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Speaker 1: On this episode of Each World, America spends nearly a

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Speaker 1: trillion dollars a year in its military. This extraordinary spending

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Speaker 1: not only attracts from our ability to address pressing social problems,

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Speaker 1: but compels us into foreign wars to justify our vast

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Speaker 1: arsenal sold to us the name of security. Our military

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Speaker 1: industrial complex actually makes us far less safe. Top policy

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Speaker 1: experts William Hartung and Ben Freeman follow the profits of

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Speaker 1: militarism from traditional Pentagon contractors who received more than half

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Speaker 1: of the Pentagon's budget, to the upstart high tech firms

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Speaker 1: that shamelessly promote on proven and destabilizing technologies. Bill n

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Speaker 1: masked the neighbors of the war machine, politicians, lobbyists, the media,

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Speaker 1: Hollywood think tanks, and so many more whose work enriches

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Speaker 1: a wealthy elite yet the expense of everybody else, spreading

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Speaker 1: conflict around the world and embroiling America and endless wars.

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Speaker 1: Here to discuss their new book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine.

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Speaker 1: Our run away military spending drives of America into foreign wars

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Speaker 1: and bankrupts us at home. I'm really pleased to welcome

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Speaker 1: my guests, William Hartung and Ben Freeman Bill and Ben,

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Speaker 1: thank you for joining me on knits World.

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Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, thanks for having us neith.

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Speaker 1: Pentagon spending today, adjusted for inflation, is one hundred billion

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Speaker 1: dollars higher than it was at the height of the

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Speaker 1: Cold War. Yet we have half the troops, half the ships,

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Speaker 1: half the aircraft. How did the US end up paying

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Speaker 1: more but getting so much less?

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Speaker 3: That stat there, that was one of the stats that

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Speaker 3: really first shocked us when we started writing this book.

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Speaker 3: Revealed a hidden truth behind the US military of today,

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Speaker 3: that we're spending more and more on security and getting

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Speaker 3: less of it. And what our book attempts to do

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Speaker 3: is explain the story why, why that is happening, and

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Speaker 3: how we've gotten to this point. And I think a

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Speaker 3: very direct answer to your question, Nute, is that we

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Speaker 3: have a broken defense acquisition system. The way the DoD

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Speaker 3: bias things is fundamentally broken, and a considerable amount of

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Speaker 3: money is just simply being wasted.

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Speaker 2: And the notion fewer better weapons, but a lot of

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Speaker 2: the weapons are too complex, hard to maintain, and at

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Speaker 2: a certain point quality can't make up for less of quantity.

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Speaker 2: Normal Augustine, the former head of Lockey Martin, he sort

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Speaker 2: of joked at the way we're going in twenty fifty,

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Speaker 2: we'd have one fighter plan and the services we have

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Speaker 2: to share it out over the course of the week.

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Speaker 2: We're not there yet, but it was insightful in its

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Speaker 2: own way.

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Speaker 1: It was actually picking up on a comment by President Coolidge, who,

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Speaker 1: when told they needed a certain number of planes for training,

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Speaker 1: said well, couldn't they just buy one and share it?

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Speaker 1: I tell audiences all the time. I think I'm the

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Speaker 1: longest serving teacher to the senior military. I've been teaching

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Speaker 1: major generals on the art of war since nineteen eighty three,

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Speaker 1: and I routinely tell groups of military leaders, if we

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Speaker 1: reduce the Pentagon to a triangle and put the other

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Speaker 1: two thirds of the building into a museum, we would

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Speaker 1: actually have a better defense of some in about two weeks,

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Speaker 1: because so much of what we do now is just

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Speaker 1: nonsensical bureaucracy. What led you to to write this book, Well,

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Speaker 1: I've been writing around this issue since. In nineteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: I worked with a guy named Gordon Adams now Aby Ross.

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Speaker 1: I wrote a book called The Iron Triangle. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of an update of status of the military industrial complex.

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Speaker 2: Interesting. Many of the companies that he profiled us since

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Speaker 2: been absorb in the merger boom. And at Columbia I

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Speaker 2: studied with an engineering professor, Seymour Melman, who had written

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Speaker 2: a book, The Permanent War Economy of the United States.

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Speaker 2: But I blame this all on Ben, you know. When

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Speaker 2: they approached me, I'm like, I've been writing about this forever.

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Speaker 2: The world's on fire. I don't have time for this.

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Speaker 2: Ben wisely convinced me otherwise, And the book is far

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Speaker 2: better because he's a little bit of a clear writer,

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Speaker 2: less of a hothead. I think it'll reach more people.

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Speaker 3: Now I'll tell you new to be perfectly candid. This

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Speaker 3: book began by ruining a perfectly good day on a boat.

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Speaker 2: You see.

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Speaker 3: Bill came down to Florida, where I live on vacation,

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Speaker 3: and he was on this beautiful boat ride. He was

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Speaker 3: boohooingg that his old publisher wanted him to write a

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Speaker 3: new book. Unbeknownst to Bill, I already had a book

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Speaker 3: in mind that I wanted Bill to write, and so

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Speaker 3: with a little lobbying of my own, Bill agreed to it.

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Speaker 3: And the book I wanted Bill to write, which he

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Speaker 3: has ultimately very kindly wrote me into writing with him.

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Speaker 3: The I thought this book had to be written was

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Speaker 3: that the military industrial complex of today was just a

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Speaker 3: fundamentally different beast than in Eisenhower's time, and we were

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Speaker 3: documenting a lot of this influence at the Quincy Institute.

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Speaker 3: We were seeing the military industrial complexes overlap with the

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Speaker 3: foreign influence industry, you know, foreign government's lobbyists working together

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Speaker 3: with the fence contractors to push arm sales. And we

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Speaker 3: were seeing the think tank influence by defense contractors. We

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Speaker 3: were seeing their influence at universities, Hollywood, on the DC

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Speaker 3: Metro for crying out loud, just everywhere you turned. We

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Speaker 3: were seeing the military industrial complex's influence, and we realized

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Speaker 3: nobody had put all of these pieces together. And so

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Speaker 3: that's where this book really started. We wanted to provide

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Speaker 3: people with this holistic look of the military industrial complex,

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Speaker 3: including the defense tech sector, which Bill had also been

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Speaker 3: covering in great detail too.

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Speaker 2: And I would say that sector, even since we started

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Speaker 2: the book as mushroomed little bit out of the mix,

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Speaker 2: because I was still stuck talking about the old guard

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Speaker 2: like Lockheed Martin, which I wrote a book about, there

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Speaker 2: really is a competition, although they may sort of pay

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Speaker 2: off both sides through big projects like Golden Dome. Even

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Speaker 2: though fighter Plane is you know, unman wing men, So

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Speaker 2: that whole drama I think is going to be critical,

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Speaker 2: and I think Ben has more of a sense that

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Speaker 2: there's positives and that you need powerful companies to dislodge

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Speaker 2: powerful companies and to create competition. The question is what

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Speaker 2: are they offering, How do we know if it's going

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Speaker 2: to work, how does it fit into our strategies. I

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Speaker 2: think we're kind of a pivotal moment, probably more so

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Speaker 2: than we realized when we started the book. When you

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Speaker 2: say we're a pivotal moment, what do you mean, well,

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Speaker 2: I think, love it or not, we're not as powerful

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Speaker 2: as we once were. There's power in the world, just diffuse.

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Speaker 2: The challenges are hard. I mean Russian invasion of Ukraine,

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Speaker 2: the situation of Israel, Gaza, how do we address the

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Speaker 2: challenge from China and now the new focus on Latin

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Speaker 2: America what they're calling the Donro doctrine, Donald Trump and

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Speaker 2: Monroe mash up. And then domestically, there's a lot of division.

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Speaker 2: Our economy. It's not as strong as it was. It's

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Speaker 2: especially not serving certain parts of the working class. We

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Speaker 2: used to have good paying manufacturing jobs. All that's in

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Speaker 2: the mix, and part of that is, all, right, what's

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Speaker 2: our strategy, and also how does the Pentagon budget and

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Speaker 2: the military fit into what kind of society, what kind

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Speaker 2: of economy, how do we want to educate and train

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Speaker 2: the next generation? And then, you know, more narrowly, just

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Speaker 2: this new fight between the big contractors which formed in

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Speaker 2: the nineties during the merger boom. I think this is

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Speaker 2: the biggest moment in the defense industrial base since then.

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Speaker 3: I really think that last comment of Bills is really

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Speaker 3: the key there, and I think that is the reason

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Speaker 3: we're going to look back on twenty twenty five specifically

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Speaker 3: as the year where the defense industry fundamentally changed. There's

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Speaker 3: a paradigm shift that's been underway in the last nine

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Speaker 3: months under the Trump administration, and that transition is explicitly

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Speaker 3: away from the major defense contractors, the primes who rose

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Speaker 3: up during the nineties defense consolidation that Bill mentioned, and

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Speaker 3: if that was a defense industry consolidation, I think we're

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Speaker 3: in the midst of a defense industry displacement where those

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Speaker 3: old guard firms, to some extent or another, are actively

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Speaker 3: being pushed around at least if not completely pushed under

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Speaker 3: by the defense tech sector. And to Bill's point, I

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Speaker 3: was perhaps a little optimistic, a little too optimistic, if

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Speaker 3: I'm critical of myself, about the rise of them being

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Speaker 3: able to push out the defense contractors. But what we're

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Speaker 3: seeing is that a rising Pentagon budget is kind of

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Speaker 3: lifting all boats, and so the old guards getting plenty

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Speaker 3: of money, and the defense tech startups are getting more

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Speaker 3: and more money. But I think as we transition to

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Speaker 3: the future, we're going the way of a more sophisticated

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Speaker 3: defense industry, and so I think the old guard defense

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Speaker 3: firms are in big trouble.

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Speaker 2: And there's no question we have to integrate new technology.

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Speaker 2: It's just how do we do it, how much hope

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Speaker 2: do we put in it, what's the strategy? And of

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Speaker 2: course we'll need a different kind of workforce to be

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Speaker 2: more involvement of our universities, and AI will be suffuse

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Speaker 2: throughout society. So how do the military uses relate to

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Speaker 2: the broader uses.

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Speaker 1: One of the things which explains part of this. You

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Speaker 1: all made the case that these big Pentagon contractors have

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Speaker 1: nine hundred and forty five lobbyists. They spent one hundred

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Speaker 1: and forty eight million dollars in twenty twenty four a loan,

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Speaker 1: So they have about two lobbyists and two hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy five thousand dollars per member of Congress, which makes

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Speaker 1: reform pretty tricky because you're clearly going uphill against a

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Speaker 1: pratorian guard protecting the past.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and as Ben points out, in addition to money,

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Speaker 2: a lot of the Hill is run by twenty three

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Speaker 2: to twenty five year olds and they have to deal

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Speaker 2: with the whole range of issues. So in addition to money,

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Speaker 2: the lobbyists bring expertise to the table. When they're reaching

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Speaker 2: for ideas for framing, they're more present. And some other

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Speaker 2: groups that don't have as many lobbyists as much money,

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Speaker 2: and there's kind of that interaction. A lot of them

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Speaker 2: came from government. They have expertise, so sometimes they control

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Speaker 2: the discussion internally as well as whatever money they spend.

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Speaker 2: I love your reference to the pratorian guard. I similarly

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Speaker 2: call it the autoimmune response at DoD when it comes

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Speaker 2: to buying stuff, where you know when innovation comes in

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Speaker 2: and automatically they're just swarming to crush that and fight

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Speaker 2: that innovative thing off. That's not part of what they're producing.

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Speaker 2: And it is to your point.

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Speaker 3: Too, it is the fact that they have that autoimmune

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Speaker 3: response because they have the lobbyist. They have the lobby

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Speaker 3: they have all this other influence too, I think tanks

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Speaker 3: and elsewhere which we point out. I will say this

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Speaker 3: the new guard. They know the game and they're starting

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Speaker 3: to play it more and more. And a Reil, for example,

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Speaker 3: which is a very big player in this new defense

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Speaker 3: tech surge, they have forty two lobbyists on their payroll

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Speaker 3: right now and that's just one firm, one of the

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Speaker 3: defense tech firms. They're leaning into the jobs argument too,

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Speaker 3: creating a big facility in a swing state like Ohio.

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Speaker 3: So you're seeing the defense tech firms create this lobbying

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Speaker 3: and influence campaign of their own. So I think at

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Speaker 3: the very least they're going to be able to push

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Speaker 3: back on the praetorium guard as you put it.

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Speaker 2: And there's a new revolving door ex military folks not

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Speaker 2: going directly to the startups, but to the VC firms

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Speaker 2: that fund them. And as a former head of procurement

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Speaker 2: of the Pentagon said, you could cash in big time

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Speaker 2: in front of your investments hits more than making a

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Speaker 2: couple hundred thousand as a board member. Pollunteer recruited Mike Gallagher,

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Speaker 2: who ran the Congressional China Committee, And interestingly, he's in

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Speaker 2: his forties, so a lot of times people do it

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Speaker 2: later in their career, but he's sort of staking to

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Speaker 2: center his career on this connection.

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Speaker 1: You know, the Japanese used to have of this tradition

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Speaker 1: that bureaucrats worked for a limited salary, but then they

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Speaker 1: got absorbed into these very big companies had amazing salaries

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Speaker 1: once they're retired. And to somebody said, we fit that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, one of the points you all make is

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Speaker 1: that I think there are seventeen hundred former senior DoD

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Speaker 1: personnel employed by the major defense contractors that according to

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Speaker 1: a government accountability study. There's the whole process here which

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Speaker 1: I find challenging. There's something wrong if somebody is arguing

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Speaker 1: for an inferior weapon or an inferior system for profit

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Speaker 1: reasons in a way which actually weakens our capacity to

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Speaker 1: defend ourselves.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and Congress plays a role because sometimes the Pentagon

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Speaker 2: wants to get rid of something and they put it back,

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Speaker 2: so military form becomes either harder or more expensive. And

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Speaker 2: then internally for example. Of course, Air force pilots are

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Speaker 2: not thrilled with the move towards and systems. Some of

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Speaker 2: them call the drone operators the chair force.

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Speaker 1: Let's say that I agree with your general concern. It's

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Speaker 1: too bureaucratic, it is too driven by non defense interests.

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Speaker 1: I always tell people that Jerry maguire, the movie in

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Speaker 1: which the agent the football player keeps saying to him,

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Speaker 1: I want you to show me the money. That explains

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Speaker 1: a great deal of the various arguments in Washington, DC

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Speaker 1: that under whatever the rationale, the real underlying argument has

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Speaker 1: showed me the money. And it's true in healthcare, it's

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Speaker 1: true in defense. True sadly at NASA, where we have

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Speaker 1: been funding a Boeing project that is absurd and amazingly indefensible,

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Speaker 1: but the politicians sustain it. How do you break through

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Speaker 1: that kind of a system. I think part of it.

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Speaker 2: Somehow we have to generate an actual discussion about what

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Speaker 2: our strategy should be. I know you are part of

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Speaker 2: the military reform movement which tried to power through a

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Speaker 2: lot of this. We could use that. Again, there's not

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Speaker 2: that many members who are really well informed on this,

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Speaker 2: and a lot of them spend more time trying to

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Speaker 2: protect one of the other states or districts than talking

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Speaker 2: strategy or how to do things better. And then in

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Speaker 2: the Pentagon, some people are attached to the existing bureaucracy.

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Speaker 2: There's jobs, there's careers, and there's others who would like

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Speaker 2: to innovate. So I think one of it is just

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Speaker 2: a national discussion about strategy, about technology, the alert knowledgeable

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Speaker 2: citizenry that Eisenower talked about. Obviously that's difficult now. I

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Speaker 2: mean there's miss and disinformation, there's conspiracy theories, there's division.

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Speaker 2: Everybody reads their own information sources. I think we might

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Speaker 2: need something old school like meeting people, teachings or even

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Speaker 2: podcasts where you can have a longer conversation. So that's

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Speaker 2: a little bit independent. On the money, I think it's

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Speaker 2: a piece of it.

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Speaker 3: I think Bill's right, you need that you need a

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Speaker 3: top down and a bottom up approach here, like this

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Speaker 3: is a big, wasteful monster we're trying to slay here.

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Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, as we point

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Speaker 3: out in the book, it doesn't make America safer, and

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Speaker 3: you know a lot of cases, it makes America less safe,

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Speaker 3: and so we have to provide the information of the

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Speaker 3: public so they understand that this idea that more spending

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Speaker 3: equals more security, it's who we That's just not how

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Speaker 3: the system works. And then to explain to them how

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Speaker 3: their tax dollars are being wasted. And I think there's

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Speaker 3: an opportunity for that in the near future where you're

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Speaker 3: seeing people worried about their healthcare premiums going out, quadrupling

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Speaker 3: or even more in some cases going up, and the

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Speaker 3: inflation put food on the tables getting harder and harder.

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Speaker 3: Yet at the same time we're willing to spend billions

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Speaker 3: of dollars on it's basically a failed F thirty five program.

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Speaker 3: I think pointing out those disconnects is key and getting

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Speaker 3: people mad about it's going to be key. Then top down,

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Speaker 3: I think you really have to have a true doge

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Speaker 3: at DoD. You know, when Dose came around, I think

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Speaker 3: a lot of us in this community that knew there

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Speaker 3: was all this wasteful spending at DoD. We're just waiting

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Speaker 3: for Elon Musk and his folks to get to DoD

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Speaker 3: because you know, we're just sitting there saying, man, if

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Speaker 3: you want government waste, go to the largest government bureaucracy

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Speaker 3: it's loaded with waste. Folks in the military will tell

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Speaker 3: you how much wasteful spending there is. Yet when DOGE

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Speaker 3: went to DoD, they barely found the change in the

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Speaker 3: couch cushions, so they didn't cut hardly anything from DoD.

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Speaker 3: I think you need somebody to come in and really

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Speaker 3: do that to get meaningful reform.

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Speaker 2: And I think you need intelligent efficiency. There's all kinds

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Speaker 2: of paperwork which I think the big firm's hide behind you.

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Speaker 2: They hire former acquisition officials and make it hard to

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Speaker 2: enter the field. But I think to do it, you

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Speaker 2: couldn't do it in three months. I think you would

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Speaker 2: have had to study what works and what doesn't work

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Speaker 2: in the various bureaucracies, and of course it would be

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Speaker 2: a huge fight to make those changes. So and I

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Speaker 2: don't know that many people who would know, well, okay,

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Speaker 2: what does work, what doesn't work. I think you do

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Speaker 2: want independent testing, You want safeguards against price gouging. You

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Speaker 2: want to be able to be flexible to adapt technology

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Speaker 2: to changing circumstances. If it takes twenty years to develop something,

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Speaker 2: you really can't do that. But I think we need

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Speaker 2: some of those former officials to tell us what they

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Speaker 2: think would work. I think we need Congress to be

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Speaker 2: more cognizant. They used to have an Office of Technology Assessment.

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Speaker 2: Given that a lot of the new stuff is tech based,

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Speaker 2: I would like the government to have the expertise to

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Speaker 2: evaluate all that. But it might be controversial because it

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Speaker 2: might cost a little money to keep people with that

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Speaker 2: expertise in government rather than industry. A lot to think

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Speaker 2: about it, but because it's in flux and there are

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Speaker 2: possibly this clash between the new guard and the old Guard.

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Speaker 2: Andrew has a manifesto called Arsenal Democracy two point zero

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Speaker 2: and it's critique of the current system. But it's pretty good.

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Speaker 2: I mean, you know, we could have probably written it

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Speaker 2: what's the new system and what is going to work

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Speaker 2: and not work, and what are the safeguards and the strategy.

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Speaker 2: So there is some hope in that change because we

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Speaker 2: can't really have a military based on twentieth century technology.

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Speaker 1: Part of that is the technologies are changing so rapidly.

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Speaker 1: If you look at what's happened with drones in Ukraine.

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Speaker 1: On both sides of Russian and Ukraine, the forces profound

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Speaker 1: rethinking of how we set up operations, at least for

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Speaker 1: the moment. These drones have given an enormous advantage to

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Speaker 1: the defense and have made the classic armored warfare that

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Speaker 1: we like up through the Iraqi campaign basically not sustainable

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Speaker 1: because just the tanks just get killed. And yet you're

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Speaker 1: wrote taking on the armored community and you're taking on

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Speaker 1: the piloted aircraft community. If you say, let's really study

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Speaker 1: what I understand. First became obvious in a fight between

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Speaker 1: Azerbaijan and Armenia, where the Azerbaijanis had mastered this technology

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Speaker 1: and just massacred the Armenians. And that was the forerunner

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Speaker 1: which the Russians obviously had not studied, or they would

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Speaker 1: have realized that running down the road towards Kiev large

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Speaker 1: armored columns was going to be a nightmare and a disaster.

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Speaker 1: But if you look at the American system right now,

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Speaker 1: to go in and suggest that scale of change arouses

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Speaker 1: so much opposition, And I am puzzled about the whole

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Speaker 1: program of a next generation fighter and a next generation bomber.

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Speaker 1: When I'm looking at the rise of automated systems, and

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Speaker 1: you mentioned Andrew earlier. They have this ghost Shark automated submarine,

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Speaker 1: which when you take out the human in a submarine,

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Speaker 1: and the amount of space that a human needs, and

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Speaker 1: the amount of support that a human needs, and the

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Speaker 1: dining room and everything else, you suddenly get a radically

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Speaker 1: smaller vehicle that actually carries far more torpedoes. And as

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Speaker 1: Ioner said it in the unclassified information, the ghost shark

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Speaker 1: that they're building for Australia basically can go out about

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundred miles autonomously by itself. If you wanted to

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Speaker 1: really screw up any Chinese communist effort to invade Taiwan,

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't take very many ghost sharks to simply make

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Speaker 1: it impossible to cross one hundred and forty miles of

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Speaker 1: the Straits of Taiwan. But we invest huge amounts in

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Speaker 1: exquisite tax submarines that are nuclear powered and have brilliant crews.

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Speaker 1: But you'd have to ask yourself in the next cycle,

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Speaker 1: is that the right investment? And because all of the

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Speaker 1: senior admirals will have come out of traditional ships, how

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Speaker 1: hard is it going to be to get them to

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Speaker 1: stop and say, you know, maybe we're in a different

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Speaker 1: world now. Yeah, And there's a couple of things. One

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Speaker 1: is I think drones are leveling the playing field a bit,

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Speaker 1: because not many countries could build a tank or a

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Speaker 1: fighter plane, but they can make relatively cheap drones.

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Speaker 2: Israel, Turkey, Iran, Ukraine also has a parallel DIY program

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Speaker 2: where they take Chinese drones, put weapons and cameras and

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Speaker 2: if it's a suicide drone that does the trick. So

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Speaker 2: some of these legacy systems they wouldn't farewell in a

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Speaker 2: new approach. They don't give you as much an advantage

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Speaker 2: as maybe they did in the past. And I think

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Speaker 2: there's got to be a range. I mean, if they're

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Speaker 2: too exquisite and they take too long to maintain in

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Speaker 2: a war like Ukraine, it would put you at a disadvantage.

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Speaker 2: Where Russia is cranking out stuff that may not be

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Speaker 2: as technically proficients ares, but they can do it quickly.

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Speaker 1: They're just going to say. The sheer number of drones

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Speaker 1: that the Ukraine NaNs are going to make in house

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Speaker 1: this year is a revolution and capability. We don't see

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Speaker 1: anything like it.

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Speaker 2: No, these aren't just victory guards. These are the weapons

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Speaker 2: of war.

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Speaker 3: The Ukraine conflict is fundamentally changing conflict, and not just

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Speaker 3: that conflict. You're seeing this in Israel, Gaza, too, And

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Speaker 3: I think to your point, new you know, as much

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Speaker 3: as we might love or friends and family in the

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Speaker 3: US Navy, in the US Air Force for that matter,

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Speaker 3: we're getting to a point where the technologology of some

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Speaker 3: of this equipment is exceeding what humans can withstand. I've

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Speaker 3: wrote in the book about flying with the Thunderbirds as

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Speaker 3: special guests with them, and you know, when you do that,

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Speaker 3: you go through, you know, like a half day training

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Speaker 3: on how to make sure you don't pass out even

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Speaker 3: in a you know, a flyover. You know we were

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Speaker 3: not in combat, or you know we were going to

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Speaker 3: do a flyover, and you get very serious training on

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Speaker 3: how not to pass out, you know, from the g's

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Speaker 3: And that's an n F sixty that doesn't have the

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Speaker 3: speed of an F twenty two or an F thirty five,

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Speaker 3: let alone future aircraft. So we're very quickly getting to

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Speaker 3: a point where the human body just can't withstand the

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Speaker 3: capabilities of the technology that we have. And we have

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Speaker 3: to recognize that, because if we don't recognize it, America's

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Speaker 3: adversaries certainly are and they're going to be creating these

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Speaker 3: unmanned systems with greater capabilities than our man systems.

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Speaker 1: It's a little bit like when we went into a wreck.

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Speaker 1: I think in retrospect we should have expected you unieds

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Speaker 1: and other kinds of low cost but very deadly operations.

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Speaker 1: And at the time I think it was shocked us.

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Speaker 1: We were fully prepared to fight a traditional war against

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Speaker 1: a traditional opponent and we would win it. And I

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Speaker 1: remember I happened to be in Australia about five months

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Speaker 1: before we went into Iraq and was a dinner with

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Speaker 1: the head of the Australian military and I said, if

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Speaker 1: you were faced with the problem of defeating the United States,

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Speaker 1: what would you do? How would you try to do it?

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Speaker 1: And he said I wouldn't. He said, It's inconceivable in

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Speaker 1: a normal traditional war that I'm going to be able

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Speaker 1: to beat the United States. So I would invest in

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Speaker 1: gorilla capabilities. I would have lots of equipment that was decentralized.

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Speaker 1: I would assume we're going to lose round one, and

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Speaker 1: then I'd be available to make round two really painful.

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Speaker 1: I thought that was just so totally outside the way

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Speaker 1: we thought of, and then of course that's what happened.

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Speaker 2: And sometimes they measure power by money. The US spends

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Speaker 2: more than the next ex hunters involved. But if you're

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Speaker 2: buying the wrong things, money is not the issue. If

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Speaker 2: there's asymmetric warfare, different levels of morale. I mean, the

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Speaker 2: revolution of military affairs was supposed to be we have

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Speaker 2: superior information, superior networks, period precision kind of mnitions, but

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Speaker 2: in Iraq that didn't get the job done, or for example,

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Speaker 2: the bombing of the houtis the costs exchange was not great.

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Speaker 2: Some of our missus were a few million dollars. There's

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Speaker 2: were cheap, so even just economically sustaining some of these

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Speaker 2: wars as a challenge.

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Speaker 3: To your point, their bill and to your point Nude,

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Speaker 3: I think part of the system that's in place we

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Speaker 3: talk about a lot in the book is how Hollywood

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Speaker 3: has helped to perpetuate this and helped to keep that

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Speaker 3: old guard going. When we see movies like Top Gun

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Speaker 3: and Top Gun two, these are movies with pilots in seats,

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Speaker 3: with butts in seats. It's not a sexy in Hollywood

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Speaker 3: to put the drones out there. Very often when the

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Speaker 3: AI or the advanced military technology is put in a movie,

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Speaker 3: it's scary. It's terminator too, you know, it's hiberdyne systems

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00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 3: trying to end humanity as we know it. And so

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Speaker 3: again there's this built in autoimmune function in the cultural

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Speaker 3: part of the miic that is repelling the technological transition, and.

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Speaker 2: Some of these weapons that don't function well in reality

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Speaker 2: are killing it in the movies.

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Speaker 1: But I saw the second top gun. They were trying

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Speaker 1: to use basically absolutely tactical aircraft to penetrate and I

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Speaker 1: said at the time, well, before what happened, you know,

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Speaker 1: in the real world, you'd use B two bombers and

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Speaker 1: you would have such precision that, in fact, you would

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Speaker 1: penetrate the target instantaneously with the zero risk. And it

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Speaker 1: occurred to me just listening to you guys, I hope

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Speaker 1: this is not an inappropriate thought. But because these guys

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Speaker 1: are obviously extraordinarily well trained and they practice and they're very,

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Speaker 1: very courageous. But if you actually tried to film the

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Speaker 1: be Too assault in Iran, the number of hours of

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Speaker 1: just flying, you couldn't make it a very interesting documentary. Now,

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Speaker 1: it had taken the Israeli Air Force to degrade and

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Speaker 1: destroy the Iranian air defense system, but which they did

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Speaker 1: pretty successfully. But and that effect was we sent seven

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00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:23,600
Speaker 1: vehicles a long distance, they refueled a number of times,

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00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:26,359
Speaker 1: they got to the right target area, there was no

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Speaker 1: effective in aircraft capability. They took out the SISE and

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Speaker 1: then they flew home.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and even in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of

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Speaker 2: the casualties were just transporting things, and so the Pentagon

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Speaker 2: became interested in modular solar and so forth, which I

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Speaker 2: think there's still some interesting even though in some circles

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00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 2: alternative energy is a bad name. So there's a lot

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Speaker 2: in it. And of course Hollywood likes heroes. An unmanned

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Speaker 2: vehicle is not a hero, Tom Craze somehow winning a

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Speaker 2: battle that they couldn't win in real life as a hero.

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Speaker 1: That's right, if every citizen could read your new book,

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Speaker 1: The Trillion Dollar War Machine, how runaway military spending drives

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Speaker 1: the America into foreign wars and bankrupt us at home.

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Speaker 1: I think, just in terms of starting the conversation and

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Speaker 1: picking up on what Eisenhower tried to warn us about

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Speaker 1: that when you build huge systems that are self serving,

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Speaker 1: that have a huge interest in manipulating everybody else to

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Speaker 1: their advantage, you are inherently both putting your national security

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Speaker 1: and your democracy and your freedom at risk and Eisenhower,

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Speaker 1: who of course had been a career soldier, a West

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Speaker 1: Point graduate, a five star general. I think he genuinely

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Speaker 1: had a fear that we had now gotten into a

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Speaker 1: cycle where the systems that are supposed to serve us

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Speaker 1: in fact have us serving them. And I think your

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Speaker 1: book helps make that point. So I encourage everybody to

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Speaker 1: take a look at the trillion dollar war machine. Bill

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Speaker 1: and Ben, I really want to thank you for taking

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Speaker 1: the time to share with us, and I think it's

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Speaker 1: a very important conversation. Thank you both for joining me,

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Speaker 1: and I think this was a very very good conversation.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Yes, thank you.

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Speaker 1: Thank you to my guests, Bill Hartung and Ben Freeman.

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Speaker 1: Newsworld is produced by Gingrash three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our

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00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: executive producers Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The

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Speaker 1: artwork for the show was created by Steve Fenley. Special

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Speaker 1: thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If you've

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Speaker 1: been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast

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00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: and both rate us at five stars and give us

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00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,360
Speaker 1: a review so others can learn what it's all about.

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Speaker 1: Join me on substat at ginglestre sixty dot net. I'm

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Speaker 1: Nick Gingrich. This is news world,