Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / What is an acceptable end-game for the battle with Iran?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College. All Things
- 0:03Speaker 1: Hillsdale at Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to
- 0:06Speaker 1: take advantage of the many free online courses there, and
- 0:08Speaker 1: of course I listen to the Hillsdale Dialogue, all of
- 0:11Speaker 1: them at Hugh for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple,
- 0:14Speaker 1: iTunes and Hilldale.
- 0:18Speaker 2: They now have the chance that is around to permanently
- 0:24Speaker 2: abandon their nuclear ambitions and.
- 0:26Speaker 3: To join a new path forward. We'll see if they
- 0:28Speaker 3: want to do it. If they don't, where they worse Nightman.
- 0:32Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'll just keep blowing them away, unimpeded, unstopped.
- 0:39Speaker 3: Well, there's not a thing they can do about it.
- 0:41Speaker 3: They can't do anything about it.
- 0:42Speaker 1: You know, I'll tell you if they could, If they could,
- 0:44Speaker 1: you'd be hearing about it.
- 0:46Speaker 3: You'd be hearing about it.
- 0:47Speaker 4: You don't hear anything about it. Born and Glory and
- 0:50Speaker 4: even Grace America.
- 0:51Speaker 1: I'm you, Hewitt. That was President Trump in the cabinet
- 0:54Speaker 1: the meeting about an hour ago. I begin today's program
- 0:57Speaker 1: with Jim Garrity. If National Review also a calm for
- 1:00Speaker 1: the Washington Post you ought to be getting. He is
- 1:02Speaker 1: Morning Daily jolt. You ought to be listening to him
- 1:05Speaker 1: on the Editors and the three Martini lunch Jim, I
- 1:08Speaker 1: have been following you on the Editors. You're in the
- 1:11Speaker 1: category of boy. I wish he'd explained it more clearly
- 1:14Speaker 1: at the beginning. I understand that. But we're just crushing
- 1:18Speaker 1: these people, these bad guys, and we're not killing civilians.
- 1:22Speaker 1: I think this is going very well, and I think
- 1:24Speaker 1: it's a pivot point in history.
- 1:25Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
- 1:28Speaker 5: Militarily it is going really well. It dawned on me
- 1:32Speaker 5: the other day, Hugh. Have we had casualties since the
- 1:36Speaker 5: initial we had the plane.
- 1:38Speaker 3: The C seventeen that went down.
- 1:41Speaker 5: We had the initial casualties and a strike on one
- 1:43Speaker 5: of the Gulf states.
- 1:45Speaker 3: Have we had military and uniform casualty?
- 1:47Speaker 1: We have lost thirteene we have not. There are some
- 1:49Speaker 1: seriously wounded, one of whom may have died. I'm a
- 1:51Speaker 1: little bit confused on what happens. Or it might be fourteen.
- 1:55Speaker 1: Israeli has lost another one yesterday. Their death toll is
- 1:58Speaker 1: up to eighteen. In our golf out, I lost twenty.
- 2:01Speaker 1: So among all of the Allied power powers and those
- 2:05Speaker 1: who have been attacked. The death toll is somewhere around sixty.
- 2:11Speaker 5: You and I from our haircuts, people can tell are
- 2:15Speaker 5: on the longer side. I have good memories of the
- 2:18Speaker 5: nineteen ninety one Gulf War. Somebody went back and looked
- 2:22Speaker 5: at the number of US planes shot down.
- 2:24Speaker 3: During the Persian Gulf War.
- 2:26Speaker 5: This is nineteen ninety one, and there were more planes
- 2:28Speaker 5: shot down over Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the technology
- 2:31Speaker 5: available then. I'm from a small town in New Jersey
- 2:34Speaker 5: called Mtuchen, and one of the POWs, Bob Wetzel, was
- 2:38Speaker 5: from Mtuchen, so that really kind of brought everything home there.
- 2:42Speaker 3: So militarily is doing quite well.
- 2:43Speaker 5: I think if you had more ships going through the
- 2:47Speaker 5: straight of war moves, I think everybody feel a lot
- 2:49Speaker 5: better about this. This is in the one card the
- 2:51Speaker 5: Iranians have had to play, and they've played it pretty effectively.
- 2:54Speaker 5: They are effectively charging a toll to go through the
- 2:57Speaker 5: straight of hor.
- 2:57Speaker 3: Moves, and this is one of their demands to end
- 3:00Speaker 3: the war.
- 3:01Speaker 5: I would point out that this is you know, shooting
- 3:03Speaker 5: drones and shooting rockets and shooting missiles and fast boats
- 3:07Speaker 5: and mines.
- 3:07Speaker 3: This is the only card they have to play.
- 3:09Speaker 5: If the US can get enough mind sweeping equipment out there,
- 3:13Speaker 5: and if we can eliminate their drone launchers and all that,
- 3:16Speaker 5: they don't have a lot.
- 3:17Speaker 3: That they can do.
- 3:19Speaker 5: I do think the ballistic missile that they launched that
- 3:22Speaker 5: was aimed at Diego Garcia.
- 3:23Speaker 3: That was a bit ominous.
- 3:25Speaker 5: No, I've heard folks saying that it Actually they did
- 3:27Speaker 5: that by taking out all the extra explosives and putting
- 3:30Speaker 5: an extra room for fuel. Of course, that just proves
- 3:32Speaker 5: that the regime was lying when it said it did
- 3:35Speaker 5: not have missiles that could strike anywhere near that. That
- 3:37Speaker 5: does put you know, London in Paris are either right
- 3:41Speaker 5: outside the range of those missiles or a little bit
- 3:43Speaker 5: for a little bit, you know, beyond it. You take
- 3:46Speaker 5: out the explosives, on the one hand, it's not going
- 3:48Speaker 5: to be nearly as powerful. On the other hand, if
- 3:51Speaker 5: I throw a school bus going at like mock fourteen
- 3:53Speaker 5: into the middle of a city, it's still going to
- 3:56Speaker 5: do some damage.
- 3:56Speaker 3: So, you know, militarily, it's going very well.
- 3:59Speaker 5: I think we can take The real question is the
- 4:01Speaker 5: straight That's what's causing the gas prices, that's what's causing
- 4:05Speaker 5: oil prices.
- 4:05Speaker 3: That's you know all that stuff.
- 4:06Speaker 5: I would point out, according to Triple A though it's
- 4:09Speaker 5: been at three ninety eight for the national average for
- 4:11Speaker 5: the last three days.
- 4:13Speaker 3: That's that's not great, but that is kind of indicating
- 4:16Speaker 3: we may they may have hit.
- 4:17Speaker 1: A ceiling there right in California where my sign is
- 4:20Speaker 1: with his family at six and a half dollars a gallon,
- 4:23Speaker 1: But we're used to that in California because of the
- 4:26Speaker 1: crazy air quality stuff and the mix that they've got
- 4:28Speaker 1: to use.
- 4:28Speaker 3: We're actould say only six and a half.
- 4:30Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's kind of crazy out there. But even
- 4:34Speaker 1: if this went on for another month and gas stayed high,
- 4:38Speaker 1: what would you say to your grandchildren When you're an
- 4:42Speaker 1: old man like me and you've got grandchildren, Jim, what
- 4:45Speaker 1: would you say about the cost benefit if the regime
- 4:48Speaker 1: is toppled or crumbles and we had to pay two
- 4:51Speaker 1: and a half months of higher gas prices.
- 4:54Speaker 5: At that point, it's a bargain, that is, you know,
- 4:57Speaker 5: if you can topple the regime and replace it with regime.
- 5:01Speaker 3: Never mind democracy, although that would be very nice. Let's
- 5:04Speaker 3: say a regime that.
- 5:05Speaker 5: Is responsive to the voices of the people, then.
- 5:10Speaker 3: It would have a situation, which that would be, you know,
- 5:12Speaker 3: definitely worth this price.
- 5:14Speaker 5: And then you know, six days a week and twice
- 5:16Speaker 5: on Sundays where I think there's like on the editors
- 5:20Speaker 5: last time, Rich put in a question to me, if
- 5:23Speaker 5: we keep the regime in place but they verifiably give
- 5:26Speaker 5: up their nuclear weapons ambitions, is that worthwhile?
- 5:30Speaker 3: And very much I would like to see this regime toppled.
- 5:33Speaker 5: I think, you know, the President himself said to the Iranians,
- 5:35Speaker 5: help is on the way.
- 5:36Speaker 3: He told them to overthrow their oppressors.
- 5:39Speaker 5: I think if the regime is still in control at
- 5:41Speaker 5: the end of this war, it will be a frustrating,
- 5:43Speaker 5: but I think that would be a significant deal sweetener
- 5:46Speaker 5: for a mixed bag.
- 5:47Speaker 1: So I'll be very critical if they are in control,
- 5:52Speaker 1: because that means they, as Guy Benson said on Special.
- 5:56Speaker 3: Report to Kicking the Fan down the Road, Yeah, they lie.
- 5:59Speaker 1: When they breathe, they immediately start digging another tunnel and
- 6:02Speaker 1: ordering centrifuges from the chicoms, and they'll start all over again.
- 6:05Speaker 1: And they still have four hundred and sixty pounds of
- 6:08Speaker 1: what the President called nuclear dust. That's like dirty bomb central.
- 6:13Speaker 1: For the next one hundred years. We really can't let
- 6:16Speaker 1: this regime stay in place. And I don't think, my gosh,
- 6:20Speaker 1: the pounding. I know that that cannard is that you
- 6:24Speaker 1: can't topple a regime from the air.
- 6:26Speaker 4: Well.
- 6:27Speaker 1: We've never had this kind of precision munition strike over
- 6:30Speaker 1: the course of six weeks on a regime that is
- 6:34Speaker 1: that unpopular among its people. That's the difference. It's not
- 6:37Speaker 1: like the German people chance to kill Hitler.
- 6:41Speaker 3: Yeah. The economists cover this week shows the Iranian.
- 6:45Speaker 5: Flag and the world like as a map of the world,
- 6:47Speaker 5: the Iranians squeezing it and the signified and they have
- 6:51Speaker 5: a state of saying that the Trump's war has achieved
- 6:53Speaker 5: nothing in Iran.
- 6:55Speaker 3: That's kind of ridiculous.
- 6:56Speaker 5: I may not be quite as optimistic as say my
- 6:58Speaker 5: colleague Noah Roffman.
- 7:00Speaker 3: Uh, maybe not as optimistic as you, Hugh.
- 7:02Speaker 4: But in the end we're very optimistic. You we're not
- 7:05Speaker 4: as optimist.
- 7:06Speaker 5: I think it myself as pretty hawks compared so hawkish.
- 7:09Speaker 3: And you know, I want to see us get to
- 7:11Speaker 3: a new regime here.
- 7:13Speaker 5: Short of that, a you know, regime that has had
- 7:16Speaker 5: you know, doesn't have an army anymore, doesn't have a
- 7:19Speaker 5: nuclear program, doesn't have ballistic missile program. That's all good steps,
- 7:23Speaker 5: but I think I concur with you that at some
- 7:25Speaker 5: point this is simply this would be you know, Iran
- 7:28Speaker 5: War one, and at some point, hopefully far in the future,
- 7:31Speaker 5: but likely at some point we would have to do it.
- 7:33Speaker 5: And you know, when you get into a fight with
- 7:35Speaker 5: the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, you have to
- 7:38Speaker 5: be very worried about the fact that they may sponsor terrorism.
- 7:41Speaker 5: They may not be able to do it now. They
- 7:42Speaker 5: may still be the newest Ayatola, might be a little shorthanded,
- 7:47Speaker 5: or you know whatever other metaphors you want to use
- 7:50Speaker 5: for a guy who looks like he's auditioning for the Mummy.
- 7:53Speaker 5: But whatever, you know, he's not in a situation where
- 7:55Speaker 5: he can order terrorist attacks against America. But in six
- 7:58Speaker 5: months to a year they'll be back on their feet,
- 8:00Speaker 5: no fun intended and uh probably looking for revenge in one.
- 8:03Speaker 1: Form always a ten yure pun. Let me ask you
- 8:06Speaker 1: about not Mission creep. Everyone knows what Mission creep is,
- 8:09Speaker 1: but victory creep. Five years ago, the Israelis would have
- 8:13Speaker 1: been happy with what we did at four Doah in
- 8:16Speaker 1: midnight hammer and I say, all a who Barack asked
- 8:19Speaker 1: for was three hours with our deep penetrators over at
- 8:23Speaker 1: four doh.
- 8:24Speaker 4: That was a victory, and we celebrated as such.
- 8:27Speaker 1: Now we've got victory creep beyond destroying the nuclear program,
- 8:32Speaker 1: I mean really into bits and beyond the missile program.
- 8:37Speaker 1: Now we want the regime instruments of terror, and we
- 8:41Speaker 1: want the regime to fall.
- 8:42Speaker 4: Our victory creep mode.
- 8:43Speaker 5: Here maybe, But also keep in mind, you know, how
- 8:48Speaker 5: did we get here. And I'm sure there's some people go, oh,
- 8:50Speaker 5: go back to the Shah or ah, go back to
- 8:53Speaker 5: the you know, the CIA back in the fifties and
- 8:56Speaker 5: all that. This really started because of the protests against
- 8:59Speaker 5: the Iranian regime. It really was peaked in January, continued
- 9:04Speaker 5: to bid into February. Presidents said help is on the way.
- 9:07Speaker 5: People genuinely thought this might be the end of the regime.
- 9:10Speaker 5: They managed to stay in power by killing everybody agrees
- 9:14Speaker 5: some five figure sum some say closer to ten thousand,
- 9:17Speaker 5: some say up in the neighborhood of thirty thousand.
- 9:19Speaker 3: Right.
- 9:20Speaker 5: All of this started because they were in dire economic straits,
- 9:23Speaker 5: because the Iranian currency is the single least worth of
- 9:28Speaker 5: valuable currency in the entire world. The value of the
- 9:32Speaker 5: money was absolutely declining. Assuming the Mollas stay in power
- 9:35Speaker 5: before all this, which you and I are hoping, you know,
- 9:37Speaker 5: is not the case. If they do that, they still
- 9:39Speaker 5: have all the same problems. You know, the people may
- 9:42Speaker 5: not be out on the street, you know, they might
- 9:43Speaker 5: not come out in the street in the first month
- 9:45Speaker 5: after the war, second month after the war, But if
- 9:47Speaker 5: the regime can't fix the economy, they're going to be
- 9:51Speaker 5: back where they started from, back in December of last year,
- 9:54Speaker 5: where they you know, people are marching in the streets
- 9:56Speaker 5: simply out of hunger, simply out of the fact that
- 9:59Speaker 5: what they're getting paid cank over the cost.
- 10:01Speaker 3: Of bread at the markets.
- 10:02Speaker 5: So long term, this regime is in real trouble if
- 10:06Speaker 5: they don't get toppled in this war.
- 10:09Speaker 3: One of these problems.
- 10:10Speaker 1: Thirty seconds on the way out the door, if the
- 10:12Speaker 1: regime's still in place, should we blow up their oil,
- 10:15Speaker 1: blow up their bridges, blow up their power grid to
- 10:18Speaker 1: make it easier for the people to rise up?
- 10:20Speaker 3: Thirty seconds Would it make it easier for the people
- 10:22Speaker 3: to rise up?
- 10:23Speaker 5: I'm not completely convinced of that, and I think it
- 10:25Speaker 5: also would drive oil markets and the world energy Markets Haywire,
- 10:29Speaker 5: So I would recC connection of how that would help them,
- 10:33Speaker 5: help them overthrow.
- 10:34Speaker 1: The regime, guarrity the Indispensable, follow them on Exit Jim Garrety,
- 10:38Speaker 1: read them in the Washington Post, treat them in National Review,
- 10:40Speaker 1: Listen to them on the Editors and at the three
- 10:42Speaker 1: Martini Lunch and stay tuned.
- 10:43Speaker 4: W right back on the Uuit Show. Welcome Back in America.
- 10:49Speaker 1: I'm jet inside the beltweigh today in the Relief Factor studio,
- 10:54Speaker 1: So please to welcome Chip Keating to the program. Chip
- 10:57Speaker 1: is a candidate for governor in the great state of Oklahoma.
- 11:00Speaker 1: A little bit later in the are I'm talking to
- 11:01Speaker 1: Jim Lankford, Senator from Oklahoma. Oklahoma's been in the news
- 11:04Speaker 1: all week long, so I thought I would talk with Chip. Chip,
- 11:07Speaker 1: how are you and how goes the campaign?
- 11:10Speaker 6: Hey you, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.
- 11:13Speaker 6: The campaign's terrific. We've got a ton of momentum and
- 11:15Speaker 6: we're going to go win for greater Oklahoma.
- 11:18Speaker 1: Now, I go down to Oklahoma every three or four
- 11:21Speaker 1: years for one reason or another, and it's always the
- 11:23Speaker 1: most welcoming state in the Union, unless Baker Mayfield is
- 11:26Speaker 1: playing Ohio State and planting the flag in the Ohio
- 11:29Speaker 1: state middle of the stadium. That's the only thing I've
- 11:32Speaker 1: got against Oklahoma. And then Baker came and came and brown.
- 11:35Speaker 1: What are the issues that people are fighting about in Oklahoma?
- 11:37Speaker 1: Because it's such a nice place to.
- 11:39Speaker 6: Visit, Oklahoma is great. Look the biggest issues in Oklahoma
- 11:44Speaker 6: right now. The old the slogan in Oklahoma used to
- 11:48Speaker 6: be used to be Oklahoma's Okay. That means we're average
- 11:51Speaker 6: and marginal. But the reality is right now, we are
- 11:54Speaker 6: fiftieth in education, we haven't modernized our tax structure since
- 11:59Speaker 6: nineteen teen thirty. We've got an illicit drug crisis in
- 12:03Speaker 6: our state from the passage of a liberal ballot initiative
- 12:06Speaker 6: that delivered medical marijuana.
- 12:08Speaker 3: And it's anything but that.
- 12:09Speaker 6: And so we are a triple Trump all seventy seven counties,
- 12:13Speaker 6: all three election cycles for President Trump were very red state.
- 12:17Speaker 6: But we're dealing with blue state issues. And so we've
- 12:20Speaker 6: been big government in Oklahoma, and it's time for a
- 12:22Speaker 6: real conservative to step up and uphold our conservative values
- 12:27Speaker 6: that we know and love in Oklahoma.
- 12:29Speaker 1: Now, I would have assumed that Oklahoma was pretty dog
- 12:33Speaker 1: on good in education chick keating just because oh you
- 12:37Speaker 1: so good in Oklahoma. State's pretty good at the state,
- 12:41Speaker 1: the state universities are so good. What happened to your
- 12:43Speaker 1: primary K through twelve schools?
- 12:47Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question.
- 12:48Speaker 6: And we do have great higher ed in Oklahoma USU
- 12:53Speaker 6: or our flagship universities, but K through twelve, one in
- 12:57Speaker 6: four of our eighth graders are illiterate in the state
- 12:59Speaker 6: of Oklahoma. And so we adopted and you hear the
- 13:03Speaker 6: Mississippi miracle around literacy in K through three and emphasis
- 13:07Speaker 6: on phonics and emphasis on having literacy coaches. We passed
- 13:12Speaker 6: that in twenty twelve. In twenty thirteen, Mississippi adopted it.
- 13:16Speaker 6: They've gone from fiftieth to seventeenth. Their per capita GDP
- 13:20Speaker 6: just sur passed the UK. And in twenty fourteen, Oklahoma
- 13:23Speaker 6: repealed it. We repealed literacy in reading proficiency, and so
- 13:28Speaker 6: Republicans repealed it.
- 13:29Speaker 3: And so enough's enough. Parents are outraged. Reading education.
- 13:35Speaker 6: It's a fundamental genesis of everything. We're per capita number
- 13:39Speaker 6: one in incarceration in Oklahoma and fiftieth in literacy, and
- 13:42Speaker 6: those two statistics fit hand in glove, and so it's
- 13:45Speaker 6: time for us to get our act together and not
- 13:47Speaker 6: governed like a blue state anymore.
- 13:50Speaker 4: Now, how does Oklahoma raise its money?
- 13:53Speaker 1: California tax I fled California to Virginia because they just
- 13:56Speaker 1: taxed everything. What is Oklahoma tax and it is there
- 14:00Speaker 1: reform to be had.
- 14:01Speaker 6: There, There's a lot of reform to be had in Oklahoma.
- 14:06Speaker 3: Look, we're so blessed.
- 14:07Speaker 6: To be in a fossil fuel stated. You think about
- 14:10Speaker 6: migration shifts in our country. Why are people migrating, you know,
- 14:14Speaker 6: fleeing blue state you know, horrific tax policy, woke agenda
- 14:19Speaker 6: states and coming to states like you know, the Midwest.
- 14:23Speaker 6: And if Oklahoma's really going to be a winner in
- 14:26Speaker 6: that net migration.
- 14:27Speaker 3: And we have the power and power is a big deal.
- 14:30Speaker 3: Right now.
- 14:30Speaker 6: We're blessed to have fossil fuels everywhere in our state.
- 14:33Speaker 6: But where are the real migration patterns going.
- 14:36Speaker 3: Well, they're going to really pro.
- 14:38Speaker 6: Tax policy, good public policy, states that have great education,
- 14:42Speaker 6: no income tax, conservative values. And so the reality is
- 14:47Speaker 6: Oklahoma is a great place. I mean, we are an
- 14:49Speaker 6: incredible place to be. And if we really want to
- 14:52Speaker 6: win the migration race, we have to figure out how
- 14:55Speaker 6: to get rid of our state income tax.
- 14:57Speaker 3: Look at Mississippi.
- 14:58Speaker 6: I think Mississippi is a good example for Oklahoma to study.
- 15:02Speaker 6: Went from fiftieth to seventeenth in education, they got rid
- 15:05Speaker 6: of their income tax. They're per capita GDP just surpassed
- 15:09Speaker 6: the UK. I mean, look at Tennessee, a great landlocked
- 15:12Speaker 6: state like Oklahoma. Thirty years ago, Oklahoma Tennessee's GDP were
- 15:17Speaker 6: very comparable. Now Tennessee's a third fastest growing state in
- 15:20Speaker 6: the country.
- 15:20Speaker 3: And so what are they doing? I mean, frankly, the
- 15:23Speaker 3: reality is, Hugh, they're.
- 15:24Speaker 6: Doing really good public policy. And so, as I traveled
- 15:27Speaker 6: the campaign trail, I'm not a career politician. I'm not
- 15:30Speaker 6: an officehopper. I'm a businessman, a former state trooper. It's
- 15:34Speaker 6: time for us to get serious. Look to other states,
- 15:36Speaker 6: and we know that work, and just do that. This
- 15:39Speaker 6: is not our seventeen seventy six moment where we have
- 15:42Speaker 6: to figure things out. We know what works, what's good
- 15:45Speaker 6: public policy, and we out are replicated.
- 15:48Speaker 1: You know, my friend's over at the American Legislative Exchange Council.
- 15:52Speaker 1: Every year they do they rank the states one through fifty,
- 15:56Speaker 1: rich state, poor state. I don't have my book with
- 15:58Speaker 1: me it's in Maine. I don't know where Oklahoma is,
- 16:01Speaker 1: but you're right next door to Texas and they don't
- 16:04Speaker 1: have an income tax. How can Oklahoma have an income
- 16:06Speaker 1: tax if Texas doesn't have an income tax.
- 16:10Speaker 3: I mean, that's where I'm saying.
- 16:11Speaker 6: I mean, good public policy is replicatable, and the reality
- 16:14Speaker 6: is not every state is blessed to have a neighbor
- 16:17Speaker 6: like Texas where we do in Oklahoma.
- 16:19Speaker 3: And Texas is a country on a standalone.
- 16:22Speaker 6: Basis, they're the seventh largest GDP in the world, And
- 16:25Speaker 6: so you are exactly right, Hugh.
- 16:27Speaker 3: We should replicate really good policy like Texas does.
- 16:31Speaker 6: Because, as I tell people traveling the state, we don't
- 16:34Speaker 6: want to beat Texas. We want to beat them in
- 16:36Speaker 6: football when we play them, but certainly we want to
- 16:39Speaker 6: be like them from a good governing and public policy
- 16:43Speaker 6: and conservative value perspective, because the crumbs that come out
- 16:46Speaker 6: of Texas are very real. And look, we are living
- 16:49Speaker 6: through a fourth Industrial Revolution.
- 16:52Speaker 3: Right now, energy power. It is a big deal.
- 16:56Speaker 6: And Oklahoma's blessed to have unlimited natural resource potentials in
- 17:01Speaker 6: fossil fuels, and that's the industry that I've been in,
- 17:03Speaker 6: and it's time to really lean in on it. It's
- 17:05Speaker 6: a national security issue. We have unlimited natural gas potential
- 17:09Speaker 6: in Oklahoma.
- 17:10Speaker 3: It's time really.
- 17:10Speaker 6: For us as a state to plan our flag and
- 17:14Speaker 6: be part of this fourth Industrial Revolution that's.
- 17:17Speaker 3: Going on real time.
- 17:18Speaker 6: I mean, we have an opportunity to be an incredible state,
- 17:22Speaker 6: much more incredible than where we are today.
- 17:24Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 17:25Speaker 1: My last hour today, I'm going to be talking with
- 17:27Speaker 1: Sean Sankar, who wrote the book Mobilized, about the new
- 17:30Speaker 1: defense industries that are springing up everywhere. One of the
- 17:33Speaker 1: things they need is a business friendly and climate. And
- 17:35Speaker 1: they need lots of energy, especially if they're doing data centers.
- 17:39Speaker 1: And I assume you guys have got whatever they need
- 17:42Speaker 1: when it comes to natural gas.
- 17:45Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
- 17:47Speaker 6: So we think about AI and I propose bringing the
- 17:52Speaker 6: Trump National Lab to Oklahoma. And national labs are a
- 17:55Speaker 6: very real thing from a GDP perspective, jobs perspective, energy,
- 18:00Speaker 6: AI and aerospace. Oklahoma's second largest industry is the aerospace industry.
- 18:06Speaker 3: Number one is oil on gas. We have both.
- 18:09Speaker 6: What does AI need. AI is a critical part of
- 18:13Speaker 6: the aerospace defense race. It's a big industry in Oklahoma.
- 18:16Speaker 6: It's time for us to lean in. We have the
- 18:18Speaker 6: natural gas and as President Trump has laid out sound
- 18:23Speaker 6: policy around, we're not going to jam our rate payers
- 18:26Speaker 6: on grid. We can't use our precious resources with water.
- 18:31Speaker 6: There's a way to do it in Oklahoma where we
- 18:33Speaker 6: can do both, not be on grid, we can be
- 18:36Speaker 6: behind the meter power this stuff directly with natural gas.
- 18:39Speaker 6: And every natural gas well in Oklahoma produces water, and
- 18:43Speaker 6: it's not good water. And there's a way for us
- 18:45Speaker 6: to lean in on American ingenuity and utilize the bad
- 18:49Speaker 6: produced water that's called salt water and descale it, utilize
- 18:53Speaker 6: it for the cooling needs for data centers, and we
- 18:56Speaker 6: can really lean in and help win on this very
- 18:59Speaker 6: important national security issue.
- 19:01Speaker 1: Chif Kating, good to talk to you. We'll stay in touch.
- 19:03Speaker 1: Kating twenty twenty six. Is your website Kating twenty twenty
- 19:07Speaker 1: six dot com.
- 19:08Speaker 3: When is the primary chip June sixteenth.
- 19:12Speaker 6: So for all of your wonderful viewers and listeners that
- 19:16Speaker 6: are in Oklahoma, we hope to add.
- 19:17Speaker 3: You on team Keaty and your boat and you. It's
- 19:19Speaker 3: a pleasure to be with you, sir.
- 19:20Speaker 4: Thank you, so thank you, Chef.
- 19:22Speaker 1: Talk to you again, Sue. Welcome back to America. I'm
- 19:26Speaker 1: Hugh Hewittt. We're joined now by Senator James Langford of Oklahoma.
- 19:30Speaker 1: He's on three big committees, Senate Finance Committee, Homeland Security,
- 19:35Speaker 1: and Intel and Senator welcome. I got to talk to
- 19:37Speaker 1: you about very important stuff and very stupid stuff. Let's
- 19:40Speaker 1: start with the very important stuff. I know you won't
- 19:42Speaker 1: tell us anything that is an open source, but what
- 19:45Speaker 1: do you think about the war with on how it's
- 19:47Speaker 1: going and the performance of the American military.
- 19:52Speaker 3: Yeah, the performance of the American military has been stellar.
- 19:54Speaker 7: I don't think anyone Republican, Democrat, independent would challenge that
- 19:58Speaker 7: at all. Based on open source and by classified information.
- 20:01Speaker 7: They moved to tremendous speed and professionalism. All of these
- 20:04Speaker 7: operations are incredibly complicated. You think to be able to
- 20:08Speaker 7: drop one munitions on a country thousands of miles away,
- 20:11Speaker 7: think about how many people that takes some logistics to
- 20:13Speaker 7: get there, and refueling and equipment and food and everything
- 20:17Speaker 7: else that has to be able to happen. All of
- 20:19Speaker 7: those things that are happening like clockwork to be able
- 20:21Speaker 7: to do it. So their performance has been absolutely exceptional
- 20:25Speaker 7: through this process. The challenges you're dealing with a deeply
- 20:28Speaker 7: seated radical regime that the functioning the operation of that
- 20:34Speaker 7: regime they know is completely dependent on them staying in power.
- 20:38Speaker 7: Now they have millions of people that want them out,
- 20:41Speaker 7: but that regime knows that if ever they're out, they're
- 20:43Speaker 7: going to be exposed to international criminal courts. They're going
- 20:46Speaker 7: to be locked away because of the oppression and what
- 20:49Speaker 7: they have done to their own people for so many decades.
- 20:51Speaker 7: So they are literally fighting for their lives as a regime.
- 20:54Speaker 7: At the same time the people of Iran are fighting
- 20:56Speaker 7: for their freedom. At the same time, we are saying,
- 20:58Speaker 7: just make it stop. You've got to stop carrying out
- 21:01Speaker 7: acces terrorism.
- 21:02Speaker 8: On the United States and on our allies.
- 21:04Speaker 7: So it is a complicated situation try to get this
- 21:06Speaker 7: to resolution. But the military has been spectacular in this process.
- 21:10Speaker 1: Now, Senator, I've covered every war since the first Golf four.
- 21:13Speaker 1: I went on the air in nineteen ninety and so
- 21:16Speaker 1: I didn't get Panama, but every war since then, I
- 21:19Speaker 1: have never seen negative coverage like this. And it's not
- 21:22Speaker 1: mission creep, it's victory creep. Everyone keeps redefining victory is
- 21:26Speaker 1: something that we haven't seen or haven't got yet, and
- 21:29Speaker 1: they wanted it. Yet it's been less than four weeks.
- 21:32Speaker 1: We've had ten thousand targets. We've had fourteen terrible casualties
- 21:35Speaker 1: at the Israelis eighteen our golf allies around twenty. So
- 21:39Speaker 1: it's not it's an enormous cost for those families, But
- 21:42Speaker 1: in terms of war, this is an extraordinary achievement. And
- 21:46Speaker 1: I can't believe this regime can survive even if we
- 21:49Speaker 1: stop the bombing.
- 21:50Speaker 4: I don't think they'll be there in a year, do you.
- 21:53Speaker 7: Yeah, I pray that they are not. For the people
- 21:55Speaker 7: of Irun and for all of us that want to
- 21:57Speaker 7: live in peace.
- 21:57Speaker 8: In the region.
- 21:58Speaker 7: The reason we have bases in Barrois and we US
- 22:00Speaker 7: we have basis in Saudi Arabia and in UAE and
- 22:03Speaker 7: in all of that area Diego Garcia in the corporation
- 22:07Speaker 7: is because of Iran. We spend billions of dollars a
- 22:10Speaker 7: year just protecting Americans and shipping in that area. Because
- 22:14Speaker 7: Iran is this radical terrorist regime that they open and
- 22:17Speaker 7: close the strait of our moves based at their own preferences.
- 22:20Speaker 7: They carry out acts of terrorism the entire region based
- 22:23Speaker 7: on their will and their preferences on this So to
- 22:26Speaker 7: have a moment that we could finally say, after forty
- 22:29Speaker 7: seven years, they're going to stop. They're not going to
- 22:32Speaker 7: do this anymore. Is a tremendous gain for the American people.
- 22:35Speaker 7: So the presidents stayed very focused, he say, focused on
- 22:39Speaker 7: they can have a nuclear weapon, they can have this
- 22:41Speaker 7: ballistic missile program, they can have a program for these
- 22:43Speaker 7: one way attack drones they're going to use. They can
- 22:45Speaker 7: have a terrorist proxy network that they're going to continue
- 22:48Speaker 7: to fund, and they can't have a navy that's going
- 22:50Speaker 7: to open and close the strait of our moves. He's
- 22:51Speaker 7: been very focused on that. Israel has been very very
- 22:54Speaker 7: focused on regime change. They know every single day, every
- 22:57Speaker 7: single Jew in the world is at risk as long
- 22:59Speaker 7: as that regime is actually in power. So you've got
- 23:03Speaker 7: two different nations, both taken on the same nation, different
- 23:06Speaker 7: priorities on this, but we both think it's very very important.
- 23:09Speaker 1: Now that's the very important stuff. Let's move to the
- 23:12Speaker 1: stuff that's so dumb it makes my head hurt. The
- 23:15Speaker 1: terrorist regime we are fighting would blow us all up
- 23:18Speaker 1: through one of their proxies, or has blow if they could.
- 23:21Speaker 1: But the Department of Homeland Security is shuttered are the
- 23:24Speaker 1: and the TSA lines might be to my front door
- 23:27Speaker 1: now from Reagan National is the Democrat? Is there any
- 23:32Speaker 1: Democrat other than John Fetterman who said, well, we really
- 23:35Speaker 1: shouldn't be doing this to the American people.
- 23:38Speaker 7: There are finally a few I can't say their names,
- 23:40Speaker 7: but they're finally a few saying enough is enough. We've
- 23:42Speaker 7: got to be able to resolve this. We've been pounding
- 23:44Speaker 7: on this over and over and over again. There is
- 23:46Speaker 7: a very real risk. We are in current conflict with Iran,
- 23:50Speaker 7: who has a very extensive cyber network that they use
- 23:53Speaker 7: for attacks.
- 23:54Speaker 8: They're a terrorist nation that they're.
- 23:55Speaker 7: Looking for ones and twos of people to be able
- 23:58Speaker 7: to find people to be able to attack anywhere in
- 24:00Speaker 7: the world they can do that. Iran is not afraid
- 24:03Speaker 7: to be able to partner with other terror networks, even
- 24:06Speaker 7: if they don't philosophically agree with them, to be able
- 24:08Speaker 7: to partner with them to get their will. They also
- 24:10Speaker 7: cooperate with gangs and with other thugs and mafia groups
- 24:14Speaker 7: that they want to be able to pay off and
- 24:16Speaker 7: partner to do their dirty work. This is a regime
- 24:18Speaker 7: that they like, this kind of asymmetric warfare to be
- 24:22Speaker 7: able to type because they know they can't reach us. So, yes,
- 24:25Speaker 7: homeland security is incredibly important. That's including border security. That's
- 24:29Speaker 7: including picking up individuals that were here during the Biden
- 24:32Speaker 7: administration that we need to be able to remove because
- 24:34Speaker 7: we don't have any idea what their background is. But
- 24:37Speaker 7: that also includes FEMA operations, Coast Guard operations, Secret Service operations.
- 24:42Speaker 8: All of those things are important.
- 24:44Speaker 3: We've got to get them going again. This is enough?
- 24:46Speaker 3: Is enough?
- 24:47Speaker 1: Do any of your Democratic colleagues read about Sheridan Gorman,
- 24:52Speaker 1: the eighteen year old who was shot in the back
- 24:53Speaker 1: my illegal immigrant waved into the country in twenty twenty three,
- 24:57Speaker 1: arrested and released in Chicago without getting a notification. Do
- 25:02Speaker 1: they aren't they ashamed at what happened under Joe Biden?
- 25:07Speaker 4: Is this is not an isolated incident. Yeah.
- 25:10Speaker 7: They will say alex Pretty's name over and over again
- 25:12Speaker 7: and that's an incredibly tragic event. But they will not
- 25:15Speaker 7: repeat the name of Lake and Riley. They will not
- 25:17Speaker 7: repeat the name of Sharon Gorman, They will not repeat
- 25:19Speaker 7: those other names. They just want to ignore that and
- 25:22Speaker 7: assume there is no problem with illegal immigration. This is
- 25:25Speaker 7: something that the Trump administration just manufactured when all of
- 25:28Speaker 7: us as Americans.
- 25:29Speaker 8: Know that's just not true.
- 25:31Speaker 7: There is a very religious let's just admit and be
- 25:33Speaker 7: honest about what's really happening here, and let's work through
- 25:36Speaker 7: the process on this. And yes, there are moments that
- 25:39Speaker 7: every agency, every law enforcement agency, makes mistakes, and they
- 25:43Speaker 7: deal with life and death every single day. But they're
- 25:45Speaker 7: also protecting the American citizens every single day, and we've
- 25:49Speaker 7: got to allow them to do that.
- 25:51Speaker 1: So last question, where we get more votes on DHS.
- 25:55Speaker 1: I don't know what the leader is planning. I know
- 25:57Speaker 1: you're doing the Save Act debate, but I wish you'd
- 25:59Speaker 1: vote on it every day because the Democrats are just
- 26:02Speaker 1: making everyone crazy at the airport and we're all aware
- 26:05Speaker 1: of the danger.
- 26:07Speaker 7: Yeah, we will continue to vote on every single day.
- 26:09Speaker 7: As you know, we've been in continuous session every single
- 26:11Speaker 7: day the last two weeks.
- 26:13Speaker 3: John Thune and myself.
- 26:15Speaker 7: And others have said we should stay in session every
- 26:17Speaker 7: single day until we get DHS SALVETD.
- 26:19Speaker 8: This is the best way to be a resolve.
- 26:21Speaker 7: This is one of the things that I've been an
- 26:22Speaker 7: advocate for for weeks and weeks that as soon as
- 26:25Speaker 7: this started, I've said we should stay here every day
- 26:28Speaker 7: and debate this until we actually solve it.
- 26:30Speaker 8: We should never leave on it.
- 26:31Speaker 7: Now we finally reach that point that everyone else agrees
- 26:34Speaker 7: with me on it. Everybody's staying until we solve the
- 26:36Speaker 7: DHS issue.
- 26:37Speaker 8: We need These folks paid the.
- 26:39Speaker 1: Senator James Leifrid of Oklahoma. Thanks, welcome back in America.
- 26:45Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewett. Eleon and Y Johnson is editor in
- 26:48Speaker 1: chief of the Washington Free Beacon. She is also a
- 26:51Speaker 1: regular contributor on the commentary podcast ely On Moments ago.
- 26:56Speaker 1: A minute ago, President Trump posted on true Social this
- 27:00Speaker 1: as per Iranian government request. Please let this statement serve
- 27:04Speaker 1: to represent that I am pausing the period of energy
- 27:08Speaker 1: plant destruction by ten days to Monday, April sixth, twenty
- 27:12Speaker 1: twenty six, at eight pm Eastern Time. Talks are on
- 27:15Speaker 1: going in despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the
- 27:19Speaker 1: fake news media and others, they are going very well.
- 27:22Speaker 1: Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J.
- 27:26Speaker 4: Trump. What do you think, Eliana, Well.
- 27:31Speaker 9: Hugh, it seems to me that in the talks, the
- 27:35Speaker 9: US is asking for what it's always been asking for,
- 27:40Speaker 9: including that Iran never pursue nuclear capabilities and destroy what's
- 27:45Speaker 9: there of its existing nuclear capabilities, and vow never to
- 27:49Speaker 9: pursue nuclear enrichment. These are not new things, so I'm
- 27:52Speaker 9: quite skeptical that negotiations will be productive. And Iran now
- 27:59Speaker 9: is coming to the table in an extraordinarily weakened state
- 28:03Speaker 9: and making demands that I just can't see the President
- 28:08Speaker 9: agreeing to, including the payment of reparations, payment for tankers
- 28:14Speaker 9: to transit the Strait of war moves, and they're demanding
- 28:17Speaker 9: that we shutter our military bases in the region. At
- 28:21Speaker 9: the same time, the President saying they better get serious
- 28:24Speaker 9: about negotiations as our marines arrive in the region and
- 28:31Speaker 9: the Pentagon prepares options for a final blow. So part
- 28:35Speaker 9: of me wonders if the President isn't buying some time
- 28:38Speaker 9: for additional military assets to get in the region and
- 28:41Speaker 9: to talk to his advisors about what these which of
- 28:45Speaker 9: these options might make the most sense.
- 28:48Speaker 1: Well, in the spectrum of possibilities, there's he's blowing smoke,
- 28:53Speaker 1: but the Iranians don't know that, and they're looking at
- 28:55Speaker 1: each other wondering who's talking to him. On the other hand,
- 28:58Speaker 1: that someone's talking to him, and we know what victory
- 29:01Speaker 1: is the victory is the Marines or the eighty second
- 29:04Speaker 1: Airborne surround Fodor and we spend a month getting the
- 29:09Speaker 1: yellow cake or whatever the what do you call them,
- 29:12Speaker 1: radioactive dust out of there, and we have instant inspections
- 29:16Speaker 1: everywhere in the country and we leave with it.
- 29:19Speaker 4: We know how to measure victory.
- 29:20Speaker 1: We got to get the enriched uranium out, otherwise it's
- 29:24Speaker 1: not a victory.
- 29:24Speaker 4: Do you agree that's like a baseline.
- 29:28Speaker 3: Well, that's one option.
- 29:29Speaker 9: I think the president's also looking at other options. I'm
- 29:32Speaker 9: just reading the reporting on this of invading or blockading
- 29:36Speaker 9: carg Island, of seizing other islands. And you know, we
- 29:42Speaker 9: heard from the ambassador of the UAE that they're deploying
- 29:46Speaker 9: forces to help us reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which
- 29:49Speaker 9: I think is an unconditional aspect of ending hostilities here.
- 29:55Speaker 9: We cannot end anything with that straight close. But in
- 29:59Speaker 9: the meantime, we're sending several fighter jet squadrons and thousands
- 30:03Speaker 9: of troops to the region. And the head of the
- 30:06Speaker 9: IRGC Navy, who is running this operation to keep the
- 30:09Speaker 9: straight closed, has been assassinated by the Israeli military overnight.
- 30:14Speaker 3: So yes, I agree with you.
- 30:16Speaker 9: The uranium has to get out of there, or Iran
- 30:19Speaker 9: has to have a new leadership that vows to destroy
- 30:23Speaker 9: this in a way that's verifiable to the US and
- 30:26Speaker 9: the rest of the world. And Hugh, I also think
- 30:28Speaker 9: it's noteworthy that the president, our golf allies are now
- 30:32Speaker 9: invested in this. The President's hearing from the UAE, the Saudis,
- 30:36Speaker 9: and other golf allies that he must finish the jobs.
- 30:39Speaker 9: So while he may have advisors in the White House
- 30:42Speaker 9: and elsewhere pressing him or showing him polls telling him
- 30:46Speaker 9: that this has gone on too long, he's hearing from
- 30:49Speaker 9: others around the world that he can't end this prematurely.
- 30:52Speaker 9: And I think there's a tremendous amount of concern that
- 30:54Speaker 9: he will do that.
- 30:56Speaker 1: You know, you and I and no Ah A. Rothman,
- 31:00Speaker 1: Jim Garritty to there's a group of iron warhawks, and
- 31:04Speaker 1: I'm in there, Guy Benson, there are a bunch of us,
- 31:06Speaker 1: and certainly Jack Keene is number one warhawk. Finish the job,
- 31:11Speaker 1: And by finish the job, I mean let the Iranian
- 31:14Speaker 1: people be free, and let's get all of the nuclear
- 31:19Speaker 1: stuff out of there and they can begin to rebuild
- 31:21Speaker 1: a normal regime. Of course, the strait of horror moves
- 31:23Speaker 1: has to be open. And I haven't seen the statement
- 31:26Speaker 1: by Ambassador of Taiba. I read what he wrote in
- 31:28Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal yesterday. He may be the most
- 31:30Speaker 1: influential man in Washington, d C. Who's not an American.
- 31:34Speaker 1: I'm very glad to see that. What do you make
- 31:36Speaker 1: of our NATO allies, Eliana, Well.
- 31:40Speaker 9: I think it's unfortunate that they're not joining this. Of course,
- 31:44Speaker 9: you know, the President's determination to seize Greenland that came
- 31:50Speaker 9: before this probably soured them to a certain extent. But
- 31:53Speaker 9: nonetheless I think it's too bad and the UK in
- 31:56Speaker 9: particular not backing the president on this. I think it's
- 32:00Speaker 9: shameful and people will remember it this way. Certainly the
- 32:03Speaker 9: President will remember it for the next three years of
- 32:05Speaker 9: his presidency.
- 32:07Speaker 3: It's unfortunate.
- 32:08Speaker 9: I think Mark Rudy is looking to, you know, lean
- 32:11Speaker 9: on them to join this fight. But where our NATO
- 32:14Speaker 9: allies are not stepping up our golf, you know, frenemies
- 32:18Speaker 9: certainly are and pressing him to the folks in the
- 32:22Speaker 9: region know how important this is, and our Israeli allies
- 32:25Speaker 9: are certainly pressing him to stay the course on this
- 32:27Speaker 9: and I think the President himself, you know, thinks in
- 32:30Speaker 9: historical terms.
- 32:32Speaker 3: He did before, but.
- 32:33Speaker 9: Certainly after that assassination attempt in Butler even more so,
- 32:36Speaker 9: he's thinking in historical terms, and this is really his
- 32:39Speaker 9: opportunity to leave a mark on history.
- 32:42Speaker 1: This is the worlds visit by far the most important thing.
- 32:46Speaker 9: I mean, there's no there's no question, you know, ridding
- 32:49Speaker 9: ridding Venezuela of Maduro and bringing him to face a
- 32:53Speaker 9: trial in the United States was important, but this is
- 32:57Speaker 9: far more important. It's a country that's menace not just
- 33:00Speaker 9: the region, but the world and the United States for
- 33:04Speaker 9: nearly five decades, and he he has an opportunity. And
- 33:08Speaker 9: not only that, you know, he's halfway there. It seems
- 33:11Speaker 9: from what General General Kine and others have said that,
- 33:16Speaker 9: you know, we're about two or three weeks out from
- 33:19Speaker 9: finishing this up.
- 33:20Speaker 4: So Elean, I want to switch topics. I have.
- 33:23Speaker 1: I've hesitated to talk about this, but pretty much every
- 33:26Speaker 1: crazy person in the world now knows we have the
- 33:29Speaker 1: softest targets in the world. At every major airline airport
- 33:33Speaker 1: in the country, hundreds of people stacked outside of TSA,
- 33:38Speaker 1: one hundred thousands of people congregated with luggage and children
- 33:42Speaker 1: and all that sort of if anything goes wrong at
- 33:45Speaker 1: any of these airports, who gets blamed for this? I
- 33:49Speaker 1: think the Democrats do. But do you agree with me.
- 33:52Speaker 9: You know, Hugh, I'm not sure. It doesn't seem to
- 33:56Speaker 9: this point that they're paying a price. And that's in part,
- 33:58Speaker 9: I think because of the message around it. My former
- 34:01Speaker 9: colleague Rachel Baide made a great point in her wonderful
- 34:05Speaker 9: newsletter yesterday that people are wondering why Republican lawmakers aren't
- 34:10Speaker 9: holding press conferences in airports with the lines behind them
- 34:14Speaker 9: and with TSA agents at the who aren't getting paid
- 34:19Speaker 9: at the lecterns talking about what they're suffering and what
- 34:22Speaker 9: the dangers are to the public in the middle of
- 34:24Speaker 9: a war. While this is happening, and you know, we're
- 34:28Speaker 9: on the heels of spring break, there could also be
- 34:30Speaker 9: a wonderful ad campaign. My colleague Christine Rosen mentioned about
- 34:33Speaker 9: who ruined spring Break? That's a lighter, you know, lighter
- 34:37Speaker 9: way to go about it, but it's serious, and I
- 34:39Speaker 9: think the idea of having press conferences in airports and
- 34:42Speaker 9: drawing attention to this is a good one. But I
- 34:45Speaker 9: think because the White House has put such a priority
- 34:48Speaker 9: on passing this Save Act about Voting, which has no
- 34:53Speaker 9: chance of really passing the Senate. The messaging has gotten
- 34:56Speaker 9: mixed and muddled, and people aren't really clear who's responsible
- 34:59Speaker 9: for this.
- 35:00Speaker 1: Well, from your lips to every Republican listening, that is
- 35:04Speaker 1: a great idea. I say kudos to Rachel Bade for
- 35:07Speaker 1: me because it is a Democrat problem, and it is
- 35:11Speaker 1: a soft target, and it's a disaster. I'm worried about.
- 35:15Speaker 1: Always got to talk to you. Eleana follow her on exit.
- 35:17Speaker 1: Eleana y Johnson listened to her on the commentary Pod
- 35:21Speaker 1: most of mornings because it's just simply the best podcast
- 35:25Speaker 1: out there. Stay tuned, America.
- 35:26Speaker 4: I'm here. Welcome back America.
- 35:28Speaker 1: Jim tell Its, senior fellow for the Regular Suit Center
- 35:31Speaker 1: for Peace, joins me. Now former Senator Talent, welcome. You're
- 35:35Speaker 1: military expert. How do you think the war in Iran
- 35:38Speaker 1: is going.
- 35:40Speaker 2: The way anybody who understands the American military knew it
- 35:43Speaker 2: was going to go. We're pounding the stuffing out of them. Essentially,
- 35:48Speaker 2: the military action is not over because we have some
- 35:50Speaker 2: cleanup to do. You if you're running a let me
- 35:54Speaker 2: give you some advice you if you're if you're running
- 35:56Speaker 2: a country that has a coastline and you or an
- 36:00Speaker 2: adversary of the United States, do not give the United
- 36:03Speaker 2: States Navy an air force two months to build up
- 36:07Speaker 2: unless you have very good integrated air defenses, because they're
- 36:12Speaker 2: gonna just they can destroy your economy, your military apparatus.
- 36:16Speaker 2: That is exactly what is happening. And anybody who thinks
- 36:19Speaker 2: it isn't happening you is not living in the real world.
- 36:24Speaker 2: But if you want to stop an adversary, you have
- 36:26Speaker 2: to change their intention or destroy their capability. President Trump
- 36:30Speaker 2: tried to change their intentions, so did every other president.
- 36:33Speaker 2: They wouldn't change. So now we're destroying their capability and
- 36:37Speaker 2: that's going to stop them.
- 36:39Speaker 1: Now, Senator, I'm afraid of something that I call victory creep.
- 36:43Speaker 1: You know, admission creep is victory creep is. No matter
- 36:47Speaker 1: what we do, the Left is going to say it
- 36:49Speaker 1: wasn't enough. To me, it's clear we've destroyed their offensive capability.
- 36:54Speaker 1: The one thing the really the straits got to be open,
- 36:58Speaker 1: and we will open that. That every like Mark Montgomery
- 37:01Speaker 1: tell me we're going to open this train. That's a
- 37:03Speaker 1: question of will and time, and we've got it. We
- 37:05Speaker 1: got to get the highly enriched uranium or it's not
- 37:09Speaker 1: a win win win because that notes can be dirty bombs.
- 37:12Speaker 4: Do you agree with me on that?
- 37:17Speaker 2: Not really you, because we've just we've destroyed I believe
- 37:21Speaker 2: we did last summer.
- 37:22Speaker 3: We destroyed the complex.
- 37:25Speaker 2: You have to not you have to be able to
- 37:26Speaker 2: make a bomb, and then you have to be able
- 37:28Speaker 2: to weaponize the bomb. And they may have It's not
- 37:32Speaker 2: a good thing if they have the uranium. But if
- 37:35Speaker 2: we get the rest of it and the regime staggers on,
- 37:39Speaker 2: we can police that. I mean, I think they're years
- 37:42Speaker 2: and years behind in terms of nuclear production, and you
- 37:45Speaker 2: I don't think they're ever going to be able to rebuild.
- 37:47Speaker 2: The economy was a basket case before this, and the
- 37:51Speaker 2: Israelis are going to police this, and they obviously know
- 37:54Speaker 2: everything that's going on in Iran. So I would like
- 37:56Speaker 2: to get it now. I would not set that as
- 37:59Speaker 2: a bar I never did.
- 38:01Speaker 1: I mean, Okay, what's in my definition by the program,
- 38:05Speaker 1: I will yield it. Let me ask you this. The
- 38:07Speaker 1: Israelis can kill whomever they want. Should they kill a
- 38:10Speaker 1: Rachi and the speaker and the new head of the
- 38:13Speaker 1: IRGC before they're done.
- 38:17Speaker 2: Well, that depends on something you and I don't know,
- 38:21Speaker 2: which is whose game are those people playing? Whose game
- 38:25Speaker 2: might they play? And this is one of the things
- 38:28Speaker 2: Trump is doing in these negotiations. And by the way,
- 38:31Speaker 2: can I make a comment about the negotiations that I
- 38:33Speaker 2: haven't heard anybody else make?
- 38:35Speaker 4: Please?
- 38:35Speaker 2: Okay, I've watched Trump, I read his book. I did
- 38:39Speaker 2: a lot of negotiation when I was younger and in
- 38:41Speaker 2: the Congress. This man has been negotiating longer than the
- 38:46Speaker 2: Islamic Republicans has been around. He is aiming master at it,
- 38:51Speaker 2: and he wants everybody speculating as to what he's doing.
- 38:54Speaker 2: When you do that, you are entering his domain. You're
- 38:57Speaker 2: fighting the shark in the water. The only two things
- 39:01Speaker 2: we know that I feel certain that he's doing here
- 39:03Speaker 2: is number one, having destroyed their capability, he's checking in
- 39:07Speaker 2: with them to see if they're going to change their intention.
- 39:09Speaker 2: In other words, he's saying, look, have you had enough yet?
- 39:13Speaker 2: And then the second thing I know about this is
- 39:15Speaker 2: he is not a man who's going to give the
- 39:18Speaker 2: other side a better deal than they could have gotten
- 39:22Speaker 2: a month ago before. He's pounded the crud out of them.
- 39:25Speaker 2: I mean, that is not going to happen. I mean,
- 39:28Speaker 2: I think I would. I would think an alien had
- 39:31Speaker 2: taken over Donald Trump's body if he gives them a
- 39:34Speaker 2: better It's just not in the soul of a negotiator
- 39:36Speaker 2: to do that. Remember, I saw a clip the other
- 39:38Speaker 2: day where he was speculating. He says they're in a
- 39:42Speaker 2: very weak bargaining position. I mean, that's a.
- 39:45Speaker 3: Red crack bull.
- 39:47Speaker 1: The richest man in Rome and part of the original
- 39:49Speaker 1: Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and puppy Marcus Crassus used to
- 39:56Speaker 1: pull a private fire brigade up to a house that
- 39:59Speaker 1: was burning or a building it was burning an ancient Rome,
- 40:01Speaker 1: and he'd make an offer on the property and if
- 40:04Speaker 1: they turn him down, they.
- 40:05Speaker 4: Just wait till some more of it burned down.
- 40:09Speaker 3: And so that's what he did.
- 40:11Speaker 4: That's what he's doing.
- 40:14Speaker 2: Trump is I'm sure he's also thinking way ahead and
- 40:17Speaker 2: thinking about things like, hmm, once we get controlled the straight,
- 40:23Speaker 2: how much of that oil can we get a piece
- 40:25Speaker 2: of that oil? I mean, he's thinking about all that stuff.
- 40:28Speaker 2: I don't think he's worried about the politics, and I
- 40:30Speaker 2: wouldn't be either. Because this is going to be over
- 40:33Speaker 2: well before the midterms. It doesn't matter what all these
- 40:36Speaker 2: people now are saying, the Economist magazine and the rest
- 40:39Speaker 2: of it. It's going to be seen as a win
- 40:41Speaker 2: by the American people, and the American people liked their
- 40:45Speaker 2: were short and successful. Again, this is not something I
- 40:49Speaker 2: would love the campaign on this if I was running
- 40:51Speaker 2: the cycle.
- 40:52Speaker 1: So about NATO, Jim, you and I both like NATO
- 40:56Speaker 1: and I'm mad at him for the first time in
- 40:58Speaker 1: my life.
- 41:01Speaker 2: Well, I mean, NATO consists of more, remember than just
- 41:05Speaker 2: the Spanish or the British or the French. This has
- 41:07Speaker 2: told us what we already knew, is that there are
- 41:11Speaker 2: certain partners in NATO who have neither the capability nor
- 41:16Speaker 2: the resolution to really add anything to the alliance. And
- 41:20Speaker 2: that's that's the truth that the President has sent. It's
- 41:23Speaker 2: the truth Vance has sent, Rubio has sent. Mike Johnson
- 41:26Speaker 2: sent it when he spoke to the to the House
- 41:29Speaker 2: of Commons. I mean, it's you know, and I know
- 41:34Speaker 2: some of the Western Europeans are very angry about this,
- 41:37Speaker 2: but when I hear that, it reminds me of a
- 41:39Speaker 2: line from the Book of Galatians. Okay, both you and
- 41:41Speaker 2: I are Christian men. Where Paul wrote the Galatian Church
- 41:45Speaker 2: and he said, am I now your enemy? Because I'm
- 41:50Speaker 2: telling you the truth. That's all the That's all we're
- 41:54Speaker 2: telling them, which is, if you want to have a
- 41:56Speaker 2: vital alliance and you want to be part of it,
- 41:59Speaker 2: you have to bring something to the table the way
- 42:01Speaker 2: the Israelis do, the way the Japanese are doing, and
- 42:05Speaker 2: you're not bringing anything to the table. The British are
- 42:10Speaker 2: down to less than thirty surface combatants, and many of
- 42:13Speaker 2: them are laid up in maintenance.
- 42:19Speaker 1: I think the UAE and Saudi Arabia have stepped up
- 42:22Speaker 1: in my esteem, have they in yours?
- 42:23Speaker 3: Absolutely?
- 42:25Speaker 4: Yes.
- 42:26Speaker 2: I mean Trump is he's not as shoeing alliances. He
- 42:30Speaker 2: wants partners who will at least burden share, And in
- 42:33Speaker 2: the case of the Israelis, I think going forward, they're
- 42:36Speaker 2: going to own the burden of military activity in the
- 42:39Speaker 2: Middle East. I think we're going to see a partnership
- 42:43Speaker 2: emerging based on economics, Israeli military power, and the diplomatic
- 42:50Speaker 2: leadership of the United States. And I think it's going
- 42:52Speaker 2: to We're going to have a peaceful region.
- 42:55Speaker 1: From your lips to God's ears, Jim Talent. Follow him
- 42:58Speaker 1: on ext Jim Talent, Thank you. Stay tuned America. I
- 43:02Speaker 1: have a Seam Sanker coming up an hour number three
- 43:05Speaker 1: about his book Mobilize not Rebuilding an American defense industry. Boy,
- 43:10Speaker 1: you gotta read his book. Stay turned on. You've heard
- 43:12Speaker 1: me talk a lot about Consumer Cellular. How you can
- 43:14Speaker 1: switch your carrier save money without the sacrifice. That's because
- 43:17Speaker 1: Consumer Cellular uses the same towers as major carriers. Make
- 43:21Speaker 1: the switch today and get twenty five dollars off at
- 43:24Speaker 1: Consumer Cellular dot Com slash shoe. If you're over fifty,
- 43:28Speaker 1: get one line of unlimited talk, text and data for
- 43:30Speaker 1: thirty five dollars plus an additional five dollars per month
- 43:33Speaker 1: off for the first five months. When you visit Consumer
- 43:36Speaker 1: Cellular dot Com slash shoe, use the promo code Q
- 43:39Speaker 1: twenty five. Consumer Cellular ranks number one for network coverage
- 43:43Speaker 1: and consumer satisfaction. According to ACSL. You'll be working with
- 43:47Speaker 1: an actual human being when you switch, based right here
- 43:49Speaker 1: in the US, So get one line of unlimited talk,
- 43:52Speaker 1: text and data for only thirty five dollars per month,
- 43:55Speaker 1: plus an additional five dollars off per month for the
- 43:57Speaker 1: first five months. Think of all the money you will
- 44:00Speaker 1: save go to Consumer Seular dot Com slash shoe promo
- 44:04Speaker 1: Que twenty five are called one eight hundred and four
- 44:07Speaker 1: to one one forty four fifty four Consumer Cellular dot
- 44:10Speaker 1: Com slash shoe. Clean water is not complicated, but it
- 44:14Speaker 1: is essential. Without it, public health suffer, education declines, economic
- 44:18Speaker 1: stability well it weakens if it doesn't collapse. Across Latin
- 44:22Speaker 1: America and the Caribbean, families are facing that reality of
- 44:25Speaker 1: unclean water.
- 44:27Speaker 4: Every day.
- 44:28Speaker 1: Mothers walk miles for clean water. Children are exposed to
- 44:31Speaker 1: preventable diseases because they haven't got it. Communities are held
- 44:34Speaker 1: back by the absence of basic clean water access. But
- 44:37Speaker 1: strategic compassion changes outcomes. Through food for the poor, your
- 44:42Speaker 1: gift provides safe and living water, improving health, strengthening communities,
- 44:47Speaker 1: and supporting gospeled centered transformation through trusted local partnerships. This
- 44:52Speaker 1: is a measurable impact with lasting results. Your gift to
- 44:55Speaker 1: fifty dollars ensures two people have safe and living water,
- 44:59Speaker 1: or for one hundred dollars, a family of four will
- 45:01Speaker 1: be transformed for a year. I hope you act text
- 45:04Speaker 1: Hewitt Hgwitt. That's Hewett HG. Witt to five to one
- 45:10Speaker 1: five fifty five. That's Hewett to fifty one five five five.
- 45:14Speaker 1: Or visit Hewitt dot com right now and click on
- 45:17Speaker 1: the blue giving living water banner at the top to
- 45:20Speaker 1: provide living water today and thank you morning glory Eton
- 45:25Speaker 1: Grace America has promised. I'm joined up by Sham Sankar,
- 45:29Speaker 1: who is the chief technology officer of Pallenteer, one of
- 45:33Speaker 1: America's the most amazing companies.
- 45:35Speaker 4: You've got a brand new book out.
- 45:37Speaker 1: Called Mobilize, How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and
- 45:40Speaker 1: Stop World War III, And it's a fabulous book.
- 45:44Speaker 4: I have read half of it. I've listened to half
- 45:46Speaker 4: of it, Sham.
- 45:47Speaker 1: I got to tell you that until I listened to
- 45:49Speaker 1: the book on tape for the second half of the book,
- 45:52Speaker 1: I always thought we'd pronounce your first name.
- 45:54Speaker 4: Shyam, but it's Shum.
- 45:56Speaker 1: How many people make that mistake a day.
- 46:01Speaker 3: I can't even count. O.
- 46:02Speaker 1: Okrect, Well, it's a fabulous book.
- 46:05Speaker 4: I'm going to start your backstory, by the way, it's fascinating.
- 46:08Speaker 1: If we have time, I'm going to go back to
- 46:10Speaker 1: your father, youngest of nine kids in India, your trip
- 46:13Speaker 1: to moving to Nigeria, while you fled in Nigeria, How
- 46:16Speaker 1: your father went to floor. I want to get all
- 46:18Speaker 1: that in, but I'm going to start with where you
- 46:20Speaker 1: are right now, sort of your end story.
- 46:22Speaker 4: You are in.
- 46:24Speaker 1: The Reserve Executive Innovation Corps. You are one of the
- 46:28Speaker 1: first recruits to it. I've never heard of it before.
- 46:31Speaker 1: What is it and what are you doing for the government.
- 46:35Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a new reserve unit that the Army stood
- 46:38Speaker 10: up about.
- 46:38Speaker 3: A year ago.
- 46:39Speaker 10: It's me, it's the CTO of META, the guy who
- 46:42Speaker 10: admitted chat GPT Bob McGrew and the chief product Officer
- 46:47Speaker 10: now head of Science at open Aye. And really the
- 46:49Speaker 10: idea behind it is much like World War Two and
- 46:52Speaker 10: keeping with the themes of the book around mobilized. We
- 46:55Speaker 10: direct commission one hundred thousand people from our economy. Some
- 46:58Speaker 10: of them worked at Disney and they were put in
- 46:59Speaker 10: charge of war communication. Some of them worked in manufacturing
- 47:02Speaker 10: and they helped build the weapons and materiel.
- 47:06Speaker 3: We should do that again. We have a bounty of.
- 47:09Speaker 10: Knowledge and skill in this country and it's a great
- 47:11Speaker 10: way for us to re establish the bridge between technology
- 47:14Speaker 10: and our national security. It's a great way for people
- 47:17Speaker 10: to serve. You know, I'm not sure I really had
- 47:20Speaker 10: anything truly unique to give the government when I was
- 47:22Speaker 10: twenty four years old, But having built a four hundred
- 47:25Speaker 10: billion dollar company in the hyper competitive world of the
- 47:28Speaker 10: US commercial sector, I think I have a lot to
- 47:30Speaker 10: give it forty four and this is a really cool
- 47:32Speaker 10: opportunity to do that.
- 47:33Speaker 1: I'm not going to miss the chant. Forty eight years ago,
- 47:35Speaker 1: I help Richard Nixon write The Real War. So if
- 47:38Speaker 1: the Reserve Executive Innovation Court needs a ghost writer, give
- 47:41Speaker 1: me a call. Although I got to say, Madeline Heart,
- 47:44Speaker 1: you gave her a cover credit. That is very cool.
- 47:49Speaker 1: Not a lot of people do that. Why did you
- 47:51Speaker 1: do that? And this is just writers stuff. I just
- 47:53Speaker 1: love the fact you gave her cover credit.
- 47:56Speaker 10: Well, she's really my co author. I mean, you know, Matteline,
- 47:59Speaker 10: it's hard to find and someone who knows more about
- 48:02Speaker 10: defense innovation history than Madeline, And you know, we just
- 48:06Speaker 10: we kind of inspire each other to get deeper and
- 48:10Speaker 10: more nuanced uncover stories. And you know, we built the
- 48:12Speaker 10: first breakfast sub stack together. That's been writing on these
- 48:15Speaker 10: issues for a couple of years now. So you know,
- 48:17Speaker 10: she's on the cover because she deserves it.
- 48:19Speaker 1: Well, I got to tell you, it's a fabulous book,
- 48:21Speaker 1: and I want to recommend it to everyone who cares
- 48:23Speaker 1: about national security. Everyone in uniform, everyone in the business,
- 48:27Speaker 1: in the industry, everyone on hill.
- 48:28Speaker 4: To go get mobilized. Here are the two top lines.
- 48:31Speaker 1: My interview notes are kind of disaggregated between the part
- 48:36Speaker 1: that I read and the part that I listened to,
- 48:38Speaker 1: So just bear with me. Two top lines. Number one,
- 48:42Speaker 1: the stockpile isn't the deterrent. Mass production is deterrent. Mass
- 48:47Speaker 1: production must be put back at the center of our
- 48:49Speaker 1: economy and our military. Now those two sentences are a
- 48:52Speaker 1: little bit apart from each other, But explain why the
- 48:55Speaker 1: stockpile isn't the deterrent.
- 48:57Speaker 4: Mass production is the deterrent.
- 49:00Speaker 10: Yeah, I think it's one of the calculuses we really
- 49:01Speaker 10: got wrong at the end of the Cold War. We
- 49:03Speaker 10: kind of thought that the stockpile would scare our adversaries
- 49:06Speaker 10: from doing things. But if you empirically.
- 49:08Speaker 3: Looked at the world for the last twelve years.
- 49:10Speaker 10: In twenty fourteen, you had the annexation of Crimea, the
- 49:12Speaker 10: militarization of the Spratleys in fifteen, a run with breakout
- 49:16Speaker 10: capability to get the bomb in seventeen, you had a
- 49:18Speaker 10: program in Israel, you have the Hooty's holding trade hostage
- 49:21Speaker 10: in the Red Sea, and of course current operations. So
- 49:25Speaker 10: it's very clear, and particularly if you look at the
- 49:27Speaker 10: Ukraine case, we went through ten years of production in
- 49:31Speaker 10: ten weeks of fighting, and so actually the calculus was
- 49:35Speaker 10: against us that the more that we did the fighting,
- 49:37Speaker 10: the less deterrent we actually had. And we had told
- 49:40Speaker 10: ourselves this lie that we could just run all these
- 49:43Speaker 10: lines at minimum rate production or at some point we'd
- 49:45Speaker 10: have enough on the shelf. And I think we should
- 49:48Speaker 10: have modeled all of these things as consumables. Essentially, we
- 49:52Speaker 10: are going to make them to use them in training.
- 49:54Speaker 10: As a consequence, we'll need to make more things that'll
- 49:57Speaker 10: allow us to innovate on what we make next, to
- 49:59Speaker 10: make better things, to make them cheaper and outproduce our
- 50:03Speaker 10: adversaries not only in quantity but also in quality.
- 50:06Speaker 4: All Right.
- 50:06Speaker 1: The second takeaway that I want to make sure everyone hears,
- 50:09Speaker 1: and they got to really read Mobilized to get the
- 50:12Speaker 1: details on this. Again, this is a quote. Founders are
- 50:16Speaker 1: outlier talent. They most closely resemble the best artists, creative
- 50:21Speaker 1: difficult and capable of prodigious output. Your argument is that
- 50:26Speaker 1: the Pentagon needs to go find founders and let them
- 50:29Speaker 1: do their thing. But you point out, and I've got
- 50:32Speaker 1: a son and a son in law who are now separated,
- 50:36Speaker 1: ones on active duty, and a seal nephew who's on
- 50:38Speaker 1: active duty.
- 50:39Speaker 4: This is not how the military works, schum.
- 50:41Speaker 1: You know that they got to check boxes and they
- 50:44Speaker 1: got to move through pipelines. How in the world are
- 50:47Speaker 1: you going to get the Pentagon to listen to you
- 50:48Speaker 1: on this?
- 50:50Speaker 10: Well, I think the president administration really understands this. I
- 50:53Speaker 10: think of Trump as a founder figure, you know, that's
- 50:56Speaker 10: part of what really makes it all work. And the
- 50:58Speaker 10: personnel choices below that at the willingness to put unconventional
- 51:01Speaker 10: people in the right roles.
- 51:03Speaker 3: But the most important.
- 51:04Speaker 10: Argument is that this is actually our history. This is
- 51:06Speaker 10: not a new prescription or recommendation. You know when I
- 51:10Speaker 10: say founder, First of all, as a country, we call
- 51:13Speaker 10: them the founding fathers for a reason. We understand that
- 51:15Speaker 10: there's something special about founders. Then if you just look
- 51:18Speaker 10: at the economics, compare the US to Europe. Europe has
- 51:21Speaker 10: created zero companies from scratch in the last fifty years
- 51:24Speaker 10: worth more than one hundred million dollars. America has created
- 51:27Speaker 10: all of her trillion dollar companies from scratch in the
- 51:30Speaker 10: last fifty years. What's the difference. Their companies are hundreds
- 51:33Speaker 10: of years old. We make our companies every day, we
- 51:36Speaker 10: get new companies. We have founder figures. But if you
- 51:39Speaker 10: look at the history of defense innovation, there too, we
- 51:42Speaker 10: have founders, even if they're not literally building the company,
- 51:45Speaker 10: they are founding something like Kelly Johnson, the founder of Skunkworks.
- 51:49Speaker 10: He built forty one airframes in his career, including the
- 51:51Speaker 10: U two which we still fly in the SR seventy one,
- 51:53Speaker 10: which is still has the record the speed record for
- 51:56Speaker 10: the fastest manned airframe. You think about Rick in the
- 52:00Speaker 10: Nuclear Navy, He's the founder of the Nuclear Navy, Higgins
- 52:04Speaker 10: and the Higgins boat. In this case, we are looking
- 52:06Speaker 10: at industry there, but you know, it's a maniacal obsession.
- 52:09Speaker 10: Like we ninety two percent of all boats in World
- 52:11Speaker 10: War Two were Higgins boats, and the Navy didn't want.
- 52:13Speaker 3: It, and the Navy tried to copy it.
- 52:15Speaker 10: Then despite is despite the system, not because of the system,
- 52:19Speaker 10: And that takes a certain sort of special character that
- 52:21Speaker 10: I think is uniquely prevalent in America, and you're right.
- 52:24Speaker 3: You can't have the whole military be that.
- 52:26Speaker 10: And it's always going to be, you know, prickly and
- 52:28Speaker 10: hard to accept, but you need enough of them. And
- 52:32Speaker 10: that's really I think the diagnosis of Sorry, go ahead, Hu, I'm.
- 52:35Speaker 4: So glad you brought up Rickover in the book.
- 52:38Speaker 1: I know, and you quote hel mel Zuomwall as saying,
- 52:41Speaker 1: the United States Navy has two enemies of Soviet Union
- 52:44Speaker 1: and Rickover. But we would be so screwed if it
- 52:46Speaker 1: wasn't for him and Rickover em betting the nuclear Navy.
- 52:49Speaker 1: We would be absolutely screwed if we did not have
- 52:51Speaker 1: the advantage that the nuclear Navy brought us. And that's
- 52:54Speaker 1: all because of Rickover. And he was a pain in
- 52:57Speaker 1: the neck for every president and everything. Now, but boy,
- 53:00Speaker 1: do we need people like him. And we're going to
- 53:02Speaker 1: come to the colonel a little bit. I want to
- 53:05Speaker 1: give you a problem, chum, to think in the back
- 53:07Speaker 1: of your head. I'm going to bring it back to
- 53:08Speaker 1: you as a hypo in our last segment. It's not
- 53:12Speaker 1: out of immobilized, it's out of my head. Soon for a
- 53:15Speaker 1: moment based on the Iran War, that someone comes in
- 53:18Speaker 1: and says to you, we need a really long range
- 53:21Speaker 1: stealth drone that can launch from anywhere in the United
- 53:25Speaker 1: States north, south, east, West, or Alaska. Has to carry
- 53:28Speaker 1: a big payload, and it must be mass produced in
- 53:31Speaker 1: America at many sites. I'd like you to come back
- 53:34Speaker 1: and tell me how we would do that and how
- 53:36Speaker 1: long it would.
- 53:36Speaker 4: Take us to do that. But let's start with the
- 53:40Speaker 4: Palmer Lucky.
- 53:41Speaker 1: I walk by Palmer maybe three times a year when
- 53:44Speaker 1: I'm in Orange County, California. I always think he ought
- 53:46Speaker 1: to be thrown out of the place what we are
- 53:48Speaker 1: because he looks so goofy. But I don't know him.
- 53:50Speaker 1: I had no idea what he was doing with Anderroll
- 53:53Speaker 1: in Columbus.
- 53:55Speaker 4: Tell that story.
- 53:57Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, we're bringing production back and say we
- 54:00Speaker 10: I mean America. But in this case Andrel and Palmer
- 54:03Speaker 10: Lucky and the and the founders VANDREL have built a
- 54:06Speaker 10: new facility called Arsenal one five thousand, five million square
- 54:10Speaker 10: feet in Columbus, Ohio to start mass producing things. And
- 54:13Speaker 10: it's a flexible manufacturing configuration, so you can change up
- 54:17Speaker 10: what you're mixing. You have flexible lines. Part of the
- 54:19Speaker 10: magic of the facility is that it's software enabled, so
- 54:23Speaker 10: you can actually change your work constructions and build better
- 54:25Speaker 10: versions of the equipment as the aligned as the assembly
- 54:28Speaker 10: line goes on, which is you know, inspired by by
- 54:31Speaker 10: modern marbles like Tesla. It's how Tesla produces things. So
- 54:35Speaker 10: bringing the very best of American modern manufacturing for scale
- 54:39Speaker 10: right here in the heartland and doing it for our
- 54:44Speaker 10: national defense.
- 54:45Speaker 1: Now, did the Pentagon say to him go off and
- 54:47Speaker 1: do that or is he doing that on his own
- 54:49Speaker 1: and hoping that they'll buy his fighter?
- 54:51Speaker 3: The theory very much the latter.
- 54:54Speaker 10: I mean that is Andrel's strategy, which is they are
- 54:57Speaker 10: a defense products company, which is to say, they are
- 55:00Speaker 10: taking their capital, not tax payer financed R and D.
- 55:03Speaker 10: They're taking private capital, building things on their own spec
- 55:07Speaker 10: their own belief of what's valuable, and then trying to
- 55:10Speaker 10: sell them and then start iterating and iterate with the customer.
- 55:13Speaker 10: From there, of course you're gonna keep evolving them. And
- 55:15Speaker 10: that's a model that we used to do during World
- 55:18Speaker 10: War Two. The Higgins boat was exactly that. Andrew Higgins
- 55:21Speaker 10: built that boat on his own costs, his own expense.
- 55:23Speaker 10: It was his own vision, uh, and then he offered
- 55:27Speaker 10: it to the Navy instead of the other way around,
- 55:29Speaker 10: which is really like, hey, the Navy sits around, or
- 55:31Speaker 10: any service sits around for a couple of years, writes
- 55:34Speaker 10: the perfect set of requirements that are completely infeasible, have
- 55:37Speaker 10: no trade space, and then you go to industry and
- 55:39Speaker 10: you say, please build this thing, and of course there's
- 55:41Speaker 10: no given there's no trade space. You kind of come
- 55:44Speaker 10: up with the kitchen sync that doesn't float. The modifications
- 55:47Speaker 10: to the frigate show exactly that you know, somehow a
- 55:50Speaker 10: commercial product from the.
- 55:50Speaker 1: Attoun killing me. The frigate's killing me. Don't go anywhere.
- 55:54Speaker 1: Sean Sankar is coming back. His book is Mobilized. I
- 55:57Speaker 1: put it on my x feed, go immediately to am
- 56:00Speaker 1: is on and order a bunch of them. Or you
- 56:01Speaker 1: can listen to it on books on tape over at Audible,
- 56:04Speaker 1: as I've been doing.
- 56:05Speaker 4: For the last couple of days. It's very easy. Remember Mobilized,
- 56:08Speaker 4: Stay tuned. Welcome back in America.
- 56:16Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewittt talking with Sham Sangkar about his brand
- 56:20Speaker 1: new book Mobilize, which you wrote with Madeline Art. Mobilize
- 56:24Speaker 1: is a three day read, or it's a day read
- 56:27Speaker 1: in a day of listening, which is how I did it.
- 56:29Speaker 1: And I got to say it left me more hopeful
- 56:32Speaker 1: about World War three not happening than I've been in
- 56:34Speaker 1: a long time.
- 56:35Speaker 4: And let's go to that.
- 56:36Speaker 1: You say, Sham, that your purpose is to prevent World
- 56:40Speaker 1: War three and to win the battle for the twenty
- 56:42Speaker 1: first century, and you're optimistic.
- 56:45Speaker 4: And again this is a quote.
- 56:46Speaker 1: The pieces for defense reformation are in place, The capitol
- 56:49Speaker 1: class has shown up, the founders are busy building, and
- 56:53Speaker 1: the Department of War is ready to innovate. Take your
- 56:56Speaker 1: time and explain how in twenty twenty seven China does
- 57:00Speaker 1: bade Taiwan, and then they don't do it in twenty
- 57:02Speaker 1: twenty eight, and then they don't do it in twenty
- 57:05Speaker 1: twenty nine, and.
- 57:06Speaker 4: Then they explain how you rolled out. You persuaded me.
- 57:09Speaker 3: We got to do.
- 57:09Speaker 10: That, Yeah, exactly. So you know, of course, the entire
- 57:14Speaker 10: will start at the beginning. The entire point of the
- 57:15Speaker 10: Department of War is to deter conflict. You know, to
- 57:19Speaker 10: be so strong that piece is the only thing that
- 57:22Speaker 10: makes sense, because picking a fight with us means you're
- 57:24Speaker 10: going to lose. Now, in order to provide for that
- 57:26Speaker 10: sort of defense, we need to change the adversary's calculus
- 57:30Speaker 10: at the margin. You know, the question is not to
- 57:32Speaker 10: we don't have to make that case for all eternity.
- 57:34Speaker 10: We have to make that case this year, the next year.
- 57:42Speaker 10: In the present moment, we face an adversary that has
- 57:46Speaker 10: systematically invested in countering American military strength since Goal War One,
- 57:51Speaker 10: since nineteen ninety one roughly, and so they've had a
- 57:54Speaker 10: long time to go after that. And if you think
- 57:56Speaker 10: about the context that we're in, you compare it to
- 58:02Speaker 10: World War Two. You know, one of the things that
- 58:03Speaker 10: I'm really trying to make the argument in the book
- 58:05Speaker 10: is that we need to mobilize just like we mobilized
- 58:08Speaker 10: in World War Two. What happened was not that we
- 58:10Speaker 10: flipped a light switch and magically all the automotive factories
- 58:13Speaker 10: turned into military facilities or you know, military production facilities.
- 58:18Speaker 10: Really what happened is in thirty eight FDR pre mobilized
- 58:22Speaker 10: by taking the number two from GM, the person Bill Knutsen,
- 58:25Speaker 10: who had perfected mass production, and putting him in charge
- 58:28Speaker 10: of war production, and we used len lease as an
- 58:31Speaker 10: opportunity to ramp production. It took us eighteen months to
- 58:34Speaker 10: build and retool factories our moment to do that would
- 58:38Speaker 10: have been Ukraine. That would have been the ideal time
- 58:40Speaker 10: would have been. We could have taken that lesson I
- 58:41Speaker 10: just talked about where we realized we're expending much faster
- 58:45Speaker 10: than we're producing, and we could have fired up, refired
- 58:47Speaker 10: up the arsenal of freedom. The next best moment to
- 58:50Speaker 10: do it is now, because if we look at a fight,
- 58:53Speaker 10: a high end fight with China, we have maybe eight
- 58:55Speaker 10: days of weapons on hand. That's not a deterrent. We
- 58:58Speaker 10: need to have eight hundred days of weapons on hand,
- 59:00Speaker 10: and we need to be able to produce these things
- 59:01Speaker 10: at a scale that allows us to have economies to
- 59:04Speaker 10: scale and the cost function. We see that with the
- 59:06Speaker 10: current interceptors that we're using, and to innovate on the
- 59:09Speaker 10: platforms themselves, which is the other lesson of Ukraine, which
- 59:12Speaker 10: is that you know, the adversary gets a vote and
- 59:14Speaker 10: they keep changing their approaches to counter the quality and
- 59:18Speaker 10: capability of your weapons, which means you need to be
- 59:20Speaker 10: able to keep changing your weapons so that they're still effective.
- 59:23Speaker 1: You know you have in Lea in the beginning of
- 59:26Speaker 1: the book, Ukraine is producing one hundred thousand drones a month.
- 59:29Speaker 1: The United States five thousand a month. That is so stunning.
- 59:33Speaker 1: How can we not be doing that? Is there some
- 59:37Speaker 1: technological difficulty like death isn't at our doorstep?
- 59:41Speaker 4: That doesn't make us do this?
- 59:44Speaker 10: All of this technology in when we invented, whether it's
- 59:47Speaker 10: the semiconductor, even the drone. The drone is an American birthright.
- 59:50Speaker 10: The Predator was the first operational drone of any significance.
- 59:53Speaker 10: We then got in our own way. We said, you
- 59:55Speaker 10: know what a drone is a flying missile, so we
- 59:57Speaker 10: should itar control it. And then the FAA said no
- 1:00:00Speaker 10: beyond line of sight operations, which killed the commercial market.
- 1:00:04Speaker 10: I will posit to you, and it's one of the
- 1:00:05Speaker 10: chapters in the book on how national security and economic
- 1:00:09Speaker 10: prosperity are two sides of the same coin. I'll posit
- 1:00:11Speaker 10: you a world where if we didn't have these regulations,
- 1:00:14Speaker 10: maybe General Atomics would have a consumer subsidiary that we
- 1:00:18Speaker 10: would call DJI, that the entire consumer drone industry would
- 1:00:22Speaker 10: exist here in the US, and we wouldn't have seded
- 1:00:24Speaker 10: that to China. Having done that, we need to invest
- 1:00:28Speaker 10: in the scale by buying these things and employing them,
- 1:00:31Speaker 10: which is what we've learned from Ukraine. That number one
- 1:00:34Speaker 10: hundred thousand is actually data. At this point, they're building
- 1:00:36Speaker 10: about four to five million drones a year, so you
- 1:00:38Speaker 10: can kind of four exit number roughly.
- 1:00:41Speaker 4: Watching the ir War, I think, would you have changed
- 1:00:44Speaker 4: in this apartment?
- 1:00:45Speaker 10: There has their head on straight around this. They are
- 1:00:47Speaker 10: going to They have a great plan to scale up
- 1:00:50Speaker 10: the production and consumption of drones.
- 1:00:53Speaker 3: Tie that into forced generation.
- 1:00:55Speaker 10: And how we're going to consume these drones and training
- 1:00:57Speaker 10: exercises which will create a consistent demands. That's going to
- 1:01:00Speaker 10: help us materialize the supply base that we need to
- 1:01:04Speaker 10: produce exactly that quantity or more in the US.
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: Have you spending time at Admiral Mark Montgomery. He's a
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: guest on the show often because he thinks the way
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: to deter China is to make sure that they realize
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: the Taiwan Strait's going to have a million drones in it,
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: and World War three on the other side of Taiwan
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: out east of Taiwan, they don't want to mess with
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: our Virginia class submarines and our surface ships.
- 1:01:26Speaker 4: Have you had a chance to sit down with him
- 1:01:27Speaker 4: and talk about this stuff.
- 1:01:29Speaker 10: I have not sat down with him, but I think
- 1:01:30Speaker 10: there'd be a lot of agreement in the broad strokes
- 1:01:33Speaker 10: of aproproach. I mean I do take a lot, you know,
- 1:01:35Speaker 10: I always heed John Boyd's advice that you need the
- 1:01:37Speaker 10: high low mix, and you know, the sort of flip
- 1:01:41Speaker 10: and answer that all you need are drones. I don't
- 1:01:43Speaker 10: think is right, but you absolutely do need drones.
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Now, I like the fact you bring in
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: John Boyd and the udul loup. Let me also give
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: you a hat tip for taking the time to confirm
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: for the smart reader of Mobilized Alger Hiss was indeed
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: a Soviet spy. You would know this, shim, but I've
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: been asking first time guests forever. Was algabizo Soviet spy?
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: Has a test about whether or not they know anything
- 1:02:04Speaker 1: about history. Most people don't even know who he is.
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: But I'm glad he's in here. I didn't know he
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: worked for that committee. Let me go now to the Colonel.
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: Because Colonel Drew Cooker. Am I saying his name right?
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: Coocker kukor yeah, cuckor he's.
- 1:02:19Speaker 4: An amazing guy.
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: Tell people about him and Maven because he should get
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: an American Medal of Freedom.
- 1:02:28Speaker 10: I call these founder figures heretics and heroes, because usually
- 1:02:31Speaker 10: they have some sort of heresy that you know, the
- 1:02:34Speaker 10: bureaucracy doesn't like and tries to kill them over, whether
- 1:02:37Speaker 10: it's Rickover or even Billy Mitchell, the founder of the
- 1:02:39Speaker 10: Air Force. And then later we realized that they really
- 1:02:42Speaker 10: were national treasures, they were heroes. And Colonel Drew Kukor
- 1:02:46Speaker 10: is exactly that we have a marine colonel. You know,
- 1:02:48Speaker 10: he grew up a single mother, grew up pretty poor
- 1:02:52Speaker 10: in southern California, and a Mormon household.
- 1:02:55Speaker 3: His only path to college was Rotzi.
- 1:02:57Speaker 10: After college, he joined as a man intel officer, served
- 1:03:01Speaker 10: for a long time in a lot of places, but
- 1:03:03Speaker 10: he had a seminal experience trying to evacuate the Izadi
- 1:03:08Speaker 10: off of Mount Sinjar as Isis was closing in on them,
- 1:03:11Speaker 10: and you know, there was a human error made along
- 1:03:14Speaker 10: the way where a young marine thought they saw an
- 1:03:16Speaker 10: RPG and waved off the helicopters from landing and ex
- 1:03:19Speaker 10: filling these people, and as a consequence, about a thousand
- 1:03:22Speaker 10: people were enslaved, raped and tortured over the ensuing number
- 1:03:27Speaker 10: of years here.
- 1:03:28Speaker 3: And he always felt there ought to have been a.
- 1:03:30Speaker 10: Way for technology to provide overwatch and support and make
- 1:03:33Speaker 10: this possible. Some number of years later, he was given
- 1:03:36Speaker 10: the opportunity to go deep in the bowels of the
- 1:03:39Speaker 10: basement of the Pentagon and start Project Mademan and Project
- 1:03:43Speaker 10: Maven was the third offset, a kind of crash crash
- 1:03:47Speaker 10: effort to bring AI to the Department of Defense, and
- 1:03:50Speaker 10: he succeeded wildly, and because of his success, the bureaucracy.
- 1:03:54Speaker 3: Came after him.
- 1:03:54Speaker 10: The services wanted you know, they had their own AI projects.
- 1:03:57Speaker 10: They didn't like that this was being done at.
- 1:03:58Speaker 3: The OSW level.
- 1:04:01Speaker 10: His success threatened other folks' equities along the way, But
- 1:04:05Speaker 10: he was so good at controlling.
- 1:04:09Speaker 3: How do I deal with acquisition? How do I deal
- 1:04:10Speaker 3: with technology?
- 1:04:11Speaker 10: He went to Silken Valley, he proselytized, he got a
- 1:04:13Speaker 10: lot of American technologists involved in the fight here, and
- 1:04:17Speaker 10: how do I deal with all of the bureaucracy that's
- 1:04:20Speaker 10: coming after him? This poor man that they waged lawfare
- 1:04:23Speaker 10: against him. IG investigation after ig investigation. I mean, maybe
- 1:04:28Speaker 10: some of the most salacious details is he was accused
- 1:04:31Speaker 10: of housing illegal immigrants in his basement and having bags
- 1:04:35Speaker 10: of money that were given to him by contractors, and
- 1:04:38Speaker 10: driving really fancy cars.
- 1:04:39Speaker 1: These chargers doesn't break, So seriously, we're going to continue
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: this after the break kukh Or. Colonel kuk Or deserved
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: complete egeneration on the radio if anyone didn't know, he's
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: already exonerated.
- 1:04:51Speaker 4: Stay tuned.
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: I'll be right back. The book is Mobilized. Mobilize yourself
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: and go get mobilized. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: Seam has done a pretty good job of explaining Colonel
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: Kukor's personality to you. You're going to have to read
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: Mobilize to figure out how Maven should not have happened.
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: Not in the military bureaucracy we have. But I came away.
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: It eventually got to be a program of record over
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: at NGA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. But seem tell
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: me if you agree with me, I think the ig
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: O to be abolished at the Pentagon. I'd rather have fraud,
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: a little bit of fraud, than a lot of abuse
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: of the ig process. And it seems to me it
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: is abused at the Pentagon more than it's used.
- 1:05:39Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
- 1:05:41Speaker 10: You know it's a contrarian position, but I think you're
- 1:05:44Speaker 10: more right than most people want to admit, you know,
- 1:05:48Speaker 10: we every decision has an opportunity cost, and the opportunity
- 1:05:52Speaker 10: costs of this sort of lawfair internally is you slow
- 1:05:54Speaker 10: everything down, and anyone who takes even an iota of
- 1:05:57Speaker 10: risk in the national interest ends up sacrificed their career.
- 1:06:01Speaker 10: So what you get is a system that at best
- 1:06:03Speaker 10: is locked into mediocrity and doesn't reward anyone who tries
- 1:06:06Speaker 10: to stick their neck out to do the right thing
- 1:06:07Speaker 10: for their fellow uniform service members.
- 1:06:09Speaker 4: And you get fragging.
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: I can tell you stories of four star superb general
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: officers who got fragged by an IG complaint to which
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: there was nothing, but they get knocked off their path,
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: and because of the pyramid, they never get back on
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: their path.
- 1:06:25Speaker 4: Not like industry.
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: Somebody files a bogus charge against you at Pallenteer, you'll
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: fight it through and you'll still be running the CTO
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: at Pallenteer. It's not how the military works. You're up
- 1:06:35Speaker 1: or you're out. And so it made me angry. I
- 1:06:39Speaker 1: want to go over to Andy Grove. I had no
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: idea of his backstory, thank you for including it. In fact,
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: I didn't know about David Packard. I knew about McNamara.
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: Everybody knows about McNamara. I knew about Forrestall because I
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: read World War Two, but I didn't know about David
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: Packard at DEPSEK, and I didn't know about Andy Grove.
- 1:06:58Speaker 1: Did you intend when you started this to kind of
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: give people a history of the military industrial complex and
- 1:07:05Speaker 1: how it began to break?
- 1:07:08Speaker 3: Yeah, I did.
- 1:07:08Speaker 10: I wanted to remind certainly my fellow technologists that the
- 1:07:11Speaker 10: history of technology in this country starts with the military.
- 1:07:15Speaker 10: The largest employer in the fifties in Silicon Valley was
- 1:07:19Speaker 10: Lockheed Martin. You know, we built the Krona satellites there,
- 1:07:22Speaker 10: and that people like David Packard, who is a co
- 1:07:25Speaker 10: founder of Hewlett Packard, served as depth SEC def and
- 1:07:30Speaker 10: that there's actually a long history of connection. Of course,
- 1:07:32Speaker 10: he was followed later on by Bill Perry, which a
- 1:07:34Speaker 10: lot of people don't know. He founded the first digital
- 1:07:36Speaker 10: sigan company called Electronic Systems Laboratory in Silicon Valley before
- 1:07:40Speaker 10: he ever came to government.
- 1:07:41Speaker 4: I did not know that there's an opportunity.
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: All I know about him is the Last Supper, And
- 1:07:45Speaker 1: you kind of redeemed his reputation for me, because you know,
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: if you're not really a geek, a military geek. You
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: don't understand that there's a lot of stuff that came
- 1:07:54Speaker 1: before the Last Supper with William Perry. But you lay
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: it out so you're not on a vendetta with anybody.
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: But you do give us the whole history of where
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: the Pentagon began to break in sixty one up to now.
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: Do you think it is healing itself right now?
- 1:08:08Speaker 3: I do.
- 1:08:09Speaker 10: I've never been more optimistic. I mean, more has changed
- 1:08:12Speaker 10: in the Pentagon the last year than the prior nineteen
- 1:08:15Speaker 10: years that I've been doing this.
- 1:08:17Speaker 4: Wow.
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: Wow, has the Iran War shown you anything that we
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: were not ready for? Are you impressed by anything that
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: you hadn't seen before?
- 1:08:26Speaker 10: Well, it's hard not to be impressed by the performance
- 1:08:28Speaker 10: of our uniform service members here. You know, they really
- 1:08:31Speaker 10: are better than we deserve. I think it only underscores
- 1:08:35Speaker 10: a lot of the points both that I've made in
- 1:08:37Speaker 10: the book and that I think the Pentagon is already
- 1:08:39Speaker 10: aware of of the need to move very quickly on mobilizing,
- 1:08:42Speaker 10: in particular to recognize that our industrial capacity is going
- 1:08:45Speaker 10: to be determinative of whether the twenty first century is
- 1:08:48Speaker 10: another American century.
- 1:08:51Speaker 4: This is also Jeremiah against overregulation.
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: I did not know that Peter Tiel had said that
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: the bite and the atom were there was a dumble standards.
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: Bytes were unregulated and atoms were regulated. But he's right.
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: I was the land News lawyer before I got into
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: the broadcast BIS for thirty years. And you know, sean
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: regulation kills building, so it must kill defense building. And
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: we've got to stop that if we're going to catch up.
- 1:09:17Speaker 3: Absolutely, and you it's compounded.
- 1:09:19Speaker 10: It's not just the commercial regulations that any normal company
- 1:09:22Speaker 10: would deal with. You have the unique regulations the MONOPSI
- 1:09:25Speaker 10: comes up with, whether it's it's cost plus contracting, and
- 1:09:27Speaker 10: how they're going to audit you, all the compliance standards
- 1:09:31Speaker 10: that are kind of byzantine and give you no leverage.
- 1:09:33Speaker 10: We basically asked our defense industrial companies to become compliance
- 1:09:37Speaker 10: companies that happened to make weapons occasionally.
- 1:09:39Speaker 1: And you also make an argument that the requirement sheet
- 1:09:42Speaker 1: should come at the end and be reverse engineered from
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: the product that made so much sense to me.
- 1:09:50Speaker 4: Is it being at all.
- 1:09:51Speaker 1: Received by the acquisition managers whose careers are built on
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: requirements over at the pentagon.
- 1:10:00Speaker 3: Of the cases?
- 1:10:01Speaker 10: So yes, in broad strokes, which is to say that
- 1:10:04Speaker 10: this team at the Pentagon has implemented a change in
- 1:10:07Speaker 10: how we think about acquisition. We're moving to portfolios as
- 1:10:11Speaker 10: opposed to programs, and in that portfolio you have a
- 1:10:14Speaker 10: lot of autonomy and discretion of how you're going to
- 1:10:16Speaker 10: accomplish the end goal that you signed up for, versus
- 1:10:19Speaker 10: being constrained in the specific systems you happen to be,
- 1:10:22Speaker 10: happened to have picked, or originally were funded. So that's
- 1:10:24Speaker 10: that's a great decision. It's going to increase discretion.
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: I'm coming back for one more segment with Sean Sankar.
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: His book is Mobilized. Mobilize yourself and go get mobilized
- 1:10:34Speaker 1: and you will thank.
- 1:10:35Speaker 4: Him for it. Can also order it from audible if
- 1:10:37Speaker 4: you want to listen to it. Very well read. Stay
- 1:10:39Speaker 4: tuned in America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Welcome back to America. I'm
- 1:10:44Speaker 4: Hugh Hewett.
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: I've fairly scratched the surface of Mobilize. I've got five
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: pages of notes and I'm not even close to being
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: done with it, So get mobilized for yourself. Sean, thanks
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: for finishing with wild Bill Donovan. I was reminded of
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: Winston Churchill and Professor Linderman when you did that. But
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: I want to finish with Kevin Zenger because I've never
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: heard of him before. Cleveland from warn Ohile, he went
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: to Yale, did law finance, failed a couple of time,
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: and now he's got Divergent Technologies in El Segundo. First
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: of all, why is he out of his mind in
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: building anything in California? And then secondly, tell people about Divergent.
- 1:11:22Speaker 10: Yeah, Diversion is an entirely new additive manufacturer. So they
- 1:11:26Speaker 10: actually have come up with these autonomous pods that take
- 1:11:30Speaker 10: the design of what you're trying to do, compute entirely
- 1:11:32Speaker 10: new geometries. It's quite elegant and beautiful, almost almost like
- 1:11:35Speaker 10: alien when you look at it, which allows you to
- 1:11:37Speaker 10: save a lot of weight and then prints these things.
- 1:11:40Speaker 10: So now you can build the bodies of cruise missiles
- 1:11:42Speaker 10: at a pace and scale with many fewer parts than
- 1:11:45Speaker 10: you could anywhere.
- 1:11:46Speaker 3: And you can take these systems.
- 1:11:47Speaker 10: And distribute them, so you now have a distributed production
- 1:11:49Speaker 10: capability that's much more resilient to attack. Now he started
- 1:11:53Speaker 10: doing this for high end exquisite automotive, where the original
- 1:11:56Speaker 10: market was, but in the present moment, in the context
- 1:11:59Speaker 10: of mobilizing. This is the way to radically accelerate technologies
- 1:12:04Speaker 10: like this, to radically accelerate how we produce it munitions,
- 1:12:07Speaker 10: and to radically reduce the cost and time of producing them.
- 1:12:11Speaker 4: So what he's making is everything. Did I come away?
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: I came away with the impression that he can pretty
- 1:12:18Speaker 1: much make anything with his DAPs model.
- 1:12:21Speaker 4: Just tell him what to build. Am I right about that?
- 1:12:23Speaker 3: That's right?
- 1:12:24Speaker 10: Yeah, parts for cars, airframes, you know, drone bodies, and
- 1:12:29Speaker 10: they're much simpler. You know that they're made to assemble.
- 1:12:32Speaker 10: They're designed for manufacturer ability. You can plug in component
- 1:12:35Speaker 10: to put in the explosive, put in the engine, and
- 1:12:37Speaker 10: you're ready to go.
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: Why is he in cal I'm very serious about this.
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: I teach in California every other year for a semester,
- 1:12:44Speaker 1: but I live in Virginia. I got driven out of
- 1:12:47Speaker 1: California after twenty five years because it was so crazy.
- 1:12:50Speaker 4: Why did he start it in California?
- 1:12:53Speaker 3: We'd have to ask him.
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: I have no idea, all right, Next question, China has
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: zero globally competitive enter prize companies.
- 1:13:01Speaker 4: Should we take great comfort in that.
- 1:13:04Speaker 3: Enterprise software companies?
- 1:13:06Speaker 10: And I think we should because you know, in the
- 1:13:09Speaker 10: present moment, for some people, it's fashionable to be kind
- 1:13:14Speaker 10: of down on America, to think, you know, our best
- 1:13:16Speaker 10: years are behind us, or that everyone else is out
- 1:13:19Speaker 10: competing us in I think nothing could.
- 1:13:20Speaker 3: Be further from the truth.
- 1:13:22Speaker 10: In particular, when you think about software, it's easy to
- 1:13:24Speaker 10: think about software as a technical skill, but I don't
- 1:13:26Speaker 10: think that's what makes software work.
- 1:13:28Speaker 3: It's a cultural skill because if it was a.
- 1:13:30Speaker 10: Technical skill China, India, they would have enterprise software companies
- 1:13:34Speaker 10: that are successful in the world stage.
- 1:13:36Speaker 3: Isn't it strange that they don't?
- 1:13:38Speaker 10: And my argument to you would be this cultural skill
- 1:13:41Speaker 10: is uniquely American. It actually doesn't come from Silicon Valley.
- 1:13:44Speaker 3: It comes from Iowa.
- 1:13:45Speaker 10: It comes from Bob Neys, a great Iowan who is
- 1:13:48Speaker 10: the co inventor of the transistor. He was a co
- 1:13:50Speaker 10: founder of Intel. And it comes from this culture rooted
- 1:13:54Speaker 10: in a Midwestern sensibility, a willingness to play positive some games,
- 1:13:57Speaker 10: an ability to collaborate over long periods of time on
- 1:14:00Speaker 10: really hard work. He brought that to Silicon Valley. He
- 1:14:03Speaker 10: invented the term open door policy. So many things we
- 1:14:06Speaker 10: take for granted today culturally are actually deeply rooted in
- 1:14:10Speaker 10: the American spirit from the Midwest.
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: That is a very inspiring story. Now I want to
- 1:14:14Speaker 1: finish with the hypo that I gave you. We need
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: a long range stealth drone that can carry a big payload.
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: It's got to be able to launch from Florida and
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: Texas and California and Alaska and New York.
- 1:14:25Speaker 4: We got to be able to move it around. It's
- 1:14:26Speaker 4: got to be mass produced in America from many sites.
- 1:14:29Speaker 4: Can we do that? And how long would it take
- 1:14:31Speaker 4: us to do it?
- 1:14:33Speaker 3: Well? I'm confident we could do it.
- 1:14:35Speaker 10: I don't have the answer on Napkin math in the
- 1:14:38Speaker 10: context of this interview yet, but what I would tell
- 1:14:40Speaker 10: you is the way I would bet on doing it
- 1:14:42Speaker 10: is how we did it in the past, which is
- 1:14:43Speaker 10: to have five or six competing efforts to take the
- 1:14:45Speaker 10: very best mavericks and innovators from both American industry and
- 1:14:50Speaker 10: inside the government, the heretics who are latent waiting for
- 1:14:52Speaker 10: an opportunity to do something great, and.
- 1:14:55Speaker 3: Let them compete on different ideas.
- 1:14:57Speaker 10: This is how we built the submarine launch ballistic missile
- 1:15:00Speaker 10: think of it as Polaris today. But Admiral Raybourne had
- 1:15:02Speaker 10: four competing efforts going concurrently, and he protected those efforts
- 1:15:06Speaker 10: that the engineers could do the messy, chaotic work that
- 1:15:08Speaker 10: is required for innovation to deliver for the nation.
- 1:15:11Speaker 4: Now, last question, it's kind of odd.
- 1:15:14Speaker 1: This week Sixty Minutes ran its story on the fact
- 1:15:17Speaker 1: that American shipbuilding is a disaster, and we have gone
- 1:15:20Speaker 1: over to han Laan, South Korea and ask them to
- 1:15:23Speaker 1: buy the Philly shipyard and they're going to teach us
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: how to make ships again. Then your book arrives mobilized
- 1:15:28Speaker 1: last week.
- 1:15:29Speaker 4: Do you think.
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: Everyone has kind of recognized the problem and is singing
- 1:15:33Speaker 1: from the same hymnal now on fixing it?
- 1:15:37Speaker 10: We're much We're certainly much closer to it, and I
- 1:15:39Speaker 10: love to see that story. Sixty Minutes. They were also
- 1:15:42Speaker 10: covering empty material and rare earth. So we seem to
- 1:15:45Speaker 10: all be converging on the same set of fundamental truths
- 1:15:48Speaker 10: and the realization that it's going to take motivated founder
- 1:15:52Speaker 10: like figures to solve these problems.
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: All right, And this is a quiz, it's not really
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: a fair question. You mentioned Leonidas in the book. You
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: don't tell me what Leonidas is. What is Leonidas?
- 1:16:04Speaker 4: A cool name?
- 1:16:05Speaker 10: Best name in the book is it's a it's a
- 1:16:09Speaker 10: system made by Epirus that is a counter drone system
- 1:16:12Speaker 10: that is a non kinetic effect, so it basically pushes
- 1:16:15Speaker 10: out an enormous amount of microwave energy that is like
- 1:16:18Speaker 10: an electronic attack on the circuits of these drones that
- 1:16:21Speaker 10: are coming at you. So it doesn't actually matter if
- 1:16:23Speaker 10: it's one drone or one thousand drones. It'll make them
- 1:16:27Speaker 10: just fall out.
- 1:16:27Speaker 3: Of the sky.
- 1:16:29Speaker 4: Sean, that's amazing.
- 1:16:30Speaker 1: How long did it take you to write Mobilize, because
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: it's I know you had the deck and I talked
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: to with you about the deck.
- 1:16:36Speaker 4: How long did it take to.
- 1:16:37Speaker 3: Do this better part of a year.
- 1:16:40Speaker 1: Well, congratulations, it's done very well in the best sellers list.
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: That's going to continue to rise. Mobilize How to wet
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War Three
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: by Sean Sankar and Madeen Hart Scham. Thank you so
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: much for joining me on the hu Huit Show.