06-20-25 - *FULL SHOW* ADM Stavridis; DougCo Home Rule; Author-CIA guy Barry Eisler - The Ross Kaminsky Show

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here we are on this Friday where we may break
some temperature records and then some people will say it's
climate change and we're all going to die. But we're
not all going to die. Don't worry about it. You
just have a lovely weekend. I have so many things
to do on today's show and very interesting guests scattered
across the show, and please don't forget that if there's

(00:24):
ever a guest that you missed and you want to hear,
or you heard and you want to hear again, or
you heard and you want to share with somebody. All
of these guest interviews, or ninety seven percent of guest
interviews go up on my website at Rosskominski dot com,
which is just really a readirect to my KOA page,
but it's easier than the long KOA link, So they

(00:46):
all go up there and in my podcast feed if
you subscribe to the Ross Kiminski Show podcast as standalones
in addition to the whole show being available if you
want to listen to the whole show that way. Let's
say you miss my interview that I'm going to do
it about eleven thirty three with Admiral Stevritis because you're
busy doing something at that time and you want to

(01:08):
hear just that. You can go to Rosskominsky dot com
or subscribe to the podcast and listen to just that
without having to listen to the whole show. So I
thought that that would be useful for you. We've been
doing that, well, we've been doing that for years, but
I just wanted to make sure you know about it.
A lot of stuff to talk about today, of course,

(01:28):
I want to start with something that I think should
be leading the news, and yet I really haven't seen
it in the news, in the national news at all.
And I'm going to share with you a headline from
Forbes magazine. And this was published last night and then

(01:49):
I think maybe updated a little bit this morning. But
here's the headline. Sixteen billion with a b okay not million.
Sixteen billion Apple, Facebook, Google and other passwords leaked act

(02:10):
now and from cyber News sixteen billion passwords exposed in
record breaking data breach, opening access to Facebook, Google, Apple,
and almost any other service imaginable. I'm going to stick
with cyber News here key takeaways. The largest data breach

(02:30):
in history, sixteen billion login credentials. The records are scattered
across thirty different databases, and some records are or might
be overlapping. The data most likely comes from various infostealers,
not just one. The data is recent not merely recycled

(02:51):
from old breaches. Cyber Criminals now have unprecedented access to
personal credentials and could exploit them for account takeovers, identity theft,
and targeted phishing attacks. Oh my gosh, they say. Our
team has been closely monitoring the web since the beginning

(03:11):
of the year. So far they've discovered thirty exposed data
sets containing from tens of millions to over three point
five billion records each. In total, the researchers uncovered and
unimaginable sixteen billion records. None of the exposed data sets
has been previously reported except for one, and that was

(03:35):
something with one hundred and eighty four million records in it,
And at this point, one hundred and eighty four million
records barely scratches the surface in this list of thirty, yes,
some are smaller than one hundred and eighty four million,
and some are bigger, but a couple of them are huge.
I see one with two billion, I see one with
three and a half billion. I see one with six
hundred and sixty seven million, another one with six hundred

(03:57):
and seventy nine million just per database. It is absolutely crazy.
And what this article says, what the researchers have said.
This is not just a leak. It's a blueprint for
mass exploitation. With over sixteen billion login records exposed, cyber
criminals now have unprecedented access to personal credentials that can

(04:20):
be used for account takeover, identity theft, and highly targeted fishing.
What's especially concerning is the structure and recency of the
data sets. The only silver lining here is that all
the data sets were exposed only briefly, long enough for
researchers to uncover them, not long enough to find out
who was controlling the data. Most of the data sets

(04:42):
were temporarily accessible through unsecured and this is something I
haven't heard of. It's all one word here, elastic search
or of object storage instances. In any case, I would
suggest to you that for any important website that has

(05:04):
important information or links to important information, especially where you
don't use two factor authentication. In other words, two factor
authentication means you log in and then you have to
put in some other information like a code that is
sent to your phone, right, those are more secure, but

(05:25):
in any place, especially where you're not doing that. But
maybe even if you are doing that, Google, Apple, Facebook,
go change your passwords and set up two factor authentication
on any and every important website, every bank, insurance company,
investment account, all of them. All of them again unclear

(05:47):
to me so far. You know just how many people
might have had access to this, But this one is
a mess. Is a mess. I will also note not
all of these relate primarily to Americans, right, so that
one of these seems to relate to Portugal. Believe it
or not, but still be careful. This is one of

(06:11):
this is the biggest, well, it's a bunch of them together,
but in terms of a report of a data breach
and a report of leaked passwords, it's the single biggest
report of all time. Okay, I'm gonna do something else,
and we'll come back to it later in the show,
but I'm gonna mention it now because it's important. Yesterday, yesterday,
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said, and I'm quote, now,

(06:37):
I have a message directly from the President based on
the fact that there is a chance for substantial negotiations
that may or may not take place with Iran in
the near future. I will make my decision on whether
or not to go, and go means attack Iran along
with Israel, within the next two weeks. Now, this is
very important and it probably deserves more time than I'm

(06:59):
going to spend on it at this moment, but I
just wanted to make sure to talk about it at
the beginning of the show. This is not the same
as some misleading headlines that say Trump is giving Iran
two weeks. He's not guaranteeing that he's giving anything two weeks.
He could decide in the next five minutes, because all
he said was that All he said was he will

(07:20):
make his decision within two weeks. But within two weeks
could be right now, and it could also be two
weeks from now, So it could be an actual opening
for Iran to negotiate, and Trump would like to see that.
But so far Iran is saying, yeah, we'll come talk,
but under no circumstance are we going to give up

(07:42):
domestic and Richmond of uranium. And if that is what
they're saying, then it's not a real talk and Trump
won't engage in it, So there's that it could just
be misdirection, and then he's actually decided already it could
be giving just a little more time for American and US,
for American and Israeli military leaders to put together a

(08:03):
joint plan. I think it's probably two or three percent
really expecting legit negotiations and ninety seven or ninety eight
percent that Trump thinks he's gonna go and just wants
to make sure to get the right plan in place.
So let's talk about a couple of things. How about
this for just an incredible change, And this definitely falls

(08:24):
into the category of that's what people voted for, which
is not everything that's going on in Trump administration right now,
but it's some things. How about this headline from the
New York Post. Border agents didn't release a single illegal
migrant into the United States last month, down from sixty
two thousand in the previous May, so a year earlier

(08:49):
under the Biden administration. So this is not just a
data point about how many they caught at the border,
but rather what this is about is so many they
released into the country. Because the Biden administration would catch
lots of people at the border, and a very small
number they might send back, but most of them they

(09:12):
just did a bunch of paperwork and let them right
into the country. So and remember also in May of
twenty twenty four, in the Biden administration, one hundred and
eighteen thousand illegal aliens were caught at the border. This
past month, that number had dropped to eighty seven hundred

(09:33):
eighty seven hundred. This is a serious success of the
Biden administration and needs should be recognized as such. Here's
the funny thing that who sent me this? Shannon? Did
you send me? Somebody sent me this low testosterone thing?

(09:53):
It's pretty funny because I know, I don't think it
was Shannon, but a friend of mine sent me. Oh,
I know who it was. It was my friend Rich.
He hears me from time to time talking about low testosterone
and Rocky Mountain Men's Clinic and that sort of thing,
and he sent me this from the Babylon b and
I thought I would share it with you. Do you
have low testosterone? Look for these warning signs. Here we go.

(10:15):
Number one, you experience emotions. Feelings are a classic symptom
of low testosterone. Number two, a home depot employee asked
if you needed help finding something and you said yes.
Number three, you used an oven mitt because the frying
pan was quote too hot. Ah, look at the little baby,
which is mitten. Number four, you remembered one of your

(10:38):
friend's birthdays. Please seek help now. I'm gonna say Number
five seems to me to be the opposite of everything
they've been saying, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go with
it anyway. At the end of Brave Heart, you didn't
shed a single tear. No testosterone, no humanity. Number six,
you've ever eaten a vegetable. Man up for goodness sake.

(10:59):
Number you have boobs, a telltale sign. Number eight you're
sitting on the back of a truck with your legs
crossed filming an ad for Tim Waltz. Uh Oh. Number
nine you'll call your mother in law mom, that's disgusting.
Number ten a doctor did blood work and showed you
a chart where your testosterone level is way below normal. Subtle,

(11:22):
and Number eleven, you're afraid to go on the teacups
at Disneyland and you call yourself a man. If you've
experienced any of these, please consult with a medical specialist today.
That is the medical alert from the Babylon bee when
it comes to low testosterone.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
All right.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
One other quick thing, Welcome to summer today is the
summer solstice. It is the longest day of the year.
And I've always found it rather interesting that not only
is the longest day of the year not the hottest
day of the year, it's not even close to being
the hottest day of the year through much of the

(12:01):
United States of America. Normally the hottest time of the
year is anywhere from the end of July into the
beginning of August in most of the United States of America.
Also in the other half six months away the other
side of the year, the coldest day of the year

(12:22):
is you know, almost never on or around the shortest
day of the year, which is December twenty first, And
this is because of something called seasonal lag. And seasonal
lag is pretty simple. Much of the world's surface is water,
and in order to heat up that water and have
it retain heat that it then releases back out into

(12:44):
the atmosphere to heat up the earth, it takes a
long time. It takes weeks or months of heat. So
by the time you get to the longest day of
the year, we're not really that close to the ocean
and land as well, being absorbed as much heat as
it can to then release back into our atmosphere and

(13:08):
to the environment generally. And that's why you get this
seasonal lag and why the hottest day of the year
is in most places unless you get up to Alaska
or something where it's kind of different, very different. The
longest day of the year and the hottest day of
the year are very different. It's something called seasonal lag.
I think it's kind of cool. We'll be right back
to talk about Douglas County home rule. I had Abe Layden,

(13:31):
who's a county commissioner in favor of home rule in
Douglas County, and I had Laura Thomas, a former county
commissioner who's opposed. And as I listened carefully to each
of them. Now I don't vote in Doug Co, but
I was thinking, well, if I did, how would I
vote based on this information? And neither the one of
them convinced me, And I have a feeling that neither

(13:53):
one of them really convinced anybody, or not very many
people listening to the show, which makes me think that
if their arguments are that unpersuasive, maybe there are lots
of people in Douglas County who still don't know how
they're going to vote on this thing. So I thought
I would do it again, but with different guests. So
joining me first, Steve Bowand is former mayor of Castle

(14:14):
Rock and former Douglas County commissioner, and he is against
home rule. But what's interesting Steve told me, and I
didn't know this before we started. Steve told me he
started as in favor of home rule and signed petitions
for it, and so on. Steve, it's good to meet
you for the first time. Thanks for being here, Thanks
for having me. I think maybe the most effective way

(14:34):
to start talking about this is for you to tell
us about your journey from being in favor or at
least positively curious about home rule to now being a
spokesperson for no.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Well. I, like many people, take the time to look
at things, and if you look at the details, you'll
often have an evolution in thinking. And for me, I
started open to home rule, sign petitions for some of
the elected officials in the county. The more I looked
at it, I saw a couple things that really bothered me.

(15:09):
First of all, the way the county commissioners approved the
Home rule process. They did not take the time to
engender public support. They didn't take the time to get
people's thoughts and ideas. They rushed it through, and now
we're on a short term I'll call it a leash.

(15:29):
They want to get home rule completed by November, sorry,
September second, so they can have a November vote on it.
That's the wrong way to do it. This is a
very complex issue. There are over fifty decisions that the
Home Rule Charter Commission will have to make. They range
from are we going to restrict debt issuance pursuant to tabor?

(15:51):
To how are we going to do social services? I
often hear that there are four home rule counties in Colorado.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Not quite right.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
There are two home rule counties and two Home rule
county municipalities.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Denver and what Broomfield. What's the other one? Yes? Those two,
those two right.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
The reason why they do that is to be a
better service to their citizens. They want to integrate social services,
drivers' licenses, you know, all the things that the state
requires a county to do. Broomfield had Broomfield citizens had
to go to three different locations to get social services

(16:31):
in Broomfield. By becoming a county, they could integrate that
into the city and County of Broomfield.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
I would also note started to interrupt to say this quickly,
home rule home rule cities, home ruld municipalities have a
lot more benefits than home ruld counties do.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
That's right, they are first home rule municipalities. The powers
that a home rule municipality has far outweigh what a
home rule county has in terms of the at the
higharity of governments in Colorado, statutory counties are the base.
They provide the fundamental services that are required by the state.

(17:09):
They are not an independent government. They are an arm
of state government. Next comes home rule counties, then comes
statutory municipalities, then comes the state of Colorado, and the
highest level is a home rule municipality. They have the
greatest power. They can, even in some instances, override state laws.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
I play Devil's advocate for a second, and again I
really don't have a strong opinion on this. Yet. The
supporters of home rule say, look, folks should vote yes
on Tuesday, because all you're really voting yes for is
giving permission for the next step to go ahead and
draft a Home rule Charter, and then the more important
vote will be the next vote where you can decide

(17:51):
whether you like what we're proposing for home rule.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
You're absolutely correct, But here's my thinking that changed my
mind on this. If we all have sixty days to
craft a home rule charter, which is in essence a
constitution for Douglas County, we are not going to get
this right. Let's take the time it requires to get
this right.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
If you were still a county commissioner, putting aside the
current deadlines and just sticking with the highest level question
of do you think home rule might be an appropriate
way for Douglas County to exist? What would your answer
be to that as a standalone question.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
When I was on the border County commissioners, we looked
at home rule twice in detail. Every two to three
years we examine home rule to see if anything had
changed in state law to give us the extra powers
that might be good for the county. We didn't see any.

(18:53):
It doesn't provide any exceptional capabilities to a county. Douglas
County already provides nearly all of the It provides all
the mandatory services required by the state. But then it
also provides nearly all the discretionary services that are allowed
by the state. As a statutory county. We didn't see

(19:16):
any benefit for the citizens.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
And you looked at this twice while you were county commissioner. Yes,
all right, I'm gonna put you in a more difficult spot. Now,
what is the strongest argument in favor of home rule?
And I don't mean in favor of necessarily voting yesterday.
Let's say you could have a perfect process, Steve's perfect
process for implementing home rule. What would the strongest argument

(19:40):
be for having home rule for Douglas County?

Speaker 3 (19:43):
For me, it would be to return government revenue limitations
back on the county. I have this streak in me
that likes smaller government. I would also look at some
of the issues that the advocates are saying, can't What
can we do with respect to immigration issues that we're

(20:05):
not already doing.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
I talked to the sheriff about this. He said, we
are doing fine right now.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
He is functionally cooperating to the extent that he can
by state law with federal ice.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
With ice, yeah, and home rule wouldn't as far as
I understand, Home rule would not allow him to cooperate
more despite what some of the proponents are saying. But
you correct me. I believe you're correct. Okay. The other
thing I wonder about is, you know a lot of
people say we can do this and it'll prevent like
the growth of our county government or something. But county

(20:40):
government in Douglas, the county, they've been spending a lot
of money already. Douglas County, which is a home rule county.
I believe that they actually have higher salaries for their
county commissioners than other counties do their home rule and
they can do that. But it's not obvious to me
that unless you are going to have a conservative government
in your county forever, which Douglas County might not, it's

(21:01):
drifting more independent, more moderate as the years go by.
You could end up with a home rule charter that
actually allows the future county commissioners to make government what
conservatives would think is big or more expensive and worse.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's one of my greatest concerns. A home rule charter
could allow the overturn of three fundamental aspects of county
budget control. First of all, you can only spend what
you have. Second of all, we follow tabor. You can
only issue debt that's approved by the people.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Now, what we know is.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
That there are two other forms of debt that are
non voter authorized debt that have been used in the
past by the county. One of the things I worked
on as a county commissioner was to pay off all
non voter authorized debt, and we got that done. They
used what's called a lease trust by water rights in

(21:58):
nineteen ninety three. That's something that I'm hearing, Well, it'll
be a great power for the county to be able
to by water rights. That's already been done several times.
And the third thing is is that we need to
maintain spending pursue it to the limitations that we currently

(22:23):
have in state law. Those are three important things that
could be overturned with a charter.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Steve Bowen is former Castle Rock mayor and more importantly
for this conversation, former Douglas County commissioner who started thinking
he was in favor of home rule, and as he
did more research on well, he already knew a lot
about what home rule meant. So he, as a commissioner,
decided that they didn't think it was worth approving, but

(22:51):
still started this time signing the petitions in favor of
moving ahead with the process, and has been so disappointed
in the process that he has be a public spokesperson
against it. Steve Bowen, thanks so much for joining us
on the show. I appreciate it. All right, we're gonna
do something different now, well, the same subject, different opinion.

(23:12):
George Teel was actually in studio with me probably a
month ish ago, maybe a little more, when this Home
Rule thing started rolling out, and I wanted to get
an opinion today in favor of Home Rule. We had
his his fellow commissioner Abe Layden on the other day.
So George joins us now by phone to give his opinion.

(23:35):
And George, I think you heard a fair bit of
what Steve had to say. Do you want to respond
to any of that?

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Yeah, you bet.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
You know.

Speaker 5 (23:44):
Listen, Steve's right about the water issues. There is nothing
more substantial that Home rule would give us in terms
of acquiring water rights or anything than we can do
right now. He was exactly right, and I think that's why,
except for Steve, hardly anybody's talking about water with Home Rule. Yeah,

(24:10):
it's understandable. Steve is a water consultant, I totally understand
why that's a focus for him, but it's really not
a focus for what everyone else is doing. You know,
Steve mentioned nothing substantial has changed. I think that's just
profoundly incorrect. You know, our sheriff cannot engage in a

(24:32):
two eighty seven G agreement with the federal government right now,
and that's a federal that's a federal form that local
governments fill out in order to work with ICE more closely.
And what Steve said about, Oh, the sheriff thinks everything's
going fine right now, that's just not true.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Well I'll ask him. I'll ask the sheriff and we'll
see what he has to say.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
But let's think with your primary point, why you can't
engage in a two eighty seven G with ICE?

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, but why are you Are you saying that you
think the sheriff would be able to if you were
a home rule county.

Speaker 5 (25:10):
Absolutely, under Section thirty of Colorado Revised Statutes in the
ability for a Home rule county to engage in independent
contracting with all levels of government, whether we're talking about
our municipal partners, our state partners, or federal partners is absolutely.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
Enhanced because you're not following.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
The statutorily appointed precepts of state government. And Steve was right.
A statutory county is an arm of the state of Colorado.
A home rule county is an independent legal entity from
the State of Colorado.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
You know, again, I need to I'm having a hard
time getting definitive answers on this. I suspect that the
state laws that prohibit the kind of cooperation that you
and I would both like to see. By the way,
I'm in favor of the kind of cooperation that you're
talking about. I suspect that the state laws that prohibit

(26:11):
it right now would not be overcome by being a
home rule county. Just like you know, I've heard some
people say you won't have to pay the ten cent
bag fee anymore. I doubt that's true either. And I've
heard some people say, you know, you won't have to
abide by some state gun laws. That's not true. And
so I just I wonder, George, what are the actual

(26:36):
benefits and not just sort of the biggest claims that
folks will get if doug Coe becomes a home rule county?

Speaker 5 (26:44):
Well first or forem mars Ross Listen, I'm not a lawyer,
but Stee's not a lawyer either. You're not a lawyer,
but it's the legal opinion of our county attorney and
other attorneys around the state that yeah, we would be
able to engage in an independent contracting and thereby be
able to work with ice. You know. Another matter that

(27:08):
Steve brought up is that nothing's changed, and something huge
changed a couple of years ago in the state legislature
they passed the law. It's called Kopka, and what it
allows for is collective bargaining by government employees at the
county level, to include our sheriff's deputies. Prior to that,

(27:29):
that was not allowed. Prior to that law passing, it
just wasn't allowed. You couldn't form a collective bargaining agreement
among county employees in the state of Colorado. That changed
two years ago. An exception built into that law, it's
written right into it is that home world counties are accepted.

(27:49):
What we want to talk about, how do we keep
costs down from the taxpayer, Well, we don't get into
collective bargaining for government employees that we know. We see
example over and over and over again across this country.
Just leads to government debt and a government drag servicing
those collective bargaining agreements.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
I do like that one. That's a good one. I mean,
even FDR thought that government workers should not be allowed
to collectively bargain. So I think that was a terrible law.
And if that's true that the well I believe you
that the county could get around that, then that's a
that's a very good thing. What about the process questions? Again,
you were you were listening when Steve was talking. He's

(28:31):
not the only one who has said that the that
the commissioners have rushed this and are continuing to try
to push a process that's that's too rushed, And I
think there's some validity there. But I'd like to know
what you think.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
Our founding fathers wrote the State of Our founding fathers
wrote the American Constitution between May and September of a
seventeen eighty. I don't understand if our founding fathers could
create the constitution that is endured for about two hundred

(29:09):
and fifty years, how anybody can say that we're rushing
this process, that we don't have time to write a
constitution or a charter for Douglas County.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Tolerance.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's that's a very interesting comparison. I guess I will say, first,
with not much disrespect, intended that the founding fathers who
wrote our Constitution are smarter than anybody who's going to
be involved in this process, even smarter than the smartest person,
which could be you involved in this process. Those people
were in a different league. Also, they had spent their

(29:43):
adult lives thinking about the questions that would come up
in the Constitution. And also, the Constitution is actually rather short.
I think that a county charter, I think the doug
Coe County Charter would likely be much longer than our Constitution.
And then finally, you're proposing, I think, to do it

(30:05):
in maybe half the time that you said was enough
time to do the federal Constitution. So it's a fun argument,
but I'm not really buying it.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Well, anybody who's read one of the municipal charters or
the Weld County Charter and the municipal charters, I'm going
to focus on that. I was on the Caliraph Council
for six and a half years. I thought, since I
had to protect and defend that charter, I should read it,
and I did so several times. The reality is the
second half, the budgeting and the debt of the pieces

(30:39):
and parts of that charter are almost identical to every
other municipal charter in this state because they are prescribed
by law what they have to be. We're going to
have the same thing. Our analysis so far says that
about the second half, dealing with finance and budgeting in

(31:01):
our charter is going to have to be virtually a
word for word identical to Pitkin County and World County.
Why because pitt Counties and World Counties are virtually word
to word, word for word identical. Here's the thing that's missing. Though.
We can put in the taxpayer Bill of Rights into

(31:22):
the Douglas County Charter. A lot of people don't know
that Douglas County d Bruce right in the nineteen nineties.
We were the first county to d Bruce. As a
matter of fact in Colorado. We can take word for
word a copy and paste the taxpayer Bill of Rights
and put them back, put them in, i should say,
the county Charter, and allowed that the citizens of Douglas

(31:46):
County can live fully under the taxpayer of Bill of
Rights once again at their county level.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
All right, so many interesting, so many interesting things here.
I want to we only got about a minute and
a half left. I want to ask you a question.
I asked a because it's a question that's just sticking
with me. If home rule were such a good idea,
why are there only two Home rule counties?

Speaker 5 (32:13):
Well, I think that's one of the downsides. It is
the work that has to be done. I mean, Ross,
I'm not taking vacation this summer. I anticipate we're going
to win. I hope I am chosen to be a
Home Rule Charter commissioner, just like Steve. He's opposed to it,
but he's still running to be a Home World Charter commissioner.

(32:34):
I already canceled our vacations. The wife and I we're hanging.
You know my wife, I do now, she does like
to travel. We're staying here because I know I'm going
to be putting in ten to twelve hour days for
two months to get this process done. Listen, I grew
up in a World county. You talked about the founding

(32:56):
fathers thinking about the Constitution for their entire adult lives.
I can't say that, but for most of my adult
life I've been advocating.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Ever since I got out of the Army and moved.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
At Douglas County in ninety seven that we should be
a home rule county. Why because when I was a
kid growing up, all I ever heard were the benefits
of home rule. And it's something I've been thinking about
for most of my adult life, and it's something that
I feel like I have a responsibility to bear. So's

(33:32):
to get his CERTI vacations this summer.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yeah, I know, I appreciate that answer, and I'll give
you this. I don't have an opinion. I hear what
I think are good arguments from both sides, no arguments
that have convinced me one way or another. To be clear,
I don't vote in Douglas County, and so if I
had an opinion, unless it was incredibly strong, when I'm
not even sure I would say. So, I'm gonna give

(33:54):
you a prediction, which is not something that I doesn't
mean I'm hoping one way or another. I have a
feeling that because Coloraden's vote know on things they don't understand,
and because the timeline to get from introducing this idea
to the first vote was pretty compressed, I have a

(34:14):
feeling it won't pass, but there may be an up
and if I'm right, then maybe there will be an
opportunity for you or whoever new commissioners are after you
and ab or eventually term limited, if they want to
go for it again, to do a process that's a
little bit longer and gets the public involved in the
educational process a little bit earlier and maybe have a
better chance. That's my prediction. Again, I'm not saying I'm

(34:37):
hoping for that. I'll give you the last few seconds.

Speaker 5 (34:40):
You know, your prediction actually doesn't bother me, because the
genie's out of the bottle. If indeed the people of
Douglas County tell us that they wanted more time to
consider this, my answer is, no problem. We'll do this
vote again in November. We've heard concerns about a special election.

(35:00):
No problem, We'll do this again in November, and we'll
keep doing it until Quite frankly, the people at Douglas
Kenny do feel comfortable with the conversation, and do feel
comfortable with the benefits, and do have an opportunity to
learn kind of both sides and learn that no, it's
not bulletproof, it's not a panacea, but can you give

(35:22):
us an advantage. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Just last quick thing here, I'm a little overtime. But
last quick thing, I was texting with the sheriff trying
to do this what multitasking while talking to you, and
he said home rule will not permit me to circumvent
state law. And this is in the context of working
with ice. So he seems a little bit skeptical that

(35:46):
home rule will allow him to do more with ice.
But as he also said to me, it is a
complex issue. So I got to leave it there. George,
I always appreciate your time, thanks for being here.

Speaker 5 (35:58):
Thank you, Ross appreciate it all right, We'll.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Take quick break, will be right back. You can win
a pair of tickets to see Metallica to what next
Friday night? Next Friday night? Right, Metallica at Mile High
And I'm told that we're gonna maybe do some stuff
on the air, because we're gonna be doing this over
a period of time, but also on our X formerly

(36:22):
Twitter and Instagram pages all week long for more chances
to win. Do you know anything about this? I know
everything about it, all right, So everything what do we
need to know?

Speaker 6 (36:31):
Well, first of all, every single day here on KA
next week during one of our shows, whether you or
Mandy or KOA Sports or anything right here, you're gonna
be able to have a chance to win on air.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
First and foremost, most importantly excellent.

Speaker 6 (36:45):
Secondly, we'll be promoting starting Monday, all week long on
X and on Instagram, like you said at Kaoi Colorado,
opportunities to win tickets to either Friday or Sunday show
because a lot of their stops on this tour they're
doing a one day day off and then another show
totally different sets. What's also great though, is if you

(37:06):
enter into those X or Instagram or both of those
contests sometime next week, you'll be entering into a grand
prize to go do both shows. Wow, automatically, just by
entering to either the X or the Instagram contest for
one of the shows, Okay, you're automatically entered into the
grand prize for both shows.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
And are the X and Instagram things posted yet?

Speaker 6 (37:26):
Now?

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Are you posting them next week? They'll be up on Monday, Okay.
So basically this is sort of a pre announcement of
stuff we're gonna be doing over the course of next
week so that folks can win tickets to one of
two different Metallica concerts, or maybe both if you win
the grand prize. So keep listening over the course of
the week, and we will remind you to check out

(37:48):
Koa's x page and Instagram page, and I suggest you
just go to each of them. They're both at KOA
Colorado on those platforms, and just subscribe to them and
then when a Rod posts those things, you will you
will see them there. Let's do a business story or two.
We'll sue we have time for here. So the Bus Family,

(38:09):
if you're an NBA fan, you heard of the Bus
family bus with two s's. They have owned the Los
Angeles Lakers for quite some time, and there was a
story that came out I guess it was two days
ago that they are selling a majority steak in the
team to Mark Walter, who is like a hedge fund

(38:30):
guy who also owns the Dodgers and a bunch of
other teams. And what's interesting about this is, and I'll
quote from The Athletic, which is part of the New
York Times, the Bus family has agreed in principle to
sell the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic
sports brands in the world, to financi your Mark Walter
in a deal that values the team at a global

(38:53):
record ten billion dollars. So what, by the way, what
valuation means. And we talked about this a little bit
yesterday when we were answering twelve year old Sophia's question
about the stock market. It doesn't mean that the guy
is spending ten billion dollars. What it means is for
whatever percentage of the company he's buying for, however much

(39:17):
he's buying it for, that would value the whole thing
at ten billion dollars. So, for example, if you were
buying half a company for five billion, then that would
value the whole company at ten billion. So that's what
this ten billion dollar valuation means. And this would make
it the highest valuation for any sports team anywhere in history.

(39:45):
This article notes that the sale is not finalized yet
and could eventually value the team higher eleven billion twelve billion.
By the way, just this past March, just a few
months ago, the Boston Celtics were sold six point one billion.
Now Genie Buss, who's Jerry Buss's daughter. Jerry Buss bought

(40:06):
the team in nineteen seventy nine for like sixty five
or seventy million dollars or something. Imagine that this return
now anyway, So Genie bus the daughter who is quite
young then she's she's sixty three years old. Now she
is going to continue to be the so called governor
of the team. And I don't know exactly what that means.
You can imagine a few things. What's interesting is that
the governor of a team must own at least fifteen

(40:29):
percent of the team, So she is going to maintain
ownership of fifteen percent of the team. The other thing
that's interesting is the group that's buying it, with Mark
Walter in charge, but I think it also includes Magic
Johnson and a few other people. They bought like a
twenty six or sore twenty seven percent stake in the
team four or five years ago, and the seller of

(40:50):
that was Colorado's Phil and Shoots. So by the time
this is done anyway, Mark Walters group will own I
think just under a and Genie Busse alone fifteen percent,
and I think a couple stragglers will own one or
two percent. But it's it's an incredible, an incredible transaction.

(41:12):
This guy's group. By the way, Mark Walter, he's sixty
five years old. His group is called Guggenheim Partners, and
his firm has like three hundred and twenty five billion
dollars in assets, so they can they can certainly afford this. Anyway.
I thought that was a very interesting business story, kind
of the intersection of business and sports. When we come back, oh,

(41:34):
actually no, we got another segment to do. I'm going
to talk about some things going on in the implementation
of Trump's mass deportation program that I think are pretty concerning.
And then I also have another business story for you,
and then the segment after that in about twenty minutes,
we're going to talk with former CIA officer and best
selling author Keep it here on KOA. I think we

(41:56):
may be looking at the proverbial tip of the iceberg
with something, and I just want you to have it
kind of in your mind. When it comes to President
Trump's mass deportation stuff. A lot of people you'll see
people on Twitter saying and I quote, this is what
I voted for. And I get that. I absolutely get
that Donald Trump ran on closing the border and deporting

(42:18):
illegal alien criminals. That was his focus, right His focus was,
We're going to find the criminals and people with or
already existing orders of removal, and we're going to get
them out. And because Steven Miller, who is one of
Donald Trump's longest and top advisors, is a bitter and
angry little man, he seems to have taken over this

(42:42):
thing and has decided to give ICE a numerical target.
We want three thousand people a day. Now, it's very
hard to go find three thousand criminals a day, So
in order to meet their targets, they're going to well
the softer targets to where people are working, or to

(43:02):
outside immigration courts. And I understand that on Twitter, which
is full of people on the far right and the
far left, there are a lot of people on Twitter,
which isn't the real world, but people on there may
think it is who say, we voted for this and
I'm so happy. And if you watch Twitter, you may
think that there are a lot of people who are
in favor of some of these scenes. But I think

(43:24):
there's a good chance that this is going to result
in some backlash against the Trump administration and a couple
of and there are two very different things that I
wanted to share with you, but videos I saw of
both types just from yesterday so what one is. And
let me just say one other thing. Some people are
certainly going to post videos out of context, and there

(43:46):
may be videos where someone is being arreested for you know,
armed robbery, and someone will post it and claim that
it's Ice deporting an illegal alien who hadn't done anything wrong.
Were don't have to be careful about that. Also, these days,
you never really know what's AI. But I'm sure some
of these are real, and they're going to be a
problem I think for the Trump administration and for Republicans

(44:06):
in the next election or two. There's one where they
I'm looking at it right now. They're arresting this maybe
thirty something year old woman just outside of an immigration court,
and clearly she's an illegal immigrant. She's going to immigration court.
I don't know if she has a DUI. They seem
to be trying to deport people who have DUIs, even
if they got no other criminal history. And she's like

(44:28):
crying about her son, says, my son is in school,
right so, and then I guess they take her away,
and I don't know what happened to her son who
was in school. So I think that most Americans did
not vote for that, and I think the Trump administration
needs to be kind of careful, but they are afraid
of pissing off their magabase by not aggressively deporting every

(44:51):
illegal alien they can find. So it's a tough spot
for them politically. The other thing, and I saw two
videos of this type yesterday. One there was a guy
and this is not very smart of the guy, but
there there's a guy who saw a federal agent in
a car, and the guy walked out in the street
behind the car and got down, you know, hunched down
to take a picture of a license plate for whatever purpose.

(45:13):
And the federal agent stopped the car, got out of
his car, and drew his pistol and pointed it at
the man's head. And then there was another one where
there was a guy uh in a car, not the
law enforcement guy. The law enforcement guy's on the sidewalk,
federal law enforcement. There's a guy in a car using
his phone to take some kind of cell phone video

(45:35):
of whatever ICE is doing there on the street in public,
and the ICE guy who is on the sidewalk pulls
his pistol and points it at the guy in the car.
So first I'll say the guy who pulled his pistol
and pointed it at the guy in the car. Should
be arrested and should be fired. She should not be
in law enforcement in general. And I'll also say I

(45:55):
understand why these why these guys and gals at ICE
are are nervous. There are bad people out there who
want to dox these ICE agents and who want to
post where they live and want to harass them. But
you just can't go around drawing your gun and pointing
it at people. If I did that in the exact
same circumstance, I would go to jail within five minutes.

(46:19):
These are bad looks, and this is my main point.
This is now I'm talking to political point. Lots and
lots of people voted for mass deportation of criminals. They
did not vote for mass deportation of you know, moms
at immigration court with their son in school and ICE

(46:39):
agents pulling their guns on civilians on the street. It's
a bad look and they better figure it out. Any
of you folks had gone with me on my trip
to Washington, d C. Which gosh I was four years ago, now,
you would have had the chance to meet in person
a friend of mine who's a very interesting person, and
he is a former three time CIA station chief, including Moscow,

(47:04):
and a good friend of mine. And when a former
Moscow CIA station chief texts me to say, you need
to have my friend on the show, well, then I
need to have his friend on the show. Nobody says
no to Dan Hoffman. And so Barry Eisler sent me
his new book. And Barry is, you know, already a
best selling author before this book. And Barry and and

(47:26):
Dan work together, and maybe we'll talk about that a
little bit. And I've I've read the whole book. It's
called The System, and it's a it's not a spy thriller.
It's a political thriller, and it's it's really interesting, and
it's a it's a different sort of book for me
a little bit. And I'll tell you why in a moment.
But Barry Eisler, welcome to KOA. It's really good to
talk to you for the first time.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
It's great to be here, Ross, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
I want to ask you a few questions about you
and and your previous career before we get to the book,
if you don't mind, of course, And I realized that
some of this this is going to be if I
told you I'd have to kill you. So feel free
to feel free to decline to answer anything. So, first
of all, if Dan Hoffman tell's text you and says,
would you please do this thing? What percentage of the

(48:14):
time will you go do that thing?

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Almost one hundred percent? Yeah, in fact, and the exception
will prove the rule. Here I was living in about
fifteen years ago. I was living in Tokyo with my
wife and our young daughter. Dan at the time was
chief of Station Moscow, and he said, Barry, you've got
to come out here. I'll give you a tour of Moscow.
This is a good friend know each other for a

(48:37):
long time. How often do you get an invitation from
the chief of Station Moscow to come and he's going
to show you around Moscow? For various reasons. Because we
were in Tokyo, I couldn't make it. And I don't
have many regrets in life, but that's one. I thought.
You just don't get opportunities like that, and I just couldn't.
I wish I had. So that's a long way of
saying yes. When Dan asks to suggest something.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Definitely perfect on that one, you didn't just say no.
It sounds like you just couldn't make it work, but
you would.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Have I wanted to. Yeah, I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah. So you were an operations officer, right, yes, Okay,
So if you were an operations officer who worked for
or with or or around Dan, then that means probably
a bunch of secret, secret squirrel stuff that there's no
point in actually asking you about. But tell me just
a little bit what you can about the life of

(49:28):
a CIA operations guy, or what we might colloquially call
a spy.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Sure, I want you to know. Ross a lot of
people who tell you that I would if I told you,
I'd have to kill you. And I had top secret
queue clearance, you know that kind of thing they're shining
you on. I don't. I don't do that. I was
in for three years. This is over thirty years ago.
Dan and I were in the same entering class. We're called,

(49:55):
I don't know what the nomenclature is these days, we're
called career trainees. So we were total green recruits in
the same class and we just hit it off. We
became good friends. Dan went on to the Heights, as
you know of the organization, had a long, illustrious career
at CIA. I didn't I had. For me, Mostly it
was training. I certainly got to enjoy an inside view

(50:19):
of the culture I got trained and all the things
that wind up in all the novels I've written, which
at this point is nineteen wow, nineteen oh, it's crazy.
I've been doing this for a while. So everything I
portray in the books, all the trade craft, the surveillance,
counter surveillance, all the sort of spy, the way operators
look at the world, how they operate, that is all

(50:40):
as I was trained by the US government, and it's
as authentic and accurate as I can make it. But
I just I've never had any interest in parlaying my
Oh you know, the assassinations of whose I worked in,
but I can't talk about that. It wasn't like that
for me. It was mostly training. Whatever else you might
want to say about the CIA, it is a giant
bureaue recy And when I look back at my career,

(51:03):
I didn't really realize this at the time. It's like
that Carecreguard expression. Life has to be lived forward, but
it can only be understood backward. When I look back.
My first job coming out of law school is with
the US government, big organization. Next job was with a
six hundred attorney New York based international law firm, so

(51:23):
getting smaller but still pretty big. Left that law firm
to join the Silicon Valley startup in two thousand and one.
I was the fourth employee, So now we're getting pretty small.
Then I sold the manuscript for my first book, Clean
Kill in Tokyo, and finally I was working for myself,
and that seems to be what's the most comfortable fit

(51:43):
for me. I really like being in charge of my
own stuff. So when I look back, I think, like,
what made you think you were going to be happy
and fulfilled working in a giant bureaucracy. Not that the
organization isn't capable of big things, that obviously is, But
if you like flexibility, if you like to manage your
own affairs, it can be hard to suppress all that

(52:03):
in service of the larger organization. So I don't I
could tell you about the culture, and I learned a
lot of interesting things from that. I could tell you
about the training all that kind of stuff, but when
it comes to the really secret stuff and high level
operator stuff, that's Dan, not me.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
We're talking with Barry Eisler Best selling author, and I
didn't realize it was that many books, and it was nine.
I mean, that's nineteen books. That's amazing. And Barry's new
book is called The System, A really fun summer read.
Just one quick personal comment and then we'll get to
the book. So I did sort of the opposite. I
like your trajectory better. So I worked when I got

(52:41):
out of college. I worked for my uncle and his
business partner for a little while. Then I worked for
myself for many years, including starting a company. So it
was a bigger group, but I was the boss and
the owner with a couple of partners. And now I
work for iHeartRadio. I worked for the man. This is
my this. I mean, I'm older than you, I think,

(53:03):
but this is my first W two salary job of
my life. And there's some upside and some I mean
the upside is what the job actually is. Getting to
do this right, because you can't do this working for yourself, really,
but yeah, but being being a sole proprietor and being

(53:23):
an entrepreneur and being able to take two months off
or three months off every year if you feel like it,
it's hard to do better than that. When it comes
to lifestyle, so I'm I'm a little envious, even though
I absolutely love my job.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yeah, there's it's always a trade off. Is that. I
think it's a Thomas Soul quote. There are no solutions,
only trade offs, and you just have to find what
works best for you. But yeah, this is a this
is a good fit for me. I just really like
to be in charge of my own just everything that
I do.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
All right, let's talk about the book. Barry Isler's new
book is called The System. Now, I think that with
at least a couple of these main characters, the parallels
who you're supposed to think of, seems pretty clear, like
to me. To me, the main character is is AOC

(54:14):
or maybe a slightly smarter version of AOC, or maybe
the love child of AOC and Andrew Yang or something
like that. Right, that's good.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
And it's interesting because because I didn't know and and
the way you write about this character who is who
is very liberal idealistic, I wouldn't quite say revolutionary, more
more ideal, more on the idealistic side. You you write
about her with what almost feels like fondness from the author.

(54:48):
And I'm a little I'm a little curious about that
or am I reading too much into it?

Speaker 2 (54:53):
No, No, you're ross. This is such a great initial question. Uh,
we're gonna this is so interesting. We might wind up
talking about this the whole time, but we'll see. Yeah,
I should start by saying I'm not an AOC fan,
and I don't. I'm not partisan. I think like you
would be fair to say my politics are pretty heterodots,
so I don't. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. Maybe,

(55:18):
just if I had to absolutely identify my politics with
a label, I would say I tend to swing libertarian,
but I don't think of myself as a libertarian. For
anybody who's interested in this, I would recommend a short
essay by a guy whose essays I really like. His
name is Paul Graham. He writes the best essays I've

(55:39):
ever come across, and one of the best of the
best is called Keep your Identity Small. Just some really
good advice for what happens when you start thinking of
so I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican, that you start
to get motivated to analyze and understand and present events
in ways that flatter your identity, and that can lead
to inaccuracy, so I try to avoid that else I

(56:00):
might be I'm certainly not one of the two wings
of America's political parties. So, but there are some politicians
I think are better, and or I say, some that
are worse, and some that are even worse AOC. I
will just say initially, I found her really promising in
a breath of fresh air. I first heard her interviewed
by Glenn Greenwald when no one had heard of her,

(56:22):
when she was just running for her office against Joe
Crowley in this long shot bid for Congress, and I
thought I liked what she had to say. I liked
her professed values. She was articulate, charismatic. I thought she
was smart. I don't think she's dumb, actually, which which
makes her tragedy more tragic. I could be wrong, of course,

(56:42):
and I don't have access to her IQ test, but
I don't think her failings have to do with a
lack of intelligence.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
I think what's disappointed you? What's disappointed you about her?

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Something that I've tried to present in the book the
system itself, which is fundamentally the way power upts. It
corrupts everything. And so I think a lot of good
people want to acquire power, typically, let's say, in the
political arena, with good intentions, because in any society, and

(57:16):
certainly one is big and complex as American society, there
are going to be a lot of problems, a lot
of injustices, a lot of things that could be dramatically better,
and things that don't have to be as bad as
they are. And there are people who are genuinely motivated
to acquire political power to improve those things. But once
they get a taste of power, they start to want

(57:37):
more power, and then rationalizations kicking. It's not a coincidence.
The first I have an epigraph that introduces each of
the sixty three chapters of the book, and the chapter
one epigraph is the object of power is power. That's
George Orwell, and that's that notion is foundational to my
whole system of belief. So what I saw with AOC

(58:00):
is that she started as an outsider, as a rabble rouser,
as someone who really was intent on shaking up the system,
taking on Nancy Pelosi, the entrenched democrat hierarchy, and very
quickly through a system of carrots and sticks, I think
she was suborned to the point where she was saying

(58:21):
things that to me, they're not supportable. I disagree with
a lot of people and a lot of things, but
we can have great conversations. Dan would be a great example.
Dan and I disagree on all sorts of national security stuff,
I mean, very different views, but we love each other.
We're close friends. We can have great conversations. We respect
each other. I wouldn't say either one of us is

(58:41):
taking a position that I've never heard Dan take a
position where I feel like, what are you like? That's crazy,
that's unconstitutional, that's whatever. And AOC in some of her
more out there moments, has talked about using the force
of law against Fox News. Certain Fox personalities should be

(59:01):
investigated and arrested, that sort of thing. I'm not a
Fox News fan. I'm not an MSNBC fan either, But
anybody who says that any journalists, anybody even TV personalities
that are costplaying his journalists should be investigated for their
opinions in the way they present the news. Anything short
about right fraud or defamation or something like that, like

(59:22):
this is crazy talk. Yeah, and I just I can't
support it no matter who's saying it. So that's the
way I say. AOC right, So.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Let's keep going because we got about six minutes. So
main character is sort of AOC like I think, inspired
by her, inspired by her, and again I see a
little Andrew Yang there with the universal basic income thing
that she supports. And I don't want to give away
much to listeners because I want you to just go
by Barry Eisler's new book called The System. But one

(59:50):
of the things that this young Latina woman who won
a shocking victory over an entrenched incumbent, and that part
is very much like AOC. But one of her campaign
big campaign platforms is cutting way way back on military
spending in the military industrial complex or the or the
military government complex. And then it gets into all the

(01:00:14):
stuff Barry just talked about about people making compromises, putting
in a polite way and then rationalizing it and all that,
and and I thought that was really interesting. Tell me,
tell me a little bit about the colonel who ends up.
When you first introduced to him, you sort of think, oh,
it's a military colonel. He's just you know, straight lace

(01:00:35):
doing his military thing and just looking at within systems.
And then it turns out to be something else. And
is that straight out of your imagination or do you
think the kind of thing that that guy did really happens,
even if just to a slightly lesser degree.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Uh, yeah, I went on to do any spoilers, but
let's just say, Colonel Aaron Walls, who's one of the
antagonists in the book, definitely does some fairly out there
stuff in what he considers to be the interests of
US national security. And yeah, all these things, from everything
I can see, are true. I try, I don't. I

(01:01:14):
try not to exaggerate the fictional aspects of my books,
and my novels are unusual, I think because they always
have extensive endnotes. I always want people to know what
is this based on what's really going on in the
world as depicted in my novels, and The System has
more endnotes than any of the previous books I've written.
There's certain things like some if you were to say

(01:01:36):
to me, for example, do you really think that US,
like one of the security organizations, would would actually try
to assassinate a journalist, let's say something like that, like
that's out there, then you would probably not know that
Mike Pompeio CIA actually plotted to assassinate Julian Assange. This
is this is documented fact. You might not like Julian Massage.

(01:01:59):
That doesn't really interests me very much, whether you think
he's great or whether he's not great. He's not even
an American citizen. People call him a trader. You can't be
a trader to America if you're not an American citizen.
You could be something else, but unless you're doing something
with the Dictionary definition of the word trader, you can't
be a trader. So if the CIA plots to kill
an American, or rather to kill a journalist, then I

(01:02:23):
don't think it's that out there to consider that the
Pentagon's intelligence unit would do similar things. This is always
how I try to approach the fiction in my book
and in my books, and never want to come up
with a scenario that's entirely fictitious, that's some sort of
fantasy thing that could never happen. I always wanted to
be a version of things that really have happened, like

(01:02:45):
my reading between the lines of what's actual history or
actual news. And that's how I look at Colonel Walls.
He's got a coherent worldview, it's a pretty cold warrior
type worldview, and he believes life is a zero sum
game and the end justifies the means. That's that's Colonel Walls.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
He's a very interesting character, and you you build him
very well. You can at you know, at the end
of the book or the end of the time, well
Walls goes basically all the way the end of the book,
I really feel like I know him. And I think
that's with all your characters. I think you. I think
you do a great job. I'm just gonna mention this
in passing because we're almost out a time. But I

(01:03:26):
also really liked the character of the Congressman that the
main character congress Woman beat the guy who is the
functional equivalent of Joe Crowley. He seems like one of
the only decent people in the book.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Actually, Yeah, and even he's got certain he's compromised in
various ways.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Yeah, I would.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
I would just say this, like, I'm not trying to
send a message with my fiction. The first thing my
books have got to do is they've got to entertain.
If they don't entertain, they've they've failed, right, So they
have to entertain you. And part of fictional entertainment, whether
it's a movie or television show or a novel, you
have you got to relate to the characters. You have
to care about the characters, if you love them or

(01:04:07):
hate them or whatever. But you can't be indifferent. And
if I've done my job with this book, in addition
to people feeling entertained, there aren't any conclusions. I don't
want people to come away thinking, oh, I get it.
Barry wants people. Barry thinks the universal basically comes a
great idea, or he thinks it's a terrible idea, or
this is good or that's bad. That's not the purpose.
And if I've done my job well, you'll see it

(01:04:29):
from all the different characters' perspectives. There are no solutions,
there are only trade offs, and I want people to
be able to talk about it. Do you think these
were good decisions? Do you think this is a good outcome?
Was it understandable, supportable? Was it a mistake? What does
it mean? I hope the book will provoke those sorts
of conversations within the context of being wildly compelling and entertaining.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
There is one interesting character who I won't quite call
a mean character. He's somewhere between a background character and
a main character who is friends slash lover, slash staffer
to the to the congresswoman, and and who I think
he's kind of the architect archetype of the uh left

(01:05:11):
wing idealist who isn't actually right. And he he isn't
in the same position as the member of Congress because
he doesn't have to take a vote, so it's kind
of easier to snipe from the cheap seats. But that
doesn't that doesn't necessarily mean you're super sympathetic. Then when
a politician takes a vote that appears to be or

(01:05:33):
or is willing to take a vote that appears to
be the opposite of what they campaigned on and and
Barry Eisler's book The System is really a wonderful and
highly entertaining look into the minds and the processes of
politics and the intersection of military spending and politics and
all these things. And it is a really interesting, a
really interesting book, Barry, and I enjoyed it very much.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
I appreciate your reading it, Ross as we're talking to
the beginning of the show there they're not all talk
show hosts actually read the book, So thank you for
thank you for taking the time, and I'm so glad
you enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Yeah, I read the book. I read the end notes too,
because I'm I'm that kind of reader. Uh. Barry Eisler's
new book is called The System, and I recommend you
buy it and read it. A perfect summer vacation read.
You will thoroughly enjoy yourself. I certainly did, Barry. It's
so good to talk to you for the first time.
We'll keep in touch.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Thanks Ross. Great talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
All right too. All right, we'll take you a quick break.
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
We'll be right back on Kawa. I promised you that
I owed you another business story, and I'm gonna do
this one very quickly because it's quite in the weeds.
But Donald Trump had interfered with Nippon Steele's purchase of

(01:06:51):
US Steel, and Ben and I said when it happened
that Trump was making a mistake and there was actually
good for America if Nippon Steele bought US Steel, because
otherwise the long run future for US Steel is probably
going out of business. Nippon Steele has more advanced processes
and they have a lot of money to invest to

(01:07:13):
make US Steel a much better, much more competitive company.
And they're gonna do all that. What I've learned. Actually,
a listener sent me this in an article for The Dispatch.
Scott Linscom is one of my favorite writers and thinkers
about international trade international economics, has written a piece entitled, yes,
Trump just nationalized US Steel And again, I'm gonna just

(01:07:36):
go through this very quickly. I'm not even gonna read
the article. But there's the thing that I only ever
heard about in communist China called a golden share. And
what a golden share is is it's a category of
stock ownership in a company that has massive, massive power

(01:07:56):
and control over the company. Even if there's only one
golden share, and you know, one hundred million regular shares,
and US Steel is actually probably more than that, but
however many shares there are. If you have one golden share,
then per whatever the provisions are of that golden share,
you can do almost anything. So, for example, in China,

(01:08:18):
if they have a golden share in a company, then
they can say no, that company can't sell itself to
another company, can't do this, it can't do that. It
must do this, it must do that, and believe it
or not. According to Linsicom, the US government has just
as part of this deal, I guess they've been issued
a so called golden share in US Steel that will

(01:08:42):
prevent Nippon Steele from doing some things if it decides
it wants to do them. Now, these are not things
that Nippon Steele has said they want to do, but
it would prevent them from doing things like moving the
headquarters or from like let's say the economy gets bad
and they want to slow down on their investments in
US steel because there's a big recession and there's no

(01:09:03):
demand right now, and they want to slow down. They
want to spend you know, instead of fourteen billion, they
want to spend twelve or instead of three years, they
want to spend it in four years. Under this golden
these golden share of provisions, they can't. And I just
want to say, I think this is really terrible, terrible.

(01:09:24):
It's not because it's Trump. It's because the United States
government should never operate that way. That the textbook definition
of fascism in the economic sense of the word. Okay,
I'm not talking about Hitler and I'm not talking about
racism and the way people throw around the word fascism.

(01:09:45):
That is not what I mean. The textbook definition of
the word fascism is in an economic sense is the
existence of nominally private enterprise. So it's not like socialism
or communism. In so socialism and communists the government owns
and overtly controls these companies. In fascism, the companies appear

(01:10:08):
to be private. You can buy and sell the stock,
you can elect boards of directors with votes of shareholders.
They appear to be private companies. But under fascism, what
happens is that the central government, the national government, forces
private companies to operate in the interest of the government,
just different or can be different from the interests of

(01:10:31):
the nation. There are lots of times where the things
the government might want, depending on what the specific politician
wants and why he wants it, that could be different
from what's good for the country. And I think it
is horrendous that the federal government of the United States
would ever have a golden share. I mean, this is
what Hijin Ping does in China in order to control

(01:10:54):
private companies and say you can't do what we want
you to do unless we get you permission. And of
course the permission is purely going to be based on politics,
not what's best for the country. Or or or best
for the company, or best for anybody other than whoever's
president at that time. And I think it's terrible. I
think it's antithetical to what it means to be a

(01:11:16):
free country. And if there's any way for Congress to
overturn this and to and to simply shred the Golden
Share at some point and tell Nippon Steele this year
simply doesn't exist anymore, and you can operate however you
would operate under American law. That's what should happen. And

(01:11:40):
I think it's a I think it's an absolute travesty
that they've done this. And again, this has nothing to
do with it being Trump. I would say the exact
same thing no matter who was president. And I think
anybody who's been listening to me for a while would
understand that, uh, what this story is a kind of
a big deal, this next one. But I'm only going
to do it quickly because I'm going to try to
get guest on the show next week to talk about it.

(01:12:02):
A guest from the Colorado Office of State Planning and
Budget and the headline from coloradopolitics dot com Colorado's economic
outlook turns grim as recession risk reaches fifty percent. Now
I can't say I'm entirely surprised by this in the
sense that we have heard, especially from Denver, but from

(01:12:25):
other important cities in Colorado. After Denver made their first
announcement that their budgets for next year are looking very
tight because tax revenue, specifically sales tax revenue is coming
in quite a bit lower than they had anticipated. It's
unclear right now why that is. Is it tariffs, is
it fear of tariffs? Is is it economics uncertainty in

(01:12:49):
general that is causing people to slow down just a little,
but slow down in terms of their purchases. Now we'll
say there's place this is that you go, like if
the other day I was I don't even remember why,
but I was at Park Meadows Mall and the parking
lot is freaking full. And whenever I happen to go
down by park Meadows Mall to go to one of

(01:13:11):
the restaurants over next to the mall for dinner, the
parking lots are full, full, full, full. So it's I
don't think we're certainly not in a recession around there,
and I don't really think we're in an actual recession anywhere.
But here's the key. Maybe they were fuller before. Maybe
they're still full, but maybe there were two percent more before,

(01:13:35):
or three percent or whatever the number is. And if
you're a federal government or not federal, well federal too,
But if you're a government and you're working with tens
or hundreds of millions of dollars and then suddenly there's
a three percent drop, and now suddenly you're missing millions
or tens of millions of dollars in Denver now seems

(01:13:56):
to be talking about two hundred million dollars. You don't
need big percentage changes to cause really important changes in
your budgets. And so this is gonna be an important
thing to see. And one of the other things all
note just very quickly. So I do think that next year,
if this happens, they're gonna have to cut medicaid somehow.

(01:14:18):
And the other thing that I think is gonna have
well they're already telling us it's very likely to happen.
And this doesn't bother me one bit. Colorado's and this
is also from this from the Colorado Sun. Colorado's tax
credits for evs and e bikes and heat pumps will
be cut in half next year. Right, So this is
fine because there shouldn't be any subsidies for any of
this stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:14:36):
This is just.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
Nonsense handing money to like middle class and upper middle
class people to buy buy fancy toys like electric cars
and electric bikes. So I'm against all these subsidies, but
they're there. And it's a very interesting thing that living
in a state as blue as we live in, where
you know, they love all this stuff, that they're gonna
have to be cut in half next year. Very interesting story.

(01:14:59):
We're gonna keep up with it next week. We'll be
right back keeping here on KOA. If you ad to
x dot com slash Ross Putin, that's my Twitter handle
r OSSPU T I N. And just look at my
most recent post. And this is from a man named
William Wheaton. And I'm not this is not like leading
up to some kind of dry joke. Okay, this is

(01:15:20):
a real thing. So this guy's daughter, his name is Trista,
thirty one years old, apparently was supposed to fly out
of Denver Airport last night. I guess at the airport,
if I understand mister Wheaton's post correctly, maybe she got
on the plane and walked off the plane. But her
phone died at some point yesterday and the family has

(01:15:41):
no idea where she is. And so this young woman
is missing. She's thirty one years old. She you know,
there's probably not that I'll just tell I'll tell you,
all right. So she's five to one, blonde. She was
last wearing black striped biker shorts, a matching crop top,
and a black hoodie. She's around five one, with blonde hair,
brown eyes, gauged ears, so kind of those big circular

(01:16:05):
in the ear lobe kind of ear rings, a little
nose ring, a couple of tattoos and so on. And
she's missing. So if you and a like a cheetah
pattern tattoo on her on the upper part of her leg,
on her right leg, which you could see, I guess
if she's wearing shorts. So in any case, this young woman,

(01:16:28):
i'll call her young, she's thirty one, is missing. I
don't know that there's much I can do to help,
but I I said I would. I said I would try.
So if you if you go to x dot com
slash ross putant r O S sp U t I N,
you can see my retweet of somebody else's post that
includes a bunch of pictures of the missing girl, and

(01:16:49):
and you know, maybe you can help. There's a phone
number in there for the dad if you happen to
if you happen to see her. All right, let's uh,
let's lighten this up a little bit, because A Rod
has had something of a conversion, and I hadn't. I
have to say, A Rod told me he was quite

(01:17:10):
passionate on one side of the issue. Now fairly passionate
at least on the other side of the issue. And
I never even really thought of it as an issue, like,
I never thought of this as anywhere near like is
a hot dog a sandwich, for example. But it sounds
a Rod like there's a whole subculture that thinks of

(01:17:31):
this as an important question. So what are we talking
about here?

Speaker 6 (01:17:35):
There is, by the way, a very passionate fan base
on one side, and I've been hearing it the last
twenty four hours. When it comes to strange cheese, you
are either a bier or a polar, a peeler, I
should say, a fighter or a peeler. And now I
have been getting crap because I have been converted. I

(01:17:56):
was very passionately a practicing peeler and now because of convenience,
because I'm always on the go adaptation to my diet,
which is now including string cheese, which in previous years
really I had not. And honestly, the dumbest part of
the take whatsoever, is that I think biting string cheese

(01:18:18):
instead of peeling string cheese is more filling. And as
I told mister greg over here, mister Gregstone, you'll hear
at noon, my biggest thing here is to give you
an explanation when it comes to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
Food that is messy or it falls apart.

Speaker 6 (01:18:34):
I eat a burrito and you have to work to
put it toget work to eat it. I feel by
the end of it you're not satisfied because you feel
like you worked, not enjoyed food. So with string cheese,
it's very important to me that it's more satisfying and
biting it, the smaller, beefier, yummier chunks, is better to me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Now some people say that you end up feeling hungrier
if you take a little longer to eat your food.
In fact, that's why part of so many diet plans
is to eat slowly or even put down the fork
between bites and so you're saying that you feel like
you're getting fuller, even though actually through your new method
of biting rather than the peeling, or I might call

(01:19:14):
it shredding, you you're eating it faster.

Speaker 6 (01:19:17):
That used to be part of my argument on the
peeling side. Yeah, but what I just do now is
just take more time in between bites. It lasts just
as long, less messy, more filling, more convenient.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
So I haven't really thought about it a lot. I
have done both. I have done the shredding and I
have done the biting, and I think the shredding for
me is far more satisfying because you can. You know,
there's not that many foods you can kind of shred
and peel like that. You could do it perhaps with
some pork, if you're going to make some shredded pork,
although you might not shread that with your fingers. You might,
you might not, might use a couple of forks or something.

(01:19:50):
I like the whole I like the whole feel of
love the shred.

Speaker 6 (01:19:55):
I do as well. And I am dog's best friend. Yeah,
I heard that right. I said it right. When I'm
at home, I will peel so I can give little
pieces to my dogs but otherwise team bite.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Okay, now if your team bite. But but team dog,
are you breaking off a piece now to give to
the dog, or are you biting off a piece and
then taking it out of your mouth and giving it
to the dog.

Speaker 6 (01:20:16):
I am not a bird, and I will to give
it more of a length and more girth for the dog.
I will peel and throw the peeled piece still to
my dog. So I will peel for the dog being around.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
But otherwise okay, okay, but if you're if you're peeling
and giving a piece to the dog, yes, oh, no,
I question. I'm going.

Speaker 6 (01:20:37):
I understand, I'm committing to peeling. I'm not gonna bend
also bite. I'm not a hybrid.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Okay. If I'm going one way, yeah, I'm gonna stick
to that way.

Speaker 6 (01:20:45):
So if I'm peeling, give to the dog, I will
peel the rest. Yes, yeah, so much goes to the dog.
When you peel, I mean wants more another piece? Another piece?

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Yeah? Team bite, all right, I'll be team shred when
we come back. We're gonna talk Team Navy. Former Native
Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavritis joins the show. Former
NATO Supreme Allied Commander. He is recently, although perhaps temporarily,
been promoted to chairman of the board of Two Dudes Consulting.

(01:21:14):
And he is a best selling author in both fiction
and nonfiction. And we have a lot to talk with
him about today. His most recent book, by the way,
which we talked about a couple of weeks ago, is
The Admiral's Bookshelf, and I still don't have my signed copy,
and I got a lot of things I want to
talk to about. But for first, Admiral, what were your

(01:21:38):
thoughts when you heard the news that Captain Cook's ship
has been found?

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:21:45):
I was thrilled. So to get everyone on the same page.
Captain James Cook one of the most intrepid explorers in
history around the period of time to the United States
becomes independent seventeen sixty eight seventeen eighty. In that range,
he discovers Australia, he discovers the Hawaiian Islands. He's the

(01:22:10):
first European to set foot on both of those. But
his voyages, he did three distinct voyages of exploration as
far north as the Arctic, as far south as the Antarctic,
and his crew loved him.

Speaker 8 (01:22:26):
He overcame scurvy, he.

Speaker 7 (01:22:28):
Learned to navigate laungitude, one of the first to do it.
Really remarkable science and exploration leader. So his ship, the
principal one, was called the Endeavor, like something you try
and do, the Endeavor.

Speaker 8 (01:22:45):
And once he died, and he died under exploring.

Speaker 7 (01:22:50):
Circumstances, attacked by Hawaiians on Hawaiian on the main island Hawaii,
and died, and then the ship sort of drifted out
of history Ross and it became a troop transport.

Speaker 8 (01:23:04):
It had different name.

Speaker 7 (01:23:06):
Now it's been discovered at the bottom of the harbor
in Newport, Rhode Island. So to anyone who knows anything
about exploration, finding James Cook's Endeavor is a pretty remarkable moment.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
What has it been long believed that the Endeavor was
in that neighborhood or was it completely lost and could
have been anywhere?

Speaker 7 (01:23:31):
I think there was a general sense that the British
had repurposed it as perhaps a troop transport at some time.
All this attendant to the American Revolution, as I just mentioned,
But I don't think anybody expected it would turn up
in a routine dredging operation in Newport, Rhode Island. Which,
by the way, for listeners in the Denver area may

(01:23:54):
not know. Newport Rhode Island is the beating heart of
sailing in America, where all of our America's cups voyages
are They train there. It's also a big navy port,
huge navy base, so kind of fitting that has been
if you will, hiding in plain sight down at the
bottom of that harbor. I think it'll be raised, There'll

(01:24:15):
be an active discussion about who owns it, who gets
to restore it. I hope ultimately it goes back to
the United Kingdom and is restored and put in Portsmouth
alongside HMS Victory, the flagship of Lord Nelson.

Speaker 8 (01:24:32):
Close with this the James Cook's legacy.

Speaker 7 (01:24:35):
Captain Cook, his legacy in the world of exploration and
science is as great as that of Lord Nelson in warfare.
Those two ships deserve to be next to each other.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
All right, Just one last quick comment on this, And
given what you've done for a living and just your
enjoyment of exploration yourself, there are very few things that
I am ever happened to mention to you that you
haven't already done. And I imagine that'll be the case
here too. But I had the opportunity to go to
Cooktown in Australia, so that was where he like beached

(01:25:11):
his The Endeavor was the ship on that trip, and
they had to do some repairs there, all way up
in northern Australia near the Dane Tree rainforest, so that
was kind of cool. I imagine you've been there. Yes,
I have.

Speaker 7 (01:25:25):
I've done that whole coast of Australia, the Gold Coast
they call it.

Speaker 8 (01:25:30):
And it's.

Speaker 7 (01:25:31):
A tribute to James Cook that it was able to
map it and survey it so precisely that many of
the surveys he produced are still in use today.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
And then the other thing I wanted to mention to you,
and again I imagine you've been there, done that already.
But I used to collect tribal art New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Indonesia,
all this stuff. I have a pretty decent little collection,
even some Aboriginal stuff. And I was briefly in Auckland.
I was more going to the South Island of New Zealand,

(01:26:03):
but I had a little time in Auckland, and so
I went to the museum there. And the museum in
Auckland has a collection of James Cook's collection that he
collected when he was traveling that part of the world,
and it was one of the greatest things I've ever
seen in my life.

Speaker 7 (01:26:25):
I couldn't agree with you more. The museum is memorable
in every way. And because I visited at a time
when I was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, the New
Zealand Armed Forces did that Hakou dance where they come
out and footstomp and welcome you and you have to

(01:26:45):
pick up a feather without breaking eye contact with the
leader of the warriors, the Maori warriors in front of you.

Speaker 8 (01:26:52):
So it's doubly memorable for me. Hey.

Speaker 7 (01:26:55):
Book recommendation, now that I know you're a Captain Cook
fan came out last year.

Speaker 8 (01:27:01):
It's by Hampton Sides.

Speaker 7 (01:27:03):
It's called The Wide Wide Ocean, and it's the story
of Cook's last voyage and his death. It's incredibly well written,
really puts you into the endeavor in that void. It's
The Wide Wide Ocean by Hampton Side.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
All right, Because I have the memory of a goldfish.
If you would do me the favor at some point
of sending me that by email, what I'll do, especially
since it's a recent book, is I'll read it and
I'll try to get the author on the show, and
then i'll send you the link to the interview so
you can hear that, and I'll tell you in advance
and you can suggest a question or two. All right, now,
let's get to what's going on in the world. And
we got probably six or seven minutes here, and I'm

(01:27:41):
going to start with a couple of specific questions rather
than the macro about Iran and Israel, which we might
get to. But what do you make of the fifth
fleet moving out of Bahrain? Do you think this is
protecting them from an Iranian strike? Do you think it's
giving more offensive optionality to the US? Do you think
it's both.

Speaker 8 (01:28:00):
I think it's both.

Speaker 7 (01:28:01):
And you know, when a hurricane is coming toward a port,
you get the ships underway. Ships are always more survivable
at sea than they are tied to appear, so it
is defensive in that regard. But also those ships are
our mind sweepers in case the Uranians decide to mine
the Straight of Four Moves. You don't want them bottled

(01:28:23):
up and trapped up north. You want them underway, so
they're flexible, and they're guided missile destroyers. There that can
provide ear cover in case the Iranians lash out against us,
which I think they will if we decide to strike
their nuclear facilities.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
So again I always hesitate a little bit asking you,
you know, what would you do if you were president?
But at the level that you got to, you were
involved in serious policy discussions and you were figuring out
the plans and the orders, not just taking orders. So
if you were at still there at that level, advising

(01:29:02):
and so on, what was your advice to be to
the president about whether we should join in at even
a quote unquote small scale two or three mops to
take out four to oh versus well versus what you
can tell me what the alternatives are as well?

Speaker 8 (01:29:21):
I think there are four options.

Speaker 7 (01:29:22):
One is do nothing, Let the Israelis handle this, let
them continue.

Speaker 8 (01:29:28):
To pound away.

Speaker 7 (01:29:29):
Problem is they probably can't really destroy that nuclear program,
but certainly.

Speaker 8 (01:29:34):
That would be an option.

Speaker 7 (01:29:35):
Option two would be let diplomacy play out, put lots
of pressure on the Iranians, set the table for strikes,
then go to the Iranians and say, hey, it's the
last exit before the tunnel. Let's talk, so give diplomacy
a real push. Option three you mentioned it a surgical participation.

Speaker 8 (01:29:59):
Say to Israe, look, we're going to do one thing,
and one thing only.

Speaker 7 (01:30:02):
We're going to take out four now, and we've got
the capability to do that with the MOP massive ordinance
penetrator often called the bunker busting bomb on the news
these days. But take a surgic goal, and then number
four would be all in with the Israelis, participate in
massive strikes against the country, try and convince the people

(01:30:24):
of Iran that their leadership is inadequate, and hope you
get a regime change. Those are four options. I would
advise option two. Set the table, be prepared to strike,
but give diplomacy another chance. I kind of think that's
what President Trump is doing when he says, hey, let's

(01:30:45):
take a two week pause here.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
Okay, so let's just elaborate with me a little bit
on that option two. Okay. If option two doesn't work,
is your next choice option three or option four?

Speaker 7 (01:31:00):
I think you want to minimize the level of US
participation simply because it will minimize the level of Iranian response.
And yeah, you don't want the straight of hor moves
to close. You don't want American businessmen walking on the
streets in the Middle East shot down by terrorist groups.

Speaker 8 (01:31:21):
You don't want a.

Speaker 7 (01:31:23):
World in which Iran is raining a thousand ballistic missiles
all pointed at Tel Aviv.

Speaker 8 (01:31:30):
You don't want that world.

Speaker 7 (01:31:31):
And so from a US perspective, I think doing the
least you can and substituting for whatever the Israelis can't
do makes the most sense.

Speaker 1 (01:31:42):
So I'm with you on both of those. I'm with
you on number two being the right first choice, Number
three being the right fallback. The one place where I
would quibble not with you, but with Trump. And you
can tell me whether you agree with me or not.
I think two weeks is too long. Yeah, I agree completely.

Speaker 7 (01:32:02):
I'll take two weeks as someone who is open to
see diplomatic resolution. By the way, most of the polling
I see indicse seventy percent of Americans are against the
US being involved militarily, and that's because our nation correctly
has enormous scar tissue concerning long forever wars in the
Middle East. And frankly, this idea that you can just

(01:32:24):
do a surgical strike and you know they'll probably just
back down and it'll be a one and done, I
don't think so. Look at the Japanese on Pearl Harbor.
I think they hope to shock in awe the United States.

Speaker 8 (01:32:38):
That's not what happened.

Speaker 7 (01:32:39):
They awoke a sleeping giant and ended up in a
big time war.

Speaker 8 (01:32:44):
I think it.

Speaker 7 (01:32:44):
Could happen here quite easily. We don't want to be
involved in another war in the Middle East.

Speaker 1 (01:32:51):
And yet you still chose three rather than four because
you think three has a lower opportunity of dragging us
into a larger conflagration than four.

Speaker 7 (01:33:00):
That's correct, And I think that if you're willing to
let diplomacy play out over a couple of months, which
is not an unreasonable amount of time, then you've got
a better chance at landing that. And frankly Ford Dow
is not going anywhere, and the Iranians are not going
to suddenly reconstitute their ear defenses, so you've got time here.

Speaker 8 (01:33:24):
I think.

Speaker 7 (01:33:24):
Having said all that, I think President Trump's tactic, and
he's the master negotiator, is to pressurize the situation.

Speaker 8 (01:33:33):
Give him two weeks.

Speaker 7 (01:33:34):
He likes to do that anyway, maybe that'll elicit a response,
and if it doesn't, he can extend the time, or
he can go to option three.

Speaker 8 (01:33:43):
As we've been discussing a surgical strike.

Speaker 1 (01:33:46):
All right, So just real quick, I think you misheard
me because then you said you agreed, because you said
you agree with me, But then what you said afterwards
is you're actually disagreeing with me. I said, I think
two weeks is too long, and you think two weeks
is too short.

Speaker 8 (01:33:59):
Oh, I'm sorry, I do. I'm sorry I misheard you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:34:02):
I think in the real world, where it takes time
to make decisions and Iran leadership or dodgy missiles, I
think two weeks is almost the minimum amount of sensible
time you could offer. And I think, more realistically, if
they don't take two weeks, but you could get them
on a track toward diplomacy.

Speaker 8 (01:34:24):
I'd take that. Again.

Speaker 7 (01:34:26):
It's not like they're strengthening by the minute or going
to build a bomb.

Speaker 8 (01:34:30):
In the next two weeks. Not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
Okay, let's do two more things in about ninety seconds. First,
when is the sequel to a Restless Wave coming out?

Speaker 7 (01:34:42):
The sequel is going to be called The Turning Tide,
and it concludes the story of the characters in The
Restless Wave, historical fiction about the first half of World
War two second half of World War two. The Turning
Tide will come out in about a year, one year
from now.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
I loved that book. I love The Restless Wave, The
Restless Wave. I'm looking forward to it. All right. We
could probably do an hour on this next thing, but
give me literally one minute on it. You wrote a
piece for Bloomberg entitled the US is making the world
a more dangerous place. So do your admiral thing where
you kind of summarize for us quickly.

Speaker 7 (01:35:20):
My concern about our foreign policy at the moment is
that it trends isolation, is so kind of moving away
from the international order, which has done a lot of
good for us, the international order. International trade, I think
number two it's too erratic.

Speaker 8 (01:35:37):
We slap big tariffs.

Speaker 7 (01:35:39):
On people, then we take them off, then we give
a ninety day pause. Then it's on auto's, then it's
on steel. It's just too many changes, too many moving parts.
And thirdly, we're not sufficiently aligning with our allies. We're
in a real standoff with the European Union right now
about trade disagreements. Really need the EU on board right

(01:36:02):
now if we're going to solve the Middle East, solve
what's going on in Ukraine and ultimately face China in
the Pacific.

Speaker 8 (01:36:09):
So those are my three concerns.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
NATO Supreme Allied Commander retired Navy Admiral James tavritas vice
chair at the Carlisle Group as well currently chairman of
Two Dudes Consulting, probably his most important position. It's always
so good to have you, Admiral. Thanks so much for
making time. I know you're very in demand these days.
Really appreciate it. Thanks, dude, Talk later all sea. Bye.

(01:36:34):
All right, So I always love talking to him. I
bet you a rod. I bet you I'm the only
person in the world who calls the former NATO Supreme
Allied Commander dude. You called him dude first, Yeah, and
then he just called me dude. We are signing off
there now. It's way less cool that he called you dude.
I think you just reciprocated you feel bad. All right,

(01:36:55):
So facing me right now is a guy who's face
you might not know, but his voice you almost certainly know.
Greg Stone. Hello, Greg's going there's this thing on, hold,
this thing on. I've never done this before, never done this,
but we're gonna play it.

Speaker 8 (01:37:09):
My check, my chet.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
We're gonna do. We're gonna do name that tune in
a second, and we only have about four minutes, So
just real quick because you're filling in for Mandy today,
which I think is fantastic. Yeah, anybody else available? So
for folks who don't who don't know you, give seventeen
seconds because I always use prime numbers on who you are,
so folks know what to a little of what to expect.

(01:37:30):
Twenty years I was Uncle Nasty on KBP. I that's
all you need, that's all you need to know. Yeah, okay,
so Greg Stone on the Fox these days. We got
Metallica tickets coming up to on KOA today. So I
come out on the show and I understand we're gonna
give away Metallica tickets all next week. Yeah, Wendy, have
you seen them? How many times? I should say how
many times have you seen them? Is really the question

(01:37:53):
you over under twenty I'd say right around twenty. Yeah, okay,
did they ever play Red Rocks? No, first time was
nineteen eighty seven for me. Wow, So yeah, that was
part of the first time I saw AC d C
was around there. I mean, I haven't seen them a lot,
but very cool

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