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A
Foreign.
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You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Town, stand up comedian, speechwriter, many other forms of writer and most likely to elicit follow up questions when applying for an apartment. Podcast host. As usual, I am joined by our panel of experts. Up first, our foreign policy and military expert, Chad Scott. Chad, how's it going?
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C
It's going really great. Looks like Matt here, if you're on the YouTube video, didn't get the blue plaid shirt memo on what we're, what we're supposed to be wearing today.
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B
I only sent it out psychically, so I think he's close to receiving me is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, you're not, you're not accepting my energies at this time. He's declined. That's fair. Toggled off and as previously discussed, missing the uniform. But always, as always, in his own uniform, the same hat as always. The global brand himself, our expert on all energy markets, renewable oil and other Mr. Global himself, Matt Randolph. Matt, how you doing, man?
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A
That was a fantastic
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C
close out the World Series or something.
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A
I too am a comedian, but I am a sit down comedian, not a stand up comedian. And it's raining outside, which I am in love with because I live in Oklahoma where that just does not happen very often. So nice, cool rainy July day.
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C
Not without tornadoes anyways, so that's nice.
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B
Yeah, congratulations on normal weather. I sound sarcastic. That's just part of my cultural upbringing. We have an interesting show ahead of us. A lot's going on in the world right now. I want to jump in first, just talk a little bit about recent news. Can we talk a little bit about the Iran situation? Obviously we've gone back and forth on whether the strait is open or closed and whether there is a legitimate ceasefire going on. The negotiations keep breaking down. I was hoping, Matt, you could give us a little recap on what's happened recently.
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A
Sure, Real quick. You know, Iran read the MoU is what happened and they understood it and the United States didn't because the fact that we read on a sixth grade level apparently goes all the way to the administration. Paragraph 5 of the MoU clearly gave Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz and the United States didn't like the way they were doing it. You shouldn't have gave it to him. But anyway, Iran gave. Iran struck some ships, the wars restarted. You've heard all of this by now. The things that are particularly different this time is both sides are striking a lot of oil and gas energy infrastructure today. Iran is striking offshore oil Platforms off Kuwait. So these are things that are going to have long, potentially long lasting effects here at home on oil and gas prices and stuff like that. One side, the US Is claiming the straits open, Iran is claiming the straits closed. You just look at the straight and see like, you know what I mean? We can't take anything either side says anymore seriously at all. And it is disappointing that we're in the middle of a war here in the United States and we're being fed or are victims of a huge misinformation campaign against our own people. That just seems a little out of sorts. I don't. Did they do that in World War II? Did, did, was Harry Truman shelling out misinformation every day about, you know, what was.
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B
I mean, not in this style. I don't think we were immune to propaganda in the 1940s, talking about a closed media environment versus the one that we have right now. But I think when you talk about a deliberate, I mean, yes, there's obviously pro US propaganda during World War II, but I think you're talking about a drastically more deliberate misinformation campaign rather than skewing the narrative.
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A
Yeah. And as of today, we are recording this, you know, a couple days before it launches. We do know there has been some additional loss of life of US Soldiers over this weekend, Saturday and Sunday. So far that's not clear yet. But, yeah, that's what's going on. So it is different because now Donald Trump is out of cards, so to speak. Like he literally has to leave or he's talking about taking Car island, which a lot of people don't, maybe don't realize that that means ground invasion. Like, you know, because Car island, there is actually ground there and there would actually be boots on it. So that is a crowd invasion and that would suggest a prolonged war. So I'm not saying that's going to happen because this is the most unpredictable war I've ever seen in my life. Tomorrow everything could be roses, who knows? But it's certainly not looking good as Iran continues to fight their economic war against the United States, as the United States keeps claiming victory of their military war and not wanting to admit that Iran is not fighting the same war we are. That's why they keep pulling us back into it. They're trying to hurt us economically and the Gulf states or Gulf nations economically. And that's what's happening.
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B
And what's the, what's the change like, how does that affect us differently now that they're hitting gas and oil refineries more specifically.
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A
Well, specifically, it means less production, less refining capacity. If everything does settle, that extends the time for oil and gas flows to normalize. I said from the very beginning, the straight of Hormuz being closed is the second worst thing that can happen. The first worst thing that can happen is the infrastructure getting blown up. Because you can open the straight in a few days, you cannot rebuild refineries in a few days. So yet to be seen how much, you know, total damage will be done to all that. But it could be, you know, could end up being significant. So we'll just have to see what happens.
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B
And that would have a multiplicative effect on prices in the industry outwards, I'm sure.
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A
Yeah, for sure.
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B
Chad, do you want to comment on that at all?
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C
Well, I would just say that kind of going back to the, the, the propaganda misinformation campaign that Trump is using against his own people, I will say that is completely unprecedented. We may have seen some of that in Vietnam where you saw Johnson perhaps flexing on like the New York Times to say, hey, can we rewrite this or can we just hold off on publishing it a few days? That was the extent. Yeah, we all remember. Not like we were there, but we all saw the cartoons like Looney Tunes. They were very much like the anti Japanese, anti German cartoons that they don't
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B
really show anymore because they're now Disney cartoons, I believe.
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C
Well, they're both.
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B
Because I'm not defending racist Bugs Bunny or anything just to say I'm trying to.
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C
No, no, no. Yeah, they were, they were both goes
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B
and fights in Japan or something.
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C
Yeah, I was. The only reason I know is because I just saw some tiktoks on some of them and it was, it's just. But the thing is, is the government, if there was going to be anything, it was just hiding it from us. And usually it was, you know, you know, like the loose lips, sink ships type of thing. But now it's like just overt lies that are verifiable like in the Internet world. And it's. And people are starting to ask, why are you even lying to us about this? The American people generally can understand, like even when we went back to the Iraq war or Afghanistan and there was like a mass casualty event which maybe a helicopter goes down in the mountains of Afghanistan, the President comes out and says, hey, this happened. The American people mourn it. We understand it. Now we are like, I think for the first time ever, we're questioning the, the level of death and destruction of American soldiers and facilities. Not because there's a lag in the news cycle getting from the theater itself, from the battlefield itself to here. But we don't know if the Hegseth, Department of Defense. And again, I'm not calling it the Department of War. That's dumb.
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B
And it's not legally called that.
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C
No, it's not. Congress has to change that. So, anyway, so they were questioning, are they just not being truthful with us? Are they just hiding these numbers? And so that's where I think there's a big difference. And that's where a big concern is. Because if there's anything that the United States has always guaranteed, it is that everyone comes home. We still have people in Vietnam searching for the. The remains of fallen soldiers. There's teams that do this. And if we're starting to lie about the number of deaths, it undermines. And I'm not saying they're actually doing this. I'm just saying we just are losing that trust. It undermines the. The ability for us to say, yeah, everyone comes home. Whether you're getting on a plane with your buddies or you're getting on a plane with a flag draped over your coffin, you always come home. And now we have an administration that might be lying about these casualties and the destruction.
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B
Yeah. And just to comment on how that narrative or how the government's narrative, you know, the federal government's narrative regarding a war, you know, how it advertises that to its people, how it presents that to its people has changed. Like I mentioned, we did used to be a much more closed society. Right. Like, access to media of a war was restricted to a very specific subset of people. So, you know, when you're watching optimistic newsreels During World War II, you're getting a very specific channel of information. Right. That was still real footage. It was still reporting on things that were happening in the war. You talk about Vietnam and, you know, that was a sort of broadening of the media landscape. All of a sudden, there's television cameras, there's more portable, you know, film cameras could be over the shoulder. All of a sudden, during Vietnam, people were shooting on, I believe, CP16s. And all of a sudden you could, you know, there was way more access to footage of violence. And one of the major media narratives that the mainstream media and the government enforced after that was that you don't see body bags on television. Like they. Essentially, the public narrative around Vietnam was really negative, partially because we had more access than we had in previous wars. But again, it was a matter of how open was our media landscape. And I think what you're seeing now is very different from those two pinpoints in time because a, like I've mentioned many times on this show, you know, we harder to tell, you know, like what's happening in Gaza. Right. It's harder to tell the people one story when they're seeing it happen on their phones. But the thing I think more or more pertinent to our conversation that you see evolving is that the Trump administration has a much more, I would liken it much more to the Putin administration, like in terms of the Russian style of propaganda now, which is they are not closing the one channel of information to people like we were doing in previous wars or the, the very narrow spectrum of channels. It's, they are putting out true information, false information. They are varying the sources of information that's reliable and unreliable intentionally. They are causing far, you know, I mean, he's always done this signal to noise ratio, right. Just dominate the 24 hour news cycle by causing as much chaos as possible. So there's that, but there's also, you know, developed by Putin, there's this very clear and you know, his strategist, there's this very clear modern misinformation strategy of prevent of presenting real information versus falsehoods. And we did have, you know, the Bush administration controlling, you know, to your point about, about the numbers of deaths, there was a while when the number of deaths in Iraq reported were about a tenth of what was real was actually happening. But to your point, the specifics about deaths of American soldiers were eventually verified. And that is still a change in like the way that it's being reported. So I think that that feels like a notable shift and also the shift of strategy from just we are narrowing what you see to like, we're telling you the truth, we're telling you a lie, we're telling you half truths just to exhaust the populace. Like, the cultists will always believe him. There will be doubters who never believe anything. And the idea is to create, you know, exhaustion nihilists, just people who are too tired to respond to the news. And so you are seeing like a very new form of disinformation. And now it's being regarded. You know, that was, that was applied domestically in the past. And now you're seeing that applied to war for really the first time in America. And it is very different.
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A
I wonder what those guys on the Big Lebowski think about the war nihilist on them. Yeah. Do you think they're out there in their black Spandex suits and like karate chopping stuff.
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B
But, you know, I mean, there's real nihilists out there. I don't.
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A
No, I, Look, I believe that lying about war, I, I know why they do it. They're trying to, like, tamp down resistance to what we're doing. I think lying about it creates more resistance than telling the truth. You come out, you tell the truth, you're like, hey, war is hell. This is what war looks like. People need to, like, know this is what war looks like and this is what it's going to have to look like for us to win. You come out and lie and lie. Especially as bad as Donald Trump lies. He is the worst liar I've ever seen in my life. I think that in itself creates more resistance and worse poll numbers than just telling the truth. I think Americans are begging for someone to tell them the truth for once and God knows how many decades, and we're just not getting it. So I don't understand the thought process, but I'm not there either, either. But I would think telling the truth is always better. If poll numbers and resistance is your concern.
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B
Yeah, I don't know that that's his strategy. I mean, honestly, I think the strategy is tell so many lies that it's exhausting the fact checkers. You know, it's like, why bother? If you tell enough lies, it doesn't, you know, enough people will repeat these things unquestionably. You might see one thing you believe debunked, but if you believe 20 lies in a week, you're not gonna find the fact checker. The, the people who publicize that Donald Trump lied three days ago in a very specific way are not going to catch up with all the people who believed the lie the first time around or just didn't bother to see if it was true the first time around. That's what I'm saying. It's like this. Adding as much chaos to the understanding of truth as possible is actually way more dangerous than being like, we control the narrative and this is what the truth is, because no one trusts anything, you know? Yeah.
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C
And they, it's funny because Donald Trump did something that no other president has done, and it's what he actually didn't do. And I think this, this is undermining his, his stance is one, he's flooding the, the message, the flooding the field, as you said, was just bullshit. That is irrelevant in general. It's like instead of talking about the problems and the future solutions, he's just saying we're Winning our greatest military ever. We're beating them. And then he shares AI videos of. Of. Of military strikes that aren't real, shares Israeli strikes, and claims it as his own. That was a real thing. But what we saw in history is a president that did presidential things, like before going to war, went in front of the American people or Congress. So Franklin Roosevelt, after Pearl harbor, went to Congress, gave that amazing speech and the day of infamy speech, and Congress declared war. And that was shared with the American people. Truman addressed the American people after South Korea was invaded by North Korea.
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A
Korea.
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C
Johnson, for all his faults and terribleness in Vietnam, he addressed the nation before every single escalation took place or immediately after things like the Gulf of Tonkin Gulf War. The George W. Bush addressed the nation. George W. Bush addressed the nation before both Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump just didn't do that. He just went, same thing. And I get the Venezuela. There was an era of. Of secrecy with that because it was special operations forces doing the thing. But a major escalation like IR for him not to do that, it immediately created confusion because the president's sole duty is to tell the American people why we're committing our treasure and why are committing our sons and daughters to a battlefield before or immediately after the hostilities start. And he just didn't do that. And now he's just chasing and just lying and trying to fill the void with. With just rah rah propaganda that isn't telling us what's going on in reality and what the future plans are? Because I just don't think they have the plans.
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B
Chad, do you think Americans in the past 20 years, sort of in the post September 11th era, like with the Bush Doctrine, have gotten. Obviously, we had two very major wars that lasted a long time under Bush, but do you think that there's more, if not comfort, like, lack of resistance to, like, military actions that are not labeled as war? Like, do you think that Trump, in what I'm speculating here is, like, Venezuela was a very different situation. The. The US Is constantly taking military actions that are not declarations of war. Do you think that the US Populace is, like, too comfortable with that now? Do you think he thought he could slide that under there? Like, as in, oh, we're not starting a war. We're just, you know, we're just. We're just removing another dictator. We're just using, you know, we're just cleaning things up with the military.
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C
I think. Well, two things. I think the American people are too ignorant, but they. I think they think and it's not necessarily hit on them. I just think they've been failed to be informed that the president, yes, he is the commander in chief of the armed forces, he has the power to deploy forces within a certain window, but then Congress has to pick up the ball and do the approvals. Where I think the abdication of power comes from and this more comfort with the president just doing whatever he wants is in Congress. I think Congress shares at least if not probably about 40% of the blame for this Iran situation. Yes. The decision to go was Trump. He, he's absolutely the one to blame. But every day that this goes by and there's. We move up the escalation ladder or move down it or prices go up and it hurts the American public, that is a failure of Congress. So the American people, I just don't think they know. And traditionally the system was supposed to be we're electing a representative that knows what needs to happen and to speak on behalf of us. And they're just not. They're just all paying fealty to Trump. And so the American people don't necessarily know or they have just. Maybe you're right, maybe they have just given up and said, well, the President, he's now this new version of a kind of a weird pseudo king who when it comes to the military and whatever he says goes. And then Congress just has to be drug along behind him. And it's not how the system was intended, unfortunately.
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B
And I think also it's not limited to Congress under Trump. I mean, we've seen.
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C
No, you're right.
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B
Under Obama and absolutely as well. I mean, you know, we're funding this, you know, we're funding the IDF under Biden. That was, you know, I mean, obviously that is a lot of congressional support for that as well. But like Obama took, you know, independent military actions that weren't. That had no declaration of war, no speech to the American people. And I, So I do.
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C
We haven't declared war since World War II.
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B
Right, exactly. Yeah. So I'm sorry, but I mean, without the big like, announcement of military action to the American people. And I think we have seen some erosion of that resistance to like, okay, you know, the, essentially the president going over Congress to do acts of war that are not technically war. And I think, you know, whether the American people are under informed or it's just like, oh, that's, it's become a norm in many ways. And I think that didn't used to be the case. Let's talk a little bit about the Global balance of power in this current situation because obviously Iran is, is increasingly unstable. The Mr. Global can we get. Whenever I say global, can we just get that piped in or maybe like six women singing your name in harmony. Just an idea for a sting. If anyone wants to. If anyone has a.
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C
Get the club remixed.
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A
Have you ever seen the old lady on the Internet that says Mr. Global runs the world?
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B
We gotta get that.
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A
Have you seen that chat?
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C
No, I have not seen that. How to see that?
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B
How is that? Not on myself.
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A
Theorist. And she thinks like there's this imaginary Mr. Global that runs the world and, and she'll, she'll make a video like in a dark room and she's like, yeah, he runs the world. And then I'll like stitch it where I'm like eating an ice cream cone, looking around like, what do I do? What do I do?
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B
Like, I like the idea that it has to be in a dark room. Otherwise you know, the like security cameras or hidden cameras are going to get you even though you're recording.
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C
Keeping the tinfoil business running.
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B
I was hoping we could talk about global concerns. The NATO summit has wrapped by now and I was hoping we could talk about some takeaways from there, both pertaining to Iran and in general. Chad, could you give us a little wrap up of the recent NATO summit?
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C
Yeah, sure. So obviously going into the summit there was a lot of concern that this was going to be yet another breakdown of what the probably the most successful alliance in the history of ever has ever been, and that's NATO. And honestly I was pleasantly surprised it ended up being a much better outcome. I was just hopeful it'd be a big nothing burger and we could just kind of walk away with the status quo. But this summit was good for NATO itself, it was good for the United States, it was good for Ukraine, and it was objectively bad for Russia. Now despite, there was, there was some, despite all that, there was some eye rolling drama. Obviously Trump came in hot with his claims about Greenland. He came in talking about how Spain is a terrible partner. But from what I'm hearing in backdoor meetings with Denmark, who is, they're the ones that oversee Greenland. And Mark Ruda, the NATO Secretary General, they presented some pretty compelling arguments to why Greenland can help the Trump administration in their current wishes and without having Denmark give it up. So there was some positives there. I believe that was all backdoor though. This is all stuff that's like back channel stuff that I'm hearing, hearing that the, the discussions in, in the back rooms. Were all very, very good. And actually Trump came out and said it was a very, he said something very weird. He said it was like a loving environment between everyone. So fair enough, I'll take it. But the biggest news probably to come out was the US to allow the Ukrainians to manufacture the Patriot missile. We're the only country that makes a missile that is so that capable that can shoot down any Russian missile. I don't care whether they use the BS moniker of hypersonic or it's a ballistic missile. The Patriot missile is the most capable. The concern is, is the timeline. What I'm hearing from Ukrainian experts is if they transition one of their current missiles production facilities to manufacturing the Patriot, one of the biggest problems is just having the radars and the interceptor trackers and the software. Everything else is already ready to go in Ukraine. And so they've had some optimistic estimates that within three months they could start rolling a few of these off the line. We'll see. I'm not 100% sure understand that Germany has had the license for two years, but they're a bit more bureaucratic. So there is a lag there. And unfortunately during that lag, Russia is going to continue to strike Ukraine because Ukraine is effectively out of these missiles. So on top of that, every NATO country, including the United States, publicly reaffirmed Article 5, which is that article that is an attack on one, is an attack on all. That was one of the key concerns that the Trump administration presented early on in last year was we may not respond to Article 5. So upfront for the US to be a part of that, reaffirming that that's a good, it's a core strategy. It's the only reason this alliance is effective. And then one that really surprised me was all NATO countries, including the U.S. explicitly named Russia as a long term threat. That was surprising to me. Previously the US had decided that they were not going to be a part of that because last year's NATO summit they tried to do the same thing in the US Kind of abstained for it from that. I mean, and so there are some other things. The Ukrainians are going to get $70 billion, which is, excuse me, 70 billion euro, which is about $80 billion in aid commitments. And NATO said they're going to do that through 2027. There was a joint announcement for NATO manufacturing and they're calling it made NATO where $50 billion is going to grow NATO manufacturing, including in the U.S. so some really good stuff. And Trump was, seemed to be all about it. He had A good conversation, it seemed, with Zelensky. And I don't know if you guys saw where Trump was kind of caught off guard, but it was kind of a fun moment where Trump said he talked to Putin about having a meeting between Zelensky and Putin in Moscow. And he turns to Zelensky and says, would you go to Moscow to meet with Putin? And Zelensky's like, I don't know if it's safe because there's a lot of Ukrainian drones over there. And so I was like, that's a pretty solid, Pretty solid joke. Side note. Yeah, I know.
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B
It's a great man was a comedian.
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C
Yeah, he was.
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B
Let's not forget he had a sitcom at one point.
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C
Yeah.
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A
So very dangerous place in Moscow.
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B
It's very, very fascinating career trajectory.
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C
And then I'll just kind of finish this. So Turkey hosted this, which hugely benefited them. So Turkey previously was banned from a lot of U. S. Technology because they decided to kind of align with Russia more and more over the last 20 years. They reversed complete course, rejected Russia completely. Apparently the S400 that they bought, which is an air defense missile that they bought from Russia, which is what triggered the US Saying, we're not going to sell you our weapons because you have Russian weapons that can be used to. To kind of track and understand our weapons better. They got rid of that. And so there. That's why Trump said he might lift sanctions on everything, including the F35, which is our most advanced fighter. Turkey came away very successful, but they're a key partner because they manage our southern flank in the Black Sea. So it's all very. It was all very good. It was, it was. Putin was pretty pissed. I think one of the best ways to determine if. If this summit was successful as the Russian response. They were pretty pissed. I mean, they came out with a message almost every hour and said things like, well, this is clearly Europe militarizing. This is clearly. They're preparing for a conflict with Russia. They're going to aid Ukraine. And I'm like, yeah, right, exactly. That's exactly what we're doing. Like, you're in the find out phase of around. You decided you were going to go into Ukraine and then start conducting asymmetric operations in Romania, Poland, the Baltics and make threats. And now you're surprised that NATO's like, let's all come together and deal with this. I really do think that Putin thought that he could use Trump to crack the alliance. And Putin doesn't like to attach to a loser. And Russia's losing right now. And so I think he switched sides because he sees the.
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B
Trump's winning to attach to a loser.
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C
Yeah, exactly. He doesn't like to. You're right. Yeah, yeah. So Trump doesn't like to attach to a loser. And because of that, there's a lot of, a lot of good changes have happened. So Russia's mad. I don't care. They'll have to deal with it. So this is good news coming out of there for sure.
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B
Kind of fascinating that the thing that can crack Trump's autocrat worship is a successful insurgency, I guess. You know, like, I mean, we've talked about it a million times, but it's like, yeah, his fickleness and like the, one of our biggest threats, you know, one of the biggest threats of, for the US From Russia is just that our commander in chief admires their leader and that that could undermine truly everything. And so it's kind of fascinating that it hadn't occurred to me like, oh, right. But he only, he only, you know, he only worships people when they seem infinitely strong. So that the situation Ukraine could actually affect our support of or, you know, our sympathy to Russia, our being the US Federal government. Of course. I want to ask you, when you're Talking about the US reaffirming Article 5, for example, where is that logistically coming from? Is this literally the whims of our commander in chief? Is this a result of Rubio Hegseth, these people meeting or Joint Chiefs of staff? How do we establish domestically or not domestically, but internally what our policy will be towards a NATO summit? How does that get decided in advance in the US So one thing to
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C
be, you have to understand that. So Article 5, first of all, I want to say that Trump doing all these things is great. It could change tomorrow. So there's that. First of all, he could turn and get pissed about something, whatever. But Article 5, so again, it comes back, goes back to the core of the, the actual treaty. But you, but it doesn't necessarily mean deploying troops. It's a response that you would provide in some way. And that response could just be as little as a strongly worded letter. So you could, like a country could be attacked and we could say, well, part of our response is providing aid. It doesn't necessarily mean deploying troops. That's a misconception that Article 5 means that we go fight a war. Now, in the case of like a Russia invading Poland, largely everyone believes that's what's going to happen even under the Trump administration. I do think that there's a lot of the Rubio, old school, more international order, Reagan style Republicans that drive that the, the Lindsey Grahams for instance, who just passed away. But the, he's another one of those. He was just in Ukraine pushing for the sanctions. So this type of countering the Soviet Union and now they see this Putin Russia as a kind of an extension of that. So Article 5 as a policy within the United States traditionally for us as we understand it, was to deploy troops, deploy logistics, be a part of the, the effort, aid where we can. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we just have the troops there already in Europe. Now Article 5 for say Spain means something different. It could just mean, well we're going to provide funding, we don't have a big army, we'll try to do what we can. That's where a lot of the heartburn came over, came about where this proportionality like the US is providing all of this and Spain is only providing this much. It's very small compared to the US And a lot of Americans were like why the hell are we providing so much and Spain is providing so little. You have to, like I said, Article 5 is provide what you can. It's not a hard article that says you must deploy troops and go to war for are on the same side as Poland and Germany to go in and get Russia. Understand also Article 5 doesn't apply to an attacking member. This is why we didn't see the United States try to join the Falklands War with the British. And so because of that it's, it's a defensive treaty. If we get attacked, we respond. But if we are the ones doing the attacking, we can't Suddenly claim Article 5. And historically the United States has been the only country that's ever benefited from Article 5. And that was after September 11, right?
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B
Yeah. That's the first time it was ever officially invoked. Right.
- [31:16]
C
Well, so it's a fun. It's not, it's not a funny story, but it's an interesting story. So it wasn't technically invoked. It was just assumed that the United States was going to invoke it and eventually they were. The United States was going to. It's just NATO saw what was going on, saw the chaos and immediately responded. And that's the beauty of NATO is we all have a shared values within this country and our, excuse me, within this alliance. And so we look at what happened in 9, 11 and they had, they could respond without us having to do the formal invocation of Article 5 the, the bureaucracy of it. So like we had NATO awacs. So NATO has its own early warning aircraft that they own themselves as part of the alliance. They deployed them over the US Saying, hey, we're going to help you with your radar coverage because, you know, there's gaps in there right now and something's going on. Didn't require invoking artifacts. Difficult five, yes, US would have eventually evoked it, but a lot of people like to get me on that technicality, like the US Truly didn't invoke it. I'm like, they would have. And then Canada provided. Canada provided a huge benefit for us where they were providing not only safe passage for airlines that would. Couldn't fly home, they were, these people were taking in Americans into their homes that would, they got diverted from places like New York into Canada. And so they would just after all this, and there was a Canadian Air Force was flying along the border as a part of NORAD to free up, up the US Assets to defend internally. It all lasted just a few days. We all kind of normalized after that as best we could. But that's just some of the, the small benefits of NATO. And there's, there's a massive amount and I get that question all the time. Why is benefit for NATO when they're not doing anything? Well, I can go down that rabbit hole.
- [33:02]
B
Well, maybe we could talk a little bit to, to expand this discussion a little bit on the topic of our podcast about what is the effect of this agreement on the global oil market and specifically what are the results of this, you know, how do the results of this latest summit affect a pretty volatile global market right now?
- [33:21]
A
So it's important that people understand, you know, sort of the basic purpose of NATO is to maintain peace around the world. Right, Chad? I mean, isn't that, I mean, it's
- [33:37]
C
generally a defensive alliance. It's not supposed to be an expeditionary to. That's why it's not really ever. But yeah, it's a stability and peace within the alliance. And they're very good at it, actually.
- [33:46]
A
And they're very good at maintaining peace around the world. And maintaining peace around the world is the number one way to mitigate a lot of volatility in energy markets. A strong NATO delivering peace delivers low gas prices. For all of you people that hate NATO and think it's a joke, but love your low gas prices, that's what the benefit of NATO is to you, whether, you know, you like that or not. And so native or native NATO is key in that because war as we know, you've seen it in Iran. We saw it when Russia hit Ukraine. We saw it in the Gulf War. That is almost all always what causes unbelievably high and volatile gas and oil prices. So that is one of the many ways that NATO benefits Americans and other people all around the world. So I totally support a very strong NATO, because while oftentimes the, the lack of peace around the world, it doesn't impact us with war here at home, we are impacted economically by it. So, you know, NATO is a huge benefit in many, many ways, far beyond oil and gas prices. But that's just one of the things that I think Americans would latch on to. They love their low gas prices, and that's something that NATO helps deliver to you, believe it or not. So.
- [35:16]
C
And I would, I would agree, because there's this. We keep hearing Trump talk about this idea that we're spending, we're paying for NATO, and the. The MAGA movement loves to echo that. Well, I'm tired of spending my tax dollars. I'm tired of all of my money going to NATO to supply some commie in France or whatever. That's hugely wrong. What Trump is doing is conflating NATO's common budget with our total defense budget. So NATO's common budget for 2026 is around $5.3 billion. The U.S. pays about 15% of that, which is the same amount as Germany. So the United States directly spends around $790 million a year on NATO's common fund. That's like 2 to $2 and $52 to $2.50 per American. And that is not just money we're giving them. We that pays for things like our command and control system, satellites, fuel pipelines, access to the air and naval facilities, the NATO AWACS program I just talked about that helped us on 9, 11, all of these infrastructure systems that we plug into to operate in Europe. But when Trump is saying things like we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to defend NATO, he's actually talking about our. Yeah, he'll say trillions, which I don't know where that's coming from. We're not spending trillions on anything in that realm. He's trying to get a $1.5 trillion budget passed, which I think is nonsense. But the current budget is 950 billion. And what he's trying to do is pretend that 950 billion is going to NATO. We would be spending that anyways. That would be our budget anyway. In fact, I would argue that we would be Spending more because we would have less allies to, to, to lean on things like our basing rights in other countries. We use them as lily pads to jump. Like when I, when I deployed to Iraq, I went to Ireland, which. And then I went to. And then on my way back I went through Germany. They have hospitals where our wounded soldiers go to at Launchtuhl, which is outside of Ramstein Air Base, that if we have a soldier get wounded severely, they'll go to Germany first to get the, the second line level of care behind the normal hospitals and theater. Those are huge assets for us. But if I'm going to talk to the MAGA crowd specifically about what exactly that it affects their pocketbook because that's their big concern. First of all, this alliance generates an enormous amount of money. And I know probably many of the listeners and you included Nat, and actually I'm a big kind of a. I'm not a big proponent of this either. Our military industrial complex benefits massively from NATO. The, the, the British, the Poles, the, the Germans. These are countries that are buying our stuff because we need standardization across the, the entire alliance. And so you'll see Abrams tanks in Poland and F35s being bought by countries. Patriot missiles and those are defense dollars that are coming to us that create jobs and create tax revenue for the United States. So if MAGA is just wanting to make this a business transactional relationship, at its core it's that we're actually, it's a bargain. We're getting billions upon billions of dollars and all we pay is 800 million. I, I don't like that notion that it's just that transactional. But if it hammers into their head that this is a good alliance, I'll go that route.
- [38:31]
B
Yeah, I think we can call this an even if apart argument, which is even if you don't see this, see these other parts as problematic, and you are, even if you only view this as a business transaction, even though there's probably a lot more going on, if you only view this as a business transaction, we gave more money. I mean, what, what's the ICE budget? $38 billion. Yeah, right. Like we gave more money to Disney last year than NATO in, in, not only in, in like tax refunds, but subsidies. We gave more. We, we gave 10 times that or more to Elon Musk last year. I mean the amount of like, I don't want to sound like $800 million isn't a lot of money that we shouldn't spend. Well, but in the scheme of federal budgeting like to, first of all, it's not like a line item that you, like you said, it's not like, it's not like a tax that we're being, we're not like, like being paid, we're not paying our NATO membership fee and they're taking advantage of us. It's, it's money that we'd be spending. But even if you're only looking at it that way, like you are, you are missing the forest for the trees. Like, but if you are focusing on that one, $800 million, what, like we have casually given that to movie studios, sneaker companies and, and Trump's best friends 400 times this year. I mean, God knows what oil companies are making, you know, based on just, you know, backdoor deals.
- [39:51]
A
That's what I was about to say. We give 20, more than 20 times more to oil and gas industry in the United States than NATO. And, but people don't look at NATO and think about it the way, you know, the, the jobs and the industry that is created with that alliance. He's talking about defense contractors, how we're building all of this, all these military assets, the F35s and the Patriots and selling that, like that's a huge business in the United States that it's created. So, and I would guess I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I would guess that that business probably brings more tax revenue back into the US treasury than oil and gas.
- [40:32]
B
Now, of course, the thing that you're going to wait, now it's my turn to say we should divest from both of those industries as soon as possible and as soon as stably possible, I will say, but you know, I think if you tell me like one of the big things that you could, you could criticize about NATO is this strengthening of the military industrial complex and this sort of Cold war reasoning that like, oh, we do need to continue to build to prevent Russian dominance in the global sphere or something like that. Do I want Russia to control the global sphere? Absolutely not. I am anti authoritarian. However, I think Cold War mentality is something to watch out of, watch out for as we build for. Also, you know, we start to look at threats from China. Not start to, but we continue to look at threats from China. I think we do have to be a little bit careful. And again, I don't see NATO as a line item any more than I see the fire department. So like, I don't, it's not like, I don't think the argument of like, should this cost Money is a good way of. It's not smart analysis, but I do think it's worth criticizing that essentially financial investment in the continuation of Cold War ideology. I think that's a little bit dangerous for us. I'm not saying we should back out of NATO and dissolve it. I think we need to look at. Unfortunately, we're in one of the worst administrations in history for this, but I think we need to look at the way that we approach global safety with de escalation in mind. And I think that's really complicated, obviously, with, you know, nuclear enemies.
- [41:56]
C
Yeah, yeah. And they, it's, there's, there's a whole other side of the finances as well, because I could you. And I don't know what the number would be because it would be pure speculation. But could you imagine what the cost of the Iran war. It's like 40 billion right now is what we spent, is what the official numbers I think are coming out. If we didn't have the ability to land in Germany to, To move over, we were. Instead, we were having to fuel, leapfrog fuel across the entire globe to get to the Middle East. We had to deploy more carriers because we didn't have basing rights or assistance from. Now granted, some countries decided to say no. Italy, Spain, eventually Italy said, okay, it's fine, go ahead and use them. But those bases saved us money. Now, I'm not trying to say we should be fighting wars because Middle east, yes, but yeah, we're. We're saved money there.
- [42:44]
B
And also stop Trump from wasting more of the money.
- [42:47]
C
Yeah, exactly. And so NATO was specifically designed, whether it's that. That's the case now, to counter the Soviet Union. Now it's designed to counter Russia. I can guarantee you if the NATO alliance dissolved and disappeared, the Russia would take huge advantage of that. They would move on Estonia, they would move on the other Baltic nations, Latvia, Lithuania, and they would. These smaller countries would have to rely on the good graces of a Poland or a Finland to maybe come in and help them. But Russia would still be able to move on these. And if the United States, it becomes a World War 3 scenario, the cost and the cost to us would be exponentially greater than what we'd be paying. It would be in the trillions of dollars to fight a World War iii. And it would be tens of thousands, if not more American lives. And NATO has brought one of the largest peace eras of peace to the European continent. We've had skirmishes, sure, the Yugoslav wars, all the stuff that was like Kosovo
- [43:46]
B
and the Balkan states.
- [43:48]
C
Yeah, yeah. All of the, the, with those that came out under the Clinton administration stuff, those were kind of small skirmishes, but again that was NATO coming together to help in that situation as well. And then we have the non NATO countries like Georgia got invaded by Russia, Ukraine got invaded by Russia. You can just know that that's going to continue to happen if NATO didn't exist. And so not only do we make a bunch of money by having unfortunately our military industrial complex that, that gets all this money from other countries, we're going to save money to the tone of trillions of dollars to prevent a future war that who knows how. What would have happened if NATO didn't exist during the Cold War? They would have probably gone hot for sure and the world be very different. And so it's also, and I said this, I think last episode, it's also stopped proliferation of nuclear weapons. So that's just objectively good across the board. And I just wanted to point out that I get a lot of people saying, why am I paying for NATO? Well, you're not really. It's not that much. We'd still be paying. It's 0.01% of our, our military budget.
- [44:51]
B
What was your NATO bill this month? Mine was lower than Con Ed.
- [44:56]
A
Yeah, I mean, my electric bill.
- [44:58]
B
Yeah, yeah. Honestly, the NATO bill's not really my. For my worry these days.
- [45:02]
C
I know the, the increase in my Netflix bill is more than the whole NATO bill.
- [45:06]
B
I know. Let me share my NATO bill with my neighbors. But Netflix, Netflix.
- [45:10]
A
It was less than the tax on my Netflix bill, actually.
- [45:13]
B
Yeah. So I. Hey, you know what they call NATO in France?
- [45:19]
C
Oh, it's. Oh, isn't it otan? Where it's like.
- [45:21]
B
And, and yeah, Portugal, I think all those. All. A lot of the European countries, it's, it's otan.
- [45:27]
C
And it's like, because it's like the way French speak it, it's like the organizational treaty, something NATO isn't or.
- [45:32]
B
No, yeah, yeah, no, it's organization. Organization.
- [45:39]
A
I believe if I'm getting holy, that's
- [45:42]
B
actually when you look at the treaty,
- [45:44]
C
when you look at the logo, that's why it says NATO and then Oton underneath it. It's kind of fascinating.
- [45:49]
B
So I thought that was a fun fact.
- [45:50]
C
Yeah.
- [45:51]
A
I heard that having that in Turkey this year gave Donald Trump a great excuse for falling asleep. He just got to blame it on the tryptophan. I told you that I'm a sit down comic.
- [46:03]
B
I know. I'm just wondering how long you were
- [46:05]
C
Waiting to say that, bringing those newly. Grandpa Joe, I tried to work it
- [46:09]
A
in during the NATO, during the deeper part of the NAT conversation. I had to wait and I was hoping it would still land.
- [46:15]
B
I appreciate, I appreciate your dedication, though. This is gonna, this is gonna land. Far be it from me to miss the opportunity and then bring the joke up again.
- [46:26]
C
I do, I do have a question.
- [46:28]
B
I can never say I'm above that. Yes, Chad, what's up?
- [46:32]
C
I do have a question for Matt, though. So what are your thoughts? Like, I know we kind of talked about the stability of oil in the past. What, like, and I hate putting you on the spot for making assumptions, but this is a pretty, pretty stable in NATO, especially after this summit. But what would you, what do you think would happen to gas and oil and diesel prices in the U.S. if NATO did dissolve? Like, do you have any thoughts on that at all? Like, where we go.
- [47:01]
A
I don't think the dissolution of it itself would trigger what could happen. It was what the dissolution could trigger. Like, you know what I mean?
- [47:11]
C
Yeah, yeah. Additional wars or something. Instability.
- [47:14]
A
Yeah, additional wars pop up and, and that would trigger, you know, a lot of craziness in oil and gas markets. And, you know, I think it would definitely make a lot of people in the nervous though, especially in markets, energy markets. They would be their pants, for lack of a better word, because then they're, they're losing like this huge cushion, like energy traders are like, we always got NATO, like, you know, keep the peace. Once you lose the thing that keeps the peace, you, it, you add an enormous amount of risk to energy markets. But I think in this day and time where traders mostly have to. And this sounds, it's going to sound wrong, but they actually do need to see it to believe it before they move markets much anymore because of the amount of misinformation that they've been fed. So now they're in a place where it's like, I got to see it, to believe it, like, and that actually kind of reduces war premiums a little bit. But I don't know, I think it could get pretty sketchy.
- [48:22]
C
Yeah, for sure.
- [48:23]
A
That's a tough thing to think about. I can't imagine it happening, though. Like, that's one of those.
- [48:31]
C
I'm just, I also never would have
- [48:32]
A
imagined the straight of four moves would have been closed. Yeah, that's not true until the day Donald Trump said we're going to attack Iran. And then I was like, yeah, they're going to close the straight of Hormuz.
- [48:42]
B
I want to talk to you about one more news item that came across this week, an update on the situation in Gaza, which is that Hamas has dissolved their government. Chad, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what that means and where that stands in the, at least in the text of the ceasefire negotiations, which obviously have not been respected so far.
- [49:01]
C
Yeah, it's definitely not been respected, that's for sure. By Israel or frankly, Hamas. Israel, more so. And to be fair, the US brokered this with the understanding that we were going to hold Israel to a higher standard, and that has not happened either. And so they. Israel's just kind of run rampant over this or run roughshod over this entire deal, and it's ridiculous. But when it comes to Hamas, they have formally dissolved the governing body that managed Gaza. It was the committee that was running all of Gaza's civilian ministries, and they are saying that they're going to hand over the government. They're totally ready to hand it over to some Palestinian technocratic government. Now, that means that it's going to be engineers to help rebuild, diplomats, people that can help rebuild all of the departments, whether it's aid, education, everything. So this, they're, they're saying, we're ready to do that. And they've officially dissolved the government. It was a part of the ceasefire, ceasefire agreement. So Hamas has executed this in good, good faith. I'm not a Hamas fan, never have been there. I think that organization needs to just be gone forever. But they are, but they are a reality on the ground and there's nothing we can do other than continue to hurt civilians in order to get to them. And that's just unacceptable. So what, what's happening, though, is Israel has essentially rejected this, this new olive branch to say Hamas has moved forward. They're saying, nope, it's just a ploy. We're going to continue doing what we're doing. And in fact, today they conducted strikes into Gaza. And if you saw, it was really sad because it just was. It looked like Israel was just striking a pile of rubble again. And so it's just piles of rubble in Gaza. And they're arguing that this is just a political trick to give the appearance of their abiding by the rules, which even the United States has come forward and said, yeah, Hamas did dissolve their government and maybe it's time for Israel, you guys, to make some movement on the things you've promised. But Israel's blocking or delaying the government from taking over many of the officials that were supposed to be picked to join the Government are scared that they're going to be offed by Israel the minute they show up. And so Hamas said flat out on social media, we gave up civilian control, so Israel must withdraw. That was the deal that Israel agreed to Israel saying, nope, you still have weapons, so you didn't really give up control. Bottom line is Hamas did dissolve its government, but Israel is not operating in good faith at this point and conducting strikes.
- [51:27]
B
Sorry, was relinquishing the weapons like part of the text of this ceasefire deal at all or they're just pivoting the narrative around it?
- [51:35]
C
No, it was so a part of the deal was there was supposed to be a phased the, the or so Hamas was going to give up their weapons the minute Israel backed out. Right, it's, that's a problem though. In negotiation it's always the first movers problem. So Israel is, and they have some legitimacy, is claiming, well, if we back out and Hamas still has their weapons, Hamas can just move in and take everything again. And we're back to square one of having to deal with this Hamas. But Hamas on their side, they have a legitimate claim to saying, well, we're not going to give up our weapons because Israel is still advancing on us. So in negotiations this is always a problem when it comes to negotiating the end of a war. It's who moves first because the trust is destroyed and that's what we're looking at. So Hamas giving up their weapons is contingent on Israel leaving, but Israel's not leaving until Hamas. It's a chicken and egg game. And I just, it's. This has been something that they've tried to negotiate for decades and I just don't think, think we're going to see this go anywhere because neither side trusts each other at all. And the United States doesn't have enough of, of skin in the game to, to enforce either side. We just, it's going to require some sort of peacekeeper and no country on earth is willing to do that right now, not even the United States. So there's been discussion from a coalition in France, of European countries to potentially do that, but no one is ever. Even then everyone's like, we're not sending our people into this. This is going to cause major, not only death and destruction of our own people, but political problems here at home. Then they still have to answer to voters. So that's kind of where we're at. It's. It looked like Hamas did and again they're, I truly believe they're a horrible terrorist organization, but they're a Product of no one else was defending the Palestinians in Gaza. So they rose up as the, the counter organization. And what Israel's doing is no better than what they're doing at this point either their. What they're killing. So we're now looking at two terrible organizations that are essentially not moving from their position. Except for Hamas did move briefly and Israel said, don't buy it. We're not doing anything about it. Everyone else can just kick rocks. We're going to continue to bomb as we see fit. It's kind of a play out of what we talked about last, last week in Lebanon. They're just, they're just going to continue doing whatever they want no matter what the international community says.
- [53:53]
B
Yeah. And it seems like the PR machine is just kind of there paying lip service to, you know, whatever the issue of the day is. But they're clearly trying to take over the region. Like, they're clearly trying to transform civilian areas. They're, you know, talking about the dropping bombs on rubble like, yeah, the only development happening in Gaza is like, you know, colonist developers by buying land that's been destroyed. And like otherwise it's, you know, people have just been run out of their homes and it's completely devastated stated. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's all these actions are still just consistent with this, you know, this. The. I'm not saying the stated intentions of Israel. I'm saying the actions of Israel, which have just essentially been to take over territory using US Weapons, you know, regardless of what they, what the stated purpose is.
- [54:39]
C
Yeah, it's. I, I will say that going back to what we talked about at the beginning, Israel's very good at exercising the propaganda to move in place, especially West Bank. Oh, there was a terrorist in this house. We took over it. Oh, there was terror. There was. They decided. We just heard gunfire from over there. So tank round through the second floor. And so that's one of those. I'm not saying they're not all illegitimate. I'm just saying that there's pretty solid evidence that a good chunk of them are. They're using the current situation on the ground to advance their goals in a way that traditionally would not have been accepted at the very least, let alone or even possibly allowed by the United States were a different administration in the seat.
- [55:25]
B
Yeah. And also I think we are seeing just in terms of the precision of strikes, unnecessary lack of precision, like it's intentional destruction. And yeah, we see these cases where, you know, the IDF will call someone who's in their car and be like, get away from the car. If you don't want us to drop a drone. We don't want, you know, if you don't want us to drone strike your entire family that's in the car, get away from the car. The person leaves and is shot down by a drone. Right. Like, they have that level. We have an enormous level of precision in terms of like, not only like striking individual people, but like finding the target. Right. And then meanwhile, you see like a hospital get bombed because, like, Hamas was inside it or something. And just the level of precision that is advertised and utilized seems to fluctuate really drastically regardless of what Israel's utilization. Know what the IDF and the Israeli government's dominant narrative is in the media?
- [56:20]
C
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, there, There's a missile. It's. And I have to talk to Alex Holling, who's the. He's the missile guy. He's our air power guy that knows a lot. But there's a Hellfire missile that's. It's like nicknamed the samurai missile or the ninja bomb. Doesn't even use explosives. The United States has one. Israel has its own precision strike version of this. We have never seen it really used, but they can actually strike. You ever seen it? It's pretty disgusting because it's a devastating weapon for the individual that gets targeted. But this weapon essentially is fired like a normal missile has no explosive. It deploys like six or eight blades outward and then just spins and basically blends its target. It's, it's, it's disgusting, but will hit you.
- [57:12]
B
We've.
- [57:13]
C
The United States has been able to hit a single person in a car and the driver survived because it hit through the. It hit the passenger. That's how precise weapons that are in the U. S. Sphere of opera, which is Israeli. Absolutely. Sphere of weapons making. That's how precise we can be. I, I don't know why that's not something that has been used more readily. I don't know if it's just a terror tactic because explosions, a lifetime of terror. I can tell you I see PTSD every day. I have a very minor version of it myself. And so explosions do cause things that lifelong. And, and it, it does change a populist and it's frustrating because if we can do it, if we can, we in the US can kill a dude in a passenger seat that is a terrorist. And we. He's a known terrorist and he just needs to die because he's awful. Israel can do it too, without hitting a bunch of kids and, and innocent people.
- [58:07]
B
Yeah. If you can blow up someone's beeper.
- [58:10]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [58:10]
B
There's a lot of strategies, it turns out, other than. Yeah, blowing up a school or a hospital and hoping that you catch the person inside of it who you were allegedly aiming for. And yeah, you know, I want to reiterate your point and you know, I unfortunately have some personal experience with this myself, but that, yeah, witnessing large scale devastation, witnessing explosions is deeply traumatic. It will give you PTSD for life.
- [58:33]
C
Life.
- [58:33]
B
And then we go and say, you know, how come this five year old who watched that happen downtown, you know, across the street from his home as a child in Gaza, didn't grow up with a nuanced position on the Israel, Palestine, on the history of Israel versus Palestine? You know, like, of course, you know, people are radicalized by events like this. It's, it's a permanent psychological effect. And, and, and you know, we're fortunate enough to have access to support after events like that. And you know, people just grow up around that devastation. And it's, you know, it's unsurprising that, that, you know, that, that a organization is disgusting. It as it is like Hamas and as horrible as they are to so many people is able to take control. You know, you see, you see like they're able to really seize in, in a, in that pocket of devastation. And, and I don't think that's a good thing, but I, I think, you know, it's really, I don't want to say predictable, but it's understandable how these things develop.
- [59:30]
A
Yep.
- [59:31]
C
Lt. Gen. Peter Torelli said, he was the commander in Iraq, said for every one that I kill, I create 10 more. When you're speaking specifically about terrorist organizations or. Yeah, so I mean the sad thing is the, the broader military knows this. It's just the, the cycle of violence doesn't stop even with this knowledge.
- [59:52]
A
My daughter is a drone pilot in the U.S. air Force.
- [59:56]
B
Oh really?
- [59:56]
A
And there's a lot of stuff she can't tell me. But what she can tell me, I can piece together how much the technology has evolved just in the last eight years. Because she started doing it eight years ago. Eight years ago, you know, she would be piloting a drone in the Middle east, sitting in a room in New Mexico and there would be. What's the spy plane, Chad? Predator, the uv yeah, whatever.
- [60:25]
C
The Spy Reaper or the pre Predator.
- [60:28]
A
A spy plane would RU too.
- [60:31]
C
Yeah.
- [60:31]
A
Her soul. Most of her missions were just identifying high value targets and taking them out. Specific people. The spy Plane would find them, and then she would fly the drone. And then there would actually be a. Yeah. What do they call the person that just fires the. The munitions? It's not the pilot, it's another person.
- [60:50]
C
What do they call the wizo? The weapon specialist.
- [60:54]
A
Yeah, weapon specialist, which happens to be your husband. Wow. And they would. They would be able to pinpoint a single person in some country and take that person out. And that was eight years ago. And now it's. Well, they don't even really need us to fly the drones anymore, and they don't even really need the spy planes anymore because the drones can be equipped with the same technology. And so this is like becoming so automated, like she's actually looking for another job because pretty soon, you know, according to her, we're not going to need drone pilots anymore. You just punch in a coordinate and it'll just do its own thing. You just send it free. Fly, fly, little birdie, fly.
- [61:39]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [61:39]
B
That's fascinating and terrifying in its own way, but also kind of a sign that these major bombings are basically, you know, it's just to inspire terror. When we have that kind of technology, if we know what the specific targets
- [61:52]
C
are, especially well in drone operators, and it's. It's different. So I'm not specifically saying this about your daughter, but drone operators have actually been determined to have a higher level of psychological distress coming because it's kind of a fascinating detachment situation where they're, like you said, in. In New Mexico, striking targets or whatever. And often there is a. There's a psychological stress and anxiety that. Or a guilt that comes from it because you're, It's. It's. You feel almost the same way as, as someone who accidentally hits someone in. With her car, it'll stay with you forever. Whereas the difference is, like a soldier who's on ground, they can process it a little differently because they can say, well, I was just defending myself. My life was in danger. I fought back, so I can go home. It's either he goes home or I go home. And that's just the way it is. So there's finding this interesting correlation where drone operators aren't necessarily having. They have actually a lower PTSD rate, but they have a different type of psychological stress because it's like a disassociation from the battlefield is fascinating because we loved our drone operators when we were in there. Every time a drone was over, we knew we were much safer on the ground. So.
- [63:13]
A
Well, they do limit the missions they can fly.
- [63:16]
C
Yeah, they've gotten Better, for sure.
- [63:20]
A
But another thing they do is the image that the drone pilot or the West Weapons Systems person, the image that they're looking at that it's not the live image of the person.
- [63:34]
C
Yeah.
- [63:35]
A
They literally try to make it look like a video game to detach them from that personal, you know, feeling of you're hitting a person, like. And she's like, it doesn't work. I still know what I'm doing. Like. Yeah, it's wild, the stuff she's told me.
- [63:53]
C
Well, it's the same thing as we
- [63:54]
B
used to, like, of Ender's game and toys. Toys starring Robin Williams from 1992. And, like, down to making it look like a video game for sure.
- [64:07]
C
Yeah. And it all goes back to, like, we used to, like, going back to the cartoon thing. We used to present. I don't know if you ever remember the cartoons, whether it was Disney or Warner Brothers or whatever. They would present the Germans as monsters and they'd present the Japanese as, like, donkeys or something like that. And it was just. Yeah, it's all that. It's just varying levels of getting people to normalize that they aren't human. Dehumanized.
- [64:34]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [64:37]
C
Yeah. Bummer.
- [64:38]
B
It is.
- [64:39]
C
But thank your daughter for me for.
- [64:41]
A
I told you we need more jokes.
- [64:42]
B
Yeah, well, we are tackling some pretty serious subject matter. I do wanna. And not making light of. Because, you know, it is, you know, we don't wanna, we don't want war to become a thing where we look at it like a video game and then, you know, know, become that detached. One could argue we're already there. I don't want to gloss over the fact, however, that Matt said that his daughter and her husband work side by side as drone pilots. And I, I gotta know if that's how they met.
- [65:11]
A
They met in basic. Oh, wow.
- [65:15]
B
And quite the rom com.
- [65:17]
A
I don't know what happened, like, for them to end up being together and
- [65:20]
C
honestly, that's not allowed. But carry on. Well, good for them, though.
- [65:25]
B
I'm just curious how, like, the work comes home with them where they're like, honey, I threw the garbage towards the garbage can. You were supposed to open the lid before it got there.
- [65:33]
A
So what Chad said, like, the first time she told me that because she was so proud because when you're a drone pilot, you're considered an Air Force pilot.
- [65:43]
C
Yeah.
- [65:43]
A
Like, you get a flight suit and everything. And she was just so proud of that. Like, and I, I, I thought it was funny because I was like, yeah, you're not really a pilot. I was looking at it from the guy that flies the F35 perspective because he's looking at her like, you're not a pilot. I'm a pilot. Anyway, that's some Top Gun stuff. But I didn't question. I was like, how is it possible that both of you are doing this together? That doesn't seem like. That's something that seems to me like that's something they would avoid. Like, you know what I mean?
- [66:15]
C
Interestingly, they don't. They find that they'll try to. I will say I, I would. I would be surprised if he is her weapon systems operator. I would be surprised if he is. That's a different situation. More than likely has been.
- [66:32]
A
He's not anymore. He has been. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
- [66:35]
C
Yeah. So that I would see that. But they, to be honest, the military will try to keep couples together so that they can. They have. It's kind of a time off situation. You both have the same time. You're not deploying at different times. You're going together. And actually in the army, I don't know how the Air Force is. But couples, the married couples that deploy together, they get their own quarters overseas so that they can still be married and stuff. Now they. There's a big to do and they have to do a bunch of stuff to make sure that they. They don't undermine the mission by doing things like getting pregnant and stuff like that. But yeah, they. The military tries to as best they can without degrading the mission, to keep couples together in similar units and without obviously conflicts of interest and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's a morale thing.
- [67:23]
B
We're nearing the end of our recording, so I think it's time to move to our final segment of the show where we talk about, if not a positive, a less negative thing that happened to us since the last episode in a segment we call the least worst part of my week. Anyone want to go first?
- [67:37]
C
I heard something about a frog from Matt that was interesting.
- [67:40]
B
Matt, what do you got for us?
- [67:41]
A
It has to happen to us.
- [67:43]
B
No, You've encountered this news in this week. You know it's part of your week because you heard about it.
- [67:52]
A
So carrying on with the recent rash of medical discoveries I've been talking about, Japanese scientists have discovered a bacteria that lies within the intestine of Japanese tree frogs. This tree frog is called the unionless Americana or something. But this bacteria kills cancer tumors instantly.
- [68:15]
B
Wow.
- [68:16]
A
And Nat apparently has a tree frog. I don't know if he's eaten it or not. But it's like, this is yet another really cool medical discovery. Of course, they haven't gotten anybody, any humans to eat the tree frogs yet or to like. I don't know how that works, but it's working in other frogs.
- [68:36]
C
It's like the Gila monster where we get GLP1s from now or something like that. That's where like all the weight loss drugs is. They. They don't come from them anymore. They figured out a. Like a synthetic version, but they. The original came from Gila monster venom or something.
- [68:51]
B
But this is like they've cured cancer. They've like, killed tumors in mice already. Right. Like, it's working in mammal. Like they're. They're doing.
- [68:57]
A
And it works instantly is the thing. It's like.
- [69:00]
B
That feels like science.
- [69:04]
A
It kind of does. So now we just need to find some brave souls that will, you know, suck on a tree frog or whatever has to happen for them to get that bacteria. I don't know how you, like, do they just cut this. Cut these animals up and just like. Like break out all of the different things that exist within them and test them individually on cancer cells, like, because it's a bacteria that's only found in the intestinal tract of this one.
- [69:32]
B
Tree fertilizer. That's fascinating. Yeah, it's just wild. Yeah. Are you just testing every chemical that is created in nature to see if it has restorative properties? Did they notice that the Japanese tree frog never gets cancer or something like that? You know, like, are there. Are they noticed in immunity or something? It is kind of fascinating where it doesn't. I wonder if that's shot in the dark.
- [69:49]
A
We can't allow the things that cure cancer to get cancer.
- [69:53]
B
Well, that's what I'm saying is if it was a species that was like, immune or something, maybe that's how they figured it out. But I'm purely speculating right now. Now. Well, that's fascinating.
- [70:02]
A
You know, they said some people were immune to Covid, right? A lot of people are immune to Covid. And they were trying to figure out why. That way they could, you know, right from that, a cure or a vaccine
- [70:14]
C
or whatever back to that GLP one thing with like ozempic and like zepbound and all those. They. So there's a scientist who was trying to. To figure out how to counter Gila monster bite because it affects the pancreas. The bite, actually, that's what kills you is eventually the. It messes with your metabolism. And you die. And he discovered this weird metabolic quirk where the gila monsters only eat a few times a year, but their blood sugar stays remarkably stable between meals. So it's part of the venom development they have. And so he sequenced it and turn. Made it it into. He went through a peptide sequencing and he isolated it. And that's where we get the weight loss drugs now that all of Hollywood got us all working on.
- [71:05]
B
So it's his fault that every famous person is 35 pounds underweight now?
- [71:09]
C
Yeah. So it's. That's. But yeah, I wonder. That's. Basically they're just trying to. I wonder if they're trying to figure out a cure here. They were trying to figure out a cure for getting like, it's kind of like the poison dart frog type thing or something like that. And it ended up discovering a cancer cure or something there.
- [71:21]
B
They're probably trying.
- [71:22]
C
Fascinating.
- [71:23]
B
Probably trying to make a weight loss drug. And they're like, probably, we found it, we'll do it. All right.
- [71:28]
C
That or a boner pill.
- [71:29]
B
Yeah, we, we got a. We're in the boner versus weight loss EB and flow. We're in very weight loss mode right now.
- [71:37]
C
Yeah.
- [71:38]
B
How are you going to make old guys horny? You know, are you going to give them stronger boners or are you going to make younger people look younger? What's your, what's your plan for the pedophile class?
- [71:48]
A
Doesn't it seem like everything we find to cure something is something that already existed on the planet we just didn't know about? Like it's not industry, something we make synthetically?
- [71:58]
B
Yeah.
- [71:59]
A
A lot of times it's something that just existed inside some other animal or plant.
- [72:04]
B
Well, it's also like we've spent what, the better part of two centuries just suppressing our, the, our natural ecosystem, like to some degree. Yeah. Like it shouldn't be a surprise. It's like, yeah, this was at one point a functioning ecosystem where everything healed each other and re. You know, would, would recuperate and the ecology was self sustaining. And it's like, only because we have been stomping on everything for decades, if not centuries, are we like, surprised when we're like, well, look, it's, it's healing. How'd that happen?
- [72:32]
A
We are the sickness is what you're saying.
- [72:34]
B
I mean, not to go full Agent Smith on you, but I would say industrial capitalism is the, is the sickness. But you know, we're dumping, we're dumping a lot of stuff in. We're dumping a Lot of stuff in the rivers for a while. Which brings me to my least worst part of my week, which is yesterday morning I went to Governor' island in Manhattan, which has been in New York, which is now open to the public, has been for about 15 years. Historic island off the coast of New York that traded hands between the New York, New Jersey, the Navy, the army for many years. I used to go there growing up because my grandfather worked for the military and we could actually visit the base when it wasn't open to the public. But I got to go back there and volunteer with a group called the Billion Oyster Project. For those who don't know, know this sounds made up, but New York, the Big Apple, used to be known as the big Oyster. Oysters were so prevalent here that they were not considered a delicacy. Food, everyone ate them. They were dirt cheap. Poor people, poor people, rich people, everyone loved them. New York used to export oysters. We had like, we would pickle and export them. They were so abundant that they were, you know, an export here. And of course, as a result of mostly factories upstate dumping chemicals directly into the, into the Hudson river, the New York harbor got deeply polluted. It still is. It's at the bottom layer there's what they call black mayo, which is just sort of a sludge that would take, you know, dredging. It would be almost impossibly impractical. But the interesting thing about this is that New York used to be an oyster town and that oysters are, you know, as we were just discussing, it turns out, some of the cures for our illness, our ailments are in nature. And oysters naturally clean water in their. They actually clean sewage out of water and they naturally clean a water supply. But not only that, that when there's enough of them, they create a self sustaining environment. So essentially to create an oyster habitat where oysters can grow, what you need is a lot of oysters growing. And that's what the premise of this project is. Essentially they're rebuilding reefs within the New York bay and harbor here. Here where creating artificial reefs from clam and oyster shells. So we were taking a giant pile of oyster shells, cleaning them, putting them through these rock these tumblers essentially, and then packaging them to build new reefs. And because they have this, you know, calcium chloride quality to the shells, oysters can latch on and grow there. And their goal was to get New York to a billion oysters by 2035. But thanks to donations, the new goal is 2020, 30. And I think that's really great. I Think it's, you know, it's kind of a great combination of, for me, you know, ecological history and New York history and, you know, I would grow up and we would learn these things about New York and all these things that used to be amazing about it, like, they were fun facts. And it's just exciting to me to see people targeting a single. A single project with an achievable goal and go, we can restore some of this. We don't just have to accept everything as inevitable and the be, you know, oh, our environment used to be one way, it's another way. It's. No, we can. We can't save everything, but we can affect the world. And I think it's really interesting that this one group chose this specific way and it seems like they'll be meeting their goals.
- [75:45]
C
That's awesome.
- [75:46]
B
Yeah. And I'm curious about. Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't. I think they had plenty of volunteers, but if you want to donate to the Billion Oyster Project, they've. They're definitely, you know, striking other territories.
- [75:56]
C
They're going to get rid of that black male.
- [76:00]
B
Well, you know, it turns out you can kind of filter a body of water not from everything that gets dumped into the water, but from sewage specifically by, you know, growing on top of it. And they're building these reefs into it rather than, you know, we'll probably never be able to dredge the bottom of the river. Like the, the amount. The exhaustive. Like there is just, just in our, in our sewer systems and in our river itself, there is just this. Centuries of. Of waste. But essentially, you know, what we need to do is create ecology that can filter and heal itself. And this is like a step in that direction. And I thought that was really cool. So much so that I got up early on a Saturday morning.
- [76:39]
C
Yeah, they just wait. They'll figure out a way to clean it up. If they find out black mayo, like, can be turned into a boner pill or a weight loss pill, then be good to go.
- [76:48]
B
Fuel source. Yeah, that's what we gotta do. We gotta figure out how to cure can. No, sorry. Make people lose weight, get boners or, you know, lower their energy bills.
- [76:59]
C
Yes. Yeah. It's like those bacteria, though, that they. It's almost like, what was it Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic park when he was like, life finds a way where those, Those bacteria that eat plastic in the. And so they've. They've discovered this bacteria has formed that eats plastic. And so hopefully. Yeah, that's good stuff.
- [77:17]
B
Yeah. I mean, I'm not the first person to say this, but if every human being disappeared from the Earth today, or our factories all stopped functioning today, the Earth would heal. Like, the ecosystem is not at the point where it cannot heal itself and quickly. And quickly. But we are currently, you know, we're currently still on. On trajectory to lose 50% of our biodiversity in the next half century. Right. We are talking about half of the species on Earth now going extinct. So again, when you talk about, like, a massive habitat that was just destroyed through, you know, industrialization, through a lack of care, through zero regulation that was going on in the Industrial Revolution, I think it's really heartening to see people, we are going to lose more. Even if we do everything right to fight climate change, to fight for the environment, we are going to have to live with the fact that things exist now that we're going to lose, lose. So I also think it's really heartening to see people sort of rebuilding things that we've already lost.
- [78:17]
C
Yeah.
- [78:17]
A
Even just. It was proven during COVID Like, and.
- [78:21]
C
Yeah.
- [78:22]
B
Oh, yeah, like dolphins outside my window in five weeks or something.
- [78:27]
A
No, I like, people could see mountain ranges that they had never seen, like, in the history of their country since the industrial age or whatever. Like the Earth, we literally got to saw C in real time, The Earth healing itself during COVID Covid. Just from a reduction in activity, not an elimination. You know, activity reduced by, say, 20%. And you could literally see it happening if you were just paying attention. The Earth was healing itself.
- [78:56]
B
Yeah. And not to be.
- [78:57]
A
I didn't have dolphins outside my window. I don't know what.
- [79:00]
C
Not in Oklahoma. No.
- [79:02]
A
I might add some buffalo. Might add some buffalo.
- [79:04]
B
Sea life was coming back here in the. In the water. But. But, you know, not to be. Not to be too ominous or philosophical, but yeah, the planet will heal itself, even if that means rejecting us. So our choice is to help it heal itself or be the thing it heals itself from. Well, what's the best part of your life sound.
- [79:25]
A
Sound like George Carlin right now. Yeah, you're sounding like George Carlin.
- [79:29]
B
That guy made a huge compliment. That's a huge compliment.
- [79:31]
A
Remember when he said the Earth would shake the US off like a dog shaking off fleas?
- [79:36]
B
D, you said it way better than I.
- [79:37]
A
We're no. We're no threat to the Earth. We're just a threat to ourselves. Like, the Earth will just shake us off when it's done.
- [79:43]
B
Yeah. And, you know, I used to be like, yeah, yeah, George and I always liked him. But like, growing up as a young, arrogant comedian, I was like, I get it. He's tell. And you going back and watch that last special now where he's like, it's a big club and you're not in it. At the time, I was still like a pretty loyal Democrat. And now I'm like, no, he's right. He was like, so right. He was. Was way more right than we could have proven at the time. Obviously, he says more than that sentence. But his, you know, semi paranoid, global financial elite perspective proved out to be pretty, pretty accurate.
- [80:15]
A
So my favorite thing he did was when he broke down the ten Commandments and called it a marketing scheme because, you know, the number 10, the Dewey decimal system and all that. And he's like, you only need two. Like, that was my favorite thing he ever did.
- [80:27]
B
The man was, I would say, I hate to say ahead of his time because he was like, like one of the best voices of his time. But like, I would say he was cogent in his time in a way that has, you know, lasted and will continue to last decades, I'm sure, is his perspective, if anything has been proven like, more cogent. Hey, do you have a best, at least worst part of your week, Chad?
- [80:51]
C
Yeah. So I heard a. I heard a joke from, interestingly, the Russians.
- [80:57]
B
The.
- [80:57]
C
It was a. It was on Russian Mill blog, which is. Which were traditionally very, very anti Ukrainian and very pro Kremlin, pro war. This joke. So this, I'll tell this joke. This man and this woman, they're sitting in these gas lines. They're sitting about their 12th hour, waiting to get gas. They've been sitting there for 12 hours. Man looks to his wife and goes, I am fed up. I'm done with sitting in this gas line. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go assassinate Vladimir Putin. I'm tired of this war causing this. I'm gonna go kill Vladimir Putin. Two days later, he comes back to his wife. She's like, what the hell? I thought you were going to go kill Vladimir Putin. He said, now the line to kill him was longer. So I just. So I thought that was just kind of, just kind of a funny joke. But that being said, it has some implications that, that, that kind of joke doesn't fly in Russia. Usually. That's the kind of joke that then puts you in jail. And they're. There's more and more of that happening in Russia where these people are getting more and more angry and, and probably not, you know, better than anyone. Satire is always that kind of the needle that starts to. It's the wedge that starts to drive open the cracks. And so they can use satire to start movements and things like that. And I think that's where we are. Are starting to see things moving and that jokes like that, because that was. That was one of several. That was the only one that was relatively clean. There were some pretty horrific ones, but the. That that satire came up. There's an interesting study where they're pivoting back to when the Soviet Union fell and the rise of comedy before the fall of the Soviet Union, being critical of the Kremlin. And there's almost a parallel line we're seeing now starting in that same route to where, once again, these social movements, they usually will start with people who are just kind of like, hey, I'm going to say this very real problem. But, oh, yeah, just joking. And then people are like, wait a minute, this is a real problem. And it starts a movement. And we're starting to see that take place in Russia right now. And I'm hoping that, like, when the fall of the Soviet Union took place and the Berlin Wall came down, we're in an era where comedy and levity and satire can drive a wedge in. In this authoritarian Kremlin government and potentially see a change for the better in the future. That one, I'm. I'm skeptical, but hopeful, but nonetheless, we're seeing that movement in that direction.
- [83:41]
B
Well, I mean, I think it's interesting that you can see, you know, you can use comedy as kind of the skeleton key towards civilian attitudes. Right. Like, I'm. I'm a comedian, and I will be the first person to tell you that I don't think comedy, I don't think political comedy is necessarily revolutionary. I think it can be cathartic. I think a lot of liberal comedy, for example, is making liberals feel superior. But I don't think it's like, we didn't satire Trump out of office the first time. Okay. We're not satiring him out of here the. The second time. But it can be, like you said, like a bellwether. It can be the, like, canary in the coal mine of something falling apart. Right. And it can be a way that people communicate attitudes, first of all, in a closed society, safely around censorship or around, you know, a way to not get flagged as insurgent. Right. But also, I think it's fascinating from a global perspective that, you know, we. We can sort of figure out the shift in civilian attitudes. Attitudes that way. And, you know, to give it a slightly historical population Sorry, Perspective. Like, I've studied a lot of comedy historically, you know, going back to even like the. The year 1100. Right. And what's fascinating about it is that you can see perspectives that are recognizable and you go, oh, not everyone was a zealot for the emperor or whatever. Like, oh, there's all these jokes about how arrogant this person was or all of these jokes about, you know, these leaders. And then we understand a little bit more of the culture at the time. Time, even. I'm sorry, this is a bummer topic for our levity segment. But one of the reasons that we knew that people. That we know historically what was happening, that people contemporaneously knew what was happening in the concentration camps during World War II versus the ahistorical fact that only people in civilian populations in Europe only ever found out after World War II, is that there are records of jokes within Jewish Germany of people referencing what was actually happening in the concentration camps, ironically. And we even have records of humor that was developed within the concentration camps because people were liberated. So it's like, it's become this, like, fascinating. You know, I think it's cathartic for the people at the time, but it's also this fast it becomes this historical document because you can say, oh, no, no one knew, or, oh, no one. Everyone in Russia still believed in Putin. And often, you know, later administrations will say that. But those jokes, they. They hold up as almost like historical pinpoints of how people actually felt, which I think is really cool. As a comedian, I love it when comedy's important.
- [86:05]
C
Yeah.
- [86:06]
B
Well, I think that's the end of our episode. Unless. Sorry, Matt, did you want to say something?
- [86:13]
A
No.
- [86:15]
B
And then that's the end of our episode. You can keep that dramatic moment in. That brings us to the end of our episode. Once again, you've been listening to America Power from Find Out Media. Make sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating. How about that? If you listen to this podcast, go give us a five star rating on whatever platform you listen to. Thumbs us up on YouTube, hype us. I don't know what that means. For Mr. Global and Chad Scott, I'm Nat Town. You've been listening to American Power from Find Out Media. And always remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts Americanly.