WEBVTT - America Is Falling Fast — Here’s What’s Next | Colonel Douglas Macgregor 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.880 War will visit us here on the continent. The world 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:07.480 has changed. There is no long term national strategy to 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:08.320 deal with anything. 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:12.119 In the Ukraine conflict, maybe the US was sort of 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.760 exposed as being a little bit incompetent or behind what 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:15.920 the Russian military was. 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.919 Russia has won. One point eight million Ukrainians in uniform 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:20.600 are dead. 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:21.239 Terrible. 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.600 Russia will determine what Ukraine looks like beyond the Polish border. 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.240 The most heinoused evil type of crime that you could 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:29.960 even imagine. 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.800 Are we going to admit that our drug problem is 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:34.839 here in the United States. 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:36.879 It's a serious conversation that needs to be have. 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:40.800 The average African warlord cares more about the people he 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.320 leads in Central Africa than most of the senators and 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.440 congressmen care about us. You may not have a job 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:48.960 here anymore. Things are about to change, you know, we 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:51.440 went through this before it was called the Civil War. 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.680 We're living through the biggest global power shifts since World 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.920 War II, and most Americans don't even see it yet. 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.360 Now the rest of the world does. We see nations realigning. 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.839 Old alliances are cracking. The US is stretched thin in China, Russia, 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:11.319 and the global South they're all moving into the vacuum. Now, 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:14.759 the question that every investor, every entrepreneur, every family should 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.520 be asking is what comes next? Because whatever this new 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.480 world looks like, your wealth, your freedom, and your future 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:23.560 is going to be shaped by it. So today we're 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:25.839 going to be joined by somebody who's been warning about 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:28.559 this moment long before it hit headlines. I'm talking about 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:33.160 Colonel Doug McGregor. He's a career Army officer, military strategist. 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.560 He's someone who's not afraid to tell the truth, no 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.639 matter how uncomfortable it is. We're going to talk about 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:42.319 NATO Ukraine. We're going to talk about Venezuela, China, the 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.480 collapse of American influence. We'll talk about the global power 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:49.840 realignment that's already underway, and most importantly, what it means 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:53.080 for you. So let's get into it. Colonel, you've openly 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:57.000 talked about the US being financially exhausted right now, right now, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.880 you know, thirty eight trillion dollars in debt and rising, 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.800 rising global commitments. What typically happens when an empire expands 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.800 while it's balance sheet collapses, Well. 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.360 Eventually catastrophe, but in the short run, and we're still 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:14.440 not yet. In the long run, we're getting there, but 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.959 we're not there yet. I think we have to understand 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.480 that our problems really began with the Vietnam War. A 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:26.480 lot of people don't understand that Lyndon Johnson actually bankrupted 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:30.360 the country the cost of the Vietnam War along with 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:35.560 his social programs, but primarily the war essentially bankrupted the country. 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:40.400 And so on fifteen August nineteen seventy one, Richard Nixon 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:45.960 discarded the gold standard. Now some people will say, well, why, well, 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:49.720 you discarded it because he couldn't pay for anything. We 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.800 have to remember that historically, if you wanted to do something, 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.280 you know, if Washington wanted to spend, they had to 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:01.360 tax the American people. There was a limit. But after 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.119 nineteen seventy one and the abandonment of the gold standard, 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.359 there was no limit. You needed money, you simply printed it. 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.360 And as a result, over a long period of time, 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:15.960 they printed away our savings, our income, everything, our heritage, 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:19.799 our standard of living. They didn't print wealth. What they 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:23.800 printed for themselves was power. So the printing press for 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:28.000 dollars is essentially the mother of unending war. You know, 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:32.120 for two trillion dollars in Afghanistan over twenty years and 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:35.960 four presidents. We replaced the Taliban with the Taliban and 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:37.160 there's no accountability. 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.000 Why yeah, well. 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.520 It didn't matter to the average American. You know, if 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:45.280 the government had to tax us directly to bomb countries 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.120 that most of us can't even find on a map, 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:50.600 then there would be a revolution or rebellion. But because 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.600 they could print, war was invisible. You know. The printing 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.200 press also is the foundation for endless bureaucracy. When money 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:02.240 is infinite, you can hire armies of bureaucrats. You can 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.760 take seventy thousand pages of federal code and turn them 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.120 into two hundred thousand. The printing press is also the 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:14.360 source of uncontrolled immigration. They tell you it's about compassion, 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.400 it isn't. It is a wage suppression operation. Why pay 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:20.760 an American a living wage when you can import a 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:25.320 replacement from some other place in the world Latin America, Africa, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:29.200 the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent for half the price. 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:32.560 So what's the result. Millions of people fled into the 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:37.919 United States, not necessarily people we really need or necessarily want. Certainly, 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.159 not necessarily people that are remotely interested in becoming Americans 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.520 or even can be. But we drive down the cost 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:47.400 of American labor, while Washington prints money to drive up 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.719 the price of their assets. So we don't have a 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:54.400 border crisis. What we have is an economic weapon that's 0:04:54.400 --> 0:05:01.000 deployed against us. And printing money without constraint is also 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.719 the mother of endless outsourcing. Fake money allows them to 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:10.000 ship factories overseas. Behind those closed doors lie rusted towns, 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:14.440 broken families, an opioid epidemic that kills more than three 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.920 hundred thousand people a year, a lot more than died 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:24.000 in Vietnam. So I think we're heading into the currency 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:29.040 debasement problem now. And of course this then elevates something 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:34.360 like bitcoin to considerable importance, because we clearly cannot go 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:38.239 back to a pure gold standard. It would be nice, 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:40.200 but I don't think there's enough gold left in the 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.320 United States, maybe not even in the world to do it. 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.279 I mean, you stop and think that in the last 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:50.520 twenty two months, we've printed thirty percent of all the 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:55.480 dollars that have ever existed. Now, that's an enormous, enormous 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:59.159 quantity of dollars. And the President smiles and says, Oh, 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.839 everything's just fun, everything's getting better. All the presidents have 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.400 done that. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican. 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.000 And they say, well, this is capitalism, this is a 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:13.000 free market. No, it's not. Capitalism requires competition, periodic failure, 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:18.799 or creative destruction. So in this current environment, given the 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.520 ability to sort of inject liquidity whatever you like, or 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.799 quantitative easy and call it what you will, when big 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.760 business fails, Washington prints money to bail it out. Now 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:32.040 that assumes that if you're in big business, you have 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.160 the right friends in Washington. And if you aren't big 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:39.000 business and you don't have friends in Washington, you're foreclosed. 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.080 So I think that's a good way to look at 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.440 the problem that we have right now. And there's no 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.800 easy way out, and nobody wants to default because that 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:53.480 could have profound consequences. So what do we do. We 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.719 continue to print, and we have a very elaborate game 0:06:56.800 --> 0:07:02.080 involving balance sheets and bonds and T bills. And now 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.400 the stable coin business is another scam in my judgment, 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:09.040 it's not bitcoin, And why would anybody want to invest 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:11.559 in stable coin? If each coin is worth one dollar, 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:18.200 We'll forget it. Let's all buy bitcoin, forget stable coin. Right. Anyway, 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:24.640 I think those things are coming together. These forces are converging. Now. 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.520 The other part of this is, in addition to running 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:30.560 out of wealth, which is effectively where we are we 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.160 don't produce anything. What do we manufacture. We manufacture some 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.720 military equipment, but much beyond it. No, our manufacturing base 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.600 was driven out of the country. So we're trying to 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.440 restart that. But that's not something you snap your fingers 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.920 and change. It's going to take a long time. What 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.240 have we done in the energy industry? What have we 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:54.000 done for agriculture? Those two things used to be pillars 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.800 in the high church of productivity and wealth in the 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.680 United States. We're not getting nearly out of energy or 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.680 out of the agrarian sector. In my judgment, what we 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.760 need there needs to be a focus on that. You know, 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.400 just look at mining. We talk about mineral wealth, and 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:15.120 we're worried about rare earth. Now, we found some rare 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:17.680 earths deposits up at Alaska. But I've got news for you. 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.800 There's rare earth all over Canada. There's rare earth in 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.080 the United States, but we haven't bothered to do anything 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:28.080 with it. Why well, it wasn't to financially rewarding. It 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:30.880 was cheaper, faster, better to go somewhere else. And the 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.080 worst part is we don't even have a refinery for 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.320 the stuff. So where do we send our rare earth 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:41.040 to be refined? Times up China, you know, so it 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.560 goes to China or you know, Kazakhstan. I don't know 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.920 if Mongolia has an operating refinery right now, but we 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:50.480 haven't built one. You know, we need to build one. 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:53.920 It's crazy. And we have friends that are sitting on 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.760 enormous rare earth deposits that nobody ever bothers to mention. 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.360 Norway has perhaps the large just rarest department in all 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.679 of Europe. So I think we've just got problems in 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:10.920 Washington because there is no long term national strategy to 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.320 deal with anything. There's no long term national strategy for 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:20.520 military purposes, none for scientific industrial development, none for mineral 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:26.040 wealth and extraction, none for agriculture, none for energy. Everything 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:31.720 is ad hoc, last minute, a short term. And that's 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.400 not surprising because every four years, what do we do 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.839 in Washington? Every four or eight it depends on how 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:43.679 long the president lasts. Well, we lobotomize the government. We say, oh, well, 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:45.560 everything they did was wrong. Now we're going to do 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.079 all of these things. Well, it doesn't really change the country. 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.000 The country remains the same thing, but there is no 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:57.319 framework for development, no framework for improvement. So I think 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.360 at this point, I think we're on the road to 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.360 what Nasam Talent calls the perhaps the mother of all 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:06.280 black swans. 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:10.040 Well, that's a really good frame, and it all kind 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:14.319 of starts with your case for sound money, which I 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:18.960 thought was really well put. The interesting historical fact is 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.000 that the first central bank that was created was the 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.280 Bank of England in the late sixteen hundreds. That was 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.719 created specifically so they'd have more money to continue to 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.880 fight wars. So it was started so they could print 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.439 money so they could just keep these never ending wars going. 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.920 And that's what we've seen, and you mentioned, you know, 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.760 spending two trillion dollars in Afghanistan. So while the US 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:45.960 government certainly has the power of the money printer and 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.680 can continue to print essentially at this point endless amounts 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.400 of money to fight these wars. The symptom of that, 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.360 as you mentioned, then it also requires sort of maybe 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.320 hollowing out the manufacturing base, which I think brings to 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.040 maybe a more crucial point. You're talking about not being 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.200 able to refine our own rare earth elements and things 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.640 like that. So currently, right now the US has this 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.199 massive amount of debt. The money printer is still working 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.760 at this point, it's having diminishing returns. But maybe the 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:19.679 real crux or maybe pain point that we have right 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.720 now being able to sort of project power globally is 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:24.600 not just in the money or the debt that we have, 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.240 but the ability to even fight a war, to even 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:29.600 be able to produce the goods that we need. You've 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:32.560 heard me talking about investing in layers and things like. 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:34.439 The reason you have to work so hard is because 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:36.960 your money doesn't well. I want to invite you to 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.280 a special event. I'm having a three day live event 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.800 called the Wealth Operating System. It's an accelerator event. I'm 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:45.520 going to teach you all the tools that the one 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:48.960 percent use to have their money work harder than they do, 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.080 getting their money to do one job, two jobs, three 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.600 five jobs at once, so it can work faster and 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:56.880 harder than you. Over three days, we're going to go deep. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.480 I'm going to bring in guest speakers. It's workshop style. 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:01.840 I got about fifteen tools and We're going to go 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.480 through a methodical process so you can learn how to 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.400 reclaim ten to fifteen hours of your time back per week, 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.080 how to keep more of your money, how to invest 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:12.640 it and multiply it faster than you've ever imagined by 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.920 the individual. Have a ninety day plan of exactly what 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:17.800 you need to do to go make twenty twenty six 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:20.520 the best year you've ever imagined. It's all going to 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:22.000 be live, it's all going to be virtual. There's a 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:23.640 link down below if you want to come check out. 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:25.400 I'll put a QR code up on the screen. If 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:27.200 you want to get your money working harder than needed 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.120 to grow your wealth faster than you've ever imagined, like 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.520 the one percent, check out the Wealth Operating System Accelerator event. 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:33.679 Check out the link down below. 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.120 Well, I think you're you know your British analogy is 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.520 Merit's closer attention because you're right. They created the Bank 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.120 of England for those purposes. It was also the strategic 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.760 engine in many ways, at least in monetary terms, for 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:52.079 the founding and expansion of the British Empire. But having 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:57.600 said that, Britain did recognize limits and constraints and they 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.960 operated within these limits and constraints. They understood the criticality 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:06.160 of gold backing their currency, and so they were able 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:11.200 to be part of various alliances and coalitions that defeated 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.520 various enemies, whether it was Louis the fourteenth or Napoleon Buonaparte, 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:18.040 and they were able to do it without enormous loss 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:23.240 of life and without fielding enormous forces. The large forces 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.319 that did most of the fighting were always continental, largely 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:30.840 German speaking and Russian speaking armies, connected with some others 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:33.200 on the periphery, but those are the main ones to 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:38.080 defeat these French forces. That changes in nineteen fourteen and 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.800 a very very bad decision is made, and that decision 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.000 was to intervene in the First World War, something for 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:46.680 which the British were not prepared and could not sustain. 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:51.040 And by nineteen seventeen it was pretty obvious to anybody 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.400 looking at the facts on the ground that France and 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:56.720 Britain were losing, and so the pressure for the bankers 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.520 was enormous for us to come into the war ultimately 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.920 bail out the French and British imperialists. So we ended 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:08.240 up doing that and had terrible consequences for US because 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.840 we destroyed Europe and we eliminated the major powers in 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:18.600 Central East Europe that held the European civilization together. Wherever 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:23.920 we have intervened historically, we have distorted the natural dynamic 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:28.680 forces in the area, which ultimately determined how people would 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.720 be governed and how people would live. And that's been 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:35.840 disastrous because we are, much like Great Britain, ultimately a 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:40.800 maritime and aerospace power. We are not a continental military 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:45.960 power anywheres but in the Western hemisphere. So like the British, 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:48.440 we've never had a requirement for a very large army, 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.920 and having to field large armies, especially during and after 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:55.080 World War Two, was an expense for which we weren't 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:59.080 prepared and we had to sustain this all through the 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:03.280 Cold War, which was frankly not a good thing. I mean, 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.080 people don't realize how much of our wealth was squandered 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.640 on containing the Soviet Union. So here we sit at 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.120 the end of this whole process. In nineteen ninety one, 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.800 we saw ourselves as having quote unquote won the Cold War. 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:21.720 In reality, the Soviet structure simply collapsed. It didn't make 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.720 any sense. State socialism was a disaster. There was an 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.400 opportunity then to do a lot of things. It made sense. 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.880 The first was to get out of NATO, or at 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:36.320 least set NATO up to operate without us. You know, 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:38.880 NATO is kind of like I'm sure some of you 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:44.320 have contracts with ADT. This is a nationwide security service 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:48.360 that cuts to your phone and wires your doors, your windows, 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:52.000 and then you have an alarm system. Well, NATO has 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:58.160 been the ADT analog for Europeans now for what almost 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.760 seventy sixty five years, and they've never had to pay 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.200 for it. Yeah, that's the problem. They said, Oh, well, 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:06.960 that's not true. We put money here in here. Let 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.240 me tell you it's a pittance. I served most of 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.160 my military career in Europe. I lived over there for 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:17.360 ten years. The school there served there twice three times 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:21.880 actually twice in Germany and then once in Belgium. We 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.920 provided free of charge ADT for the Europeans, and oh, 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:30.360 by the way, we've provided ADT free of charge for 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:34.120 Japan and to a lesser extent, Korea. The Koreans did 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.400 join US in Vietnam tried to reduce the burden on 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.360 US there, but not Japan. Japan's national strategy has been 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.720 to extract as much wealth as possible from us and 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.560 get a defense for it without paying for any of it. 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.320 And it's worked. So what Donald Trump has been saying 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:57.520 is now saying publicly this needs to end. And of course, 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:00.840 you know you're dealing with countries es actually in Europe 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:05.640 that have been spoiled, rotten like children, and they don't 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:07.560 want us to leave. They want us to continue to 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.359 pay for everything and protect them for nothing. Now, there 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:12.600 are a lot of people in Washington that don't like it, 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:17.120 because in Washington everything is mortgaged to vanity as well 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:20.800 as money. That means everybody likes the fact that we 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.000 have US forces all over the world. People like to 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.800 stand up and talk talk, and even President Trump does this, 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.480 which is really annoying. Frankly, we have the greatest armed 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.240 forces in the world. Nobody can stand against us. Well, 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.439 if you're like the British before World War One, and 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.440 you skillfully avoid fighting anybody who can really fight back, 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.960 you look pretty good. And Britain looked pretty good in 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:46.000 nineteen fourteen until it faced the Imperial German Army and 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:48.720 the rest is history. Same thing happened again in World 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:54.919 War Two. So your point is accurate. We're really not organized, trained, equipped, 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.720 and ready, if structured, to go after anybody who is 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:02.240 a near peer opponent if you will, or appear opponent. 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.800 And I hope people begin to understand that. And the 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:10.359 answer to that is not to pour money into the 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.200 old structure and the old defense establishment because we need 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:17.879 a new one. It's to cut back on spending defense spending, 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.560 figure out what it is that we need, and then 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:24.320 build that, and then steer a different course in foreign policy. 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.119 And that course is war avoidance. You mentioned that in 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:33.119 Washington and people look at you and say, what conflict 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:39.560 avoidance will Why? Yeah, because war will visit us here 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.200 on the continent. It's not what it was. The world 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.800 has changed. The technologies we once enjoyed a monopoly over 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:52.640 have now proliferated. War is dangerous. The last president who 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:57.240 really understood that was Eisenhower, and he understood that World 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:01.240 War II is no great march to victory without massive, 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:05.119 massive loss of life. And you know, this disruption of 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.479 our way of life. So you know, you put together 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.840 the end of the fat system, which I think is 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:15.320 staring us in the face or it's collapsed, together with 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.840 this giant force it's not really the force we need 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.240 for the future. It happens to be the force that 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:25.040 we've used for the past fifty sixty years to pulverize 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.680 anybody we didn't like and bullied people into submission. How 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.640 do we rectify this? And that's where you come into 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.080 a discussion of where do we go from here financially 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:38.200 And I don't really feel competent to discuss that in detail, 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.240 but I think bitcoin fits into that because the fat 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:44.240 system is not going to survive, not in its current form. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:49.480 You talk about when you talked about the British army 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:51.600 looks strong until they met the German army, and sort 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.119 of the US is sort of looks strong if you 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:55.960 look at it, and I think, you know, I've heard 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:58.720 many of your interviews talking about this sort of the 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.360 US was sort of put on a global stage, well 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.040 two times maybe, So if you have heard of like 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:07.240 the generations of warfare, maybe the third generation of warfare 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.520 was like the industrial armies of like World War One 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.840 and World War two. Fourth generations sort of being maybe 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.160 starting in Vietnam, more of like a guerrilla type warfare. 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.600 And so if you look at like from Vietnam, Ford, 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:20.840 I mean, how many of these wars have been have 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:23.399 we been winning from the US side? But then maybe 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:28.240 more specifically in the Ukraine conflict, maybe the US was 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:30.520 sort of exposed as being a little bit incompetent or 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:32.480 behind maybe what the Russian military was. 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.159 Oh, I think it has been. It's been very much exposed. 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:40.840 Now how profoundly has that affected our standing in the world. 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.040 It'll take time to sort that out. The quickest way 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:48.320 to demonstrate, you know, the weakness of the United States 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:52.399 strategically would be to disable or sink an aircraft carrier. 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.119 People don't realize the enormous impact of the loss of 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.639 the Prince of Wales. It's giant British battleship that it 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.280 had been sent along with a cruiser by Churchill to 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.199 Singapore in nineteen forty two, and at the time the 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.159 admirals told Churchill, don't do this, they're at risk. And 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:10.600 he said, what do you mean they're at risk? These 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:12.680 are the greatest warships in the world, said, ye know, 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.160 but they don't have any air cover and their air 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.680 defenses on board the vessels are inadequate. And he said, nonsense. Well, 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:22.880 we know what happened The Japanese found it, they flew 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.479 out to it and they sank it. That was the 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:28.520 beginning of the end of the British Empire. And then 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.200 subsequently we have the defeat at Singapore, which pretty much 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:36.120 nailed the coffin shut. So those kinds of events matter. 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.400 We haven't really experienced that yet, but it doesn't mean 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.080 we could very easily and very suddenly. One example I think, 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:45.919 of course, of the Hoodies. Look at the success the 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:49.920 Hoodies had against the United States Navy in the Red Sea. Well, 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:52.439 was that the fault of the sailors on the ships 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:54.919 that they weren't able to avoid being struck and they 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:59.159 weren't able to damage fatally the Hoodies, No, of course not. 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:02.720 And the wrong vessels doing the wrong things for the 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:06.439 wrong reasons, with the wrong weapons systems. This is years 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:10.159 and years of negligence. It's also years and years of 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:14.040 continuing to buy the same things and spending money on 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.080 the same things that we always have because that makes 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:21.280 people inside the belt Way wealthy, that makes the donors happy, 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:25.200 it creates money. It doesn't help us in defense, which 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.280 is why spending more money for defense is not an answer. 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.560 It matters how you spend it and on what you spend, right, 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:35.000 it also matters the quality of the soldier, sailors, airminham 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.600 marines that you have the quality of discipline and leadership. So, 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:43.280 you know, I think your question is a valid one, 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.520 and I would say, yes, we have been exposed to 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:50.040 some extent, and I don't see any evidence that we 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:55.240 are seriously examining what has been exposed. I really don't. 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:57.280 I don't think the majority of the people I talked 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:00.520 to has still all sorts of fantasies about what is 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:03.000 really happening on the ground in eastern Ukraine and what 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:07.760 isn't complete failure to understand what the Russians have really done. 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.119 And I think it's unfortunate, but there's not much that 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:12.320 we could do about. It's very, very hard to take 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:16.439 a power with the kinds of armed forces we have 0:23:17.160 --> 0:23:19.600 and persuade the people that lead it to pay attention 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.080