Episode 730: Mid-August Melee

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime,
and welcome on board everybody. Thank you very much for
joining us today for another edition of mid Rats, and
hey lucky for you for the second week in a row.

(00:50):
I don't know if there's an exact definition difference between
a free for all and a melee, but today we
are going to have a melee. We do not have
a guest. It's just Mark and myself. We have our
list of things that we want to chat about today
in the maritime and National security arena. But as always
we're interested in what you're thinking as well, So if
you're with us live, go ahead and roll into the

(01:12):
chat room and you can just share some observations if
you'd like, or if there's a topic or subject that
you would like for us to talk about in the
course of the next hour, you can put it in there,
and if we don't already have it on our list,
we will do our best to incorporate it into the
conversation as it goes forward. And if this is the
first time you listen to mid or at you're just
one of those people that hop in now and then

(01:33):
when you catch us live. If you don't already, go
ahead and head over to iTunes, Spotify, spreaker, wherever you
aggregate your podcast. Look us up. We're there and you
can go ahead and subscribe to us that way. If
you can't join us with join us live, then you
can listen to us when you have an opportunity. So
with all that out of the way, Hey, Mark, Happy

(01:54):
Sunday to.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
You, Well, thank you, sal Happy Sunday to you.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well, it's funny. I think I'd put in one of
the little pre show now by picking up the conversation
where it was last week, because our after show we
talked for ten or fifteen minutes. That's one thing that
even during the doldrums of summer, there's there's all there's
always something going on that we can chat about.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, let me let me throw out something that we
didn't talk about in our pre show but which we
ought to mention. Some person has undertaken to challenge the
the I guess patriotism of a Medal of Honor winner
because he chose to speak at a democratic national at
the Democratic National Convention. And he has his reasons why

(02:42):
he did that. But you know, we've got to stop
this nonsense of going after people because they you don't
you know, they do something you don't agree with, and
that does not make them a bad person, unpatriotic, and
particularly when you're talking about a guy who was in
this case was a French citizen who decided to become
an American and goes to war on behalf of this country, UH,

(03:03):
saves a bunch of people, UH and get seriously injured,
UH taking on a guy wearing a suicide vest and
is awarded the Medal of Honor and and and it's
well earned. You know that is that is the kind
of discussion and attack on people that that we don't
need this country. We we know we can, we can assume,

(03:24):
we used to be able to assume at a certain
point that people of good faith could have different views
on things and we could talk about it. And to
to just suddenly throughout this smear especially against uh someone
in that in that who's earned the nation's highest medal
UH for combat operations. I I I just it's unfathomably

(03:46):
what what what's the word I'm gonna use tacky, tasteless, unfair,
and and ridiculous. So I just thought we got to
kind of throw that out. As you know, let's let's
keep in mind that that there are people on both sides.
We have different opinions, and that's what makes the country great.
We can, we should be able to talk about that
rather than in declaring that you I don't agree with you,

(04:07):
therefore your evil and we're going to get you banned
from from things for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Amen. I don't I don't care whether you know, as
long as you're not on active duty. You know, there
are great patriots and great Americans who are Democrats, who
are Republicans, who are libertarians, who are independent. I might
draw the line at the Communist Party USA or the
Nazi Party, but you can be a Greenie. You can

(04:34):
have all sorts. That's that is part of living in
a free republic is that individuals can have agency and opinions,
and they can vary very differently from you. But I
think you're you're spawn on there is common ground where
people who serve this nation. They may disagree with you

(04:56):
on architecture, they may disagree with you on tax policy.
Our various social issues, or they just might be from
a part of the country that one political party or
another just makes more sense for him. That's okay. We
should be able to meet in the middle on fifty
one percent of the items. And at the end of

(05:18):
the day, we're all Americans. We can have a beer together,
our kids can marry each other, and we can share
our trench together. And I know the individually talking about
I'm not going to say the individual's name. I think
they thrive off the oxygen of the attention. But you
have we run into this on a regular basis where

(05:41):
one side of the political spectrum or the other will
go after somebody for having impure thoughts from their perspective
and will detegrate their service to our nation. And I
don't care whether you served one tour or you or
thirty five years in the military. You stepped forward and

(06:04):
did more than whatever the percentage is nowadays in the
north of ninety five percent. That if people have done
and when you are actually somebody who has received the
Medal of Honor, what you always have to back up
and remember is the amount of people who do receive
the Medal of Honor posthumously. That is exceptional people finding

(06:30):
themselves in exceptional circumstances, and their characters revealed what your
petty domestic political differences are against us are immaterial and
should not detract from the service that they did. And
people who do that they deserve to be to be
publicly keel hauled and held up for what they are

(06:53):
because they've lost the bubble, if they ever had the
bubble to begin with. So I'm really glad you brought
that up. That's a great way to start this because
we both have friends, acquaintances, followers, people that we email
and communicate with on the regulators who disagree with us
on lots of different issues. Uh. And that's okay, and

(07:18):
that that should be the default option for everybody, especially
somebody who has come to this nation and has served
it well and it's come out the other end and
our nation has decided to recognize their service and support
of our republic. And Uh, if they want to come

(07:40):
out and support Betty and Smithfield over fred kaplan for
a dogcatcher, that's okay. Let them do that, but don't
don't don't degrade them in their in their service. That's
can we say that's an American because I think you
could probably put that in that category.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, and we see, I mean we've seen it in
a lot of ways that we both have experiences where, uh,
something we were doing, something that was said someone has
disagreed with and in some cases taken us out of
certain things that we used to be able to participate
in pretty freely, you know, And that that's the choice.
If you have a publication or something and you don't

(08:21):
want our voice on it, that's that, you know, that's
your You own it. You can you can do what
you want with it. But that's not my point is that,
you know, let's let's look at it from a larger picture,
which is it is a when you when you start
banning people because they have a different view or it's
affecting something, you know, it that that's wrong. I'm not

(08:44):
just ban you from a specific publication, but demanding that
they be basically a persona non grata for the rest
of society because they hold a different opinion than yours.
That that's not the way we're supposed to work. And
you know, if you've ever looked at at the federalists,
uh and the anti federalist points of view, there were

(09:04):
these are the people who founded the country. They had
serious disagreements about how this country was supposed to be
organized and and and what the new constitution was going
to should be like and what should contain, you know,
and they were they had people who fought together as
as as brothers in the in the in the in
the war for Independence, and who had subscribed to the

(09:27):
Declaration of Independence, and they could agree to disagree and
and get it worked out politically. And there were a
lot of things that came from that that that we
take for granted day, but we forget how how difficult,
you know, how challenging it is to get even people
who had that kind of shared experiences to h to
to do what they did, which was communicate pretty effectively

(09:48):
about about what they what their opinions were, and why
uh the you know, the opinions of one side should
prevail over over the other. And I think that we
have to go back to that example as how as
to how we need to approach things and just not start.
You know, you're as I said, you know, you're evil,

(10:08):
You're bad. I'm not going to talk to you anymore.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, you look at how Jefferson Adams, Hamilton Madison All
those all those gentlemen, they were at each other tooth
and claw. I think even Abigail Adams had some uh
the barbs to throw here and there with her exceptional
intellect as well. But at the end of the day,
they never challenged each other's support of our republic. It

(10:36):
was just that creative friction that sometimes throws off bigger
sparks than others about how to achieve what we want
to achieve without you know, degrading the service one person
or another did for our republic. And a lot of
times when people they they they personalize the political and

(10:58):
and opinion, and they they what was the phrase from
the nineteen nineties, the politics of personal destruction when you
back away from it. Those people who don't want to
discuss issues, argue issues, don't want to assume good faith

(11:21):
in one person an other, and devolve into name calling
and smearing. They really say more about themselves and they
do the person they accuse, especially the fact that they
for whatever reason, they do not have the ability or
the capacity to argue their position, so as opposed to

(11:44):
coming to an argument and countering it like that individual
speaking at the DNC, there were retired military who spoke
at the RNC, you know, compare their two points of view,
let them argue. Instead of allowing that open discussion to
take place. They want to eliminate opposition. They want to

(12:04):
destroy and diminish anything that's not exactly aligned with them.
And again that habits as old as human history. But
in a republic like ours, people who do that should
be rightfully called out and I really question how those
can people can come to defend it. The fun thing is,
and I've had a couple of exchanges with folks over

(12:26):
the course of the last day on that. It's nice
to see that people on both sides of the spectrum
will rise to the occasion and hopefully when the shoes
on the other foot and somebody who's on the other
side of the political spectrum gets treated the same, that
all parties will of good people of good faith and

(12:50):
well meaning people will rally around them as well. And
I think they will. We've seen that in the past
and we will see this again. But like I said that, now,
that was spot on for you to start off our
show like that, because you know, silence is approval and
things like that. It's important to put a marker down.
And again, if people people disagree with that, that's great

(13:12):
on great for them, but they're wrong and we should
put the marker down like that.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, we tried to get political on this show, but
you know, so we should probably get into some other
stuff that we've been talking about. And one of the
things we looked at just just was the recent announcement
by the Australians is they're gonna acquire and developed the
Japanese of friggate. You want to talk about that a

(13:39):
little bit.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, I thought that was just that was great to see.
I'll go positive and then I'll be mister grumpy pants
on it. But the Australians, I mean, they're a relatively
small nation where they have like twenty two million people,
just a couple million more than the state of Florida
twenty eight million, a twenty eight million. They they can

(14:03):
build stuff domestically, but they just they have a habit
of leveraging off of prior designs a European, our American
and the Japanese. For a long time, they they were
not in the export market, but they and they consistently
spent one percent or less of GDP. But when you're

(14:25):
the second are are now I think third largest economy
in the world, even one percent of GDP Gissey the
ability have a really nice military industrial base. And I
know you've you spent time in the Pacific. I have
as well, though as a predominantly a U Sands sailor
and an East Coast guy, I did did do a

(14:46):
tour in the Pacific. When you work with the Japanese
on an individual basis, not only are they exceptional professionals,
but they build good kit Their submarines are exceptional. Their
surface chips you can do surgery on them. They're not
only clean, they're very professional. They have a lot of
systems that are in common with US obviously as a

(15:09):
defense partner with US. They're maintenance facilities or are superb.
And now that everybody's joining the twenty first century, Australia
was looking at some European options for the next frigate
and the Mogami, which is already under production and it's
an expanded Mogami which makes it a little bit larger.

(15:32):
It's going to it has everything from a five inch
gun forward. The Australian version, which is the modified Mogami
that the Japanese are building for themselves now, is going
to have thirty two mark forty one vlsls that the
Australians can put all sorts of fun toys in Helo capable,
real great modern system. I think off the top of

(15:53):
my head the first two or three will be built
in Japan, and then they'll have an additional three to
five that we built in Australia. So I'm real happy
for the Australians. And it also brings together our two
I know the Filipinos might throw a yellow card at
me for this, but when you're talking about royal military
power and economic power, it's true. Our two big friends

(16:17):
in the Western Pacific is Japan and Australia. We have
a mutual defense treaty with Japan. We have one with Australia.
Australia and Japan don't have one with each other per se,
though they have an official acquaintance that happened recently, but
it's not a full blown treaty. However, we're all tied together,
and if Australia in Japan, the closer they get together

(16:41):
from a military and diplomatic point of view, everybody benefits.
In between the Indonesians, the Vietnamese, the Filipinos, the Taiwani.
Everybody benefits from Australia in Japan getting closer, and them
getting closer will also tie the US back together. It
was just all good news. The only bad thing I

(17:02):
thought about it is again, I'm gonna take out one
of my hobby horses out of the garage and jump
on its back. It used to be whether you're talking
about the Charles Adams Class DDG, the Knox frigate, the
Oliver Hazard Perry frigate, that the US used to design

(17:28):
light destroyers and frigates so well that other nations would
license build them. And we haven't done that since the
end of the Cold War. So everybody is building European
designs and now Japanese designs, and I'm sure the Koreans,
at least in the land component the polls are buying
pretty much everything the Koreans can build. It Also, while

(17:51):
I smile on one end because I really am enthusiastic
about the Japanese the Australian get together, it also is
just another car hard to put down on the table.
The fact that our shipbuilding industry and our shipbuilding intelligentsia
for both commercial industry and a navsey it's it's broken,

(18:13):
it's fixed, and it's so bad that that nobody wants
nobody else has anything they want to do with it.
And so we should also acknowledge the fact that nobody's
interested in license building anything that we've designed this century,
should again redouble everybody's efforts to fix the system that
has produced this because we have Lord knows, we have

(18:33):
the economy, we have the engineers in theory, we have
the business acumen to do it, we just don't have
the ability to. So it's it's going to be a
nice frigate and it's it's having the Australia having that,
which hopefully should work out pretty well in the Japanese
For those that have worked with Japanese industry on the

(18:54):
commercial side of the house, they deliver what they promised
much more often than anybody. So I think it's going
to be a good news story down the road and
the one that every all the friends of Australia and
Japan should smile with.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, it's it's kind of interesting to me that that
I was watching some of the other day and they
had there were somebody was interviewing various mechanics. You know, what,
what car would you what cars would you recommend mine?
And if they asked twelve mechanics, eleven of them said
Toyota or Honda. You know, and some of the Toyotas
and Hondas are built in the US. Great, but you

(19:30):
know they've got the engineering skills that we've created this
thing where the Japanese vehicles have become uh what we
would like to think what once was the Cadillac and
they and the Lincoln's and other cars in this country.
But you know that the way it goes, so there's
a lot to be admired and the way they the
way they've done that, and it carries over to other industries,

(19:54):
and it also carries over if they've got the the
ability to encourage the Australians and and there and the
maybe even the Philippines to start working on those supply
chain things. You need to get uh in place so
you can you can get the the the non actual

(20:17):
shipyard stuff done. If you want latches for lockers, if
you want uh uh you know, all those things components
that go into ships. You need to have the quality.
And that's where the the the theory that Deming had
got Japanese off was that if you only if you
bring quality materials into the system, are you able to

(20:38):
stick quality produce quality materials at the end of the system.
I mean, I don't think it takes a rocket science
to figure that out, but but it was. It was
really important for the for the for the Japanese industry
to get that, and they that's how you get these
things where you know, if they if they're bringing in
good supplies from people that they can rely on to

(20:58):
be good suppliers. UH, then that makes the whole world
of difference. And and those are those are jobs that matter,
they matter in this country and and they that and
somebody is pointing out I think John in the chat
room that's why uh Tesla had to go. They have
a a chain that is uh vertically integrated. And you know,

(21:23):
you don't have to be vertically integrated if you have
suppliers who are are toeing the line. And that's that's
kind of what the the Australians and the and I
hope that Japanese are going to encourage in some of
the other countries. And I would go with the Philippines
in the in the UH in that part of the world.
UH so they can can you know, they can get
everybody on board with these projects. And I fail to

(21:45):
understand where that the UH Philippines aren't looking at the Japanese.
I know they got some other stuff going on with
the japan providing some equipment for them, but there are
a lot of other countries down that should be looking
at some of these Japanese and South Korean ships, all
of which are pretty good, pretty good stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, it's one of those things that these things build
over time. As country X does business with Country Y
and it works out well, that more people will we'll
benchmark and replicate that. And you know, not everybody has
to work with the US and buy from the US.
But if our friends are buying from our friends, as

(22:24):
opposed to subsidizing people who aren't our friends, then then
we all benefit from that. And because it seems like
a long time ago, but it wasn't the amount of
damage that's been done to the US and our allies

(22:44):
when you look at our sovereign control over our industry,
our supply chains, and our access to raw materials from
the China doves who had so much power mostly for
economic reasons because there was a lot of money to

(23:04):
be made. Is China grew into prominence and that those
those phone calls kept the serious national security China hawks
at bay for a long time. But nobody can really
argue anymore that the CCP is a force for good.

(23:27):
And one thing we talked about in the show I
think ties right into that is you were talking that
the news broke recently about the software problems that we
have here in the US, where we have whether it's
Microsoft or other companies who are creating software for not

(23:49):
just military but our civilian infrastructure. You know, with without
without power, without water, the whole society can collapse when
you pull the thread on it. A lot of these
nominally US companies they have outsourced to PRC nationals and
PRC companies themselves, all of who have requirements and obligations

(24:13):
with the Chinese Communist Party, and they are writing code
and managing software and databases for something that if you
wind up going to war with that country. In prior generations,
they would have to put sabotage teams on submarines and
sneak up the Long Island Sound and off of Saint Augustine, Florida,
and try to dump people off on a raft to

(24:34):
go do sabotage. Nowadays, all they have to do is
get an IP portal and to click yes or no
on a screen to do incredible amounts of damage. And
a lot of that comes from that commercial aspect, where hey,
if we do the following steps and offshore of the

(24:54):
following items, we can create an additional point zero zero
two to five cents per share over the course of
a fiscal year. So let's go ahead and do that,
irregardless of the larger national strategic risk we would expose
our nation to and our customer base bought why by

(25:15):
achieving that per share increase in profit, it's the more
news that comes out about this, regardless of how scary
it is. That's great because we're at peace. Hopefully that
motivates the right people to start making changes. So maybe
by twenty thirty we have instead of a one point
zero threat, we have a point one five threat. That

(25:36):
would be nice.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Well, I mean, it wasn't just I mean, it's it's
China and it's Microsoft, and China's figured out something with Microsoft.
So here here they hack into the US National Nuclear
Security Administration. Last month, Microsoft reports it Microsoft and they're
using sharepoints somehow. There's some Glitchen SharePoint that the Chinese

(26:00):
are exploiting. So they go in and and and you've
got to remember that that it wasn't that long ago
when when Microsoft said that they had decided to stop
this is a quote, to stop relying on engineers based
in China and support to support the Pentagon's use of
cloud services. I mean, I am flabbergasted. When you read

(26:22):
stuff like that, you go, well, how in the world
did they get the Microsoft not get the memo that
we don't want Chinese engineers working on this project to
begin with. And and you know, we keep learning, and
we got to go back to Dean Chang who who
wrote that book years ago, and we talked him about
cyber Dragon inside China's information warfare and cyber operations, which

(26:46):
I'm going to put a link to up to her
in the chat room. But you know, he's been on
the show a number of times and he's he was
not well. He was one of the early warners that
you know, China is very very serious about about this
intrusion into our into our cyber aspects. We we we've
talked about it with salmccargliano on the on the cranes

(27:08):
that were the Chinese were shipping out that that the
various entities in the US government have warned people about
these cranes because the information that they are getting gathering
is is fed right to China, so and the ports
that they've taken over. So when they scan use a
barcode scanner to scan a container, they know what's in
that container and if it's full of US defense supplies

(27:31):
or Lord goes, what else we could ship that way,
then uh, they're going to know exactly where those containers are.
I mean, our protection against this sort of intrusion is
it seems to be extremely weak, and we need to
get on top of this because and it's I'm sure
there are groups that are inside the government that are

(27:52):
they're trying to figure out how to get on top
of it because it's gotten so so ubiquitous that that
you know, it starts. It's like having to find the
one weed in your yard full of weeds that I'm
gonna pull that particular weed because it's a lot of it, and.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
I have just.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
I hope we have are producing a whole bunch of
new software.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
People.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
I mean, I know one of my one of my
kids used to work in the industry of of doing
these hacks where they have a hackathon just you know,
checking out software, and you know that we need more
of that, we need more red teaming of these some
of these things we're using because I can't believe Microsoft
would release I'm stunned they would release a product they

(28:39):
knew could be hacked. And if they didn't know it
couldn't be hacked, then they weren't doing their job.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, and it's it's very serious and a lot of
people don't appreciate it. Anybody who has kids in there,
who's graduated from college in the last fifteen years have
noticed it. All my kids we're in STEM programs up
through PhD programs, and when you go to the graduations,

(29:06):
the amount of Chinese nationals and what you would consider
very nationally strategic fields is just it's off the charts
and is despair. Especially the stemfield concentration. Is there for
a reason, because that's how you grow industry, that's how
you grow your cyber that's also how that's also how

(29:30):
you spy and steal. Is you get in our major
research institutions and you get involved in a lot of projects.
There's a reason why intellectual property theft from the PRC
is so huge because not just anybody can leave the
PRC to go study or work abroad. They have connections
and requirements back to their government. They have to report.

(29:51):
This is not Luxembourg that we're dealing with, and the
disparity is huge. I was looking at these figures that
as of April of last year, two hundred and ninety
thousand citizens of the People's Republic of China were in
college in undergraduate and graduate positions, predominantly in STEM fields.

(30:16):
The amount of Americans studying in the PRC one thousand.
So it's and I'll guarantee you that of those thousands,
the vast majority of the Americans over in the PRC
are not studying nuclear engineering, advanced statistics, and computer modeling,
much less less stuff in the biomedical field, in epidemiology

(30:41):
and things like that. There's a reason for that. And
you talk to people in the university, they go, yeah,
but they pay the full ride, Like okay, so what
is the price tag at your public university you're willing
to accept to subject your nation to significant threat from
a hostyle power, which is what it does. And it

(31:02):
goes back to an argument I've been really glad to
see has come up a lot in the last few years.
Is a lot of times we obsess about, for instance,
since GDP and things like that, you have to quit
looking at the United States or whatever nation you're a
citizen of. It's not an economic zone. It's a nation,

(31:24):
and there are things a nation has to do and
be concerned with that would be detrimental from an accounting
point of view, from an economic GDP. So if you
have to do X for national security reasons to protect
yourself from existential threats, maybe to impact point three percent

(31:47):
of your GDP if you don't accept two hundred and
ninety thousand dollars free ride, and then they're not all
free ride because some of these people do get scholarships,
and the sentence just assume that it's true. Okay, that's
going to affect your university budget by five to ten percent. Okay,
we've identified the price that you put on your contribution

(32:12):
to your nation's security. There needs to be more and
more of a conversation of about the fact that our
nation is not an economic zone. It's a nation, and
we have a threat. And you remember the Cold War
better than I do. We didn't let the Soviet Union
send over their scientists to study genetic manipulation of infectious

(32:39):
disease or nuclear engineering are quantum computing, but we do
that with PRC nationals. And it's a conversation I've been
glad to hear recently because I'm glad you mentioned Dean,
because you're right, Dean. Dean's one of those guys that
probably quiet nights poors him self adrinc and go like

(33:03):
all great cassandras I told you a decade ago, welcome
to the party. Yeah, Dean Dean has been on this
for a while. He's been trying to let us know.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, we need to get him back on again. It's
and get scared again because every time we talked to
everybody goes, oh no, but you know we we're talking
about Australia and that's another thing we need to think
about it here. I'm glad Australia is getting some frigates.
I'm glad they're looking at at a lot of equipment
from other you know better like the Aucus thing and
the and the possibility of a lot of under sea

(33:34):
unmanned UH vessels and stuff because they're they and new
Zealand are closest links to Antarctica, and we're noticing and
and uh, Elizabeth Buchanan I think we talked about in
the pre show has done a great job looking at
what's going on and our Antarctica. I mean they have
China's put a whole bunch of research stations around that,

(33:59):
uh continent, I guess it is. And and they're also
claiming that they are a as we've talked about before
the show, they are a near Arctic nations. So they're
working on the on the Arctic region too. And and
we have we in the NATO countries. The northern NATO

(34:20):
countries are the are the nearest nations to those. Canadians,
of course, are the nearest nations to those to that water.
So you know, we need to talk about we've got
these We've talked about it here before. We've talked about
the need for for ice breakers. I'm glad to see
that the administration is now seriously looking at buying ice

(34:42):
breakers from the from the fins. That's a good thing,
and and we need more of that. We also need
weaponized ice hardened ships to go up there.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Too.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
We can't we can't rely on the Canadians since they've
seemed to have just kind of given up on things.
And but we've got we thankfully we have the Swedes
and the Norwegians and the Finns who can help us
out in that Arctic region.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, the whole thing with the PRC and the Arctic
and the antarchic part of me thinks is part of that.
They're trying to make up from their century of humiliation,
as they like to call it. You know, that's when
you know, in the especially in the nineteenth century, in
the early twentieth century, that's when all the lack of

(35:35):
a better phrase, industrially advanced nations who had the surplus
of people in material to go explore the Arctic and
the Antarctic. We're mostly European with Americans right behind them.
North Americans don't forget our Canadian friends, though they're in
the spot of bother for a while, I think, and
so they want to play catch up. But they have

(35:58):
absolutely zero reasons and to be in the Arctic, uh,
the Antarctic. They want to do quote experimentation and scientific
things down there. I guess sure why not everybody can,
but the Arctic they have less than zero reason that
had anything to do with the Arctic, but they consider

(36:20):
themselves an Arctic nation, and they will roll back at
US as like, well, in North America, what are you
doing in the Pacific. Well, we've we've fought a few
wars over there. We have allies there, we have ah, we.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Have territory there. You know, we got the uh, the
the what is it, the the Marianna's the well, Sipan, Mike, Yeah,
the whatever it is. You know, we've got allies, we've
got pull out, We've got we've got Sipan, that whole
because gosh, we just talked about this too. The Marianna's whatever, it's,

(37:01):
it's it's a territory. It's the US territory. And we've
talked about how they're the Chinese are infiltrating that they
they get people in in Saipan to somehow get the
Chinese who can get into Saipan without a visa, can can?
They've they somehow they've been smuggled into Guam and that

(37:21):
has ramifications because a lot of them are ended up
on military basis. Yeah, it's you know, they're they're everywhere,
and they're doing a lot of things that that nobody
in the world likes. I mean, we've seen their their
fishing fleets park themselves off the coast of South America
and and Argentina, I think, and some of the other
countries have taken a furious action against intrusion into their

(37:43):
into their fishing waters. And it's, uh, you know, it
is just a matter of they just keep pushing, They
keep pushing. They don't you know, it is not it's
not like there's a a an act of war or
they have just near you know, near acts of war.
If they intrude on fishing water, it's, oh, well, we're sorry,

(38:04):
we made a mistake. Of course, their fleets go radio silent,
they go dark so that nobody knows they're there. You know.
It is just they are going out of their way
to keep pushing and pushing, and to the end, every
time they claim something or have visited something, it suddenly,
somehow magically becomes theirs.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah, And I think part of it is, unfortunately, is
so much of this movement has happened in the last
decade decade and a half, and there's still a lot
of people, especially politicians who they've been in office for
so long that they haven't been they still think it's
nineteen ninety eight in some regards. And you know you

(38:46):
mentioned lizbe Cannon. She is one of her billets a
variety of things she does. This is a senior fellow
over at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in the chat room.
Also on the on the show page. Later on tonight,
I'll add a link to it. But there was a
neat report they had from twenty nineteen. It kind of

(39:06):
ties back to what we were talking about before with
universities here in the US. Obviously being Australian, they're very
interested in commonwealth issues and all these connections that they've
made in universities in Commonwealth countries. It shows you the
fact they're not interested in sociology, they're not interested in business,

(39:27):
they're not interested in accounting, they're not interested in ethnic
studies or anything like that. The partnerships that these CCP
related and PLA related universities, and they've done a really
good job connecting the lines and tell them where this
all goes to. It all started in twenty thirteen, so

(39:49):
between twenty thirteen and twenty eighteen they made a lot
of these connections. I'm not going to go through all
of them, but I'll just pick a couple of Australian
and a couple of UK universities to tell you about.
For instance, in Australia, monosh University, their partnership is in
started in twenty nineteen and they're researching again, we're building

(40:15):
webs for three D printing. And also at the University
of Technology in Sydney they're doing big data, artificial intelligence,
quantum information and advanced materials and electronics studies. And a
couple of UK universities let's see here at Imperial College London,

(40:36):
they're studying aircraft design and materials, aircraft structural integrity. And
also let's see University of Nottingham. Let's see what they're
doing there. They are studying thermal coatings for turbine blades
and impact damage. You know, you can't make this stuff up.

(40:59):
So it's not just a US problem. It's a Western problem.
And I'll guarantee you those British and Australian university and
there's like a dozen things on here you can look at.
They're saying the same things. Yeah, well they you know
that they pay the full ride, Yeah they do, and
why are they doing that? And how many Australians are

(41:21):
going to major research institutions in China and helping them
research cyber technology, cryptological issues, material science, rocketry and things
like that. The answer is zero. I don't even have
to look it up. We both know it. It's like
one person's playing a very serious game. The other one

(41:43):
is doing something, though I'm not sure what they are. Well.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
By the way, it's the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands,
and I should know that having lived in Guami the
you know, that's the commonwealth. Worry about it is it is?
It is like the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It's a
it's a US territory, it is it basically US law
applies and you know it is self governing to have
our own laws too, but the federal law of the

(42:10):
United States applies to that, to that commonwealth, and you know,
we just can't let them trapes around. But that's that's
beside the the other. Yeah, we're not sending anybody to
China to study. I would love to see somebody go
in there and study their cyber cyber program. But you know,
we also don't have rooms full of people, massive rooms

(42:31):
full of people who are constantly trying to hack into systems,
you know, the way they do. I mean, it's it's
it's it's kind of like when we knew that the omb,
the Officer of Personnel Management o PM, got hacked, and

(42:52):
everybody who'd ever had any kind of thing to do
with the federal government, either employment or otherwise. You know,
you're all of a suden, they've got all your information. Well,
who was doing that? It wasn't It wasn't the girls
scouts from Rwanda. It was you know, it's the bad guy,
so you know, and that and that's the shame of
it is we you know, they they are at war.

(43:14):
We don't we don't think it's war. But they're doing
everything they can to uh to win without fighting, and
and they're pretty darn good at it. And we were
talking a little bit earlier about the production of stuff
from China. I mean, I I am fascinated. I got
my my one of my grandkids got a a robot,
you know, a little thing he could assemble and and

(43:35):
it bounces around and makes annoying noises, but you know,
it says proudly on the outside of the box, you know,
designed in California, just like some Apple products designed in California.
But then you look at the finally it took a while,
but when I looked at the box down to the bottom,
it says manufactured in China. You know, that's that's how
they do it. So so when you go on Amazon

(43:57):
and when you try and order something, have you ever
tried to order anything it wasn't made? You know, I
want to I don't want anything. I want a US
made product. It's and if you search for US made product, uh,
you don't get much.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
No. And they've they've subsidized those industries that build real well.
It's uh, there's a real nice interview it's like eighteen
months ago with one of the drone operators, not operators,
one of the drone leaders in the Ukrainian military, and
they were talking about how the everything they get involving

(44:32):
drones from the from China, it's built better, it's cheaper,
and it's more available. It's like they get something from
the US. It's not as good. It's very expensive and
it's not as functional. Uh. So it's not that they're
just slapping cheap stuff together. They do that pretty well.
But in the things that they have to do quality, Uh,

(44:54):
it's it's it's well done, and I think that's a
good example, just like the Japanese, just the South Koreans,
you know, don't don't give me excuses Americans about why
our industry can't do X, Y or Z. There are
nations who were pretty much bombed into the Stone Age

(45:14):
and living memory who now we're getting on the phone
and asking them, could you please come over here and
tell us how to properly do something today that we
used to be the best in the world at forty
years ago. Much much of our problem is internal in
that record. But that's that's just a challenge. That's a challenge.

(45:36):
And now that we're talking about it, not us, but
the imperial we talk about it. I try to be
optimistic that you know, the in the National twelve step program,
the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
And I think we've done that, and it's to follow
through and the action on the other end and going

(45:59):
back to the top the show, hopefully in a bipartisan manner,
because we are all part of the same nation here.
UH that there's optimism there. We just need more people
in Congress to lean into it. And UH with the
support of the right people and the legislative and the
executive branch, and there's progress to be made. Yeah, but

(46:19):
everything in the oh go ahead. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
I was gonna say one more thing. I'm China before
we leave. We need to talk about something else. But
but you know they're mad. China's now mad at the
Philippines again because the Indian Indian Navy has come and
done some exercises with the Filipinos.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
You know, uh stay mad.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, so you know that the Chinese, they they just
don't get along with anybody.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
And you know, the whole thing about the Filipino uh
situation that cracks me up is you will you will
be hard pressed to find a more jingoistic society than
Han Chinese. And they have always always look down pretty
much everybody but that aren't Han Chinese, but especially the Filipinos,

(47:07):
the native Taiwanese, the Vietnamese, they really have unpleasant things
to say about them. So it really it really rubs
them the wrong way when they see the Philippines standing
up for their themselves and their their territory, which is great,
which is why we should encourage the Filipinos to to
do that and to back their play as much as possible,

(47:28):
simply because it frustrates the the Han Chinese so much. Yeah,
it's good stuff, but everything on the international scene, it's
it's not it's not negative. America is doing some things right.
One thing we talk about in the pretio I wanted
to talk about because I'm really first of all, it's
it's frustrating to get details of the actual arrangements. But

(47:52):
some progress is better than no progress. I know that
upcoming here is there's going to be a meeting with
Vladimir Putin in Alaska and we'll see what happens with that.
There's some discussion to know. The German Chancellor was like, hey,
the European Union would like to have somebody there, and
here's been talked about. Well, Zelensky show up or not?

(48:14):
Why is the US talking to Russia by the Ukrainian situation? Whatever?
Better did jaw jaw than war war? So hey, let's
all get together. Even it doesn't accomplish anything. But when
you look at the Trump administration has only been here
for eight months. I know it seems like eight years,
but let's just go back and look at what's happened recently.

(48:36):
The most recent one is I was able to find
out some pretty neat details on since the fall of
the Soviet Union and those screwed up borders that also
had a lot to do with the Russian and Ukraine problem.
But Armenia and ozer Berjehan got together and signed a
treaty that part of it, it's gonna there's gonna be

(49:01):
a It's it's kind of like the say, the same
reason why the air force fire is gonna be f
F forty seven, but uh, there's gonna be a twenty
mile corridor. And this has been an Ozer Rjon desire
since the beginning two because when you look at the
map of the of the Southern Caucuses Armenia Jean, there's

(49:22):
an auserie territory that is separated from a major part
of Rjon. In between it is Armenia Scott. What is
that vigial term in exclave I think is the correct term.
But to get there, part of the treaty is there's
gonna be a twenty mile corridor called the quote Trump

(49:43):
Route for International Peace Security Cordy Corridor. Okay, fine, whatever,
It's gonna be managed by an American consortium somehow, I
don't know, maybe they's the New Jersey term Pike Authority
who does. But it's a ninety nine year lead to
allow that connection. Maybe that'll decrease some friction there. There's

(50:03):
a lot more cards to come out these people who
are always they've hated each other for since the since
it forever. So we'll see how that goes. But what's
neat about it is what that does. You already had
an existing thing that's called the U two things. It's
called the Middle Corridor Project also the trans Caspian Project

(50:24):
that connects again commercial whatever China to the Baltic Sea,
and it had a little bit of an inefficient jaunt
around Armenia. This will give them their ability for this
to be a lot more efficient and effective. And what
it really does because it would come out of from
ozerber Jean more efficiently, through Georgia and Armenia into Turkey.

(50:48):
From Turkey, then it goes up through the Black Sea
through Ukraine, pulling the Baltics, et cetera, and so forth.
It bypasses Russia, and it bypasses Iran, and it makes
them both angry and a lot of those former Soviet republics.
The less they can rely on Russia. The better for
them and the better for the international community. And anything

(51:10):
that upsets the Iranians is fine with me. I also
don't forget that I think it's twenty percent of the
population of Iran or actually ethnic Asari, which is a
little interesting detail. So that was a pretty neat detail.
So that was done last week. So that's an August check.
You go back a month to July. Cambodia and Thailand,

(51:35):
multi century rivalry. There, they got to a slapfest and
the US managed to get at least a cease fire
till they pick it up again at some point down
the road. For years, Rwanda and the Democrat Republic of Congo,
there's been a conflict there, mostly ethnic base that took

(51:56):
place in June, and then India and Pakistan and they
got there ongoing conflict clicked off. We helped bring that
to a close back in May. So you know, let's
give a nice golf clap to the National Security Chain
and the State Department team for the new administration. They've

(52:20):
done a heck of a lot to put down some
brush wars over their first eight months, which just makes
me wonder, you know what we're blinking and Sullivan doing
for the last four years, that all this stuff just
cascaded with the new administration, new leadership, new approach to
the world. I don't care whether you're a Republican or

(52:42):
a Democrat, you should be very glad that those four conflicts,
at least for the moment, there's no longer rounds being
exchanged by the two. So if there's some momentum and
that can translate into an imperfect peace is better than
an imperfect forever war in Ukraine. Then there's room for

(53:04):
optimism in the fact that the US, still when it
wants to, can have a positive impact on the world.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
It's often forgotten how important it is that when a
US ambassador or represented for the Department of State shows
up someplace, how meaningful that is to some of these countries,
just because you know, they may remember our past, sometimes
better than we remember our past, and they know that
we can be, and have been in the past, impartial
our our our portrayor for groups that are mad at

(53:35):
each other, And you know, that's a good thing to have.
And it hasn't always worked in the Middle East where
we'd like to, although I will say it looks like
the Abraham Accords under the first Trump administration seemed to
be coming back into play. I've seen some reports from
Saudis and other people from that area that it's saying,

(53:56):
you know, they don't care if they're not worried about
Israel's existence any worthy, They just they just want the
Palestinians to calm calm down. So it's a it's an
interesting time and we'll see what happens again. You know,
the Iranians are being quiet, but the Hoofies are still
acting up a little bit. And obviously the Gaza thing

(54:19):
is just a mess.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, it's not. It's not all roses and sunshine. I
don't I don't see any way there can be regardless
of what direction it goes in, there's going to be
happy ending in Gaza. And that's just a in tractical
problem that everybody's going to have to deal with. It's interesting,

(54:43):
you know, the Abraham of Gords. I think it didn't
facilitate it. It was a natural byproduct of a modernization
that has h taken place in the Gold States. There's
been amazing things that have happened to modernize even Saudi Arabia.

(55:04):
Since I first put my feet on the ground there
in January of nineteen ninety one. Compared to today, Again
it's not a Western nation, but it's it's a modernizing nation,
and there's they are more bought into an international system
that by its its nature, desires stability and peace because

(55:30):
that's how you do commerce. There was I think it's cutters.
Royal family are one of the royal families in UAE.
I think it's cutter. They've determined actually owns more of
London than the English crown owns in London. So they

(55:54):
have a lot of investments all over the globe, more
international less looking at that, there's smaller concerns and that
making peace of Israel. You know, why have an ongoing
war that doesn't benefit commerce, it doesn't benefit education, it
doesn't benefit healthcare. I know there's been some one by

(56:16):
product of the Abraham Accords is some of the partnerships
with some of the hospitals in the Arabian Peninsula because
the israelis medical professional cadre or some of the bestial planet.
So it's medical diplomacy is always good when you can
help people get over cancer and other things like that.

(56:40):
So that you know it's there's positive news, but there's
also some things that just there there there, there won't
be a pretty resolution to it, but time marches forward elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yeah, well there's you know, we're seeing almost seeing, uh,
civilization has come to life in some of these areas.
I mean that everybody. It seems so many European countries
are now wrestling with what they've done with the open
immigration they've had and the effects of allowing certain groups

(57:16):
of people in and and how are you going to
deal with that if they're not going to moderate their positions?
But then they're there, you know, are they Are they
there as guests? Are they there as have many of
them become citizens? And if they're citizens, and what do
you how do you deal with citizens who don't believe
in any of what the other large percent of your

(57:39):
population believes are the core values of your country? It
is it is. I would not like to be in
Ireland these days as a as the and either either
as the immigrant or as the Irish, because nobody seems
to be able to get along a situation there. And
we're seeing that in in Great Britain now we're seeing that,
and in Spain and France and Germany, you know, the

(58:04):
countries that refused to accept some of these in the
days when they're revegues like Hungary and Poland. You know,
they got bad mouth for being racist or whatever the
term would be. But they seem to be riding that.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Out.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
This situation a little better than some of these countries,
a little more open bordered.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah, I've seen it in person, and it's since I
moved back from from living on the continent for years,
over fifteen years ago. I mean, I saw it bad
enough then it's gotten worse now. My daughter got to
the point we had a conversation a couple of years
ago because she was studying on the continent and we

(58:52):
were in Budapest having a nice at the New York
Cafe of all places in downtown Budapest. We were having oh,
oh you America pars we were having It's actually a
pre World World War II facility that they brought back
once the Communists left. It's very nice. It's very Art deco,
Art nouveau. It's pretty cool. But we we were talking

(59:15):
about all the travels she had made and what a
great time we were having in Budapest and Broadislava, Vienna, Prague,
and uh, She's like, yeah, I would much rather I
would advise people coming here are Vienna over Paris, because
she had just gotten back from Paris a few weeks earlier,
visiting some friends who were studying there, and it's very sad,

(59:36):
and I think that's going to be the big friction
point in Europe. Besides Russia. Europe's got a lot of
internal concerns they're going to have, and I think with
the upcoming elections in the next few years in France
and the UK as well, uh, there there's going to
be a reckoning because part of the problem is is

(59:58):
you had a theory that has been proven to be wrong,
but that theory is still in power and in laws
in the EU, specifically those nations, even though, by the way,
even though the UK left the EU, they still are
subject to, by their own choice, the European Commission on

(01:00:21):
Human Rights. As long as you are nodding to ECCHR,
which is the implementation force of this theory that has
turned out to be wrong, it's very difficult to fix
the problem. However, the problem is not economic, it's people.
And how do you resolve a massive people who don't

(01:00:44):
not only don't want to assimilate, but have other plans
for your future the next five to ten years in Europe,
that's where their concern is going to be and how
they internally accept the fact that they have been ruled
by a theory that has not worked out, and how

(01:01:04):
do they correct it. It's going to not be pretty,
but it'll.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Be the last time they broke away from the Soviet Union. Yeah,
another theory that didn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
And the Hungarians and the polls especially, they're they're not blind.
They can look at Okay, y'all yelled at us, y'all
threatened us, y'all called us nasty names for years. But
you can walk and this is true. You can walk
through our markets during the high holidays. And it's not

(01:01:37):
like in the big cities in France where you have
paratroopers at every street corner with submachine guns and you
have all these barriers and all these metal detectors and securities.
It's like Warsaw in Christmas twenty twenty five is going
to be like the rest of Europe was in nineteen

(01:01:58):
ninety five. And they're they're going to have to resolve that.
And I don't see how it's going to be done easily,
cheaply or pleasantly one way or another. But again, these
are all countries with democratic systems as long as those
democratic systems are allowed to function as inefficiently as they do,

(01:02:24):
Like Europeans like to say about the US for a
long time, they'll eventually do the right thing after they've
tried all other options. But so I try to be
optimistic in that regard. But I remember riding over on
my blog fifteen years ago. They needed to start fixing there.
It's harder to fix in twenty twenty five than it

(01:02:45):
would be in twenty ten, twenty fifteen. But after they
try everything else, will eventually find a way to fix it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Yeah, we need to get somebody on here that is
really studying these problems because it's going to be an
interesting time for the national security for US, and it
certainly is national of national concern to us because our allies,
NATO allies are caught up in this, in this stuff,
and it's uh, it could you know, it is Uh,

(01:03:16):
it's going to be it's going to be really difficult
to try and figure out how to anybody to settle
this stuff without coming to blows. I mean, that's you know,
I'm I'm not optimistic that it won't come to that
because I kind of see that. It's it's uh, the people,
the people who have lived lived there longer, are getting

(01:03:36):
a little tired of being told what they have to
do by people who just arrived. And and when I was,
when I was in Italy several years ago, they were
really having trouble with the migrants, uh coming ashore and
and settling in, but they didn't settle. I mean it
was they were just this this Uh, they've created this underclass,
which which you know that that gets ugly real easily.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
It doesn't resolve itself well at all. And hey, I
just realized we're already past the hour, but we need
we need again again. Time flies and you're having fun. Well, hey, everybody,
we appreciate you taking time today for joining us a
mid rest. Next week, tune in, We're gonna have a guest.
If it's summertime, what does that mean? It's time for

(01:04:22):
the last fifteen years, Dimitri Gorenberg. Uh, doctr one issue
from the Center for Naval Analysis is coming on. We've
been having him on once a year, like I said,
pretty much from the start of the show, and we
are going to talk about the latest about Russia, not
exclusively about the Russia Ukrainian War and the Russian military.
We always kind of touch on lots of different subjects

(01:04:43):
or so for those that wanted to have one of
the best minds out there when it comes to just
taking a real objective, realistic and calm view of Russia.
Next week is going to be great.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Yeah, I don't help us understand better what the Trump
and Putin are going to be talking.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Absolutely, So Hey, thanks everybody in the chat room. We
appreciate y'all coming in and until next time. I hope
everybody has a great Navy day. Cheers.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Molly to Need replied, worry Paddy, all you name Mike
Mandoney want to marry me and all leave a friend
of becdily for you being to blame for love loved me,
Sill Faulding your the time.

Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
It's a long way to It's a long way. It's
a long way to differ Ny through.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
The gorb think on it fair well, listen, well, it's
a long long way to get away.

Speaker 4 (01:06:11):
It's but my my na

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.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

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