E4: AUKUS Fracas

Episode Transcript
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Henri (00:00):
Today, we'll be talking about the diplomatic fallout
surrounding the AUKUS deal.
For those of you don't know, theAUKUS deal is the Australia, UK,
and US joint program of buildingthe next generation of subs for
the Australian Navy.
And more specifically, we'regoing to talk about how USA
betrayed her French ally, whowas the original awardees of the

(00:23):
Australian sub contract.
To explain this disaster and theramifications for the world I'm
going to first address thecommon Anglo-centric,
misconceptions that arecurrently floating around in the
news.
For this purpose I'm going touse an exchange on a recent
discussion of bill Maher's"RealTime with Bill Maher" show on
HBO to set the stage.

(00:44):
Though, let me warn you, first,I want to delve into it with the
different classifications ofNaval submarines.
So if you're alreadyknowledgeable on the subject, or
you simply don't care that muchabout those specifics and the
engineering aspects of thesubmarines, feel free to skip
the chapter two, because, Iapologize, this is already kind
of a pretty long podcast.
So, chapter two is around the15-ish minute mark of this

(01:06):
podcast.
Let's have a listen.

Bill Maher on "Real Time wi (01:09):
And sometimes it's not bad to be
America first.
I mean, I don't understand whyFrance is like, maybe I
understand why they're mad atus, but if you don't know it,
what happened was, France had adeal to sell nuclear submarines
for defense to Australia.
And at the last minute we camein and offered them cheaper and
better.

Richard Ojeda on "Real (01:28):
Exactly.

And they took it.
Hey, that's the art of the deal,bitch! You know what, I mean,
sorry, we beat you at business,fair and square.
We didn't hold a gun toAustralia's head.

Richard Ojeda on "R (01:41):
Absolutely.
And the thing is, is that Francewants to sell their stuff, I'm
sure Saudi would buy it.
But at the end of the day, ourstuff is far superior.
So Australia would go with that.
And...

The one thing we can still do was
make killing machines.

Richard Ojeda on "Real Time (01:52):
And it also sends a message to
China, and lets them know, youknow, we w ere in t heir back in
the woods.

Bill Maher on "Real Time (01:58):
Right, so we shouldn't feel bad about
that one.
Right?

Jennifer Rubin on "Real Tim (02:02):
The French ones were so bad.
They were really loud, a loudsubmarine.
It's a diesel.

Richard Ojeda on "Real Tim (02:06):
It's diesel, these are different from
nuclear, there's this diesel.

Bill Maher on "Real (02:10):
Seriously?

Richard Ojeda on "Re (02:10):
Seriously.

Bill Maher on "Real Time with (02:13):
I feel even better about this now.

Jennifer Rubin on "Real Tim (02:17):
Not a good idea of you're trying to
spy.
[..]

Did they leave that black smoke?
They didn't have truck nuts onit, did they?

Jennifer Rubin on "Real Ti (02:30):
They can spy.
They can do some productivethings.
So of course the French had a[inaudible]

Bill Maher on "Real Time w (02:35):
Ours can kill the whales so much more
effectively.

Intro (02:43):
Come On, Don't Bullshit Me!

Henri (02:57):
So, in one move! This is like Trump level of diplomatic
fuckery is how many alliesAustralia managed to piss off.
Again, like if this wasn't reallife, it would be complicated.
Welcome to come on.
Don't me where we peel away themessaging of talking heads to

(03:21):
get to the crux of today'sissues.
I don't like the excessivehubris of these people.
I mean, they're shitting on theFrench submarine deal or the
lack of it now.
They're like, oh, Americansubmarines are technically

(03:42):
superior, and that's why we won!Which completely misses the
whole point of why the Frenchare pissed off.
Because, first off, you have tomake a determination between
which submarines you are talkingabout.
Because most people, when theythink of submarines, they think
of"The Hunt for Red October",and that's a ballistic missile

(04:02):
submarine.
Or in the US Navy parlance, it'slike SSBN.
Without being too pedantic,there's, generally speaking, two
separate classes of submarines.
You've got attack submarines andthen you basically have"Hunt for
Red October" missile submarines.
But I think the Navy communitycalls them boomers.

(04:24):
Not like"okay, Boomer!", Like ababy boomers, but they're just
ballistic missile submarines,and they call them boomers.
If we're talking about hide andseek, the boomers are the
hiders; and the attacksubmarines are the seekers,
their whole job is to go find,find the subs, find the boomers.
So the boomers-- their wholemission is to basically go on

(04:47):
station, and be quiet and justsit there.
And obviously they do...
Because we're not under constantthreat of World War III, they
just go around and do things,missile drills.
As Sean Connery said in RedOctober,"we will do the missile
drills and enjoy the company ofHavana" or something.
And then all the Russians saylike"yeah!" or"Da!", and then

(05:12):
there was singing the SovietAnthem.

Sean Connery in "The Hunt fo (05:15):
We will pass through the American
patrols past their sonar nets,and lay off their largest city,
and listen to that rock and rollwhile we conduct the missile
drills.
And when we are finished, theonly sound they will hear is our
laughter.
While we sail to Havana, wherethe sun is warm and so is the

(05:35):
comradeship.

Henri (05:41):
And then of course the Sam Neill from"Jurassic Park",
who was captain Vasily Borodin,and he's like, Captain, the
noise will attract theimperialist pig-dog Americans!

And then Sean Connery's like: "Let them sing!" (05:53):
undefined

Sailors in "The Hunt for Red (05:56):
[ Singing the Soviet Anthem].

Henri (06:06):
So that's the purpose of the SSBNs.
Their whole mission is basicallyto be quiet, just have a coke
and smile and shut the fuck up.
And if something happens, youknow, World War III happens, and
they get an order from theirtowed array, you got to launch
the missiles.
They're purely offensive,they're there purely to ensure

(06:29):
MAD, right, Mutual AssuredDestruction.
If the Russians or the Chinese,or whoever, if someone launches
nuclear missiles and destroysus, we have our submarines that
can launch back.
So you better not launch anymissiles.
So our nuclear triad is basedoff nuclear silos: our
land-based ballistic missiles;and then we have our strategic

(06:51):
bombers, that are always up inthe air, so if you launch
missiles, they would fire; andthen you have our SSBNs missile
submarines that are under water,and then they will fire.
It's kind of like the Similarilsfrom the Silmarillion.

You had the three Silmarils (07:08):
one would be lost into the sea, one
would be in the air, and thenone would be lost in the ground
or fire, whatever, earth.
So that our nuclear triad couldbe based off of the
Silmarillion.
Thanks J.
R.
R.
Tolkien.
So anyway, if World War IIIhappens, you know, we detect the

(07:30):
missiles, the orders go out tothe triad, simultaneously.

To everyone, to the silos (07:32):
the strategic bombers and the
nuclear submarines get the sameorder to launch the missiles.
And the whole thing is, we hopethat at least one out of those
three entities is still aliveand it can launch missiles back
at the enemy, because that'spart of our nuclear triad.

(07:54):
And I think the Soviets, or Iguess the Russians, and other
countries have similar things.
With Britain, famously, theydon't really have a specific
code that they're supposed tomonitor for for launching
missiles.
But for them they're supposed totune into BBC-4, and then if
BBC-4 four goes static, thatmeans that UK is destroyed, so

(08:15):
they have to launch theirmissiles.
Which doesn't really give memuch confidence.
I think the whole world isinvested in making sure BBC-4
stays operational.
Because, God forbid, somepigeons shits on antenna or
something, and then the WorldWar III happens.
Yeah, I'm sure there's fallbackprotocols, but it's a nice

(08:36):
anecdote.
At least I hope it's a niceanecdote.
Then you got your attacksubmarines.
They're basically the apexpredator of the sea.
Their whole job is to find theseextremely quiet SSBNs and take
them out.
Well, during the war take themout, during peace time it's
obviously to find them and, andsay,"Aha, we found you! You're

(08:57):
not as stealthy as you think youare.
So don't even try to think thatyou're going to rely on your
SSBNs, because we're goingto..." Well, not going to knock
them out of the sky, as we sayin the air force, but"we're
going to take them to the DavyJones' locker", or whatever the
Navy says.
"So don't rely on your SSBNswhen we nuke the shit out of
you!" Morbid discussions today.

(09:20):
Anyway, under the conventionalwar, their whole job is to
infiltrate Navy carrier groupsundetected and launch their
torpedoes in sink mostlycarriers, because that's the
most valuable asset, but alsoother ships.
Because right now with currenttechnology that humans have,

(09:42):
nothing comes even close to thedestructive power of a
submarine, of an attacksubmarine.
It's just unmatched.
And obviously, I mean, theGermans figure this out and
during World War II that's whythe Krieg's Marine, they kind of
, vested away from capital shipsand put almost all their effort
and focus on attack submarinesand sunk ships left and right.

(10:05):
So the Naval doctrine reallyhasn't changed that much,
despite the advent of nuclearweapons.
This is that with the attacksubmarines-- they're the apex
predators in the sea.
And no one even came close.
As far as the Naval vessels areconcerned, because obviously we
have air assets and otherthings.
But as far as the Navy isconcerned, nothing comes close

(10:25):
to attack submarines, and theycan pretty much take out anyone.
And their whole job is to bequiet enough to get close to the
carriers or other Naval assetsand basically torpedo the shit
out of them.
So that's their point.
So while SSBNs can be prettyquiet because they have the
luxury of just sittingcompletely quiet in the middle

(10:47):
of a God knows what ocean, andjust sit and wait for World War
III to happen, SSNs or SSKsbasically attack subs.
They don't have that luxurybecause the attack submarines
are the seekers, right?
Their whole job is to go find,find the subs, find the boomers.
So again, there's generallyspeaking two separate classes of

submarines (11:08):
there's attack submarines and ballistic missile
submarines(the boomers).
The boomers are the hiders andthe attack submarines are the
seekers.
And amongst those two, there arebasically four designations.
The attacks you have the SSKsdiesel electric and the SSNs

(11:30):
(which is a nuclear submarine).
And then with the ballisticmissiles you have SSBNs and SSG;
SSBNs are nuclear ballisticmissile submarines.
And SSGNs happened during the, Ibelieve, the START treaties,
where during thedenuclearization between the

(11:51):
Soviet Union, or I guess at thispoint the Russian Federation,
and the US.
We were required to get rid offour of our SSBNs and
denuclearize them.
Obviously we're not going tocompletely decommission these
really nice submarines.
These are, by the way, they arethe Ohio class submarines, for
anyone who wants to be specific.

(12:12):
And because of the START treatyor because of the US Navy
posture statement, the Navy wereeither forced to, or all of
their own volition said, Hey,look, we have 18 ballistic
missile submarines, but in orderto accomplish our mission, we
really only need 14.
So what we're going to do is,we're going to denuclearize four

(12:32):
of those submarines, thoseSSBNs.
And rather than justdecommission them, we're going
to use them for other things.
So they replaced the Tridentballistic missiles with Tomahawk
cruise missile.
So they're not ballisticanymore, they're cruise

missiles (12:47):
they cruise above the sea line and then go hit their
targets.
Which you probably know if youremember the old CNN clips of
the First World War...
Or First World War-- First GulfWar! First World War with
Tomahawks, heh.
No, the First Gulf War, becausethat was the first televised
war.
So four of those SSBNs weretransitioned into SSGNs and used

(13:12):
only conventional ammunitions.
So again, that doesn't reallymatter, but I figured I'd be
thorough here.
And speaking of thorough, I knowthere's going to be some random
Navy guy that's listening tothis, and I'm going to get a
whole bunch of angry comments,saying like,"Oh, you don't know
what you're talking about! Causewe don't use SSKs anymore".
Yes, yes, I understand.
Okay.

(13:32):
In the interest of that onerandom Navy guy that's

listening (13:35):
yes, we don't do SSKs anymore because nowadays all
submarines are expected tohandle the anti-submarine
warfare role.
So really we don't really haveSSKs.
It's mostly your boomers andthen the attack submarines are
now just SSGs.
So they'd have those Tomahawksin there, and they are supposed

(13:57):
to attack and destroy the Landand Naval surface assets.
If you look at the Australiansubmarines right now, they're
not called SSKs, they're calledSSGs, right, without the"N",
because they're not nuclear.
Yes.
They have torpedoes, but theirmain focus is on the cruise
missiles.
But for this podcast, I'm justgoing to be fast and loose with

(14:20):
terminology, because I want tofocus on nuclear propulsion
versus diesel electric.
And also by the way, the newattack submarines that the
Australians wanted, the attackclass submarine, I figured it's
just easier and more pleasing tothe ear to call them SSKs rather
than SSGs.
And technically, the contractwasn't awarded, it was canceled.

(14:40):
So we don't even know what thearmament is.
So I'm being a little cheekythere, but yeah, SSGs, SSKs--
bottom line is, it's aboutdiesel-electric.
And this is the thing that thiswhole AUKUS Fracas is about.

(15:02):
This panel is a classic exampleof people being confidently
incorrect.
And they just don't know whatthe hell they're talking about.
I don't want to call themidiots, but they're being
idiotic, saying things like,"oh,the French submarines are not as
quiet as ours, because they'rediesel".
First off, you're a colossalmoron.

(15:22):
I mean, I shouldn't, I shouldn'tsay that.
That's not a nice thing to say.
But they're being, I'll just saythat they're being colossally
moronic, because it's not likethese subs are some sort of Mack
truck, big-rig out in the middleof the ocean going"
Hrgrrrrrrrrrr"; and then theRussians would be like,"Captain,
I hear a French sub on sonar!""Are you sure, comrade?" Like,

(15:44):
"Yes, captain, she sounds justlike my truck in Vladivostok!"
No, no, it's not like that.
They only run the diesel engineswhen they surface to charge up
the batteries and then theysubmerge all quiet and run on
electric.
So if you're talking about beingquiet, diesel submarines are way
quieter than nuclear submarines.
The whole point of having anuclear submarine is not about
being quiet.

(16:04):
It's about endurance, power, andindiscretion rate or your
indiscretion time.
So, endurance is basically howfar you can go and how long you
could stay on station.
And power, well, we can talkabout power later, but that's
pretty self-explanatory.
Indiscretion rate is specific todiesel-electric submarines.

(16:26):
Because the whole point of SSKs-- these diesel attack subs-- is
that they use diesel generators.
Well, they use electric motors.
And as we know from Tesla,electric motors beat mechanical
motors hands down any day of theweek.

(16:47):
They're more efficient.
And part of the reason why themore efficient is that they are
quieter.
And obviously the more noise youmake, the more inefficiency you
have, because of phonons beinggenerated.
But the point is, noise is aform of inefficiency and,
electric motors are way quieterthan mechanical motors.
So these electric subs in and ofthemselves are extremely quiet.

(17:13):
Now, the reason why they get abad rap and why this panel is
specifically talking about, oh,they're not quiet submarines is
not because of their operation,it's because of the fact that
once the batteries are depletedin your SSK, in your diesel
submarine, you have to go up toPeriscope depth, put out a
snorkel, and breathe in air sothat your diesel engines can

(17:37):
run.
And then your diesel engines runand recharge your batteries.
And that's, what's noisy.
And this is what's called the"indiscretion rate".
So if you can be submerged forthree weeks, but then you have
to come up for eight hours...
These are not real numbers,obviously, because I don't know

(17:59):
them, and if I did, I wouldn'tbe allowed to say anything, but
your indiscretion rate would beokay, every three weeks, you
have to be up surfaced to theeight hours.
Which is exposing yourself tobeing attacked by an all manner
of different Naval ships, allmanner of ways from by the
enemy.
So the point is to minimize yourindiscretion rate.

(18:20):
So if your whole premise thatall the French deserve to lose
this contract is because theFrench submarines are inferior
because they're less quiet orthey're more noisy because
they're diesel submarines,you're just being a colossal
ignoramus because it just provesthat you have no understanding

(18:42):
of the fundamentals of submarinewarfare or a submarine
propulsion.
Nuclear subs are really good,but it's not because they're
quiet.
Diesel submarines are quieterthan nuclear submarines because
with diesel submarines, oncethey're fully charged, you can
shut off the engines, and thebackground noise is practically

(19:03):
zero.
Whereas with nuclear submarinesyou have to constantly cycle
through water to cool thereactor down.
Anyone who watched Chernobyl oranything knows that nuclear
power plants, nuclear reactors,require a constant flow of water
to cool the reactor down toavoid a meltdown.
You can't shut down a nuclearreactor.
The nuclear reactions areconstantly going and it is

(19:25):
constant heat buildup.
So you always, you have toconstantly cool a reactor down
to avoid a Chernobyl in yoursubmarine.
So if you want to talk strictlyabout being quiet, well, they're
just completely wrong.
It's just a matter of physics.
Diesel submarines are quieterthan nuclear submarines.
Now, I know, okay, yes, in themost recent Virginia class

(19:47):
submarines they've replaced thepumping of coolant with, they
call it, conventional cooling.
But then, obviously, the detailsof that are classified.
And, frankly, right now we don'tknow if it's quiet or not.
If it is quieter, that's a huge,remarkable achievement that
obviously is not going to bereleased to another country or,

(20:09):
let alone, the public.
And if it was the case, thesetalking heads wouldn't know
about it.
And if they did, well, then theFBI should be knocking on their
door pretty soon.
So, as far as we, the public,are concerned, it's a completely
ludicrous statement to say, oh,the French lost because they had
diesel submarines, and dieselsubmarines are not as quiet as

(20:29):
nuclear submarines.
It's just completelypreposterous.
So again, the whole point ofnuclear submarines is not about
being quiet.
It's about endurance, power, andindiscretion rate.
And one of the main points ofnuclear propulsion is that it
reduces your indiscretion ratesto zero, because you don't have

(20:52):
to recharge your batteries, youdon't have to resurface to
recharge any batteries.
You have nuclear engines, so youhave nuclear power and it's
constantly on and you don't runout of energy.
The nuclear engine can last forabout 10-ish years.
So, about 10 years, based on thefissile material, that's in it.
And that's how most nuclearsubmarines operate, whether it's

(21:17):
SSBNs or SSNs.
And what the doctrine of the daywas that, okay, submarines have
to have a major retrofit.
It's like a mid-cycle retrofit.
So they do maintenance, whichbasically involves completely
replacing the hull andrebuilding it again.
Almost kind of like a Theseusship situation.

(21:38):
And during that time, theprevailing thought was that,
okay, well, if the submarine hasto come in for this major
retrofit, well, then we'll justput enough fissile material in
there for about a decade or soor whenever the major retrofit
has to happen.
And in its mid cycle retrofitit'll get upgraded systems,
it'll get all the maintenancestuff, and everything like that.

(22:00):
And then also we'll swap out thenuclear reactor or the physical
material with a nuclear reactorand replace it with new one.
So that could go on until thesubmarine gets decommissioned at
the end of its life cycle.
So that's the kind of like theway it was.
So with nuclear propulsion, thenuclear core was sized
appropriately, so that duringthese mid cycle retrofits you

(22:25):
could swap out the nuclear coreand put a new core in, and go on
your way.
For submarine nuclear reactorsthey use highly enriched
uranium, which allows thenuclear reactor to run for the
full 30+ year life cycle of thesubmarine.
Now, this is not really aproblem for the US or Russia, or

(22:48):
China, or even the UK, becausethey're an established in
nuclear power, when it comes tothe nuclear non-proliferation
treaty.
But for other countries like,you know, cough, cough,
Australia who are not nuclearpowers, this is a big issue.

(23:09):
That's just the minor point Iwant to make about the
quietness, if you will, of thesubmarines, which is completely
preposterous point.
But more broadly speaking, thepanel was referencing that the
reason why the French lost thecontract, the Australian
submarine contract was becauseAmerica came in and made a
better deal.

(23:30):
And that's just the giant grossoversimplification of the entire
issue.
And if we really want to getinto the nuts and bolts of it,
which obviously we're going todo, because that's the whole
point of this podcast, we haveto go back to the predecessor,
to the attack class submarine,which was the Collins class
submarine.
The Collins class submarine wasbased off a Swedish design.

(23:53):
And there was a colossalclusterfuck of an acquisitions
program.
There were a lot of issues withit, but in retrospect it was
actually a really good programbecause one of the reasons why
it was a huge issue was becauseof the prevailing doctrine for
the Australian Navy.
Which was that prior to theCollins, they had the Oberon

(24:16):
class submarine, and the Oberonclass submarine was built by
other country.
So there was no in-houseexperience within Australia to
maintain the Oberon classsubmarines.
So anytime they had to maintainit, which was obviously often,
because submarines arenotoriously difficult pieces of

(24:39):
engineering, and they requireconstant maintenance.
So from a supply chainstandpoint, Australia basically
had nothing, and it wascompletely reliant on the UK.
And one of their points thatthey made in the Naval doctrine
was that they didn't want to bereliant on another country for
their strategic deterrence inthe form of submarines.

(25:02):
Which is a completely legitimateand wise thing to do and to
believe.
So with the Collins classsubmarines they said, okay, we
don't have any experience, so wegot to gain this experience.
And we are not going to recreatethe wheel here and try to build
our own submarine from scratch.
So they said, we're going topartner with another country,
and we're going to learn fromthem and get the experience here

(25:26):
locally in Australia.
And that's exactly what they didwith the Collins class
submarine, with Saab, theSwedes.
And there were a lot of issueswith it, because obviously
trying to repurpose a submarinefor another country, and not
only that, but also build thein-house knowledge for the
Australian government to be ableto maintain these ships, was a

(25:49):
monumental undertaking.
And obviously there was a wholebunch of cost overruns and a lot
of things that were promised,but weren't quite delivered.
But overall they worked throughit.
And a lot of the problems thatplague the Collins class
submarine, to their credit, theNavy worked on it.
And to this date, the Collinssubmarine is probably considered

(26:11):
the premier SSK in the world.
I don't think anything quitematches it as far as the diesel
submarines are concerned.
So they learned a lot of lessonsfrom that.
Now, when they want to replacethe Collins, because the
projected life cycle, or thebudgeted, or planned life cycle
of the Collins submarine wasonly about 25 years.

(26:34):
But by the time they got theiract together about five years
ago, we're already got to thepoint where, Hey, we're nearing
the end of the lifecycle of theCollins and we need to replace
it.
And this was when there was ahuge diplomatic fuckery, if you
will, where the Australian primeminister had a really good

(26:54):
relationship with Shinzo Abe,the Japanese prime minister.
And he famously said that, Hey,we love Japan, and our strategic
partnerships, and everything'sgreat.
But most famously, he said, hebasically insinuated...
This was a prime minister, TonyAbbott, by the way.
He basically insinuated thatAustralia would want to use the

(27:18):
Japanese Sonyu class submarines,or excuse me, Soryu class
submarine.
Well, it doesn't matter whatclass it is, but basically, we'd
love to have the Japanese buildour next generation submarine.
And obviously this is a hugefoux pas, because he didn't
consult with the military, hedidn't consult with the
parliament.

(27:39):
And obviously these types ofthings, you have to first get
your guidance from them-- fromthe military-- on what is
actually their requirements.
It has to be validated by theparliament and voted upon.
And also this has to go up tofor a bid.
You don't want to justunilaterally give this contract
to a country.
So once it happened, there was ahuge, big shitstorm, but at the
cat was out of the bag.

(28:00):
So they said, okay, fine.
We're going to open this up tobidding.
And famously, the United Statesdid not bid on this, but the
Germans bid on it, the Frenchobviously bid, and the Japanese.
And I don't think the Swedes bidon it, but basically those were
the three, I think, maincandidates: the Japanese, the
Germans, and the French.

(28:20):
And one of the requirements ofthis was that it has to be a
diesel submarine.
Which obviously wasn't a problemfor the Japanese and the
Germans, because that's whatthey use.
They have SSKs diesel electricand they were going to give the
SSK technology to theAustralians.
The French, on the other hand,use SSNs, which is a nuclear
submarine.

(28:41):
So what the French offered wasthat they're going to take their
Barracuda class submarines, orSuffren class submarine, as the
French call it.
Basically, they're going to taketheir nuclear, their SSNs, and
they're going to base the SSKdesign on this SSN and make it a
conventionally poweredBarracuda, the short fin

(29:02):
Barracuda.
And reason why they proposedthis was because that's what the
requirement was.
The Australians wanted aconventional diesel-electric
submarine, so the Frenchproposed a diesel-electric
submarine.
It wasn't about the French beinginferior or anything like that.
It was just that this is whatthe requirement was.
And then, given the thegeopolitical situation of the

(29:24):
day, it obviously made sense,because Australia did not have a
nuclear capability, and itwouldn't make sense to have an
SSN, because in order to have anSSN, you would need a whole
nuclear infrastructure.
You would need the engineers, asyou would need the know-how, you
would need the facilities.
You'd have to mine the uranium,you would have to enrich it.

(29:46):
The whole life cycle of that,including the disposal.
You would have to mine theuranium from the uranium ore,
and then you'd mill it intowhat's called"the yellow cake",
which everyone remembers fromthe Colin Powell talks during
Congress.
And that's how Bush conned usinto go into Iraq, because Iraq
allegedly had a yellow cake,which is the precursor to

(30:06):
nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons.
Anyway, from the yellow cake youhave to enrich it, so it can
actually be used as a nuclearfuel.
And this is what actuallymatters-- the enrichment
process.
Because natural occurringuranium is shit for weaponry or
for fuel.
You can't really use it, becauseit's mostly Uranium-238 with

(30:27):
only about less than 1% U-235,which is the actual stuff that
you need for a nuclearpropulsion, nuclear power,
nuclear weapons, et cetera.
And so what you have to do isyou've got to take that yellow
cake, which has, again, lessthan 1% of U-235, and then
you've got to enrich it so thatit's useful for nuclear power.

(30:47):
And typically for civiliancases, it starts off at 3% and
then it goes up from there.
And this is called"low enricheduranium".
The issue is, once you get to20% enrichment, that's the
theoretical minimum to create anuclear weapon.
And depending on who you ask, toactually create an engineeringly

(31:10):
feasible nuclear weapon you needabout 85% to 90% of enrichment
of uranium.
This is the whole issue withIran right now that we're
dealing with, because they'rebasically saying, No, we're
using our uranium for nuclearpower, which obviously they
totally can do.
But they're getting into thepoint where it's above 20% and

(31:32):
God knows how much percentage,but it's enough to create a
nuclear weapon.
And that's obviously an issue.
So in order for Australia tohave an SSN, they would need the
enrichment capabilities to atleast enrich this to a 3% range,
right?
The Brazilians, for example,they were considered a
non-nuclear state, they didn'thave nuclear weapons.

(31:53):
But they developed their ownnuclear infrastructure so that
they can have an SSN.
Because a non-proliferationtreaty does not prohibit nuclear
power, Naval nuclear propulsion,but what the treaty specifically
says is that you can't just givea nuclear technology to
non-nuclear nations.
So the Brazilians had developedin-house their own nuclear

(32:16):
capability and nuclearinfrastructure to enrich the
uranium to, I think, it's like7%.
I think this is what they useright now for their subs.
And, uh, and Australia, when itwould need to do the same thing
and the Australian governmentand Australian people as a
society have made adetermination that they don't
want that.
So SSNs were immediately off thetable when they were looking for

(32:41):
the Collins class replacement,because they weren't really
interested in creating thenuclear infrastructure and they
didn't want it.
So obviously, diesel it is.
Again, this has nothing to dowith the French technology being
inferior or not, this is purelyabout the fact that Australia
didn't want a nuclearinfrastructure, it doesn't want
to invest in that.

(33:01):
And obviously it's in theirright to do so.
Now going back to the Barracudaclass ship, well, the French SSN
is a technological marvel.
Of course I shouldn't be tooflippant for what the panel
said, because, realisticallyspeaking, obviously, American

(33:22):
technology, at least when itcomes to the military
technology, is hands down asuperior to any other country.
But even if they didn't knowanything, which they clearly
don't know, based on theirstatements about it being quiet
and whatnot, clearly they don'tknow...
they don't understand anythingabout the submarine technology.

(33:42):
But you can excuse them, becauseit's a safe bet to say, Hey, if
I put a gun to your head andsaid, who has the best in the
military weaponry, you'reprobably going to say"the United
States".
That's a pretty safe bet.
So I can't really shit on themtoo much for that.
But the thing is, even thoughthe U S submarines are a class
above everyone else, thatdoesn't mean that the United

(34:05):
States won this contract, whichagain, it wasn't even a
contract, because it was awardedto France, because again, the
United States did not bid on it.
But again, it doesn't matter,because even though the Virginia
class submarines are atechnological masterpiece, it's
not like the Australians aregoing to get the Virginia class
submarines.
There's technologicalrestrictions.
There's the ITAR, which is theInternational Trafficking in

(34:28):
Arms Regulations.
As great as an ally Australiais, a lot of our technology is
just a restricted, and we're notgoing to just freely give it
away.
So just because we make the bestships, just because we won this
contract, doesn't mean Australiais going to get the best ships.
It's not like we're going togive them Virginia class
submarines.
I mean, look at the joint strikefighter: as much of a debacle as

(34:49):
that was, it's considered to bean international program, which
obviously mostly United Statesfunding it.
And of course, yes, there arecosts overruns, which we could
talk about until the cows comehome.
But part of the considerationsduring the programmatics of the
F-35, of the joint strikefighter, is what technology

(35:10):
transfer was going to be allowedand permitted for the coalition
partners, who are also investingin the joint strike fighter.
What were they going to get?
Because the JSF that we'rebuilding for ourselves, it's
going to be, obviously going tobe different than the ones that
the UK, for example, is going toget.
It's not even a contract, right?

(35:30):
It's just the strategicagreement, a partnership
agreement.
So we don't even know what thedetails are, because the details
are still not out.
It's too early to know aboutanything.
And a lot of that stuff is TBD.
So what happened was, from whatwe know, is that Biden
essentially talked with TonyMorrison...

(35:51):
Well, no, not Tony Morrison,Morrison is a novelist.
By the way,"Song of Solomon",great book, you should read it.
But anyway, Tony Abbott-- ScottMorrison.
Okay.
Scott Morrison-- the currentAustralian prime minister.
They made an agreement for theprocurement of a to be

(36:12):
determined SSN for Australia toreplace the Collins.
That's essentially all we knowright now, but it's safe to say
that they're not going to getthe Virginia for several
reasons.
Obviously, it's, you know, otherthan the Seawolf, it's the most
preeminent, attack submarine outthere.
And just like we said about ITARand FMS, you know, For Military

(36:35):
Sales, as great as an allyAustralia is, there'll be
significant hurdles and it willbe subject to many different
regulations and laws on whetherwe could even transfer the
technology to Australia.
So that's that.
But also we have about 20Virginia class submarines right

(36:55):
now.
And we plan on ordering at leastdouble that.
So we're going to have like over60 Virginia class submarines.
We can't crank out enough ofVirginia class submarines.
So even if we were going to givethe Virginias to Australia,
which obviously are not, buteven if we were, we simply can't
do it because we can't buildthem fast enough.

(37:17):
So saying that, Oh, the Frenchlost, because the US technology
is better-- it's a red herring.
This is a classic case of whichwe talk about in these podcasts
-- about talking heads sayingone thing that in isolation
sounds smart and reasonable,logical; but when you put it in
its place with surroundingdetails, you quickly realize
that they're full of shit.

And then we got to realize (37:38):
this is not an Australia-US
relationship, it's AUKUS.
So there's the UK in this aswell.
Well, what the hell does the UKhave to do with this, if this
was a discussion between ScottMorrison and Joe Biden?
Well, what we do know about theUK is that they have their own

(37:59):
SSNs.
And their SSNs are the astuteclass.
And one of the issues with theUK is obviously they've always
been traditionally a maritimepower, of course, severely
diminished since World War II.
So that's a constant worry thatthey have to maintain their
maritime expertise, if you will,within the country.

(38:20):
But of course they don't havethe crazy unlimited budget that
the United States does, so theyhave to make choices.
Sometimes painful choices forthis.
So, whereas we can't, shit outenough submarines, for the UK
this is not necessarily likethat.
In fact, they're about to buildtheir...
I don't know if they havefinished building it or they're
about to, but essentiallythey're about to build their

(38:41):
last Astute class submarine.
Which is, again, Astute class isthe British SSN.
So they're ending that.
Now the worry is that for theUK, because there are no more
submarines being built, thenthose factories are going to
close down.
Those people who are working onit, they're going to move on to
other jobs, right.

(39:01):
Or retire or whatever.
So that institutional knowledgeof submarine building is going
to be gone.
So that in a couple of decades,when they need to replace the
submarine for the nextgeneration submarine, they won't
have the expertise there to spinback up that capability.
This is actually something that,and again, I like to be fair
here, this is not a left wingpodcast or anything, but the

(39:24):
Democrats like to alwayscomplain about our defense
spending, that, Oh, we'reconstantly buying tanks that
even the army doesn't want.
Well, I mean, again, that's notthe point.
Yes, the army doesn't want them.
The army doesn't need tanks, andwe've gone away from armored
cavalry as far as our main landdoctrine.
But the point is that Congresskeeps ordering those tanks,

(39:46):
because if we don't order thosetanks, then those factories are
going to shut down.
And in the future, when weactually do need to build tanks
and build tanks in a hurry, wecan quickly spin it up.
And if we just let these guysshut down their plants and
people retire, we lose all that.
Then at the point where weactually do need tanks, that's
going to be an Oh, shit!"moment.
And it's going to be in evendeeper"Oh, shit!" moment when we

(40:08):
can't even build tanks, becausewe've lost the know-how to do
that.
So, going back to the wholeefficiency question, not
everything is about cost cuttingand saving money.
They're doing not only thethings that we need right now.
A lot of it is just long-termvalue chain management.
And that's exactly the problemthat the UK is running into.
But with this AUKUS programprovides a golden opportunity

(40:34):
for the UK to provide the Astuteclass submarine hull for the
Australians.
And that this gives a chance forthe UK to keep their factories
employed and, more importantly,it's not even on their dime.
So chances are, given the supplychain considerations, the global

(40:56):
supply chain considerationsbetween the US and the UK...
Again, the details aren't knownyet, but a reasonable assumption
can be made that this new SSN isgoing to be based off of the
Astute hull design-- it's goingto be a British design.
It's going to be a UK boat,stuffed with the US shit.

(41:17):
And I say word"shit"affectionately.
Which brings me back to thepoints of the French submarine.
Yes, of course the Virginias arebetter than the French
submarines, but again, it's nota knock on the French, it just
shows you how technologicallyadvanced the US military

(41:39):
industrial complexes is.
But the thing is, the gutsinside the Barracuda are
actually very comparable to theVirginia.
So the sensor suite inside thethe submarine is comparable to
the Virginia's.
So if you want to make theargument that, Oh, the French
lost, because American subs arebetter.

(42:00):
Well, that's also kind of adisingenuous argument, because
we've already established herethat it's most likely going to
be a UK hull with US guts.
And the US guts that are goingto be in it are comparable.
Or anything that the Frenchwould provide in the sensor
suite will be comparable toanything that the United States
would be willing to provide.
An emphasis there on"willing",because obviously our best stuff

(42:21):
is going to stay within usborders.
So given all of theseconsiderations, okay, we might
quibble on it.
And again, all we are doingright now is just basically
chickens pecking at each, otherbecause we don't know the
details of it.
And even if the details do comeout, they would most likely be
classified.
But from a civilian discussionperspective, which is all we can
be right now, is we canessentially say that it's

(42:45):
practically a wash.
That the sensor suite that theFrench are going to give you are
going to be comparable, let'ssay, to what the Americans are
going to give you.

Jazz (43:04):
[ Music],

Henri (43:05):
Now going back to the original point here about why
did they originally pick theFrench over the German and the
Japanese.
Well, there's a lot of reasonsfor it, but most of all, the one

that we talk about (43:18):
the French ship, when you consider it,
especially being that the FrenchNavy is one of the few navies
that actually uses SSNs nuclearattack submarines, obviously the
technological know-how that theFrench have is going to be
vastly superior to that of whatthe Japanese or the Germans
have.
So just like I said, it's prettysafe to say that the American

(43:41):
technology is going to besuperior to anyone else's, well,
it's pretty safe to say that theFrench technology is superior to
anything that most othercountries are going to have.
You can argue between Russianversus French or UK versus
French, but if I was going to dothe Mount Rushmore of submarine
technology, well, obviously USis going to be there, number
one; but then in some specificorder for 2, 3, and 4, clearly,

(44:05):
it's going to be France, UK, andRussia.
And then everyone else is kindof off on the wayside.
So, and obviously because ofsome unfortunate events in 1945,
there's not exactly a goodrapport of nuclear technology in
Japan.
It's changed obviously recently,but not to the point where the

(44:25):
Japanese are cranking outnuclear Naval vessels.
Partly because of the culture ofbeing anti-nuclear, which again,
like I said, is changing.
But also around the fact thattheir constitution that we, the
Americans, forced them to sign,is that they can't really have
an offensive Naval capability.
It has to be purely defensive.

(44:46):
So for the doctrine of theJapanese, it doesn't make sense
to spend all that money on notjust the construction of nuclear
submarines, but to have thenuclear infrastructure to
accommodate the maintenance ofnuclear submarines, because
their Navy is a constitutionallymandated defense force.
Now, of course, that's in theprocess of being changed right

(45:07):
now, or just being encouragementof altering the constitution to
make it more of an offensivecapability with, obviously, the
blessings of the United States.
But that's something to discussin the future, years from now.
As for Germany, well, Germanyhas only recently been reunited.
So its capabilities to fieldsuch capital intensive ships was

(45:29):
limited.
And also their green party ispretty dominant within their
politics, and they have ananti-nuclear stance, which we
can talk about in the next, in afuture episode on the European
Union's green initiatives, andhow they're shooting themselves
in the foot with respect tonuclear energy.
Germany also doesn't really havethe need for nuclear weapons.

(45:50):
Because again, in the beginningof this podcast, we talked about
the three discriminators ofSSNs: endurance, power, and
indiscretion rate.
So we already talked bout theindiscretion rate, so let's go
to endurance here.
And for countries like Japan andGermany, endurance is not as big

(46:13):
of a concern, because forprimarily being defensive
navies, they're not required togo out and be out out at sea for
long periods of time.
And if they are, they're usuallypretty close to the Homeland.
For Japan, obviously because oftheir constitutionally mandated
defense posture, and for Germanyit is just a simple matter of

(46:34):
geography, which has alwaysplagued them in World War I,
World War II, where they have toget past the UK and France to
actually physically be out therein the blue ocean.
And now have divestingthemselves from being a military
power to being more of aneconomic one, there really is no
need for a long endurancesubmarine that would necessitate

(46:55):
the use of an SSN.
France on the other hand, havingthe largest economic exclusivity
zone in the world, requires ablue Navy force posture.
So, endurance is a big issue forit.
Which is why it has heavilyinvested itself and nuclear
vessels.
And United States and UK, ofcourse, are no exception.

(47:16):
Being blue Navies themselves andUS Navy being the preeminent
blue Navy, not only in theworld, but in history.
And of course, Soviets, or Ishould say the Russians now,
inheriting the Soviet posture ofbeing a blue force adversary to
the United States, it makessense for them to also have
nuclear weapons.
China is an interesting story,because they mostly have SSKs,

(47:39):
but they've been doingsignificant investments,
obviously in SSNs, which goesagainst their propaganda, that
they espouse is that all in all,we're really here to protect
ourselves.
But now with them focusing onSSNs, obviously, that would be
more for a blue water posturerather than a brown water.
What we call brown water postureof being within the lateral

(48:02):
combat regions.
So now for Australia, it's aninteresting point, because up
until recently, within the pastcouple of years, Australia's
doctrine has always been aboutnational defense.
And they've actually made it apoint to criticize the United

(48:22):
States and say, Hey, look, wedon't want to have an
adversarial relationship withChina, because China's in our
doorstep.
And we want to work with Chinaas a geographic neighbor.
So the need for an SSN, wasn'treally there.
Now, as China has become moreantagonistic over the years, the
doctrine necessarily forAustralia has changed.
Now to the point where it says,well, no, we now need to

(48:44):
recognize that China is nolonger interested in being a
peaceful neighbor.
And within the Asia Pacificregion, we need to have a
capability to not only defendourselves, but to project the
fore to make sure that we don'thave a disastrous war.
Because just like Germany has apainful memories of the 1940s,

(49:05):
so does Australia.
The Imperial Japanese Navy didquite a big number on Australia.
And so Australia is no strangerto the devastating effects of a
powerful adversarial Navy.
Which is why they need to takeinto consideration endurance,

(49:25):
because the main submarine baseof Australia is in Perth, which
is in Southwestern Australia.
And it's about 3,000-ish milesto the south China sea, which is
where most of presumably ChineseNaval operations are going to be
occurring.
And that's part of their issuehere of why Australia is under a

(49:50):
change of its doctrine, becauseoriginally they wanted to have a
kind of a cold friendship, ifyou will, a look-warm friendship
with China, because it's aregional partner.
And it's also one of the biggesttrading partners of Australia.
But as China has become moreadversarial, specifically with
the a Nine-dash-line.

(50:12):
And Nine-dash-line, by the way,for those who don't know it, is
basically this claim that theChinese government submitted to
the UN, where it claims allthose random little tiny islands
all around the South China Sea.
And basically it says the entireSouth China Sea is under the
Naval jurisdiction or authorityof China.

(50:35):
So if you don't know much aboutSouth China Sea, that means
they're claiming not just thewaters around mainland China,
but all the water essentiallyaround Vietnam all the way down
through Singapore, to Indonesia,Malaysia, back up towards
Philippines, and then up fromTaiwan to Japan.
basically, forget about theSouth East Asia international

(50:59):
community.
They're like, yeah, we're notsplitting this with anyone.
They're just taking everything.
It's like that comic, thatGarfield: he has a birthday cake
with John Arbuckle, and then hecuts a little slice and John
thinks that that's what he'sgoing to take, but instead of
taking a little slice forhimself, Garfield takes the
entire pie and eats it, leavinga little slice for a John.
And that's basically what Chinais: China's basically the

(51:20):
Garfield of the South China Sea.
So that's kind of an issue thatChina is basically tacitly
threatening all shipping andNaval activity throughout the
South China Sea, saying thatanyone who doesn't ask for our
permission or who we don't givea specific authorization to,
without actually saying, youknow, we can basically sink you,

(51:42):
because this is all ourterritorial waters.
Which obviously is a bigproblem, if you're Indonesia,
Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam,Philippine., Basically, anyone,
because you can't do anyshipping over there.

And, you know, Malacca Straits: 20% of the world's global (51:56):
undefined
shipping goes through theMalacca straits, which is that's
the straits between Malaysia andIndonesia with Singapore at the
tip.
So 20% of the world's globalshipping goes through there.
So it's kind of a, as Bidenwould say, it's a big fucking
deal.
And with that, I think it's 20%of the global shipment.

(52:18):
I think it's over 60% ofChinese.
And I don't know what it is forAustralia, but Australia being a
Pacific nation, a lot of itsshipment goes through there.
So this focus on the South ChinaSea and the Nine-dash-line that
China is proposing, is obviouslycausing a lot of adversarial
problems.
So going back to the point hereis that from Perth to the South

(52:40):
China Sea is around 3,000 miles.
So the endurance that you wouldneed to go there is pretty
hefty, which means now it's notjust about a territorial defense
where SSKs should be sufficient.
It's about actually nowoperating in the South China Sea
and providing a good deterrentagainst the Chinese Naval

(53:01):
ambitions.
And for that, yeah, sure.
It does make sense, that it'sokay.
You would want to switch to anSSN as your main submarine
force.
So you would say, Okay, well,doctrines change all the time.
And especially with how long ittakes submarines to be built.
Whereas the US is one of thefaster ones, where it comes to
around six years; but generallyspeaking, it takes about 10-15

(53:23):
years from the initial contractaward for the operational
capability to the christening ofthe boat.
A lot of things can happenwithin 10-15 years.
So it makes sense to say, Well,you know what, the priorities
have changed.
And now yes, they gave theinitial contract to the French
to build an SSKs, but SSNs makemore sense, so that's why they

(53:46):
picked the US.
And that would be true, exceptfor the fact that France are not
a bunch of idiots.
Most countries aren't idiotic,and they can read the room, as
you would say.
Then they also know that, okay,SSKs, don't really make sense.
Not only that, but the Frenchalready had the capability of
making SSN.
So it's a lot easier for them tomake SSNs.

(54:06):
And they also can see thewriting on the wall, because
they also have had a similarthing where most of the maritime
territory of France is not inEurope.
It's actually in the Pacific, inthe Indo-Pacific region.
So we may not really realizethis as Americans, but France
has huge territorial,geopolitical, and economic

(54:26):
concerns or interests in theIndo-Pacific region, based on
the sheer amount of territorythat she has.
So she also had this thing whereshe wanted to be partners with
China, this look-warm thing,where we don't antagonize them
and just try to work with themas much as we can.
But with the expansionistantagonism that China has done

(54:47):
in recent years, they have alsoswitched their doctrine to a
more of a, I wouldn't say,blatant adversarial position
against China, but definitely atacit adversarial relationship
with China.
And because of this, during thewhole process of the Barracuda
submarine, initial design review, they kept asking, there are

(55:11):
reports, and even the Frenchadministration-- the Macron
administration-- the Frenchgovernment had stated, they
repeatedly asked the Australiangovernment, Hey, are you sure
you still want to do the SSKs?
We have the SSNs.
We think SSNs would be betterfor you.
And Australia was like, no, no,we don't want SSNs.
We want SSKs.
Even now we're starting to findout they even said this,"No, we

(55:33):
don't want to SSNs" at the sametime that the Australians were
talking with America, withBiden, with the Biden
administration, saying, Hey, youknow, about those SSNs...
So that's kind of a prettyfucked up situation.
It's kind of like with"The Gameof Thrones: the HBO executives

(55:54):
were realizing that seasonsseven-eight were gonna be a
shit-show,'cause they onlybudgeted for a hundred episodes.
And they said, Hey, you know, ifyou want more money, if you want
more episodes, you want moreseasons, we'll give you the
money, here you go; you can haveas much money and time as you
need, take them.
And DMD-- the"Game of Thrones"directors-- were like, No, no,
no, it's okay, we got it, we canwrap this up within one, two

(56:16):
seasons max.
It's like,"Are you sure?
You can have more money." Andthey like,"No, no, we're good".
And of course they completelyshit the bed on seasons seven
and eight.
So it's kind of like that herewith Australians and the French.
So that's the point I wanted tomake about the endurance.
Now the third point was power,which is kind of a minor issue

(56:36):
here.
But another advantage of nuclearpropulsion is power.
In that again, like we talkedabout with diesel-electric
diesel engines, you snorkel upto Periscope depth, use your
diesel engines to charge yourbatteries, and then you
submerge.
Then you use that battery powerfor all your operations.

(56:58):
And then when they deplete, you,obviously, have to resurface and
recharge your batteries again.
And everything that you use isgoing to impact your endurance.
So anything as innocuous,anything from using an oven in
the galley to even, you know,charging a sailor's laptop for
RNR-- rest and relaxation--reduces your endurance, because

(57:21):
all that, whether it's the ovenor charging the sailor's laptop,
requires battery power from themain batteries of the submarine,
which reduces the endurance ofthe submarine.
So there's all the huge powerbudget considerations that you
have to worry about, whichfrankly, it doesn't exist with
nuclear reactors.
Because nuclear reactorsprovides so much power that

(57:42):
basically not only do we nothave to worry about ovens and
sailors' laptops, but we'reactually thinking about using
all that excess power to shootdown drones in the sky with
fricking laser beams, AustinPowers' style.
That's actually, one of theacquisition programs that is
being run in the DoD right nowis putting lasers on Virginia

(58:04):
class submarines for aerialdrone warfare.
So, if you have enough power touse a laser, the amount of power
that it generates, it's almostembarrassing.
So that's that.
And actually this was one of theconsiderations of the French
proposal, which is actuallyanother reason why they won.
Because they knew this and theypurposely didn't use some

(58:30):
ancillary technology that theGermans and the Japanese
proposed.
The Germans and the Japanesewere proposing and ancillary
technology like AIP, which isAir-Independent Propulsion, and
lithium ion batteries, fuelcells, combination of thereof to

(58:50):
lower the indiscretion rate.
And the French famously, well,not famously, but notably they
didn't do that.
Their design was, Okay, yeah,we're just going to use the
conventional diesel-electricpropulsion system along with
your conventional lead acidbatteries.
But the thing was, because theydidn't have to waste space with

(59:11):
all this ancillary technology,and the fact that their hull was
bigger, and because of theirjust Naval construction
expertise, even though they use,quote,"the shittiest
technology", which is lead acidbatteries, with just
conventional snorkeling forrecharging, for running the
diesel engine, their endurancewas so much higher.

(59:32):
And under normal operationalparameters for an Australian
submarine, the indiscretion ratewas so low that the advantages
of having an AIP or a moreefficient battery like fuel cell
or lithium ion battery, didn'treally matter.
So that despite using"theshittiest technology" the

(59:55):
Australian Navy realized that,Wow, as far as meeting the KPIs
are concerned, the French designblew everyone else out of the
water.
That's how good the Frenchtechnology and French design
was, or is.
And not only that, but becausethey didn't have all this other
ancillary technology in there,the crew quarters and the

(01:00:19):
amenities, were much bigger.
And that's another interestingpoint here.
Do you know what the weakestsubsystem of a submarine is?
The limiting factor of asubmarine's performance?
It's the sailors, it's thehumans in the submarine.
So especially with nuclearsubmarines, they can go on
forever.
And with a lot of these SSKs,these diesel submarines, they

(01:00:42):
can essentially go on forevertoo.
What limits the submarinesperformance is the fact that the
humans are cramped inside ametal tube without any sun or
natural air in cramped quarters.
And obviously they have to eatfood, and everything.
And so that's the limitingfactor.
And that's why we don't get abunch of people going postal.

(01:01:03):
And for the mental health ofsailors, usually most Navy's
limit the tour of duty forsubmarines to about three
months, 90-ish days.
Obviously, some are moreextended, but that's basically
the average.
So the limiting factor ofsubmarines is actually the crew
stamina.
And that was one of the softcharacteristics, if you will, of

the French design (01:01:25):
because they didn't waste all this space with
other technology, and their basetechnology was so much better
than everyone else's, they hadway more room for crew quarters
and crew living spaces.
Which as far as for a humanendurance or human factors
engineering standpoint wasmonumental.

(01:01:47):
And when you're talking aboutthe limiting factor of a summary
and the difference being thepeople, well, this is another
added bonus to the French designover the German and then the
Japanese designs.
So another criticism of theFrench deal was that of cost
overruns.
The reason that's a bullshitargument is because there hasn't

(01:02:11):
been any formal cost estimationor report done by the Australian
government.
The actual details of that wouldbe, of course, classified, but
any broad scope general auditingof the program famously hasn't
been done yet.
And all the reports of 60billion Australian dollars,

(01:02:31):
which is about 42-ish billionAmerican dollars, those cost
overruns-- a big part of this isbecause of the lessons learned
from the Australian Navy, fromthe Collins and even before that
-- the Oberon class submarine--was that there needs to be the
national infrastructure, nativein Australia, to be able to do

(01:02:55):
the maintenance on thesesubmarines.
Not be reliant on an externalpower.
Especially if you're talkingabout building a French
submarine, which has the guts ofan American sensor suite, if you
will.
But again, the point is thatit's a foreign service,
essentially.
It's a foreign made submarinefor Australia.
They wanted to have, to developthe in-house knowledge.

(01:03:15):
To de-risk that supply chainproblem and not be reliant on a
foreign power.
And especially when you'retalking about France.
France is practically on theother side of the world.
So having to sail yoursubmarines all the way across
the globe for their maintenancewas obviously not only

(01:03:37):
unacceptable, but impractical.
So many of the cost overruns wasthe fact that because the
Australian engineers didn't havethe institutional knowledge of
submarine shipbuilding, part ofthe cost overruns was sending
these Australian engineers toFrance to get the know-how, to

(01:03:59):
build these submarines.
And they reportedly werestruggling on that.
And so a lot of the costoverruns were due to the
Australians themselves, and notnecessarily anything that the
French were doing.
So it was kind of disingenuousto say, oh yeah, there was a lot
of cost overruns, and it was areally expensive project, when a
lot of that expense of theproject was based on the

(01:04:22):
specific requirements for thetechnology transfer from France
to Australia.
So a lot of these costs overrunswere self-imposed by the
Australians and not necessarilysome sort of negative
performance by the French.
And another thing about thesecost overruns, if cost over runs
really are the issue here.
Well, here's the thing that'salready coming out in the news

(01:04:45):
right now.
So it's already how colossal ofa fuck up this is, is that the
life cycle of the Collinssubmarine was only about 25
years, I believe.
And they're rapidly coming tothe end of their life cycle.
And these Barracuda classsubmarines were supposed to
replace them.
Now, of course they aren't goingto make it in time.

(01:05:06):
So they were consideringextending the life cycle of the
Collins for a couple of years,like 5-ish, years or so, so that
it would bridge the gap betweenthe time that the Barracudas
came online and the nominal endof the Collins' life cycle.
But now, because they completelyscrapped the French design,

(01:05:30):
that's five years of basicallycontracting work down the tubes.
And because we're going on thishybrid UK-US submarine model,
that's pushed the procurementschedule for the next generation
submarines even further beyond.
And now the Australiangovernment is saying, yeah, well

(01:05:51):
it looks like we're not going toeven be able to extend the
lifecycle of the Collins, andwe're going to actually have to
get a new bridge submarine.
New submarine to bridge the gapbetween the Collins and the
US-UK submarine.
So what originally they weresaying, Oh yeah, cost overruns
because the blah, blah, blah,because of the French-- now
they're actually going to haveto spend even more money for a

(01:06:13):
new alternate submarine to havein-between the Collins and
whatever the presumed the AUKUSsubmarine is.
So this is how much of a clusterfuck it is right now in
Australia.
And which is why, even if wedon't consider diplomatic
points, which we'll get tolater, but they don't really
have leg to stand on whentorpedoing in the French deal.

(01:06:41):
Not only that, but actually theday before this thing was
announced, and this just showsyou how shady the Australian
government was acting,'causethey have legal requirements,
right?
Because they signed a strategicpartnership between France and
Australia.
So when there were specificcheckpoints that they had to go
through to fulfill specificcontractual requirements.
And one of those requirementswas the thing called the

(01:07:02):
preliminary design review.
And it actually...
so, part of this strategicpartnership...
And this is one of thecriticisms that Australians
would levy on the French, Imean, I guess rightfully so, but
the point here saying that, Hey,this wasn't a contract, this was
a strategic partnership.
And we specifically had clausesin here to opt out of the
strategic partnership atspecific times, milestones, of

(01:07:25):
the procurement process.
And one of those procurementprocess was after the
preliminary design review.
And what they actually did wasthe day before this bombshell
announcement came out, theAustralian government okayed the
preliminary design review of theshort fin Barracuda to fulfill
that strategic partnershiprequirement.
And the very next day is whenthe bombshell news came out,

(01:07:49):
that they're ditching the Frenchsubmarine.
It would be hilarious if itwasn't so sad and, you know,
real life.
Now, why did this, why thestrategic partnership fail?
Well, according to these talkingheads and you know, the US
government, and the Australiangovernment-- again, they have
all these different excuses on,"we want a nuclear submarine",

(01:08:11):
even though that's bogus,because the French offered that,
and they met the KPIs, and whathave you-- all things that we
just discussed.
But quite frankly, it would havebeen just easier if they just
acknowledged and said, Hey,look, our strategic requirements
have changed within the pastfive years or so with the
accelerated antagonisticbehavior of the Chinese where,

(01:08:35):
quite frankly, our doctrinechanged.
So what we initially wanted outof the Collins-- a replacement
submarine-- now no longerapplies and we need a new
submarine.
And that's perfectly fine, butthat's not what they said.
Instead we saw what happened.
It was that they're basicallysaying one thing to the French
and then secretly behind theirback talking to the US and UK on

(01:09:00):
something else.
So why did France actually losetheir strategic partnership?
We have all these reasons why wejust went through in detail on
why that's not really the case.
Well then what really is thecase?
Well, quite frankly, we don'treally know.
This story is still relativelyfresh.
And a lot of the discussion isgoing to be privileged
communication, which we maynever even know about, as the

(01:09:23):
details may never come out tothe public.
But the point here is that'sundeniable that while there
might be technical reasons thatyou could fall back on for the
legitimacy of this, doctrinalreasons, which we talked about,
that she could fall back on forgoing with the AUKUS deal.
And we also discussed the legalpoints that you could fall back

(01:09:44):
on and saying, this wasn't acontract, this was strategic
partnership, which Oh, by theway, with this AUKUS, that's
still not really clear.
Just like the debacle that TonyAbbott did with Shinzo Abe,
saying, Oh yeah, we totally wantthe Japanese submarines.
And there was a huge uproar,because there was no competitive
bid for that.

(01:10:04):
Does it now mean that the AUKUSdeal will have to go through a
new competitive bid, or they'rejust unilaterally saying, No,
we're skipping that.
Why was it not okay for theJapanese, but it was okay for
the US?
So there's other ramificationsto think about here: the
Japanese are already sore fromlosing the bid in the first
place, especially if you'rebeing courted with this whole
bilateral budding relationshipbetween Australia and Japan.

(01:10:28):
But now all of a sudden they seethat not only were they screwed
out of this sweetheart deal withthe Australian Navy, but the
very thing that they werescrewed on is now being granted
to the United States and the UK.
So what does that say forAustralia's partnership with
Japan as well?
So this is not just about offthe French.
You've also pissed off Japanese.

(01:10:50):
And Oh, by the way, because thisis a nuclear submarine, and New
Zealand-- their closest neighbor-- famously has a policy where
they don't allow nuclear vesselswithin their territory, you're
also pissing off New Zealand.
Because they're not going toallow you to dock your
submarines anywhere near them,or even sail your submarines
anywhere near them.
So in one move!..

(01:11:11):
This is like Trump level ofdiplomatic fuckery is how many
allies Australia managed to pissoff.
Again, if this wasn't real life,it would be comical.
So why did they do that?
We don't know, but there arespeculations.
And we can go off of what mostpeople in the know are saying,

(01:11:32):
that this is part of the Biden'sor, you know, the America's
desire to disengage fromSouthwest Asia, basically, this
global war on terrorism andfocus on the actual, real
strategic threat, if you will,of the Chinese dominance in the
Indo-Pacific region.
And that's, obviously, it's avery, a good thing that we are

(01:11:55):
focusing on that.
Especially ending all thesecountless wars, that don't
amount to anything.
And from the American viewpoint,this is a colossal win, because
while it's about 3,000 milesfrom Perth to South China Sea,
from Hawaii, it's a double that,it's about 6 to 7,000 miles from

(01:12:15):
Hawaii to the South China Sea.
So presumably, if yourinfrastructure is going to be
built within Perth foraccommodating nuclear attack
submarines, then now all of asudden the American Naval forces
Pacific fleet now not just relyon Hawaii and Guam(which...
Guam...
The facilities in Guam, beingsuch a small island, are limited

(01:12:37):
in itself), but now you're goingto have a fallback base with
Australia and you can basically,get on station twice as fast
because it's half the distance.
It's also, there's thequadrilateral Alliance, or they
call it"the Quad", which UnitedStates has been focused on.
Which is between Japan,Australia, India, and obviously

(01:12:57):
the United States.
And this is kind of encircling,a diplomatic encircling
initiative to encircle China andcounteract their expansionist,
the aggressive policies, withtheir own strategic Alliance
between India, Australia, Japan.
So it covers the entire, if youwill, the semicircle, of the

(01:13:19):
Indo-Pacific region.
So with providing the submarinetechnology for Australia, this
gives a good balance where wecan have our ships, of, excuse
me, our Naval assets to not onlyto the South China Sea, but also
into the Indian ocean as well.
Not being so reliant on the SuezCanal or going around the horn

(01:13:40):
of Africa.
That's obviously a big win forus.
So to blame the United Statesfor doing this, I mean, that's
not, that's not right eitherbecause obviously it's in the
United States strategic interestto do this.
And also we, obviously we have alot of submarines, we have a lot
of Naval assets, butstrengthening our allies with
our, especially with ourtechnology, means while having a

(01:14:01):
more capable allies, we can relyon them further for our own
national objectives.
I mean, this is one of thereasons why you want to have a
strong ally, so you can actuallyrely on them.
So this AUKUS deal is obviouslygoing to be a huge win from that
perspective.
So no one's really criticizing,and even France recognizes this,
right?
They tacitly recognize that.

(01:14:22):
That's not the issue.
That's not the reason why Francecalled off their ambassadors and
canceled the gala, the 240thanniversary of the French and
colonial forces defeating theEnglish.
The gala and the recalling theambassadors is because this is a
colossal diplomatic faux pas.
And this is the main issue Iwant to bring up, because anyone
can be a monkey in the peanutgallery, as my dad would say,

(01:14:46):
and throw shit at talking heads,especially when it's a live
recording, and they misspeak.
The point here is the underlyingthing that these talking heads,
that this panel was talkingabout here, is that somehow that
the French are completelyinferior and America rightfully
should initiate this AUKUS dealwith a complete disregard to

(01:15:07):
diplomatic protocol.
And this is what the, the Frenchforeign minister and even the
French president said.
They said, this is the type ofbehavior we would expect from
Trump.
And again, not to bring politicsinto this, but from an

(01:15:29):
international perspective,Donald Trump and his cabinet,
specifically, the secretary ofstate diplomatic core was
reviled.
Especially with this whole"America First" attitude.
And Biden was supposed to bethis breath of fresh air,
restoring the diplomaticprominence of the United States

(01:15:50):
to the Obama and even beforeyears.
And everyone was ready towelcome the United States back
into the internationalcommunity.
With all these aspirations ofAmerica, returning back to the
international scene, to comearound and basically stab France
in the back as, as their foreignminister said, i t w as just
inexcusable.

(01:16:10):
And again, here, this is notabout shitting on A mericans
saying that, Oh, America didn'thave the r ight to do this.
Of course, America h ad theright to do this.
And as we discussed, it makesperfect sense from a doctrinal
standpoint.
But it's kind of like that JeffGoldblum's scene in"Jurassic
Park" where he says,"You guys were so concerned with..", I'm

(01:16:31):
butchering the quote,"You guyswere so concerned about, whether
you could, y ou didn't stop tothink whether you should", when
talking about the dinosaur eggs.

Jeff Goldblum in "Jurassi (01:16:41):
Yeah, yeah.
But your scientists were sopreoccupied with whether or not
they could, they didn't stop tothink if they should.

Henri (01:16:46):
And that's exactly the point here.
We have a Jeff Goldblumsituation.
And yes, the United States coulddo this, but should we have done
that?
And it's not just even whetherwe should have done that.
It's just, when I say,"should wehave done it", It's not about,
should we have done the AUKUSdeal.
It's about, should we haveconducted the AUKUS deal in a

(01:17:06):
manner that we did.
Namely, as the French would say,as we stabbed them in the back.
Because the whole point is theFrench government was asking,
Hey, how's everything going withthe Barracuda program?
And there were these textmessages from Macron that
apparently got leaked ontoTwitter that people can read
about.
And Scott Morrison said, Ohyeah, everything's good.

(01:17:29):
He did not say anything.
There was the whole discussionat the G7 this year, where
Macron and Biden were talkingand getting all chummy with each
other, having a good time, andnot once did Biden take Macron
to the side and say, Hey, by theway, there's this thing
happening with the submarinesthat I just want to let you

(01:17:49):
know, give you a heads up.
Bad things happen all the timeon the international stage.
But especially with allies, it'sconsidered good protocol to give
people a heads up.
And actually this is not justdiplomacy, this is just good
general life advice for anyone.
At work we say, Hey..
If you have a good boss, youjust say"I don't mind something
bad is going to happen, it'sjust, if it's going to happen,

(01:18:11):
just give me a heads up beforeit does happen".
So if I was a king for a day, ifI was, you know, Biden, what I
would have done was, Okay, AUKUSis happening, that's fine.
But at least tell M acronbeforehand and say, Hey, look,
this is happening.
And obviously Macron's going tobe furious about it, but h e's
saying it in private, and thiswill give him an opportunity,

(01:18:32):
for both France and the UnitedStates, to either work something
out, where F rance is still partof this deal, or even if not,
worst case scenario, France iscompletely out of it, but then
at least you give France theopportunity to save face.
And the way to spin that storyis painfully obvious.
Where we say, Hey, look in thepast five years again, you could

(01:18:53):
just blame everything on China.
In the past five years, Chinahas been very aggressive.
You don't even have to mentionChina if you're worried about
ruffling feathers, but you couldsay, Hey, in the past five
years, the strategicrequirements or strategic
realities of the Indo-Pacificregion have changed to the point
where a conventional sub, likethe Barracuda, does not make

(01:19:15):
sense.
Or you can make some otherreason to basically say that,
Hey, look, this doesn't work.
And even the French could say,look, we tried to do this, but
there's too many issues with thetechnology transfer, where the
Australian engineering communitycannot assimilate our
technology.
And also there are concerns withintellectual property transfers.
The point here is that you canmake a hundred of bullshit

(01:19:36):
statements like this, basicallyto save face.
And then France would say,because of these realities and
hardships or problems, we'vedecided to pull out of this
strategic partnership with theBarracuda and focus our efforts
on other things.
On strengthening ourrelationship with Australia in
other aspects, or something likethat.

(01:19:57):
But the fact that I come up withthis in the span of five minutes
means, that the United Statesgovernment in its infinite
wisdom and resources should beable to come up with that thing
too.
You know, Fox news, they like totalk about and like shit on on,
Hey, look, this is such acolossal fuck up by the Biden
administration with the pulloutof Afghanistan.

(01:20:19):
And in some respects they'rekind of right on that.
In this case, this is completelyno excuse, that diplomatic fuck
up of the AUKUS deal.
It's just completelyinexcusable.
And it just further underpinswhat a lot of our allies,
specifically our Europeanallies, are saying.
That United States hasfundamentally changed since the

(01:20:40):
election of Donald Trump.
And Biden is no different thanTrump.
And actually, even before Trump,because they were saying this
about Obama as well, is thatsince the election of George W.
Bush, the United States has beencoming increasingly
antagonistic, which means ouradversaries are also becoming
increasingly antagonistic.
It first started with the Iraqwar, which obviously famously

(01:21:04):
France was against.
Remember that whole freedomfries versus French fries
debacle that happened, thatstarted with that?
And then they thought, Europeansand specifically the French
thought, Okay, with Obama thingswere going to change.
And they welcomed with openarms.
And of course, Obama continuedthe war.
Even despite his campaignrhetoric of Afghanistan being in

(01:21:24):
the good war, and Iraq being thebad war, he still continued with
the drone strikes, whichinternational community objected
to, even from a Russianperspective.
You know, this is not just aboutour allies, but from the Russian
perspective, there was thefamous reset where Hillary
Clinton brought the reset buttonbutton saying, Hey, look, we
reset.
And it didn't reset.

(01:21:45):
So this is just the continuingpattern for almost two decades
now, where the United Statesfrom the diplomatic standpoint
has been constantly screwing up.
And where most countriesobviously don't have the
military or martial power thatwe do, they rely on the
diplomacy.
It is a big thing.

(01:22:05):
As a matter of fact, it's a bigthing for us too.
So at the G7 Biden should havepulled Macron to the side and
told him in private that thiswas what was going down.
And someone might make theargument, Well, it's not really
United States' concern, becauseit's not America's message to
give, it's Australia's messageto give, because it's the
partnership between France andAustralia.

(01:22:27):
But that's a very obtuse takeon, it because again, in
diplomacy, and especially withthe supposed friends, this is
not something you do.
And again, this is the wholepoint of private conversations
is that you bring someone to theside and tell them, Hey, this is
the thing that happened.
Because if this happened to you,you wouldn't like it either.
So I dismissed the argumentthat's saying, Well, it's not
really Biden's fault, it'sAustralia's fault.

(01:22:48):
That's just the, it's a colossalapplication of responsibility.
Especially for the world's onlysuperpower.
Talking about"with great powercomes great responsibility".
Well, one of theresponsibilities of a super
power like the United States isto manage its diplomatic
relations with its allies.
At the bare minimum, to informthem of things in private.

(01:23:09):
So I dismissed that argument outof hand.
So there's this feeling in theinternational community for
about two decades.
And again, it has nothing to dowith politics, because they
criticize both Republicanpresidents and Democrat.
And we had two of each.
Which crystallized with Trumpsaying"America First!" This
"America first" mentality meansthat our allies can't trust us

(01:23:33):
anymore.
And I know like some of your,people, are saying, Oh, well,
you're so stupid, of course it'sAmerica first, because all
countries are their countryfirst.
Because they care of theirinterests first.
Yes, yes, okay, I understandwhat you're saying there, but
that's not really the pointhere.
The point here is that, ofcourse, America has to care
about America first, but whenyou've been talking about

(01:23:53):
diplomatic circles, youcertainly don't shout that off
the rooftops.
It's about having the diplomaticchutzpah to work with your
allies and to address theirconcerns.
And even not just your allies,but your enemies as well.
Or I shouldn't say enemies, butyour adversaries as well.
But specifically your allies.
The only time that the"Americafirst" policy was a legitimate

(01:24:15):
diplomatic course wasessentially during our first 50
years of our existence.
Which was culminated, or Ishould say, which was
crystallized with the Monroedoctrine.
It was that, Hey, we are UnitedStates, we're not going to
bother with the affairs ofEurope, and Europe, likewise,

(01:24:36):
you guys are not going to botherin the affairs of the Americas.
So we leave you alone and youleave us alone, right?
That's where"America first" isappropriate.
And that carried on through toall the way up into the 1940s,
where we've always had anisolationist standpoint.
You know, we didn't want to getinvolved with World War I, that
was a Europe's problem, notours.

(01:24:56):
But then we got sucked into it.
And then even after World War I,we got sucked into it, we still
said, you know what, we're stillgetting out of there, America
first! We don't want to dealwith your, guys, crap.
We're doing our own thing.
And then only after the SecondWorld War happened, with the
advent of nuclear weapons, werealized, okay, this whole
"America first" attitude is notreally working.
We have to be the world'spolicemen.

(01:25:17):
And again, you can criticize theUnited States being the world's
policeman and everything likethat, that's fine.
It's a fair criticism for you.
But the point here is thatbecause we've adopted that as
our foreign relation posture, ifyou will, we don't have the
luxury to say"America first"anymore, because by being the

(01:25:39):
world's policeman, we have toensure that we have proper
allies, because we can't just doit all alone.
And especially if we're takingour adversaries seriously, like
Russia and China, then we haveto make sure we have our allies
on our side, and not constantlypush them to the side of our
adversaries.
The classic point here is withTurkey.

(01:26:00):
That a lot of people are talkingabout is that how the West has
constantly pushed Turkey awayfrom the West.
And now Turkey's chumming upwith China and Russia.
And same thing can be said aboutIndia.
That's another point here isthat, Hey, we're in Alliance.
Look, India needs to be a goodally.
Originally they were kind of atacit ally of the Soviet union,

(01:26:20):
but after the Cold War, therewas a good opportunity to bring
India into the fold of theWestern sphere of influence, and
then being a really good ally.
And then we started pissing themoff, especially with dealing
with Afghanistan, andunnecessarily having starting
the chumming up with Pakistan,their own primary adversary.
But with this constantdiplomatic faux pas that we've

(01:26:41):
been doing, even India now islooking and saying, Hey, you
know what, maybe China, evendespite the adversary
relationship that India has withChina and Russia, they are going
after relationships with thosecountries.
Famously right now, I thinkIndia is looking at getting the
S-400 missile system.
The other thing is, okay, it maybe also America first, which

(01:27:04):
again, I just pointed out here,that it really isn't.
Because being the globalpoliceman, being the global
superpower of where you have tobe reliant on the allies.
But also America has always beenthe foundation of America, it's
our national ethos, if you will,has always been about
international maritime trade,the free trade.
And a lot of our prosperitycomes from our close

(01:27:25):
relationship with Europeannations.
And we've done a pretty decentjob, despite everything that I
just said, we still have verygood relationships with the
European union.
But two things have happenedrecently.

One (01:27:39):
Brexit happened.
So now one of our staunchestallies, practically brother and
arms, if you will, the Brits,are no longer part of the
European union.
So we can't rely on them as ourfoot in the door with Europe.
But secondly, Angela Merkel hasstepped down after 15 or so
years.

(01:27:59):
The reason why I mentioned thatis because up until recently,
Germany has pretty muchdominated the Europeans sphere
of influence.
So if anything's going to happenwith Europe, we pretty much had
to run it by Germany.
And now with Merkel leaving,well, there's essentially, I
would not call it a powervacuum, but I guess you can call

(01:28:20):
it a power vacuum in Europe orin the European union, which
France is very eager to pick up.
And in some way has alreadypicked up.
And this is a lot of the thingsthat Macron has been doing in
the international circle isshowing the prominence or the
re-emergence of France as a, ifnot a global power, definitely a

(01:28:42):
regional power or amulti-regional power here.
So if we've already acknowledgedand established that part of our
fortunes as Americans comes fromour close relationship with the
Europeans, and if Francis is nowthe de facto gatekeeper of
Europe, well then maybe weprobably shouldn't be pissing

(01:29:03):
off France with these type of adiplomatic faux pas.
And not only that with Europe,but again like we established
earlier in the podcast is thatmost of the France's maritime
territory is in the Pacificocean.
And they are also agitated bythe Chinese aggression.
So having them on our side notonly is good from a commercial

(01:29:24):
standpoint, from a Europeantrade standpoint, but also from
our self-admitted foreign policyobjectives and the containment
of Chinese aggression.
So shitting on France,especially in such a public
manner, of saying, Hey, look wedid the AUKUS thing and
completely blindsiding them.
And not allowing them to saveface, is just...

(01:29:45):
It's not even"America first." Itis not"America first", because
we are actively harmingourselves.
We're harming ourselves, becausewe're harming our ability to
engage in trade deals withEurope, because now France is
going to veto a lot of things,any deals that we would want to
do with the European Union.
But also it's harming ourforeign policy objectives in the

(01:30:08):
Indo-Pacific region, because weneed France as an ally to
counter the Chinese threat.
So even from an"America first"standpoint, we have to realize
that"America first" is notAmerica just bulldozing over
everyone.
"America first" is that we haveto use our diplomatic strengths
to bring along the entire worldto isolate from the aggression,

(01:30:29):
the Chinese aggression.
This brings me to my final pointabout this diplomatic faux pas.
And this is specific to the factthat we are giving nuclear
technologies to Australia.
So, okay.
Originally we talked about,earlier in the podcast, we
talked about endurance ofsubmarines and specifically

(01:30:51):
nuclear weapons.
And this wasn't just mepontificating about nuclear
weapons.
There was a reason to this,which now I am finally getting
to.
That is that the nuclearnon-proliferation treaty that we
are signatories of, that themost countries are signatories
of, prevents the transfer of alot of weapons grade nuclear

(01:31:13):
technology to non-nuclearnations, which A ustralia is: a
non-nuclear nation.
A nd this is actually one of ourbeefs that we have with North
Korea and Iran, right?
Especially t he thing with Iranis that a Non- P roliferation
Treaty, the NPT, says that everycountry has the right to pursue
peaceful nuclear technology fortheir energy needs.

(01:31:35):
And this is why I d iscussed thedifference between low enriched
uranium, which i s between threeto 20% and weapons grade
uranium, and highly enricheduranium, which is from 20 to 90+
percent.
And this is our thing with Iranis that we're claiming, Oh, no,
t hey're enriching it beyond20%, so this is violating the
NPT, and also, more importantly,they're going to use this to

(01:31:57):
make weapons to launch on Israelor whoever else.
So what does this have to dowith submarines?
Well, again, I mentioned there'stwo non-nuclear countries that
will be using SSNs right now.
One is obviously Australia,which we just talked about, and
then the first one is Brazil.
But Brazil's nuclear submarineuses low enriched uranium.

(01:32:21):
And not only that, but it'stechnology that they developed
themselves, again from theirfree right, that's recognized by
the NPT to develop nucleartechnology for peaceful means.
They've been able to now parlaythat, obviously with some
assistance from France, which,oh, by the way, Australia, if
you're talking about needing acountry, that can actually do

(01:32:42):
this, well, obviously France hasalready done this with Brazil.
But again, the point here isthat Brazil has done this, but
without violating thenon-proliferation treaty,
because it was homegrowntechnology that they developed.
And now they're parlaying thatinto nuclear propulsion, but
also these SSNs are using lowenriched uranium.
Which means, it's not a weaponsgrade, which is adherent to the

(01:33:05):
NPT.
And similarly with theBarracuda, this is one thing
that is a drawback, that bothAustralia and the United States
would say, Oh, well, it doesn'treally matter, because even if
Australia took the Barracuda andtook the original SSN design of
the Barracuda, well, theirnuclear reactor or the nuclear
core is only good for 10 years.

(01:33:26):
And it requires a mid-cyclemaintenance, where it's a swap
of the core for a new one.
And Australia does not have thenuclear infrastructure for that,
and we don't really want that.
But the United States' Virginiasubmarines are, as well as the
UK's Astute ones...
So again, we don't know whichone is going to be used, but the

(01:33:47):
US Virginia technology has thelifecycle of nuclear core of 33
years, or whatever.
But let me ask you, how is itthat the nuclear core of the US
submarine is 33 years, while theFrench one is 10?
Well, I'll tell you why, it'sbecause the US nuclear core,
nuclear propulsion, uses ahighly enriched uranium.

(01:34:09):
So, by us giving highly enricheduranium to the Australians, a
non-nuclear nation, because theydon't want to do mid cycle
maintenance, well, that's aviolation of the
non-proliferation treaty.
Because now we're handing anon-nuclear nation weapons grade
uranium.
That's a clear violation of MPT.
Now, of course, this is going tobe spun in different ways of

(01:34:31):
saying, No, it's not really aviolation, because we're not
actually giving the technologyor the know-how to the
Australians.
And it's going to be acompletely, they'll probably say
it's going to be a completelysealed module, because this is
actually, this is how submarinesare built.
Actually, I encourage anyone whois really interested in this to
go to a submarine shipyard andsee how subs are built.
But they're basically built indifferent modules.

(01:34:51):
So you have cylinders.
That's..
It's kind of like a Christmasyule log.
So, it's basically a slice ofChristmas yule log.
You have a bunch of differentslices, and they're bringing
them all together.
So submarine construction iskind of very modular designed.
Anyway.
So you'll have a, basically, aChristmas yule log slice of the
nuclear reactor, and that'sgoing to be completely sealed,

(01:35:13):
right?
And because it's going to lastthe entire life cycle of the new
AUKUS sub, that the Australianswill never go into it.
It'll be completely sealed.
They won't go in there.
So, technically we're not reallyviolating the NPT.
This is how I imagine that thisis going to be spun.
But what we know from experienceis that give an inch to

(01:35:36):
countries like Russia, China,Iran, you know, basically all
our adversaries-- they take amile.
And now you bet your ass, Chinaand Russia are going to use this
to say, Oh, well, the UnitedStates is giving highly enriched
uranium to Australia, so thatmeans, now we can start giving
it to other people.
So now Russia is going to say,Hey Pakistan, Hey India, Hey

(01:35:56):
Iran, you guys want highlyenriched uranium?
Well, here you go.
And it's like, Oh no, it's not aviolation,'cause, wink-wink,
it's totally sealed.
And we're going to give it toyou, and it's not a violation.
And then United States, we'renot gonna be able to say
anything, because we already didit, with the NPT.
Not only did we fuck up by nottelling France and doing all
this stuff, but even when thenews was broken out, there was

(01:36:19):
no initial preemptive pressrelease, if you will, or
discussion from Biden, saying,Hey, we're going to give this
highly enriched uranium toAustralia, but it's not a
violation of MPT for thesespecific reasons.
So he wasn't preemptively clearabout that.
And because the initial mediahoopla of the AUKUS deal

(01:36:40):
happened without such anexplanation, even if it does
happen later on, it doesn'tmatter.
Because it's going get lost, andnow Russia and China are already
going to have the built-inexcuse: well, United States
already violated the NPT, sowe're going to do whatever the
hell we want to do.
So when we're talking about justglobal destabilization from
nuclear proliferation, we're notreally doing ourselves any
favor.

(01:37:01):
And if preventing proliferationof nuclear weapons is not
America first, I don't know whatis.
If you would like to comment onthis podcast or on the topics
covered within it, or you'd likeus to raise a new topic in our
next episode, please feel freeto leave us a message or a

(01:37:21):
voicemail on www.codbsm.com.
That's Charlie Oscar DeltaBravo, Sierra, Mike, dot com.
Thank you for listening, and seeyou at the party, Richter!

Jazz (01:37:37):
[ Music].

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