Latest / Bourbon & Rum / Status Chasing, Tribalism, and the Iran Conflict: From Airline Loyalty to the Military-Industrial Complex

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Status Chasing, Tribalism, and the Iran Conflict: From Airline Loyalty to the Military-Industrial Complex · Bourbon & Rum

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  It's not sexy and it'd be hard to campaign on, and that's why
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  nobody ever changes it, but that's what needs to change.
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  They've created a system that smart, capable people, I mean,
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  will sell their souls. You know, the whole thing moves
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  like a Ouija board. You know, you got all these
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  hands on it. The thing just kind of migrates
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  wherever the hell it goes, and nobody's really running it.
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  Welcome to Bourbon and Rum, the podcast dedicated to civil
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  conversation. I'm Kent, I like rum and I'm
• 0:34
  from the left side of the aisle. And I'm Kyle.
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  I like bourbon. I tend to be a little more
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  conservative. We're brothers talking politics
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  for bourbon and rum. What are you drinking?
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  I'm drinking a bottle of Eagle Rare.
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  You're drinking from a bottle of Eagle Rear.
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  You're not drinking a bottle of Eagle Rear for the.
• 1:04
  Pouring out of a bottle of Eagle rear, but been finding that
• 1:09
  stuff everywhere and I actually picked up a bottle it's it's
• 1:13
  getting a little bit I've got 5 unopened bottles and then this
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  half bottle so it's I'm hoarding them a little bit but you know
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  this stuff has always been hard to find it's less hard to find
• 1:26
  now And my local liquor store had a bourbon drop today and we
• 1:31
  were at a volleyball tournament and I didn't make it in time but
• 1:34
  I got there and they had a bottle Eagle rear left but they
• 1:40
  they also had one other bottle from the bourbon drop.
• 1:43
  It was a bottle of Eagle Double Eagle Rear, which is $3000
• 1:50
  bottle, which actually I've seen that for sale for like 10.
• 1:55
  But you know, like who's buying? Are there people buying $3000
• 2:00
  bottles and just Downing them with Coke?
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  I mean, I suppose. But maybe so.
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  What you got going? Well, I'm drinking a not too
• 2:11
  dark and Stormy. A dark and Stormy is a great rum
• 2:13
  cocktail. It's a dark rum, ginger beer and
• 2:17
  lime. I'm going to be dark rum, so I'm
• 2:19
  drinking medium rum, you know, kind of an Inejo rum, but it's
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  pretty good. It looks really refreshing.
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  Yeah, it's tasty. You know, we're talking like
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  there may be a chance that we get together if, if things align
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  and you come down here next month.
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  I've got 2 bottles of rum I've been saving for you.
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  So I've got this 20 year old Kirkland rum and then I got this
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  diplomatico. You know, you're the Venezuelan.
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  Yeah. There we go.
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  Chavez Special. Yeah.
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  Well, cool. That'd be great.
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  I'd love to love to sip some of that with.
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  I'd actually wouldn't mind working my way through that top
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  shelf in your office there on your bourbon.
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  So I want you to try for sure. Cool.
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  Well, almost the end of March. I've been out of it.
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  I was at a conference this week. I.
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  Was in. Me too.
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  I was in California, rode my first way MO, which was kind of
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  fun. But probably the the news that
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  we ought to talk about is the war.
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  But I'm honestly, I'm kind of low information at this point.
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  I guess that qualifies me to be the commander in chief, but you
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  know. Or the low information fake
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  news. Yes, yeah, I've been travelling
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  as well. I mean, I guess one question is
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  how is your TSA experience this week?
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  Well, my local airport is always, I mean, is, I've never
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  waited in line at my local airport, but I came through, you
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  know, we're, we're watching all these horror stories.
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  We left our conference early because a colleague I was with
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  was really worried about it. So we we we head back to LAX and
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  there was nobody in line. Like there were people ahead of
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  me, but by the time I walked through the pre-check line at
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  the international terminal at LAX, like the person that was in
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  front of me was already through the metal detector before I got
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  my bag onto the conveyor. Wow.
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  Yeah, I had a well, I was in Fort Lauderdale and had a flight
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  out at 5:00 AM and I finished up early and the guys were telling
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  me that 5:00 AM flight's the worst one.
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  They said it really packs up, but if you get it like in the
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  middle of the afternoon, it's fine.
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  So I wound up moving it up and yeah, it was fine.
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  But you know, I've been doing that facial ID check.
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  Man, that thing is awesome. That's like you breeze through
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  at every airport pretty much. Have you ever tried CLEAR?
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  You know, I haven't because I always see those guys and it's
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  always like a line up and then there's like some guy like you
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  got to have a conversation with some dude.
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  It seems like a goat rope honestly.
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  I had, I had a, a coupon to do it for six months or a year and
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  it just, I don't see it, it it just doesn't make sense to me.
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  I don't, I don't see the benefit.
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  It must be really situational. We, we may want to edit this out
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  because I don't want to ramble about travel minutiae for the
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  longest, but I told you I, I gave up on trying to maintain
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  status on an airline. So I'm kind of a free agent.
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  I fly Delta, an American and whatever.
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  And I got the does that make you a concubine?
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  I'm a, I'm I, I got that the American Express Platinum, which
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  gives you access. There's a lot of like travel
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  perks and it kind of actually the hotel I stayed at, that
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  Loews hotel was in their network and if you book through them, it
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  was very much like the Platinum Marriott experience at check in.
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  They were like, oh, you're with this group and we gave you a big
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  upgrade and I got and so that was nice.
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  And then you get access to their own branded lounges, the
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  Centurion lounge. That was not that was not
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  impressive. Oh, really?
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  When I got there, they were wait listed because they were full.
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  And so there were probably 25 people like loitering around the
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  elevator. They were like people like
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  sitting on the floor on their phones outside the entrance.
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  It was like a homeless encampment.
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  And you know, I went in the lounge and it was nice and there
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  was food. It was no better than, I mean,
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  I, it was better than some Admirals clubs I've been to or
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  better than some Sky clubs, but it was, it would have been right
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  in the middle of the pack of Atlanta sky clubs.
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  And, and that was one of the things that pushed me away from
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  Delta is cause a lot of their lounges now are wait listed.
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  And you go to the, you go to the Sky club and there's like a
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  rope, a velvet rope and 12 people on their phone standing
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  in line to get into it. I'm just like, for as much as
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  you spend to to hit that level, that is insane.
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  Well, in a lot of those airports where they're back doing the
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  club, but I, I didn't for a year and it was like, you know, most
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  of these nice airports, if it's nice to have to have a club,
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  they get some nice restaurants. I mean, right, Just go sit in a
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  restaurant for Pete's sake. That's exactly what I was going
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  to say. Yeah.
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  You know, seriously. Like an overpriced quesadilla at
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  Chili's. They bring it to you.
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  You can stay there as long as you want.
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  It's usually it's quieter than the lounges.
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  This one, there was a woman talking on the phone, like full
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  volume. There were kids.
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  I was just like, what the hell am I doing here?
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  OK, I and I honestly, you're saying we should cut this.
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  I think we got to keep. I mean, the travel thing that
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  that's something that I don't get is these freaking people
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  that talk on a speakerphone in public.
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  Like, what are you thinking? Do we want to do?
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  The rest of us want to listen in to your converse.
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  That the lack of self-awareness of some people in public is just
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  astonishing to me. Yeah, it is.
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  And look, you got to take phone calls and it's an airport and
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  you know, it's going to be noisy, but kind of my MO, if I
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  need to take a call, I'll go look for the, for a gate that
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  there's not a plane at. I'll sit facing the wall.
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  I'll have my conversation and I won't, I won't, I won't put them
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  on speaker and I won't yak like we're just old friends.
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  You know, I'm, it's amazing to me the way people just carry on
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  and as you said, speakerphone talking into it.
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  I I don't get that. The best, though, is when it's
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  like an uncomfortable conversation with like
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  somebody's yelling at somebody. Like, no, you listen to me, you
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  son of a bitch. Like OK man, I want to hear
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  more. If I can get a name, I always,
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  you know, if it's, if they mention the name is, you know,
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  it's Kay that they're talking to.
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  When they're ready to wrap up, I'm always like, bye Kay.
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  Well, as you do have to the the Bluetooth, you have to be
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  careful. Not long after Bluetooth started
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  being a thing with these headsets, I had some little
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  earpiece and I was walking through an airport and I called
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  my wife and I'm just walking along people and you can't
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  really tell if somebody's on a Bluetooth or not.
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  And I was like, hey, babe. And this lady next to me is
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  like, really? I said no, I'm talking to my
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  wife. Well, I wear, I wear hearing
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  aids and they're my Bluetooth. That's what I I use the my
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  speaker, but that's even more of a problem because I don't have
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  earbuds hanging from my ears and I look like I'm just talking to
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  myself. I know, yeah.
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  You know, but you hit on these, this loyalty to these brands for
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  hotels or for airlines, and there's such a some, some people
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  really put a sense of identity into these statuses, you know,
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  and it's like what an ingenious marketing tool.
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  Like they're going to spend more money in a, in a stupid way just
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  so that they can carry this, this, this made-up status that
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  we invented. I mean, it you start thinking
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  about the mechanics of that and how manipulative that is, it's
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  unbelievable. Well, graph out the benefit, the
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  value of the benefit. And one of the things for me
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  with this, some of it's, I live in a town with a small airport
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  and it, it, it's harder to be loyal.
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  You know, it's, it's a lot more flexible if you're willing to go
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  to whatever. But for the longest, I, I was
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  kind of like, well, you know, you, you, you get upgrades and
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  every airline that I've flown in the last little bit, a day or
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  two before the flight, they come on and, you know, for 150 bucks,
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  we'll upgrade. And you know, you, you can do
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  that quite a bit for the price of what you would spend to.
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  I mean, and, and maybe that's the first world problem, but I
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  do that from time to time. I'm like, and I'll be strategic
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  about the legs. A lot of times when we've got a
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  short connection, that's one of the other things I want to bitch
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  about is the short connections. I'll upgrade the first on the
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  first leg because I know that I'm at the front of the plane
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  and I can get off and make my next gate and it's 150 bucks.
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  And no, I don't have to do the thing where where I'm checking
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  the phone every 5 minutes right up until the check in to see if
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  I'm going to get the upgrade. Come on it just for for a $6
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  free drink? Good grief.
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  I know. And it's not that comfortable
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  either. I mean, I remember 30 years ago
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  you'd get upgraded and you know you're crossing your legs.
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  It's a big bunch of space now. It's like.
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  It's tight. Yeah.
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  Yeah. The other thing that status
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  gives you is when stuff goes to hell.
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  Yeah, you've got a better phone number and that'll help you.
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  That does, however, probably the best part it is.
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  Unless unless you like own American Airlines or travel like
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  you do. I've had more problems on
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  American in the last couple years and you can't talk to
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  anybody. There is no human being you can
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  reach if you don't have status. And so I mean, that's a problem.
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  But again, then I don't care if I don't get what I want to
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  cancel the flight and buy a flight on another airline.
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  You know, you just, it's, it's really weird.
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  Hotels are a little different. I've felt like I've gotten more
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  value from my long standing thing with Marriott then.
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  But then I look at, you know, how much I've spent with
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  Marriott. Yeah.
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  It's like they ought to pick me up.
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  Right. Yeah, I, I actually switched
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  back years ago. I did Hilton and I've been
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  playing with that or last year I switched back and I.
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  Well, and just common sense for you, you know, sometimes take a
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  look at what you make an hour and think that if you're out
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  there searching for a cheaper hotel room for 1/2 an hour,
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  right, you're losing money. You know, like, but to your
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  point, they've created a system that smart, capable people, I
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  mean, will absolutely like sell their souls to to cross the
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  street to stay at a different branded hotel.
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  I'm, I'm really kind of backing out of that.
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  But then I'm thinking, why couldn't you do that with a
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  like, why couldn't, why hasn't a restaurant figured that out?
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  Like, hey, I'm, I'm platinum with Chili's, you know.
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  And like, you know, no, I hide every meal at Chili's, you know,
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  like, I'm, I'm almost surprised that somebody hadn't figured
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  that out with a restaurant. You could do like you could have
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  like the velvet rope around a fancy table in the middle of the
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  room. Yeah, like a little, a little
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  like Speakeasy area. Well, this is the Chili's
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  Speakeasy, you know? Yeah, yeah.
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  It's interesting because it's not stuck with other things and,
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  and other, you know, that's one of the things that's in my field
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  is data analytics and everybody, everybody brings that up all the
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  time. But we need to make it like the
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  airline. So people are like crawling over
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  each other to get that status. And I'm like, no, I don't think,
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  I don't think it's going to work.
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  Well, but that I think that the the and like we've talked about,
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  you get upgraded first class, whoopty Doo, you got this crappy
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  drink, you know, really low quality booze and bad food.
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  Like, oh, that's great. But I think they've been
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  successful at making the premium experience something that is
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  sought after, either getting first class or getting a suite
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  at a hotel room. Like that's enough of a drive
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  that it keeps people in the game.
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  I mean it Chili's, I mean, what are they going to offer?
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  It's going to be like, well, you could get a bigger bowl of chips
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  and salsa, you know, like, what is the, you know, enticement?
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  The the airline, even more than the hotel has got it.
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  And part of that is that they board you on that plane first in
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  first class, and they March the entire rest of the airplane past
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  you looking. At everybody in first class puts
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  that judgmental look on their face, like, why are you getting
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  on the plane late, Jennifer? And when I get upgraded, I've
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  got the condescension in full bore.
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  And then when I don't get upgraded, I'm like, well, he's
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  not anybody. He he, he's just some bum who
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  flies. He flew a lot last year.
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  He's not more special than I am. That's.
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  Right. That's right.
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  Well, OK, so we started down the travel path.
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  We're going to figure out a way to tie this back to Iran, But,
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  but it does I'm, I'm, I'm digging here, I, I guess, but is
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  there, does the status chasing, the social element around status
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  chasing have a corollary to how we interact in a, in the
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  political world around identifying with a candidate or
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  identifying with the 'cause, you know, we've talked a lot about
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  how we try to have a civil dialogue here, but a lot of
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  people can't about politics. And is there a piece of that?
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  Because people identify with a camp of some kind, just like you
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  identify with a camp and a hotel and a I don't know, maybe
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  there's a stretch. No, I, I actually have been
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  thinking about this a lot, 'cause I think I'm caught in
• 18:47
  this right now a lot on the left.
• 18:52
  We've got a, a, another No Kings rally today.
• 18:55
  There's thousands of people all over the country protesting.
• 18:59
  And I could give you have given you a pretty long list of all of
• 19:04
  the things that I think are wrong with the way Trump has
• 19:08
  approached this conflict. But I'm still not ready.
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  I am shedding no tears for the Ayatollah.
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  Do you know what I mean? Like, I, I think that how this
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  is going about, I think is dangerous.
• 19:24
  I, I, I, I hope that I'm proven wrong.
• 19:28
  But I think we could, I said to you this week, we could have the
• 19:30
  20th anniversary, the podcast and we could say, well, what's
• 19:34
  the latest from Iran? And I don't think I, I don't
• 19:38
  think history says that's impossible.
• 19:41
  So I got all kinds of worries about it.
• 19:44
  But it's also not shocking that you don't like the stylistic
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  approach with which he goes to war.
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  You don't really like the stylistic approach with which he
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  does anything else. So that would make that's
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  consistent, that makes sense. Well.
• 19:59
  Right. And I do think that we've made
• 20:02
  big mistakes as a country. We've we've been.
• 20:06
  We've, we've rolled this movie over and over again since, you
• 20:10
  know, to a degree Korea, but certainly Vietnam.
• 20:13
  You had a, a notable exception to that with the first Gulf War.
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  But, but, but then the criticism is you didn't finish the job.
• 20:21
  So we got to have the second Gulf War.
• 20:23
  And, but I guess my point is that I'm not, I, I don't know
• 20:30
  where I'm at. I am, I am not ready to say that
• 20:35
  I would prefer that we hadn't killed the atoll.
• 20:39
  We, we are better off for degrading their capabilities.
• 20:44
  But that doesn't take us off the hook of having to be thoughtful
• 20:48
  about what we're doing. And, and now I'm really anxious
• 20:52
  about the now it's not 10,000, it's 17,000 troops we're sending
• 20:57
  there. I think that is a serious 'cause
• 20:59
  I, I'm not trying to, I'm, I'm not trying to bend this around.
• 21:03
  I want to answer your, your point.
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  The tribalism is that, you know, that low stakes, that low stakes
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  status seeking. I'm not going to succumb to
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  that. I'm not going to go the low
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  stakes status seeking of a lot of the left like this is, you
• 21:22
  know, the the worst thing. No, I, I, Iran was a threat.
• 21:27
  Were they an imminent threat? Were they a threat tomorrow?
• 21:30
  I, I don't know, but they're a threat and we're better off with
• 21:33
  them not in charge. But that doesn't mean that
• 21:39
  doesn't mean I'm all in either. And so how do you balance?
• 21:41
  Now, and I think you're, I think your positions totally make
• 21:45
  sense and I think. The.
• 21:48
  Tribalism piece, you know, we, we were talking about this
• 21:54
  somebody else and you're talking about like what's we're talking
• 21:57
  about the quality of conversations and we're having a
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  conversation about that separate conversation about that about an
• 22:04
  event I'm working on. But but you know, I think that
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  you kind of said something that made me think about it and I
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  thought about like going straight to a tribalistic
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  argument is almost like it's, it's like a lazy easy thing.
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  And I and I and I don't, I'm not trying to, you know, pat
• 22:32
  ourselves on the back, but I think part of what we try to do
• 22:35
  in this podcast is not just knee jerk and go to your tribalistic
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  corner. I mean, yes, we both have, you
• 22:45
  know, we both have views with our own tribal, you know,
• 22:49
  elements. But we're not just like, you
• 22:53
  know, shout, we're not shouting Project 2025 to you and you're
• 22:58
  not shouting, you know, the democratic platform.
• 23:02
  We, we have a, a dialogue, you know, so I, I think your point
• 23:09
  there is totally makes sense. I, I will say, and, and I'm not
• 23:17
  like, I'm with you, like I think this, I'm not mourning the death
• 23:23
  of the Ayatollah. I think, I think there's
• 23:26
  goodness that can come out of this.
• 23:28
  But I'm also with you. I want to look at this in a
• 23:30
  balanced way. And it's not like, you know, not
• 23:35
  everything we do is going to be perfect and yadda, yadda, yadda.
• 23:39
  But the one part that does drive me nuts is when I listen to the
• 23:44
  media and somebody starts quoting, well, the Iranian state
• 23:49
  news said blah, blah, blah. You know, and I'm like, I mean,
• 23:53
  isn't that about like saying the North Korean news said that, you
• 24:00
  know, are we really putting credence in what you know, the
• 24:03
  state owned media says? What did?
• 24:07
  What did you? What did they quote them on?
• 24:09
  I'm not, I'm not familiar. I, it's a variety of things.
• 24:14
  I mean, I've seen multiple news reports about, well, the Iranian
• 24:17
  news media said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 24:19
  I'm like, OK, you know, I just, I, if you ever read the KCNA
• 24:25
  news, the North Korea, you know, they said the Dear Leader was
• 24:32
  coming to sign, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 24:34
  Like, OK, that's interesting. But no, I mean, I think you're,
• 24:42
  I think you're, you're right there.
• 24:44
  I mean, as we pivot into Iran from from hotel and airline
• 24:49
  loyalty pivoting to the Iran war.
• 24:54
  Well, we got it in the right order.
• 24:56
  We got it in order of priority, right?
• 24:58
  That's right. That's right.
• 25:02
  Discussion Group 1. Discretion group 2 we're we're a
• 25:07
  discussion group 8 now what about a red?
• 25:11
  That's right. That's right.
• 25:14
  I do think it's interesting the, and we talked about this a
• 25:19
  little bit, the coalition that is kind of forming and both the
• 25:25
  good way and a bad way. I mean, you got the Russians
• 25:27
  that are probably feeding some bad actors there.
• 25:31
  And I saw some news about the Houthis, you know, jumping in,
• 25:36
  but then you, you're getting all the Gulf states.
• 25:39
  And I mean, we're not far from the Gulf states jumping into
• 25:43
  this thing, too. I mean, their patience for
• 25:45
  somebody lobbing missiles at them is starting to run out.
• 25:49
  I just saw the Ugandan president said Uganda's all in with Israel
• 25:54
  on this one. Do you have a serious question
• 25:58
  and I don't know enough to to ask?
• 26:01
  I may not know enough to answer. The been some concern about
• 26:08
  degradation of our stocks. We've got a finite number of
• 26:11
  Tomahawks and you know, are we, are we emptying the, the ammo
• 26:18
  dump right now? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly,
• 26:23
  it's certainly concerning. I I also think though, and I'm
• 26:29
  not trying to deflect, you're right, I mean that that is
• 26:32
  certainly a concerning factor and these things are expensive.
• 26:37
  I think also, though, one of the things I read about, and when
• 26:41
  you talk about the immediacy around why now, you know, we
• 26:46
  talked about that I think a time or two ago about, you know, how
• 26:51
  many years we heard that the Iran is weeks away from refined
• 26:56
  uranium. You know, like, yeah, I mean,
• 26:59
  I'm not discounting that there's a threat there.
• 27:01
  But I also think that's been something that's been spun up
• 27:05
  for a really long time. And I I don't know where the
• 27:08
  truth lies there. But one thing I was reading
• 27:12
  about, and we were talking the other day about drones and other
• 27:15
  drone technology. And one of the things I was
• 27:18
  reading about was that the Iranian drone programs were
• 27:23
  reaching a critical mass. And there was fear that they
• 27:28
  were at the point where, you know, they could load up a a
• 27:33
  wide body jet aircraft, commercial aircraft and fly it
• 27:39
  over to the coast, coast of New York and drop out 50,000 drones
• 27:44
  and wreak havoc on a city. And you know, the thought was
• 27:48
  like the imminent threat of Iran actually maybe more their
• 27:55
  advancements and drone technology because because you
• 27:58
  see like all, a lot of what Russia's using in Ukraine is
• 28:03
  Iranian drone technology. I thought that was kind of an
• 28:07
  interesting take that that drone technology which we're seeing
• 28:10
  play out may have been at a critical mass that really could
• 28:15
  have been disastrous if we hadn't confronted that.
• 28:18
  So I don't. I don't know if that's the case,
• 28:20
  but. I, I think back to all of these
• 28:24
  drone sightings in New Jersey over the last year.
• 28:29
  I, I, I don't know, is it, is it likelier that that's an ancient
• 28:35
  race of humans that have gone underwater, or could it be the
• 28:41
  Iranians? I mean, it's it, you know,
• 28:43
  that's the thing. The stuff is small.
• 28:46
  You don't need the Gerald R Ford.
• 28:48
  You need, you know, you can run this stuff off the back of a
• 28:52
  speedboat. Right.
• 28:55
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, I really.
• 28:57
  Think that is one of the the biggest news news.
• 29:05
  I mean, the biggest, the biggest subplots of this thing is that
• 29:11
  drone advancement and the changes to warfare of drones
• 29:17
  because it gets a little bit to the whole terror of the air
• 29:23
  raids. World War 2, you know, dropping
• 29:25
  something on the civilian population.
• 29:27
  You don't know where these bombs are going to go.
• 29:28
  You know, he's going to die, kind of the same thing.
• 29:30
  You drop a bunch of these little homemade drones and it can kill
• 29:35
  a onesie twosie here, but that creates terror in the populace.
• 29:39
  Well, and and our defenses are designed to stop strategic
• 29:44
  bombers. They're good for Scud.
• 29:45
  Missiles, but they're not necessarily for, you know, some
• 29:48
  little basketball sized drone, right?
• 29:53
  That is, that's an interesting piece of this in so far as, I
• 30:05
  mean, you talk about bipartisan abdication of responsibility.
• 30:12
  And I think that's probably more a factor of, you know, let's go
• 30:16
  back to Eisenhower warning about the military industrial complex.
• 30:22
  I mean, if, if, if you're in the business of selling stuff,
• 30:25
  wouldn't you rather sell F-30 fives than like DJI drones with
• 30:30
  the IED on it? Well, you know, yeah.
• 30:35
  But it's also a part of Part 1 of the biggest problems of the
• 30:42
  military industrial complex is the whole budgeting process with
• 30:48
  Congress in the legislative branch to secure funding, to do
• 30:53
  research and then to bring that to fruition that, you know, they
• 30:58
  called it the P bomb whole process.
• 31:00
  You know, where you lay out that, that whole budgeting, what
• 31:05
  is, I forget, I'm, I'm probably using the wrong terminology, but
• 31:09
  there is like this really structured acquisition process
• 31:14
  of bringing out a new weapon system and planning for and
• 31:17
  doing all the R&D and getting to that next step.
• 31:19
  And that's why like by the time they produce something, it's
• 31:25
  technology that's obsolete in many cases.
• 31:28
  I mean, they're fielding new systems that are something
• 31:30
  that's like 8 years old because it takes 5 to 10 years to feel
• 31:35
  the thing. And it's like, and and then it's
• 31:39
  like, OK, well, let's make that more efficient.
• 31:42
  OK. Well, the whole freaking system
• 31:47
  is built around entitlement for all these congressman's little
• 31:51
  pet projects and all their little industries.
• 31:53
  It's it's not sexy and it'd be hard to campaign on.
• 31:59
  And that's why nobody ever changes it.
• 32:01
  But that's what needs to change. Like yeah, in the in this day
• 32:07
  and age to be buying crap on a 5 to 10 year cycle as fast as
• 32:14
  everything changes, that's AI. Don't know that's that's a whole
• 32:18
  other topic, but that's. A huge challenge, I think.
• 32:24
  I think about this a lot because of the juxtaposition.
• 32:28
  You know, everybody looks at the fact that the B52 is still
• 32:31
  flying and it's a 70 year old plane and it's a such an
• 32:34
  anomaly. You know, honestly, as a
• 32:37
  taxpayer, the idea of a plane that was so well suited to its
• 32:45
  role that it's worth keeping around for 70 years like that
• 32:51
  ought to be what we're targeting.
• 32:53
  The the shocking thing shouldn't be that the B52's lasted this
• 32:57
  long. The shocking thing should have
• 32:59
  been all of the shit that's come and gone without ever getting
• 33:03
  fired in anger that we spent a billion dollars on this and a
• 33:07
  trillion dollars on that and we were like, Oh no, we don't now
• 33:10
  we don't need that. We're selling those for scrap or
• 33:14
  melting down the aluminum, right?
• 33:17
  I mean, think about weapon systems that my, my feed tells
• 33:23
  you a little bit about me. I for some reason, I've been
• 33:26
  getting a lot of clips from the reboot of Top Gun and so, you
• 33:32
  know, lots of MAV flying a, an F18 around and talking about how
• 33:38
  it's not like the old days with the Tomcat.
• 33:41
  I don't know how many times, how many times did an F-14 Tomcat
• 33:46
  during its entire life fire in anger.
• 33:49
  There was like a couple times in Libya like like we talking about
• 33:54
  we spent a trillion dollars in 30 years for like 8 shots.
• 34:00
  Yeah, that's a good point. Or like the F22, you know, it's
• 34:04
  a this sophisticated air to air fighter.
• 34:06
  I mean, it's a great jet, but like, you know, so much of what?
• 34:13
  F-14 combat F-14 Tomcat combat record Total Confirmed Air to
• 34:20
  Air kills 5. Four of them were.
• 34:26
  Libyans and 1 was an Iraqi, so yeah.
• 34:30
  And I'd be good that it performed when the chips were
• 34:33
  down. And you, you know, you, you, you
• 34:36
  buy fire trucks hoping that you don't use them every day.
• 34:40
  But still, that seems like a. That seems like kind of a crazy
• 34:45
  ratio to me. Well, or OK, let me figure this
• 34:52
  out here hang real quick. We're going to do a cost per and
• 34:57
  to be combatant fatality. Well, I mean, what about the
• 35:05
  cost of the F22 program, $67 billion?
• 35:15
  Air kills 0 but they're still in service, right?
• 35:21
  Oh, they are. And they've been used in combat
• 35:25
  in Syria. I think that's it in combat.
• 35:30
  Would the F117 run us? Yeah, well now F117 was.
• 35:36
  They used the hell out of those things in a desert storm because
• 35:40
  that was air to ground. Oh, OK, yeah.
• 35:43
  Let's see, Yeah, they flew 1300 sorties during the Gulf War.
• 35:49
  Oh wow. Well, that's that's a lot.
• 35:53
  But I mean, you know, the other thing is, I mean, you know, I
• 36:01
  was in the Air Force and I wasn't a pilot.
• 36:03
  I was a a schmuck in supply. But the people that run the Air
• 36:08
  Force are fighter pilots. And interesting.
• 36:12
  Where do we spend all our money on fighter jets, you know, that
• 36:15
  we don't need because you know, it's like, you know, the whole
• 36:19
  thing of these these systems to get air superiority.
• 36:23
  Well, would we get air superiority in Iran in like the
• 36:26
  first two hours of the campaign? So like, do we need the multi
• 36:30
  billion dollar platform to get air superiority in a place that
• 36:34
  has no air support superiority? I don't know.
• 36:37
  Well, look, I, I want us to be the best, right?
• 36:41
  I, I don't want to find out that we're the 4th best Air Force in
• 36:45
  the world when it, when it counts, right?
• 36:49
  But still you, you got to wonder about the incentives for people
• 36:55
  to make prudent decisions in this, well, I think.
• 36:59
  Of it more, I think of it more like, you know, kind of your
• 37:04
  analytics business kind of like more the moneyball aspect like
• 37:09
  and then, you know, that's the thing.
• 37:11
  This is back to the tribal arguing thing, like when you
• 37:14
  start injecting cost benefit analysis and something like Air
• 37:19
  Force weaponry, you're going to get all those to people.
• 37:23
  And I'm sure we can get all those to people.
• 37:25
  Listen to our podcast Like. It doesn't matter what it.
• 37:28
  Costs, You have to do whatever it costs like, OK, yeah.
• 37:33
  Or you could do some math and you could probably figure out
• 37:37
  that for probably a tenth of the price of the F35, we could have
• 37:43
  bought, you know, 16,000,000 drones and, and could that have
• 37:49
  had an equal impact? I, I don't know.
• 37:52
  I mean, that's overall simplification, but.
• 37:55
  Well, and is military the right place to spend the money?
• 37:58
  What what did you say? I mean, some of these programs
• 38:00
  F-22 67 billion. What if we instead of bombing
• 38:06
  and and I'm I again, I don't want to get into this like that.
• 38:10
  It was a terrible idea to bomb in Iran when you knew you had
• 38:14
  everybody concentrated. But at some point you said $50
• 38:19
  million for the Ayatollah, alive or dead.
• 38:24
  Give us a call. You know, you do that a few
• 38:29
  times. That's looking like a bargain to
• 38:33
  me. Yeah.
• 38:34
  Well, and then, then, OK, then you look at the F35, one point 7
• 38:39
  trillion for the F35 and it's they've used it a little bit in
• 38:45
  combat, but I mean, there's no air to air kills.
• 38:51
  There's a pretty minor usage so far.
• 38:58
  Yeah. I mean, it's just the problem
• 39:02
  is, I think part of the problem is that it's so big nobody can
• 39:10
  control it. Yeah.
• 39:13
  You know, like if you could actually make decisions, like
• 39:16
  long term decisions based on the most optimal use of the
• 39:20
  resources. We do everything way different,
• 39:24
  but everything, it's like a, you know, the whole thing moves like
• 39:29
  a Ouija board. You know, you got all these
• 39:31
  hands on it. The thing just kind of migrates
• 39:33
  wherever the hell it goes, and nobody's really running it.
• 39:37
  Well, and this is a case where, you know, people want to throw
• 39:41
  around, well, the Democrats won't do their the Republicans
• 39:44
  are doing this. Look, man, Republicans and
• 39:47
  Democrats are not the enemy in this.
• 39:49
  It's the it's the system, it's the baked in incentives.
• 39:53
  It's too big to fail system. It's the fact that it's what,
• 40:01
  15% of our GDP or 20% or some, I don't know what the number is a
• 40:06
  ludicrous number, you know? Yeah.
• 40:10
  So like, yeah, we could, we could.
• 40:13
  And. And there's an element of that
• 40:15
  where the economist in me is like, well, it kind of doesn't
• 40:17
  matter. It doesn't matter if the stuff's
• 40:18
  any good or if we get any utility out of it, because we
• 40:22
  did pay people to build these things and those people bought
• 40:27
  groceries and cars and houses. And you know, it's in, if you
• 40:33
  look at it as purely as A and, and look, this is a part of what
• 40:38
  the story is in this country. It is ultimately a government
• 40:44
  direct subsidy to private industry.
• 40:48
  If you take the military readiness and the importance of
• 40:51
  that out of it. Yeah, Yeah.
• 40:54
  I mean, at least you can get people fired up to buy
• 40:57
  airplanes. You're not going to get people
• 40:58
  fired up to do public works like we did during the during the New
• 41:03
  Deal. I mean this sounds like BS but I
• 41:09
  mean honestly AI might be the answer to shortening this.
• 41:14
  If you look at like the F35 timeline when they first started
• 41:19
  developing the ideas about the F35 is in the 90's the thing
• 41:24
  wasn't operational to 2015 and now and it wasn't fully fielded
• 41:28
  until like now. So it's you're talking about a
• 41:32
  20 to 30 year process on a new weapon system and it's not, I
• 41:36
  mean, some of that is budgeting and all the rest of the stuff we
• 41:39
  talked about, but some of that just pure development and just
• 41:42
  come, you know, companies, you know, somebody's got to come up
• 41:45
  with the idea, then you got to refine the idea and figure out
• 41:48
  if it works. And then you got to get somebody
• 41:49
  to build the thing. You know, it's just like
• 41:51
  building a brand new commercial airplane.
• 41:53
  I mean, that's going to take you 1015 years.
• 41:56
  But then you wonder, like, will advanced AI get to the point
• 42:00
  where you could shorten that? Yeah.
• 42:04
  Is that the answer? You know, well, yeah, but then
• 42:08
  that that's part of the whole kind of disruption of AI.
• 42:12
  Because again and again, I'm not in favour of this, but we spend
• 42:18
  so much, so damn much money on defence that if we right size
• 42:24
  that to more commensurate with the real threats that we have.
• 42:29
  You, you put a million people out of work.
• 42:32
  Yeah, you know what I mean? You can't make that move fast.
• 42:37
  Yeah, well, and then the threats themselves, I think that's
• 42:42
  another area that AI could assist into, like analyzing the
• 42:48
  full threat and then developing what is the actual like what's
• 42:53
  the best solution to combat that threat?
• 42:55
  Is it a $1.7 trillion 6th generation fighter or is it, you
• 43:02
  know, 16,000 drones with dynamite sticks on them or
• 43:07
  something? Yeah.
• 43:07
  I mean, I'm, I'm over oversimplified, but like that,
• 43:11
  'cause it's not scientific. Now it's like, well, I think we
• 43:14
  need a fighter and we need a bomber and we need a blah, blah,
• 43:16
  blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, I don't, I'm
• 43:20
  sure somebody would say it's very scientific, but it's not.
• 43:23
  I I don't think it is. No, but again, and you know, I'm
• 43:29
  kind of undercutting my own point, but is the reason we do
• 43:33
  this because the threats that serious or are we doing this
• 43:39
  because because it shores up a fifth of our economy?
• 43:46
  Well, and then, you know, we're talking about the Air Force and
• 43:48
  we're talking about weapons systems.
• 43:49
  But throughout the military, there are people developing
• 43:54
  every stinking little tiny element.
• 43:57
  Well, I'm creating the new combat boot.
• 43:59
  And this is going to help the threat of, you know, when the
• 44:01
  troops go and they're using this new bed, it's got a new thread.
• 44:06
  Like you've got millions of people that are focusing on
• 44:09
  every little nook and cranny of the war fighter experience and
• 44:13
  coming up with some way to, well, this.
• 44:16
  We need this new tank, we need this new gun, we need this new
• 44:19
  Jeep, whatever the hell it is, you know?
• 44:21
  And it's not all linked together.
• 44:27
  It's like all these little silos and everybody's working on their
• 44:30
  own little projects. And you know, if you build it
• 44:33
  all up together, it's not like there's some mastermind looking
• 44:35
  at all this crap saying, OK, is the sum total of all these
• 44:39
  little projects and all this crap what we need to combat what
• 44:43
  the total threat is? I don't think anybody's really.
• 44:46
  I mean, there's people working on bits and pieces of that, but
• 44:48
  it's so big nobody can wrap their arm around, arms around
• 44:51
  it, you know? So what's the fix?
• 44:55
  Thermonuclear war? What is What is the war games
• 44:58
  line like? Thermonuclear destruction.
• 45:06
  Yeah. I, I don't know.
• 45:08
  You know, it's like the cynic in me thinks that that this is,
• 45:16
  this is one of the reasons that the tribalism is, is going to be
• 45:23
  protected because it because it serves the need, right.
• 45:29
  No, no sane Democrat, no sane Democrat is going to come out
• 45:35
  and say, look, this is crazy. We need to cut defense by a by
• 45:39
  1/2. And and I trust the generals and
• 45:41
  all of them to figure out what we need within what we can
• 45:45
  afford, but we need to tell them we can't afford it.
• 45:48
  So here's what we're going to say.
• 45:50
  We're going to cut it by half and we're going to say come back
• 45:52
  to us with a plan. No Democrat can do that because
• 45:55
  they're going to get brutalized by everybody that you're weak,
• 46:00
  You know, you're weak on defense, you're selling out
• 46:03
  America. And no Republicans going to do
• 46:07
  it for similar reasons, right? I mean, am I missing something?
• 46:13
  No. And I mean, it's a little off
• 46:15
  the subject, but you got me thinking.
• 46:17
  And I think I, I mean, the reason tribal exists, tribalism
• 46:23
  exists in the 1st place is people have to make sense of the
• 46:27
  world. Like if if you considered every
• 46:31
  possible opinion and every possible alternative, I'm just
• 46:36
  making this up. But is part of the reason why
• 46:38
  tribalism is a thing is because it helps people carve up the
• 46:43
  world and say, OK, I'm going to latch on to this piece over here
• 46:46
  that I can understand. Yeah.
• 46:50
  Because it's so big and it's so broad and everybody needs
• 46:52
  something that they can, you know, is that just is that is
• 46:56
  the tribalism. Just because we're human and
• 47:00
  we're not capable of considering the whole field of opinion and
• 47:06
  looking at things. I think there's, I think there's
• 47:10
  absolutely an element of that, right?
• 47:13
  Like, stuff's complex. It's a whole lot easier to say,
• 47:17
  well, I'm against Iran no matter what.
• 47:21
  Look, I'm, I'm going to go out and say that I don't want Iran
• 47:24
  under any of, of what I've seen. I don't want them with their
• 47:30
  finger on the nuclear button. But I also don't believe in a
• 47:35
  country of 95 million people that there's nobody who wants
• 47:39
  peaceful coexistence with the West and to kind of dial things
• 47:42
  back. But it's a whole lot easier to
• 47:45
  say I just hate. Iran like the Texas ballot this
• 47:49
  last election that, you know, I voted no to Sharia law.
• 47:53
  Can't I? Just so you know.
• 47:55
  Did you I? I was not aware that Sharia law
• 47:58
  was on the ballot. It was on the ballot.
• 48:01
  Well, it was a it was some provision.
• 48:03
  It was like vote yes or no for Sharia law, like, but it was
• 48:07
  like, it was like a there's some, the Republicans put
• 48:12
  something on there like we're going to put up a proposition of
• 48:16
  do you support or not support Sharia law?
• 48:18
  Like, OK, no, I don't. All right.
• 48:26
  Did it? Did it pass?
• 48:29
  Yeah, I know it always happen. If everybody was like, yeah,
• 48:32
  Sharia law sounds great. Oh my God, what do we do?
• 48:35
  The we be careful what you wish for.
• 48:38
  You thought you were really going to show him, and you put
• 48:40
  Sharia law on the. Ballot Sharia law.
• 48:43
  Won by 15 points. Now what are we going to do?
• 48:47
  Yeah, I didn't think about. That did you hear that?
• 48:54
  And I don't know that it's factual, but the apparently at
• 48:58
  CPAC, somebody was trying to make the case we have to be
• 49:02
  strong, we have to win the election because otherwise the
• 49:06
  Democrats are going to impeach Trump.
• 49:08
  And he was like, we don't want to impeach the president, do we?
• 49:11
  In about half the room, thinking about Iran and some of their
• 49:15
  frustrations with him, About half the room.
• 49:17
  And CPAC was like, yeah, impeach, impeach.
• 49:23
  And the guy was like, no, no, no, no.
• 49:25
  That's not what I'm. That's not what.
• 49:32
  I meant that that backfired. Gosh.
• 49:37
  Well, I don't know that we've solved it, but we've certainly
• 49:41
  talked about it. Well, I just like that we can,
• 49:44
  we can laugh at the, you know, the silliness of some of this
• 49:52
  stuff as well as just, you know, I think we're, well, I don't
• 49:59
  know, again, I'm, I'm stroking our ego here, but I feel like
• 50:02
  we're more realistic that some, some of these people, you know,
• 50:08
  like, oh, I've got a solution for the Defense Department.
• 50:12
  I think it's a little bigger, you know, I think some I think,
• 50:15
  and I think that is honestly, I'd, I'd love to hear that more
• 50:20
  from a politician. Like, yeah, I don't know.
• 50:22
  I don't know how you fix that. You know, like, like, right.
• 50:26
  And we've talked about that before, like everybody's got to
• 50:28
  have an answer to everything. Like, oh, well, you know, how is
• 50:31
  this going to work? And like, they got to have it
• 50:32
  all nailed down. It's like there's some crap it's
• 50:38
  too big to figure out at this point.
• 50:40
  I I I'd love that honesty if I saw it.
• 50:42
  Ever. Well, and these are like, these
• 50:45
  are serious issues and everybody's like, all you got to
• 50:49
  do is, you know, it's crazy. Yeah.
• 50:55
  And I think that, again, it's like that with the politicians
• 51:00
  and, and, and some of it it, you know, either you're explaining
• 51:07
  it or you're using the people's tribalistic instincts to be
• 51:12
  like, well, this is the Democrats fault or this is the
• 51:15
  Republicans fault. And when you're talking about
• 51:17
  something as complex as a Defense Department, it's like,
• 51:20
  how the hell are you pinning that on a political party?
• 51:23
  I mean, it's too big for that. It is, and yet we're quick to.
• 51:28
  We are quick to go there. Because it's easier.
• 51:31
  Because it's easier than the truth.
• 51:34
  Because the truth is it's too freaking complicated for anybody
• 51:37
  to figure out. That's what the problem is.
• 51:39
  But nobody would ever want to admit that.
• 51:41
  So it's much easier to say, well, your guy did it or my guy
• 51:44
  did it. Yeah, I, I think that's, I think
• 51:49
  that is a huge part of the explanation of, of what's going
• 51:54
  on. It's just, it's laziness or it's
• 51:59
  that it's daunting. I mean, I, you know, I don't
• 52:02
  want to be too judgy about it. It is hard to figure what we're
• 52:07
  what's going on, you know? Maybe we need an auto?
• 52:11
  Maybe we need an auto pen? Well, let's wrap this one for
• 52:21
  now and. Sounds good.
• 52:23
  As always, we hope for. We hope for for for better days.
• 52:28
  We hope for peace. We hope for safety.
• 52:30
  We hope for quick resolution. Somebody to explain how to fix
• 52:34
  the Defense Department the the War Department.
• 52:36
  We'll see if that happens. We can offer ourselves up.
• 52:39
  That's a service that we could provide in addition to, that's
• 52:42
  right, weekly conversation, a solution for the military
• 52:47
  industrial complex. That's right.
• 52:53
  Hey, thanks for joining us on this episode of Bourbon and Rum
• 52:55
  Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it.
• 52:58
  Remember to subscribe on your favorite platform and leave us a
• 53:01
  review. Your feedback helps us keep the
• 53:04
  good spirits flowing. And we invite you to join this
• 53:06
  conversation. Follow us on our Facebook page.
• 53:09
  Let us know what you think. Let us know what you want to
• 53:11
  hear. And until next time, cheers.