Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm as Valoshan here with Kara Price.
Speaker 2: Hi Kara, hi os.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to share today's interview with Dexter Philkins, who's
Speaker 1: a longtime war correspondent and now a reporter at large
Speaker 1: for The New Yorker. He recently wrote a piece to
Speaker 1: answer a very big question, is the US ready for
Speaker 1: the next war? In search of that question, Dexter traveled
Speaker 1: all over the world, from Israel to Taiwan to of course, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: where he visited a drone factory. Here's Dexter on how
Speaker 1: Ukraine became ground zero for drone warfare.
Speaker 2: The Ukrainians, on their und really they have invented basically
Speaker 2: a whole new way of warfare. They build really chieved
Speaker 2: drones that are really really accurate and really really and
Speaker 2: they build them by the thousands and the thousands and
Speaker 2: the thousands. So last year twenty twenty four, the Ukrainians
Speaker 2: built and deployed two million drones on the battlefield. The
Speaker 2: moment the Russians start to move in any kind of
Speaker 2: numbers at all, they walk right into a wall of drones. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've actually seen videos of these drones. It looks like
Speaker 3: a swarm.
Speaker 1: It really does, and there are these insane stories about
Speaker 1: how Ukrainians are protecting themselves from drones. In fact, old
Speaker 1: fishing nets from the south of France are being shipped
Speaker 1: to Ukraine and kind of put over roads to basically
Speaker 1: prevent the suicide drones from hitting people and vehicles on
Speaker 1: the roads. There's a great story recently in The Guardian
Speaker 1: about how proud the fishermen of Provence are to be
Speaker 1: helping Ukrainians out with their old nets. There's also another
Speaker 1: detail in the story which I found just absolutely mind blowing,
Speaker 1: which is that drone operators in Ukraine are given points
Speaker 1: for kills and for destruction of tanks and other milestones essentially,
Speaker 1: and the units that get the most points get more drones.
Speaker 1: It's basically a video game mechanic for distributing weapons of war.
Speaker 1: But the story is not just about drones. It's also
Speaker 1: about how the wider future of warfare is being driven
Speaker 1: by technology.
Speaker 2: The most important thing is not the jet at the bomber,
Speaker 2: the aircraft carry that costs billions of billions dollars, the
Speaker 2: most important components of software.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, it's inside baseball, but on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's absolutely fascinating. The whole paradigm of arms
Speaker 1: manufacturing is being turned on its head. In the past,
Speaker 1: the government would decide what it wanted and then put
Speaker 1: in an order. Now the private sector is taking a
Speaker 1: build it and they will come approach. And this simple
Speaker 1: fact explains the explosion of venture capital funding into defense
Speaker 1: tech that we talk about quite often on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned Ukraine, but you know another place my
Speaker 3: mind goes to in terms of the future of warfare
Speaker 3: is obviously Israel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Deta talks about that about how the
Speaker 1: IDEF is using AI to identify and locate people with
Speaker 1: potential links to Hamas based on a number of factors.
Speaker 2: Based on their telephone calls, based on the location, based
Speaker 2: on the buildings they go into. And there's just enormous
Speaker 2: amounts of data, so much data that's all being crunched
Speaker 2: into these big computers that then essentially spit out target recommendations.
Speaker 3: And what did the IDF do with this information?
Speaker 1: They use it to decide who to kill. Dexter was
Speaker 1: told that after the AI analyzes the data, it makes
Speaker 1: a recommendation on who to target, and then a team
Speaker 1: of humans in the IDF tries to verify whether or
Speaker 1: not these targets are really connects to hamas and whether
Speaker 1: or not to make the kill decision. Dexter reports, however,
Speaker 1: this IDF team would get about one hundred recommendations from
Speaker 1: AI per day, and that sometimes the latency between the
Speaker 1: AI recommendation and the kill decision is less than a minute.
Speaker 3: You know, at that point, is there like even a
Speaker 3: human in the loop?
Speaker 1: I mean technically legally, legally yes, but practically less than
Speaker 1: a minute, not really. So we talk about that, and
Speaker 1: we also talk about Palme Lucky. He's the founder of Anderil,
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley's hottest, most darling defense tech startup, Unicorn, And
Speaker 1: we talk about how all these different places in the
Speaker 1: world come together, So how the battlefield of Ukraine and
Speaker 1: the warring Gaza are ultimately affecting how the US and
Speaker 1: China think about a potential conflict in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: It's fair to say it would be catastrophic for the
Speaker 2: United States and for the kind of the interests of
Speaker 2: the Western world.
Speaker 1: Before we get there, dextro Nite started off by talking
Speaker 1: about Dexter's visit to a Ukrainian drone factory.
Speaker 2: So you know, I was blindfolded. I was taking this factory.
Speaker 2: They took the blindfold off. I was inside this you know.
Speaker 2: It was like a small, small like warehouse. There were
Speaker 2: a couple hundred people in there, most of them women,
Speaker 2: and they were they were making drones. But the drones,
Speaker 2: it's just a little thing. It's nothing. It's a farb
Speaker 2: and fib or frame. It's like a foot and a
Speaker 2: half by a foot and a half. It's just a square.
Speaker 2: It's got little propellers on it. I mean, it's nothing.
Speaker 2: And then it's got a bomb rack and then a
Speaker 2: camera so that the person who's driving the drunk can
Speaker 2: kind of see where he's going. That's it. It costs
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars and so with not a lot of money,
Speaker 2: they can deploy thousands of these things. And that's what
Speaker 2: they're doing. And I should say the Russians are doing
Speaker 2: the same thing. And so it's this incredible kind of
Speaker 2: dogfight that tapping in eastern Ukraine. But the technology for
Speaker 2: now appears to favorite the defense. And so it's largely
Speaker 2: because of drones and drone swarms and the tactics Ukrainians
Speaker 2: have developed that they've been able to hold the Russians off.
Speaker 1: You talk about it largely favors the defense, but there's
Speaker 1: this extraordinary David and Goliath moment where some of the
Speaker 1: cheapest technology of warfare knocked out some of the most
Speaker 1: expensive thousands of miles behind the front lines.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. And so for instance, the guy
Speaker 2: that I spoke to, he was like running like a
Speaker 2: trucking company like when the war started, and he's like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the Prime Minister called and they said, hey,
Speaker 2: can you make drones? And that was that was three
Speaker 2: years ago. He never made a drone his life. And
Speaker 2: so this was a government project that I saw with
Speaker 2: private companies, and they've developed these anti ship drones. They're
Speaker 2: like these little toy boats. They're like six feet long,
Speaker 2: no people, a little cameras. Some of them are just
Speaker 2: loaded with explosives. Others had like kind of torpedoes on them.
Speaker 2: But they have chased the entire Russian Black Sea fleet,
Speaker 2: some of it out of the Black Sea and the
Speaker 2: rest of it all the way to the eastern side
Speaker 2: of the Black Sea, where they've basically reopened what the
Speaker 2: Russians had blockaded, which is the sea lanes that allow
Speaker 2: Ukraine to export grain, which is you know, lifeblood. It's
Speaker 2: all the TRD currency. That's the kind of things that
Speaker 2: are happening here, and it's an amazing thing to see
Speaker 2: up close.
Speaker 1: The other moment in the piece that really caught my
Speaker 1: imagination was the fact that the drone operators have a
Speaker 1: kind of internal economy and the more points they accrue,
Speaker 1: the more drones they can get for their unit. I
Speaker 1: mean literally like a video game.
Speaker 2: It does feel like a video game. The drones are
Speaker 2: are flown to their destination by a guy on a joystick,
Speaker 2: you know, manning a joystick. They have a screen, they
Speaker 2: have a laptop. Often they're not sure what their destination is.
Speaker 2: They're they're looking for targets or more typically, they'll have
Speaker 2: a surveillance drone finding targets and then directing the other
Speaker 2: drones to the target. So tank spotted go here. That's
Speaker 2: essentially how the game works. There's drone teams all over
Speaker 2: the front line everywhere, and the best drone team, the
Speaker 2: team with the most kills get You get points, you know,
Speaker 2: like you get a number of points when you blow
Speaker 2: up tank and you can prove it. You get a
Speaker 2: number of points when you when you kill a Russian
Speaker 2: soldier when you kill a missile battery and those points
Speaker 2: out up. So the team with the most points, they
Speaker 2: don't get a prize, you know, or they don't get
Speaker 2: a cash award, they get more drones. And so you
Speaker 2: can see how how well that works. So that the
Speaker 2: really killer teams, and there there's some just utterly lethal
Speaker 2: teams there. They were they were just getting as many
Speaker 2: drones as they could handle.
Speaker 1: One of the sort of iconic images I've seen of
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian battlefield is this crisscrossed FIBROTI cable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. But the biggest challenge to be overcome
Speaker 2: if you're trying to run a drone war is electronic jamming.
Speaker 2: And so you're sitting there with your joystick and you're
Speaker 2: flying your drone around and you're looking for a tank
Speaker 2: or you're looking for a platoon somebody, and somebody to
Speaker 2: crash your drone into. The Russians are really really good
Speaker 2: at jamming the radio signals and so that renders the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian drones inoperable. When I picked up the five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars drone in the Factory and Western Ukraine, it had
Speaker 2: a kind of frequency horp so like if it goes
Speaker 2: up on one frequency, so the guy with the joystick
Speaker 2: is steering the drone and then if the Russians jam that,
Speaker 2: he quickly bounces to another frequency. If they jam that,
Speaker 2: it bounces to another where the long cables come in
Speaker 2: and they're fiber op the cables, so they're just you know,
Speaker 2: super super thin. You can't jam fiber op the cable,
Speaker 2: and you can. You can find us on the web.
Speaker 2: You can find video footage. But there's there's drone teams,
Speaker 2: like Ukrainian drone teams racing down roads in eastern Ukraine
Speaker 2: that they've covered with netting the whole road.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's a big connection between jamming drones and
Speaker 1: the race towards autonomous weapons. I want to come back
Speaker 1: to Palmer Lucky and full autonomy. But in between is
Speaker 1: Israel and Gaza. And some have suggested or questioned that
Speaker 1: Israel is already letting a I make kill decisions on
Speaker 1: the battlefield in Gaza. I think in your piece, the
Speaker 1: answer is AI is identifying targets, and sometimes the gap
Speaker 1: between identifying the target and making the kill decision is
Speaker 1: extremely short in terms of time. But nonetheless there is
Speaker 1: always a human in the loop. I mean, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between a killer robot and a robot telling a
Speaker 1: human who to kill.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the heart of the matter. So in Israel,
Speaker 2: you get a recommendation from the AI, the mother computer,
Speaker 2: and it says it's basically a coordinate. It doesn't tell
Speaker 2: you who it is because I don't necessarily know who
Speaker 2: it is, and I think typically it gives you a
Speaker 2: kind of percentage of certainty. So if you fire at
Speaker 2: this coordinate on the map, the chances are eighty percent
Speaker 2: you're going to kill a bad guy, or it's seventy
Speaker 2: percent you're going to fifty percent you're going to kill
Speaker 2: a bad guy. And that's essentially what they're acting on.
Speaker 2: So what the Israeli say is that it's always the
Speaker 2: human that kind of pulls the trigger. What we as
Speaker 2: the targeting officers is to try to verify the target
Speaker 2: recommendation from the computer independently. But I think my great
Speaker 2: impression of talking to them was that perfection is kind
Speaker 2: of not really possible in more time, and so what
Speaker 2: you have is like in the heat of battle, when
Speaker 2: that little waypoint the coordinate on the map is moving
Speaker 2: and you just have a few seconds to decide whether
Speaker 2: or not to kill it or not. How much independent
Speaker 2: verification can you do? Do you really have time to
Speaker 2: send another drone over it to look at it, or
Speaker 2: do you just kill it? That's the really hard part
Speaker 2: right there. That's what's happening in the room where they're
Speaker 2: making these targeting decisions.
Speaker 1: Do the algorithms have a built in calculation of chollateral damage?
Speaker 1: Is that information that the officers have access to when
Speaker 1: they're making these decisions, or is that not even consideration.
Speaker 2: Now this is where it gets really really I think
Speaker 2: morally tricky. As I understood it from my reporting, the
Speaker 2: computer will say fire here, here's your coordinate on a map.
Speaker 2: You have an eighty percent certainty, but you might kill
Speaker 2: eight civilians and that has to be included in the
Speaker 2: decision that you're making. You know, if I were a
Speaker 2: newspaper porter, I would have just written a separate story
Speaker 2: on this fact alone. I heard this from an IDF
Speaker 2: targeting officer. He said, we were allowed in the beginning
Speaker 2: phases of the war, and I can't remember the exact number,
Speaker 2: but it was very, very high. We were allowed to
Speaker 2: kill a target that was recommended by the computer. If
Speaker 2: we believed that there was a possibility that we were
Speaker 2: going to kill as many as twenty civilians. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: hit pause there, because that's pretty extraordinary. You're basically saying,
Speaker 2: I'm going to kill the one bad guy who's standing
Speaker 2: in a crowded market, and I think we might kill
Speaker 2: twenty people, but we're going to do it. And that's
Speaker 2: a human decision. I mean, that is in fact to
Speaker 2: what we're seeing in Gaza. If you want to know
Speaker 2: why and how there's so much distruction in Gaza and
Speaker 2: so many civilians dead, that's the reason. It's the rules
Speaker 2: of engagement decision. But they just dialed it way way back.
Speaker 2: And I had a conversation with an American senior civilian
Speaker 2: in the Pentagon, Biden and who had been involved in
Speaker 2: a lot of the decisions in Gossip War, helping these rallies,
Speaker 2: and he said, if we had ever in the course
Speaker 2: of say the Iraq War, the Afghan War, if we
Speaker 2: had thought that there was a chance we were going
Speaker 2: to kill twenty civilians, that a decision like that would
Speaker 2: go to the President or it would go to the
Speaker 2: Secretary Offense. He said, the Israelis are doing this every day.
Speaker 2: Sometimes more than once. So that gives you a sense
Speaker 2: of how I think, extraordinarily loose the rules of engagement
Speaker 2: have been for the Israelis. And I think it's not
Speaker 2: as much a technological kind of decision as it is
Speaker 2: a human decision. I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the ciche about you know, technology is that
Speaker 1: these are tools and we choose how to use them, right.
Speaker 1: I mean a soldiers sitting in a bunker making kill
Speaker 1: decisions with an eighty percent probability it's a quote unquote
Speaker 1: bad guy and you know, full civilians or six cividians,
Speaker 1: eight civilians being killed. I mean the technological element kind
Speaker 1: of creates this remove from the consequences of a decision almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't. You can't hear the screams. But you know,
Speaker 2: you mentioned the Obama administration when they have the drone
Speaker 2: more in Pakistan. They made a lot of decisions like this,
Speaker 2: and they're very similar decisions. I had lots of conversations
Speaker 2: with people during the Obama administration about what they were
Speaker 2: trying to do in Pakistan, and they're trying to kill
Speaker 2: all kinda guys in Pakistan, but it was kind of
Speaker 2: the same. They'd have a drone in the air watching
Speaker 2: a house and they'd say, well, we don't really know
Speaker 2: who's in the house, but there's guys in a pickup
Speaker 2: truck and they come and they all have guns, and
Speaker 2: they're going in and they're going out. And the guys
Speaker 2: with guns, like when I left the house, they went
Speaker 2: to another place. They went to a military camp. We
Speaker 2: don't know who they are, but we think they're probably
Speaker 2: bad guys. Are the civilians in the house. We don't
Speaker 2: know the answer to that, but I think it's a
Speaker 2: pretty well documented. Some of those guys traumatized by what
Speaker 2: happened because you know they're killing people. It's totally bizarre.
Speaker 2: You've got a joystick and you're looking at a video
Speaker 2: screen and then you blow up a house it's got
Speaker 2: fifteen people in it, and then you get in your
Speaker 2: car and like you're gone and have dinner with your family.
Speaker 2: It's like you're removed from those consequences, but like you
Speaker 2: can see how it's still I think haunting a lot
Speaker 2: of the people that have been involved after the break.
Speaker 1: Could technology be the spot that creates World War three?
Speaker 1: Stay with us. Let's talk about full autonomy, i e.
Speaker 1: Killar robots making their own target and killed decisions. Is
Speaker 1: it a technological barrier to arriving there or is it
Speaker 1: a rules of engagement barrier? And if the latter, how
Speaker 1: on do you see that holding.
Speaker 2: For Well, that's a good question. I think ultimately, as
Speaker 2: was explained to me by Palmer, Lucky and others, like,
Speaker 2: we can do this, we can, and we are preparing
Speaker 2: to go fully autonomous. That's what we are making these
Speaker 2: things to do, because the technology is taking us there.
Speaker 2: One of the things he said to me, and we
Speaker 2: were standing in the showroom in the Andrel's office, so
Speaker 2: we're surrounded by the drones and the pilots airplanes and
Speaker 2: the in the in the anti drones and all the
Speaker 2: stuff that they sell, and he said, every vehicle in here,
Speaker 2: i'm a will be cut off from communication, from controlling
Speaker 2: our own weapons. But what it means is that these
Speaker 2: weapons have their own brains and they will have to
Speaker 2: go and find their targets on their own. And you
Speaker 2: can see all the problems that could potentially arise from that,
Speaker 2: because you're really talking about kind of autonomous warfare. And
Speaker 2: so I had a conversation with I think he's now
Speaker 2: the president of and Brian Shimp and Brian sketched out
Speaker 2: the following scenario, which I thought was really interesting. He said, look,
Speaker 2: just imagine a one hundred miles square in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 2: Imagine somewhere inside of there, in that vast stretch of ocean,
Speaker 2: there is a fleet of Chinese ships. What Andreil weapons
Speaker 2: are being designed to do, and what they will be
Speaker 2: able to do is we will fire our missiles at
Speaker 2: those ships, and they will, independently of us, with no
Speaker 2: human control, they will find the ships, they will target
Speaker 2: the ships, they will communicate with each other and decide
Speaker 2: who's going to take which ones and then go destroy them.
Speaker 2: But ultimately those are human decisions. And so in the
Speaker 2: Pentagon there's a whole executive order that Biden put out
Speaker 2: and then I think Trump slightly revised that basically kind
Speaker 2: of allows for full autonomy as I understand it. Palmer
Speaker 2: Lucky was really clear about this, which was this is
Speaker 2: where it's going full on killer robe on it science
Speaker 2: fiction movie. These things are fighting each other and they're
Speaker 2: killing people, and like, the Chinese are gonna have theirs
Speaker 2: and we're gonna have ours, and the humans are going
Speaker 2: to be basically taking a ringside seat.
Speaker 1: What was your sense of Palm and Lucky and what's
Speaker 1: the scale of his ambition and where is he on
Speaker 1: achieving end.
Speaker 2: Palmer Lucky is a remarkable guy, and he's deceptively modest
Speaker 2: about the whole thing. Like when you meet him, he's
Speaker 2: just you know, he's like a tech guy. He's young,
Speaker 2: he's wearing flip flops. He's got like a flowered shirt on,
Speaker 2: he's got she had shorts on. When I met him,
Speaker 2: he was eating from a bag and took He's revolutionizing
Speaker 2: the way that America is approaching its wars and approaching
Speaker 2: to wars in the future. And and so the system
Speaker 2: that we've inherited and the system that we have now
Speaker 2: is hundreds of people in the Pentagon will decide what
Speaker 2: they need. And so they'll say, you know, we need
Speaker 2: a we need a jet fighter. And it has to
Speaker 2: do all these things. It has to fly at supersonic speeds,
Speaker 2: and it needs to be able to die at this
Speaker 2: particular angle, and it has to have a range, and
Speaker 2: one thing after another, and this takes literally years for
Speaker 2: the Pentagon to devise a new weapon, whether it's an
Speaker 2: F thirty five fighter jet or a new Navy ship
Speaker 2: or a submarine. It takes them years. And so the
Speaker 2: paradigm that I think is finally being broken is that,
Speaker 2: you know, the tech world moves very very rapidly. That
Speaker 2: I'm talking about our tech world in California. They move
Speaker 2: it super high speeds because if you don't move a
Speaker 2: high speeds to go out of business. Pentagon moved very slowly,
Speaker 2: and these two worlds never really came together. That's where
Speaker 2: Palmer Lucky comes in. So Palmer Lucky has figured out
Speaker 2: a way to bring these two worlds together. And he
Speaker 2: did that by by standing the Pentagon procurement process entirely
Speaker 2: on its head. And so instead of you know, hundreds
Speaker 2: of people taking years and years to design a weapons system,
Speaker 2: Palmer went out there and just built the most advanced
Speaker 2: anti drone and the most advanced pilotless airplane. He just
Speaker 2: built the most sophisticated one that he could and he
Speaker 2: went to the Pentagon and said, this is for sale.
Speaker 2: We can do these, and we can make them. We
Speaker 2: can make a ton of these really fast, really cheaply.
Speaker 2: But take it or leave it here it is. And
Speaker 2: so instead of an F three five fighter jet that
Speaker 2: costs two hundred million dollars, you have a drone like
Speaker 2: they cost fifty thousand dollars. And what Palmer again is
Speaker 2: kind of figured out is it's all about the software.
Speaker 2: So they just have these kind of very cheap shells,
Speaker 2: you know, i e. The drone itself, the missile carrying
Speaker 2: its explosives, but the only thing that really matters is
Speaker 2: software so that they can constantly make it better. The
Speaker 2: drone missed its target, We'll fix the software. We'll tinker
Speaker 2: with the software. How do we make it more accurate?
Speaker 2: How do we make it better? The Pentagon says it
Speaker 2: wants us to do something differently, We'll just go in
Speaker 2: and tinker with the software. And they can do that really,
Speaker 2: really cheaply for nothing. And that's that's how the Palmer
Speaker 2: Lucky stood the whole Pentagon procurement process on its head.
Speaker 1: I mean, both China and the US have looked extremely
Speaker 1: hard at what's been happening in Ukraine. How are the
Speaker 1: two countries responding from a technology point into view? And
Speaker 1: where does Taiwan say.
Speaker 2: In all of this, Well, Taiwan's it's right in the
Speaker 2: middle between China and in the United States. You know,
Speaker 2: you could like look out a map at the Pacific
Speaker 2: and go like, who cares, you know, it's just this
Speaker 2: big island one hundred miles off the coast of China.
Speaker 2: Who cares? And like, it's a democracy. It's an ally,
Speaker 2: a very close ally. And it's also they make something
Speaker 2: like ninety five percent of the most sophisticated microchips in
Speaker 2: the world are made in Taiwan and made nowhere else.
Speaker 2: The big rilla in chip manufacturing, the most sophisticated, the
Speaker 2: best is TSMC in Taiwan. And I remember more than
Speaker 2: a couple of timewhen Hees kind of jokingly said to me,
Speaker 2: you know, if the Chinese invade, the safest place and
Speaker 2: the whole country is going to be in the basement
Speaker 2: of the TSMC building something like. But to answer your question,
Speaker 2: if you got to stand way back, you take America
Speaker 2: on one side, has basically dominated the Western Pacific, and
Speaker 2: those are the most important sea lanes in the world.
Speaker 2: Those sea lanes are absolutely crucial to the world economy
Speaker 2: in every conceivable way. And the Chinese are undergoing a
Speaker 2: rapid massive military build up of their navy, the air force, everything.
Speaker 2: They're challenging that they want to push the United States
Speaker 2: out of the Western Pacific you can see the dilemma
Speaker 2: that the Americans have. The US Navy, Air Force, everything,
Speaker 2: the entire armed forces are built on this principle which
Speaker 2: is completely antiquated now, which is we have very few
Speaker 2: but very expensive and very sophisticated weapons platforms. I mean,
Speaker 2: just the other day in the Red Sea, an aircraft
Speaker 2: carrier had to make a sharp term because they were
Speaker 2: fighting against the Huthi's, you know, and two f thirty
Speaker 2: five's slid off the deck and went to the bottom
Speaker 2: of the ocean. There's two hundred million dollars, yeah, in
Speaker 2: like five minutes. So that's the Chinese, I think, to
Speaker 2: their credit, really, they have designed their entire army forces
Speaker 2: to defeat the United States in the Western Pacific. That
Speaker 2: is what they want to do. They want to push
Speaker 2: the United States out of the Western Pacific, and they
Speaker 2: have spotted and identified our vulnerabilities, you know, very precisely.
Speaker 2: So they have designed their armed forces to sink aircraft
Speaker 2: carriers and to take out very very expensive American plans.
Speaker 2: They have designed their entire armed forces to do that.
Speaker 2: And so the United States is kind of suddenly and
Speaker 2: way way too they'd woken up to that, and that's
Speaker 2: what's driving all this what we're talking about, I mean,
Speaker 2: the Pentagon, It is kind of I wouldn't describe it
Speaker 2: as a panic, but I think, well, I think the
Speaker 2: smart people are paniced. You know, the smart people are pretty.
Speaker 1: Freaked out, and they're actively shipping drones to Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, Andrew's sending drones to Taiwan. So if you
Speaker 2: take Ukraine as a template Russia, they come in with
Speaker 2: these very expensive, very expensive platforms like tanks, like big
Speaker 2: radar installations cost millions and millions of dollars, and the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians are taking them out with five hundred dollars drones.
Speaker 2: This is what the United States wants to do in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: I think Sam and Paparo, who's the head at the
Speaker 2: Indo Pacific Fleet in the Western Pacific to the American forces,
Speaker 2: has said, I want to turn Taiwan into a hellscape
Speaker 2: for the Chinese and to make them and he said this,
Speaker 2: to make them utterly miserable until we have enough time
Speaker 2: to get the rest of our military out there. What
Speaker 2: does that mean. It's super simple. Flood Timelong with drunes
Speaker 2: and so if the Chinese try to say, invade the
Speaker 2: island and there's you know, there's a lot of evidence,
Speaker 2: a lot of evidence to suggest that the Chinese are
Speaker 2: thinking very very carefully about doing that. You flood the air,
Speaker 2: you flood the sea, you flood the beaches with unmanned
Speaker 2: vehicles to basically sink an invasion force, And that, in
Speaker 2: a nutshell, is kind of what the plan is now
Speaker 2: that you know the Chinese, no doubt they're trying to
Speaker 2: counter it to and I think to me, the kind
Speaker 2: of the most likely scenario is that the Chinese won't
Speaker 2: invade Taiwan, but they'll blockade Taiwan. They'll just cut it
Speaker 2: off and they'll basically dare us to run the blockade.
Speaker 2: So that's that's a whole other ball of wax.
Speaker 1: But to your point earlier about the advantage being for
Speaker 1: the defender in today's world of military technology, and all
Speaker 1: out of tech from China would make Taiwan into the
Speaker 1: defender and therefore trigger the advantages of all these very cheap,
Speaker 1: unmanned aerial and water drones. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: if a blockade, they essentially become the defender, and therefore
Speaker 1: the Americans become vunderbirth they try to run the blockade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It's a sort of it's everybody's spending a
Speaker 2: lot of time thinking about this. I went to a wargame. Actually,
Speaker 2: the Pentagon has these wargames, most of which you are classified. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well well they I went to a I went to
Speaker 2: an unclassified wargame at CSIS, the Center for a Strategic
Speaker 2: International Stuff. It's a think tanking Washington, and it was fascinating,
Speaker 2: but also it was like pretty disturbing the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And it was just a war game, but it was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god. The scenario was a blockade. It wasn't
Speaker 2: an invasion. Chinese started stopping ships in the in the
Speaker 2: Straits of Taiwan. So there was a Chinese team and
Speaker 2: there was an American team, and everybody had essentially weapons
Speaker 2: that each country is believed to have. But it was
Speaker 2: fantastically bloody. I think it's safe to say tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of people died on each side. They stopped the
Speaker 2: game after like the four go rounds. I wouldn't say
Speaker 2: it was a draw because like neither side had stopped,
Speaker 2: but they really really blooded each other, and I think
Speaker 2: that was That's the one thing we can be sure
Speaker 2: about is if the United States and China go to war,
Speaker 2: it will be it would be an utter and complete catastrophe.
Speaker 2: And this was no nuclear weapons were used because it
Speaker 2: had sort of decided at the beginning of the war
Speaker 2: game no nukes. Sometimes that prohibition is not in the
Speaker 2: war games that they have, and sometimes nuclear weapons have
Speaker 2: been used. The Chinese did not attack the American mainland,
Speaker 2: even though they are quite capable of doing that. The
Speaker 2: United States attacked the Chinese mainline, filled thousands of Chinese,
Speaker 2: and I think what kind of sobered everyone in the room,
Speaker 2: and these are people in the room where you know
Speaker 2: they were pros. What sobered everybody was how fast things escalated.
Speaker 2: You know, you started with this like kind of nothing
Speaker 2: event where the Chinese navy like stops a Taiwanese ship,
Speaker 2: and then it like stops an American one, and then
Speaker 2: there's some confusion, and then they shoot an American plane down,
Speaker 2: and then the Americans shoot a Chinese and then it's
Speaker 2: World War three like rapidly, very very quickly. It's just
Speaker 2: you could feel it in the room. It just took off.
Speaker 2: And so this is what happens in war. You know,
Speaker 2: wars get out of control, and the wargame that I
Speaker 2: went to the war between the United States and China
Speaker 2: got out of control very quickly.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask you, what is the future
Speaker 1: of wolfare that you saw and how afraid should we be?
Speaker 2: Well, well, it's all pretty sobering, you know. It's the
Speaker 2: old Latin phrase devis possum parabellum. If you want peace,
Speaker 2: prepare for war. And I think if each side would say,
Speaker 2: in this case, the United States and China, we're both
Speaker 2: preparing for war. Hopefully the two cancel out. Everybody's really
Speaker 2: sober about it. Everybody's really careful, and because the prospect
Speaker 2: of going to war is so terrifying to each country,
Speaker 2: that war will be avoided. That's the best case scenarios.
Speaker 2: That's that's the best we're going to do. If the
Speaker 2: terrence fails, that's what everybody's trying to avoid. And I
Speaker 2: think everybody knows this, including the Chinese. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think the Chinese have been very careful in Taiwan. You know,
Speaker 2: they've been increasing the pressure, increasing the pressure, but they're careful,
Speaker 2: like they haven't done anything rash, and I think it's
Speaker 2: for the reasons that we're talking about, Like they've done
Speaker 2: more games too and they know how ugly these things
Speaker 2: are and how unpredictable they are, how rapidly they can
Speaker 2: get out of control.
Speaker 1: What's the biggest question for you.
Speaker 2: The kind of unanswered, unanswerable question, is can andrel and
Speaker 2: the Palmer Luckies of the United States deploy those these
Speaker 2: weapons that we're talking about rapidly enough to deter the
Speaker 2: Chinese from taking Taiwan. Because I think if the Western
Speaker 2: Pacific were to be kind of fall under Chinese domination,
Speaker 2: that would be a catastrophe too. So and I think
Speaker 2: the best way to prevent that is for these weapons
Speaker 2: to get out there as fast as they can go
Speaker 2: to deter the Chinese from doing that. And so that's
Speaker 2: really the question. Can they get that stuff out there
Speaker 2: and ready quickly enough before the Chinese are ready to go?
Speaker 2: Because the Chinese have been very very clear, as clear
Speaker 2: as day like they want Taiwan. They've set twenty twenty
Speaker 2: seven as the year that they wanted to be in
Speaker 2: Chinese hands. They couldn't be more clear about what they want,
Speaker 2: and so I think it's fair to say the United
Speaker 2: States is racing to kind of prevent that. But my
Speaker 2: sense is that we'll work out the technological staff for
Speaker 2: these guys. Will the Palmer Luckees of the world will
Speaker 2: figure out the technology, but can they do it in time?
Speaker 1: Text to filchis thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: For having me.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Cara Price and I'm as Velocian. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It
Speaker 1: was executive produced by Me, Kara Price, Julian Nutter, and
Speaker 1: Kate Osborne for Kneidoscope and Katria novelle Va iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Jack Insley makes this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote off
Speaker 1: theme song.
Speaker 3: On Friday, instead of our usual weekend tech episode, we
Speaker 3: will be airing part one of the podcast shell Game.
Speaker 3: This season, host Evan Ratliff founds a startup run by
Speaker 3: fake people. Listen to see how close we are to
Speaker 3: AI taking our jobs.
Speaker 1: And please do rate and review the show wherever you
Speaker 1: listen and send us your ideas, your suggestions, and your
Speaker 1: feedback to tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: We love hearing from you.