July 6, 2025 • 30 mins
He was a fighter pilot, then an astronaut, and now a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator from Texas. Terry Virts saw Russia attack Ukraine while sitting alongside cosmonauts in the International Space Station. Now he sees the party in charge of America attacking... America. Terry Virts gives his first podcast interview after announcing his candidacy.(www.terryvirts.com)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. Our guest today is Terry Wurtz.
He's a friend of ours. Actually, he's a retired US
Air Force commander, a NASA astronaut, and was on the
International Space Station. He's a graduate of the Air Force Academy.
He studied in France, he worked in Russia, and he
was a part of the team that achieved the fastest
(00:47):
circumnavigation of Earth. And to top it all off, he
just announced his candidacy for the US Senate in Texas.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
The race to unseen US Senator John Cornham from Texas
now has its first Democratic contender. Former astronaut Terry Urts
launched his campaign yesterday. Senator Cornyn has held this seat
since two thousand and two verts posted this video on
x describing himself as a common sense Democrat and an
Air Force veteran Attorney General. Kinpax then threw his hat
(01:15):
and ring back in April. The primary election happens in
March of next year.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
So thanks for talking to us today, Terry, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, how many combat missions did you fly?
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I flew forty five in Iraq, So I had to
verify that for the campaign, because you don't want to
If you put out forty four then they'll run negative
ads against you. So I literally went through my logbook.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
So we're eager to talk to you about your career
and your plans and congratulate you on your Senate run.
And it seems to me at least that you're a
shoeing now since you've appeared on the Joe Rogan Show.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
No, I'm a shoe in because I was on the
Mission Impossible. That's the key there, you go, Yeah, tell
how is the Rogan thing?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Are you going to go back on again?
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I hope so hopefully Joe will have you on there.
You know, I'm run in the space of I'm running
as a Democrat, but I'm very much a common sense
democrat and kind of a big tent democrat, you know.
So I'm not on the progressive side. I probably would
lose in New York City based on our recent results there,
but I'm trying to win in Texas. So I think
that's the kind of thing that Joe's interested in. There's
(02:17):
been a lot of national attention as to what the
heck's happening with our politics, so I'm trying to bring
some sanity back to that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We would appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, I don't know whether to start light or or
or go aheadvy idea, but let's start with I think
the most important thing sort of Terry is a former astronaut.
Are you a Star Wars guy or a Star Trek guy?
So I was.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I watched a lot more Star Wars when I was
a kid. I remember when the first movie came out,
and when Darth Vader walked in, it was like the
most terrifying thing that I'd ever seen in my life.
But in recent years I've had so many Star Trek
connections it's crazy. A buddy of mine was friends with
Scott Bakula, who was a commander on Star Trek Enterprise,
the old TV show, So I flew out with him
(03:01):
in a T thirty eight after a spaceflight, and I
actually was on Star Trek Enterprise. And there was probably
five years of my NASA astronaut career where if you
googled my name, the fact I was an astronaut didn't
come up. The only thing that came up was the
fact I was on Star Trek Enterprise like three seconds
wearing one of those costumes. You know, I was just
sitting there flipping switches and that's all I did.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
But seriously, on that, yeah, Star Wars, Yeah, give sort
of a dystopian pessimistic view of our future. And Star
Trek is where we all come together to collaborate, right,
to do great things, right humanity does. And you know,
you've been inside the deep state, you've been a fighter pilot,
you understand how the American goverment work works, and not
(03:43):
running for office, you also you look in to collaborate
and you're look into like achieve things. So what's your
view of the American future and what is it you
want to achieve?
Speaker 4 (03:54):
That is a really interesting point. I hadn't thought of
the dystopian versus positive now trying to work in j
at the air Force Academy, I boxed and I did judo.
We had to do all these wrestle and stuff, and
then judo we called it the Captain Kirk move, where
you would grab the guy and then flip him over
your shoulder. And CIA that was probably like you did
that before breakfast every day. But then the Air Force
(04:15):
we didn't do it that often, but we learned that.
We learned that Captain Kirk move exactly. You know my
vision for America, there's a what's the guy's name? Russo,
one of the French philosophers came here in the eighteen
hundreds and he did the you know, the world tour
all around America. He wanted to figure out what was
going on here in the New World. And when he
came away, he said something very profound. He said, America
(04:37):
is great because America is good. And his point was
the reason why this country's doing so well is because
of our fundamental goodness. And I think we need to
get back to that. Like what we're seeing now with
this current administration is badness. I mean there's like it's
morally reprehensible to send law enforcement dressed like Navy seals
(04:59):
with face masks on grabbing people off the street and
throwing them in unmasked cars. That is not America having grievances,
constantly complaining about people, constantly attacking people constantly. This is
not good. This is not what America is about. And Jerry,
before we got started, we were talking about some interesting
parallels with the nineteen thirty. That's probably more down the
Darth Vader and Star Wars track.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Maybe less whining would be a nice thing, wouldn't it great?
Speaker 4 (05:23):
You know in the fighter community, and I'm sure it's
the same in the different agencies. If you whine like
you're crushed, there's no whining in fighter pilots, like there's
no crying in baseball. Oh my god, the grievances that
kept spewed out of this man's mouth every day. There's
going to be generations of psychologists, residents programs that study
(05:45):
just how warped of a brain this current president has.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Let me ask you sort of a basic question, because
we don't often have fighter pilots and astronauts on which
was more fun and rewarding forced pilot were national Because
I know for sure being a politician is not going
to be the.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Fo No, No, we've been laughing. Yea, if I it'll
be the third coolest job I've ever had, being a
fighter pile. You know, I'm a fighter pilot. That's just
who I am. It's so cool to strap on an
F sixteen, the way the stick is on the right
and the throttles is on the left, and the seats
lean back so like the jet just fits you like
(06:23):
a glove, and you get to the point where you
just think and that you can make the airplane go.
But it's just the coolest thing flying in F sixteen.
It's so maneuverable, goes to nine gs, accelerates like crazy.
But on the other hand, like leaving Earth on a
rocket and floating, floating is pretty cool like that, you
can't be beat looking down at the planet, it's the
most beautiful thing. Actually, you can't imagine unless you've seen
(06:46):
it yourself. You can't imagine how beautiful it is looking
out at the galaxy. Man, there's a lot of stars
out there. So I don't know which one the F
sixteens are cooler, but being an astronaut is probably more profound.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So it's almost as cool as blow to CIA.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
I can't confirm or deny what that would be like, yeah,
I think you could deny exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, So Terry running with conspiracy theories and conspiracy. So
Marjorie Taylor Green recently wrote she posted that there was
once a great president that the American people loved. He
opposed Israel's nuclear program, and then he was assassinated. The
rest of the post goes on to basically sort of
(07:27):
slyly insinuate that JFK was killed by Mosad or the Jews.
Right and so in politics there seems to be this
increasing level of conspiracy theories that are creating violence. Right,
we saw what happened in Minnesota. This rightly conspiracy theorist
goes out and assassinates people. And then you've got a
(07:50):
US Senator, Mike Lee making fun of it all, saying, well,
it's just sort of the Marxist playing right or or
Nancy Pelosi's husband is ticked again by a right conspiracy
theorist and hit with a hammer, and people make fun
of it. And I'll even throw in. On the left,
there were people sort of saying that when Trump was
not assassinating the assassination attempt against him, that that was
(08:11):
staged to make him look good. I was wondering if
you could give me your sense of like where you
stand on and are you concerned about violence going into politics,
the kind of people that go into it, and sort
of how you deal with like crazy conspiracy theories from
some of your peers.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
You know, as we're recording this, I just announced just
a couple of days ago, and I could show you.
And I started a new folder in my email last
night called weird and that mailbox is filling up very quickly.
I had a call with the local police department and
they were so excited that I was running and they're like, absolutely,
we're gonna check out your thing. You know, as an astronaut,
the police come and they check out your family's house
(08:51):
while you're in space. While I was in space, we
had a guy crawling around my yard in the middle
of the day. And the problem with that, right like
just at the CIA, you guys have to be right
a hunter percent of the time. If you're wrong, once
the bomb goes off, right, And the same thing with security,
you have to be right one hundred percent of the time.
I have a handgun. I have a handgun in each
night stand next to my bed. Two handguns. I've contacted
(09:13):
the local police. So absolutely, I'm concerned about this, and
it's insane. It's not only irresponsible, Trump goes way beyond irresponsible.
It wasn't just anybody making fun of Nancy Pelosi's husband.
It was Trump family members making fun of Nancy Pelosi's husband.
This is unacceptable. This is again, Jerry, we were just
talking about nineteen thirty three Germany. This is nineteen thirty
(09:33):
three Germany. You know this is not America. We don't
do political violence, and these Republicans are making fun of it.
That's we got to stop that. Man, we take We
got to turn the temperature down. And here's the thing,
here's the worst part about it. There are good human
beings who are Republicans. Of course, there's a lot of
normal Republicans. They don't say anything. They are quiet, they
(09:55):
know better, and they don't say anything. They know Trump
should have been in peach after the thing they didn't
vote to do. So, they know you shouldn't threaten people
with violence, and they don't say anything. They don't say
anything because they put their career and they put their
party above their country and above doing what's right. And
that's why I'm running. That's why I'm running for Senate.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Let's pause, per secret, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Let me stay a little bit on the conspiracy theme
then a little bit. So as someone who's trained in
the Air Force and NASA, how do you view these
commercial space organizations? And I say conspiracy because Elon Musk's
big role in this. What's your view? Is it good
for the US? How do they integrate with NASA and
what we're doing.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
There's a lot of different commercial space companies. Obviously SpaceX
is the biggest and most successful. Without the Falcon nine
SpaceX rocket, you know, the US government wouldn't be able
to do the things that it needs to do in space.
That rocket dominates the American launch industry and the global
launch industry. Last year I saw stat SpaceX launched like
ninety percent of the mass sent into orbit. That's not
(11:11):
the right number, but it's close. And everybody else, China, Russia,
and all the other American companies in Europe launched the
other ten percent, So they're important. They've also gotten a
huge amount of US government contracts over the years. Mister
Musk also donated three hundred million dollars to Trump's campaign
and then was immediately put in charge of the entire
(11:32):
government and given all the data of the entire government
for it. And by the way, he has an AI company.
And as you know, data is the currency the realm
in the AI world, and that's the difference between a
mega billion or trillion dollar AI company and a zero
dollar AI company. And now he has I don't know
what he has. One of the things I need to
do as a senator is to investigate that, to figure
(11:54):
out what data went to him. And it's not only SpaceX.
There's lots of other companies doing amazing things in stace.
That's great. And the more people spending money and the
more people employing engineers and building rockets and satellites, that's
really good for the space industry. It just needs to
be done in an ethical way. You know, it can't
be done in a corrupt way. And what we've seen
(12:15):
happen in the last few months, but DOJE is corruption
on the scale we've never seen. I mean, this puts
Rockefeller and Morgan into shame. It gives corruption a bad
name because it's so corrupt. As a senator, I'm going
to definitely investigate that and try and get to the
bottom of what happened. It's going to be tough, the
investigations and the reparations and the peristroika, if you will,
(12:36):
it needs to happen in the next administration. Knock on wood,
it's a democrat. Is going to be a lot of work.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, So on investigations, Terry, I was wondering, if you like,
on this show here and now, whether you're willing to
investigate how it is that you know that NASA has
hid the fact that we fake the mood landings for
so long, so many people still believe we went to
the moon.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Do you have a favorite conspiracy they related to space
and moon and all that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, flat Earth?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
You know, well, Stanley Kubrick was the the time two
thousand and one. You know, there were some pretty big
filmmakers in the sixties. But Kubrick, I'll say this for
the first time on your podcast if you want, Stanley
Kubrick actually is the guy that filmed the moonlanding. But
he was such a perfectionist he had to film it
on site.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
So how do you deal with people you know, you've
been in space, right, you know you've seen the Earth.
How do you deal with people who say the Earth
is flat? I mean, how would you because this is
part of the electorate. Now.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
You know, Archimedes figured out that the Earth was round,
you know, several thousand years ago. It's not that hard.
You measure a shadow and then you walk a few
hundred miles, and then you measure this at the same time,
the same shadow, and it's a different shadow because the
Earth is round. And when I launched, you could see
the launch. People watched it right. This rocket launched and
it went to the east. Well, first was flat. I'd
(13:55):
still be flying to the east, but thankfully it's round,
and I came back around and was a bent able
to land. At the Kennedy Space Center, the Moon landing,
there were hundreds of thousands of people working on it.
I wasn't around during Apollo. I'm friends with buzz Aldrin.
Actually he punches people who play exactly. But I'm a politician,
so I can't do that. But yet I have to
wait till after my career. But hundreds of thousands of people,
(14:18):
the Russians were watching. They got radars, they've got cameras,
you know, so if we had not landed on the Moon,
they would have said something. And think about Bill Clinton,
he was not able to cover up Monica Lewinsky, So
how on the heck would NASA be able to cover
up the Apollo moonlandings with four hundred thousand people. So
(14:38):
it's just it's silly. And you can actually see pictures.
There's there's orbiters in orbit around the Moon now that
have taken pictures. You can see the first stage, the
different Apollo lunar landers. You can see all the astronaut footprints.
Or there's kind of like a mess, just like we're
Americans who make a mess everywhere we go. So there's
all their footprints are around the landers.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Plastic bags and cigarette butts, is golf ball.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
You see the and it's like but it's not waving.
You can go on YouTube and see how I blocked
an alien spaceship. I was doing a spacewalk and this
guy's following the video of me doing the spacewalk and
there's a flash of something. I don't know what it is,
just a glint from the sun or maybe a piece
of dust floating. You see this little flash, right is
my hand like I'm working, and my hand blocks that
(15:21):
flash and the hin he's narrating his YouTube video breathlessly
and He's like their astronaut verts, just block the alien spaceship.
We've got two cameras well, there's one hundred cameras outside.
There's all kinds of cameras everywhere. So yes, I blocked
it in front of one camera, but not in front
of the other ten cameras that we're all looking in
that direction. The only thing I can say, everybody always
(15:41):
talks about area fifty one. Area fifty two is the
area you want to know about. That's all I'm gonna
That's all I'm gonna say about that.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Fair enough, So Terry, what before we went on, we
were talking a little bit about what's going on in Ukraine,
And yeah, when you were in the space station, you
delta lot with Russia bureaucracy and Russians, you know, decent
people talking to you know, in a dictatorship. But I
just wondering, but give us a sense of what you
(16:11):
see in Russia today is prime pushers of conspiracy theories? Yeah,
whole machine. If you wanted to say something about Russia,
having work with them firsthand, right, what would your sense
be about what we're dealing with.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
I could talk about this for hours, So the whole
Putin regime is built on a foundation of lies, and
so it won't last forever. The lies will eventually just
like the Soviet Union was built on lies, it eventually fell.
Just like the Trump administration is built on the Grosso
Luga right, the big lie lies don't ever last forever.
They eventually come out. I love my time in Russia.
(16:45):
I have a lot of Russian friends. I love borsh,
I love the fish. I enjoyed it. I tried to
have dinner on the Russian segment of the space station
with the cosmonauts as often as I could. I tried
to learn language. I tried to learn expression. I try
to learn things they don't teach you in RUSSI class.
So I made the most of it. But I was there.
I could see some really disturbing things happening when I
(17:06):
was there. I had been going there for a decade,
but my training began in twenty twelve for this one mission,
and I was there on May ninth. They call it
Victory Day. It's truly the day after Victory Day. And
I walked around and I was like, this is really bizarre.
There are posters everywhere. This is like a cult. But
I remember it was just really weird. What a cult
(17:26):
like obsession they had with World War Two. And I thought, yeah,
we won World War Two, but we've moved on since then,
like we've done other things since World War Two. And
for them, they're just completely stuck in nineteen forty five
and they always have these things, these big monuments in
their cities. Nineteen forty one and nineteen forty five. Well, yeah,
they're forgetting nineteen thirty nine, in nineteen forty one, when
they were on the side of the Nazis, when they
(17:47):
actually started World War two with Hitler. That's like a
minor detail that everybody forgets. Trump is talking about how
great the Russia was and how they helped us win
World War two. It's like, yeah, well they started World
War two too, on the side of Hitler. So this
fact that it was this cult really it was really bizarre.
One day, I was walking around Moscow by myself and
there was a big mob and it was Navalney. Navalney
was having an approach because this was when Putin was coming
(18:08):
back after his four years as vice president essentially and
thinking wow. And then I was like, all right, I'm
going to go the other direction. I walked away. So
I was in space and one night I was there
with a guy named Sasha Samukuchayev and we were having
dinner quiet looking out the window. They have a big
window on the Russian segment, which is really cool. And
in Western Europe there's a lot of lights, so there's London,
(18:30):
in Paris and Berlin. As you go east has less
and less lights. And then all of a sudden, I
just saw these red flashes and we were over Ukraine.
This is twenty fifteen when the Russians had first invaded,
and it was like we didn't say a word, we
were just solemn. And this guy came back to Earth
and joined Dai Rossia Putin's party to promote the war
(18:51):
and to promote Putin. And three of the cosmonauts that
I flew with did that, And it's the most disappointing
and just angering thing. These men and women, one of
them is Ulena Sirovos say they know better, they know better,
they know right from wrong. They lived in America. They
know we're not Basically, we don't care about Russia. No
Texan that I know gives a crap about Russia other
(19:13):
than those war in Ukraine. Right, No one cares about Russia.
As long as they're not bothering anybody, we don't care.
They're just not that big of a deal anyway. So
it was a very very frustrating thing for me to
see people and you know what, they get more space flights.
If you promote putin, you get to fly in space again.
You get a nice apartment in Moscow. They all come
back and they get Lexus, SUVs and Mercedes, so you
(19:35):
get stuff for promoting the old man, and they do that,
and so it's a human nature thing that's been incredibly disappointing.
Not everybody, there are good cosmonauts, but that n that
number is pretty small.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Well good thing that could never happen in this country,
that cabinet numbers would go out of their way to
praise the president Kim Chunguin's style.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
The dear Leader. Can you imagine a cabinet member behaving
the way these cabinet members are behaving. There's a word
I can't it's sick of fancy. I can't even that's
probably not a word I should use, but like, no, no, that's.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
A good one.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
But I think you know anybody who wants to be
like they need an enemy, They need somebody to blame,
and they need to create symbols and things, fake symbols,
and so for Putin the Great Patriotic War, World War
two is the symbol the thing that and since then
it's the awful West that's caused problems. You know, you
can't blame yourself for problems. You have to blame others,
and so they blame the West. So the cosmonaut you
(20:28):
work with, you know, they're stuck in that system. What
hurts me now is the Maga faithful and made those
enemies to blame other Americans. They've said it's the Democrats
and the Marxist whatever they call, you know, the deep state,
all these kind of things. Yeah, rather than blaming at
least the Russians are blaming some foreigners.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Right, they're not blaming themselves. I saw Ted Cruz one
time talking. He's like, whatever the issue was, I forget.
We need to stop worrying about this so we can
get back to focusing on our enemy, the Democrats. And
I was like, wait a minute, Ted, the other word
for Democrats is Texans or Americans.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And I don't think any Democrat has called his wife ugly?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Can you if somebody called my wife or my kid
or anything my any family member, I'd have a problem
with that person, Like we would have issues.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
For a long time.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
I want to ask you guys a question as CIA guys.
So Vladimir Putin is this spy master. He's KGB, but
he was a spy in East Germany? Right, So does
the CIA send our bet Like when you go to
the you guys have a team and B team. I'm
sure there's like really good guys, there's like the top spies.
And then it's a little sensitive with Jerry on the
(21:38):
do you spend you do you send the a guy?
What's the name of the CI school? The farm or
whatever I saw in a movie? Sometimes so the graduates
of your school, do the do your best spies go
to Canada? Or do your do your best buies go
to Denmark? So he went to East Germany, I would
assume that the best KGB spies went to West Germany.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Came into the KGB in nineteen seventy five, and he
spent this first like eleven years working in his hometown,
essentially following people who might be oppositionists or maybe foreigners
who visited. And finally he got his first quote overseas tour,
and it was the East Germany, which was controlled obviously
by Soviet as part of the Soviet Bloc.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
That's equivalent of sending one of you guys to Canada.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Is the even worse? Actually, Although to answer your question,
and this is going to like friggin kill me, to
a certain extent, yes, I think we do send some
of our best and brightest and youngest to you know,
to go inside behind the curtain as it used to be,
into Russia. And that would be John. John was you know,
sent into into Russia and some of our best and
(22:39):
brightest and I didn't. But it also plays into it
also plays into what your strengths are. So I was
a European and an African guy and later a counter
terrorism guy. I think I would have sucked if I
worked inside of Russia because it has it demands different
capabilities and different strengths, and so the strengths that you
need to operate. I mean an F sixteen pilot and
(23:01):
a warhog pilot, right, you know, it's like they probably
doesn't mean one's better than the other, although probably an
F sixteen pilot maybe.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Is better looking.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
They're better looking but yeah, I think it's it's maybe. Yeah,
we would send our certainly our top caliber folks into
that and Glannaber Putin, Plannier Putin just did not make
that grade.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
When it's true, it's true, I think he's created again
a false narrative for himself. Now he's put out there
that he worked with illegals and stuff, when in fact
what he worked with was supporting terrorist groups. So it
was like the PLFP the Palestinian saying some Libyan groups
and others they would come to East Germany because they
were because they were away from you know, the West
(23:40):
and stuff to be, and the KGB guys would work
with them and support them and give them money and
that type of thing. And so he never was a general.
I think he might have been by the time record,
but not senior.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Yeah, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Here's a hard question for a former Air Force guy,
what do you think of the Space Force?
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Earth is only half the battle.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
Our entire way of life depends on space, from banking
to farming to communication and navigation. We are here to
defend the freedom to operate in space, to be the
guardians the more way of life, and because space defines
every battle. We must protect a high ground.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
I was actually a vocal promoter of Space Force. I
wrote an op ed in the Washington Post, and the
reason is that the way we organize our military, we
have the services do what we call organized, train and equip.
Right like they organized, they train and they equip. They
get the Air Force ready or the Army ready, and
then when it's time to go to combat, we have
(24:56):
the chain of command, which would be the Secretary of
Defense through the Secretary of the Air Force, through the
combatant command. So we have this different the military organized
trains that equip and then the civilian we have two
different chains of command. We have an air force and
army in the navy. The air is different than land,
is different than sea, is different than space, and I
think is different than cyber So I think we need
a space force to organize training and equip, and also
(25:18):
a cyber force to organize training equip. Frankly, I think
you're going to have a better chance recruiting and retaining
the best computer nerds out of our colleges if they
got to go to a cyber force. I mean, that
would be pretty cool.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
We're calling on all late night coders, early morning gamers,
self proclaimed space geeks, stargazing, science junkies, and especially square
peg in a round hole type bankers to shape the
only force created for the twenty first century.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
So we're considered that your invitation.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Well, the NSA is this essentially belongs to the Defense
Department largely.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
But there's Title ten, Title fifty, right, they do both,
but there are there's a difference between spying and conducting
military operations. You guys are more familiar than that what
I am. So I'm just saying that I think it
makes sense to and and space is different. I've done both.
I flow jets and I've been at space and the
kind of people that do both those are very different
kind of people. So I think it makes sense not
(26:11):
to create more bureaucracy, but I think less if you
did it right. Like every Army, Air Force, and Navy
all had their own little mini space wars, so if
you could just put them all in one, you could
create some efficiencies there.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
So, as a fighter pilot, what do you think about
drones taking over? And that falls in between cyber and
the Army, that the Navy even and the Air Force,
it doesn't fit nicely. Into any of these, and of
course you know less and less reasons for manned aircraft.
So what's your sense of like where we're going militarily
(26:44):
and how the fighter pilots look at this. They put
you out of a job. Man.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
I was a fighter pilot back in the nineties and
early two thousands, and predators were death. I mean it
was like the worst possible thing we could think of.
There's a group called Dos Ringos. There are these two
F sixteen pilot and they're really funny. They're on you
can find their songs and they have a song about predators,
about how it's like just the worst imaginable thing.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
They shot down the predator.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
That's one of less slime for me.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
This shot down the predator and it.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Film barkely, Yeah, falling alone now.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
They got down. That's one less start for me.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
When I was a test pilot, this is probably two
thousand is ish. I was a chase on some of
the drones. We had some big, giant reconnaissance drones. Global
Hawk is still in use today. So I did some
work with drones. And today when kids go to the
Air Force Academy, that's what they want to do. I
mean they want to be drone pilots, and the three
of us we've been following what's going on in Ukraine
a lot. I mean, the battlefield has changed. The naval
(27:58):
sea drones have just roid the Moscow's vaunted Black Sea Fleet.
The army battlefield. It was an artillery war the last
couple of years. It's a drone war now. And you know,
there's twenty thirty fifty kilometers dozens of miles of space
where they're just swarms of drones. You can't walk or
you die. So things have changed profoundly. So as a
(28:19):
fighter pilot, I would much rather fly in F sixteen
and I would just be thankful that there's people doing
the drone stuff. That's just who I am personally. But
the drones are super important. And the drones that you
guys used during the Global War on Terror, the Predator
and the Reaper, those are not relevant in the Russia
Ukraine conflict because there's so much air defense. They would
just get shot down. I think the key thing about
(28:39):
drones is to be fast and agile and able to adapt.
I'm not sure that our military has kept up. Frankly,
I don't know that the US Army could fight a
modern war with an army like Russia that has millions
of drones. I mean, I don't know that we're there yet.
So as a senator, I'm going to make sure that
I do what I can to make sure our army
is up to speed. And what we can't do is
(29:01):
have a program and then we'll go through the whole
federal acquisition regulation process and you know, we'll stand up
a program office and the drone we'll be ready in
five years, and then we'll change the requirements and blah
blah blah. The Ukrainian, the Uda Loup, if you will.
The decision making time is like days, it's not weeks.
Got some soldier on the front line goes, hey, I
(29:22):
need the drone to hold a grenade instead of a
bomb or whatever. They and a couple of days later
they have what they want. I think we're far from
there and we need to get there or we're going
to get our butts kicked in the next war.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, and they're a tool that can be used different
by the army, navy who likes and so Yeah, putting
it in one thing or making it a big program
is probably the death of it. And they hopefully We're
learning that from Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
You can teach us US and the Brits and others
have been training Ukrainians, but Man, we can train them
on how to march. Here's how you shoot an M
four or whatever like. They need to be training us.
They know how to fight this modern land war. And
I think that information flow needs to be coming a
lot more towards us than it does going away from us.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
We'll continue next week with more of our conversation with
Texas senatorial candidate Terry Urns here on Mission Implausible. Mission
Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
(30:25):
for iHeart Podcasts
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. Our guest today is Terry Wurtz.
He's a friend of ours. Actually, he's a retired US
Air Force commander, a NASA astronaut, and was on the
International Space Station. He's a graduate of the Air Force Academy.
He studied in France, he worked in Russia, and he
was a part of the team that achieved the fastest
(00:47):
circumnavigation of Earth. And to top it all off, he
just announced his candidacy for the US Senate in Texas.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
The race to unseen US Senator John Cornham from Texas
now has its first Democratic contender. Former astronaut Terry Urts
launched his campaign yesterday. Senator Cornyn has held this seat
since two thousand and two verts posted this video on
x describing himself as a common sense Democrat and an
Air Force veteran Attorney General. Kinpax then threw his hat
(01:15):
and ring back in April. The primary election happens in
March of next year.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
So thanks for talking to us today, Terry, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, how many combat missions did you fly?
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I flew forty five in Iraq, So I had to
verify that for the campaign, because you don't want to
If you put out forty four then they'll run negative
ads against you. So I literally went through my logbook.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
So we're eager to talk to you about your career
and your plans and congratulate you on your Senate run.
And it seems to me at least that you're a
shoeing now since you've appeared on the Joe Rogan Show.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
No, I'm a shoe in because I was on the
Mission Impossible. That's the key there, you go, Yeah, tell
how is the Rogan thing?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Are you going to go back on again?
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I hope so hopefully Joe will have you on there.
You know, I'm run in the space of I'm running
as a Democrat, but I'm very much a common sense
democrat and kind of a big tent democrat, you know.
So I'm not on the progressive side. I probably would
lose in New York City based on our recent results there,
but I'm trying to win in Texas. So I think
that's the kind of thing that Joe's interested in. There's
(02:17):
been a lot of national attention as to what the
heck's happening with our politics, so I'm trying to bring
some sanity back to that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We would appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, I don't know whether to start light or or
or go aheadvy idea, but let's start with I think
the most important thing sort of Terry is a former astronaut.
Are you a Star Wars guy or a Star Trek guy?
So I was.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I watched a lot more Star Wars when I was
a kid. I remember when the first movie came out,
and when Darth Vader walked in, it was like the
most terrifying thing that I'd ever seen in my life.
But in recent years I've had so many Star Trek
connections it's crazy. A buddy of mine was friends with
Scott Bakula, who was a commander on Star Trek Enterprise,
the old TV show, So I flew out with him
(03:01):
in a T thirty eight after a spaceflight, and I
actually was on Star Trek Enterprise. And there was probably
five years of my NASA astronaut career where if you
googled my name, the fact I was an astronaut didn't
come up. The only thing that came up was the
fact I was on Star Trek Enterprise like three seconds
wearing one of those costumes. You know, I was just
sitting there flipping switches and that's all I did.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
But seriously, on that, yeah, Star Wars, Yeah, give sort
of a dystopian pessimistic view of our future. And Star
Trek is where we all come together to collaborate, right,
to do great things, right humanity does. And you know,
you've been inside the deep state, you've been a fighter pilot,
you understand how the American goverment work works, and not
(03:43):
running for office, you also you look in to collaborate
and you're look into like achieve things. So what's your
view of the American future and what is it you
want to achieve?
Speaker 4 (03:54):
That is a really interesting point. I hadn't thought of
the dystopian versus positive now trying to work in j
at the air Force Academy, I boxed and I did judo.
We had to do all these wrestle and stuff, and
then judo we called it the Captain Kirk move, where
you would grab the guy and then flip him over
your shoulder. And CIA that was probably like you did
that before breakfast every day. But then the Air Force
(04:15):
we didn't do it that often, but we learned that.
We learned that Captain Kirk move exactly. You know my
vision for America, there's a what's the guy's name? Russo,
one of the French philosophers came here in the eighteen
hundreds and he did the you know, the world tour
all around America. He wanted to figure out what was
going on here in the New World. And when he
came away, he said something very profound. He said, America
(04:37):
is great because America is good. And his point was
the reason why this country's doing so well is because
of our fundamental goodness. And I think we need to
get back to that. Like what we're seeing now with
this current administration is badness. I mean there's like it's
morally reprehensible to send law enforcement dressed like Navy seals
(04:59):
with face masks on grabbing people off the street and
throwing them in unmasked cars. That is not America having grievances,
constantly complaining about people, constantly attacking people constantly. This is
not good. This is not what America is about. And Jerry,
before we got started, we were talking about some interesting
parallels with the nineteen thirty. That's probably more down the
Darth Vader and Star Wars track.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Maybe less whining would be a nice thing, wouldn't it great?
Speaker 4 (05:23):
You know in the fighter community, and I'm sure it's
the same in the different agencies. If you whine like
you're crushed, there's no whining in fighter pilots, like there's
no crying in baseball. Oh my god, the grievances that
kept spewed out of this man's mouth every day. There's
going to be generations of psychologists, residents programs that study
(05:45):
just how warped of a brain this current president has.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Let me ask you sort of a basic question, because
we don't often have fighter pilots and astronauts on which
was more fun and rewarding forced pilot were national Because
I know for sure being a politician is not going
to be the.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Fo No, No, we've been laughing. Yea, if I it'll
be the third coolest job I've ever had, being a
fighter pile. You know, I'm a fighter pilot. That's just
who I am. It's so cool to strap on an
F sixteen, the way the stick is on the right
and the throttles is on the left, and the seats
lean back so like the jet just fits you like
(06:23):
a glove, and you get to the point where you
just think and that you can make the airplane go.
But it's just the coolest thing flying in F sixteen.
It's so maneuverable, goes to nine gs, accelerates like crazy.
But on the other hand, like leaving Earth on a
rocket and floating, floating is pretty cool like that, you
can't be beat looking down at the planet, it's the
most beautiful thing. Actually, you can't imagine unless you've seen
(06:46):
it yourself. You can't imagine how beautiful it is looking
out at the galaxy. Man, there's a lot of stars
out there. So I don't know which one the F
sixteens are cooler, but being an astronaut is probably more profound.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So it's almost as cool as blow to CIA.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
I can't confirm or deny what that would be like, yeah,
I think you could deny exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, So Terry running with conspiracy theories and conspiracy. So
Marjorie Taylor Green recently wrote she posted that there was
once a great president that the American people loved. He
opposed Israel's nuclear program, and then he was assassinated. The
rest of the post goes on to basically sort of
(07:27):
slyly insinuate that JFK was killed by Mosad or the Jews.
Right and so in politics there seems to be this
increasing level of conspiracy theories that are creating violence. Right,
we saw what happened in Minnesota. This rightly conspiracy theorist
goes out and assassinates people. And then you've got a
(07:50):
US Senator, Mike Lee making fun of it all, saying, well,
it's just sort of the Marxist playing right or or
Nancy Pelosi's husband is ticked again by a right conspiracy
theorist and hit with a hammer, and people make fun
of it. And I'll even throw in. On the left,
there were people sort of saying that when Trump was
not assassinating the assassination attempt against him, that that was
(08:11):
staged to make him look good. I was wondering if
you could give me your sense of like where you
stand on and are you concerned about violence going into politics,
the kind of people that go into it, and sort
of how you deal with like crazy conspiracy theories from
some of your peers.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
You know, as we're recording this, I just announced just
a couple of days ago, and I could show you.
And I started a new folder in my email last
night called weird and that mailbox is filling up very quickly.
I had a call with the local police department and
they were so excited that I was running and they're like, absolutely,
we're gonna check out your thing. You know, as an astronaut,
the police come and they check out your family's house
(08:51):
while you're in space. While I was in space, we
had a guy crawling around my yard in the middle
of the day. And the problem with that, right like
just at the CIA, you guys have to be right
a hunter percent of the time. If you're wrong, once
the bomb goes off, right, And the same thing with security,
you have to be right one hundred percent of the time.
I have a handgun. I have a handgun in each
night stand next to my bed. Two handguns. I've contacted
(09:13):
the local police. So absolutely, I'm concerned about this, and
it's insane. It's not only irresponsible, Trump goes way beyond irresponsible.
It wasn't just anybody making fun of Nancy Pelosi's husband.
It was Trump family members making fun of Nancy Pelosi's husband.
This is unacceptable. This is again, Jerry, we were just
talking about nineteen thirty three Germany. This is nineteen thirty
(09:33):
three Germany. You know this is not America. We don't
do political violence, and these Republicans are making fun of it.
That's we got to stop that. Man, we take We
got to turn the temperature down. And here's the thing,
here's the worst part about it. There are good human
beings who are Republicans. Of course, there's a lot of
normal Republicans. They don't say anything. They are quiet, they
(09:55):
know better, and they don't say anything. They know Trump
should have been in peach after the thing they didn't
vote to do. So, they know you shouldn't threaten people
with violence, and they don't say anything. They don't say
anything because they put their career and they put their
party above their country and above doing what's right. And
that's why I'm running. That's why I'm running for Senate.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Let's pause, per secret, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Let me stay a little bit on the conspiracy theme
then a little bit. So as someone who's trained in
the Air Force and NASA, how do you view these
commercial space organizations? And I say conspiracy because Elon Musk's
big role in this. What's your view? Is it good
for the US? How do they integrate with NASA and
what we're doing.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
There's a lot of different commercial space companies. Obviously SpaceX
is the biggest and most successful. Without the Falcon nine
SpaceX rocket, you know, the US government wouldn't be able
to do the things that it needs to do in space.
That rocket dominates the American launch industry and the global
launch industry. Last year I saw stat SpaceX launched like
ninety percent of the mass sent into orbit. That's not
(11:11):
the right number, but it's close. And everybody else, China, Russia,
and all the other American companies in Europe launched the
other ten percent, So they're important. They've also gotten a
huge amount of US government contracts over the years. Mister
Musk also donated three hundred million dollars to Trump's campaign
and then was immediately put in charge of the entire
(11:32):
government and given all the data of the entire government
for it. And by the way, he has an AI company.
And as you know, data is the currency the realm
in the AI world, and that's the difference between a
mega billion or trillion dollar AI company and a zero
dollar AI company. And now he has I don't know
what he has. One of the things I need to
do as a senator is to investigate that, to figure
(11:54):
out what data went to him. And it's not only SpaceX.
There's lots of other companies doing amazing things in stace.
That's great. And the more people spending money and the
more people employing engineers and building rockets and satellites, that's
really good for the space industry. It just needs to
be done in an ethical way. You know, it can't
be done in a corrupt way. And what we've seen
(12:15):
happen in the last few months, but DOJE is corruption
on the scale we've never seen. I mean, this puts
Rockefeller and Morgan into shame. It gives corruption a bad
name because it's so corrupt. As a senator, I'm going
to definitely investigate that and try and get to the
bottom of what happened. It's going to be tough, the
investigations and the reparations and the peristroika, if you will,
(12:36):
it needs to happen in the next administration. Knock on wood,
it's a democrat. Is going to be a lot of work.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, So on investigations, Terry, I was wondering, if you like,
on this show here and now, whether you're willing to
investigate how it is that you know that NASA has
hid the fact that we fake the mood landings for
so long, so many people still believe we went to
the moon.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Do you have a favorite conspiracy they related to space
and moon and all that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, flat Earth?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
You know, well, Stanley Kubrick was the the time two
thousand and one. You know, there were some pretty big
filmmakers in the sixties. But Kubrick, I'll say this for
the first time on your podcast if you want, Stanley
Kubrick actually is the guy that filmed the moonlanding. But
he was such a perfectionist he had to film it
on site.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
So how do you deal with people you know, you've
been in space, right, you know you've seen the Earth.
How do you deal with people who say the Earth
is flat? I mean, how would you because this is
part of the electorate. Now.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
You know, Archimedes figured out that the Earth was round,
you know, several thousand years ago. It's not that hard.
You measure a shadow and then you walk a few
hundred miles, and then you measure this at the same time,
the same shadow, and it's a different shadow because the
Earth is round. And when I launched, you could see
the launch. People watched it right. This rocket launched and
it went to the east. Well, first was flat. I'd
(13:55):
still be flying to the east, but thankfully it's round,
and I came back around and was a bent able
to land. At the Kennedy Space Center, the Moon landing,
there were hundreds of thousands of people working on it.
I wasn't around during Apollo. I'm friends with buzz Aldrin.
Actually he punches people who play exactly. But I'm a politician,
so I can't do that. But yet I have to
wait till after my career. But hundreds of thousands of people,
(14:18):
the Russians were watching. They got radars, they've got cameras,
you know, so if we had not landed on the Moon,
they would have said something. And think about Bill Clinton,
he was not able to cover up Monica Lewinsky, So
how on the heck would NASA be able to cover
up the Apollo moonlandings with four hundred thousand people. So
(14:38):
it's just it's silly. And you can actually see pictures.
There's there's orbiters in orbit around the Moon now that
have taken pictures. You can see the first stage, the
different Apollo lunar landers. You can see all the astronaut footprints.
Or there's kind of like a mess, just like we're
Americans who make a mess everywhere we go. So there's
all their footprints are around the landers.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Plastic bags and cigarette butts, is golf ball.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
You see the and it's like but it's not waving.
You can go on YouTube and see how I blocked
an alien spaceship. I was doing a spacewalk and this
guy's following the video of me doing the spacewalk and
there's a flash of something. I don't know what it is,
just a glint from the sun or maybe a piece
of dust floating. You see this little flash, right is
my hand like I'm working, and my hand blocks that
(15:21):
flash and the hin he's narrating his YouTube video breathlessly
and He's like their astronaut verts, just block the alien spaceship.
We've got two cameras well, there's one hundred cameras outside.
There's all kinds of cameras everywhere. So yes, I blocked
it in front of one camera, but not in front
of the other ten cameras that we're all looking in
that direction. The only thing I can say, everybody always
(15:41):
talks about area fifty one. Area fifty two is the
area you want to know about. That's all I'm gonna
That's all I'm gonna say about that.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Fair enough, So Terry, what before we went on, we
were talking a little bit about what's going on in Ukraine,
And yeah, when you were in the space station, you
delta lot with Russia bureaucracy and Russians, you know, decent
people talking to you know, in a dictatorship. But I
just wondering, but give us a sense of what you
(16:11):
see in Russia today is prime pushers of conspiracy theories? Yeah,
whole machine. If you wanted to say something about Russia,
having work with them firsthand, right, what would your sense
be about what we're dealing with.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
I could talk about this for hours, So the whole
Putin regime is built on a foundation of lies, and
so it won't last forever. The lies will eventually just
like the Soviet Union was built on lies, it eventually fell.
Just like the Trump administration is built on the Grosso
Luga right, the big lie lies don't ever last forever.
They eventually come out. I love my time in Russia.
(16:45):
I have a lot of Russian friends. I love borsh,
I love the fish. I enjoyed it. I tried to
have dinner on the Russian segment of the space station
with the cosmonauts as often as I could. I tried
to learn language. I tried to learn expression. I try
to learn things they don't teach you in RUSSI class.
So I made the most of it. But I was there.
I could see some really disturbing things happening when I
(17:06):
was there. I had been going there for a decade,
but my training began in twenty twelve for this one mission,
and I was there on May ninth. They call it
Victory Day. It's truly the day after Victory Day. And
I walked around and I was like, this is really bizarre.
There are posters everywhere. This is like a cult. But
I remember it was just really weird. What a cult
(17:26):
like obsession they had with World War Two. And I thought, yeah,
we won World War Two, but we've moved on since then,
like we've done other things since World War Two. And
for them, they're just completely stuck in nineteen forty five
and they always have these things, these big monuments in
their cities. Nineteen forty one and nineteen forty five. Well, yeah,
they're forgetting nineteen thirty nine, in nineteen forty one, when
they were on the side of the Nazis, when they
(17:47):
actually started World War two with Hitler. That's like a
minor detail that everybody forgets. Trump is talking about how
great the Russia was and how they helped us win
World War two. It's like, yeah, well they started World
War two too, on the side of Hitler. So this
fact that it was this cult really it was really bizarre.
One day, I was walking around Moscow by myself and
there was a big mob and it was Navalney. Navalney
was having an approach because this was when Putin was coming
(18:08):
back after his four years as vice president essentially and
thinking wow. And then I was like, all right, I'm
going to go the other direction. I walked away. So
I was in space and one night I was there
with a guy named Sasha Samukuchayev and we were having
dinner quiet looking out the window. They have a big
window on the Russian segment, which is really cool. And
in Western Europe there's a lot of lights, so there's London,
(18:30):
in Paris and Berlin. As you go east has less
and less lights. And then all of a sudden, I
just saw these red flashes and we were over Ukraine.
This is twenty fifteen when the Russians had first invaded,
and it was like we didn't say a word, we
were just solemn. And this guy came back to Earth
and joined Dai Rossia Putin's party to promote the war
(18:51):
and to promote Putin. And three of the cosmonauts that
I flew with did that, And it's the most disappointing
and just angering thing. These men and women, one of
them is Ulena Sirovos say they know better, they know better,
they know right from wrong. They lived in America. They
know we're not Basically, we don't care about Russia. No
Texan that I know gives a crap about Russia other
(19:13):
than those war in Ukraine. Right, No one cares about Russia.
As long as they're not bothering anybody, we don't care.
They're just not that big of a deal anyway. So
it was a very very frustrating thing for me to
see people and you know what, they get more space flights.
If you promote putin, you get to fly in space again.
You get a nice apartment in Moscow. They all come
back and they get Lexus, SUVs and Mercedes, so you
(19:35):
get stuff for promoting the old man, and they do that,
and so it's a human nature thing that's been incredibly disappointing.
Not everybody, there are good cosmonauts, but that n that
number is pretty small.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Well good thing that could never happen in this country,
that cabinet numbers would go out of their way to
praise the president Kim Chunguin's style.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
The dear Leader. Can you imagine a cabinet member behaving
the way these cabinet members are behaving. There's a word
I can't it's sick of fancy. I can't even that's
probably not a word I should use, but like, no, no, that's.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
A good one.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
But I think you know anybody who wants to be
like they need an enemy, They need somebody to blame,
and they need to create symbols and things, fake symbols,
and so for Putin the Great Patriotic War, World War
two is the symbol the thing that and since then
it's the awful West that's caused problems. You know, you
can't blame yourself for problems. You have to blame others,
and so they blame the West. So the cosmonaut you
(20:28):
work with, you know, they're stuck in that system. What
hurts me now is the Maga faithful and made those
enemies to blame other Americans. They've said it's the Democrats
and the Marxist whatever they call, you know, the deep state,
all these kind of things. Yeah, rather than blaming at
least the Russians are blaming some foreigners.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Right, they're not blaming themselves. I saw Ted Cruz one
time talking. He's like, whatever the issue was, I forget.
We need to stop worrying about this so we can
get back to focusing on our enemy, the Democrats. And
I was like, wait a minute, Ted, the other word
for Democrats is Texans or Americans.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And I don't think any Democrat has called his wife ugly?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Can you if somebody called my wife or my kid
or anything my any family member, I'd have a problem
with that person, Like we would have issues.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
For a long time.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
I want to ask you guys a question as CIA guys.
So Vladimir Putin is this spy master. He's KGB, but
he was a spy in East Germany? Right, So does
the CIA send our bet Like when you go to
the you guys have a team and B team. I'm
sure there's like really good guys, there's like the top spies.
And then it's a little sensitive with Jerry on the
(21:38):
do you spend you do you send the a guy?
What's the name of the CI school? The farm or
whatever I saw in a movie? Sometimes so the graduates
of your school, do the do your best spies go
to Canada? Or do your do your best buies go
to Denmark? So he went to East Germany, I would
assume that the best KGB spies went to West Germany.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Came into the KGB in nineteen seventy five, and he
spent this first like eleven years working in his hometown,
essentially following people who might be oppositionists or maybe foreigners
who visited. And finally he got his first quote overseas tour,
and it was the East Germany, which was controlled obviously
by Soviet as part of the Soviet Bloc.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
That's equivalent of sending one of you guys to Canada.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Is the even worse? Actually, Although to answer your question,
and this is going to like friggin kill me, to
a certain extent, yes, I think we do send some
of our best and brightest and youngest to you know,
to go inside behind the curtain as it used to be,
into Russia. And that would be John. John was you know,
sent into into Russia and some of our best and
(22:39):
brightest and I didn't. But it also plays into it
also plays into what your strengths are. So I was
a European and an African guy and later a counter
terrorism guy. I think I would have sucked if I
worked inside of Russia because it has it demands different
capabilities and different strengths, and so the strengths that you
need to operate. I mean an F sixteen pilot and
(23:01):
a warhog pilot, right, you know, it's like they probably
doesn't mean one's better than the other, although probably an
F sixteen pilot maybe.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Is better looking.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
They're better looking but yeah, I think it's it's maybe. Yeah,
we would send our certainly our top caliber folks into
that and Glannaber Putin, Plannier Putin just did not make
that grade.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
When it's true, it's true, I think he's created again
a false narrative for himself. Now he's put out there
that he worked with illegals and stuff, when in fact
what he worked with was supporting terrorist groups. So it
was like the PLFP the Palestinian saying some Libyan groups
and others they would come to East Germany because they
were because they were away from you know, the West
(23:40):
and stuff to be, and the KGB guys would work
with them and support them and give them money and
that type of thing. And so he never was a general.
I think he might have been by the time record,
but not senior.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Yeah, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Here's a hard question for a former Air Force guy,
what do you think of the Space Force?
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Earth is only half the battle.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
Our entire way of life depends on space, from banking
to farming to communication and navigation. We are here to
defend the freedom to operate in space, to be the
guardians the more way of life, and because space defines
every battle. We must protect a high ground.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
I was actually a vocal promoter of Space Force. I
wrote an op ed in the Washington Post, and the
reason is that the way we organize our military, we
have the services do what we call organized, train and equip.
Right like they organized, they train and they equip. They
get the Air Force ready or the Army ready, and
then when it's time to go to combat, we have
(24:56):
the chain of command, which would be the Secretary of
Defense through the Secretary of the Air Force, through the
combatant command. So we have this different the military organized
trains that equip and then the civilian we have two
different chains of command. We have an air force and
army in the navy. The air is different than land,
is different than sea, is different than space, and I
think is different than cyber So I think we need
a space force to organize training and equip, and also
(25:18):
a cyber force to organize training equip. Frankly, I think
you're going to have a better chance recruiting and retaining
the best computer nerds out of our colleges if they
got to go to a cyber force. I mean, that
would be pretty cool.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
We're calling on all late night coders, early morning gamers,
self proclaimed space geeks, stargazing, science junkies, and especially square
peg in a round hole type bankers to shape the
only force created for the twenty first century.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
So we're considered that your invitation.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Well, the NSA is this essentially belongs to the Defense
Department largely.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
But there's Title ten, Title fifty, right, they do both,
but there are there's a difference between spying and conducting
military operations. You guys are more familiar than that what
I am. So I'm just saying that I think it
makes sense to and and space is different. I've done both.
I flow jets and I've been at space and the
kind of people that do both those are very different
kind of people. So I think it makes sense not
(26:11):
to create more bureaucracy, but I think less if you
did it right. Like every Army, Air Force, and Navy
all had their own little mini space wars, so if
you could just put them all in one, you could
create some efficiencies there.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
So, as a fighter pilot, what do you think about
drones taking over? And that falls in between cyber and
the Army, that the Navy even and the Air Force,
it doesn't fit nicely. Into any of these, and of
course you know less and less reasons for manned aircraft.
So what's your sense of like where we're going militarily
(26:44):
and how the fighter pilots look at this. They put
you out of a job. Man.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
I was a fighter pilot back in the nineties and
early two thousands, and predators were death. I mean it
was like the worst possible thing we could think of.
There's a group called Dos Ringos. There are these two
F sixteen pilot and they're really funny. They're on you
can find their songs and they have a song about predators,
about how it's like just the worst imaginable thing.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
They shot down the predator.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
That's one of less slime for me.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
This shot down the predator and it.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Film barkely, Yeah, falling alone now.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
They got down. That's one less start for me.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
When I was a test pilot, this is probably two
thousand is ish. I was a chase on some of
the drones. We had some big, giant reconnaissance drones. Global
Hawk is still in use today. So I did some
work with drones. And today when kids go to the
Air Force Academy, that's what they want to do. I
mean they want to be drone pilots, and the three
of us we've been following what's going on in Ukraine
a lot. I mean, the battlefield has changed. The naval
(27:58):
sea drones have just roid the Moscow's vaunted Black Sea Fleet.
The army battlefield. It was an artillery war the last
couple of years. It's a drone war now. And you know,
there's twenty thirty fifty kilometers dozens of miles of space
where they're just swarms of drones. You can't walk or
you die. So things have changed profoundly. So as a
(28:19):
fighter pilot, I would much rather fly in F sixteen
and I would just be thankful that there's people doing
the drone stuff. That's just who I am personally. But
the drones are super important. And the drones that you
guys used during the Global War on Terror, the Predator
and the Reaper, those are not relevant in the Russia
Ukraine conflict because there's so much air defense. They would
just get shot down. I think the key thing about
(28:39):
drones is to be fast and agile and able to adapt.
I'm not sure that our military has kept up. Frankly,
I don't know that the US Army could fight a
modern war with an army like Russia that has millions
of drones. I mean, I don't know that we're there yet.
So as a senator, I'm going to make sure that
I do what I can to make sure our army
is up to speed. And what we can't do is
(29:01):
have a program and then we'll go through the whole
federal acquisition regulation process and you know, we'll stand up
a program office and the drone we'll be ready in
five years, and then we'll change the requirements and blah
blah blah. The Ukrainian, the Uda Loup, if you will.
The decision making time is like days, it's not weeks.
Got some soldier on the front line goes, hey, I
(29:22):
need the drone to hold a grenade instead of a
bomb or whatever. They and a couple of days later
they have what they want. I think we're far from
there and we need to get there or we're going
to get our butts kicked in the next war.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, and they're a tool that can be used different
by the army, navy who likes and so Yeah, putting
it in one thing or making it a big program
is probably the death of it. And they hopefully We're
learning that from Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
You can teach us US and the Brits and others
have been training Ukrainians, but Man, we can train them
on how to march. Here's how you shoot an M
four or whatever like. They need to be training us.
They know how to fight this modern land war. And
I think that information flow needs to be coming a
lot more towards us than it does going away from us.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
We'll continue next week with more of our conversation with
Texas senatorial candidate Terry Urns here on Mission Implausible. Mission
Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
(30:25):
for iHeart Podcasts
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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