Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Noel is doing his civic duty. Doo d
Speaker 2: y oh. Yeah that is all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they called me Ben. We're joined with our guest producer,
Speaker 3: Max white Pants Williams. Most importantly, you are you. You
Speaker 3: are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
Speaker 3: you to know. And Matt, I think it's fair to
Speaker 3: say this one has been a long time in coming
Speaker 3: for both of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, just about twenty years roughly.
Speaker 3: And we're harkening back to some previous episodes wherein you
Speaker 3: and I explore the concept of a think tank. You know,
Speaker 3: shout out Rand Corporation, right, the shadowy quasi governmental nerd trust,
Speaker 3: which we mean with great affection, like the think tank
Speaker 3: in general is just here in the US. It's an
Speaker 3: institution or a group of people organized around the study
Speaker 3: of a specific issue. And the idea is that if
Speaker 3: you are a world leader, you can look to these
Speaker 3: groups to get in depth insite advice and analysis of
Speaker 3: anything under the sun. Like, let's be honest, it's true.
Speaker 3: Most members of Congress do not have time to become
Speaker 3: subject matter experts themselves on a number of issues. So
Speaker 3: they go to the experts and say meteorology, or the
Speaker 3: experts in play, plastic production, literally any industry name it,
Speaker 3: there's a think tank that applies. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm beating a little Pollyanna, but I would say
Speaker 3: in general, most think tanks are a huge benefit for
Speaker 3: the world. Like they're smart, they care, they know what's up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, theoretically, you can have the greatest minds come together
Speaker 2: and figure out problems, right, figure out solutions or maybe
Speaker 2: this way, figure out the best thirty solutions to a
Speaker 2: major problem, and then discuss those solutions, each one as
Speaker 2: an individual thing, together for a long period of time.
Speaker 2: And then you can take those, you know, the best ideas,
Speaker 2: and let's say, lobby Congress or the President with those
Speaker 2: ideas to say, hey, we think we understand this problem
Speaker 2: better than maybe your joint chiefs of staff. Here's what
Speaker 2: we think. Maybe mullet over for a.
Speaker 3: Bit funny, you should mention that Congressman, because retired member
Speaker 3: of JAYSK is in fact part of our think tank.
Speaker 3: And here's what he says.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. And if you are a think tank like
Speaker 2: that that publishes your work on a regular basis, let's
Speaker 2: say you're just a member of one of those people
Speaker 2: that you'd want to be lobbying, right, maybe you are
Speaker 2: just reading that information as opinion pieces essentially on a weekly, daily,
Speaker 2: even monthly basis. There's this like there's an influence that's
Speaker 2: occurring there with these think tanks, maybe whether even they
Speaker 2: know it or like to think about it or not.
Speaker 3: M hm agreed. There's a tremendous deal of soft power
Speaker 3: inherent in these sorts of conversations. And it reminds me
Speaker 3: also of our earlier episode on ALEC, the American Legislative
Speaker 3: Exchange Council, Like how think tanks often willft craft policy
Speaker 3: proposals right, and the idea is when everything works out
Speaker 3: and is above board, the idea is that members of
Speaker 3: the political class and some private industries will read these
Speaker 3: policy recommendations and say, heck, yeah, but ten ten no notes,
Speaker 3: Let's go do this list of thirty very specific things
Speaker 3: in this order. Unfortunately, for every ten amazing in good
Speaker 3: faith to think tanks. There are a couple of what
Speaker 3: the British would call the batties, some incredibly shady things.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I well tell me what you think, Ben,
Speaker 2: I think the worst of it comes when there is
Speaker 2: a political action committee or something like that that is
Speaker 2: directly tied to one of these think tanks, to where
Speaker 2: money money donations can be simultaneously given as well as
Speaker 2: suggestions for policy. Because that's when you get that thing
Speaker 2: that happens where policy is literally dictated or written down,
Speaker 2: like a law is drafted that then gets sent to
Speaker 2: somebody in Congress and they kind of just rubber stamp
Speaker 2: it or change a couple words to make sure it's theirs,
Speaker 2: and then it goes in and is submitted and voted
Speaker 2: on as a potential law.
Speaker 3: We the private healthcare industry are completely objective in our
Speaker 3: funding of this think tank that has sent this policy
Speaker 3: proposal to Congress, folks on both sides of the aisle,
Speaker 3: who are also the largest recipients of our campaign donations.
Speaker 3: But no harm, no foul, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Well, let's okay, So let's let's before we even get
Speaker 2: into bad stuff. Let's talk about what every single think
Speaker 2: tank like this has access to that is public information
Speaker 2: about the United States, specifically spending, So things like information
Speaker 2: about the GDP, the gross domestic product of the United States,
Speaker 2: and where dollars get allocated for things, and well, I
Speaker 2: mean it's for everything, right, Imagine anything the US government
Speaker 2: spends money on. It's all in there, except for the
Speaker 2: part the secret budget parts, because there is some of
Speaker 2: that or the stuff that's missing from the pentagons pentagons accounting,
Speaker 2: you know, to the tune of billions of dollars. But
Speaker 2: you get things like the amount of overall defense spending
Speaker 2: that the United States put allocates on a per year basis.
Speaker 2: So Ben I did a deep dive into GDP and
Speaker 2: defense spending and I wanted to really quickly just give
Speaker 2: some numbers out here so we can have maybe a
Speaker 2: starting place for the conversation. Is that okay?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: So in nineteen sixty five, this is just the earliest
Speaker 2: back that macro trends had. They went back to nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty but I had to match it up with stuff
Speaker 2: from the dods, like official reporting. So in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: the gross domestic Product of the United States was seven
Speaker 2: hundred and forty three point seven billion dollars. That's all
Speaker 2: the money that everyone living in the United States, every
Speaker 2: company that is from the United States, all the taxes,
Speaker 2: all the other things all added up and subtracted seven
Speaker 2: hundred and forty three point seven.
Speaker 3: Billion, not adjusted for inflation.
Speaker 2: Exactly or depreciation or all these other things. But it's
Speaker 2: like it's the big number, right of that money, defense
Speaker 2: spending was six point five percent, So around forty eight
Speaker 2: point three billion dollars now nineteen sixty five, six point
Speaker 2: five percent. What we're going to be talking about a
Speaker 2: lot today is a group of people, a think tank
Speaker 2: that wants to make that number, that percentage of GDP
Speaker 2: that's on defense spending. Increase that number just as much
Speaker 2: as you can increase it, and just keep increasing it
Speaker 2: and always have it at a certain level basically, and
Speaker 2: it's always a percentage. It's not like a dollar amount.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a proportion of GDP, and it's it's an
Speaker 3: ongoing project in normalization of that percentage and moving the
Speaker 3: Overton window of what is acceptable to the American public.
Speaker 3: It's kind of you know what we could call it.
Speaker 3: We could call it a group project for an American Century.
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, it is like a group product project
Speaker 2: for that. It's just like that, we're all going to
Speaker 2: work together on it. But before we even launch into
Speaker 2: that band, I wanted because so that was nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: just as like a CIA benchmark early right before the
Speaker 2: major time. I guess that we're going to be focused
Speaker 2: on today. Nineteen ninety nine, the year the matrix was released.
Speaker 2: Everybody shout out to Prince also exactly shout out to Prince.
Speaker 2: The GDP of the United States was nine six hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty one point one seven billion, right, So that's
Speaker 2: that's like nine trillion.
Speaker 3: That's like imaginary money at that point.
Speaker 2: Yes, but defense spending dropped down to two point seven
Speaker 2: percent overall, So nineteen sixty five six point five percent,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine to two point seven percent, which to
Speaker 2: a lot of the people were going to be talking
Speaker 2: about the individuals and the group that is egregiously low
Speaker 2: of a proportion of your money spent on defense.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm. Yeah. And Eisenhower's dead, so he's not going
Speaker 3: to weigh in on that one. You're right there, there
Speaker 3: is there is a problem, and this problem is this
Speaker 3: problem is apparent to all sides of the conversation. However,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like, you know, if there are people
Speaker 3: who are on the opposite sides of the gun control
Speaker 3: debate in America, and they'll both stand up and they'll
Speaker 3: say this is horrible. There's a huge problem. And as
Speaker 3: long as they don't get into the specifics of how
Speaker 3: they define the problem and what they think the problem is,
Speaker 3: then both sides feel very in sync and heated up
Speaker 3: about it. But as you, as you so beautifully set up, Matt,
Speaker 3: this is a story of what some would call a
Speaker 3: continuing conspiracy, right and perhaps to the critics, a quite
Speaker 3: successful conspiracy. This evening, we're talking about the Project for
Speaker 3: a New American Century, and buckle up, folks, it's kind
Speaker 3: of crazy. Just to be honest with you, here are
Speaker 3: the facts, Matt. Do you want do you want to
Speaker 3: talk about how how you ran into this? Well?
Speaker 2: I called a phone now number the other day. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's for this thing called the Project for the New
Speaker 2: American Century. The phone number, I'm going to say it
Speaker 2: two oh two two nine three four nine eight three.
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert, the number you've dialed is not in service.
Speaker 3: UH DC zip code or DC area code obviously it is.
Speaker 2: It is a DC area code, but that isn't a
Speaker 2: number that's listed on the publications from the year two
Speaker 2: thousand that were put out by the Project for the
Speaker 2: New American Century, and it was it was something we
Speaker 2: came across because we've been I I will let me
Speaker 2: shout one person out really quickly. Lunch lady called in
Speaker 2: a while back and put us on to I forget
Speaker 2: exactly what what the topic was. I ended up getting
Speaker 2: mired in Project for New American Century because it was
Speaker 2: tangentially irrelated, and I just went down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: But we brought up another organization. It was something called
Speaker 2: the Center for a New American Security, and it sounded
Speaker 2: so familiar to me. That's what it was. Lunch Lady
Speaker 2: told us about a documentary called Unknown Killer Robots that
Speaker 2: was on Netflix, and there was a person speaking in
Speaker 2: there who happened to be what was her name, Stacy
Speaker 2: Petty John. She happened to be from this thing called
Speaker 2: the Center for New American Security. And I got fascinated
Speaker 2: by that. Went down that rabbit hole led to the
Speaker 2: project and reminded me of September eleventh attacks. But anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll get.
Speaker 3: To them, we'll get there. Yeah, yeah, the h In
Speaker 3: another life, the activities of things like the p and
Speaker 3: AC were objects of intense scrutiny and study. You know,
Speaker 3: there are any number of universities, college programs, kind of
Speaker 3: what would you call it feater schools that study this
Speaker 3: sort of stuff extensively, all with the intention of getting
Speaker 3: people into that industry and related sort of the world
Speaker 3: of policy and punditry. Right, and so the p and AC,
Speaker 3: as weird as it may sound, is a huge, huge
Speaker 3: deal in US and inde global history. Like you pointed out, Matt,
Speaker 3: it is no longer officially active. It was officially active
Speaker 3: for a very short amount of time, in the course
Speaker 3: of less than one decade. Though you could argue that
Speaker 3: it fundamentally shifted the actions of the United States and
Speaker 3: in doing so, shifted the actions of the world entire
Speaker 3: And the story, I don't know. With these kind of
Speaker 3: origin stories, we could go back to the roots of
Speaker 3: Chicago neo conservatism. But the two guys who start this,
Speaker 3: co founders of the PNAC, a guy named William Crystal
Speaker 3: and his buddy Robert Kagan, they are still alive. They
Speaker 3: are huge players in US politics and policy. They also
Speaker 3: the names get so vague and confusing. They also are
Speaker 3: instrumental in another think tank called the American Enterprise Institute.
Speaker 3: That thing is also still around. You can go to
Speaker 3: their website today. I'm sure they're super chill and a
Speaker 3: very fun hang.
Speaker 2: American Enterprise Institute.
Speaker 3: What do we say about vague names? Man?
Speaker 2: I know, I hope you can take classes at that institute.
Speaker 2: I bet you can.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they have plenty of Actually, I can confirm
Speaker 3: they have a lot of papers they want you to read.
Speaker 3: They have a lot of takes on things.
Speaker 2: Yes. By the way, if you are searching this up
Speaker 2: on your own, you probably won't find many references to
Speaker 2: William Crystal. He is generally known as Bill Crystal.
Speaker 3: Not to be confused with our pal from the Search
Speaker 3: for Curly's Gold.
Speaker 2: I like that Billy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a good egg. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But this guy's been around for a very long time,
Speaker 2: highly intelligent when you've listened to him to speak, longtime writer.
Speaker 2: He's considered, I don't know, one of the primary new
Speaker 2: conservatives of our time. Really, he has been on television
Speaker 2: a whole lot. You've seen him be interviewed and just
Speaker 2: give speeches probably if you if you again, if you
Speaker 2: look him up, you can find him. I don't know
Speaker 2: how much he's been on c SPAN. I know there
Speaker 2: are other people that we'll be talking about today that
Speaker 2: show up on c SPAN quite a bit.
Speaker 3: He's got a podcast, that's that's it. M Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's one of his primary means of communicating with the
Speaker 3: public at large. Still writes extensively, as you said, still
Speaker 3: makes a lot of speeches. He is in the hole power,
Speaker 3: he is in those inner circle conversations. He is probably
Speaker 3: most notable aside from you know, like spots on CNN
Speaker 3: and mass media, He's most notable for being the former
Speaker 3: chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, who also
Speaker 3: did they tell you I read Dan's book?
Speaker 2: No that that's great, It's I still want to learn
Speaker 2: as much as I can about George Bush Sr. That
Speaker 2: guy has been fascinating me more and more as time
Speaker 2: goes on. Oh yeah, just the things that he got
Speaker 2: into and the people he met in decisions he made.
Speaker 3: Holy mackerel, what a scamp that guy.
Speaker 2: So Dan quail was vice president to George Bush George H. W.
Speaker 3: Bush, Yes, Herbert Walker, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And former ahead of the CIA then yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the CIA is definitely a thing people quit
Speaker 3: sure h. He's also dan quail I guess. In the
Speaker 3: circus of political discourse. Dan Quayle was notably famous for
Speaker 3: like a dumb thing about how to spell potato, which
Speaker 3: some of some of the older members of our audience
Speaker 3: may may remember.
Speaker 2: It's really simple. It's the e that goes on when
Speaker 2: it's pluralized, and then you'd remove the e, but he
Speaker 2: did not.
Speaker 3: And I'll be you to say again, I think that
Speaker 3: was the fact that that was a story showed us
Speaker 3: the future of political discourse right and evolving it down
Speaker 3: into you know, look at this guy. He gets fancy mustard.
Speaker 2: You know, he gets spelled one word on the fly
Speaker 2: because we all spell perfectly exactly right.
Speaker 3: And so this guy, for a long long time is
Speaker 3: bridging the gap from Ivy League ideology, conservative thought very
Speaker 3: well to do upper class folks to the political class.
Speaker 3: And along comes his buddy, Robert Kagan. Our buddy rob
Speaker 3: is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Today we
Speaker 3: you know, we're throwing a lot of names at you,
Speaker 3: Brookings Institution. Other bag of badgers maybe a different episode,
Speaker 3: but like his pal Billy. He is a prominent foreign
Speaker 3: policy advisor. These guys are both sort of Kissinger light.
Speaker 3: And with Kagan, what's interesting is that throughout his storied career,
Speaker 3: Congress folks, decision makers on both sides of America's political divide,
Speaker 3: go to this guy. You know, they might not always
Speaker 3: agree with them, but they're like, hey, Rob, what do
Speaker 3: you think? Oh yeah, because his opinion matters.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. And there are a bunch of other individuals
Speaker 2: we could get into, people like Gary Schmidt, SCCHM I T. T.
Speaker 2: Tom Donnelly is one of the major authors that ends
Speaker 2: up publishing things that become very important to this organization.
Speaker 2: But Robert Kagan and William Bill Crystal are definitely the
Speaker 2: primary guys. And oh boy, these two guys could be,
Speaker 2: quite honestly their own episodes if you go into their
Speaker 2: background and again, just like with George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 2: see where their influence has, where it's gone, and the
Speaker 2: people they've touched and the lives they've influenced. But we're
Speaker 2: not going to do that, right, We're going to talk
Speaker 2: about an article they wrote together in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: Oh Yes, what a Banker title tepid Consensus, Their This
Speaker 3: is their distrack basically toward the Clinton administration's foreign policy
Speaker 3: in the nineties. And what they're saying is, Oh, I
Speaker 3: don't want to sound hip hop about it, but what
Speaker 3: they're saying essentially is you're a punk. All the stuff
Speaker 3: that you have the United States doing is losing power
Speaker 3: and it is losing influence and it is ultimately bad
Speaker 3: for the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and fully dunking on that concept of spending two
Speaker 2: point seven percent of GDP on defense spending, saying you're
Speaker 2: weakening us, like we're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: fight the battles. All of our foreign allies are going
Speaker 2: to look down on us because we're going to be
Speaker 2: too weak to defend them. When you know, rubber meets
Speaker 2: the road.
Speaker 3: Dunking is, by the way back, the perfect phrase. That's
Speaker 3: what I was looking for. That's awesome. Yes, well, which
Speaker 3: one dunking they are? Oh yeah, they're dunking on the potus.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's it. That's definitely what's occurring here. And but
Speaker 2: again it's not just on it's weird because in my mind,
Speaker 2: it's not just to talk crap about, you know, the
Speaker 2: sitting president that you don't agree with the views it's
Speaker 2: about trying to get everybody else who's also a thinker
Speaker 2: in this space to feel and think in a similar way,
Speaker 2: or to get their gears turning so that it becomes
Speaker 2: more of the same page deal, right, right, not.
Speaker 3: Just the problem, but a proposed solution, exactly right. So
Speaker 3: we're not going to tell you we're not just gonna
Speaker 3: winge and complain. We're also going to provide a path forward.
Speaker 3: And the argument from these two individuals and their cohort
Speaker 3: has always been party takes a back seat to the
Speaker 3: good of the country. Asterisk.
Speaker 2: Oh well, we'll tell you about that asterisk later. It's
Speaker 2: down the bottom of the page. So think about where
Speaker 2: the United States was at that time. If you go
Speaker 2: back in your history books, we went through this whole
Speaker 2: thing during the Vietnam War. Remember that that was the
Speaker 2: late nineteen sixties. Nineteen sixty eight, we spent eight point
Speaker 2: six percent of GDP on defense spending. Then by the
Speaker 2: time we get to nineteen seventy nine that had fallen
Speaker 2: to four point five. But then we're seriously in this
Speaker 2: Cold War thing, right, So everybody, like Bill Crystal, of
Speaker 2: like the Bill Crystals of that time, came out and
Speaker 2: said no, we gotta spend more. What about Cuba? What
Speaker 2: are you gonna do about Cuba? You haven't thought a
Speaker 2: Cuba exactly. So that number in nineteen eighty five rose
Speaker 2: to five point six percent of GDP spent on defense.
Speaker 2: And now again we're in nineteen ninety nine or like
Speaker 2: we're getting towards nineteen ninety nine, where we're lowering and
Speaker 2: lowering that number down to four percent, three percent, now
Speaker 2: two point seven percent. So that's the that's a state
Speaker 2: we find ourselves in. So everybody who is who has
Speaker 2: any kind of either as you said, been ideological interest
Speaker 2: in having the United States as the most powerful military,
Speaker 2: the thing that cannot be stopped and will police the
Speaker 2: word world and should police the world, they are going
Speaker 2: to want that number to rise, and they're going to
Speaker 2: argue that until they can't.
Speaker 3: Right, and there is to be absolutely fair, there is
Speaker 3: validity to the concern. There is, So it's are there
Speaker 3: multiple what we would call conflicts of interest? Of course,
Speaker 3: remember these are regular people who have access to pretty
Speaker 3: significant funds as private individuals, and they know where to
Speaker 3: put their money, they know how to make the money dance.
Speaker 3: But it's also it doesn't invalidate the idea that the
Speaker 3: world can be an ugly place. And if you do
Speaker 3: not invest in this sort of force projection, then the
Speaker 3: argument in a zero sum game is that force shall
Speaker 3: be projected upon you. Oh exactly.
Speaker 2: But this is the thing that I keep trying to
Speaker 2: wrap my head around, and I know it's it's proportional.
Speaker 2: So ultimately that's what we're dealing with. It's growing, you know,
Speaker 2: at a rate compared to another thing. But the amount
Speaker 2: of money spent on defense in six nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: six point five percent, forty eight billion dollars, is dwarfed
Speaker 2: by the two point seven percent spent in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: which equals two hundred and sixty billion dollars. So, like,
Speaker 2: just think about that, from forty eight to two hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty billion dollars, and those numbers, those figures are
Speaker 2: adjusted so they equal the same amount, right, It's not
Speaker 2: like nineteen sixty five dollars versus nineteen ninety nine dollars.
Speaker 2: It's all in uh equivalent dollars for the year twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three.
Speaker 3: And each of those dollars could have gone to a school,
Speaker 3: a hospital, a library. I'm just not we can't not
Speaker 3: shout about Eisenhower.
Speaker 2: You're right, and it could have. But I guess the
Speaker 2: idea is, even though we're only spending two point seven
Speaker 2: percent in nineteen ninety nine, we are still spending so
Speaker 2: much money on defense, Like it's that's an insane number,
Speaker 2: two hundred and sixty billion dollars.
Speaker 3: And at what point can we still call it defense? Right?
Speaker 3: Like how much force can one project before you start
Speaker 3: to say, maybe a little proactive, it is a little offense.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what we need to get further into it.
Speaker 2: But one of the primary things a Project for New
Speaker 2: American Century was writing about was griping about like DARPA
Speaker 2: projects and projects that we're going through R and D
Speaker 2: right for like the F twenty two. Is the F
Speaker 2: twenty two worth it? What about these new versions of
Speaker 2: the howitzer cannons? We're spending a lot of money on that,
Speaker 2: and how much force projection is that actually going to
Speaker 2: give us? And you're just like, I can't wrap my
Speaker 2: head round all of that stuff. They but they really
Speaker 2: are trying to identify projects to spend billions of dollars
Speaker 2: on that will last for decades and provide the most security.
Speaker 3: Literally in the case of missiles like the hell Fire,
Speaker 3: the most bang for your buck. Yeah, exactly, And we're
Speaker 3: going to pause here for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back, and we have returned.
Speaker 2: Let's keep going. What did they say in nineteen ninety six, ninety.
Speaker 3: Seven, Oh yeah, so they published Tepid Consensus, their dunk
Speaker 3: slash disc track, and then a year later in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, they co found the think tank Project for
Speaker 3: a New American Century. And what this does, really, it
Speaker 3: doesn't occur in vacuum. What it does is it curates,
Speaker 3: agglomerates a lot of thought and a lot of thought
Speaker 3: leaders that have been sort of shouting with their own
Speaker 3: separate microphones into the world. And they have a mission
Speaker 3: statement where wherein they say specifically, we want to quote
Speaker 3: set forth a new agenda for post Cold War, for
Speaker 3: it and military policy that would ensure that the United
Speaker 3: States could claim the twenty first century as its own.
Speaker 3: And they say, US military dominance not only protects US
Speaker 3: national security and national interests, but it also establishes and
Speaker 3: this is the scary part, a global pox Americana, which
Speaker 3: is a very a very fancy land way for saying
Speaker 3: a peaceful world, so long as the US is in charge.
Speaker 2: Ooh, I've heard that phrase before, pox Americana. I never
Speaker 2: knew what it was.
Speaker 3: It's a you'll see like pox, insert empire here applied
Speaker 3: to so many things, right, like, hey, we're Rome and
Speaker 3: everything's great, so long as we're at the top.
Speaker 2: Right, it's is this the word we always throw around?
Speaker 2: Are we here thrown around? Hegemony?
Speaker 3: No? Yes, sir, yeah, hedge of money? I don't know, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: So a world in which everybody checks with Uncle Sam
Speaker 3: first before they do things. Just make control, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: control an ultimate uh suzerain sovereignty. And it's an idea
Speaker 3: that's very old. It's as old as you know the
Speaker 3: first empires, right, Hama Rabbi is out there going. Things
Speaker 3: are going to be great and super peaceful, so long
Speaker 3: as you know my thing is king of the hill exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so there's also the Cold War thing, like you mentioned,
Speaker 3: Soviet Union. The world is transitioning at this point from
Speaker 3: a bipolar to superpower kind of situation to this more
Speaker 3: unilateral thing. The USSR is clearly on the way out.
Speaker 3: By the nineties, and the Boffins over a project for
Speaker 3: new American Century. Say hey, let's run with it. Let's
Speaker 3: make the US the one global superpower judge jury and
Speaker 3: if need be, executioner all the globe round. And they were,
Speaker 3: to their credit, they were very honest about this. They
Speaker 3: were not like trying to wrap stuff up necessarily a mystery,
Speaker 3: at least not at the beginning. And we're like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is our thing, is what should happen, Let's do this.
Speaker 3: And from nineteen ninety seven to about two thousand and
Speaker 3: six they were super hard in the paint.
Speaker 2: You know, oh yeah, yeah, they didn't stop. You can
Speaker 2: go you can find the Project for the New American
Speaker 2: Centuries website through the wave I think it's the Wayback Machine,
Speaker 2: or it's like it's through archive dot org. So we
Speaker 2: were able to go through that and find publications that
Speaker 2: have been wiped from the Internet, but they exist fourth
Speaker 2: dimensionally in the Wayback Machine and you can read about
Speaker 2: all of these things. Sometimes it's a tiny little memo
Speaker 2: that gets published that you can find there. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: a huge document that is a culmination like a kind
Speaker 2: of like a project of the Project for the New
Speaker 2: American Century, right where they got a bunch of different
Speaker 2: thought leaders and ex military people to come together and say, hey,
Speaker 2: identify a problem and give us the answer to it,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna collate all of those different answers and
Speaker 2: then we're gonna write a summary basically of let's say,
Speaker 2: a almost an outline of what the Defense Department should
Speaker 2: do to up its game and become powerful again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And they're they're big hobby horse.
Speaker 3: We'll get to the site, but just the teaser, they're
Speaker 3: big hobby horse. Of course is a rock.
Speaker 2: Uh And yeah, no, that's important.
Speaker 3: It's hugely important.
Speaker 2: It was all about Iraq. But think about this, Bill Crystal,
Speaker 2: will Willie Billy Crystal, will Billy Billy Will Crystal. He
Speaker 2: is working for Quail, who is working alongside George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 2: who invaded Iraq right in the Gulf War and it
Speaker 2: went really well. It was over swiftly, but it was
Speaker 2: like there was unfinished business there or something right. And
Speaker 2: all Bill Crystal and his pals want to do is
Speaker 2: get back into Iraq somehow and really punish them.
Speaker 3: They wanted to.
Speaker 4: Oh, Okay, I know, I know it's convoluted and it's strange,
Speaker 4: but there isn't There is a fascination of perhaps an
Speaker 4: obsession with projecting power in the middle.
Speaker 3: Together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is this is happening,
Speaker 3: you know, in in the wake of Iran Iraq wars,
Speaker 3: in the wake of stuff going down in Kuwait. Very
Speaker 3: aware of this, uh, their ideas for the record when
Speaker 3: they when they came out under the auspice of P
Speaker 3: and A c. These ideas are massively popular in conservative circles.
Speaker 3: And for a lot of people who are hearing this,
Speaker 3: they are hearing stuff they had thought before. This is
Speaker 3: not new information to them. They're hearing it and it's
Speaker 3: like they're in church, you know, like aim in, tell
Speaker 3: them pastor let them know a rock. We got to
Speaker 3: do something. And among the supporters the P and AC
Speaker 3: are are some characters in our story, three Republican officials
Speaker 3: who were on a little bit of R and R
Speaker 3: you know, kind of biden their time, not.
Speaker 2: A jil doing.
Speaker 3: They're sitting out and they're laying low during the Democratic
Speaker 3: presidential administration of Bill Clinton, Willie Bill Clinton, I don't
Speaker 3: know a lot of bills. These three guys are. I
Speaker 3: am almost sure for every American they will be names
Speaker 3: that you recognize. Fellow conspiracy realist you might not know
Speaker 3: the whole score with them, but you definitely have heard
Speaker 3: these names before.
Speaker 2: Let's do in this order, Okay. Paul Wolfowitz, which you
Speaker 2: may not remember unless you watched a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: political television back in the day, or watch a bunch
Speaker 2: of documentaries. He's very important. Donald Rumsfeld that we remember
Speaker 2: for many reasons, but he was high up in the
Speaker 2: old defense areas there. And then Dick Cheney, the vice
Speaker 2: president president vice president.
Speaker 3: Okay, blurred lines. Indeed with that last one, right, these
Speaker 3: names were commonplace in American and global media. And indeed
Speaker 3: there was a time where if you turned on a
Speaker 3: television back when people still like cable, you couldn't you
Speaker 3: couldn't go through three news channels without running into something
Speaker 3: about one of these guys. Because they were very very
Speaker 3: important in US policy. They were also super duper huge
Speaker 3: fans of the Project for New American Century. And when
Speaker 3: the first thing that the PNAC publishes, it's like June third,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven, it's a statement of principles. And for
Speaker 3: everybody from Cheney on down, this is a stem to
Speaker 3: stern banger.
Speaker 2: This is like J Cole's first album. For them, you
Speaker 2: know Oh that indeed a banger. Wow, yeah, really good stuff.
Speaker 2: Not as much drive. I still I still hardly. I
Speaker 2: don't know that all is a special place in my heart.
Speaker 3: I agree that's a good one. But you know what,
Speaker 3: what what are you going to do? Right? Like at first,
Speaker 3: if you are the Clinton administration, then you might say, hey,
Speaker 3: these think tanks publish stuff all the time about any given,
Speaker 3: any given matter. But these guys are so connected that
Speaker 3: they are immediately taken seriously and they send like open
Speaker 3: letters to the Clinton administration and different conservative leaders of Congress,
Speaker 3: and they say from again to to their credit, they
Speaker 3: don't shift tone, they don't switch up their game. They say,
Speaker 3: from day one, we got to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 3: We got to do more stuff more proactively in the
Speaker 3: Middle East. And if people aren't going to help us, right,
Speaker 3: if our allies or coalition of the Willing, if they're
Speaker 3: not down to clown, we'll do it ourselves unilaterally. We
Speaker 3: have to do this. We cannot depend on our previous partners.
Speaker 3: From the Gulf War.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh, they're all about going in there. They
Speaker 2: were about setting up missile defense all across Europe, all
Speaker 2: across all basically territories that would be considered allied areas.
Speaker 2: And again, huge projects. And if we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about defense spending, a major missile defense strategy that they
Speaker 2: wanted that Robert Kagan was writing about in the Washington
Speaker 2: Post as a part of PNAC, it would have cost
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions, no billions. It would have cost billions
Speaker 2: of dollars to make that happen, And it would have
Speaker 2: put billions of dollars. It would have put millions of
Speaker 2: dollars in the pockets of individuals who were connected to
Speaker 2: those companies making like manufacturing all the things you would need. Right,
Speaker 2: because if you're gonna build, let's imagine an array of
Speaker 2: missiles on a coastline, right, it's not just the missiles
Speaker 2: and the thing, the piece of machinery that fires that missile, Right,
Speaker 2: it's the computer that tracks whatever the missile is being
Speaker 2: fired at. It's the facilities for the human beings to
Speaker 2: be in that are monitoring and using those systems. Like,
Speaker 2: there's so much construction money that also gets wrapped up
Speaker 2: in something like a missile defense program. But they're writing
Speaker 2: about that like crazy all the time. And again it's
Speaker 2: all in defense of an enemy, some enemy. Oh, I
Speaker 2: guess we should say this ben another primary thing there's
Speaker 2: writing about here is okay, Well, we no longer have
Speaker 2: a primary enemy in the Soviet Union, so now we
Speaker 2: are the hedgemon. What do we do to maintain this status?
Speaker 2: How do we make sure there is not another enemy
Speaker 2: that can challenge us? And they do seem to target
Speaker 2: literally al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein other powerful military leaders
Speaker 2: in the Middle East as like people that we could
Speaker 2: go after and basically that could stand in as our
Speaker 2: new Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just so shout out to a little book I've
Speaker 3: got to hear somewhere called Where to Invade Next that
Speaker 3: you and I talked about several years ago and at lists,
Speaker 3: you know, not just a rock but also Syria, Iran,
Speaker 3: Lebanon and Libya is another one.
Speaker 2: Yep. Well, because if you don't have an enemy, then
Speaker 2: why are you building all those big guns? Pal? Why
Speaker 2: do you why are you making newer, more awesome F
Speaker 2: twenty two fighter jets?
Speaker 3: Right? And also conversely, if one does not limit the
Speaker 3: growth of expansionist regimes, then they'll do what those regimes do,
Speaker 3: They will expand, So they could be the idea is.
Speaker 3: And it may sound a bit paranoid, but the idea
Speaker 3: is a regional threat today is a global threat tomorrow. Right,
Speaker 3: So we're preventing another USSR is the concept. Right, Let's
Speaker 3: make sure these things don't get the TLC they need
Speaker 3: in order to become a real world competitor another superpower.
Speaker 3: And look the players in this game, in this p
Speaker 3: and AC argument, they're like chess pieces. They're moving around
Speaker 3: to assume different mission critical decision making positions of the
Speaker 3: like eighteen something people who signed these open letters ten
Speaker 3: went on to serve in the Bush administration, Bush the
Speaker 3: second George W. Bush. We know it's confusing, but they
Speaker 3: identified this real world's case study. Right. They said, let's
Speaker 3: take it out of the realm of theory. Let's give
Speaker 3: people something actionable to do, and let's make it a rock.
Speaker 3: The only question then that they had was how to
Speaker 3: justify this plan to like, getting the conservative vote wasn't
Speaker 3: enough because America is a very big place and there
Speaker 3: are a lot of people who are not conservatives. Right.
Speaker 3: They may even react on a tribal level to that.
Speaker 3: They might hate an idea just because of the person
Speaker 3: who is saying. Instead of evaluating the validity of the concept. Really,
Speaker 3: what they needed is a reason. And just like how
Speaker 3: fascism always needs an external enemy, this reason could be
Speaker 3: anything at all. Let's take a pause here for a
Speaker 3: word from our sponsors. We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 2: And in one of those big projects that we kind
Speaker 2: of mentioned before, the Project for New American Century got
Speaker 2: together with a whole bunch of people including Donald Kagan,
Speaker 2: Gary Schmidt, who were the co chairman of the project,
Speaker 2: and Thomas Donnelly, who was an author who ended up
Speaker 2: writing this big piece based on the writings of subject
Speaker 2: matter experts in the defense industry. It was titled Rebuilding
Speaker 2: America's Defenses. It was published in September of the year
Speaker 2: two thousand, one year before a really big thing happened
Speaker 2: in history, exactly one year they put this thing together.
Speaker 2: It's huge. It's a massive document. You can find it
Speaker 2: right now on that wayback machine that we talked about.
Speaker 2: It goes over the Project for the New American Century,
Speaker 2: like again, all of the things we've talked about here,
Speaker 2: how it was established, who is a part of it,
Speaker 2: why it exists, and then it goes down. I think
Speaker 2: if you get to page fifty you get to section five,
Speaker 2: and that is where it gets really really interesting. The subtitle,
Speaker 2: I guess the title of that section is creating Tomorrow's
Speaker 2: Dominant Force, And it's kind of a to be honest,
Speaker 2: it's written really well, but it's kind of a difficult
Speaker 2: read because there are a lot of concepts that get
Speaker 2: thrown in right, so you have to if you're not
Speaker 2: used to reading words and sentences and concepts about the
Speaker 2: defense industry, then it could be overwhelming. But I would
Speaker 2: highly recommend you check it out because it is talking
Speaker 2: about increasing spending on military, It is talking about being
Speaker 2: able to fight at least two wars at once. One
Speaker 2: of the primary subjects in here, Ben is controlling both
Speaker 2: cyberspace and space.
Speaker 3: Yeah space, space, yeah.
Speaker 2: Space actual and they and what they're talking about is like,
Speaker 2: we have to be pre eminent force in outer space
Speaker 2: and if we are not, someone else will be. We
Speaker 2: need a space force. They are calling in the year
Speaker 2: two thousand for a space force, which is something that
Speaker 2: was not established until what late twenty teens or was
Speaker 2: it like twenty twenty. That's just crazy to me.
Speaker 3: There's there's also a clear implication here that they don't
Speaker 3: take the UN the United Nations, seriously, whatsoever. It's like
Speaker 3: our earlier episode about storming the Hague. That's very much
Speaker 3: their vibe. You know. They're like, yeah, I guess there's
Speaker 3: some sort of treaty about space from the UN, but
Speaker 3: come on, guys, we need we need cyber space, we
Speaker 3: need space actual I love your phrase there, Mat And
Speaker 3: they also say, look, we have history on our side.
Speaker 3: We are in We are the good guys here. We
Speaker 3: are correct in everything we're saying, and we are also pragmatic,
Speaker 3: we are realist. We argue that over time there will
Speaker 3: be a slow shift toward our values. The US is
Speaker 3: the world's police. It'll be a slow burn. And then
Speaker 3: they hit us with that you know, that third act turn.
Speaker 3: They say, unless something happens, unless there ye a catalyzing event,
Speaker 3: I think they call it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they're talking about the thing we've already discussed.
Speaker 2: The United States is the big power right now. There's
Speaker 2: no equal on the planet. We have to do everything
Speaker 2: we can to keep that power. So we need an
Speaker 2: enemy to fight to show everyone that we are the
Speaker 2: big power. And I'm gonna read from page fifty quote
Speaker 2: the United States simply cannot declare US strategic pause while
Speaker 2: experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts. Nor can it
Speaker 2: choose to pursue a t transformation strategy that would decouple
Speaker 2: American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued
Speaker 2: capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example,
Speaker 2: and sacrificed forward basing and presence would be at odds
Speaker 2: with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies.
Speaker 2: What whatever. Nobody cares. I don't understand any of that.
Speaker 2: But page fifty one starts like this Further, the process
Speaker 2: of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely
Speaker 2: to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing
Speaker 2: event like a new Pearl Harbor a year prior to
Speaker 2: the nine to eleven attacks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the key phrase they're saying. Look, there
Speaker 3: will be a slow burn. Big change takes time. You know.
Speaker 3: We admit that the Heinz fifty seven approach to foreign
Speaker 3: policy is the law of the land for now. However,
Speaker 3: that's the third act they're going And also though if
Speaker 3: something were to happen, then our timeline escalates massively. In
Speaker 3: other words, if there is a watershed moment, a triumph,
Speaker 3: a disaster that up ends the usual bickering and bureaucracy
Speaker 3: of government. Then let those ponies run. All bets are off.
Speaker 2: Well because think about Pearl Harbor. It was the thing
Speaker 2: they got everybody on the same page. Oh, we need
Speaker 2: to fight, we have to fight. We let's get all
Speaker 2: the factories and let's build war machines because we have
Speaker 2: to fight. Look what they did.
Speaker 3: Look what they did to US defense Authorization acts go through,
Speaker 3: everybody puts their domestic differences to the side largely, and
Speaker 3: Congress becomes a rubber stamp. There is also very little
Speaker 3: in terms of oversight or interrogation of policies. Right, so
Speaker 3: the US wakes up in World War two, So great
Speaker 3: injustices occur. A ton of people get locked up just
Speaker 3: because somewhere in their family someone came from Japan. Right,
Speaker 3: great injustice is very few questions, And it's a troubling
Speaker 3: thing that occurs because this observation, like you pointed out, Matt,
Speaker 3: proves eerily prescient. The attacks in September eleventh, two thousand
Speaker 3: and one occurred as if on que And I know
Speaker 3: that's a statement that might give people a sour taste
Speaker 3: in their mouths.
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly is. It seems that way if you
Speaker 2: just look at it and you choose to view it
Speaker 2: that way. Right, most people, I think, choose to not
Speaker 2: look at it that way, and that is probably, you know,
Speaker 2: that's probably the standard. Like you just you look at
Speaker 2: and say, well, no to September eleventh attacks or a thing.
Speaker 2: This is just some papers that were in the year before, right,
Speaker 2: And I think that's the way we also look at it.
Speaker 2: But we have to at least imagine it because it
Speaker 2: is eerily is so eerie that this group of people
Speaker 2: wrote these statements right, curated this thing. Then many of
Speaker 2: them who were all on the same page end up
Speaker 2: in the White House at the time of the attacks
Speaker 2: that become the next Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 3: Dick Cheney is the most powerful vice president in US history.
Speaker 3: Rumsfeld a Secretary of Defense, and our buddy Paul the
Speaker 3: Wolfman wolf Witz is the deputy of Rumsfeld over at
Speaker 3: the Pentagon, which is still to date, by the way,
Speaker 3: the world's largest office building.
Speaker 2: And they have beef with one guy that ends up
Speaker 2: in office, Colin Powell, because he's not a full team player. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a couple others, but Colin Powell is one of
Speaker 2: the big people that comes out after those attacks, and
Speaker 2: it's like, look, yellow cake, guys, it's yellow cake. Make it.
Speaker 2: They have it there. We got to go in and
Speaker 2: it's so we getting I've been. There's so much to
Speaker 2: cover here.
Speaker 3: This is a two burd at the at minimum, we're
Speaker 3: setting this stuff up. And I love that you're pointing
Speaker 3: this out. The very next day, September twelfth, two thousand
Speaker 3: and one. You can read accounts of this too. It's
Speaker 3: very like it's like Catch twenty two level stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: where they're like, well, I guess we're going to start
Speaker 3: a war, and they're like a war or like a
Speaker 3: war against who? And I don't know. We'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: We got a meeting, but Rumsfeld on September twelfth says,
Speaker 3: we have to go to Iraq. This should be a
Speaker 3: principal target of the first round the war on terror.
Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden, as if by design,
Speaker 3: one might argue not to be too bait or minehoff
Speaker 3: about it, As if by design, what started as a
Speaker 3: theory and ideology from Project for New American Century seemed
Speaker 3: well on its way to becoming real world policy and
Speaker 3: every like across the pond. European allies are incredibly upset
Speaker 3: about this. They're saying the PNAC specifically is the architect
Speaker 3: of quote, a secret blueprint for US global domination. And
Speaker 3: that's why. Wow, yeah, I know they're not men some words,
Speaker 3: and this is a statement in multiple different outlets. That's
Speaker 3: the vibe of Europe. We also know there are other
Speaker 3: players in the game. And Matt here, perhaps we pause
Speaker 3: and we make this a two parter because we just
Speaker 3: mentioned something that people, our fellow conspiracy realists, have asked
Speaker 3: us about more than a decade September eleventh, in the aftermath, I'm.
Speaker 2: Kind of not looking forward to getting into.
Speaker 3: It, but same bro.
Speaker 2: Also, it's really important, so we're gonna do it.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Here we go into the deep water, folks,
Speaker 3: We want to hear your takes. As we mentioned, we'll
Speaker 3: be back later this week with part two of the
Speaker 3: Project for New American Century. In the meantime, join us.
Speaker 3: We can't wait to hear from you. Find us on YouTube, Instagram,
Speaker 3: of course, on the p and AC forum website, fanclub,
Speaker 3: Big Big Fans. And if that doesn't quite if that
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Speaker 3: a phone call as well.
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