half.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's kind of crazy out there. But even
Speaker 1: if this went on for another month and gas stayed high,
Speaker 1: what would you say to your grandchildren When you're an
Speaker 1: old man like me and you've got grandchildren, Jim, what
Speaker 1: would you say about the cost benefit if the regime
Speaker 1: is toppled or crumbles and we had to pay two
Speaker 1: and a half months of higher gas prices.
Speaker 5: At that point, it's a bargain, that is, you know,
Speaker 5: if you can topple the regime and replace it with regime.
Speaker 3: Never mind democracy, although that would be very nice. Let's
Speaker 3: say a regime that.
Speaker 5: Is responsive to the voices of the people, then.
Speaker 3: It would have a situation, which that would be, you know,
Speaker 3: definitely worth this price.
Speaker 5: And then you know, six days a week and twice
Speaker 5: on Sundays where I think there's like on the editors
Speaker 5: last time, Rich put in a question to me, if
Speaker 5: we keep the regime in place but they verifiably give
Speaker 5: up their nuclear weapons ambitions, is that worthwhile?
Speaker 3: And very much I would like to see this regime toppled.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, the President himself said to the Iranians,
Speaker 5: help is on the way.
Speaker 3: He told them to overthrow their oppressors.
Speaker 5: I think if the regime is still in control at
Speaker 5: the end of this war, it will be a frustrating,
Speaker 5: but I think that would be a significant deal sweetener
Speaker 5: for a mixed bag.
Speaker 1: So I'll be very critical if they are in control,
Speaker 1: because that means they, as Guy Benson said on Special.
Speaker 3: Report to Kicking the Fan down the Road, Yeah, they lie.
Speaker 1: When they breathe, they immediately start digging another tunnel and
Speaker 1: ordering centrifuges from the chicoms, and they'll start all over again.
Speaker 1: And they still have four hundred and sixty pounds of
Speaker 1: what the President called nuclear dust. That's like dirty bomb central.
Speaker 1: For the next one hundred years. We really can't let
Speaker 1: this regime stay in place. And I don't think, my gosh,
Speaker 1: the pounding. I know that that cannard is that you
Speaker 1: can't topple a regime from the air.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: We've never had this kind of precision munition strike over
Speaker 1: the course of six weeks on a regime that is
Speaker 1: that unpopular among its people. That's the difference. It's not
Speaker 1: like the German people chance to kill Hitler.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The economists cover this week shows the Iranian.
Speaker 5: Flag and the world like as a map of the world,
Speaker 5: the Iranians squeezing it and the signified and they have
Speaker 5: a state of saying that the Trump's war has achieved
Speaker 5: nothing in Iran.
Speaker 3: That's kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 5: I may not be quite as optimistic as say my
Speaker 5: colleague Noah Roffman.
Speaker 3: Uh, maybe not as optimistic as you, Hugh.
Speaker 4: But in the end we're very optimistic. You we're not
Speaker 4: as optimist.
Speaker 5: I think it myself as pretty hawks compared so hawkish.
Speaker 3: And you know, I want to see us get to
Speaker 3: a new regime here.
Speaker 5: Short of that, a you know, regime that has had
Speaker 5: you know, doesn't have an army anymore, doesn't have a
Speaker 5: nuclear program, doesn't have ballistic missile program. That's all good steps,
Speaker 5: but I think I concur with you that at some
Speaker 5: point this is simply this would be you know, Iran
Speaker 5: War one, and at some point, hopefully far in the future,
Speaker 5: but likely at some point we would have to do it.
Speaker 5: And you know, when you get into a fight with
Speaker 5: the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, you have to
Speaker 5: be very worried about the fact that they may sponsor terrorism.
Speaker 5: They may not be able to do it now. They
Speaker 5: may still be the newest Ayatola, might be a little shorthanded,
Speaker 5: or you know whatever other metaphors you want to use
Speaker 5: for a guy who looks like he's auditioning for the Mummy.
Speaker 5: But whatever, you know, he's not in a situation where
Speaker 5: he can order terrorist attacks against America. But in six
Speaker 5: months to a year they'll be back on their feet,
Speaker 5: no fun intended and uh probably looking for revenge in one.
Speaker 1: Form always a ten yure pun. Let me ask you
Speaker 1: about not Mission creep. Everyone knows what Mission creep is,
Speaker 1: but victory creep. Five years ago, the Israelis would have
Speaker 1: been happy with what we did at four Doah in
Speaker 1: midnight hammer and I say, all a who Barack asked
Speaker 1: for was three hours with our deep penetrators over at
Speaker 1: four doh.
Speaker 4: That was a victory, and we celebrated as such.
Speaker 1: Now we've got victory creep beyond destroying the nuclear program,
Speaker 1: I mean really into bits and beyond the missile program.
Speaker 1: Now we want the regime instruments of terror, and we
Speaker 1: want the regime to fall.
Speaker 4: Our victory creep mode.
Speaker 5: Here maybe, But also keep in mind, you know, how
Speaker 5: did we get here. And I'm sure there's some people go, oh,
Speaker 5: go back to the Shah or ah, go back to
Speaker 5: the you know, the CIA back in the fifties and
Speaker 5: all that. This really started because of the protests against
Speaker 5: the Iranian regime. It really was peaked in January, continued
Speaker 5: to bid into February. Presidents said help is on the way.
Speaker 5: People genuinely thought this might be the end of the regime.
Speaker 5: They managed to stay in power by killing everybody agrees
Speaker 5: some five figure sum some say closer to ten thousand,
Speaker 5: some say up in the neighborhood of thirty thousand.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: All of this started because they were in dire economic straits,
Speaker 5: because the Iranian currency is the single least worth of
Speaker 5: valuable currency in the entire world. The value of the
Speaker 5: money was absolutely declining. Assuming the Mollas stay in power
Speaker 5: before all this, which you and I are hoping, you know,
Speaker 5: is not the case. If they do that, they still
Speaker 5: have all the same problems. You know, the people may
Speaker 5: not be out on the street, you know, they might
Speaker 5: not come out in the street in the first month
Speaker 5: after the war, second month after the war, But if
Speaker 5: the regime can't fix the economy, they're going to be
Speaker 5: back where they started from, back in December of last year,
Speaker 5: where they you know, people are marching in the streets
Speaker 5: simply out of hunger, simply out of the fact that
Speaker 5: what they're getting paid cank over the cost.
Speaker 3: Of bread at the markets.
Speaker 5: So long term, this regime is in real trouble if
Speaker 5: they don't get toppled in this war.
Speaker 3: One of these problems.
Speaker 1: Thirty seconds on the way out the door, if the
Speaker 1: regime's still in place, should we blow up their oil,
Speaker 1: blow up their bridges, blow up their power grid to
Speaker 1: make it easier for the people to rise up?
Speaker 3: Thirty seconds Would it make it easier for the people
Speaker 3: to rise up?
Speaker 5: I'm not completely convinced of that, and I think it
Speaker 5: also would drive oil markets and the world energy Markets Haywire,
Speaker 5: So I would recC connection of how that would help them,
Speaker 5: help them overthrow.
Speaker 1: The regime, guarrity the Indispensable, follow them on Exit Jim Garrety,
Speaker 1: read them in the Washington Post, treat them in National Review,
Speaker 1: Listen to them on the Editors and at the three
Speaker 1: Martini Lunch and stay tuned.
Speaker 4: W right back on the Uuit Show. Welcome Back in America.
Speaker 1: I'm jet inside the beltweigh today in the Relief Factor studio,
Speaker 1: So please to welcome Chip Keating to the program. Chip
Speaker 1: is a candidate for governor in the great state of Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: A little bit later in the are I'm talking to
Speaker 1: Jim Lankford, Senator from Oklahoma. Oklahoma's been in the news
Speaker 1: all week long, so I thought I would talk with Chip. Chip,
Speaker 1: how are you and how goes the campaign?
Speaker 6: Hey you, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 6: The campaign's terrific. We've got a ton of momentum and
Speaker 6: we're going to go win for greater Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Now, I go down to Oklahoma every three or four
Speaker 1: years for one reason or another, and it's always the
Speaker 1: most welcoming state in the Union, unless Baker Mayfield is
Speaker 1: playing Ohio State and planting the flag in the Ohio
Speaker 1: state middle of the stadium. That's the only thing I've
Speaker 1: got against Oklahoma. And then Baker came and came and brown.
Speaker 1: What are the issues that people are fighting about in Oklahoma?
Speaker 1: Because it's such a nice place to.
Speaker 6: Visit, Oklahoma is great. Look the biggest issues in Oklahoma
Speaker 6: right now. The old the slogan in Oklahoma used to
Speaker 6: be used to be Oklahoma's Okay. That means we're average
Speaker 6: and marginal. But the reality is right now, we are
Speaker 6: fiftieth in education, we haven't modernized our tax structure since
Speaker 6: nineteen teen thirty. We've got an illicit drug crisis in
Speaker 6: our state from the passage of a liberal ballot initiative
Speaker 6: that delivered medical marijuana.
Speaker 3: And it's anything but that.
Speaker 6: And so we are a triple Trump all seventy seven counties,
Speaker 6: all three election cycles for President Trump were very red state.
Speaker 6: But we're dealing with blue state issues. And so we've
Speaker 6: been big government in Oklahoma, and it's time for a
Speaker 6: real conservative to step up and uphold our conservative values
Speaker 6: that we know and love in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Now, I would have assumed that Oklahoma was pretty dog
Speaker 1: on good in education chick keating just because oh you
Speaker 1: so good in Oklahoma. State's pretty good at the state,
Speaker 1: the state universities are so good. What happened to your
Speaker 1: primary K through twelve schools?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 6: And we do have great higher ed in Oklahoma USU
Speaker 6: or our flagship universities, but K through twelve, one in
Speaker 6: four of our eighth graders are illiterate in the state
Speaker 6: of Oklahoma. And so we adopted and you hear the
Speaker 6: Mississippi miracle around literacy in K through three and emphasis
Speaker 6: on phonics and emphasis on having literacy coaches. We passed
Speaker 6: that in twenty twelve. In twenty thirteen, Mississippi adopted it.
Speaker 6: They've gone from fiftieth to seventeenth. Their per capita GDP
Speaker 6: just sur passed the UK. And in twenty fourteen, Oklahoma
Speaker 6: repealed it. We repealed literacy in reading proficiency, and so
Speaker 6: Republicans repealed it.
Speaker 3: And so enough's enough. Parents are outraged. Reading education.
Speaker 6: It's a fundamental genesis of everything. We're per capita number
Speaker 6: one in incarceration in Oklahoma and fiftieth in literacy, and
Speaker 6: those two statistics fit hand in glove, and so it's
Speaker 6: time for us to get our act together and not
Speaker 6: governed like a blue state anymore.
Speaker 4: Now, how does Oklahoma raise its money?
Speaker 1: California tax I fled California to Virginia because they just
Speaker 1: taxed everything. What is Oklahoma tax and it is there
Speaker 1: reform to be had.
Speaker 6: There, There's a lot of reform to be had in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: Look, we're so blessed.
Speaker 6: To be in a fossil fuel stated. You think about
Speaker 6: migration shifts in our country. Why are people migrating, you know,
Speaker 6: fleeing blue state you know, horrific tax policy, woke agenda
Speaker 6: states and coming to states like you know, the Midwest.
Speaker 6: And if Oklahoma's really going to be a winner in
Speaker 6: that net migration.
Speaker 3: And we have the power and power is a big deal.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 6: We're blessed to have fossil fuels everywhere in our state.
Speaker 6: But where are the real migration patterns going.
Speaker 3: Well, they're going to really pro.
Speaker 6: Tax policy, good public policy, states that have great education,
Speaker 6: no income tax, conservative values. And so the reality is
Speaker 6: Oklahoma is a great place. I mean, we are an
Speaker 6: incredible place to be. And if we really want to
Speaker 6: win the migration race, we have to figure out how
Speaker 6: to get rid of our state income tax.
Speaker 3: Look at Mississippi.
Speaker 6: I think Mississippi is a good example for Oklahoma to study.
Speaker 6: Went from fiftieth to seventeenth in education, they got rid
Speaker 6: of their income tax. They're per capita GDP just surpassed
Speaker 6: the UK. I mean, look at Tennessee, a great landlocked
Speaker 6: state like Oklahoma. Thirty years ago, Oklahoma Tennessee's GDP were
Speaker 6: very comparable. Now Tennessee's a third fastest growing state in
Speaker 6: the country.
Speaker 3: And so what are they doing? I mean, frankly, the
Speaker 3: reality is, Hugh, they're.
Speaker 6: Doing really good public policy. And so, as I traveled
Speaker 6: the campaign trail, I'm not a career politician. I'm not
Speaker 6: an officehopper. I'm a businessman, a former state trooper. It's
Speaker 6: time for us to get serious. Look to other states,
Speaker 6: and we know that work, and just do that. This
Speaker 6: is not our seventeen seventy six moment where we have
Speaker 6: to figure things out. We know what works, what's good
Speaker 6: public policy, and we out are replicated.
Speaker 1: You know, my friend's over at the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Speaker 1: Every year they do they rank the states one through fifty,
Speaker 1: rich state, poor state. I don't have my book with
Speaker 1: me it's in Maine. I don't know where Oklahoma is,
Speaker 1: but you're right next door to Texas and they don't
Speaker 1: have an income tax. How can Oklahoma have an income
Speaker 1: tax if Texas doesn't have an income tax.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's where I'm saying.
Speaker 6: I mean, good public policy is replicatable, and the reality
Speaker 6: is not every state is blessed to have a neighbor
Speaker 6: like Texas where we do in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: And Texas is a country on a standalone.
Speaker 6: Basis, they're the seventh largest GDP in the world, And
Speaker 6: so you are exactly right, Hugh.
Speaker 3: We should replicate really good policy like Texas does.
Speaker 6: Because, as I tell people traveling the state, we don't
Speaker 6: want to beat Texas. We want to beat them in
Speaker 6: football when we play them, but certainly we want to
Speaker 6: be like them from a good governing and public policy
Speaker 6: and conservative value perspective, because the crumbs that come out
Speaker 6: of Texas are very real. And look, we are living
Speaker 6: through a fourth Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 3: Right now, energy power. It is a big deal.
Speaker 6: And Oklahoma's blessed to have unlimited natural resource potentials in
Speaker 6: fossil fuels, and that's the industry that I've been in,
Speaker 6: and it's time to really lean in on it. It's
Speaker 6: a national security issue. We have unlimited natural gas potential
Speaker 6: in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: It's time really.
Speaker 6: For us as a state to plan our flag and
Speaker 6: be part of this fourth Industrial Revolution that's.
Speaker 3: Going on real time.
Speaker 6: I mean, we have an opportunity to be an incredible state,
Speaker 6: much more incredible than where we are today.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My last hour today, I'm going to be talking with
Speaker 1: Sean Sankar, who wrote the book Mobilized, about the new
Speaker 1: defense industries that are springing up everywhere. One of the
Speaker 1: things they need is a business friendly and climate. And
Speaker 1: they need lots of energy, especially if they're doing data centers.
Speaker 1: And I assume you guys have got whatever they need
Speaker 1: when it comes to natural gas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 6: So we think about AI and I propose bringing the
Speaker 6: Trump National Lab to Oklahoma. And national labs are a
Speaker 6: very real thing from a GDP perspective, jobs perspective, energy,
Speaker 6: AI and aerospace. Oklahoma's second largest industry is the aerospace industry.
Speaker 3: Number one is oil on gas. We have both.
Speaker 6: What does AI need. AI is a critical part of
Speaker 6: the aerospace defense race. It's a big industry in Oklahoma.
Speaker 6: It's time for us to lean in. We have the
Speaker 6: natural gas and as President Trump has laid out sound
Speaker 6: policy around, we're not going to jam our rate payers
Speaker 6: on grid. We can't use our precious resources with water.
Speaker 6: There's a way to do it in Oklahoma where we
Speaker 6: can do both, not be on grid, we can be
Speaker 6: behind the meter power this stuff directly with natural gas.
Speaker 6: And every natural gas well in Oklahoma produces water, and
Speaker 6: it's not good water. And there's a way for us
Speaker 6: to lean in on American ingenuity and utilize the bad
Speaker 6: produced water that's called salt water and descale it, utilize
Speaker 6: it for the cooling needs for data centers, and we
Speaker 6: can really lean in and help win on this very
Speaker 6: important national security issue.
Speaker 1: Chif Kating, good to talk to you. We'll stay in touch.
Speaker 1: Kating twenty twenty six. Is your website Kating twenty twenty
Speaker 1: six dot com.
Speaker 3: When is the primary chip June sixteenth.
Speaker 6: So for all of your wonderful viewers and listeners that
Speaker 6: are in Oklahoma, we hope to add.
Speaker 3: You on team Keaty and your boat and you. It's
Speaker 3: a pleasure to be with you, sir.
Speaker 4: Thank you, so thank you, Chef.
Speaker 1: Talk to you again, Sue. Welcome back to America. I'm
Speaker 1: Hugh Hewittt. We're joined now by Senator James Langford of Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: He's on three big committees, Senate Finance Committee, Homeland Security,
Speaker 1: and Intel and Senator welcome. I got to talk to
Speaker 1: you about very important stuff and very stupid stuff. Let's
Speaker 1: start with the very important stuff. I know you won't
Speaker 1: tell us anything that is an open source, but what
Speaker 1: do you think about the war with on how it's
Speaker 1: going and the performance of the American military.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the performance of the American military has been stellar.
Speaker 7: I don't think anyone Republican, Democrat, independent would challenge that
Speaker 7: at all. Based on open source and by classified information.
Speaker 7: They moved to tremendous speed and professionalism. All of these
Speaker 7: operations are incredibly complicated. You think to be able to
Speaker 7: drop one munitions on a country thousands of miles away,
Speaker 7: think about how many people that takes some logistics to
Speaker 7: get there, and refueling and equipment and food and everything
Speaker 7: else that has to be able to happen. All of
Speaker 7: those things that are happening like clockwork to be able
Speaker 7: to do it. So their performance has been absolutely exceptional
Speaker 7: through this process. The challenges you're dealing with a deeply
Speaker 7: seated radical regime that the functioning the operation of that
Speaker 7: regime they know is completely dependent on them staying in power.
Speaker 7: Now they have millions of people that want them out,
Speaker 7: but that regime knows that if ever they're out, they're
Speaker 7: going to be exposed to international criminal courts. They're going
Speaker 7: to be locked away because of the oppression and what
Speaker 7: they have done to their own people for so many decades.
Speaker 7: So they are literally fighting for their lives as a regime.
Speaker 7: At the same time the people of Iran are fighting
Speaker 7: for their freedom. At the same time, we are saying,
Speaker 7: just make it stop. You've got to stop carrying out
Speaker 7: acces terrorism.
Speaker 8: On the United States and on our allies.
Speaker 7: So it is a complicated situation try to get this
Speaker 7: to resolution. But the military has been spectacular in this process.
Speaker 1: Now, Senator, I've covered every war since the first Golf four.
Speaker 1: I went on the air in nineteen ninety and so
Speaker 1: I didn't get Panama, but every war since then, I
Speaker 1: have never seen negative coverage like this. And it's not
Speaker 1: mission creep, it's victory creep. Everyone keeps redefining victory is
Speaker 1: something that we haven't seen or haven't got yet, and
Speaker 1: they wanted it. Yet it's been less than four weeks.
Speaker 1: We've had ten thousand targets. We've had fourteen terrible casualties
Speaker 1: at the Israelis eighteen our golf allies around twenty. So
Speaker 1: it's not it's an enormous cost for those families, But
Speaker 1: in terms of war, this is an extraordinary achievement. And
Speaker 1: I can't believe this regime can survive even if we
Speaker 1: stop the bombing.
Speaker 4: I don't think they'll be there in a year, do you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I pray that they are not. For the people
Speaker 7: of Irun and for all of us that want to
Speaker 7: live in peace.
Speaker 8: In the region.
Speaker 7: The reason we have bases in Barrois and we US
Speaker 7: we have basis in Saudi Arabia and in UAE and
Speaker 7: in all of that area Diego Garcia in the corporation
Speaker 7: is because of Iran. We spend billions of dollars a
Speaker 7: year just protecting Americans and shipping in that area. Because
Speaker 7: Iran is this radical terrorist regime that they open and
Speaker 7: close the strait of our moves based at their own preferences.
Speaker 7: They carry out acts of terrorism the entire region based
Speaker 7: on their will and their preferences on this So to
Speaker 7: have a moment that we could finally say, after forty
Speaker 7: seven years, they're going to stop. They're not going to
Speaker 7: do this anymore. Is a tremendous gain for the American people.
Speaker 7: So the presidents stayed very focused, he say, focused on
Speaker 7: they can have a nuclear weapon, they can have this
Speaker 7: ballistic missile program, they can have a program for these
Speaker 7: one way attack drones they're going to use. They can
Speaker 7: have a terrorist proxy network that they're going to continue
Speaker 7: to fund, and they can't have a navy that's going
Speaker 7: to open and close the strait of our moves. He's
Speaker 7: been very focused on that. Israel has been very very
Speaker 7: focused on regime change. They know every single day, every
Speaker 7: single Jew in the world is at risk as long
Speaker 7: as that regime is actually in power. So you've got
Speaker 7: two different nations, both taken on the same nation, different
Speaker 7: priorities on this, but we both think it's very very important.
Speaker 1: Now that's the very important stuff. Let's move to the
Speaker 1: stuff that's so dumb it makes my head hurt. The
Speaker 1: terrorist regime we are fighting would blow us all up
Speaker 1: through one of their proxies, or has blow if they could.
Speaker 1: But the Department of Homeland Security is shuttered are the
Speaker 1: and the TSA lines might be to my front door
Speaker 1: now from Reagan National is the Democrat? Is there any
Speaker 1: Democrat other than John Fetterman who said, well, we really
Speaker 1: shouldn't be doing this to the American people.
Speaker 7: There are finally a few I can't say their names,
Speaker 7: but they're finally a few saying enough is enough. We've
Speaker 7: got to be able to resolve this. We've been pounding
Speaker 7: on this over and over and over again. There is
Speaker 7: a very real risk. We are in current conflict with Iran,
Speaker 7: who has a very extensive cyber network that they use
Speaker 7: for attacks.
Speaker 8: They're a terrorist nation that they're.
Speaker 7: Looking for ones and twos of people to be able
Speaker 7: to find people to be able to attack anywhere in
Speaker 7: the world they can do that. Iran is not afraid
Speaker 7: to be able to partner with other terror networks, even
Speaker 7: if they don't philosophically agree with them, to be able
Speaker 7: to partner with them to get their will. They also
Speaker 7: cooperate with gangs and with other thugs and mafia groups
Speaker 7: that they want to be able to pay off and
Speaker 7: partner to do their dirty work. This is a regime
Speaker 7: that they like, this kind of asymmetric warfare to be
Speaker 7: able to type because they know they can't reach us. So, yes,
Speaker 7: homeland security is incredibly important. That's including border security. That's
Speaker 7: including picking up individuals that were here during the Biden
Speaker 7: administration that we need to be able to remove because
Speaker 7: we don't have any idea what their background is. But
Speaker 7: that also includes FEMA operations, Coast Guard operations, Secret Service operations.
Speaker 8: All of those things are important.
Speaker 3: We've got to get them going again. This is enough?
Speaker 3: Is enough?
Speaker 1: Do any of your Democratic colleagues read about Sheridan Gorman,
Speaker 1: the eighteen year old who was shot in the back
Speaker 1: my illegal immigrant waved into the country in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: arrested and released in Chicago without getting a notification. Do
Speaker 1: they aren't they ashamed at what happened under Joe Biden?
Speaker 4: Is this is not an isolated incident. Yeah.
Speaker 7: They will say alex Pretty's name over and over again
Speaker 7: and that's an incredibly tragic event. But they will not
Speaker 7: repeat the name of Lake and Riley. They will not
Speaker 7: repeat the name of Sharon Gorman, They will not repeat
Speaker 7: those other names. They just want to ignore that and
Speaker 7: assume there is no problem with illegal immigration. This is
Speaker 7: something that the Trump administration just manufactured when all of
Speaker 7: us as Americans.
Speaker 8: Know that's just not true.
Speaker 7: There is a very religious let's just admit and be
Speaker 7: honest about what's really happening here, and let's work through
Speaker 7: the process on this. And yes, there are moments that
Speaker 7: every agency, every law enforcement agency, makes mistakes, and they
Speaker 7: deal with life and death every single day. But they're
Speaker 7: also protecting the American citizens every single day, and we've
Speaker 7: got to allow them to do that.
Speaker 1: So last question, where we get more votes on DHS.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the leader is planning. I know
Speaker 1: you're doing the Save Act debate, but I wish you'd
Speaker 1: vote on it every day because the Democrats are just
Speaker 1: making everyone crazy at the airport and we're all aware
Speaker 1: of the danger.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we will continue to vote on every single day.
Speaker 7: As you know, we've been in continuous session every single
Speaker 7: day the last two weeks.
Speaker 3: John Thune and myself.
Speaker 7: And others have said we should stay in session every
Speaker 7: single day until we get DHS SALVETD.
Speaker 8: This is the best way to be a resolve.
Speaker 7: This is one of the things that I've been an
Speaker 7: advocate for for weeks and weeks that as soon as
Speaker 7: this started, I've said we should stay here every day
Speaker 7: and debate this until we actually solve it.
Speaker 8: We should never leave on it.
Speaker 7: Now we finally reach that point that everyone else agrees
Speaker 7: with me on it. Everybody's staying until we solve the
Speaker 7: DHS issue.
Speaker 8: We need These folks paid the.
Speaker 1: Senator James Leifrid of Oklahoma. Thanks, welcome back in America.
Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewett. Eleon and Y Johnson is editor in
Speaker 1: chief of the Washington Free Beacon. She is also a
Speaker 1: regular contributor on the commentary podcast ely On Moments ago.
Speaker 1: A minute ago, President Trump posted on true Social this
Speaker 1: as per Iranian government request. Please let this statement serve
Speaker 1: to represent that I am pausing the period of energy
Speaker 1: plant destruction by ten days to Monday, April sixth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, at eight pm Eastern Time. Talks are on
Speaker 1: going in despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the
Speaker 1: fake news media and others, they are going very well.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J.
Speaker 4: Trump. What do you think, Eliana, Well.
Speaker 9: Hugh, it seems to me that in the talks, the
Speaker 9: US is asking for what it's always been asking for,
Speaker 9: including that Iran never pursue nuclear capabilities and destroy what's
Speaker 9: there of its existing nuclear capabilities, and vow never to
Speaker 9: pursue nuclear enrichment. These are not new things, so I'm
Speaker 9: quite skeptical that negotiations will be productive. And Iran now
Speaker 9: is coming to the table in an extraordinarily weakened state
Speaker 9: and making demands that I just can't see the President
Speaker 9: agreeing to, including the payment of reparations, payment for tankers
Speaker 9: to transit the Strait of war moves, and they're demanding
Speaker 9: that we shutter our military bases in the region. At
Speaker 9: the same time, the President saying they better get serious
Speaker 9: about negotiations as our marines arrive in the region and
Speaker 9: the Pentagon prepares options for a final blow. So part
Speaker 9: of me wonders if the President isn't buying some time
Speaker 9: for additional military assets to get in the region and
Speaker 9: to talk to his advisors about what these which of
Speaker 9: these options might make the most sense.
Speaker 1: Well, in the spectrum of possibilities, there's he's blowing smoke,
Speaker 1: but the Iranians don't know that, and they're looking at
Speaker 1: each other wondering who's talking to him. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: that someone's talking to him, and we know what victory
Speaker 1: is the victory is the Marines or the eighty second
Speaker 1: Airborne surround Fodor and we spend a month getting the
Speaker 1: yellow cake or whatever the what do you call them,
Speaker 1: radioactive dust out of there, and we have instant inspections
Speaker 1: everywhere in the country and we leave with it.
Speaker 4: We know how to measure victory.
Speaker 1: We got to get the enriched uranium out, otherwise it's
Speaker 1: not a victory.
Speaker 4: Do you agree that's like a baseline.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one option.
Speaker 9: I think the president's also looking at other options. I'm
Speaker 9: just reading the reporting on this of invading or blockading
Speaker 9: carg Island, of seizing other islands. And you know, we
Speaker 9: heard from the ambassador of the UAE that they're deploying
Speaker 9: forces to help us reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which
Speaker 9: I think is an unconditional aspect of ending hostilities here.
Speaker 9: We cannot end anything with that straight close. But in
Speaker 9: the meantime, we're sending several fighter jet squadrons and thousands
Speaker 9: of troops to the region. And the head of the
Speaker 9: IRGC Navy, who is running this operation to keep the
Speaker 9: straight closed, has been assassinated by the Israeli military overnight.
Speaker 3: So yes, I agree with you.
Speaker 9: The uranium has to get out of there, or Iran
Speaker 9: has to have a new leadership that vows to destroy
Speaker 9: this in a way that's verifiable to the US and
Speaker 9: the rest of the world. And Hugh, I also think
Speaker 9: it's noteworthy that the president, our golf allies are now
Speaker 9: invested in this. The President's hearing from the UAE, the Saudis,
Speaker 9: and other golf allies that he must finish the jobs.
Speaker 9: So while he may have advisors in the White House
Speaker 9: and elsewhere pressing him or showing him polls telling him
Speaker 9: that this has gone on too long, he's hearing from
Speaker 9: others around the world that he can't end this prematurely.
Speaker 9: And I think there's a tremendous amount of concern that
Speaker 9: he will do that.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I and no Ah A. Rothman,
Speaker 1: Jim Garritty to there's a group of iron warhawks, and
Speaker 1: I'm in there, Guy Benson, there are a bunch of us,
Speaker 1: and certainly Jack Keene is number one warhawk. Finish the job,
Speaker 1: And by finish the job, I mean let the Iranian
Speaker 1: people be free, and let's get all of the nuclear
Speaker 1: stuff out of there and they can begin to rebuild
Speaker 1: a normal regime. Of course, the strait of horror moves
Speaker 1: has to be open. And I haven't seen the statement
Speaker 1: by Ambassador of Taiba. I read what he wrote in
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal yesterday. He may be the most
Speaker 1: influential man in Washington, d C. Who's not an American.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad to see that. What do you make
Speaker 1: of our NATO allies, Eliana, Well.
Speaker 9: I think it's unfortunate that they're not joining this. Of course,
Speaker 9: you know, the President's determination to seize Greenland that came
Speaker 9: before this probably soured them to a certain extent. But
Speaker 9: nonetheless I think it's too bad and the UK in
Speaker 9: particular not backing the president on this. I think it's
Speaker 9: shameful and people will remember it this way. Certainly the
Speaker 9: President will remember it for the next three years of
Speaker 9: his presidency.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate.
Speaker 9: I think Mark Rudy is looking to, you know, lean
Speaker 9: on them to join this fight. But where our NATO
Speaker 9: allies are not stepping up our golf, you know, frenemies
Speaker 9: certainly are and pressing him to the folks in the
Speaker 9: region know how important this is, and our Israeli allies
Speaker 9: are certainly pressing him to stay the course on this
Speaker 9: and I think the President himself, you know, thinks in
Speaker 9: historical terms.
Speaker 3: He did before, but.
Speaker 9: Certainly after that assassination attempt in Butler even more so,
Speaker 9: he's thinking in historical terms, and this is really his
Speaker 9: opportunity to leave a mark on history.
Speaker 1: This is the worlds visit by far the most important thing.
Speaker 9: I mean, there's no there's no question, you know, ridding
Speaker 9: ridding Venezuela of Maduro and bringing him to face a
Speaker 9: trial in the United States was important, but this is
Speaker 9: far more important. It's a country that's menace not just
Speaker 9: the region, but the world and the United States for
Speaker 9: nearly five decades, and he he has an opportunity. And
Speaker 9: not only that, you know, he's halfway there. It seems
Speaker 9: from what General General Kine and others have said that,
Speaker 9: you know, we're about two or three weeks out from
Speaker 9: finishing this up.
Speaker 4: So Elean, I want to switch topics. I have.
Speaker 1: I've hesitated to talk about this, but pretty much every
Speaker 1: crazy person in the world now knows we have the
Speaker 1: softest targets in the world. At every major airline airport
Speaker 1: in the country, hundreds of people stacked outside of TSA,
Speaker 1: one hundred thousands of people congregated with luggage and children
Speaker 1: and all that sort of if anything goes wrong at
Speaker 1: any of these airports, who gets blamed for this? I
Speaker 1: think the Democrats do. But do you agree with me.
Speaker 9: You know, Hugh, I'm not sure. It doesn't seem to
Speaker 9: this point that they're paying a price. And that's in part,
Speaker 9: I think because of the message around it. My former
Speaker 9: colleague Rachel Baide made a great point in her wonderful
Speaker 9: newsletter yesterday that people are wondering why Republican lawmakers aren't
Speaker 9: holding press conferences in airports with the lines behind them
Speaker 9: and with TSA agents at the who aren't getting paid
Speaker 9: at the lecterns talking about what they're suffering and what
Speaker 9: the dangers are to the public in the middle of
Speaker 9: a war. While this is happening, and you know, we're
Speaker 9: on the heels of spring break, there could also be
Speaker 9: a wonderful ad campaign. My colleague Christine Rosen mentioned about
Speaker 9: who ruined spring Break? That's a lighter, you know, lighter
Speaker 9: way to go about it, but it's serious, and I
Speaker 9: think the idea of having press conferences in airports and
Speaker 9: drawing attention to this is a good one. But I
Speaker 9: think because the White House has put such a priority
Speaker 9: on passing this Save Act about Voting, which has no
Speaker 9: chance of really passing the Senate. The messaging has gotten
Speaker 9: mixed and muddled, and people aren't really clear who's responsible
Speaker 9: for this.
Speaker 1: Well, from your lips to every Republican listening, that is
Speaker 1: a great idea. I say kudos to Rachel Bade for
Speaker 1: me because it is a Democrat problem, and it is
Speaker 1: a soft target, and it's a disaster. I'm worried about.
Speaker 1: Always got to talk to you. Eleana follow her on exit.
Speaker 1: Eleana y Johnson listened to her on the commentary Pod
Speaker 1: most of mornings because it's just simply the best podcast
Speaker 1: out there. Stay tuned, America.
Speaker 4: I'm here. Welcome back America.
Speaker 1: Jim tell Its, senior fellow for the Regular Suit Center
Speaker 1: for Peace, joins me. Now former Senator Talent, welcome. You're
Speaker 1: military expert. How do you think the war in Iran
Speaker 1: is going.
Speaker 2: The way anybody who understands the American military knew it
Speaker 2: was going to go. We're pounding the stuffing out of them. Essentially,
Speaker 2: the military action is not over because we have some
Speaker 2: cleanup to do. You if you're running a let me
Speaker 2: give you some advice you if you're if you're running
Speaker 2: a country that has a coastline and you or an
Speaker 2: adversary of the United States, do not give the United
Speaker 2: States Navy an air force two months to build up
Speaker 2: unless you have very good integrated air defenses, because they're
Speaker 2: gonna just they can destroy your economy, your military apparatus.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what is happening. And anybody who thinks
Speaker 2: it isn't happening you is not living in the real world.
Speaker 2: But if you want to stop an adversary, you have
Speaker 2: to change their intention or destroy their capability. President Trump
Speaker 2: tried to change their intentions, so did every other president.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't change. So now we're destroying their capability and
Speaker 2: that's going to stop them.
Speaker 1: Now, Senator, I'm afraid of something that I call victory creep.
Speaker 1: You know, admission creep is victory creep is. No matter
Speaker 1: what we do, the Left is going to say it
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. To me, it's clear we've destroyed their offensive capability.
Speaker 1: The one thing the really the straits got to be open,
Speaker 1: and we will open that. That every like Mark Montgomery
Speaker 1: tell me we're going to open this train. That's a
Speaker 1: question of will and time, and we've got it. We
Speaker 1: got to get the highly enriched uranium or it's not
Speaker 1: a win win win because that notes can be dirty bombs.
Speaker 4: Do you agree with me on that?
Speaker 2: Not really you, because we've just we've destroyed I believe
Speaker 2: we did last summer.
Speaker 3: We destroyed the complex.
Speaker 2: You have to not you have to be able to
Speaker 2: make a bomb, and then you have to be able
Speaker 2: to weaponize the bomb. And they may have It's not
Speaker 2: a good thing if they have the uranium. But if
Speaker 2: we get the rest of it and the regime staggers on,
Speaker 2: we can police that. I mean, I think they're years
Speaker 2: and years behind in terms of nuclear production, and you
Speaker 2: I don't think they're ever going to be able to rebuild.
Speaker 2: The economy was a basket case before this, and the
Speaker 2: Israelis are going to police this, and they obviously know
Speaker 2: everything that's going on in Iran. So I would like
Speaker 2: to get it now. I would not set that as
Speaker 2: a bar I never did.
Speaker 1: I mean, Okay, what's in my definition by the program,
Speaker 1: I will yield it. Let me ask you this. The
Speaker 1: Israelis can kill whomever they want. Should they kill a
Speaker 1: Rachi and the speaker and the new head of the
Speaker 1: IRGC before they're done.
Speaker 2: Well, that depends on something you and I don't know,
Speaker 2: which is whose game are those people playing? Whose game
Speaker 2: might they play? And this is one of the things
Speaker 2: Trump is doing in these negotiations. And by the way,
Speaker 2: can I make a comment about the negotiations that I
Speaker 2: haven't heard anybody else make?
Speaker 4: Please?
Speaker 2: Okay, I've watched Trump, I read his book. I did
Speaker 2: a lot of negotiation when I was younger and in
Speaker 2: the Congress. This man has been negotiating longer than the
Speaker 2: Islamic Republicans has been around. He is aiming master at it,
Speaker 2: and he wants everybody speculating as to what he's doing.
Speaker 2: When you do that, you are entering his domain. You're
Speaker 2: fighting the shark in the water. The only two things
Speaker 2: we know that I feel certain that he's doing here
Speaker 2: is number one, having destroyed their capability, he's checking in
Speaker 2: with them to see if they're going to change their intention.
Speaker 2: In other words, he's saying, look, have you had enough yet?
Speaker 2: And then the second thing I know about this is
Speaker 2: he is not a man who's going to give the
Speaker 2: other side a better deal than they could have gotten
Speaker 2: a month ago before. He's pounded the crud out of them.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is not going to happen. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think I would. I would think an alien had
Speaker 2: taken over Donald Trump's body if he gives them a
Speaker 2: better It's just not in the soul of a negotiator
Speaker 2: to do that. Remember, I saw a clip the other
Speaker 2: day where he was speculating. He says they're in a
Speaker 2: very weak bargaining position. I mean, that's a.
Speaker 3: Red crack bull.
Speaker 1: The richest man in Rome and part of the original
Speaker 1: Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and puppy Marcus Crassus used to
Speaker 1: pull a private fire brigade up to a house that
Speaker 1: was burning or a building it was burning an ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: and he'd make an offer on the property and if
Speaker 1: they turn him down, they.
Speaker 4: Just wait till some more of it burned down.
Speaker 3: And so that's what he did.
Speaker 4: That's what he's doing.
Speaker 2: Trump is I'm sure he's also thinking way ahead and
Speaker 2: thinking about things like, hmm, once we get controlled the straight,
Speaker 2: how much of that oil can we get a piece
Speaker 2: of that oil? I mean, he's thinking about all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's worried about the politics, and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be either. Because this is going to be over
Speaker 2: well before the midterms. It doesn't matter what all these
Speaker 2: people now are saying, the Economist magazine and the rest
Speaker 2: of it. It's going to be seen as a win
Speaker 2: by the American people, and the American people liked their
Speaker 2: were short and successful. Again, this is not something I
Speaker 2: would love the campaign on this if I was running
Speaker 2: the cycle.
Speaker 1: So about NATO, Jim, you and I both like NATO
Speaker 1: and I'm mad at him for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, NATO consists of more, remember than just
Speaker 2: the Spanish or the British or the French. This has
Speaker 2: told us what we already knew, is that there are
Speaker 2: certain partners in NATO who have neither the capability nor
Speaker 2: the resolution to really add anything to the alliance. And
Speaker 2: that's that's the truth that the President has sent. It's
Speaker 2: the truth Vance has sent, Rubio has sent. Mike Johnson
Speaker 2: sent it when he spoke to the to the House
Speaker 2: of Commons. I mean, it's you know, and I know
Speaker 2: some of the Western Europeans are very angry about this,
Speaker 2: but when I hear that, it reminds me of a
Speaker 2: line from the Book of Galatians. Okay, both you and
Speaker 2: I are Christian men. Where Paul wrote the Galatian Church
Speaker 2: and he said, am I now your enemy? Because I'm
Speaker 2: telling you the truth. That's all the That's all we're
Speaker 2: telling them, which is, if you want to have a
Speaker 2: vital alliance and you want to be part of it,
Speaker 2: you have to bring something to the table the way
Speaker 2: the Israelis do, the way the Japanese are doing, and
Speaker 2: you're not bringing anything to the table. The British are
Speaker 2: down to less than thirty surface combatants, and many of
Speaker 2: them are laid up in maintenance.
Speaker 1: I think the UAE and Saudi Arabia have stepped up
Speaker 1: in my esteem, have they in yours?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: I mean Trump is he's not as shoeing alliances. He
Speaker 2: wants partners who will at least burden share, And in
Speaker 2: the case of the Israelis, I think going forward, they're
Speaker 2: going to own the burden of military activity in the
Speaker 2: Middle East. I think we're going to see a partnership
Speaker 2: emerging based on economics, Israeli military power, and the diplomatic
Speaker 2: leadership of the United States. And I think it's going
Speaker 2: to We're going to have a peaceful region.
Speaker 1: From your lips to God's ears, Jim Talent. Follow him
Speaker 1: on ext Jim Talent, Thank you. Stay tuned America. I
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Speaker 4: You've got a brand new book out.
Speaker 1: Called Mobilize, How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and
Speaker 1: Stop World War III, And it's a fabulous book.
Speaker 4: I have read half of it. I've listened to half
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Speaker 1: I got to tell you that until I listened to
Speaker 1: the book on tape for the second half of the book,
Speaker 1: I always thought we'd pronounce your first name.
Speaker 4: Shyam, but it's Shum.
Speaker 1: How many people make that mistake a day.
Speaker 3: I can't even count. O.
Speaker 1: Okrect, Well, it's a fabulous book.
Speaker 4: I'm going to start your backstory, by the way, it's fascinating.
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Speaker 4: You are in.
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Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a new reserve unit that the Army stood
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Speaker 3: A year ago.
Speaker 10: It's me, it's the CTO of META, the guy who
Speaker 10: admitted chat GPT Bob McGrew and the chief product Officer
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Speaker 10: direct commission one hundred thousand people from our economy. Some
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Speaker 3: We should do that again. We have a bounty of.
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Speaker 10: US commercial sector, I think I have a lot to
Speaker 10: give it forty four and this is a really cool
Speaker 10: opportunity to do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to miss the chant. Forty eight years ago,
Speaker 1: I help Richard Nixon write The Real War. So if
Speaker 1: the Reserve Executive Innovation Court needs a ghost writer, give
Speaker 1: me a call. Although I got to say, Madeline Heart,
Speaker 1: you gave her a cover credit. That is very cool.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of people do that. Why did you
Speaker 1: do that? And this is just writers stuff. I just
Speaker 1: love the fact you gave her cover credit.
Speaker 10: Well, she's really my co author. I mean, you know, Matteline,
Speaker 10: it's hard to find and someone who knows more about
Speaker 10: defense innovation history than Madeline, And you know, we just
Speaker 10: we kind of inspire each other to get deeper and
Speaker 10: more nuanced uncover stories. And you know, we built the
Speaker 10: first breakfast sub stack together. That's been writing on these
Speaker 10: issues for a couple of years now. So you know,
Speaker 10: she's on the cover because she deserves it.
Speaker 1: Well, I got to tell you, it's a fabulous book,
Speaker 1: and I want to recommend it to everyone who cares
Speaker 1: about national security. Everyone in uniform, everyone in the business,
Speaker 1: in the industry, everyone on hill.
Speaker 4: To go get mobilized. Here are the two top lines.
Speaker 1: My interview notes are kind of disaggregated between the part
Speaker 1: that I read and the part that I listened to,
Speaker 1: So just bear with me. Two top lines. Number one,
Speaker 1: the stockpile isn't the deterrent. Mass production is deterrent. Mass
Speaker 1: production must be put back at the center of our
Speaker 1: economy and our military. Now those two sentences are a
Speaker 1: little bit apart from each other, But explain why the
Speaker 1: stockpile isn't the deterrent.
Speaker 4: Mass production is the deterrent.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think it's one of the calculuses we really
Speaker 10: got wrong at the end of the Cold War. We
Speaker 10: kind of thought that the stockpile would scare our adversaries
Speaker 10: from doing things. But if you empirically.
Speaker 3: Looked at the world for the last twelve years.
Speaker 10: In twenty fourteen, you had the annexation of Crimea, the
Speaker 10: militarization of the Spratleys in fifteen, a run with breakout
Speaker 10: capability to get the bomb in seventeen, you had a
Speaker 10: program in Israel, you have the Hooty's holding trade hostage
Speaker 10: in the Red Sea, and of course current operations. So
Speaker 10: it's very clear, and particularly if you look at the
Speaker 10: Ukraine case, we went through ten years of production in
Speaker 10: ten weeks of fighting, and so actually the calculus was
Speaker 10: against us that the more that we did the fighting,
Speaker 10: the less deterrent we actually had. And we had told
Speaker 10: ourselves this lie that we could just run all these
Speaker 10: lines at minimum rate production or at some point we'd
Speaker 10: have enough on the shelf. And I think we should
Speaker 10: have modeled all of these things as consumables. Essentially, we
Speaker 10: are going to make them to use them in training.
Speaker 10: As a consequence, we'll need to make more things that'll
Speaker 10: allow us to innovate on what we make next, to
Speaker 10: make better things, to make them cheaper and outproduce our
Speaker 10: adversaries not only in quantity but also in quality.
Speaker 4: All Right.
Speaker 1: The second takeaway that I want to make sure everyone hears,
Speaker 1: and they got to really read Mobilized to get the
Speaker 1: details on this. Again, this is a quote. Founders are
Speaker 1: outlier talent. They most closely resemble the best artists, creative
Speaker 1: difficult and capable of prodigious output. Your argument is that
Speaker 1: the Pentagon needs to go find founders and let them
Speaker 1: do their thing. But you point out, and I've got
Speaker 1: a son and a son in law who are now separated,
Speaker 1: ones on active duty, and a seal nephew who's on
Speaker 1: active duty.
Speaker 4: This is not how the military works, schum.
Speaker 1: You know that they got to check boxes and they
Speaker 1: got to move through pipelines. How in the world are
Speaker 1: you going to get the Pentagon to listen to you
Speaker 1: on this?
Speaker 10: Well, I think the president administration really understands this. I
Speaker 10: think of Trump as a founder figure, you know, that's
Speaker 10: part of what really makes it all work. And the
Speaker 10: personnel choices below that at the willingness to put unconventional
Speaker 10: people in the right roles.
Speaker 3: But the most important.
Speaker 10: Argument is that this is actually our history. This is
Speaker 10: not a new prescription or recommendation. You know when I
Speaker 10: say founder, First of all, as a country, we call
Speaker 10: them the founding fathers for a reason. We understand that
Speaker 10: there's something special about founders. Then if you just look
Speaker 10: at the economics, compare the US to Europe. Europe has
Speaker 10: created zero companies from scratch in the last fifty years
Speaker 10: worth more than one hundred million dollars. America has created
Speaker 10: all of her trillion dollar companies from scratch in the
Speaker 10: last fifty years. What's the difference. Their companies are hundreds
Speaker 10: of years old. We make our companies every day, we
Speaker 10: get new companies. We have founder figures. But if you
Speaker 10: look at the history of defense innovation, there too, we
Speaker 10: have founders, even if they're not literally building the company,
Speaker 10: they are founding something like Kelly Johnson, the founder of Skunkworks.
Speaker 10: He built forty one airframes in his career, including the
Speaker 10: U two which we still fly in the SR seventy one,
Speaker 10: which is still has the record the speed record for
Speaker 10: the fastest manned airframe. You think about Rick in the
Speaker 10: Nuclear Navy, He's the founder of the Nuclear Navy, Higgins
Speaker 10: and the Higgins boat. In this case, we are looking
Speaker 10: at industry there, but you know, it's a maniacal obsession.
Speaker 10: Like we ninety two percent of all boats in World
Speaker 10: War Two were Higgins boats, and the Navy didn't want.
Speaker 3: It, and the Navy tried to copy it.
Speaker 10: Then despite is despite the system, not because of the system,
Speaker 10: And that takes a certain sort of special character that
Speaker 10: I think is uniquely prevalent in America, and you're right.
Speaker 3: You can't have the whole military be that.
Speaker 10: And it's always going to be, you know, prickly and
Speaker 10: hard to accept, but you need enough of them. And
Speaker 10: that's really I think the diagnosis of Sorry, go ahead, Hu, I'm.
Speaker 4: So glad you brought up Rickover in the book.
Speaker 1: I know, and you quote hel mel Zuomwall as saying,
Speaker 1: the United States Navy has two enemies of Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and Rickover. But we would be so screwed if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for him and Rickover em betting the nuclear Navy.
Speaker 1: We would be absolutely screwed if we did not have
Speaker 1: the advantage that the nuclear Navy brought us. And that's
Speaker 1: all because of Rickover. And he was a pain in
Speaker 1: the neck for every president and everything. Now, but boy,
Speaker 1: do we need people like him. And we're going to
Speaker 1: come to the colonel a little bit. I want to
Speaker 1: give you a problem, chum, to think in the back
Speaker 1: of your head. I'm going to bring it back to
Speaker 1: you as a hypo in our last segment. It's not
Speaker 1: out of immobilized, it's out of my head. Soon for a
Speaker 1: moment based on the Iran War, that someone comes in
Speaker 1: and says to you, we need a really long range
Speaker 1: stealth drone that can launch from anywhere in the United
Speaker 1: States north, south, east, West, or Alaska. Has to carry
Speaker 1: a big payload, and it must be mass produced in
Speaker 1: America at many sites. I'd like you to come back
Speaker 1: and tell me how we would do that and how
Speaker 1: long it would.
Speaker 4: Take us to do that. But let's start with the
Speaker 4: Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 1: I walk by Palmer maybe three times a year when
Speaker 1: I'm in Orange County, California. I always think he ought
Speaker 1: to be thrown out of the place what we are
Speaker 1: because he looks so goofy. But I don't know him.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what he was doing with Anderroll
Speaker 1: in Columbus.
Speaker 4: Tell that story.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, we're bringing production back and say we
Speaker 10: I mean America. But in this case Andrel and Palmer
Speaker 10: Lucky and the and the founders VANDREL have built a
Speaker 10: new facility called Arsenal one five thousand, five million square
Speaker 10: feet in Columbus, Ohio to start mass producing things. And
Speaker 10: it's a flexible manufacturing configuration, so you can change up
Speaker 10: what you're mixing. You have flexible lines. Part of the
Speaker 10: magic of the facility is that it's software enabled, so
Speaker 10: you can actually change your work constructions and build better
Speaker 10: versions of the equipment as the aligned as the assembly
Speaker 10: line goes on, which is you know, inspired by by
Speaker 10: modern marbles like Tesla. It's how Tesla produces things. So
Speaker 10: bringing the very best of American modern manufacturing for scale
Speaker 10: right here in the heartland and doing it for our
Speaker 10: national defense.
Speaker 1: Now, did the Pentagon say to him go off and
Speaker 1: do that or is he doing that on his own
Speaker 1: and hoping that they'll buy his fighter?
Speaker 3: The theory very much the latter.
Speaker 10: I mean that is Andrel's strategy, which is they are
Speaker 10: a defense products company, which is to say, they are
Speaker 10: taking their capital, not tax payer financed R and D.
Speaker 10: They're taking private capital, building things on their own spec
Speaker 10: their own belief of what's valuable, and then trying to
Speaker 10: sell them and then start iterating and iterate with the customer.
Speaker 10: From there, of course you're gonna keep evolving them. And
Speaker 10: that's a model that we used to do during World
Speaker 10: War Two. The Higgins boat was exactly that. Andrew Higgins
Speaker 10: built that boat on his own costs, his own expense.
Speaker 10: It was his own vision, uh, and then he offered
Speaker 10: it to the Navy instead of the other way around,
Speaker 10: which is really like, hey, the Navy sits around, or
Speaker 10: any service sits around for a couple of years, writes
Speaker 10: the perfect set of requirements that are completely infeasible, have
Speaker 10: no trade space, and then you go to industry and
Speaker 10: you say, please build this thing, and of course there's
Speaker 10: no given there's no trade space. You kind of come
Speaker 10: up with the kitchen sync that doesn't float. The modifications
Speaker 10: to the frigate show exactly that you know, somehow a
Speaker 10: commercial product from the.
Speaker 1: Attoun killing me. The frigate's killing me. Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Sean Sankar is coming back. His book is Mobilized. I
Speaker 1: put it on my x feed, go immediately to am
Speaker 1: is on and order a bunch of them. Or you
Speaker 1: can listen to it on books on tape over at Audible,
Speaker 1: as I've been doing.
Speaker 4: For the last couple of days. It's very easy. Remember Mobilized,
Speaker 4: Stay tuned. Welcome back in America.
Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewittt talking with Sham Sangkar about his brand
Speaker 1: new book Mobilize, which you wrote with Madeline Art. Mobilize
Speaker 1: is a three day read, or it's a day read
Speaker 1: in a day of listening, which is how I did it.
Speaker 1: And I got to say it left me more hopeful
Speaker 1: about World War three not happening than I've been in
Speaker 1: a long time.
Speaker 4: And let's go to that.
Speaker 1: You say, Sham, that your purpose is to prevent World
Speaker 1: War three and to win the battle for the twenty
Speaker 1: first century, and you're optimistic.
Speaker 4: And again this is a quote.
Speaker 1: The pieces for defense reformation are in place, The capitol
Speaker 1: class has shown up, the founders are busy building, and
Speaker 1: the Department of War is ready to innovate. Take your
Speaker 1: time and explain how in twenty twenty seven China does
Speaker 1: bade Taiwan, and then they don't do it in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight, and then they don't do it in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine, and.
Speaker 4: Then they explain how you rolled out. You persuaded me.
Speaker 3: We got to do.
Speaker 10: That, Yeah, exactly. So you know, of course, the entire
Speaker 10: will start at the beginning. The entire point of the
Speaker 10: Department of War is to deter conflict. You know, to
Speaker 10: be so strong that piece is the only thing that
Speaker 10: makes sense, because picking a fight with us means you're
Speaker 10: going to lose. Now, in order to provide for that
Speaker 10: sort of defense, we need to change the adversary's calculus
Speaker 10: at the margin. You know, the question is not to
Speaker 10: we don't have to make that case for all eternity.
Speaker 10: We have to make that case this year, the next year.
Speaker 10: In the present moment, we face an adversary that has
Speaker 10: systematically invested in countering American military strength since Goal War One,
Speaker 10: since nineteen ninety one roughly, and so they've had a
Speaker 10: long time to go after that. And if you think
Speaker 10: about the context that we're in, you compare it to
Speaker 10: World War Two. You know, one of the things that
Speaker 10: I'm really trying to make the argument in the book
Speaker 10: is that we need to mobilize just like we mobilized
Speaker 10: in World War Two. What happened was not that we
Speaker 10: flipped a light switch and magically all the automotive factories
Speaker 10: turned into military facilities or you know, military production facilities.
Speaker 10: Really what happened is in thirty eight FDR pre mobilized
Speaker 10: by taking the number two from GM, the person Bill Knutsen,
Speaker 10: who had perfected mass production, and putting him in charge
Speaker 10: of war production, and we used len lease as an
Speaker 10: opportunity to ramp production. It took us eighteen months to
Speaker 10: build and retool factories our moment to do that would
Speaker 10: have been Ukraine. That would have been the ideal time
Speaker 10: would have been. We could have taken that lesson I
Speaker 10: just talked about where we realized we're expending much faster
Speaker 10: than we're producing, and we could have fired up, refired
Speaker 10: up the arsenal of freedom. The next best moment to
Speaker 10: do it is now, because if we look at a fight,
Speaker 10: a high end fight with China, we have maybe eight
Speaker 10: days of weapons on hand. That's not a deterrent. We
Speaker 10: need to have eight hundred days of weapons on hand,
Speaker 10: and we need to be able to produce these things
Speaker 10: at a scale that allows us to have economies to
Speaker 10: scale and the cost function. We see that with the
Speaker 10: current interceptors that we're using, and to innovate on the
Speaker 10: platforms themselves, which is the other lesson of Ukraine, which
Speaker 10: is that you know, the adversary gets a vote and
Speaker 10: they keep changing their approaches to counter the quality and
Speaker 10: capability of your weapons, which means you need to be
Speaker 10: able to keep changing your weapons so that they're still effective.
Speaker 1: You know you have in Lea in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book, Ukraine is producing one hundred thousand drones a month.
Speaker 1: The United States five thousand a month. That is so stunning.
Speaker 1: How can we not be doing that? Is there some
Speaker 1: technological difficulty like death isn't at our doorstep?
Speaker 4: That doesn't make us do this?
Speaker 10: All of this technology in when we invented, whether it's
Speaker 10: the semiconductor, even the drone. The drone is an American birthright.
Speaker 10: The Predator was the first operational drone of any significance.
Speaker 10: We then got in our own way. We said, you
Speaker 10: know what a drone is a flying missile, so we
Speaker 10: should itar control it. And then the FAA said no
Speaker 10: beyond line of sight operations, which killed the commercial market.
Speaker 10: I will posit to you, and it's one of the
Speaker 10: chapters in the book on how national security and economic
Speaker 10: prosperity are two sides of the same coin. I'll posit
Speaker 10: you a world where if we didn't have these regulations,
Speaker 10: maybe General Atomics would have a consumer subsidiary that we
Speaker 10: would call DJI, that the entire consumer drone industry would
Speaker 10: exist here in the US, and we wouldn't have seded
Speaker 10: that to China. Having done that, we need to invest
Speaker 10: in the scale by buying these things and employing them,
Speaker 10: which is what we've learned from Ukraine. That number one
Speaker 10: hundred thousand is actually data. At this point, they're building
Speaker 10: about four to five million drones a year, so you
Speaker 10: can kind of four exit number roughly.
Speaker 4: Watching the ir War, I think, would you have changed
Speaker 4: in this apartment?
Speaker 10: There has their head on straight around this. They are
Speaker 10: going to They have a great plan to scale up
Speaker 10: the production and consumption of drones.
Speaker 3: Tie that into forced generation.
Speaker 10: And how we're going to consume these drones and training
Speaker 10: exercises which will create a consistent demands. That's going to
Speaker 10: help us materialize the supply base that we need to
Speaker 10: produce exactly that quantity or more in the US.
Speaker 1: Have you spending time at Admiral Mark Montgomery. He's a
Speaker 1: guest on the show often because he thinks the way
Speaker 1: to deter China is to make sure that they realize
Speaker 1: the Taiwan Strait's going to have a million drones in it,
Speaker 1: and World War three on the other side of Taiwan
Speaker 1: out east of Taiwan, they don't want to mess with
Speaker 1: our Virginia class submarines and our surface ships.
Speaker 4: Have you had a chance to sit down with him
Speaker 4: and talk about this stuff.
Speaker 10: I have not sat down with him, but I think
Speaker 10: there'd be a lot of agreement in the broad strokes
Speaker 10: of aproproach. I mean I do take a lot, you know,
Speaker 10: I always heed John Boyd's advice that you need the
Speaker 10: high low mix, and you know, the sort of flip
Speaker 10: and answer that all you need are drones. I don't
Speaker 10: think is right, but you absolutely do need drones.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Now, I like the fact you bring in
Speaker 1: John Boyd and the udul loup. Let me also give
Speaker 1: you a hat tip for taking the time to confirm
Speaker 1: for the smart reader of Mobilized Alger Hiss was indeed
Speaker 1: a Soviet spy. You would know this, shim, but I've
Speaker 1: been asking first time guests forever. Was algabizo Soviet spy?
Speaker 1: Has a test about whether or not they know anything
Speaker 1: about history. Most people don't even know who he is.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad he's in here. I didn't know he
Speaker 1: worked for that committee. Let me go now to the Colonel.
Speaker 1: Because Colonel Drew Cooker. Am I saying his name right?
Speaker 3: Coocker kukor yeah, cuckor he's.
Speaker 4: An amazing guy.
Speaker 1: Tell people about him and Maven because he should get
Speaker 1: an American Medal of Freedom.
Speaker 10: I call these founder figures heretics and heroes, because usually
Speaker 10: they have some sort of heresy that you know, the
Speaker 10: bureaucracy doesn't like and tries to kill them over, whether
Speaker 10: it's Rickover or even Billy Mitchell, the founder of the
Speaker 10: Air Force. And then later we realized that they really
Speaker 10: were national treasures, they were heroes. And Colonel Drew Kukor
Speaker 10: is exactly that we have a marine colonel. You know,
Speaker 10: he grew up a single mother, grew up pretty poor
Speaker 10: in southern California, and a Mormon household.
Speaker 3: His only path to college was Rotzi.
Speaker 10: After college, he joined as a man intel officer, served
Speaker 10: for a long time in a lot of places, but
Speaker 10: he had a seminal experience trying to evacuate the Izadi
Speaker 10: off of Mount Sinjar as Isis was closing in on them,
Speaker 10: and you know, there was a human error made along
Speaker 10: the way where a young marine thought they saw an
Speaker 10: RPG and waved off the helicopters from landing and ex
Speaker 10: filling these people, and as a consequence, about a thousand
Speaker 10: people were enslaved, raped and tortured over the ensuing number
Speaker 10: of years here.
Speaker 3: And he always felt there ought to have been a.
Speaker 10: Way for technology to provide overwatch and support and make
Speaker 10: this possible. Some number of years later, he was given
Speaker 10: the opportunity to go deep in the bowels of the
Speaker 10: basement of the Pentagon and start Project Mademan and Project
Speaker 10: Maven was the third offset, a kind of crash crash
Speaker 10: effort to bring AI to the Department of Defense, and
Speaker 10: he succeeded wildly, and because of his success, the bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: Came after him.
Speaker 10: The services wanted you know, they had their own AI projects.
Speaker 10: They didn't like that this was being done at.
Speaker 3: The OSW level.
Speaker 10: His success threatened other folks' equities along the way, But
Speaker 10: he was so good at controlling.
Speaker 3: How do I deal with acquisition? How do I deal
Speaker 3: with technology?
Speaker 10: He went to Silken Valley, he proselytized, he got a
Speaker 10: lot of American technologists involved in the fight here, and
Speaker 10: how do I deal with all of the bureaucracy that's
Speaker 10: coming after him? This poor man that they waged lawfare
Speaker 10: against him. IG investigation after ig investigation. I mean, maybe
Speaker 10: some of the most salacious details is he was accused
Speaker 10: of housing illegal immigrants in his basement and having bags
Speaker 10: of money that were given to him by contractors, and
Speaker 10: driving really fancy cars.
Speaker 1: These chargers doesn't break, So seriously, we're going to continue
Speaker 1: this after the break kukh Or. Colonel kuk Or deserved
Speaker 1: complete egeneration on the radio if anyone didn't know, he's
Speaker 1: already exonerated.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. The book is Mobilized. Mobilize yourself
Speaker 1: and go get mobilized. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
Speaker 1: Seam has done a pretty good job of explaining Colonel
Speaker 1: Kukor's personality to you. You're going to have to read
Speaker 1: Mobilize to figure out how Maven should not have happened.
Speaker 1: Not in the military bureaucracy we have. But I came away.
Speaker 1: It eventually got to be a program of record over
Speaker 1: at NGA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. But seem tell
Speaker 1: me if you agree with me, I think the ig
Speaker 1: O to be abolished at the Pentagon. I'd rather have fraud,
Speaker 1: a little bit of fraud, than a lot of abuse
Speaker 1: of the ig process. And it seems to me it
Speaker 1: is abused at the Pentagon more than it's used.
Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
Speaker 10: You know it's a contrarian position, but I think you're
Speaker 10: more right than most people want to admit, you know,
Speaker 10: we every decision has an opportunity cost, and the opportunity
Speaker 10: costs of this sort of lawfair internally is you slow
Speaker 10: everything down, and anyone who takes even an iota of
Speaker 10: risk in the national interest ends up sacrificed their career.
Speaker 10: So what you get is a system that at best
Speaker 10: is locked into mediocrity and doesn't reward anyone who tries
Speaker 10: to stick their neck out to do the right thing
Speaker 10: for their fellow uniform service members.
Speaker 4: And you get fragging.
Speaker 1: I can tell you stories of four star superb general
Speaker 1: officers who got fragged by an IG complaint to which
Speaker 1: there was nothing, but they get knocked off their path,
Speaker 1: and because of the pyramid, they never get back on
Speaker 1: their path.
Speaker 4: Not like industry.
Speaker 1: Somebody files a bogus charge against you at Pallenteer, you'll
Speaker 1: fight it through and you'll still be running the CTO
Speaker 1: at Pallenteer. It's not how the military works. You're up
Speaker 1: or you're out. And so it made me angry. I
Speaker 1: want to go over to Andy Grove. I had no
Speaker 1: idea of his backstory, thank you for including it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I didn't know about David Packard. I knew about McNamara.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows about McNamara. I knew about Forrestall because I
Speaker 1: read World War Two, but I didn't know about David
Speaker 1: Packard at DEPSEK, and I didn't know about Andy Grove.
Speaker 1: Did you intend when you started this to kind of
Speaker 1: give people a history of the military industrial complex and
Speaker 1: how it began to break?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 10: I wanted to remind certainly my fellow technologists that the
Speaker 10: history of technology in this country starts with the military.
Speaker 10: The largest employer in the fifties in Silicon Valley was
Speaker 10: Lockheed Martin. You know, we built the Krona satellites there,
Speaker 10: and that people like David Packard, who is a co
Speaker 10: founder of Hewlett Packard, served as depth SEC def and
Speaker 10: that there's actually a long history of connection. Of course,
Speaker 10: he was followed later on by Bill Perry, which a
Speaker 10: lot of people don't know. He founded the first digital
Speaker 10: sigan company called Electronic Systems Laboratory in Silicon Valley before
Speaker 10: he ever came to government.
Speaker 4: I did not know that there's an opportunity.
Speaker 1: All I know about him is the Last Supper, And
Speaker 1: you kind of redeemed his reputation for me, because you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not really a geek, a military geek. You
Speaker 1: don't understand that there's a lot of stuff that came
Speaker 1: before the Last Supper with William Perry. But you lay
Speaker 1: it out so you're not on a vendetta with anybody.
Speaker 1: But you do give us the whole history of where
Speaker 1: the Pentagon began to break in sixty one up to now.
Speaker 1: Do you think it is healing itself right now?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 10: I've never been more optimistic. I mean, more has changed
Speaker 10: in the Pentagon the last year than the prior nineteen
Speaker 10: years that I've been doing this.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Wow, has the Iran War shown you anything that we
Speaker 1: were not ready for? Are you impressed by anything that
Speaker 1: you hadn't seen before?
Speaker 10: Well, it's hard not to be impressed by the performance
Speaker 10: of our uniform service members here. You know, they really
Speaker 10: are better than we deserve. I think it only underscores
Speaker 10: a lot of the points both that I've made in
Speaker 10: the book and that I think the Pentagon is already
Speaker 10: aware of of the need to move very quickly on mobilizing,
Speaker 10: in particular to recognize that our industrial capacity is going
Speaker 10: to be determinative of whether the twenty first century is
Speaker 10: another American century.
Speaker 4: This is also Jeremiah against overregulation.
Speaker 1: I did not know that Peter Tiel had said that
Speaker 1: the bite and the atom were there was a dumble standards.
Speaker 1: Bytes were unregulated and atoms were regulated. But he's right.
Speaker 1: I was the land News lawyer before I got into
Speaker 1: the broadcast BIS for thirty years. And you know, sean
Speaker 1: regulation kills building, so it must kill defense building. And
Speaker 1: we've got to stop that if we're going to catch up.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and you it's compounded.
Speaker 10: It's not just the commercial regulations that any normal company
Speaker 10: would deal with. You have the unique regulations the MONOPSI
Speaker 10: comes up with, whether it's it's cost plus contracting, and
Speaker 10: how they're going to audit you, all the compliance standards
Speaker 10: that are kind of byzantine and give you no leverage.
Speaker 10: We basically asked our defense industrial companies to become compliance
Speaker 10: companies that happened to make weapons occasionally.
Speaker 1: And you also make an argument that the requirement sheet
Speaker 1: should come at the end and be reverse engineered from
Speaker 1: the product that made so much sense to me.
Speaker 4: Is it being at all.
Speaker 1: Received by the acquisition managers whose careers are built on
Speaker 1: requirements over at the pentagon.
Speaker 3: Of the cases?
Speaker 10: So yes, in broad strokes, which is to say that
Speaker 10: this team at the Pentagon has implemented a change in
Speaker 10: how we think about acquisition. We're moving to portfolios as
Speaker 10: opposed to programs, and in that portfolio you have a
Speaker 10: lot of autonomy and discretion of how you're going to
Speaker 10: accomplish the end goal that you signed up for, versus
Speaker 10: being constrained in the specific systems you happen to be,
Speaker 10: happened to have picked, or originally were funded. So that's
Speaker 10: that's a great decision. It's going to increase discretion.
Speaker 1: I'm coming back for one more segment with Sean Sankar.
Speaker 1: His book is Mobilized. Mobilize yourself and go get mobilized
Speaker 1: and you will thank.
Speaker 4: Him for it. Can also order it from audible if
Speaker 4: you want to listen to it. Very well read. Stay
Speaker 4: tuned in America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Welcome back to America. I'm
Speaker 4: Hugh Hewett.
Speaker 1: I've fairly scratched the surface of Mobilize. I've got five
Speaker 1: pages of notes and I'm not even close to being
Speaker 1: done with it, So get mobilized for yourself. Sean, thanks
Speaker 1: for finishing with wild Bill Donovan. I was reminded of
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill and Professor Linderman when you did that. But
Speaker 1: I want to finish with Kevin Zenger because I've never
Speaker 1: heard of him before. Cleveland from warn Ohile, he went
Speaker 1: to Yale, did law finance, failed a couple of time,
Speaker 1: and now he's got Divergent Technologies in El Segundo. First
Speaker 1: of all, why is he out of his mind in
Speaker 1: building anything in California? And then secondly, tell people about Divergent.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Diversion is an entirely new additive manufacturer. So they
Speaker 10: actually have come up with these autonomous pods that take
Speaker 10: the design of what you're trying to do, compute entirely
Speaker 10: new geometries. It's quite elegant and beautiful, almost almost like
Speaker 10: alien when you look at it, which allows you to
Speaker 10: save a lot of weight and then prints these things.
Speaker 10: So now you can build the bodies of cruise missiles
Speaker 10: at a pace and scale with many fewer parts than
Speaker 10: you could anywhere.
Speaker 3: And you can take these systems.
Speaker 10: And distribute them, so you now have a distributed production
Speaker 10: capability that's much more resilient to attack. Now he started
Speaker 10: doing this for high end exquisite automotive, where the original
Speaker 10: market was, but in the present moment, in the context
Speaker 10: of mobilizing. This is the way to radically accelerate technologies
Speaker 10: like this, to radically accelerate how we produce it munitions,
Speaker 10: and to radically reduce the cost and time of producing them.
Speaker 4: So what he's making is everything. Did I come away?
Speaker 1: I came away with the impression that he can pretty
Speaker 1: much make anything with his DAPs model.
Speaker 4: Just tell him what to build. Am I right about that?
Speaker 3: That's right?
Speaker 10: Yeah, parts for cars, airframes, you know, drone bodies, and
Speaker 10: they're much simpler. You know that they're made to assemble.
Speaker 10: They're designed for manufacturer ability. You can plug in component
Speaker 10: to put in the explosive, put in the engine, and
Speaker 10: you're ready to go.
Speaker 1: Why is he in cal I'm very serious about this.
Speaker 1: I teach in California every other year for a semester,
Speaker 1: but I live in Virginia. I got driven out of
Speaker 1: California after twenty five years because it was so crazy.
Speaker 4: Why did he start it in California?
Speaker 3: We'd have to ask him.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, all right, Next question, China has
Speaker 1: zero globally competitive enter prize companies.
Speaker 4: Should we take great comfort in that.
Speaker 3: Enterprise software companies?
Speaker 10: And I think we should because you know, in the
Speaker 10: present moment, for some people, it's fashionable to be kind
Speaker 10: of down on America, to think, you know, our best
Speaker 10: years are behind us, or that everyone else is out
Speaker 10: competing us in I think nothing could.
Speaker 3: Be further from the truth.
Speaker 10: In particular, when you think about software, it's easy to
Speaker 10: think about software as a technical skill, but I don't
Speaker 10: think that's what makes software work.
Speaker 3: It's a cultural skill because if it was a.
Speaker 10: Technical skill China, India, they would have enterprise software companies
Speaker 10: that are successful in the world stage.
Speaker 3: Isn't it strange that they don't?
Speaker 10: And my argument to you would be this cultural skill
Speaker 10: is uniquely American. It actually doesn't come from Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3: It comes from Iowa.
Speaker 10: It comes from Bob Neys, a great Iowan who is
Speaker 10: the co inventor of the transistor. He was a co
Speaker 10: founder of Intel. And it comes from this culture rooted
Speaker 10: in a Midwestern sensibility, a willingness to play positive some games,
Speaker 10: an ability to collaborate over long periods of time on
Speaker 10: really hard work. He brought that to Silicon Valley. He
Speaker 10: invented the term open door policy. So many things we
Speaker 10: take for granted today culturally are actually deeply rooted in
Speaker 10: the American spirit from the Midwest.
Speaker 1: That is a very inspiring story. Now I want to
Speaker 1: finish with the hypo that I gave you. We need
Speaker 1: a long range stealth drone that can carry a big payload.
Speaker 1: It's got to be able to launch from Florida and
Speaker 1: Texas and California and Alaska and New York.
Speaker 4: We got to be able to move it around. It's
Speaker 4: got to be mass produced in America from many sites.
Speaker 4: Can we do that? And how long would it take
Speaker 4: us to do it?
Speaker 3: Well? I'm confident we could do it.
Speaker 10: I don't have the answer on Napkin math in the
Speaker 10: context of this interview yet, but what I would tell
Speaker 10: you is the way I would bet on doing it
Speaker 10: is how we did it in the past, which is
Speaker 10: to have five or six competing efforts to take the
Speaker 10: very best mavericks and innovators from both American industry and
Speaker 10: inside the government, the heretics who are latent waiting for
Speaker 10: an opportunity to do something great, and.
Speaker 3: Let them compete on different ideas.
Speaker 10: This is how we built the submarine launch ballistic missile
Speaker 10: think of it as Polaris today. But Admiral Raybourne had
Speaker 10: four competing efforts going concurrently, and he protected those efforts
Speaker 10: that the engineers could do the messy, chaotic work that
Speaker 10: is required for innovation to deliver for the nation.
Speaker 4: Now, last question, it's kind of odd.
Speaker 1: This week Sixty Minutes ran its story on the fact
Speaker 1: that American shipbuilding is a disaster, and we have gone
Speaker 1: over to han Laan, South Korea and ask them to
Speaker 1: buy the Philly shipyard and they're going to teach us
Speaker 1: how to make ships again. Then your book arrives mobilized
Speaker 1: last week.
Speaker 4: Do you think.
Speaker 1: Everyone has kind of recognized the problem and is singing
Speaker 1: from the same hymnal now on fixing it?
Speaker 10: We're much We're certainly much closer to it, and I
Speaker 10: love to see that story. Sixty Minutes. They were also
Speaker 10: covering empty material and rare earth. So we seem to
Speaker 10: all be converging on the same set of fundamental truths
Speaker 10: and the realization that it's going to take motivated founder
Speaker 10: like figures to solve these problems.
Speaker 1: All right, And this is a quiz, it's not really
Speaker 1: a fair question. You mentioned Leonidas in the book. You
Speaker 1: don't tell me what Leonidas is. What is Leonidas?
Speaker 4: A cool name?
Speaker 10: Best name in the book is it's a it's a
Speaker 10: system made by Epirus that is a counter drone system
Speaker 10: that is a non kinetic effect, so it basically pushes
Speaker 10: out an enormous amount of microwave energy that is like
Speaker 10: an electronic attack on the circuits of these drones that
Speaker 10: are coming at you. So it doesn't actually matter if
Speaker 10: it's one drone or one thousand drones. It'll make them
Speaker 10: just fall out.
Speaker 3: Of the sky.
Speaker 4: Sean, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to write Mobilize, because
Speaker 1: it's I know you had the deck and I talked
Speaker 1: to with you about the deck.
Speaker 4: How long did it take to.
Speaker 3: Do this better part of a year.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations, it's done very well in the best sellers list.
Speaker 1: That's going to continue to rise. Mobilize How to wet
Speaker 1: Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War Three
Speaker 1: by Sean Sankar and Madeen Hart Scham. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me on the hu Huit Show.