December 15, 2025 • 24 mins
Brian Fitzherbert, president of Liberty and Prosperity, joins Anne Baker on WOND radio for 'Fitzherbert Friday'.
Brian and Anne take a deep dive into the world of AI, and the national security strategic ramifications of its advancing technology.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Anne Baker on talking with Anne. And I
have Brian Fitzherbert on. Brian, I didn't realize
that you were online.
Anyway, good morning, Brian. How the heck are
you?
Morning, Anne. I'm doing well. Thanks for having
me. Well,
yeah.
It's,
it's a good day.
What would you like to discuss? Because
(00:22):
you're
the man who is the weapons industry
guru.
You you've done this for,
what, close to fifteen years now?
Yep. What can we expect,
particularly with the weapons systems that we know
we're selling
to other countries?
And
(00:43):
should we be doing that? I know that
you said there's a fail safe, that we
only sell them things that we can shut
down
if necessary.
But are we doing the right thing by
selling to countries like China?
Well, I rephrase it, not necessarily shut down,
but have options and capabilities to make sure
that we can deter those weapons if they're
(01:05):
used on us.
But even further with China, obviously, that's a
difficult situation because they're clearly a geopolitical foe.
They would like not nothing more than to,
be the number one economic power, the only
superpower in the military force and they obviously
want to move on Taiwan for a multitude
of reasons.
And obviously the the supply lanes that are
(01:25):
tied to not just,
the South China Sea, but obviously your overall
your overarching global supply chain,
from a semiconductor
standpoint out of Taiwan, which obviously
everything that you, me, and all of our
listeners
have in their pockets at any given time
in their phones or any other devices or
technology,
that's a control thing. So when we talk
(01:46):
about
any kind of interaction with China with regard
to military
weapons,
you know, there's obviously cautionary and there's very
little, if anything,
that is sold specific to China, especially since
they try to reverse engineer anything that we
build to begin with. Yeah. So that's kind
of a no no to begin with. But,
again, that,
(02:08):
hopefully, that never comes to pass. But should
it come to pass where there's a confrontation
with China, it's going to be a sea
war,
with regard to ships and obviously with things
that have been,
leaked recently this week
with regard to,
war games and evaluations, whether or not that's
accurate information or if that was deliberately leaked,
(02:29):
to create,
theatricality
and for psychological warfare or if it is
in fact true, that's another story to to
digest,
with what would happen should war games come
out and what that game theory would be
is how many ships would be sunk, how
many,
missiles and or weapons would be utilized
if all out war happened
with China or within the South China Sea,
(02:51):
or a triggering event like China moving on
Taiwan to make it part of, you know,
China as opposed to an independent nation and
it's an island obviously.
So,
there's all those things that play into the
calculus, but again, there should be no justifiable
reason,
to sell any kind of military equipment and
or weapons to China.
(03:12):
Much like,
much like we do not use any
Chinese suppliers
for any,
for the vast majority of military grade products,
weapons, vehicles, etcetera because
they
are abundantly,
an example of
if I dumb this down, an example of
(03:33):
counterfeit parts. You know, you have an engineering
drawing and it has particular requirements on it,
I. E. Material for a particular reason (03:38):
heating,
cooling, vibe, all those kinds of things to
make sure that
that type of material is used in the
manufacturing of a particular designed,
sub assembly or smaller part or whatever. And
if you don't use that particular
material,
then obviously the design of whatever that goes
into a product does not have its intended
(03:58):
effect. So then you have this issue
up and down the supply chain of counterfeit
parts because instead of making it out of
one material, they've made it out of a
cheaper, crappier material that does not support the
design and could have ramifications. Obviously if you're
building
weapons,
from an explosive standpoint, you know, it's gotta
absorb heat, it's gotta have and sustain vibe,
(04:20):
meaning vibration tests,
cold conditions, sand, all those kinds of things
that go into the design of these parts
and why a particular material is chosen for
engineers to design. That's exactly why we
barely use China for any,
basically
small products or any kind of thing within
the supply chain that hopefully winds up in
(04:41):
a military grade weapon or product. Oh, and
you would know. You would know because you
make sure that every part of the weapons
that are built in your company are made
with the exact requirements,
that the weapon, needs.
But I I had recently read where we're
allowing the sale of NVIDIA's h 200 AI
(05:02):
chips
to China. Yeah.
How is that going to impact us down
the road?
Alright. So there's multiple multiple things,
at play here. Obviously,
tongue in cheek, my reference here to Skynet
is is tongue in cheek, but it's very
real for those of you that are friends,
that are, fans of the Terminator movie. So
person of the year, was the architects of
(05:24):
artificial intelligence according to Time Magazine. What a
joke. Should have been Charlie Kirk. Whatever.
But this is becoming a bigger, bigger issue
with regard to artificial intelligence because of the
ability for it to do things. And these
chips that Nvidia does, and which is why
Nvidia is making so much money, they have
trillions of dollars in market cap, and they're
gonna continue to grow because they have a
demand. And what are they tied to? They're
(05:44):
tied to
Taiwan and the semiconductors and these chips that
ultimately go into everything. There's there's basically the
ability
for AI to do things a lot faster,
and, obviously, this is will tie into data
centers and all kinds of other things. But
any of these artificial intelligence that each of
these companies are designing, ultimately, there'll be,
competition that weeds down and or merges these
(06:07):
capabilities, and there'll be only a few that
survive. Right now, there's there's, I don't know,
six, seven, eight, nine, or whatever. They're demanding
these chips, and and Trump has made the
decision to approve the sale
of these chips
that NVIDIA makes to China. Now is that
part of a bigger play in a negotiation
with China that Trump is doing that we
(06:29):
are or not aware of? Brian?
Brian, hold that thought because it's important enough
for us to give some time to it,
and we have to take a quick break.
I worry so much about what is to
come
with all of the wars that Donald Trump
has been telling us he has stopped
and how the countries involved are
(06:50):
going right back at each other again,
trying to destroy one or the other. I
mean, all you have to do is,
look at Pakistan and India. But
with the tech industry and with what is
being done with the with the chips,
has it taken Taiwan
maybe a little bit off the table
(07:11):
as a target for China?
Because Taiwan is the main
manufacturer
of these chips,
has has
allowing them to buy the chips from us
sort of decreased
the desire for Taiwan
for China?
(07:34):
I would caution
that mentality
because the thing that stopped China from doing
anything today is Donald Trump,
Number one.
While Donald Trump is trying to do things
and negotiate with China and he's trying to
find things of leverage
and he's gotta give and take. I mean,
any good negotiation just gotta be give and
take and you gotta make sure that you
feel like you're getting something and maybe that's
(07:55):
part of the ploy here with with everything
he's doing with regard to tariffs and trying
to get our economy,
back on back on schedule as or as
well as all the other stuff that's going
on, you know, trying to secure the border,
enforce the law and audit the government and
the billions dollars in fraud. But a company,
so Taiwan itself as the country has a
lot of these companies and then there's one
in particular, Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing.
(08:17):
I can't remember the stock ticker. I think
it's TSM or something. They're the main driver.
They're the main supplier of Nvidia
that ultimately drives the manufacturer
of these chips.
Now, with regard to your comment or your
question on whether or not this has stymied
this, no. I don't I
mean, if I'm gonna be very pessimistic, I
don't think so at all. I think China
(08:38):
still has the goal to do this and
obviously if they disrupt the entire supply chain
by moving in
with war drums with regard to Taiwan, that
obviously impacts the global supply chain that affects
everybody, meaning everyone's gotta hold on to their
existing phones, computers, etcetera, And there won't be
any kind of updates until that supply chain
has been exhausted and then it starts up
(08:58):
again when a theoretical war or aggression or
whatever happens. And that is a very powerful
leverage point for China to be able to
deal with other countries in the region, not
just The United States on the global scale.
So, again, this is positioning. This is jockeying.
This is all kinds of things. Remember, China
does not look at things in three, five,
ten, fifteen years. They look at things in
(09:19):
hundred year views
so that they can have domination. That's just
part of their culture. You gotta understand your
opponent and your enemy with regard to that.
And I think Trump gets that, but he
is only confined to the three years that
he has in office. So he's trying to
do what he can do that has a
long lasting impact. And if he can do
something with regard to, hey, I'm gonna give
you this little, treat over here, China. Here's
(09:40):
some chips while I decimate you through tariffs
that will ultimately stay on and no future
president will lift, then that might be something
of an advantage in negotiations.
But I think overall, China still wants Taiwan,
and they want to have control of those
sea lanes in the South China Sea, and
they absolutely want control
over products that control the global supply chain,
(10:01):
especially semiconductors
that go into NVIDIA chips. Well, we know
that NVIDIA
wants to sell to whoever wants to buy
them. I mean, they want their company to
be number one, I guess it is, and,
and to stay that way. So they'll sell
to anybody, even America's enemies.
Do those semiconductor
(10:21):
chips do do they have anything to do
with the,
navy
and the weapons used on naval ships?
Are they part and parcel of all of
that?
They could be.
In terms of capabilities, again, the main driver
for the demand for a lot of these
semiconductors
(10:42):
today is the overarching
drive for artificial intelligence.
Now when you think about this on the
simplest terms, right, anyone that's familiar with any
of these GROC, ChatGPT,
Copilot, etcetera, you can have it do something
in microseconds. For example, let's say you're applying
for a job. You need to write a
cover letter. You take the job description, you
copy and paste in there, and you say,
(11:02):
chat GPT, write me a cover letter. Update
the cover letter based on my resume. You
copy and paste your resume in there, and
then within microseconds,
it spits out a cover letter for you.
Now, that's a very minute
way to use artificial intelligence.
The same could be said with command, control,
or any other key five systems
that the Navy and or other military uses
(11:22):
to be able to make decisions in a
faster amount of time based on the intel
and the data that's being provided.
IE Skynet, the Terminator movies that is in
sci fi and Hollywood
that was came out in 1984.
Here we are forty years later where it's
possibly becoming a reality. Now, there's a lot
of things from a design standpoint but in
terms of the capabilities,
(11:43):
it yes. It could be in there for
a multitude of reasons from a comp computation
standpoint and the faster ability
to compute data so decisions can be made
in a given time frame.
Wow. Do,
American ships measure up to the Chinese Navy,
which is going full blast and building more
(12:03):
and more of of the subs and the
ships that could be used to take over
Taiwan?
So China has more ships and subs than
we do at this juncture. And even with
the things that I've worked on, Columbia class
submarines
and what's which is supposed to replace the
Ohio, class submarines,
from now until 2080.
I don't know. I think it's 2086 or
(12:25):
something.
With regard to the lifespan,
no. We're not building as much from a
naval standpoint, though we should. Pete Hegseth, as
secretary of war, is violently aware of this
deficit
and is reallocating
a lot of resources towards the Navy. Because
again, where is potential future wars that are
likely to happen? It's naval. It's not in
(12:46):
the Air Force. It's not in the army
from a ground stand standpoint It's navy and
it's space which is hence why trump created
space force, which again was a spin off
It was already existing within air force and
it spun off into its own military branch
and a lot of stuff was Declassified etcetera.
That's that was the genesis of that. But
from a naval standpoint, we need to build
more ships. It's very difficult. There's only so
(13:07):
many shipyards in,
in The United States. Fincantieri,
is in Wisconsin, you know, where your caller
from, a few minutes ago is. They're up
in the Green Bay area, Marinette area. You
have Bollinger Shipyards. You have,
General Dynamics Electric Boat, which is up in,
Groton, Connecticut.
You have,
(13:28):
Austal down in Mobile, Alabama.
So any of the basically, in the Gulf
Coast, your your coast, and then a couple
of the Northern Lakes, there's your ship building.
But a lot of them are behind
the curve ball,
with being able to produce this stuff. It
is very costly, and it takes a lot
of skill. You need
machinists, you need welders. And there are a
(13:50):
lot of tools
and,
machines now that can do what
30 welders could do that now only 10
welders need to do and two supervisors with
these machines that can do things with zero
tolerance, which is very impressive.
Fincantieri, I believe, is one of those shipyards
that has the most,
capabilities. And, obviously, Trump and HEGSETH
(14:12):
and Naval Command has been up at that
shipyard
to basically promote that and hopefully they win
some contracts. That's where those RFPs will be
issued,
for all these shipyards to compete on. But
we need to maintain that. And obviously, the
most local shipyard is Philly Shipyard, not far
from us. And they just do repair and
overhaul. To my knowledge, they haven't won any
actual production
(14:33):
ship programs in years. And if that doesn't
if that shipyard doesn't have work, then guess
what happens? Just like any business that shuts
down. That's a national security thing. So that's
why
HAGSENF is trying to do things to get
all these shipyards
up to snuff so that when a RFP
comes out for the design of a new
ship,
aircraft carrier, submarine,
(14:54):
any other surface vehicles that the Navy needs,
that many shipyards can bid on it, not
only making this a competitive thing to drive
down the cost for the taxpayer that ultimately
pay for this, but to keep these shipyards
in business as well as create and generate
work. So that's a long winded way of
saying,
we're behind. We need to increase that. But
(15:14):
in terms
of total military capability versus China's,
we are light years ahead of them when
you include space, when you include army,
and and the likes of everything else and
the other capabilities that we can't share,
even in war games to make sure that
we're
or where we need to be as a
country. Yeah. I would think that we would
be using drones if China was going to
(15:37):
attack Taiwan on the water with their navies.
That we would have drones well prepared to
go after them or any submarines beneath the
surface,
who might be along the coast.
Yeah. So there's a lot of development for
undersea
autonomous,
and unmanned, meaning underwater drones.
There's also things that are mine hunters, you
(15:59):
know, obviously if you have, let's say for
example, you have
explosive devices undersea,
that are protecting your mainland. Let's say China
has those and you're gonna send in, you're
not gonna send a man crew to go
find those and disarm them. You're gonna send
an unmanned,
undersea vehicle to deal with that whether,
to dismantle it or to, you know, because
(16:19):
a drone when it's out of actual weapons
and missiles, guess what? The drone itself is
a weapon because you can use that to
from an air standpoint, you can have that
drive into something like a rocket and from
an undersea development standpoint, obviously, that's an underwater
bomb.
So yes, there are all those things that
are being pushed from an unmanned perspective from
the air, from the surface, and from undersea,
(16:41):
that's being developed as a more or less
your marines, the ones that go in first.
Oh, my goodness gracious. Do we need more,
in the way of marines, naval officers?
Do we have enough military? We we talk
about the fact that, military,
was,
degraded tremendously under the Biden Obama administration.
(17:02):
Have we returned to a point where we
can be assured that if in fact there
was to be a skirmish of any kind
that we would have the people who have
been well trained
to take over the reins and do what
needs to be done?
So maybe. It depends on how you look
at it because China's military
in terms of actual numbers, people is twice
(17:23):
the size of ours.
And
again, China has a billion
people. We have three thirty million people.
So,
in terms of the,
in terms of the targets for each of
the military branches, paid hacks since he became
secretary of war has exceeded every single one
of those. Now, the question is whether or
(17:44):
not those baseline targets are accurate or if
they need to be increased, which I suspect
that he will be increasing.
But there is a re a return to
enlistment
that was gone for a significant amount of
time, especially all of the military
that were forced out because they wouldn't take
a COVID vaccination,
that were forced out by the Biden administration.
So there is a return and obviously all
(18:04):
the other DEI and woke nonsense that Higgsdeath
has now removed making it again, the whole
point is being a lethal fighting force to
protect The United States, kill people and break
things. That's the whole ethos of being a
war fighter.
And so all of that stuff is being
addressed.
And it's whether or not we increase
that. But in terms of again, if we
had some kind of war game play out,
(18:25):
the game theory of The United States versus
China, it would not necessarily be
men and women in uniform. It's gonna be
the vehicles and missiles and and the, you
know, other things that we have to to
war that out. And again, that's where the
technological
advancement
is very And, you know, it's a little
scary, Brian, when you consider that we've had
Confucius centers in our country
(18:48):
for decades.
These are Chinese nationalist students who come over,
work in the same laboratories
as our own,
educated,
students who wanna go into
sometimes the weapons industry,
and that these young men and women
who are part of enemy countries
(19:08):
are allowed to walk out
and perhaps even become part of the industry
itself? I mean,
do we have to get rid of our
Confucius centers and all the people who are
here as students from our,
enemy countries?
Do we have to remove them
so that they don't end up
working in weapons industry and taking back that
(19:30):
kind of information to their countries?
Yes and yes. So this is one thing
I deviate with our president because, again, if
there's any instance of the fact that there
are 600,000
Chinese nationals in our colleges
today,
why?
Is there 600,000
spots that could be for American citizens?
Probably.
(19:51):
So, again, when we're dealing with these kinds
of things, there's a lot of things at
play. But again, if if I can make,
you know, wave the magic wand, I would
say, yep, no more. But a lot of
these schools
have developed,
sister campuses
in China and in Hong Kong, etcetera,
to try to grow and make money. And
now again, this is a bigger problem because
(20:11):
all these colleges and universities are tax exempt.
They shouldn't be, they operate like businesses, and
they shouldn't be exempt from taxes. And truthfully,
we need to right size this all these
colleges. Again, my personal view has always been
that these colleges and universities grew too much
to be the one
stop shop for everything. No. You should focus
on a few core competencies. Let's say, for
instance, Johns Hopkins. What are they known for?
(20:32):
Medicine, engineering,
and public policy. And from a sporting standpoint,
women's soccer and men's lacrosse. That's all they
should have. They shouldn't expand to other things.
And all these colleges have tried to be
all things so they could just take 18
year olds money for four years, not without
any verification of whether or not they can
actually be employed, etcetera. So that's number one.
Number two, yes. And this has been you
(20:54):
can Google this. There are plenty of instances
where there have been Chinese nationals that have
been arrested after,
espionage and stealing secrets working at these companies.
And we have at every company I've worked
for
massive amounts of annual training to look,
to be aware as an employee of a
company to raise the red flag when you
see something that doesn't look right.
(21:16):
That could be one of these instances coming
on. They've plenty of recent examples to utilize
of Chinese nationals
trying to
steal drawings, engineering drawings,
other kinds of requirements and other capabilities and
sharing that. And this is again, this is
why we have ITAR,
to make sure that there isn't an exchange
via electronic transfer, I e email or anything
(21:37):
else, of this information across cyberspace.
So there's all these things that are put
in place, but again, why even risk it?
What is the advantage
for any given common United States citizen of
having the Confucius centers in colleges and universities
that you're ultimately paying for in the form
of higher taxes anyway, or at higher prices
that you're sending your kids off to college
(21:59):
in these exorbitant amount of student loans that
of course have no risk pool, right? You
can study basket weaving and it doesn't matter
what your interest rate is rather than, you
know, let's say medicine or engineering where you
know there's a return on investment or business
or whatever, where there should be a risk
assessment, your interest rate should be less because
you are less risky because you're gonna come
out and have the ability to pay back
those student loans. And again,
(22:20):
there should be a right sizing of all
these schools. And if and again, Trump's opinion
was that a lot of colleges
and universities would be hit detrimentally
financially. Okay. Fine. Guess what? The whole real
world does that when there are up and
uptimes and and bad times. Businesses
right size
how they run their operations. Education and colleges
should do the same. And guess what? If
(22:40):
the demand goes down for colleges, guess what?
Prices will fall as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Every time we add government to
a formula
for industry or for anything in in
private industry,
we add
people
becoming part and parcel
of needing government
(23:02):
rather than simply using them when they need
them.
They become part of their lives, part of
the fiber of their lives. Government takes over
and all of a sudden, what they've presented
to us as gifts, we will forgive this,
your loan. We you know, we're gonna lower
interest rates.
We become prisoners of our government
who know that we can't seem to live
(23:23):
without them anymore. And quite frankly, I don't
know about you, Brian, but I am sick
and damn tired of it.
What you bring what you bring to the
table is everything that we need to know
about what our country where we're headed.
And I can't tell you how much I
appreciate it because of all of the
education that you've received, all of the,
(23:45):
the information
that you have available to you in the
job that you have that you can't reveal
probably 99%
of it simply because
you are a patriot.
You were told this is,
this is information that no one can have.
It belongs it with you and with your
your bosses.
(24:06):
I so admire that, and I can't begin
to tell you how much I value your
time here
with us, Brian, on Fitzherbert
Friday.
So thank you, my friend. And, you can
take that to the bank.
Anybody who would hire you for any job
would be getting the best example of what
America is.
(24:27):
So keep up the good work, Brian.
Truly appreciate that. Yeah. I appreciate that. I
signed, I signed that agreement with the United
States government when I was 24 years old,
and, it's been going on since. So I
appreciate that. I appreciate the kind words, and
always
always nice talking with you and your listeners
about the issues of the day. Well, god
bless you, and thank you, Brian, again. I
so appreciate it. Have a good one.
(24:48):
Alright. Bye.
Anne Baker on talking with Anne. And I
have Brian Fitzherbert on. Brian, I didn't realize
that you were online.
Anyway, good morning, Brian. How the heck are
you?
Morning, Anne. I'm doing well. Thanks for having
me. Well,
yeah.
It's,
it's a good day.
What would you like to discuss? Because
(00:22):
you're
the man who is the weapons industry
guru.
You you've done this for,
what, close to fifteen years now?
Yep. What can we expect,
particularly with the weapons systems that we know
we're selling
to other countries?
And
(00:43):
should we be doing that? I know that
you said there's a fail safe, that we
only sell them things that we can shut
down
if necessary.
But are we doing the right thing by
selling to countries like China?
Well, I rephrase it, not necessarily shut down,
but have options and capabilities to make sure
that we can deter those weapons if they're
(01:05):
used on us.
But even further with China, obviously, that's a
difficult situation because they're clearly a geopolitical foe.
They would like not nothing more than to,
be the number one economic power, the only
superpower in the military force and they obviously
want to move on Taiwan for a multitude
of reasons.
And obviously the the supply lanes that are
(01:25):
tied to not just,
the South China Sea, but obviously your overall
your overarching global supply chain,
from a semiconductor
standpoint out of Taiwan, which obviously
everything that you, me, and all of our
listeners
have in their pockets at any given time
in their phones or any other devices or
technology,
that's a control thing. So when we talk
(01:46):
about
any kind of interaction with China with regard
to military
weapons,
you know, there's obviously cautionary and there's very
little, if anything,
that is sold specific to China, especially since
they try to reverse engineer anything that we
build to begin with. Yeah. So that's kind
of a no no to begin with. But,
again, that,
(02:08):
hopefully, that never comes to pass. But should
it come to pass where there's a confrontation
with China, it's going to be a sea
war,
with regard to ships and obviously with things
that have been,
leaked recently this week
with regard to,
war games and evaluations, whether or not that's
accurate information or if that was deliberately leaked,
(02:29):
to create,
theatricality
and for psychological warfare or if it is
in fact true, that's another story to to
digest,
with what would happen should war games come
out and what that game theory would be
is how many ships would be sunk, how
many,
missiles and or weapons would be utilized
if all out war happened
with China or within the South China Sea,
(02:51):
or a triggering event like China moving on
Taiwan to make it part of, you know,
China as opposed to an independent nation and
it's an island obviously.
So,
there's all those things that play into the
calculus, but again, there should be no justifiable
reason,
to sell any kind of military equipment and
or weapons to China.
(03:12):
Much like,
much like we do not use any
Chinese suppliers
for any,
for the vast majority of military grade products,
weapons, vehicles, etcetera because
they
are abundantly,
an example of
if I dumb this down, an example of
(03:33):
counterfeit parts. You know, you have an engineering
drawing and it has particular requirements on it,
I. E. Material for a particular reason (03:38):
heating,
cooling, vibe, all those kinds of things to
make sure that
that type of material is used in the
manufacturing of a particular designed,
sub assembly or smaller part or whatever. And
if you don't use that particular
material,
then obviously the design of whatever that goes
into a product does not have its intended
(03:58):
effect. So then you have this issue
up and down the supply chain of counterfeit
parts because instead of making it out of
one material, they've made it out of a
cheaper, crappier material that does not support the
design and could have ramifications. Obviously if you're
building
weapons,
from an explosive standpoint, you know, it's gotta
absorb heat, it's gotta have and sustain vibe,
(04:20):
meaning vibration tests,
cold conditions, sand, all those kinds of things
that go into the design of these parts
and why a particular material is chosen for
engineers to design. That's exactly why we
barely use China for any,
basically
small products or any kind of thing within
the supply chain that hopefully winds up in
(04:41):
a military grade weapon or product. Oh, and
you would know. You would know because you
make sure that every part of the weapons
that are built in your company are made
with the exact requirements,
that the weapon, needs.
But I I had recently read where we're
allowing the sale of NVIDIA's h 200 AI
(05:02):
chips
to China. Yeah.
How is that going to impact us down
the road?
Alright. So there's multiple multiple things,
at play here. Obviously,
tongue in cheek, my reference here to Skynet
is is tongue in cheek, but it's very
real for those of you that are friends,
that are, fans of the Terminator movie. So
person of the year, was the architects of
(05:24):
artificial intelligence according to Time Magazine. What a
joke. Should have been Charlie Kirk. Whatever.
But this is becoming a bigger, bigger issue
with regard to artificial intelligence because of the
ability for it to do things. And these
chips that Nvidia does, and which is why
Nvidia is making so much money, they have
trillions of dollars in market cap, and they're
gonna continue to grow because they have a
demand. And what are they tied to? They're
(05:44):
tied to
Taiwan and the semiconductors and these chips that
ultimately go into everything. There's there's basically the
ability
for AI to do things a lot faster,
and, obviously, this is will tie into data
centers and all kinds of other things. But
any of these artificial intelligence that each of
these companies are designing, ultimately, there'll be,
competition that weeds down and or merges these
(06:07):
capabilities, and there'll be only a few that
survive. Right now, there's there's, I don't know,
six, seven, eight, nine, or whatever. They're demanding
these chips, and and Trump has made the
decision to approve the sale
of these chips
that NVIDIA makes to China. Now is that
part of a bigger play in a negotiation
with China that Trump is doing that we
(06:29):
are or not aware of? Brian?
Brian, hold that thought because it's important enough
for us to give some time to it,
and we have to take a quick break.
I worry so much about what is to
come
with all of the wars that Donald Trump
has been telling us he has stopped
and how the countries involved are
(06:50):
going right back at each other again,
trying to destroy one or the other. I
mean, all you have to do is,
look at Pakistan and India. But
with the tech industry and with what is
being done with the with the chips,
has it taken Taiwan
maybe a little bit off the table
(07:11):
as a target for China?
Because Taiwan is the main
manufacturer
of these chips,
has has
allowing them to buy the chips from us
sort of decreased
the desire for Taiwan
for China?
(07:34):
I would caution
that mentality
because the thing that stopped China from doing
anything today is Donald Trump,
Number one.
While Donald Trump is trying to do things
and negotiate with China and he's trying to
find things of leverage
and he's gotta give and take. I mean,
any good negotiation just gotta be give and
take and you gotta make sure that you
feel like you're getting something and maybe that's
(07:55):
part of the ploy here with with everything
he's doing with regard to tariffs and trying
to get our economy,
back on back on schedule as or as
well as all the other stuff that's going
on, you know, trying to secure the border,
enforce the law and audit the government and
the billions dollars in fraud. But a company,
so Taiwan itself as the country has a
lot of these companies and then there's one
in particular, Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing.
(08:17):
I can't remember the stock ticker. I think
it's TSM or something. They're the main driver.
They're the main supplier of Nvidia
that ultimately drives the manufacturer
of these chips.
Now, with regard to your comment or your
question on whether or not this has stymied
this, no. I don't I
mean, if I'm gonna be very pessimistic, I
don't think so at all. I think China
(08:38):
still has the goal to do this and
obviously if they disrupt the entire supply chain
by moving in
with war drums with regard to Taiwan, that
obviously impacts the global supply chain that affects
everybody, meaning everyone's gotta hold on to their
existing phones, computers, etcetera, And there won't be
any kind of updates until that supply chain
has been exhausted and then it starts up
(08:58):
again when a theoretical war or aggression or
whatever happens. And that is a very powerful
leverage point for China to be able to
deal with other countries in the region, not
just The United States on the global scale.
So, again, this is positioning. This is jockeying.
This is all kinds of things. Remember, China
does not look at things in three, five,
ten, fifteen years. They look at things in
(09:19):
hundred year views
so that they can have domination. That's just
part of their culture. You gotta understand your
opponent and your enemy with regard to that.
And I think Trump gets that, but he
is only confined to the three years that
he has in office. So he's trying to
do what he can do that has a
long lasting impact. And if he can do
something with regard to, hey, I'm gonna give
you this little, treat over here, China. Here's
(09:40):
some chips while I decimate you through tariffs
that will ultimately stay on and no future
president will lift, then that might be something
of an advantage in negotiations.
But I think overall, China still wants Taiwan,
and they want to have control of those
sea lanes in the South China Sea, and
they absolutely want control
over products that control the global supply chain,
(10:01):
especially semiconductors
that go into NVIDIA chips. Well, we know
that NVIDIA
wants to sell to whoever wants to buy
them. I mean, they want their company to
be number one, I guess it is, and,
and to stay that way. So they'll sell
to anybody, even America's enemies.
Do those semiconductor
(10:21):
chips do do they have anything to do
with the,
navy
and the weapons used on naval ships?
Are they part and parcel of all of
that?
They could be.
In terms of capabilities, again, the main driver
for the demand for a lot of these
semiconductors
(10:42):
today is the overarching
drive for artificial intelligence.
Now when you think about this on the
simplest terms, right, anyone that's familiar with any
of these GROC, ChatGPT,
Copilot, etcetera, you can have it do something
in microseconds. For example, let's say you're applying
for a job. You need to write a
cover letter. You take the job description, you
copy and paste in there, and you say,
(11:02):
chat GPT, write me a cover letter. Update
the cover letter based on my resume. You
copy and paste your resume in there, and
then within microseconds,
it spits out a cover letter for you.
Now, that's a very minute
way to use artificial intelligence.
The same could be said with command, control,
or any other key five systems
that the Navy and or other military uses
(11:22):
to be able to make decisions in a
faster amount of time based on the intel
and the data that's being provided.
IE Skynet, the Terminator movies that is in
sci fi and Hollywood
that was came out in 1984.
Here we are forty years later where it's
possibly becoming a reality. Now, there's a lot
of things from a design standpoint but in
terms of the capabilities,
(11:43):
it yes. It could be in there for
a multitude of reasons from a comp computation
standpoint and the faster ability
to compute data so decisions can be made
in a given time frame.
Wow. Do,
American ships measure up to the Chinese Navy,
which is going full blast and building more
(12:03):
and more of of the subs and the
ships that could be used to take over
Taiwan?
So China has more ships and subs than
we do at this juncture. And even with
the things that I've worked on, Columbia class
submarines
and what's which is supposed to replace the
Ohio, class submarines,
from now until 2080.
I don't know. I think it's 2086 or
(12:25):
something.
With regard to the lifespan,
no. We're not building as much from a
naval standpoint, though we should. Pete Hegseth, as
secretary of war, is violently aware of this
deficit
and is reallocating
a lot of resources towards the Navy. Because
again, where is potential future wars that are
likely to happen? It's naval. It's not in
(12:46):
the Air Force. It's not in the army
from a ground stand standpoint It's navy and
it's space which is hence why trump created
space force, which again was a spin off
It was already existing within air force and
it spun off into its own military branch
and a lot of stuff was Declassified etcetera.
That's that was the genesis of that. But
from a naval standpoint, we need to build
more ships. It's very difficult. There's only so
(13:07):
many shipyards in,
in The United States. Fincantieri,
is in Wisconsin, you know, where your caller
from, a few minutes ago is. They're up
in the Green Bay area, Marinette area. You
have Bollinger Shipyards. You have,
General Dynamics Electric Boat, which is up in,
Groton, Connecticut.
You have,
(13:28):
Austal down in Mobile, Alabama.
So any of the basically, in the Gulf
Coast, your your coast, and then a couple
of the Northern Lakes, there's your ship building.
But a lot of them are behind
the curve ball,
with being able to produce this stuff. It
is very costly, and it takes a lot
of skill. You need
machinists, you need welders. And there are a
(13:50):
lot of tools
and,
machines now that can do what
30 welders could do that now only 10
welders need to do and two supervisors with
these machines that can do things with zero
tolerance, which is very impressive.
Fincantieri, I believe, is one of those shipyards
that has the most,
capabilities. And, obviously, Trump and HEGSETH
(14:12):
and Naval Command has been up at that
shipyard
to basically promote that and hopefully they win
some contracts. That's where those RFPs will be
issued,
for all these shipyards to compete on. But
we need to maintain that. And obviously, the
most local shipyard is Philly Shipyard, not far
from us. And they just do repair and
overhaul. To my knowledge, they haven't won any
actual production
(14:33):
ship programs in years. And if that doesn't
if that shipyard doesn't have work, then guess
what happens? Just like any business that shuts
down. That's a national security thing. So that's
why
HAGSENF is trying to do things to get
all these shipyards
up to snuff so that when a RFP
comes out for the design of a new
ship,
aircraft carrier, submarine,
(14:54):
any other surface vehicles that the Navy needs,
that many shipyards can bid on it, not
only making this a competitive thing to drive
down the cost for the taxpayer that ultimately
pay for this, but to keep these shipyards
in business as well as create and generate
work. So that's a long winded way of
saying,
we're behind. We need to increase that. But
(15:14):
in terms
of total military capability versus China's,
we are light years ahead of them when
you include space, when you include army,
and and the likes of everything else and
the other capabilities that we can't share,
even in war games to make sure that
we're
or where we need to be as a
country. Yeah. I would think that we would
be using drones if China was going to
(15:37):
attack Taiwan on the water with their navies.
That we would have drones well prepared to
go after them or any submarines beneath the
surface,
who might be along the coast.
Yeah. So there's a lot of development for
undersea
autonomous,
and unmanned, meaning underwater drones.
There's also things that are mine hunters, you
(15:59):
know, obviously if you have, let's say for
example, you have
explosive devices undersea,
that are protecting your mainland. Let's say China
has those and you're gonna send in, you're
not gonna send a man crew to go
find those and disarm them. You're gonna send
an unmanned,
undersea vehicle to deal with that whether,
to dismantle it or to, you know, because
(16:19):
a drone when it's out of actual weapons
and missiles, guess what? The drone itself is
a weapon because you can use that to
from an air standpoint, you can have that
drive into something like a rocket and from
an undersea development standpoint, obviously, that's an underwater
bomb.
So yes, there are all those things that
are being pushed from an unmanned perspective from
the air, from the surface, and from undersea,
(16:41):
that's being developed as a more or less
your marines, the ones that go in first.
Oh, my goodness gracious. Do we need more,
in the way of marines, naval officers?
Do we have enough military? We we talk
about the fact that, military,
was,
degraded tremendously under the Biden Obama administration.
(17:02):
Have we returned to a point where we
can be assured that if in fact there
was to be a skirmish of any kind
that we would have the people who have
been well trained
to take over the reins and do what
needs to be done?
So maybe. It depends on how you look
at it because China's military
in terms of actual numbers, people is twice
(17:23):
the size of ours.
And
again, China has a billion
people. We have three thirty million people.
So,
in terms of the,
in terms of the targets for each of
the military branches, paid hacks since he became
secretary of war has exceeded every single one
of those. Now, the question is whether or
(17:44):
not those baseline targets are accurate or if
they need to be increased, which I suspect
that he will be increasing.
But there is a re a return to
enlistment
that was gone for a significant amount of
time, especially all of the military
that were forced out because they wouldn't take
a COVID vaccination,
that were forced out by the Biden administration.
So there is a return and obviously all
(18:04):
the other DEI and woke nonsense that Higgsdeath
has now removed making it again, the whole
point is being a lethal fighting force to
protect The United States, kill people and break
things. That's the whole ethos of being a
war fighter.
And so all of that stuff is being
addressed.
And it's whether or not we increase
that. But in terms of again, if we
had some kind of war game play out,
(18:25):
the game theory of The United States versus
China, it would not necessarily be
men and women in uniform. It's gonna be
the vehicles and missiles and and the, you
know, other things that we have to to
war that out. And again, that's where the
technological
advancement
is very And, you know, it's a little
scary, Brian, when you consider that we've had
Confucius centers in our country
(18:48):
for decades.
These are Chinese nationalist students who come over,
work in the same laboratories
as our own,
educated,
students who wanna go into
sometimes the weapons industry,
and that these young men and women
who are part of enemy countries
(19:08):
are allowed to walk out
and perhaps even become part of the industry
itself? I mean,
do we have to get rid of our
Confucius centers and all the people who are
here as students from our,
enemy countries?
Do we have to remove them
so that they don't end up
working in weapons industry and taking back that
(19:30):
kind of information to their countries?
Yes and yes. So this is one thing
I deviate with our president because, again, if
there's any instance of the fact that there
are 600,000
Chinese nationals in our colleges
today,
why?
Is there 600,000
spots that could be for American citizens?
Probably.
(19:51):
So, again, when we're dealing with these kinds
of things, there's a lot of things at
play. But again, if if I can make,
you know, wave the magic wand, I would
say, yep, no more. But a lot of
these schools
have developed,
sister campuses
in China and in Hong Kong, etcetera,
to try to grow and make money. And
now again, this is a bigger problem because
(20:11):
all these colleges and universities are tax exempt.
They shouldn't be, they operate like businesses, and
they shouldn't be exempt from taxes. And truthfully,
we need to right size this all these
colleges. Again, my personal view has always been
that these colleges and universities grew too much
to be the one
stop shop for everything. No. You should focus
on a few core competencies. Let's say, for
instance, Johns Hopkins. What are they known for?
(20:32):
Medicine, engineering,
and public policy. And from a sporting standpoint,
women's soccer and men's lacrosse. That's all they
should have. They shouldn't expand to other things.
And all these colleges have tried to be
all things so they could just take 18
year olds money for four years, not without
any verification of whether or not they can
actually be employed, etcetera. So that's number one.
Number two, yes. And this has been you
(20:54):
can Google this. There are plenty of instances
where there have been Chinese nationals that have
been arrested after,
espionage and stealing secrets working at these companies.
And we have at every company I've worked
for
massive amounts of annual training to look,
to be aware as an employee of a
company to raise the red flag when you
see something that doesn't look right.
(21:16):
That could be one of these instances coming
on. They've plenty of recent examples to utilize
of Chinese nationals
trying to
steal drawings, engineering drawings,
other kinds of requirements and other capabilities and
sharing that. And this is again, this is
why we have ITAR,
to make sure that there isn't an exchange
via electronic transfer, I e email or anything
(21:37):
else, of this information across cyberspace.
So there's all these things that are put
in place, but again, why even risk it?
What is the advantage
for any given common United States citizen of
having the Confucius centers in colleges and universities
that you're ultimately paying for in the form
of higher taxes anyway, or at higher prices
that you're sending your kids off to college
(21:59):
in these exorbitant amount of student loans that
of course have no risk pool, right? You
can study basket weaving and it doesn't matter
what your interest rate is rather than, you
know, let's say medicine or engineering where you
know there's a return on investment or business
or whatever, where there should be a risk
assessment, your interest rate should be less because
you are less risky because you're gonna come
out and have the ability to pay back
those student loans. And again,
(22:20):
there should be a right sizing of all
these schools. And if and again, Trump's opinion
was that a lot of colleges
and universities would be hit detrimentally
financially. Okay. Fine. Guess what? The whole real
world does that when there are up and
uptimes and and bad times. Businesses
right size
how they run their operations. Education and colleges
should do the same. And guess what? If
(22:40):
the demand goes down for colleges, guess what?
Prices will fall as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Every time we add government to
a formula
for industry or for anything in in
private industry,
we add
people
becoming part and parcel
of needing government
(23:02):
rather than simply using them when they need
them.
They become part of their lives, part of
the fiber of their lives. Government takes over
and all of a sudden, what they've presented
to us as gifts, we will forgive this,
your loan. We you know, we're gonna lower
interest rates.
We become prisoners of our government
who know that we can't seem to live
(23:23):
without them anymore. And quite frankly, I don't
know about you, Brian, but I am sick
and damn tired of it.
What you bring what you bring to the
table is everything that we need to know
about what our country where we're headed.
And I can't tell you how much I
appreciate it because of all of the
education that you've received, all of the,
(23:45):
the information
that you have available to you in the
job that you have that you can't reveal
probably 99%
of it simply because
you are a patriot.
You were told this is,
this is information that no one can have.
It belongs it with you and with your
your bosses.
(24:06):
I so admire that, and I can't begin
to tell you how much I value your
time here
with us, Brian, on Fitzherbert
Friday.
So thank you, my friend. And, you can
take that to the bank.
Anybody who would hire you for any job
would be getting the best example of what
America is.
(24:27):
So keep up the good work, Brian.
Truly appreciate that. Yeah. I appreciate that. I
signed, I signed that agreement with the United
States government when I was 24 years old,
and, it's been going on since. So I
appreciate that. I appreciate the kind words, and
always
always nice talking with you and your listeners
about the issues of the day. Well, god
bless you, and thank you, Brian, again. I
so appreciate it. Have a good one.
(24:48):
Alright. Bye.
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