August 7, 2026 • 53 mins
Officially known as the RTX Corporation, the company commonly called Raytheon is one of the biggest defense and aerospace conglomerates on the planet. And with that comes a slew of controversies, cover-ups, and accusations of conspiracy. In tonight's episode, Ben, Noel, and Dylan explore how three guys who were super into refrigerators ended up saving the Allies in World War II ... and quickly realized war is great for business.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
My name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Our colleague Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. We are recording this
on Friday, July thirty first, and Noel Tennessee. Let's start
(00:54):
it with a question. What is the first thing you
think of when you hear the word.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I swear to God, there's either a Pokemon with a
similar name or like a monster in the Monster Hunter series.
So I think mythical creature. Okay, I like that. That's
that's awesome. Actually I have to look that up. Uh, Tennessee,
what about you, Raytheon I think graphics cards, but I
think I'm thinking of radion.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
There we go. This is this is Uh. This is
a great example, Blake. If you asked me as well,
what I first thought of when I heard the word Raytheon,
I would probably think of the excellent running joke on
our sister show, Behind the Bastards with Robert Evans, who
loves to shout out Raytheon, And it's Robert's doing the
(01:44):
lord's work here, because Raytheon is just one piece of
a larger thing called the RTX Corporation. This remains one
of the largest defense contractors aerospace companies in all of
the world, and they're super deep and intelligence service too.
But you know, no, Tennessee everybody tuning in like you
(02:07):
just saw with our three examples RTX Raytheon. It's huge
by any measure, but a lot of people don't know
much about them, and after our research here, we think
Raytheon likes it that way.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, I think you're right, Ben, But also just to
be clear, Raytheon is in fact a dragon in the
Dragon Tamer universe. He's legendary electric and lights and is
considered a terosaur. So I don't know if that just
was a coincidence because I don't know the Dragon Tamer universe.
But there you go.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Ooh, that's perfect, Nola, and thank you for coming through
with that, because that's going to come up later in
an immediate impactful way.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I don't believe you.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh just watch all right, just start just just wait.
Oh I wish we could include our fifty six conversation
on air, but let's get into raythiond afterward. For our sponsors.
Here are the facts. No, you know, like we're saying.
(03:09):
The first thing people need to realize is that Raytheon
is technically now a business unit of RTX Corporation, that's
their parent company.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So business units is like when something is spun off
from a larger entity and given kind of its own categorization.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I don't know that I know that term in this
exact context. Yeah, it can be kind of confusing, right,
A lot of us have a similar questions. So in
our corporate overlord world, we have iHeart right, we have
iHeart Media, and then beneath that we have different business
units like iHeart podcasts. Catch is what we're part of.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I wasn't too far off because I was thinking of
back when we were part of how stuff works. The
website and the podcasts. We're sort of all under the
same umbrella. But at a certain point, I heeart acquisition.
They quote unquote spun off the podcast business into its
own sub semi autonomous entity.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
You nailed it there, man, Yes, semi autonomous is the
key phrase there. Like the idea is you are a
segment in a larger company and you focus on a
specific thing.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
And it also acts as a separate profit and loss unit.
So it's a way of kind of like separating that
from the main business.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
One hundred percent. And importantly, it's a way of separating
some legal liability. If the worst were to happen, you
can quantize the wound. So we'll give you a quick
with a nod of our caps to another show. We
love ridiculous History. No, what say? We give a brief
history of how Raytheon came to be, starting with three
(04:56):
very smart, interesting guys in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
List man, this is a little ridiculous history coded in
that the guy's names are Lawrence K. Marshall, Charles G.
Smith and Vanivar Bush. Is that the Vanovar Bush?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, this is a distant cousin of the Bush presidents
of the United States. A Bush of the Bush Bushes.
I see, distant cousin. He could be invited to the cookout.
It's also weird that democracy would have multiple members of
the same family be president, so whatever, it's almost like
(05:33):
it's like some sort of dynasty. Yeah, it's almost a democratic. Well.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
In nineteen twenty two, Bush of the Bush Bushes was
a professor at the MIT in their Department of Electrical Engineering.
He teamed up with an old colleague of his from university.
He would have been British Lawrence, the aforementioned Lawrence as well,
who is an engineering physicist, as well as Charles who
is a scientist and an inventor, and they banded together
(06:02):
voltrond up to form the American appliance Company Ben. We
just did an episode of Ridiculous History about banal company names,
and this definitely fits the bill. I think that what
was it the it was a baby the cradle Manufacturing
company or something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
You check out the Ridiculous History episode on baby gear.
It's a fun one.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of you discovering that,
and I thought, wow, Nol is right. These company names
were accurate at the price of creativity.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Heat and then they often pivot to something a little more,
even further vague or more specific with a little bit
of marketing panache right.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like how the Learning Channel becomes TLC. Right.
So they were, which is not, in our opinion, a
success story. So our three amigos here in Cambridge, they're
riding high on previous market success. Our buddy Marshall had
I'm not clear on the history exactly, but he had
taken a thermostat invention from another guy named Al Spencer,
(07:10):
and they used it to revolutionize your home flat iron
like an iron for yes, yeah, like an iron for clothing,
because back in the day, people would heat a hunk
of metal on a stovetop essentially, and then they would
iron and hope they didn't burn themselves. This thing absolutely
(07:31):
changed the game for ironing, and game was never the
same after that. Yeah, isn't it ironic?
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Huh, I stop it, Ben, We'll keep it, No, we must.
Did he not sell that? They turned around and they
sold this to Westinghouse, which is such a fascinating company
and worth an episode onto itself because it always blows
my mind that Westinghouse makes everything from like kind of
crappy TVs to nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah exactly, they're uh, you know, it's funny. There was
a story map brought that. I think we're all tracking
in a previous Strange News program about how South Korea's
stock market has absolutely been tanking. Part of that is
because of new Chinese competitors in the tech space, but
(08:16):
another part of that is because Samsung in Korea is
what Westinghouse wants to be and probably what Raytheon wants
to be, because Samsung owns everything. Like you were saying, Noel,
with Westinghouse, there are Samsung schools, you go to a
Samsung hospital, maybe you buy all these Samsung products, you
(08:38):
can be cradle to the grave with it. Westinghouse isn't
quite there yet, but something like something like a huge
cradle to grave company is probably on the way in
the States anyhow.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Really quickly, just to put a pin in this for
the Westinghouse episode of the future. We've recently been talking
as well about this idea of AI company and data
centers potentially creating their own power, like not being connected
to the grid, and something kind of triggered in my memory.
I remembered Westinghouse was a while ago working on a
(09:12):
quote unquote small modular reactor clear reactor, but they've got
a new one now. I just looked up the e
Vinci micro Reactor. Westinghouse is currently developing the e Venci
Trademark micro Reactor, a next generation micro modular reactor for
decentralized remote applications. Gotta say that's gonna be really interesting
(09:36):
how that gets looped in with the whole data center,
you know, quandary.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, especially if their prototype can still perform as a
mass produced product. This is what this is what Charles Smith,
our inventor, runs into with his power Lawrence. So Charles
or cg to his buddies. He's hanging with his power
Lawrence Marshall. And he says they're walking around Tuff's University
(10:02):
or something. At this point, he says, I walk around.
He says, I've got a great idea. Heavy L or
Big L or whatever they call each other.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Thank you for going with my tough guys.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, right, yes, yes, sir. He says, you know,
I invent a bunch of stuff, and Big L is
like heard, heard, and he says, I've got this idea
for a gas powered refrigerator. If we can make it,
we will create millions of dollars in revenue, because every
(10:36):
who doesn't want a refrigerator in their home, and Lawrence
is like heard heard definitely. So at the very beginning,
the guys who would found raytheon wanted to be refrigerator folks.
But just like you were saying with the miniature reactor
of Westinghouse, they've tried this several times. This gas powered
fridge is a bust, folks. The model works, the prototype works,
(10:59):
but the actual product has a ton of problems. And
at this point a lot of people would have given up.
They would have said, good job, refrigeration didn't work. We're done.
But these guys didn't give up, did they.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
They sure didn't. And that is, honestly, the biggest takeaway
for wanting to like be an inventor or really do
anything worthwhile is just to don't give up, you know,
don't be dissuaded just by failure after failure. Keep pushing forward,
and eventually you'll probably do something cool.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, baby, like us with podcasts. Okay, we just never stopped.
We just never took no for an answer.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So it's true, Ben, the men did shift to another
at the time, emergent technology radio Wow. Smith already had
patents under his belt, one of which was the S tube,
which was a transmission tube that was popular with the
ham radio community, which is something that is always fascinating
me that I don't know nearly enough about. Marshall asked
(11:58):
him to make a ree had transmitting to why not
make a receiving tube called that the B tube, which
would eliminate the need for batteries and enable radios to
run on household electricity. And this was a kind of
a big deal at the time, or at least they were
heading towards the thing.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That was a big deal, right, yeah, Because now Marshall
is our coixotic dude, Lawrence Marshall is our visionary right,
And he realized that if he could get his pal
Charles to, as you said, make this new kind of tube,
leveraging what they already had designed, they could have millions
(12:37):
of consumers literally throwing their well not literally but figuratively
throwing their wallets at the company for a chance to
have radios in their own homes. And this is where, okay,
this is where we're paying off what you said earlier,
right about the pokemon. So Marshall gets a bunch of
(12:57):
his employees together, probably not all of them, probably just
the ones he likes, and he says, all right, help
us come up with a name for this new fangled
B tube and this new fangled radio technology. And there's
a young sales engineer whose name is something like Miles Pennybacker.
And he he looks up at the media, is his name?
(13:18):
It was just something like you Okay, okay, he says,
why don't we call it raytheon It's a play yeah,
it's a playoff words.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
See that translates to Ray of the Gods, okay roughly,
And so it's kind of like that Pokemon you're talking.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Then, by the way, there wasn't a Pokemon. Uh And
I didn't know it from whatever Dragon tamer. It absolutely
is in the Monster Hunter universe. It is just expelled
are a t h I A n It has draft
dragon and thunder elemental weakness, and let's see stunt works
(13:56):
very well against it, and make sure to bring lots
of antidotes and herb medicine to cure her poison because
she's a poisonous monster.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Sorry, I'm a big monster hunter. I know from someone
was great thematically. This is great because it ties in
and I do want to confirm, yes, we checked off air.
The guy's name was Miles Pennybacker. He lived all the
way until nineteen ninety eight. Way yeah, yes, wait ed
so this this so Raytheon is created, but this is
(14:27):
far from its final form. At this point, Raytheon is
a name, a brand name for products that the AAC creates.
But this is how ridiculous and dumb history can be.
These guys got a legal threat from another company out
in Indiana that was also called the American Appliance Company
(14:49):
because it's not the most creative name. Now it's not.
It's bound to happen, bound to happen. Yeah, so they
rename our guys renamed their entire outfit, their entire company
eat Raytheon instead of just the one product. And now
so many people are getting into radio. They're all these competitors,
just like the early days of Sodo Pop, and Raytheon
(15:10):
has to work tirelessly to stay afloat, and they're really
you don't have to beat me here, Dylan. They're really
freaking good, so much so that they get the attention
of the big four guys, General Electric, Westinghouse as we
mentioned earlier, RCA, AT, and T. And then they find
out that Westinghouse is stealing their ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Know it man got their attention, not in the best
I mean, you're flattered and everything, but also don't take
our stuff. So Raytheon did, in fact discover the Westinghouse
had stolen one of their innovations, and they pushed back
legally and they won. It was a real David and
Goliath kind of win, which got them some serious street
cred in terms of their reputation in the radio tech community.
(15:59):
But it also, I mean, along with that opened them
up to a lot more kind of angel investor opportunities.
Not only that, but also increased their sales signfically. By
nineteen twenty six, their sales had reached a million bucks
or Jesus is hard number to even read, eighteen million,
eight hundred and eighty seven thousand, three hundred and forty
four dollars and sixty three cents by twenty twenty six standards.
(16:24):
So by nineteen twenty nine, they were still just making
these tubes, right, Ben, But they're making a ton of them,
forty thousand a day.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, yeah, forty thousand tubes per day on average. And
these tubes might have different uses, but they're they're selling
like hotcakes, right and Raytheon expands and contracts and has
its ups and downs throughout the Great Depression terrible name.
Then World War II comes along and Raytheon realizes, thanks
(16:54):
to the help of one of their brilliant scientists, a
guy named Percy, Raytheon reales their research into radio naturally
leads to another innovation, radar.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, and they've already kind of got a name that
sort of lends itself to that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, and now we see some nepotism come into play. Folks.
Remember how Noel said vanavar Bush was a big deal
at MIT. Uncle Sam goes to MIT and says, we
need some help with something, and MIT says, we have
just the company, and it's we're not recommending them in
any way because one of our guys gets a lot
(17:35):
of money if you mess with them. So this backroom deal,
our backroom recommendation, leads to the US Navy going to
Raytheon and they say, hey, guys, very smart, come highly recommended.
We need you to help with the war effort. We
need you to build some kind of microwave radar device
(17:56):
that can function on our ships. And oh, by the away,
we're calling it a proposal, but you have to do it,
and you have to do it now.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know that's a bummer. And we
also know that the Uncle Sam can swoop in and
take control of a patent if it threatens national security.
This seems like the inverse of that Desperate times, desperate measures.
The British were super desperate for help against the Nazis
and their expansion, and they needed as much help as
they could get to build these key components of their
(18:28):
radar technology. As you mentioned, Ben, the magnetron tube. This
was very much in line with the kind of stuff
that Raytheon was already, you know, it was kind of
their bread and butter. So this made perfect sense. So
somehow though, Raytheon was able to convince the Navy to
let them borrow a particularly top secret component and let
(18:48):
them kind of mess dick around with it, you know,
kind of figure it out and like poke around inside, which.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Really gave them a leg up big picture wise.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I would imagine Ben.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right crazy just to think about it. Seems like something
we would see in that series Drunk History. Because the
Navy had it. I had like a couple of magnetron tubes.
They were, as he said, so difficult to produce because
you had to machine them out of pure metal. It
(19:19):
was very intricate and laborious process. So I just imagine
being so tight with nepotism in government that they could
They're essentially say, hey, we need you to help us
build flying saucers, and then you go, oh, aliens are real,
and they go, yeah, ky, check this out.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Take a look at this this tactical. We can make
it better. And that's think about it. We're talking about
the early days here of massive defense contracts, and I
think this is such an interesting peak behind the curtain
about how quickly this kind of relationship just starts generating
f you money, you know, just like like economy of
(20:01):
scale money.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh yeah, well put man. Because luckily for the Allies,
the boffins of Raytheon did come up with an answer.
They figured out a new way to design and manufacture
these magnetron tubes. So production skyrockets. You're talking about economy
of scale right. Previously, before Raytheon, we were looking at
a manufacturing capability of like seventeen magnetron units a week,
(20:27):
and now it's several thousands. So by the close of
World War Two, Raytheon alone is making almost eighty percent
of all of the magnetrons used by all allied forces.
They have moved from three guys who thought refrigerators were
cool haha, ha ha to full on defense contractors.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right, you know, essentially a wing of a government, a
manufacturing wing of the government. Yeah, you know, I mean
like too big to fail doesn't even begin to describe it.
Ifion expanded past magnetrons, of course eventually to manufacturing and
you know, improving the designs of complete radar systems, completely
(21:10):
outclassing a lot of the tech you know that the
enemy we're using.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, and so now to give you some more quick numbers, folks,
Raytheon's annual sales were six million dollars in nineteen forty two.
By nineteen forty five, those sales had reached again. Keep
in mind just three years later one hundred and seventy
three million dollars in twenty six money. That is another
(21:36):
big number, three billion, two hundred and nine million, six
hundred and forty nine thousand, seven hundred and seventy dollars
and seventy eight cents. So that's a lot of cheddar. Well,
that's a lot of that's a lot of radar.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
A lot of microwaves, and lest we, you know, leave
out their contributions to the day to day lives of
you know, normies like us, they also somewhere along the
way invented the microwave oven.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yes, college us, thanks you.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
They were thinking ahead. They knew that war couldn't go
on forever until it you know, had to to protect
companies like Raytheon, So they decided they would kind of
look into ways of being successful year round and finding
their way into more kind of consumer commercial markets.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, and check out our older show Stuff of Genius
to learn about how Raytheon's Percy Spencer created the microwave
oven for four civilian markets and Miligan nailed it. They said,
a war can't last forever, or so they thought at
the time, but they never gave up on the military applications, right.
(22:45):
They got into rockets big, big time in the nineteen fifties.
They were still making transistors. In sixty five they acquired
a refrigeration company named Amana, and then they began selling
you're still a ways there's still all.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
About that refrigeration man.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
That was like their main thing. I love I love
picturing their meetings and they're saying you know, we're making
millions of dollars off of the wall, and so when
in the back goes But what use is it if
our food is warm?
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yes, we've got to get back to that dream of refrigeration.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, it's maybe their their core identity is the idea
that food can never be room temperature. It has to
either be hot or very cold. Well, it was the failure,
the soul.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
It was the failure that spurred them on to you know,
all this rocket and radar stuff. It was like if
they what if they had succeeded in refrigeration right up front,
you know, that's a good question, then it might not
have been a history might have been very very different.
But much like who was it? I think it's Barbara
Streisand's former hairdresser, who was a big movie producer who
always wanted to have a giant mechanical spider in movies
(23:55):
that he produced, and eventually he got it in Wild
Wild West, which was as a giant flop. But this
is their giant mechanical.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Spider, yes, and it's the one they care about. They've
also made some other giant mechanical warlike things. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Sorry, that's funny, you know, the Patriot missile system that
began as the sam dash D program in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It turned into anti ballistic defense during the Cold War,
and for conspiracy realist of a certain age, you probably
remember when the Patriot became a matter of massive international
attention during the Persian Gulf War in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
For sure. And by two thousand and six, Raytheon reported
two hundred and eighty three point nine million in global
revenues for its Patriot missile system alone. And all along
the way they continued acquiring other companies that aligned with
their interests and you know, kind of filled some of
their gaps. In July of twenty twenty three, Raytheon Technology
(25:01):
Corporation changed its name to RTX Incorporation and sort of
a the learning channel to TLC kind of move right.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah. Absolutely. Now you can see RTX headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
It is still one of the world's yeah what else, what.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Else is around there?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yeah, you know, they wanted to be in the neighborhood, right, Yeah,
And it's great real estate for them because RTX is
one of the world's largest defense manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It's actually number two, right below Lockheed Martin and it's
like it's an umbrella at this point is so many
big corporations and conglomerates become there are dozens of smaller
outfits under it, regional corporate entities across the globe. Their
three biggest business units are Collins Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney.
(25:52):
We've all heard of Pratt and Whitney Engines and of
course Raytheon. So a lot of irons in the fire
and with that a lot of controversy. Accusations of corruption,
dirty dealings, dirty deeds done, dirt ye and we'll very
expense funny later this case, I imagine. Yeah, and of
course conspiracy. No, let's say we take a break for
(26:12):
a word from our sponsors and get into the deep water.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, I say, yay, Ben, here's.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Where it gets crazy. Let's start with the corruption, because
I think we all know Raytheon does not have a
spotless reputation.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Now, now a few companies you know this magnitude and
in this particular business too. So despite its massive reach
and massive, massive profits that are just continuing to grow,
Raytheon has of course repeatedly come under fire for multiple reasons.
First and foremost of which is its role in creating
weapons of war and its continual association with corruption on
(26:50):
a worldwide scale. In twenty twenty four, Raytheon was ordered
to pay over nine hundred and fifty million dollars to
resolve the Justice Department investigation into this. Uh well, this
is a quote what they called. It's a major government
fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and
violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FCPA and the
(27:13):
Arms Export Control Act ae c A. And it's implementing regulations,
the International Traffic in Arms Regulations or we'll just go
ahead and call it itar.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Nobody is going to love an acronym more than a government,
right for us the babe yeah or us Yeah, we're
we're number two there. Yeah. So the FIPPA, the ACA,
and the U TAR big deal to get busted with these.
That nine hundred and fifty million dollar payment is part
(27:44):
of a three year deferred payment plan. And other words, folks,
justice on layaway, and nobody goes to jail, and you
barely get accused of wrongdoing.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
You barely get like quote unquote convicted of doing the
bad thing. It's weird, right the way you can kind
of pay your way out of jail.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Right, And I can't get away with a late fee
at the library still, and I lay on the riz.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
They're still coming after me for that Blockbuster video copy
of Captain Ron that I didn't return.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I think you should keep it. I am keeping
it at this point.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
It's just the principle of the thing.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
It's the principle. So if you guys wait.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Them out, eventually, you know Blockbuster, their business will go right, correct.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, So these are actually pretty good comparisons, folks, because
Raytheon again, there are no criminal charges against actual employees
or decision makers. As part of this agreement, Raytheon has
to admit that they did the bad thing. They say,
we had two separate conspiracies to defraud the Department of Defense,
(28:49):
including getting them to overpay for radar systems and Patriot missiles.
So these are like war profiteers. That's what they're agreeing to.
And they this was good old work barrow private contractor corruption.
The Department of Justice said, Raytheon ultimately got over one
(29:09):
hundred and eleven million dollars in extra money on maintenance projects,
but then they got fied nine hundred and fifty million
to teach them a lesson, But they make billions of
dollars a year. So what's the real consequence?
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Sure well, And I mean, you know it's my understanding, man.
It's not like they the government said, no, no, you've
hurt us too deeply. We can no longer do business
with you. You know, you're a toxic your toxic partner
in this situation.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Not not the case. Got a bad romance, Yeah no,
but yeah, not the case. As you're saying, Noel, and
don't fret, friends and neighbors, there's more. Raytheon also had
another agreement connected to a conspiracy to bribe a military
official in Hutter, as well as a conspiracy to violate
the Arms ex Control Act again, which is a federal
(30:03):
series of laws all about how you can import or
export sensitive technology and how it has to be reported.
They they got caught doing kind of like a proxy
grift where they used subcontractors to pay this official in Cutter,
just like two million dollars, which seems such a little
amount of money. At this level. It feels almost like
(30:27):
just tipping your server.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, with we're talking about these kinds of profits, it's
an absolute drop in the bucket, as is the amount
of you know money that they were fined. So this
is to my previous point about toxic you know, romance
or whatever. I mean, the government, the US government, you
could argue where it was victimized by you know, Raytheon.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yes, that's all they saw it from their perspective. In
these cases, they were victims just like you said, and
they they did get caught with their hands and the
cook j and those cases did go through. But we
also should take a moment here as stute listeners. You
clocked this. When Nola and I are giving you direct
(31:12):
quotations from the Justice Department, we're saying stuff like, resolve
the investigation, admit to a thing, not plead guilty, not
go to jail, just go you got me, But I'm
the cutest kid. Who else is going to make your missiles?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Well that's right, too big to fail, too big to
break up with. They have had their foot in the
door for a very very long time, you know, Uncle
Sam and the original agreement between these entities needed them
much more than they needed Uncle Sam. But then that
relationship evolved and now it's literally like they're kind of
(31:50):
so intertwined that no matter what kind of Shenanigan's Rayfiono
Archiex gets up to, Uncle Sam is likely never going
to be like bye right right.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And be like Hank, quit them, I love him.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
So it is definitely an abusive relationship, but not that
Uncle Sam is like not Also on many sides of
abusive relationships.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
We're not saying there are good guys in the conversation,
but we do enjoy a weird Jerry Springer reference. Look, folks,
there's another big issue here. Most of the criticism that
you are going to hear of RTX or Wraitheon as
its street name is now, is not going to focus
(32:34):
on them ripping off world governments, which has occurred. There's
a lot of bribery, but you're going to instead hear
criticism about a teeming mass of other victims who are
not as well healed as a state level actor. We're
talking about the vast amount of people around the world,
many of whom were civilians, who have been murdered by
(32:57):
raytheon products and.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Why am I sensing it's not the gun that murders,
it's the person kind of arguments.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Oh yeah, man, Let's take a quick break for a
word from our sponsors. You nailed it. Let's do it
and we're back.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
So okay, let's pick right up on that the Cliff Haggard.
It's about, you know, what is the nature of murder
when it comes to the thing doing it or the
entity or group or individual operating the thing. So let's
talk about war, the business of war versus the morality
of war. If there is any to speak of. Products
made by raytheon RTX, including missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets. Obviously,
(33:42):
these communications systems other weapons systems are regularly used in
war zones. They're super commonplace in places like Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq,
and Yemen. These weapons have been used on attacks that
injured and aimed and of course killed civilians. I believe
(34:03):
the term is thrown around collateral damage, right.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, right, acceptable margin of loss. They're all sorts of
banal evil euphemisms for this. And this occurs to some
degree in any large conflict. There has never been a
war wherein no innocent people diet. Elephants bake wars the
(34:28):
grass that suffers the Old African Yeah, check out our
episode on elephant shows, by the way, folks.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yeah, not the fun ones. That sing skinna marinky dinkydink
and where.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Which I still think it was a great reference.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
But it was a part of all of our childhoods
at least, and so, fellow conspiracy realist of a certain age,
you may also remember stories that didn't make the headlines
they should have.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
There have been a lot of investigations into Raytheon eighty activities.
We know for a fact that between twenty fifteen and
twenty twenty, Raytheon sold more than five billion dollars worth
of weapons to Saudi Arabia and its partners alone. This
is more than one hundred and twenty thousand bombs and
bomb components or paraphernalia that alone was worth three billion dollars.
(35:21):
The War on Yemen begins in twenty fifteen, which is
when the US government authorizes the sale of six one
hundred and twenty Haaveway guided bombs to Saudi Arabia. So
our triumvirate are three amigos who found Raytheon. They go
from refrigerators to radio to radar, which leads them to
(35:45):
guided missiles, guided bombs, and rocketry.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
It just goes to show that, like these types of success,
stories require a really long timeline and like being just
the first ones around, you know, and then that evolution
naturally occurs, especially when governments are concerned. They're kind of
like evolving in lockstep. Right, Yeah, that's a great way
to put it.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
We know that. In twenty eighteen CNN report, CNN based
here in the States found hard evidence that GBU twelve
laser guided bombs produced by Raith Yod had been used
to attack civilians in Yemen, including bombs hitting schools.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yeah, I mean a common occurrence, it would seem. Sadly.
In twenty nineteen, President Trump bypassed Congress and authorized further
sales of those bombs too, both Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Right, and this was this was happening despite a lot
of public outcry and opprobrium.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
And the profiteers is that not what this is? These
are like this what it feels like they may as
well be illegal arms dealers, like you know, the kind
of Lord award. That's what it feels like. You're selling
it to the high bitter without any consideration as to
what they're going to do with them. And then you
claim ignorance and or.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
No, we didn't do the thing. We just made the
thing that did the thing.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
You know, it's like Smith and Wesson making those kinds
of arguments around school shootings.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Absolutely, yeah, And we have to be clear, this was
this was an exception that felt unusual to proponents of
democracy people in the US on across the swath of
political affiliation, very conservative people, very libertarian people, very left
(37:35):
wing people managed to agree on this one thing, and
they were saying, hey, we should pause the sale of
this stuff either completely or you know, for a middle ground.
At least, do we know how exactly these weapons are
going to be used? And these are not multi use devices.
Nobody is say, like, a Patriot missile can blow up
(37:56):
your school, but it's also a cool ride to take
on a Saturday night with your gal.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Or again, not to beat a dead horse or a
dead deer. The way that you know, weapons manufacturers of
you know, firearms argue there for hunting. You can't really,
you can't really make that argument for these types of weapons.
Nobody's using a Patriot missile to like kill a you know, a.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Deer to control the deer population. Correct. I love seed,
I love pictory. Somebody explain to you that to a
park Ranger. We can't tell you this. It's it's actually
it's ruplingly. It bears troubling similarities to some of the
arguments about illegal evil content people find online. Right, you
(38:42):
can say, hey, we are a service that provides communication,
but we don't actually upload or download something terrible like CSAM,
and that's on the individual users.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Well, and to be fair, Ben, I mean, there's a
certain amount of validity to that argument. It's sometimes like,
at least especially with like the companies that let's just
say on and operate the pipes, you know, the fiber
and all of that. It's not a reasonable expectation for
them to police everything on the Internet. That's just not
the nature of their the service that they provide. I
(39:15):
think it would be untenable to expect them to do that, right, right.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I believe legally, at least in the States here, they're
still acknowledged as service or platform providers, not content creators, right,
so that that would be the division. But the same
a similar a roughly similar reasoning occurs with Raytheon. Raytheon
is not considered legally responsible for war crimes right anyway,
(39:43):
the same way as Smith Wesson is not legally considered
culpable for mass shootings using their products. However, human rights
groups and plenty of legal advocates have accused the company
of being complicit in war crimes because they have clearly
provably manufactured things that have been used in civilian attacks
(40:07):
or been used in other parts of conflict that violate
the known rules of war.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
I don't want to make it seem like I was
drawing the comparison between you know, internet service providers and
something like Raytheon. Raytheon knows who they're selling to. There
are choices they can make in seeing the human rights
record of these entities that they are choosing to do
business with, and then, you know, but then the argument
becomes one of raw unfettered capitalism, like, of course we're
(40:37):
going to sell it to them. They have money, doesn't
matter what they've done or who they are. That's not
for us to decide. And that's where the morality really becomes, like,
come on, there's room for a middle ground here.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, And we also have to consider that at this
level of rarefied air, Raytheon as a US company, can
be in a situation where maybe they do have an
ethicist and the ethicist says, well, we can't sell these
to this country because we know exactly what they're going
to do with it. But then the politicians come in
(41:11):
from Uncle Sam and they say, you have to sell
it to this company or we're canceling other contracts to punish.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
You, right, you know what I mean, And they're much
more likely to not only listen to their internal legal
team rather than the ethicist. Of course, you know, the
US government is going to trump all of that, but
the ethicist is kind of always going to be third
down the you know, the tier list of like who
is being listened to because.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
The last the last email address on the big CC
list for sure.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Because I mean, even from a legal perspective, like the
ethicists might say, oh, well, you should maybe consider not
selling it to these folks because they've done X, Y
and Z. But then the legal team might say, well,
it's only a matter of what our legal exposure is,
and if we find it to be worth the money,
then we're gonna sell it to them and deal with
the fallout later. And maybe that's more of a pr
(42:06):
move at that point rather than a legal issue, which
seems like the case in a lot of these situations.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, and add to that, international law on corporate complicity
is still in development because there are a lot of
powerful players in the game who want their perspective to
win the narrative. So at this point, no domestic, no
international court has found the manufacturer Raytheon legally liable for
(42:34):
how these sovereign nations will use those toys that they bought. Also, yeah,
Raytheon is so in deep is so it is infested
American economics and politics because in addition to weapons of war,
Raytheon is also a huge private contractor for intelligence agencies
(42:56):
through another business unit, Raytheon Intelligence Information and Services or
get this RIZ.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
You know, of course they've got all the ris ben
you know that revolving door of government.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Oh yes, at play here like oh big time? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
that's how the sausage is made. We know, Raytheon supplied
surveillance products and services to monitor the US Mexico border
between two thousand and five and twenty nineteen. They were
a huge part of customs border protections efforts to make
(43:31):
a virtual wall or a smart wall on the border.
So did it work? No, did Raytheon profit?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Oh? Yeah absolutely? But I just want to remind everyone
that this whole relationship with the US government and Raytheon
started with the US government handing them proprietary technology and saying,
take a look at this and do a better job.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
So that is the precedent here, right, Yeah, we're all buddies.
Just take the weekend. No secrets between friends, right right,
go to the care happened? Uh? That is it was
the magnetrod tube was classified at the time. Yes, and
we know that this intelligence, this intelligence arm of Raytheon
(44:12):
also had legal issues. In twenty twenty five, they and
a outfit called the night Wing Group were ordered to
pay wait for it, NOL eight point four million dollars
because they violated the False Claims Act by failing to
comply with cybersecurity requirements in contracts involving the DoD.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
It's like a parking ticket though, you know, yeah, that's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
I mean, I mean you also we have to say
night Wing is a group that we just introduced here.
It's way cooler, right, Nightwing and Raytheon sounds like a
crime fighting duo.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
I agree, RTX is so dull, but that's by design. Right,
So you may be wondering why yet another group night
Wing also got caught up in these legal proceedings. Well,
that's because in March of twenty twenty four, RTX Corps
sold its cybersecurity intelligence and services business, which then became
absorbed into Nightwing. They're also based in Virginia, over in Dulles, which,
(45:16):
as you may or may not know, is where the Washington,
DC Area International Airport.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Is pretty convenient if you want to lobby, we'll say
this settlement also to our earlier point, it didn't find
any specific individual guilty of a crime. Instead, the phrase
they use is resolve. It resolved alleged misconduct between twenty
fifteen and twenty twenty one before RTX sold the business
(45:45):
to night Wing, because clearly they knew there was trouble
on the way. So I don't know how they pitched
it to night Wing. But for Blake, you were saying,
for the majority of individual people living in the United States,
and honestly for a lot of smaller businesses, an eight
point four million dollar fine ruins your life. You are
(46:05):
going to be bankrupt, right. You are going to be.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Paying for that until you die, I mean no question
about it.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, yeah, and then then your kids will be paying
for it. Unscrupulous collectors will try to convince your kids
and your relatives to pay that debt after your death. However,
pro tip, you don't actually have to pay those folks.
I can say us to that personally. Yeah, at least
in terms of like credit card debt and medical debt
like it's you may technically be on the hook for it,
(46:32):
but there's a statute of limitations, and they it's hard
for them to justify coming after you, and it's it's
also something that occurs during one of the most terrible,
harrowing points of a person's life. Absolutely, yeah, But for
Raytheon and those like them, for our TX and so on,
eight point four million is chump change. It's a correction
(46:54):
and align item budget, especially when we know that Raytheon's
Patriot missile defense system is used by nineteen nations officially
and probably other nations as well. They've got factories and
labs and other facilities across the planet. They're pure profit,
their net profit, not Their annual sales revenue of twenty
(47:16):
twenty four was four point seven four four billion dollars
and then it jumped again last year.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Well, and I'm sure Raytheon is in the mix with this.
I don't know exactly what that mix is, but think
about how when Uncle Sam more or less depleted their
weapons reserves in this conflict, this skirmish with you know, Iran,
and now they're asking for what a couple trillion more dollars?
You know that a big old chunk of that's going
(47:44):
to companies, like directly to companies like Raytheon.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Oh yeah. In twenty twenty five, the most recent numbers
we have Raytheon's again, this is pure profit. Raytheon's pure
profit was reported to be six point seven three two
billion dollars. So what's eight million? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Among friends?
Speaker 2 (48:03):
You know tech? Yep.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
So what happens next, Ben, I don't imagine that Raytheon,
ArtX Corp.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Are going anywhere. Yeah, I agree with you there, Noel,
When we talk about the future, we know there are
going to be outs of continual criticism, tons of protests,
activist war survivors, some scrupulous politicians which do thankfully exist.
They're an endangered species, you know. I think there are
a couple of a zoo somewhere out in Philly and
we just can't get them to reproduce. But there are
(48:33):
scrupulous politicians. RTX has to your earlier point, they've attained
that too big to fail level of business with the
US government. There's validity to that argument because kind of
like Lockey Martin or other big dog contractors, the United
States the military will have a terrible time waging war
(48:55):
without raytheon which they have to pay them lots and
lots and lots of money.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
That's what that request to Congress, you know from heg's
geth that's what it's going to fund. It's not like
they're in like sort of a friend deal. There is
money to be made and they expect to be paid. Yeah,
they expect to be made whole. And also, in multiple
cases they're the only entity with the infrastructure and manufacturing
(49:23):
base to create these things. So if what this means
is if the public outcry and or probrium ever reached
a level where Raytheon would be dissolved, what would actually
happen is all of that manufacturing base, all that infrastructure
would be sliced up like a pizza and hand it
(49:46):
out like at a pizza party. There'd be a sell off.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Of the company's businesses, and you know who would be
at that pizza party, a small group of investors and politicians,
and they would make I don't even know how much
money they would make, but it would be more than
a million each.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
And it wouldn't go anywhere. Even still, it would just
be called by a different name and then spread out
differently and parsed out. So it's harder to like say
it's one company doing all the bad stuff. I mean,
it wouldn't go anywhere. No, that's the reality of it.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
The names on the missiles might change, but the missiles
would still be made. Right. That's the level we're at,
and folks, that's where we're gonna leave it this evening.
There's so much more to get into about Raytheon. Thank
you for tuning in. As always, hit us up if
you'd like to learn more. We want to hear your
thoughts on this dilemma. The big lawsuits are just making
(50:39):
fines the company easily pays, and they're trying I guess
the authorities to get Raytheon to rein itself in and
do a little less bribery. But is that enough? How
much does the US depend on Raytheon. That's the stuff
Uncle Sam doesn't want you to know. You can't wait
to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
He ever thought about like the dystopian version of this,
where company like Raytheon decides that like they're going to
use the weapons they make against Yes, yes, they're holding
the keys man to the doomsday devices like there's no
it's again one of those things where it's all decorum
that's keeping them from being able to just hold everyone hostage.
(51:19):
They're already kind of doing.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
This, see well, and they also have they also have
a standoff because a lot of the top leadership of
these places, they have secrets on each other, right right,
So if one goes down, they could all go down.
It's mutually short destruction, which, as we know, is not
a sustainable situation.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
It's kind of right there in the name.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah, yeah exactly, So with that sucks. We would love
yet we would love to hear from you. Let's have
some mutually assured correspondence for sure.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Thanks again for tuning in. You can also check out
that a minute episode you mentioned Bena behind the Bastards
on Raytheon with our pals Robert and Sophie, And we'd
also love to hear more of your thoughts on this
whole quandary.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, you can find us on the lines conspiracy stuff,
conspiracy stuff, show some derivation thereof You can give us
a call on a phone number that's one eight three
three SDDWYTK. Let us know what's on your mind, let
us know if we can use your name and message
on the air, and as always, there's a great way
to contact us. Twenty four hours a night, seven evenings
(52:25):
a week. We have an email address.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
My name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Our colleague Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. We are recording this
on Friday, July thirty first, and Noel Tennessee. Let's start
(00:54):
it with a question. What is the first thing you
think of when you hear the word.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I swear to God, there's either a Pokemon with a
similar name or like a monster in the Monster Hunter series.
So I think mythical creature. Okay, I like that. That's
that's awesome. Actually I have to look that up. Uh, Tennessee,
what about you, Raytheon I think graphics cards, but I
think I'm thinking of radion.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
There we go. This is this is Uh. This is
a great example, Blake. If you asked me as well,
what I first thought of when I heard the word Raytheon,
I would probably think of the excellent running joke on
our sister show, Behind the Bastards with Robert Evans, who
loves to shout out Raytheon, And it's Robert's doing the
(01:44):
lord's work here, because Raytheon is just one piece of
a larger thing called the RTX Corporation. This remains one
of the largest defense contractors aerospace companies in all of
the world, and they're super deep and intelligence service too.
But you know, no, Tennessee everybody tuning in like you
(02:07):
just saw with our three examples RTX Raytheon. It's huge
by any measure, but a lot of people don't know
much about them, and after our research here, we think
Raytheon likes it that way.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, I think you're right, Ben, But also just to
be clear, Raytheon is in fact a dragon in the
Dragon Tamer universe. He's legendary electric and lights and is
considered a terosaur. So I don't know if that just
was a coincidence because I don't know the Dragon Tamer universe.
But there you go.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Ooh, that's perfect, Nola, and thank you for coming through
with that, because that's going to come up later in
an immediate impactful way.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I don't believe you.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh just watch all right, just start just just wait.
Oh I wish we could include our fifty six conversation
on air, but let's get into raythiond afterward. For our sponsors.
Here are the facts. No, you know, like we're saying.
(03:09):
The first thing people need to realize is that Raytheon
is technically now a business unit of RTX Corporation, that's
their parent company.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So business units is like when something is spun off
from a larger entity and given kind of its own categorization.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I don't know that I know that term in this
exact context. Yeah, it can be kind of confusing, right,
A lot of us have a similar questions. So in
our corporate overlord world, we have iHeart right, we have
iHeart Media, and then beneath that we have different business
units like iHeart podcasts. Catch is what we're part of.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I wasn't too far off because I was thinking of
back when we were part of how stuff works. The
website and the podcasts. We're sort of all under the
same umbrella. But at a certain point, I heeart acquisition.
They quote unquote spun off the podcast business into its
own sub semi autonomous entity.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
You nailed it there, man, Yes, semi autonomous is the
key phrase there. Like the idea is you are a
segment in a larger company and you focus on a
specific thing.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
And it also acts as a separate profit and loss unit.
So it's a way of kind of like separating that
from the main business.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
One hundred percent. And importantly, it's a way of separating
some legal liability. If the worst were to happen, you
can quantize the wound. So we'll give you a quick
with a nod of our caps to another show. We
love ridiculous History. No, what say? We give a brief
history of how Raytheon came to be, starting with three
(04:56):
very smart, interesting guys in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
List man, this is a little ridiculous history coded in
that the guy's names are Lawrence K. Marshall, Charles G.
Smith and Vanivar Bush. Is that the Vanovar Bush?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, this is a distant cousin of the Bush presidents
of the United States. A Bush of the Bush Bushes.
I see, distant cousin. He could be invited to the cookout.
It's also weird that democracy would have multiple members of
the same family be president, so whatever, it's almost like
(05:33):
it's like some sort of dynasty. Yeah, it's almost a democratic. Well.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
In nineteen twenty two, Bush of the Bush Bushes was
a professor at the MIT in their Department of Electrical Engineering.
He teamed up with an old colleague of his from university.
He would have been British Lawrence, the aforementioned Lawrence as well,
who is an engineering physicist, as well as Charles who
is a scientist and an inventor, and they banded together
(06:02):
voltrond up to form the American appliance Company Ben. We
just did an episode of Ridiculous History about banal company names,
and this definitely fits the bill. I think that what
was it the it was a baby the cradle Manufacturing
company or something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
You check out the Ridiculous History episode on baby gear.
It's a fun one.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of you discovering that,
and I thought, wow, Nol is right. These company names
were accurate at the price of creativity.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Heat and then they often pivot to something a little more,
even further vague or more specific with a little bit
of marketing panache right.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like how the Learning Channel becomes TLC. Right.
So they were, which is not, in our opinion, a
success story. So our three amigos here in Cambridge, they're
riding high on previous market success. Our buddy Marshall had
I'm not clear on the history exactly, but he had
taken a thermostat invention from another guy named Al Spencer,
(07:10):
and they used it to revolutionize your home flat iron
like an iron for yes, yeah, like an iron for clothing,
because back in the day, people would heat a hunk
of metal on a stovetop essentially, and then they would
iron and hope they didn't burn themselves. This thing absolutely
(07:31):
changed the game for ironing, and game was never the
same after that. Yeah, isn't it ironic?
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Huh, I stop it, Ben, We'll keep it, No, we must.
Did he not sell that? They turned around and they
sold this to Westinghouse, which is such a fascinating company
and worth an episode onto itself because it always blows
my mind that Westinghouse makes everything from like kind of
crappy TVs to nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah exactly, they're uh, you know, it's funny. There was
a story map brought that. I think we're all tracking
in a previous Strange News program about how South Korea's
stock market has absolutely been tanking. Part of that is
because of new Chinese competitors in the tech space, but
(08:16):
another part of that is because Samsung in Korea is
what Westinghouse wants to be and probably what Raytheon wants
to be, because Samsung owns everything. Like you were saying, Noel,
with Westinghouse, there are Samsung schools, you go to a
Samsung hospital, maybe you buy all these Samsung products, you
(08:38):
can be cradle to the grave with it. Westinghouse isn't
quite there yet, but something like something like a huge
cradle to grave company is probably on the way in
the States anyhow.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Really quickly, just to put a pin in this for
the Westinghouse episode of the future. We've recently been talking
as well about this idea of AI company and data
centers potentially creating their own power, like not being connected
to the grid, and something kind of triggered in my memory.
I remembered Westinghouse was a while ago working on a
(09:12):
quote unquote small modular reactor clear reactor, but they've got
a new one now. I just looked up the e
Vinci micro Reactor. Westinghouse is currently developing the e Venci
Trademark micro Reactor, a next generation micro modular reactor for
decentralized remote applications. Gotta say that's gonna be really interesting
(09:36):
how that gets looped in with the whole data center,
you know, quandary.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, especially if their prototype can still perform as a
mass produced product. This is what this is what Charles Smith,
our inventor, runs into with his power Lawrence. So Charles
or cg to his buddies. He's hanging with his power
Lawrence Marshall. And he says they're walking around Tuff's University
(10:02):
or something. At this point, he says, I walk around.
He says, I've got a great idea. Heavy L or
Big L or whatever they call each other.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Thank you for going with my tough guys.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, right, yes, yes, sir. He says, you know,
I invent a bunch of stuff, and Big L is
like heard, heard, and he says, I've got this idea
for a gas powered refrigerator. If we can make it,
we will create millions of dollars in revenue, because every
(10:36):
who doesn't want a refrigerator in their home, and Lawrence
is like heard heard definitely. So at the very beginning,
the guys who would found raytheon wanted to be refrigerator folks.
But just like you were saying with the miniature reactor
of Westinghouse, they've tried this several times. This gas powered
fridge is a bust, folks. The model works, the prototype works,
(10:59):
but the actual product has a ton of problems. And
at this point a lot of people would have given up.
They would have said, good job, refrigeration didn't work. We're done.
But these guys didn't give up, did they.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
They sure didn't. And that is, honestly, the biggest takeaway
for wanting to like be an inventor or really do
anything worthwhile is just to don't give up, you know,
don't be dissuaded just by failure after failure. Keep pushing forward,
and eventually you'll probably do something cool.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, baby, like us with podcasts. Okay, we just never stopped.
We just never took no for an answer.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So it's true, Ben, the men did shift to another
at the time, emergent technology radio Wow. Smith already had
patents under his belt, one of which was the S tube,
which was a transmission tube that was popular with the
ham radio community, which is something that is always fascinating
me that I don't know nearly enough about. Marshall asked
(11:58):
him to make a ree had transmitting to why not
make a receiving tube called that the B tube, which
would eliminate the need for batteries and enable radios to
run on household electricity. And this was a kind of
a big deal at the time, or at least they were
heading towards the thing.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That was a big deal, right, yeah, Because now Marshall
is our coixotic dude, Lawrence Marshall is our visionary right,
And he realized that if he could get his pal
Charles to, as you said, make this new kind of tube,
leveraging what they already had designed, they could have millions
(12:37):
of consumers literally throwing their well not literally but figuratively
throwing their wallets at the company for a chance to
have radios in their own homes. And this is where, okay,
this is where we're paying off what you said earlier,
right about the pokemon. So Marshall gets a bunch of
(12:57):
his employees together, probably not all of them, probably just
the ones he likes, and he says, all right, help
us come up with a name for this new fangled
B tube and this new fangled radio technology. And there's
a young sales engineer whose name is something like Miles Pennybacker.
And he he looks up at the media, is his name?
(13:18):
It was just something like you Okay, okay, he says,
why don't we call it raytheon It's a play yeah,
it's a playoff words.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
See that translates to Ray of the Gods, okay roughly,
And so it's kind of like that Pokemon you're talking.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Then, by the way, there wasn't a Pokemon. Uh And
I didn't know it from whatever Dragon tamer. It absolutely
is in the Monster Hunter universe. It is just expelled
are a t h I A n It has draft
dragon and thunder elemental weakness, and let's see stunt works
(13:56):
very well against it, and make sure to bring lots
of antidotes and herb medicine to cure her poison because
she's a poisonous monster.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Sorry, I'm a big monster hunter. I know from someone
was great thematically. This is great because it ties in
and I do want to confirm, yes, we checked off air.
The guy's name was Miles Pennybacker. He lived all the
way until nineteen ninety eight. Way yeah, yes, wait ed
so this this so Raytheon is created, but this is
(14:27):
far from its final form. At this point, Raytheon is
a name, a brand name for products that the AAC creates.
But this is how ridiculous and dumb history can be.
These guys got a legal threat from another company out
in Indiana that was also called the American Appliance Company
(14:49):
because it's not the most creative name. Now it's not.
It's bound to happen, bound to happen. Yeah, so they
rename our guys renamed their entire outfit, their entire company
eat Raytheon instead of just the one product. And now
so many people are getting into radio. They're all these competitors,
just like the early days of Sodo Pop, and Raytheon
(15:10):
has to work tirelessly to stay afloat, and they're really
you don't have to beat me here, Dylan. They're really
freaking good, so much so that they get the attention
of the big four guys, General Electric, Westinghouse as we
mentioned earlier, RCA, AT, and T. And then they find
out that Westinghouse is stealing their ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Know it man got their attention, not in the best
I mean, you're flattered and everything, but also don't take
our stuff. So Raytheon did, in fact discover the Westinghouse
had stolen one of their innovations, and they pushed back
legally and they won. It was a real David and
Goliath kind of win, which got them some serious street
cred in terms of their reputation in the radio tech community.
(15:59):
But it also, I mean, along with that opened them
up to a lot more kind of angel investor opportunities.
Not only that, but also increased their sales signfically. By
nineteen twenty six, their sales had reached a million bucks
or Jesus is hard number to even read, eighteen million,
eight hundred and eighty seven thousand, three hundred and forty
four dollars and sixty three cents by twenty twenty six standards.
(16:24):
So by nineteen twenty nine, they were still just making
these tubes, right, Ben, But they're making a ton of them,
forty thousand a day.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, yeah, forty thousand tubes per day on average. And
these tubes might have different uses, but they're they're selling
like hotcakes, right and Raytheon expands and contracts and has
its ups and downs throughout the Great Depression terrible name.
Then World War II comes along and Raytheon realizes, thanks
(16:54):
to the help of one of their brilliant scientists, a
guy named Percy, Raytheon reales their research into radio naturally
leads to another innovation, radar.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, and they've already kind of got a name that
sort of lends itself to that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, and now we see some nepotism come into play. Folks.
Remember how Noel said vanavar Bush was a big deal
at MIT. Uncle Sam goes to MIT and says, we
need some help with something, and MIT says, we have
just the company, and it's we're not recommending them in
any way because one of our guys gets a lot
(17:35):
of money if you mess with them. So this backroom deal,
our backroom recommendation, leads to the US Navy going to
Raytheon and they say, hey, guys, very smart, come highly recommended.
We need you to help with the war effort. We
need you to build some kind of microwave radar device
(17:56):
that can function on our ships. And oh, by the away,
we're calling it a proposal, but you have to do it,
and you have to do it now.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know that's a bummer. And we
also know that the Uncle Sam can swoop in and
take control of a patent if it threatens national security.
This seems like the inverse of that Desperate times, desperate measures.
The British were super desperate for help against the Nazis
and their expansion, and they needed as much help as
they could get to build these key components of their
(18:28):
radar technology. As you mentioned, Ben, the magnetron tube. This
was very much in line with the kind of stuff
that Raytheon was already, you know, it was kind of
their bread and butter. So this made perfect sense. So
somehow though, Raytheon was able to convince the Navy to
let them borrow a particularly top secret component and let
(18:48):
them kind of mess dick around with it, you know,
kind of figure it out and like poke around inside, which.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Really gave them a leg up big picture wise.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I would imagine Ben.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right crazy just to think about it. Seems like something
we would see in that series Drunk History. Because the
Navy had it. I had like a couple of magnetron tubes.
They were, as he said, so difficult to produce because
you had to machine them out of pure metal. It
(19:19):
was very intricate and laborious process. So I just imagine
being so tight with nepotism in government that they could
They're essentially say, hey, we need you to help us
build flying saucers, and then you go, oh, aliens are real,
and they go, yeah, ky, check this out.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Take a look at this this tactical. We can make
it better. And that's think about it. We're talking about
the early days here of massive defense contracts, and I
think this is such an interesting peak behind the curtain
about how quickly this kind of relationship just starts generating
f you money, you know, just like like economy of
(20:01):
scale money.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh yeah, well put man. Because luckily for the Allies,
the boffins of Raytheon did come up with an answer.
They figured out a new way to design and manufacture
these magnetron tubes. So production skyrockets. You're talking about economy
of scale right. Previously, before Raytheon, we were looking at
a manufacturing capability of like seventeen magnetron units a week,
(20:27):
and now it's several thousands. So by the close of
World War Two, Raytheon alone is making almost eighty percent
of all of the magnetrons used by all allied forces.
They have moved from three guys who thought refrigerators were
cool haha, ha ha to full on defense contractors.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right, you know, essentially a wing of a government, a
manufacturing wing of the government. Yeah, you know, I mean
like too big to fail doesn't even begin to describe it.
Ifion expanded past magnetrons, of course eventually to manufacturing and
you know, improving the designs of complete radar systems, completely
(21:10):
outclassing a lot of the tech you know that the
enemy we're using.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, and so now to give you some more quick numbers, folks,
Raytheon's annual sales were six million dollars in nineteen forty two.
By nineteen forty five, those sales had reached again. Keep
in mind just three years later one hundred and seventy
three million dollars in twenty six money. That is another
(21:36):
big number, three billion, two hundred and nine million, six
hundred and forty nine thousand, seven hundred and seventy dollars
and seventy eight cents. So that's a lot of cheddar. Well,
that's a lot of that's a lot of radar.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
A lot of microwaves, and lest we, you know, leave
out their contributions to the day to day lives of
you know, normies like us, they also somewhere along the
way invented the microwave oven.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yes, college us, thanks you.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
They were thinking ahead. They knew that war couldn't go
on forever until it you know, had to to protect
companies like Raytheon, So they decided they would kind of
look into ways of being successful year round and finding
their way into more kind of consumer commercial markets.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, and check out our older show Stuff of Genius
to learn about how Raytheon's Percy Spencer created the microwave
oven for four civilian markets and Miligan nailed it. They said,
a war can't last forever, or so they thought at
the time, but they never gave up on the military applications, right.
(22:45):
They got into rockets big, big time in the nineteen fifties.
They were still making transistors. In sixty five they acquired
a refrigeration company named Amana, and then they began selling
you're still a ways there's still all.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
About that refrigeration man.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
That was like their main thing. I love I love
picturing their meetings and they're saying you know, we're making
millions of dollars off of the wall, and so when
in the back goes But what use is it if
our food is warm?
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yes, we've got to get back to that dream of refrigeration.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, it's maybe their their core identity is the idea
that food can never be room temperature. It has to
either be hot or very cold. Well, it was the failure,
the soul.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
It was the failure that spurred them on to you know,
all this rocket and radar stuff. It was like if
they what if they had succeeded in refrigeration right up front,
you know, that's a good question, then it might not
have been a history might have been very very different.
But much like who was it? I think it's Barbara
Streisand's former hairdresser, who was a big movie producer who
always wanted to have a giant mechanical spider in movies
(23:55):
that he produced, and eventually he got it in Wild
Wild West, which was as a giant flop. But this
is their giant mechanical.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Spider, yes, and it's the one they care about. They've
also made some other giant mechanical warlike things. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Sorry, that's funny, you know, the Patriot missile system that
began as the sam dash D program in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It turned into anti ballistic defense during the Cold War,
and for conspiracy realist of a certain age, you probably
remember when the Patriot became a matter of massive international
attention during the Persian Gulf War in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
For sure. And by two thousand and six, Raytheon reported
two hundred and eighty three point nine million in global
revenues for its Patriot missile system alone. And all along
the way they continued acquiring other companies that aligned with
their interests and you know, kind of filled some of
their gaps. In July of twenty twenty three, Raytheon Technology
(25:01):
Corporation changed its name to RTX Incorporation and sort of
a the learning channel to TLC kind of move right.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah. Absolutely. Now you can see RTX headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
It is still one of the world's yeah what else, what.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Else is around there?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yeah, you know, they wanted to be in the neighborhood, right, Yeah,
And it's great real estate for them because RTX is
one of the world's largest defense manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It's actually number two, right below Lockheed Martin and it's
like it's an umbrella at this point is so many
big corporations and conglomerates become there are dozens of smaller
outfits under it, regional corporate entities across the globe. Their
three biggest business units are Collins Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney.
(25:52):
We've all heard of Pratt and Whitney Engines and of
course Raytheon. So a lot of irons in the fire
and with that a lot of controversy. Accusations of corruption,
dirty dealings, dirty deeds done, dirt ye and we'll very
expense funny later this case, I imagine. Yeah, and of
course conspiracy. No, let's say we take a break for
(26:12):
a word from our sponsors and get into the deep water.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, I say, yay, Ben, here's.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Where it gets crazy. Let's start with the corruption, because
I think we all know Raytheon does not have a
spotless reputation.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Now, now a few companies you know this magnitude and
in this particular business too. So despite its massive reach
and massive, massive profits that are just continuing to grow,
Raytheon has of course repeatedly come under fire for multiple reasons.
First and foremost of which is its role in creating
weapons of war and its continual association with corruption on
(26:50):
a worldwide scale. In twenty twenty four, Raytheon was ordered
to pay over nine hundred and fifty million dollars to
resolve the Justice Department investigation into this. Uh well, this
is a quote what they called. It's a major government
fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and
violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FCPA and the
(27:13):
Arms Export Control Act ae c A. And it's implementing regulations,
the International Traffic in Arms Regulations or we'll just go
ahead and call it itar.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Nobody is going to love an acronym more than a government,
right for us the babe yeah or us Yeah, we're
we're number two there. Yeah. So the FIPPA, the ACA,
and the U TAR big deal to get busted with these.
That nine hundred and fifty million dollar payment is part
(27:44):
of a three year deferred payment plan. And other words, folks,
justice on layaway, and nobody goes to jail, and you
barely get accused of wrongdoing.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
You barely get like quote unquote convicted of doing the
bad thing. It's weird, right the way you can kind
of pay your way out of jail.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Right, And I can't get away with a late fee
at the library still, and I lay on the riz.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
They're still coming after me for that Blockbuster video copy
of Captain Ron that I didn't return.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I think you should keep it. I am keeping
it at this point.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
It's just the principle of the thing.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
It's the principle. So if you guys wait.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Them out, eventually, you know Blockbuster, their business will go right, correct.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, So these are actually pretty good comparisons, folks, because
Raytheon again, there are no criminal charges against actual employees
or decision makers. As part of this agreement, Raytheon has
to admit that they did the bad thing. They say,
we had two separate conspiracies to defraud the Department of Defense,
(28:49):
including getting them to overpay for radar systems and Patriot missiles.
So these are like war profiteers. That's what they're agreeing to.
And they this was good old work barrow private contractor corruption.
The Department of Justice said, Raytheon ultimately got over one
(29:09):
hundred and eleven million dollars in extra money on maintenance projects,
but then they got fied nine hundred and fifty million
to teach them a lesson, But they make billions of
dollars a year. So what's the real consequence?
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Sure well, And I mean, you know it's my understanding, man.
It's not like they the government said, no, no, you've
hurt us too deeply. We can no longer do business
with you. You know, you're a toxic your toxic partner
in this situation.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Not not the case. Got a bad romance, Yeah no,
but yeah, not the case. As you're saying, Noel, and
don't fret, friends and neighbors, there's more. Raytheon also had
another agreement connected to a conspiracy to bribe a military
official in Hutter, as well as a conspiracy to violate
the Arms ex Control Act again, which is a federal
(30:03):
series of laws all about how you can import or
export sensitive technology and how it has to be reported.
They they got caught doing kind of like a proxy
grift where they used subcontractors to pay this official in Cutter,
just like two million dollars, which seems such a little
amount of money. At this level. It feels almost like
(30:27):
just tipping your server.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, with we're talking about these kinds of profits, it's
an absolute drop in the bucket, as is the amount
of you know money that they were fined. So this
is to my previous point about toxic you know, romance
or whatever. I mean, the government, the US government, you
could argue where it was victimized by you know, Raytheon.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yes, that's all they saw it from their perspective. In
these cases, they were victims just like you said, and
they they did get caught with their hands and the
cook j and those cases did go through. But we
also should take a moment here as stute listeners. You
clocked this. When Nola and I are giving you direct
(31:12):
quotations from the Justice Department, we're saying stuff like, resolve
the investigation, admit to a thing, not plead guilty, not
go to jail, just go you got me, But I'm
the cutest kid. Who else is going to make your missiles?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Well that's right, too big to fail, too big to
break up with. They have had their foot in the
door for a very very long time, you know, Uncle
Sam and the original agreement between these entities needed them
much more than they needed Uncle Sam. But then that
relationship evolved and now it's literally like they're kind of
(31:50):
so intertwined that no matter what kind of Shenanigan's Rayfiono
Archiex gets up to, Uncle Sam is likely never going
to be like bye right right.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And be like Hank, quit them, I love him.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
So it is definitely an abusive relationship, but not that
Uncle Sam is like not Also on many sides of
abusive relationships.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
We're not saying there are good guys in the conversation,
but we do enjoy a weird Jerry Springer reference. Look, folks,
there's another big issue here. Most of the criticism that
you are going to hear of RTX or Wraitheon as
its street name is now, is not going to focus
(32:34):
on them ripping off world governments, which has occurred. There's
a lot of bribery, but you're going to instead hear
criticism about a teeming mass of other victims who are
not as well healed as a state level actor. We're
talking about the vast amount of people around the world,
many of whom were civilians, who have been murdered by
(32:57):
raytheon products and.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Why am I sensing it's not the gun that murders,
it's the person kind of arguments.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Oh yeah, man, Let's take a quick break for a
word from our sponsors. You nailed it. Let's do it
and we're back.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
So okay, let's pick right up on that the Cliff Haggard.
It's about, you know, what is the nature of murder
when it comes to the thing doing it or the
entity or group or individual operating the thing. So let's
talk about war, the business of war versus the morality
of war. If there is any to speak of. Products
made by raytheon RTX, including missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets. Obviously,
(33:42):
these communications systems other weapons systems are regularly used in
war zones. They're super commonplace in places like Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq,
and Yemen. These weapons have been used on attacks that
injured and aimed and of course killed civilians. I believe
(34:03):
the term is thrown around collateral damage, right.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, right, acceptable margin of loss. They're all sorts of
banal evil euphemisms for this. And this occurs to some
degree in any large conflict. There has never been a
war wherein no innocent people diet. Elephants bake wars the
(34:28):
grass that suffers the Old African Yeah, check out our
episode on elephant shows, by the way, folks.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yeah, not the fun ones. That sing skinna marinky dinkydink
and where.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Which I still think it was a great reference.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
But it was a part of all of our childhoods
at least, and so, fellow conspiracy realist of a certain age,
you may also remember stories that didn't make the headlines
they should have.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
There have been a lot of investigations into Raytheon eighty activities.
We know for a fact that between twenty fifteen and
twenty twenty, Raytheon sold more than five billion dollars worth
of weapons to Saudi Arabia and its partners alone. This
is more than one hundred and twenty thousand bombs and
bomb components or paraphernalia that alone was worth three billion dollars.
(35:21):
The War on Yemen begins in twenty fifteen, which is
when the US government authorizes the sale of six one
hundred and twenty Haaveway guided bombs to Saudi Arabia. So
our triumvirate are three amigos who found Raytheon. They go
from refrigerators to radio to radar, which leads them to
(35:45):
guided missiles, guided bombs, and rocketry.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
It just goes to show that, like these types of success,
stories require a really long timeline and like being just
the first ones around, you know, and then that evolution
naturally occurs, especially when governments are concerned. They're kind of
like evolving in lockstep. Right, Yeah, that's a great way
to put it.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
We know that. In twenty eighteen CNN report, CNN based
here in the States found hard evidence that GBU twelve
laser guided bombs produced by Raith Yod had been used
to attack civilians in Yemen, including bombs hitting schools.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yeah, I mean a common occurrence, it would seem. Sadly.
In twenty nineteen, President Trump bypassed Congress and authorized further
sales of those bombs too, both Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Right, and this was this was happening despite a lot
of public outcry and opprobrium.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
And the profiteers is that not what this is? These
are like this what it feels like they may as
well be illegal arms dealers, like you know, the kind
of Lord award. That's what it feels like. You're selling
it to the high bitter without any consideration as to
what they're going to do with them. And then you
claim ignorance and or.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
No, we didn't do the thing. We just made the
thing that did the thing.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
You know, it's like Smith and Wesson making those kinds
of arguments around school shootings.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Absolutely, yeah, And we have to be clear, this was
this was an exception that felt unusual to proponents of
democracy people in the US on across the swath of
political affiliation, very conservative people, very libertarian people, very left
(37:35):
wing people managed to agree on this one thing, and
they were saying, hey, we should pause the sale of
this stuff either completely or you know, for a middle ground.
At least, do we know how exactly these weapons are
going to be used? And these are not multi use devices.
Nobody is say, like, a Patriot missile can blow up
(37:56):
your school, but it's also a cool ride to take
on a Saturday night with your gal.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Or again, not to beat a dead horse or a
dead deer. The way that you know, weapons manufacturers of
you know, firearms argue there for hunting. You can't really,
you can't really make that argument for these types of weapons.
Nobody's using a Patriot missile to like kill a you know, a.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Deer to control the deer population. Correct. I love seed,
I love pictory. Somebody explain to you that to a
park Ranger. We can't tell you this. It's it's actually
it's ruplingly. It bears troubling similarities to some of the
arguments about illegal evil content people find online. Right, you
(38:42):
can say, hey, we are a service that provides communication,
but we don't actually upload or download something terrible like CSAM,
and that's on the individual users.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Well, and to be fair, Ben, I mean, there's a
certain amount of validity to that argument. It's sometimes like,
at least especially with like the companies that let's just
say on and operate the pipes, you know, the fiber
and all of that. It's not a reasonable expectation for
them to police everything on the Internet. That's just not
the nature of their the service that they provide. I
(39:15):
think it would be untenable to expect them to do that, right, right.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I believe legally, at least in the States here, they're
still acknowledged as service or platform providers, not content creators, right,
so that that would be the division. But the same
a similar a roughly similar reasoning occurs with Raytheon. Raytheon
is not considered legally responsible for war crimes right anyway,
(39:43):
the same way as Smith Wesson is not legally considered
culpable for mass shootings using their products. However, human rights
groups and plenty of legal advocates have accused the company
of being complicit in war crimes because they have clearly
provably manufactured things that have been used in civilian attacks
(40:07):
or been used in other parts of conflict that violate
the known rules of war.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
I don't want to make it seem like I was
drawing the comparison between you know, internet service providers and
something like Raytheon. Raytheon knows who they're selling to. There
are choices they can make in seeing the human rights
record of these entities that they are choosing to do
business with, and then, you know, but then the argument
becomes one of raw unfettered capitalism, like, of course we're
(40:37):
going to sell it to them. They have money, doesn't
matter what they've done or who they are. That's not
for us to decide. And that's where the morality really becomes, like,
come on, there's room for a middle ground here.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, And we also have to consider that at this
level of rarefied air, Raytheon as a US company, can
be in a situation where maybe they do have an
ethicist and the ethicist says, well, we can't sell these
to this country because we know exactly what they're going
to do with it. But then the politicians come in
(41:11):
from Uncle Sam and they say, you have to sell
it to this company or we're canceling other contracts to punish.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
You, right, you know what I mean, And they're much
more likely to not only listen to their internal legal
team rather than the ethicist. Of course, you know, the
US government is going to trump all of that, but
the ethicist is kind of always going to be third
down the you know, the tier list of like who
is being listened to because.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
The last the last email address on the big CC
list for sure.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Because I mean, even from a legal perspective, like the
ethicists might say, oh, well, you should maybe consider not
selling it to these folks because they've done X, Y
and Z. But then the legal team might say, well,
it's only a matter of what our legal exposure is,
and if we find it to be worth the money,
then we're gonna sell it to them and deal with
the fallout later. And maybe that's more of a pr
(42:06):
move at that point rather than a legal issue, which
seems like the case in a lot of these situations.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, and add to that, international law on corporate complicity
is still in development because there are a lot of
powerful players in the game who want their perspective to
win the narrative. So at this point, no domestic, no
international court has found the manufacturer Raytheon legally liable for
(42:34):
how these sovereign nations will use those toys that they bought. Also, yeah,
Raytheon is so in deep is so it is infested
American economics and politics because in addition to weapons of war,
Raytheon is also a huge private contractor for intelligence agencies
(42:56):
through another business unit, Raytheon Intelligence Information and Services or
get this RIZ.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
You know, of course they've got all the ris ben
you know that revolving door of government.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Oh yes, at play here like oh big time? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
that's how the sausage is made. We know, Raytheon supplied
surveillance products and services to monitor the US Mexico border
between two thousand and five and twenty nineteen. They were
a huge part of customs border protections efforts to make
(43:31):
a virtual wall or a smart wall on the border.
So did it work? No, did Raytheon profit?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Oh? Yeah absolutely? But I just want to remind everyone
that this whole relationship with the US government and Raytheon
started with the US government handing them proprietary technology and saying,
take a look at this and do a better job.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
So that is the precedent here, right, Yeah, we're all buddies.
Just take the weekend. No secrets between friends, right right,
go to the care happened? Uh? That is it was
the magnetrod tube was classified at the time. Yes, and
we know that this intelligence, this intelligence arm of Raytheon
(44:12):
also had legal issues. In twenty twenty five, they and
a outfit called the night Wing Group were ordered to
pay wait for it, NOL eight point four million dollars
because they violated the False Claims Act by failing to
comply with cybersecurity requirements in contracts involving the DoD.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
It's like a parking ticket though, you know, yeah, that's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
I mean, I mean you also we have to say
night Wing is a group that we just introduced here.
It's way cooler, right, Nightwing and Raytheon sounds like a
crime fighting duo.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
I agree, RTX is so dull, but that's by design. Right,
So you may be wondering why yet another group night
Wing also got caught up in these legal proceedings. Well,
that's because in March of twenty twenty four, RTX Corps
sold its cybersecurity intelligence and services business, which then became
absorbed into Nightwing. They're also based in Virginia, over in Dulles, which,
(45:16):
as you may or may not know, is where the Washington,
DC Area International Airport.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Is pretty convenient if you want to lobby, we'll say
this settlement also to our earlier point, it didn't find
any specific individual guilty of a crime. Instead, the phrase
they use is resolve. It resolved alleged misconduct between twenty
fifteen and twenty twenty one before RTX sold the business
(45:45):
to night Wing, because clearly they knew there was trouble
on the way. So I don't know how they pitched
it to night Wing. But for Blake, you were saying,
for the majority of individual people living in the United States,
and honestly for a lot of smaller businesses, an eight
point four million dollar fine ruins your life. You are
(46:05):
going to be bankrupt, right. You are going to be.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Paying for that until you die, I mean no question
about it.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, yeah, and then then your kids will be paying
for it. Unscrupulous collectors will try to convince your kids
and your relatives to pay that debt after your death. However,
pro tip, you don't actually have to pay those folks.
I can say us to that personally. Yeah, at least
in terms of like credit card debt and medical debt
like it's you may technically be on the hook for it,
(46:32):
but there's a statute of limitations, and they it's hard
for them to justify coming after you, and it's it's
also something that occurs during one of the most terrible,
harrowing points of a person's life. Absolutely, yeah, But for
Raytheon and those like them, for our TX and so on,
eight point four million is chump change. It's a correction
(46:54):
and align item budget, especially when we know that Raytheon's
Patriot missile defense system is used by nineteen nations officially
and probably other nations as well. They've got factories and
labs and other facilities across the planet. They're pure profit,
their net profit, not Their annual sales revenue of twenty
(47:16):
twenty four was four point seven four four billion dollars
and then it jumped again last year.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Well, and I'm sure Raytheon is in the mix with this.
I don't know exactly what that mix is, but think
about how when Uncle Sam more or less depleted their
weapons reserves in this conflict, this skirmish with you know, Iran,
and now they're asking for what a couple trillion more dollars?
You know that a big old chunk of that's going
(47:44):
to companies, like directly to companies like Raytheon.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Oh yeah. In twenty twenty five, the most recent numbers
we have Raytheon's again, this is pure profit. Raytheon's pure
profit was reported to be six point seven three two
billion dollars. So what's eight million? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Among friends?
Speaker 2 (48:03):
You know tech? Yep.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
So what happens next, Ben, I don't imagine that Raytheon,
ArtX Corp.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Are going anywhere. Yeah, I agree with you there, Noel,
When we talk about the future, we know there are
going to be outs of continual criticism, tons of protests,
activist war survivors, some scrupulous politicians which do thankfully exist.
They're an endangered species, you know. I think there are
a couple of a zoo somewhere out in Philly and
we just can't get them to reproduce. But there are
(48:33):
scrupulous politicians. RTX has to your earlier point, they've attained
that too big to fail level of business with the
US government. There's validity to that argument because kind of
like Lockey Martin or other big dog contractors, the United
States the military will have a terrible time waging war
(48:55):
without raytheon which they have to pay them lots and
lots and lots of money.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
That's what that request to Congress, you know from heg's
geth that's what it's going to fund. It's not like
they're in like sort of a friend deal. There is
money to be made and they expect to be paid. Yeah,
they expect to be made whole. And also, in multiple
cases they're the only entity with the infrastructure and manufacturing
(49:23):
base to create these things. So if what this means
is if the public outcry and or probrium ever reached
a level where Raytheon would be dissolved, what would actually
happen is all of that manufacturing base, all that infrastructure
would be sliced up like a pizza and hand it
(49:46):
out like at a pizza party. There'd be a sell off.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Of the company's businesses, and you know who would be
at that pizza party, a small group of investors and politicians,
and they would make I don't even know how much
money they would make, but it would be more than
a million each.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
And it wouldn't go anywhere. Even still, it would just
be called by a different name and then spread out
differently and parsed out. So it's harder to like say
it's one company doing all the bad stuff. I mean,
it wouldn't go anywhere. No, that's the reality of it.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
The names on the missiles might change, but the missiles
would still be made. Right. That's the level we're at,
and folks, that's where we're gonna leave it this evening.
There's so much more to get into about Raytheon. Thank
you for tuning in. As always, hit us up if
you'd like to learn more. We want to hear your
thoughts on this dilemma. The big lawsuits are just making
(50:39):
fines the company easily pays, and they're trying I guess
the authorities to get Raytheon to rein itself in and
do a little less bribery. But is that enough? How
much does the US depend on Raytheon. That's the stuff
Uncle Sam doesn't want you to know. You can't wait
to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
He ever thought about like the dystopian version of this,
where company like Raytheon decides that like they're going to
use the weapons they make against Yes, yes, they're holding
the keys man to the doomsday devices like there's no
it's again one of those things where it's all decorum
that's keeping them from being able to just hold everyone hostage.
(51:19):
They're already kind of doing.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
This, see well, and they also have they also have
a standoff because a lot of the top leadership of
these places, they have secrets on each other, right right,
So if one goes down, they could all go down.
It's mutually short destruction, which, as we know, is not
a sustainable situation.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
It's kind of right there in the name.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah, yeah exactly, So with that sucks. We would love
yet we would love to hear from you. Let's have
some mutually assured correspondence for sure.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Thanks again for tuning in. You can also check out
that a minute episode you mentioned Bena behind the Bastards
on Raytheon with our pals Robert and Sophie, And we'd
also love to hear more of your thoughts on this
whole quandary.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, you can find us on the lines conspiracy stuff,
conspiracy stuff, show some derivation thereof You can give us
a call on a phone number that's one eight three
three SDDWYTK. Let us know what's on your mind, let
us know if we can use your name and message
on the air, and as always, there's a great way
to contact us. Twenty four hours a night, seven evenings
(52:25):
a week. We have an email address.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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Noel Brown
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