September 8, 2023 • 31 mins
In this episode, Tudor and Tommy Waller discuss the need for transparency, accountability, and whistleblower protection in the electric utility industry. They highlight the potential mismanagement of power lines by Hawaiian Electric and the devastating wildfires in Maui. The conversation also delves into the national security risks associated with the electrical grid, including the potential for foreign adversaries to disrupt or control it. They criticize the lack of bipartisan efforts to secure the grid and express concerns about the feasibility and security of relying solely on clean energy sources. Additionally, Waller discusses the negative impact of vaccine mandates on the military and raises awareness about the potential consequences of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. For more information visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast in the Clay
and Buck podcast Network. Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
This week, we approach one month since the devastating wildfires
struck Maui. Fires engulfed the town of Lehina. One hundred
and fifteen people lost their lives and at least three
(00:22):
hundred and eighty five people are still missing. Tens of
billions of dollars worth of damage has been done, making
this the deadliest wildfire the US has seen in more
than one hundred years. Still, there's a lot to be
uncovered on the exact cause of the fires, but all
signs are pointing to mismanagement of the power lines by
Hawaiian Electric. This brings up a number of questions related
(00:45):
to the safety and security of our entire electrical grid.
So today I'm joined by an expert, Tommy Waller. He
is a retired Marine Reserve lieutenant colonel with two decades
of experience, and he's the current president and CEO of
the Center for Security Policy. Tommy, thank you so much
for joining the podcast. I'm so glad you're with me today.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Sure, Twitter, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, the story with Maui. I think it goes beyond
just Maui, but what we're looking at in Maui is
pretty devastating. I actually, just before I sat down here
to talk to you today, I was watching a video
from some residents there saying, we're just done. We're just
done with the United States. We're done with the United
States government. We feel like we've been totally abandoned because
(01:30):
not only did this happen with the electric grid, and
they're not getting answers, they're not really being served by
the US government right now. Either. What do you from
from your experience level, what do you see as having
happened on the ground there, and could it have been prevented?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, Tutor, it's again it's going to have to be investigated.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
But just the cursory investigation that I did just looking
at video from both the local news media social media,
you know, you witnessed in numerous locations electric grid infrastructure
causing fires. You know, transmission lines on the ground in
the grass, flames abounding from those transmission lines. In some cases,
(02:12):
there were video of substations that were arcing and sparking,
and so you know, it looks a lot like the
fire came from the electric grid, and when you discussed
tootor the mismanagement of it, you know, the argument that
I most recently made in the Wall Street Journal is
that the people who would know the best if it
were mismanaged would be the actual employees within the electric
(02:35):
utility industry, and right now they don't have any whistleblow
or protection to be able to speak out to the
American people about issues of safety or security that they see.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And that's something that I think we need to change
in this country.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And you say that because in the past, folks have
spoken out and they've lost their jobs. So you feel
like there could be potentially this culture of fear. If
I say something, I might not have a job. But
if I don't say something, then this could potentially be catastrophic.
And we're seeing this. I mean, we saw this in
California and now we've seen this in Hawaii. But this
goes beyond just the danger. I mean, we also saw
(03:10):
this in Texas. They said that that was mismanagement as well.
And so you go from fire to freeze in the
middle of an ice storm. I mean, this is all
pretty catastrophic that could happen if something else, If this
continues right to you.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Just mentioned the real world examples. So California, right A.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
PG and E had an employee named Todd hern who
he tried to blow the whistle. He tried to warn
the company about the prospect that their technology that they
were installing on the grid could cause fires, and he
was fired, He lost his job, and you know, a
year later, the campfire took the lives of eighty four
American citizens and PG and E was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
(03:53):
Right And so that's where I think, you know, the
whistleblower protection would go a long way for issues of
safety like that.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
But well, let me ask you, if they were I mean,
knowing that they were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, why wouldn't
the companies also want this protection. Why wouldn't they want
the people out there on the lines to be able
to come out and say, hey, I want you as
a company to be protected as well as.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
The citizens to do That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
In fact, that's the sort of question that our Congress
should be pulling these CEOs in and questioning them and
directly asking them those questions. You know, oftentimes, when you
have very powerful industries that have what's called regulatory capture.
In other words, they really affect the government's ability to
regulate them. There is this notion that they can write
(04:41):
the rules right, and with the electric power industry, in
many ways that is the case. The industry makes its
own rules, and it often has the ability to break
those rules, and the American public doesn't even get to
know which companies break them. And I could explain all that,
but the whistleblowers inside the industry would be a huge
help so be able to you know, change that culture,
(05:03):
that culture that you know, they really think that they
can get away with writing their own rules and breaking
them at will.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I think that we need to understand that because it's
not just that we see these these catastrophic events. We
see these increases in prices that nobody seems to be
able to control. I mean, as most of our listeners know,
I'm here in Michigan. Michigan has some of the highest
energy costs in the nation. We just recently had a storm,
a storm compared to the hurricane that Florida had. After
(05:32):
the storm, we had power out for some homes for
five full days. Now in the middle of summer, you know,
we don't get as hot as someplace like you know, Arizona,
but it was a hot week, we have no power.
We've also had this same experience in the middle of winter.
So how do you start holding these companies accountable because
(05:52):
it seems like in Michigan it's just the wild wild West.
You can't do anything when the power goes out. You
have no control over these companies when they just had
to raise your.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Rates, right, So to do the number one thing is transparency, right,
So sunshine is the best disinfectant, and so that in fact,
that's a lot of what we do at the Center
for Security Policy. We have a Secure the Grid Coalition
nationwide that works on trying to get the industry to
secure its infrastructure and to expose when there are bad actors.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I mean, it might be kind of mind blowing for
you to know this, but right now, the industry rights
its own standards, and if they violate the critical Infrastructure
Protection standards that they write, the public doesn't get to
know the names of the violators. And so you know,
our coalition filed freedom of information a request two hundred
and fifty five of them for fifteen hundred company names,
(06:44):
and the federal government denied.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Those Foier requests. In fact, we're in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
The middle of a lawsuit right now with the federal
government over this issue of transparency. That's the number one
thing we can do to change that culture is just
to be able to shine some light, some sunlight in it.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
When we talk about transparent and see, I think there's
something bigger at play here, because there are some of
us who say, what if the entire grid goes down?
What if a bad actor comes in from another country
and takes the entire grid down. This is something that
a lot of people may not realize that Trump administration
was working hard to fight against because they had said, Okay,
we're not going to bring in transformers from adversarial countries.
(07:22):
They had found out that we were getting a lot
of these transformers from the Chinese. The Chinese also had
some things placed on these transformers that you know, who knows.
Could they have shut off our power, could they control
our power? These are all incredibly scary thoughts when you
think about, well, well, if the Chinese want to take
over the United States, what's the best way to do that?
(07:44):
Cripple us with no power? And then suddenly you can
just cross into our borders and take us over. What
did the how did the Biden administration change those safety standards?
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, so, Tutor, you know you mentioned in China this
is absolutely in their way fighting doctrine, right. It goes
all the way back to Sun too. You think about
you know, what he said is the supreme art of
war is to subdue your enemy without fighting, and that's
exactly what it would be if they took down the grid.
Fast forward to nineteen ninety nine with a book Unrestricted Warfare,
written by two People's Liberation Army colonels. You know, if
(08:17):
your viewers and listeners just download Unrestricted Warfare PDF offline,
they will see on page one forty four a whole
scenario that lays out when two developed countries go to war,
how one attacks the civilian networks, including electricity to grind
to a halt. The other and unfortunately, the Biden administration
in many ways open the floodgates back up to investments
(08:39):
in China. You mentioned before, Tutor, that the Trump administration
had passed an executive order to May one, twenty twenty,
President Trump declared a grid security emergency after they found
a hardware back door on a massive Chinese transformer at
that time that were about three hundred in our grid,
and on the first day the Biden administration, they suspended
(09:01):
that executive order, and now we have about four hundred
and twenty eight Chinese transformers in our grid.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
But Tutor, could possibly what could possibly have been their
reason for them to change that order, because we are
talking about national security, and when we talk about national
security like this, it gets me really fired up because
I think, why don't we know this? I mean, you
talk about transparency on the grid, but why do we
(09:27):
not hear Honestly, I have to say, on the opponent's side,
on the Republican side, why aren't they coming out and
saying this is a massive danger to national security? But
this is the first time I'm hearing.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
This, Tutor. It's a bipartisan failure. Both sides of the
isle have failed.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And there have been good things on both sides of
the President Obama passed an executive order that would attempt
to secure our grid against solar weather so like the
natural form of electromenetic pulse. President Trump passed an executive
order to secure the grid against nuclear electromentic pulse. Those
are good things, but by and large, and it's really
the fault of both the administrative state in government, but
(10:07):
it's also the fault of the industry and how they
create their own rules to be able to just avoid
any sort of regulation. And so it's truly bipartisan and
how we've failed and it's going to have to be
bipartisan in how we turn this around us succeed in
securing this infrastructure we can't live without.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I see a new ad has
come out from the Biden administration in the last couple
of days. It's going to be playing and I think
five or six different states, and one of the things
that it says in the ad is that Joe Biden
(10:46):
has increased our energy independence. I've got to laugh when
I see that, because I think, who's going to hold
them accountable to the fact that that is the exact
opposite of what he's done. It's not just that we
have and a crisis with the grid, but we don't
have the supply. We are currently talking about shutting off
(11:06):
our own supply of energy. I mean, Governor Whitmer here
in the state of Michigan had a What's Next press
conference last week, which is like something new, we've never
heard of it. Nobody could ask questions, so we don't
even know what it was because she just walked off afterward.
But part of What's next is one hundred percent clean
energy in the state of Michigan. How is that secure?
(11:28):
We don't even know what clean energy is. We don't
even know what How many sources could you possibly get
in the state of Michigan to be able to power
the entire state. How much of a national security issue
is that?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
So, Tutor, what you're articulating right now is a whole
new threat vector for the grid. So traditionally the national
security community that we're focused on protecting this infrastructure, we
saw four main threats. You had physical sabotage, cyber attack,
You had natural you know, whether it was in terrestrial
weather like you mentioned hurricanes or solar weather like the
(12:03):
natural form of EMP, and nuclear EMP.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Those were the four threat vectors. We now have six.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
The fifth is the supply chain, which we just talked
about in one example with the Chinese transformers. And the
sixth one is government policies. Unreasonable government policies just like
you mentioned this country may suffer brownouts and blackouts because
of its own policies before.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You've seen it in California.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
And so it's just it's unreasonable to think that you
can attach all these new ev charging stations, electric vehicles
to a grid that can't even produce enough power, while
at the same time you're shutting down baseload power generators
like fossil fuel coal, nuclear, You know, Tutor. The thing is,
we actually do have the ability in this country to
(12:50):
produce clean energy, and we've already mined the components we
need to do it. And this is a policy priority
we've been promoting for years, which is to take the
spent nuclear fuel from our nuclear reactors and recycle it.
You know, we could power the United States of America
for two hundred and fifty years with clean, carbon free
(13:11):
energy from just the spent nuclear fuel from the light
water reactors we.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Have in this country.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
But you say a word there that scares people to death,
and they just can't get past that word nuclear.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, there's a reason for that, toot.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
That's an information operation that our adversaries have levied against
the United States for years.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I mean, you look at other countries.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
China is investing heavily in nuclear and so you know
that the nuclear industry, it really truly has the best
safety record of any industry in the United States. So
there's a ton of amazing potential with nuclear power if
we were to be wise enough to embrace it. And
so that's again it's a policy priority. You know, Jennifer Granholm,
(13:53):
the Secretary of Energy, talked about these earthshot initiatives, right,
these clean carbon free energy initiatives. Twice, Tutor I personally
briefed Secretary Granholm and her advisory board on the need
to look at spent nuclear fuel as an earthshot idea.
I haven't really seen much indication that they're taking it seriously.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
No, we keep hearing more solar farms. They're just going
to take over farmland put out solar panels. They're going
to start putting it. I mean, there's been the argument
for years as to whether or not they want to
put the wind the wind turbines out into the lake,
into the Great Lakes here, and I know they have
them in the ocean. I know there's been some discussion
(14:36):
as to whether or not that has affected the whales.
The wildlife and the oceans. A lot of people have
been fighting against putting them in the Great Lakes. They
certainly don't want to have a bunch of those windmills
out there in our Great Lakes to look out there
and see that. But also, what is the impact of
the clean energy? And that's the answer we don't ever
get again, transparency, We don't ever hear. Now we're suddenly
(14:57):
being told, well, when the rain hits the solar panel,
there is something that comes off, goes into the ground.
It does affect the groundwater. What is the truth about
whether or not this is clean? Let me talk about
EV's for a second, because right now we're in the
midst of potentially having a massive strike for the auto industry.
We're looking at the UAW saying they're demanding this, they're
(15:19):
demanding that, But they're also saying, if you listen to
what this UAW boss is saying, he's out there saying
this EV vehicle production has severely impacted our lives, our careers,
because when you're assembling a vehicle with no engine, with
no gas powered engine, there's a lot fewer jobs there.
(15:41):
There is a fewer there's a lot fewer suppliers there
as well. So we're talking about severely impacting Michigan alone,
but the entire country because our automotive industry is just
hanging by a thread. I mean, I think it was
four billion dollars that Ford last loss last year on
the EV vehicles. People aren't buying them. As you said,
(16:01):
we can't possibly put enough chargers on our grid to
actually have everybody have an EV vehicle, and it's costing
us critical manufacturing jobs and putting us behind other countries
when it comes to being able to be even mobile.
I mean, what does that mean? What? How do we
get to the point where the government mandates what we're
going to purchase and the consumer is still going, yeah,
(16:23):
I'm not interested.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well too, That's exactly the problem is that the government
is mandating something that's that's unreasonable. Right, So, and I
realized to On one hand, I'm saying that the government
should should better regulate the electric utility industry, right, And
on the other hand, I'm saying that the government shouldn't
be mandating certain things. But what you're talking about is
the market, right, Let the people decide what works for them. Look,
(16:45):
if if they want to go on a long trip
and they want to go sit at an EV charging
station for a couple of hours.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Every couple of hours. Hey, hey, I think about it.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I honestly think about We used to travel. My in
laws live in Kentucky, so when the girls were a little well,
you know, the trip for us is about six hours,
but when the kids were little, they were you know,
you have babies that need to have their diapers changed
and bottles and everything, and it was just taken extra
two hours to get there with little kids, and you're like,
(17:14):
oh gosh, this is such a nightmare trip. I think
about what it would be like if we had to
actually stop halfway through and wait an hour for the
and you might be waiting longer because I think what
people don't always understand is that these chargers that you
stop at, they're not necessarily these speedy fast chargers that
after fifteen minutes you're going to have a fully charged car.
(17:35):
You could be waiting hours just to be able to
make it through the end of your trip.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah too, do you know exactly?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
We need to think about what is reasonable and again
let the consumer decide if the consumer wants that to
be part of their life and part of their lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
That's fine. Look, I don't have anything against wind and solar.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
In fact, at the household level with battery backup storage,
that's a great asset to have, right if the regular
grid goes down and you can generation.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It's also hard because the energy companies prevent you from
having a solar panel on your house. So this is
all like a big racket. You can't actually do that.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
In many places, you can't. You're absolutely right to he
or that. That's that's that regulatory capture that we talked about.
But you know, when it comes to the ev situation,
what's really worrisome to me is not that there's you know,
people interested in producing or using electric vehicles, but it's
it's the government promoting certain things for an ideological reason
that don't That won't work right, So you think about
(18:33):
like the statements that have been made that you know,
by a certain year all US military vehicles are going
to be electric vehicles. I mean, the people making these
rules have not thought for a second about what it
would be like to have to depend on electric vehicle
in combat. I mean, it's absolutely irrational. And unfortunately, you
have big gigantic industries and bureaucrats and government that just
(18:55):
say sure thing, yes, yes, sir, yes ma'am, we'll do it.
And they're going to be people who suffer immensely because
of that.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
They can't get kids from their neighborhood to school on
these electric buses. And you're going to put somebody out
in a war zone and say, Okay, let's hope that
this electric vehicle is going to get you out of
the war zone. It is outrageous. But you know, we've
seen the government do this. We've seen mandates before that
have severely affected the way the country is run and
(19:23):
the national security of the country. And I'm just going
to go come out here and say it. The COVID
vaccine mandate severely affected our military. We have lost a
lot of military members. We lost a lot of folks
who were lifelong military folks that have all of that
experience gone. This is something we really don't talk about.
I think everybody is sort of afraid to go there.
(19:44):
But the vaccine mandate, a lot of people retired, a
lot of people left, a lot of that knowledge gone.
What kind of condition is our military in right now?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I mean, I'm blessed that I didn't get court martialed.
I was in command at the time. I did as
much research as I could on the the vaccine itself,
on the legal nature of that mandate, and it would
it was unlawful for me to force my subordinates to
take any emergency use authorized product against their will. That
(20:15):
is a violation of the law, and I wouldn't do
it right. And so yeah, I mean a case in
point twenty years in the Marine Corps, and I retired
after I spent a year trying to be able to
continue serving. I mean, last spring, I brought my family
to a military installation to get a new ID. We
were barred access, We weren't allowed in. My son was
(20:37):
about to get his identification card. And when I found
out that they wouldn't let us on this base, where
I had worked for three years at the time, had
a top secret compunity clearance, I said, son, step away,
don't put your fingerprint on there. Because if they're not
going to allow me and my wife, who served as
a spouse for twenty years to enter an installation just
to go see the memorial for our fallen service members,
(20:58):
then the next generation of wall is not going to
be serving in uniform.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
That is the destruction that's.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Been wrought upon the military by the people in charge
and Tudor, I'll just say I have it right here.
Since we're on the topic, If you want to know
the story of that vaccine mandate and what it did,
there's a book written by a courageous active duty officer,
Rob Green, defending the Constitution behind enemy lines, and that's
exactly the case with the vaccine medate. I know we
(21:23):
didn't start the conversation talking about that, but we could
probably do a whole other segment on just that topic.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It has been devastating to the military.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
That's what I think people don't understand is that this
mandate was removed, but people didn't. People who were let go.
I mean there were people that were actually let go
from their active duty positions, told you're not welcome here anymore. Essentially,
they were not brought back. They were not apologized too,
(21:52):
They did not get their benefits back. They lost everything.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Many of them did. That's right.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
There are people who were forced to attie you know,
I'm sorry, were forced out, you know, six months before retirement.
The military was brutal about how they enforced In fact,
the United States Marine Corps was exceptionally brutal.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Tutor.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
If someone were to refuse medical treatment and you had
to separate them from the military, the Uniform Code of
Military Justice the UCMJ, gives you a couple.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Of codes that you can use.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
You can use refusing medical treatment or refusing inoculation. The
Marine Corps decided to use a misconduct code called commission
of a Serious offense, which is the same as would
be used for rape, theft, or any other terrible offense,
and that was designed specifically to enable them to strip
the honorable characterization of service, to strip the educational benefits
(22:45):
that that service member would get after their service.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
The brutality of.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
The enforcement of that mandate was incredible, and it was
designed specifically to do what it did.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Tutor. It was a litmus test.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
You think about, it's black and white that it violation
of the law to force someone against their will in
the military to take an emergency use authorized drug or vaccine.
It was a litmus test for the officer Corps and
depending on how you look at it, we catastrophically failed,
or if you were the ones that wanted to shape
the force to do what you want them to do,
in violation of the law, then you succeeded beyond your
(23:19):
waileve streams.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I saw an article just the
other day, and I see these things and then you
see them for a split second and they never return.
There's nobody that kind of expands on these stories. But
the story was that since the either since COVID or
(23:43):
the vaccine, one of the two, there has been an
uptick of heart issues in the military that is like
three hundred percent of myocarditis, heart attack, that kind of issue.
I think a lot of people have said they don't
feel comfortable within the information on this vaccine. We know
that the side effects have not been released. We haven't
been able to study what the pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical companies have
(24:08):
all the data that they have on these vaccines. Do
you think that a change of administration would change the
mandate on this vaccine, would change the view from the
military on this vaccine. Would people be welcomed back and
if they were fully reinstated, would they take that.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
So, Tutor, we started this conversation about the electric utility
industry and regulatory capture that's exactly what we have with
the pharmaceutical industry is regulatory capture. So a couple things
would need to happen with a new administration. One would
be to address that issue of regulatory capture, where the
pharmaceutical industry writes the rules for the rest of America's
(24:49):
health right. And then that have to be a serious
investigation of the sorts of crimes and cover ups that
have taken place. And that would be the same for
the military. The people at the very top that instant
these policies ought to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted where
possible for the crimes that they committed against the subordinate
service members. I think that it's going to be difficult
(25:10):
for a lot of the people who were removed from
the military to want to come back, because, Tutor, you know,
just because Congress, you know, forced the military to stop
the mandate, they never fired any of the people who
were brutally enforcing it and breaking the law. And so
the moral injury, and look, Tutor, it's also there's a
moral injury on top of the physical injuries that we're seeing.
(25:30):
You know, I talk to service members who now tell
me they're like Tommy, I'm having difficult difficulty recruiting.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
We can't seem to fill the ranks.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
The people above me are telling me to go and
try to recruit the people we just kicked out for
the vaccine mandate. I took the mandate against my will,
and they're acting like it's.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
No big deal, like you forced me to do this.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
My whole family is depending on me, you know, to
take this thing I don't want to take for me
to keep my job, and now you act like it
never happened, right. I hear that oh, over and over
and over again. And so the moral injury is probably
even worse than the physical catastrophe that's happened because of
this mandate.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
So I know these sound like two totally separate subjects,
but let me just ask you. We talk about this security,
the national security, the grid. You talked about how the
one of the first steps of warfare is something like
this where they would come in and they would try
to recap us in some way to be able to
take over, and that could be an EMP that could
(26:29):
be taking down the grid if they have this ability
to have these transformers that they have some sort of
control over. For all we know, they are controlling them
directly from China. They shut us down. They come right
across our border, they come in and they take us over.
Are we prepared? Is this military that has lost so
many people, that has a morale problem, that is struggling
(26:51):
to recruit. Is this military prepared for the next step,
and that is active warfare?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Tutor to answer your question about the military's preparedness in
the context of which you just asked, right, which was
the scenario where an adversary takes down the US electric grid.
The US military is absolutely unprepared for that. And I
tried to work.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
This in uniform. In fact, I mean we were blessed.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Before mister Trump became president, we briefed him on nuclear
electromenetic pulse. He made a promise, he kept that promise
to address it. And then once the President passed that
executive order on EMP, there were some courageous generals in
the military that tried to aggressively pursue trying to protect
the infrastructure against it. And I was brought in as
a staff member to the US Air Force Electromenetic Defense
(27:37):
task Force founded by Lieutenant General Stephen cost and in
the end that task force no longer exists. General Cost
was forced to retire, and as best I can tell,
many of the recommendations made by the task force have
not been adopted by the US military, And so the
reality tutor is that if our grid goes down, the
US military members are going to starve and be in
(27:59):
the same boat as the rest of the United States, and.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
We don't have to This is a fixable problem. It's
absolutely a fixable problem.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
The military has protected its nuclear command and control against
a lot of these threats. It's the American people and
the rest of our bases, conventional bases that need to
be protected as well.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I think people don't understand when you say the grid
could go down what that means. You know, you always
see those I'm the last guy in the world type
of movies. There was one with Will Smith where they
He's the last guy in the world, and I think
it's so funny because in the trailer he's alone running
on a treadmill, and in my mind, I'm like, who's
(28:36):
running the power company house? He running on this He's
got nothing. You know, people don't understand there's no refrigeration,
there's no food, There's going to be mass chaos. I'm
not trying to be terrifying, but when we talk about
an EMP, I mean your cars stop, your your homes
have no power, your cell phones don't work, there's no communication,
(28:59):
is that right?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
When it comes to nuclear electromenetic pulse totor, we know
that we'll have nationwide grid collapse.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
That's it. That's that's a sure thing that that will happen.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
In terms of cell phones, you know, automobiles, we don't
really know which ones.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Would be affected and which ones won't.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But the but the reality is if if you have
grid collapse and the grid's not.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Working, eventually you don't charge your phone.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Right exactly, And so that's that and again it's a
it's a fixable problem. There are companies that have developed
technologies that can that can protect against electromenetic pulse right,
and and so what we really need to do is
we just need the American people to wake up to
what you just said to you.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
This is this is scary and it's real.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And in fact, we're blessed now that there's a film
that was just launched at the beginning of this year.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Called Grid Down, Power Up.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
It's a documentary produced by a gentleman named David Tye
and narrated by Dennis Quaid. And so grid downpower up
dot Com is the website and people can watch a
film that will educate them about this topic, and then
the neat thing is on that website. We've created the
opportunity for people to actually get involved in the effort
to convince their policymakers to protect this critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, I appreciate you coming on today. So it's been
very interesting to me because I really think that no
matter what side of the aisle you're on. First of all,
you can see where there's failures on both sides of
the aisle, and no matter what side of the aisle
you're on, you have to look at this and say,
this is critical to my life, This is critical to
my future, to my children's future. Whether it is national
(30:34):
security from the military standpoint or from the electric grid standpoint,
we all really need to get involved. And I just
appreciate you your willingness to come here and talk to
us today.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Sure, thank to thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, absolutely, thank you and thank you all for joining
us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast today. As always, for
this episode and others, you can check out tutordixonpodcast dot com.
Subscribe right there, or go to the Iheartrate app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts and join us next
time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessed day.
You're listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast in the Clay
and Buck podcast Network. Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
This week, we approach one month since the devastating wildfires
struck Maui. Fires engulfed the town of Lehina. One hundred
and fifteen people lost their lives and at least three
(00:22):
hundred and eighty five people are still missing. Tens of
billions of dollars worth of damage has been done, making
this the deadliest wildfire the US has seen in more
than one hundred years. Still, there's a lot to be
uncovered on the exact cause of the fires, but all
signs are pointing to mismanagement of the power lines by
Hawaiian Electric. This brings up a number of questions related
(00:45):
to the safety and security of our entire electrical grid.
So today I'm joined by an expert, Tommy Waller. He
is a retired Marine Reserve lieutenant colonel with two decades
of experience, and he's the current president and CEO of
the Center for Security Policy. Tommy, thank you so much
for joining the podcast. I'm so glad you're with me today.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Sure, Twitter, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, the story with Maui. I think it goes beyond
just Maui, but what we're looking at in Maui is
pretty devastating. I actually, just before I sat down here
to talk to you today, I was watching a video
from some residents there saying, we're just done. We're just
done with the United States. We're done with the United
States government. We feel like we've been totally abandoned because
(01:30):
not only did this happen with the electric grid, and
they're not getting answers, they're not really being served by
the US government right now. Either. What do you from
from your experience level, what do you see as having
happened on the ground there, and could it have been prevented?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, Tutor, it's again it's going to have to be investigated.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
But just the cursory investigation that I did just looking
at video from both the local news media social media,
you know, you witnessed in numerous locations electric grid infrastructure
causing fires. You know, transmission lines on the ground in
the grass, flames abounding from those transmission lines. In some cases,
(02:12):
there were video of substations that were arcing and sparking,
and so you know, it looks a lot like the
fire came from the electric grid, and when you discussed
tootor the mismanagement of it, you know, the argument that
I most recently made in the Wall Street Journal is
that the people who would know the best if it
were mismanaged would be the actual employees within the electric
(02:35):
utility industry, and right now they don't have any whistleblow
or protection to be able to speak out to the
American people about issues of safety or security that they see.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And that's something that I think we need to change
in this country.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And you say that because in the past, folks have
spoken out and they've lost their jobs. So you feel
like there could be potentially this culture of fear. If
I say something, I might not have a job. But
if I don't say something, then this could potentially be catastrophic.
And we're seeing this. I mean, we saw this in
California and now we've seen this in Hawaii. But this
goes beyond just the danger. I mean, we also saw
(03:10):
this in Texas. They said that that was mismanagement as well.
And so you go from fire to freeze in the
middle of an ice storm. I mean, this is all
pretty catastrophic that could happen if something else, If this
continues right to you.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Just mentioned the real world examples. So California, right A.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
PG and E had an employee named Todd hern who
he tried to blow the whistle. He tried to warn
the company about the prospect that their technology that they
were installing on the grid could cause fires, and he
was fired, He lost his job, and you know, a
year later, the campfire took the lives of eighty four
American citizens and PG and E was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
(03:53):
Right And so that's where I think, you know, the
whistleblower protection would go a long way for issues of
safety like that.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
But well, let me ask you, if they were I mean,
knowing that they were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, why wouldn't
the companies also want this protection. Why wouldn't they want
the people out there on the lines to be able
to come out and say, hey, I want you as
a company to be protected as well as.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
The citizens to do That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
In fact, that's the sort of question that our Congress
should be pulling these CEOs in and questioning them and
directly asking them those questions. You know, oftentimes, when you
have very powerful industries that have what's called regulatory capture.
In other words, they really affect the government's ability to
regulate them. There is this notion that they can write
(04:41):
the rules right, and with the electric power industry, in
many ways that is the case. The industry makes its
own rules, and it often has the ability to break
those rules, and the American public doesn't even get to
know which companies break them. And I could explain all that,
but the whistleblowers inside the industry would be a huge
help so be able to you know, change that culture,
(05:03):
that culture that you know, they really think that they
can get away with writing their own rules and breaking
them at will.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I think that we need to understand that because it's
not just that we see these these catastrophic events. We
see these increases in prices that nobody seems to be
able to control. I mean, as most of our listeners know,
I'm here in Michigan. Michigan has some of the highest
energy costs in the nation. We just recently had a storm,
a storm compared to the hurricane that Florida had. After
(05:32):
the storm, we had power out for some homes for
five full days. Now in the middle of summer, you know,
we don't get as hot as someplace like you know, Arizona,
but it was a hot week, we have no power.
We've also had this same experience in the middle of winter.
So how do you start holding these companies accountable because
(05:52):
it seems like in Michigan it's just the wild wild West.
You can't do anything when the power goes out. You
have no control over these companies when they just had
to raise your.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Rates, right, So to do the number one thing is transparency, right,
So sunshine is the best disinfectant, and so that in fact,
that's a lot of what we do at the Center
for Security Policy. We have a Secure the Grid Coalition
nationwide that works on trying to get the industry to
secure its infrastructure and to expose when there are bad actors.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I mean, it might be kind of mind blowing for
you to know this, but right now, the industry rights
its own standards, and if they violate the critical Infrastructure
Protection standards that they write, the public doesn't get to
know the names of the violators. And so you know,
our coalition filed freedom of information a request two hundred
and fifty five of them for fifteen hundred company names,
(06:44):
and the federal government denied.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Those Foier requests. In fact, we're in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
The middle of a lawsuit right now with the federal
government over this issue of transparency. That's the number one
thing we can do to change that culture is just
to be able to shine some light, some sunlight in it.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
When we talk about transparent and see, I think there's
something bigger at play here, because there are some of
us who say, what if the entire grid goes down?
What if a bad actor comes in from another country
and takes the entire grid down. This is something that
a lot of people may not realize that Trump administration
was working hard to fight against because they had said, Okay,
we're not going to bring in transformers from adversarial countries.
(07:22):
They had found out that we were getting a lot
of these transformers from the Chinese. The Chinese also had
some things placed on these transformers that you know, who knows.
Could they have shut off our power, could they control
our power? These are all incredibly scary thoughts when you
think about, well, well, if the Chinese want to take
over the United States, what's the best way to do that?
(07:44):
Cripple us with no power? And then suddenly you can
just cross into our borders and take us over. What
did the how did the Biden administration change those safety standards?
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, so, Tutor, you know you mentioned in China this
is absolutely in their way fighting doctrine, right. It goes
all the way back to Sun too. You think about
you know, what he said is the supreme art of
war is to subdue your enemy without fighting, and that's
exactly what it would be if they took down the grid.
Fast forward to nineteen ninety nine with a book Unrestricted Warfare,
written by two People's Liberation Army colonels. You know, if
(08:17):
your viewers and listeners just download Unrestricted Warfare PDF offline,
they will see on page one forty four a whole
scenario that lays out when two developed countries go to war,
how one attacks the civilian networks, including electricity to grind
to a halt. The other and unfortunately, the Biden administration
in many ways open the floodgates back up to investments
(08:39):
in China. You mentioned before, Tutor, that the Trump administration
had passed an executive order to May one, twenty twenty,
President Trump declared a grid security emergency after they found
a hardware back door on a massive Chinese transformer at
that time that were about three hundred in our grid,
and on the first day the Biden administration, they suspended
(09:01):
that executive order, and now we have about four hundred
and twenty eight Chinese transformers in our grid.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
But Tutor, could possibly what could possibly have been their
reason for them to change that order, because we are
talking about national security, and when we talk about national
security like this, it gets me really fired up because
I think, why don't we know this? I mean, you
talk about transparency on the grid, but why do we
(09:27):
not hear Honestly, I have to say, on the opponent's side,
on the Republican side, why aren't they coming out and
saying this is a massive danger to national security? But
this is the first time I'm hearing.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
This, Tutor. It's a bipartisan failure. Both sides of the
isle have failed.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And there have been good things on both sides of
the President Obama passed an executive order that would attempt
to secure our grid against solar weather so like the
natural form of electromenetic pulse. President Trump passed an executive
order to secure the grid against nuclear electromentic pulse. Those
are good things, but by and large, and it's really
the fault of both the administrative state in government, but
(10:07):
it's also the fault of the industry and how they
create their own rules to be able to just avoid
any sort of regulation. And so it's truly bipartisan and
how we've failed and it's going to have to be
bipartisan in how we turn this around us succeed in
securing this infrastructure we can't live without.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I see a new ad has
come out from the Biden administration in the last couple
of days. It's going to be playing and I think
five or six different states, and one of the things
that it says in the ad is that Joe Biden
(10:46):
has increased our energy independence. I've got to laugh when
I see that, because I think, who's going to hold
them accountable to the fact that that is the exact
opposite of what he's done. It's not just that we
have and a crisis with the grid, but we don't
have the supply. We are currently talking about shutting off
(11:06):
our own supply of energy. I mean, Governor Whitmer here
in the state of Michigan had a What's Next press
conference last week, which is like something new, we've never
heard of it. Nobody could ask questions, so we don't
even know what it was because she just walked off afterward.
But part of What's next is one hundred percent clean
energy in the state of Michigan. How is that secure?
(11:28):
We don't even know what clean energy is. We don't
even know what How many sources could you possibly get
in the state of Michigan to be able to power
the entire state. How much of a national security issue
is that?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
So, Tutor, what you're articulating right now is a whole
new threat vector for the grid. So traditionally the national
security community that we're focused on protecting this infrastructure, we
saw four main threats. You had physical sabotage, cyber attack,
You had natural you know, whether it was in terrestrial
weather like you mentioned hurricanes or solar weather like the
(12:03):
natural form of EMP, and nuclear EMP.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Those were the four threat vectors. We now have six.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
The fifth is the supply chain, which we just talked
about in one example with the Chinese transformers. And the
sixth one is government policies. Unreasonable government policies just like
you mentioned this country may suffer brownouts and blackouts because
of its own policies before.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You've seen it in California.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
And so it's just it's unreasonable to think that you
can attach all these new ev charging stations, electric vehicles
to a grid that can't even produce enough power, while
at the same time you're shutting down baseload power generators
like fossil fuel coal, nuclear, You know, Tutor. The thing is,
we actually do have the ability in this country to
(12:50):
produce clean energy, and we've already mined the components we
need to do it. And this is a policy priority
we've been promoting for years, which is to take the
spent nuclear fuel from our nuclear reactors and recycle it.
You know, we could power the United States of America
for two hundred and fifty years with clean, carbon free
(13:11):
energy from just the spent nuclear fuel from the light
water reactors we.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Have in this country.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
But you say a word there that scares people to death,
and they just can't get past that word nuclear.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, there's a reason for that, toot.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
That's an information operation that our adversaries have levied against
the United States for years.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I mean, you look at other countries.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
China is investing heavily in nuclear and so you know
that the nuclear industry, it really truly has the best
safety record of any industry in the United States. So
there's a ton of amazing potential with nuclear power if
we were to be wise enough to embrace it. And
so that's again it's a policy priority. You know, Jennifer Granholm,
(13:53):
the Secretary of Energy, talked about these earthshot initiatives, right,
these clean carbon free energy initiatives. Twice, Tutor I personally
briefed Secretary Granholm and her advisory board on the need
to look at spent nuclear fuel as an earthshot idea.
I haven't really seen much indication that they're taking it seriously.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
No, we keep hearing more solar farms. They're just going
to take over farmland put out solar panels. They're going
to start putting it. I mean, there's been the argument
for years as to whether or not they want to
put the wind the wind turbines out into the lake,
into the Great Lakes here, and I know they have
them in the ocean. I know there's been some discussion
(14:36):
as to whether or not that has affected the whales.
The wildlife and the oceans. A lot of people have
been fighting against putting them in the Great Lakes. They
certainly don't want to have a bunch of those windmills
out there in our Great Lakes to look out there
and see that. But also, what is the impact of
the clean energy? And that's the answer we don't ever
get again, transparency, We don't ever hear. Now we're suddenly
(14:57):
being told, well, when the rain hits the solar panel,
there is something that comes off, goes into the ground.
It does affect the groundwater. What is the truth about
whether or not this is clean? Let me talk about
EV's for a second, because right now we're in the
midst of potentially having a massive strike for the auto industry.
We're looking at the UAW saying they're demanding this, they're
(15:19):
demanding that, But they're also saying, if you listen to
what this UAW boss is saying, he's out there saying
this EV vehicle production has severely impacted our lives, our careers,
because when you're assembling a vehicle with no engine, with
no gas powered engine, there's a lot fewer jobs there.
(15:41):
There is a fewer there's a lot fewer suppliers there
as well. So we're talking about severely impacting Michigan alone,
but the entire country because our automotive industry is just
hanging by a thread. I mean, I think it was
four billion dollars that Ford last loss last year on
the EV vehicles. People aren't buying them. As you said,
(16:01):
we can't possibly put enough chargers on our grid to
actually have everybody have an EV vehicle, and it's costing
us critical manufacturing jobs and putting us behind other countries
when it comes to being able to be even mobile.
I mean, what does that mean? What? How do we
get to the point where the government mandates what we're
going to purchase and the consumer is still going, yeah,
(16:23):
I'm not interested.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well too, That's exactly the problem is that the government
is mandating something that's that's unreasonable. Right, So, and I
realized to On one hand, I'm saying that the government
should should better regulate the electric utility industry, right, And
on the other hand, I'm saying that the government shouldn't
be mandating certain things. But what you're talking about is
the market, right, Let the people decide what works for them. Look,
(16:45):
if if they want to go on a long trip
and they want to go sit at an EV charging
station for a couple of hours.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Every couple of hours. Hey, hey, I think about it.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I honestly think about We used to travel. My in
laws live in Kentucky, so when the girls were a little well,
you know, the trip for us is about six hours,
but when the kids were little, they were you know,
you have babies that need to have their diapers changed
and bottles and everything, and it was just taken extra
two hours to get there with little kids, and you're like,
(17:14):
oh gosh, this is such a nightmare trip. I think
about what it would be like if we had to
actually stop halfway through and wait an hour for the
and you might be waiting longer because I think what
people don't always understand is that these chargers that you
stop at, they're not necessarily these speedy fast chargers that
after fifteen minutes you're going to have a fully charged car.
(17:35):
You could be waiting hours just to be able to
make it through the end of your trip.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah too, do you know exactly?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
We need to think about what is reasonable and again
let the consumer decide if the consumer wants that to
be part of their life and part of their lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
That's fine. Look, I don't have anything against wind and solar.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
In fact, at the household level with battery backup storage,
that's a great asset to have, right if the regular
grid goes down and you can generation.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It's also hard because the energy companies prevent you from
having a solar panel on your house. So this is
all like a big racket. You can't actually do that.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
In many places, you can't. You're absolutely right to he
or that. That's that's that regulatory capture that we talked about.
But you know, when it comes to the ev situation,
what's really worrisome to me is not that there's you know,
people interested in producing or using electric vehicles, but it's
it's the government promoting certain things for an ideological reason
that don't That won't work right, So you think about
(18:33):
like the statements that have been made that you know,
by a certain year all US military vehicles are going
to be electric vehicles. I mean, the people making these
rules have not thought for a second about what it
would be like to have to depend on electric vehicle
in combat. I mean, it's absolutely irrational. And unfortunately, you
have big gigantic industries and bureaucrats and government that just
(18:55):
say sure thing, yes, yes, sir, yes ma'am, we'll do it.
And they're going to be people who suffer immensely because
of that.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
They can't get kids from their neighborhood to school on
these electric buses. And you're going to put somebody out
in a war zone and say, Okay, let's hope that
this electric vehicle is going to get you out of
the war zone. It is outrageous. But you know, we've
seen the government do this. We've seen mandates before that
have severely affected the way the country is run and
(19:23):
the national security of the country. And I'm just going
to go come out here and say it. The COVID
vaccine mandate severely affected our military. We have lost a
lot of military members. We lost a lot of folks
who were lifelong military folks that have all of that
experience gone. This is something we really don't talk about.
I think everybody is sort of afraid to go there.
(19:44):
But the vaccine mandate, a lot of people retired, a
lot of people left, a lot of that knowledge gone.
What kind of condition is our military in right now?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I mean, I'm blessed that I didn't get court martialed.
I was in command at the time. I did as
much research as I could on the the vaccine itself,
on the legal nature of that mandate, and it would
it was unlawful for me to force my subordinates to
take any emergency use authorized product against their will. That
(20:15):
is a violation of the law, and I wouldn't do
it right. And so yeah, I mean a case in
point twenty years in the Marine Corps, and I retired
after I spent a year trying to be able to
continue serving. I mean, last spring, I brought my family
to a military installation to get a new ID. We
were barred access, We weren't allowed in. My son was
(20:37):
about to get his identification card. And when I found
out that they wouldn't let us on this base, where
I had worked for three years at the time, had
a top secret compunity clearance, I said, son, step away,
don't put your fingerprint on there. Because if they're not
going to allow me and my wife, who served as
a spouse for twenty years to enter an installation just
to go see the memorial for our fallen service members,
(20:58):
then the next generation of wall is not going to
be serving in uniform.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
That is the destruction that's.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Been wrought upon the military by the people in charge
and Tudor, I'll just say I have it right here.
Since we're on the topic, If you want to know
the story of that vaccine mandate and what it did,
there's a book written by a courageous active duty officer,
Rob Green, defending the Constitution behind enemy lines, and that's
exactly the case with the vaccine medate. I know we
(21:23):
didn't start the conversation talking about that, but we could
probably do a whole other segment on just that topic.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It has been devastating to the military.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
That's what I think people don't understand is that this
mandate was removed, but people didn't. People who were let go.
I mean there were people that were actually let go
from their active duty positions, told you're not welcome here anymore. Essentially,
they were not brought back. They were not apologized too,
(21:52):
They did not get their benefits back. They lost everything.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Many of them did. That's right.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
There are people who were forced to attie you know,
I'm sorry, were forced out, you know, six months before retirement.
The military was brutal about how they enforced In fact,
the United States Marine Corps was exceptionally brutal.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Tutor.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
If someone were to refuse medical treatment and you had
to separate them from the military, the Uniform Code of
Military Justice the UCMJ, gives you a couple.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Of codes that you can use.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
You can use refusing medical treatment or refusing inoculation. The
Marine Corps decided to use a misconduct code called commission
of a Serious offense, which is the same as would
be used for rape, theft, or any other terrible offense,
and that was designed specifically to enable them to strip
the honorable characterization of service, to strip the educational benefits
(22:45):
that that service member would get after their service.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
The brutality of.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
The enforcement of that mandate was incredible, and it was
designed specifically to do what it did.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Tutor. It was a litmus test.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
You think about, it's black and white that it violation
of the law to force someone against their will in
the military to take an emergency use authorized drug or vaccine.
It was a litmus test for the officer Corps and
depending on how you look at it, we catastrophically failed,
or if you were the ones that wanted to shape
the force to do what you want them to do,
in violation of the law, then you succeeded beyond your
(23:19):
waileve streams.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I saw an article just the
other day, and I see these things and then you
see them for a split second and they never return.
There's nobody that kind of expands on these stories. But
the story was that since the either since COVID or
(23:43):
the vaccine, one of the two, there has been an
uptick of heart issues in the military that is like
three hundred percent of myocarditis, heart attack, that kind of issue.
I think a lot of people have said they don't
feel comfortable within the information on this vaccine. We know
that the side effects have not been released. We haven't
been able to study what the pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical companies have
(24:08):
all the data that they have on these vaccines. Do
you think that a change of administration would change the
mandate on this vaccine, would change the view from the
military on this vaccine. Would people be welcomed back and
if they were fully reinstated, would they take that.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
So, Tutor, we started this conversation about the electric utility
industry and regulatory capture that's exactly what we have with
the pharmaceutical industry is regulatory capture. So a couple things
would need to happen with a new administration. One would
be to address that issue of regulatory capture, where the
pharmaceutical industry writes the rules for the rest of America's
(24:49):
health right. And then that have to be a serious
investigation of the sorts of crimes and cover ups that
have taken place. And that would be the same for
the military. The people at the very top that instant
these policies ought to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted where
possible for the crimes that they committed against the subordinate
service members. I think that it's going to be difficult
(25:10):
for a lot of the people who were removed from
the military to want to come back, because, Tutor, you know,
just because Congress, you know, forced the military to stop
the mandate, they never fired any of the people who
were brutally enforcing it and breaking the law. And so
the moral injury, and look, Tutor, it's also there's a
moral injury on top of the physical injuries that we're seeing.
(25:30):
You know, I talk to service members who now tell
me they're like Tommy, I'm having difficult difficulty recruiting.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
We can't seem to fill the ranks.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
The people above me are telling me to go and
try to recruit the people we just kicked out for
the vaccine mandate. I took the mandate against my will,
and they're acting like it's.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
No big deal, like you forced me to do this.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
My whole family is depending on me, you know, to
take this thing I don't want to take for me
to keep my job, and now you act like it
never happened, right. I hear that oh, over and over
and over again. And so the moral injury is probably
even worse than the physical catastrophe that's happened because of
this mandate.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
So I know these sound like two totally separate subjects,
but let me just ask you. We talk about this security,
the national security, the grid. You talked about how the
one of the first steps of warfare is something like
this where they would come in and they would try
to recap us in some way to be able to
take over, and that could be an EMP that could
(26:29):
be taking down the grid if they have this ability
to have these transformers that they have some sort of
control over. For all we know, they are controlling them
directly from China. They shut us down. They come right
across our border, they come in and they take us over.
Are we prepared? Is this military that has lost so
many people, that has a morale problem, that is struggling
(26:51):
to recruit. Is this military prepared for the next step,
and that is active warfare?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Tutor to answer your question about the military's preparedness in
the context of which you just asked, right, which was
the scenario where an adversary takes down the US electric grid.
The US military is absolutely unprepared for that. And I
tried to work.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
This in uniform. In fact, I mean we were blessed.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Before mister Trump became president, we briefed him on nuclear
electromenetic pulse. He made a promise, he kept that promise
to address it. And then once the President passed that
executive order on EMP, there were some courageous generals in
the military that tried to aggressively pursue trying to protect
the infrastructure against it. And I was brought in as
a staff member to the US Air Force Electromenetic Defense
(27:37):
task Force founded by Lieutenant General Stephen cost and in
the end that task force no longer exists. General Cost
was forced to retire, and as best I can tell,
many of the recommendations made by the task force have
not been adopted by the US military, And so the
reality tutor is that if our grid goes down, the
US military members are going to starve and be in
(27:59):
the same boat as the rest of the United States, and.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
We don't have to This is a fixable problem. It's
absolutely a fixable problem.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
The military has protected its nuclear command and control against
a lot of these threats. It's the American people and
the rest of our bases, conventional bases that need to
be protected as well.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I think people don't understand when you say the grid
could go down what that means. You know, you always
see those I'm the last guy in the world type
of movies. There was one with Will Smith where they
He's the last guy in the world, and I think
it's so funny because in the trailer he's alone running
on a treadmill, and in my mind, I'm like, who's
(28:36):
running the power company house? He running on this He's
got nothing. You know, people don't understand there's no refrigeration,
there's no food, There's going to be mass chaos. I'm
not trying to be terrifying, but when we talk about
an EMP, I mean your cars stop, your your homes
have no power, your cell phones don't work, there's no communication,
(28:59):
is that right?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
When it comes to nuclear electromenetic pulse totor, we know
that we'll have nationwide grid collapse.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
That's it. That's that's a sure thing that that will happen.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
In terms of cell phones, you know, automobiles, we don't
really know which ones.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Would be affected and which ones won't.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But the but the reality is if if you have
grid collapse and the grid's not.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Working, eventually you don't charge your phone.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Right exactly, And so that's that and again it's a
it's a fixable problem. There are companies that have developed
technologies that can that can protect against electromenetic pulse right,
and and so what we really need to do is
we just need the American people to wake up to
what you just said to you.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
This is this is scary and it's real.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And in fact, we're blessed now that there's a film
that was just launched at the beginning of this year.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Called Grid Down, Power Up.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
It's a documentary produced by a gentleman named David Tye
and narrated by Dennis Quaid. And so grid downpower up
dot Com is the website and people can watch a
film that will educate them about this topic, and then
the neat thing is on that website. We've created the
opportunity for people to actually get involved in the effort
to convince their policymakers to protect this critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, I appreciate you coming on today. So it's been
very interesting to me because I really think that no
matter what side of the aisle you're on. First of all,
you can see where there's failures on both sides of
the aisle, and no matter what side of the aisle
you're on, you have to look at this and say,
this is critical to my life, This is critical to
my future, to my children's future. Whether it is national
(30:34):
security from the military standpoint or from the electric grid standpoint,
we all really need to get involved. And I just
appreciate you your willingness to come here and talk to
us today.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Sure, thank to thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, absolutely, thank you and thank you all for joining
us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast today. As always, for
this episode and others, you can check out tutordixonpodcast dot com.
Subscribe right there, or go to the Iheartrate app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts and join us next
time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessed day.
Host
Buck Sexton
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