WarRoom Battleground EP 755: The Lords Of Easy Money Three Years Later

Summary

Podcast Summary: WarRoom Battleground EP 755 – "The Lords Of Easy Money Three Years Later"

Introduction In Episode 755 of WarRoom Battleground, hosted by Steve Bannon from WarRoom.org, the discussion centers around the critical analysis of the United States' industrial and defense sectors. Joining Bannon is Christopher Leonard, the esteemed author of "Lords of Easy Money". Released on April 25, 2025, this episode delves deep into the decline of America's manufacturing prowess, the erosion of its defense industrial base, and the looming challenges posed by global competitors, particularly China.

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Section 1: The Decline of America's Manufacturing Ecosystem

Timestamp [00:03 – 01:27]

Steve Bannon opens the dialogue with a strong critique of the current state of American society and media, emphasizing the growing frustration among the populace:

Steve Bannon [00:03]: "This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people... All these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it."

He introduces Christopher Leonard, highlighting the significance of Leonard's work in understanding America's financial and industrial trajectory.

Timestamp [01:19 – 03:08]

Leonard responds by outlining his ongoing research focused on the defense industrial base. He underscores the historical context, tracing back to the deindustrialization that accelerated post-China's WTO entry in 2001:

Christopher Leonard [03:08]: "When you think about the United States right now, in my mind, the most important story of the day... is the deindustrialization of the United States over the last 40 years... We won the world war because of the power of our manufacturing... We've lost the manufacturing ecosystem that we had in 1940."

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Section 2: Historical Context and the Rise of Industrial Hegemony

Timestamp [03:08 – 07:31]

Leonard provides a comprehensive historical overview, comparing the United States' manufacturing might during World War II to its standing in the early 1970s. He emphasizes how the 1930s policies and global events shaped America's industrial landscape:

Christopher Leonard [04:28]: "We were the arsenal of democracy. And how we exist right now today is that we have lost the manufacturing ecosystem that we had in 1940..."

Bannon interjects with reflections on FDR's industrial policies and contrasts them with Germany's wartime economic strategies:

Steve Bannon [06:02]: "It was the ramp up in 39 and 40 that got us out of the Great Depression... How do we go from a manufacturing hegemon to cut to the early 1970s or whatever, this decline?"

Leonard further explores the transition from post-WWII hegemony to the challenges of maintaining industrial supremacy, highlighting key moments such as the Nye Commission and the America First Movement.

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Section 3: The Erosion of the Defense Industrial Complex

Timestamp [07:31 – 16:55]

The conversation shifts to the defense industrial complex, with Leonard detailing the interplay between manufacturing and national security:

Christopher Leonard [05:19]: "We have lost the manufacturing ecosystem... The defense industry relied on that. That's what made it great."

Bannon questions the leadership decisions that led to the decline of America's manufacturing base despite its pivotal role in establishing the nation as a superpower:

Steve Bannon [07:31]: "How did the 'greatest generation' as leaders allow our greatest power, the manufacturing hegemon superpower, to just leave?"

Leonard discusses the strategic decisions from the 1990s onward, particularly the "Last Supper" meeting in 1993 where the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate, leading to a diminished industrial base:

Christopher Leonard [19:53]: "That initiates phase two, which brings us up to February 2023... the manufacturing might that existed in 1940 now essentially exists in China, Mexico, Vietnam and elsewhere."

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Section 4: Modern-Day Challenges and Geopolitical Implications

Timestamp [16:55 – 33:04]

Leonard draws parallels between historical industrial shifts and current geopolitical tensions, especially with China's military buildup:

Christopher Leonard [31:08]: "China's undertaking the fastest, most rapid, most expansive peacetime military buildup in the history of the world."

Bannon brings in contemporary policy discussions, referencing President Trump's initiatives to bolster manufacturing through measures like the Defense Production Act and critiques the current inability to escalate manufacturing in times of crisis:

Steve Bannon [22:05]: "They can't find welders. They've got to train welders up from nothing over a long time... We're trying to develop military industrial might without that commercial manufacturing base around it."

Leonard emphasizes the vulnerabilities arising from the outsourced supply chain, particularly in critical sectors like shipbuilding and aerospace:

Christopher Leonard [21:10]: "Parts of the F35 come from China... They have parts produced in Europe and then assembled here."

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Section 5: The Future of America's Industrial and Defense Strategy

Timestamp [33:04 – 44:22]

The discussion moves towards strategic solutions and the imperative to revitalize America's manufacturing base. Leonard outlines the three phases of the military industrial complex, highlighting the urgent need to reinvest in domestic manufacturing to ensure national security:

Christopher Leonard [34:39]: "China right now has a manufacturing advantage against us of 200 to 1 compared to the United States."

Bannon underscores the critical nature of this decline, comparing current manufacturing vulnerabilities to those that led to World War II:

Steve Bannon [35:11]: "A lot of people on the Japanese, [...] thought they had to have a knockout blow against the foreign devils."

Leonard ties these historical insights to modern challenges, warning about the risks posed by emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) in warfare:

Christopher Leonard [43:42]: "Once the technology is on the shelf, the logic of war is going to mandate itself."

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Section 6: Economic Implications and Policy Recommendations

Timestamp [44:05 – 48:23]

Leonard delves into the economic policies that contributed to the deindustrialization, such as free trade agreements and the financialization of the economy. He critiques the shift from being the workshop of the world to global financial dominance, which eroded domestic manufacturing:

Christopher Leonard [45:07]: "We are the peak, the pinnacle of it. And it's therefore in our interest to be engaged more in running the entire system than being the workshop of the system."

Bannon connects these economic shifts to present-day fiscal challenges, including the soaring government debt surpassed only by personal debt:

Steve Bannon [48:22]: "Our interest payments on debt right now cost more than the entire military budget."

Leonard reiterates the necessity of reevaluating policies to restore the manufacturing base as a cornerstone of national power and economic stability.

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Conclusion

As the episode concludes, both Bannon and Leonard emphasize the urgency of addressing America's industrial decline to safeguard its national security and economic future. Leonard's insights, backed by his extensive research in "Lords of Easy Money", provide a foundational understanding of the systemic issues facing the United States. Bannon underscores the importance of reinstating robust manufacturing and defense strategies to counteract global adversaries and ensure the nation's continued supremacy.

Notable Quotes:

• Steve Bannon [00:03]: "This is the primal scream of a dying regime... It's going to happen."

• Christopher Leonard [05:19]: "The defense industry relied on that. That's what made it great."

• Christopher Leonard [31:08]: "China's undertaking the fastest, most rapid, most expansive peacetime military buildup in the history of the world."

• Steve Bannon [35:11]: "A lot of people on the Japanese [...] thought they had to have a knockout blow against the foreign devils."

• Christopher Leonard [43:42]: "Once the technology is on the shelf, the logic of war is going to mandate itself."

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Final Thoughts This episode serves as a critical examination of the United States' transition from an industrial and military powerhouse to its current state of vulnerability. Through historical analysis and present-day observations, Bannon and Leonard illuminate the pathways that led to America's decline and propose considerations for its resurgence amidst evolving global dynamics.

Transcript

[Steve Bannon]

This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. Christians not got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.

[Christopher Leonard]

And where do people like that go.

[Steve Bannon]

To share the big lie? MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul I w that any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War ROOM here's your host, Stephen K. Ban. Welcome. It is Friday the 25th of April year overlord 2025. We're still here in Kansas City, Missouri. Love this town and man so lucky. Christopher Leonard, author of one of my favorite all time favorites, Lords of Easy Money. Now you live here. Just so happens that the Hillsdale College conference is here. You're actually, you actually live in the Greater Kansas City, Missouri area.

[Christopher Leonard]

I do. I live about 10 minutes from here. Lived in D.C. for about 10 years, but moved back here in 21.

[Steve Bannon]

Couldn't wait to get back.

[Christopher Leonard]

I couldn't wait to get back. It's where I grew up.

[Steve Bannon]

Yeah.

[Christopher Leonard]

Yeah.

[Steve Bannon]

Let's talk about a couple things today. I know you're working, doing a lot of research. First off, your book we refer to all the time. I think I've given out a couple hundred copies over the last couple of years. Everybody that's read it is like shocked.

[Christopher Leonard]

Why?

[Steve Bannon]

Nobody knows the story about Wall street, the Lords of Easy Money. Just an absolute, it's a foundational text of the MAGA movement. Although I know you're not political, but you've been doing research in something that's very relevant to today. This whole President Trump trying to reorganize the world's commercial kind of system. Peter Navarro, who was a co host here for years in the interregnum, is now back over as the trade czar and the manufacturing czar. This is about the defense industrial base. This is about actually, is the United States even possible? Because I talked at the World Economic Forum conference the other day over at Semaphore with all the globalists. A lot of guys pulling me aside said, hey, it's really nice that you guys have these aspirations, but the United States is so far gone as far as an advanced industrial power. It's not, it's not going to not just Be easy. It'll be impossible to bring the type of manufacturing that you want back here. So talk, talk to me about the history of this and your research.

[Christopher Leonard]

I will. Thank you and thank you for having me on. I've been working on a book about the defense industry, really hardcore full time for about a year and a half or a couple of years now. And I'm very concerned about what you just talked about about the defense industrial base and the way it would tie into this new era that we're living in right now. And I guess the way I could put it, and I know we have a little time, so you might indulge me to talk about a little history.

[Steve Bannon]

Definitely. We have the entire. We're going to do this for an entire hour.

[Christopher Leonard]

Okay, here's the headline in my mind right now is what you're talking about. You know, a retired army colonel who teaches out at Leavenworth now put it really well to me, that's at the Staff College, the Commander General Staff College. Yeah, a lot of smart folks out there. And he said, you know, all wars are wars of attrition. That's what they always turn into. And it tends to turn into a contest between two nations, full society conflict. And it really can kind of turn into a contest between two industrial bases. And when we look at the United States right now, in my mind, the most important story of the day right now is obviously the Liberation Day tariff regime. But when you back up, in my mind, one of the most important stories, if not the most important story, is the deindustrialization of the United States over the last 40 years accelerated after China joined the WTO in 2001. And that has grave consequences for our national security. And here's how I'd put it. You know, the book I'm working on now goes back to 1940. And you know, this, this is a truism. We won the world war because of the power of our manufacturing.

[Steve Bannon]

We were the arsenal of democracy.

[Christopher Leonard]

Arsenal of democracy. And how we exist right now today is that we have lost the manufacturing ecosystem that we had in 1940 and going all the way back really to 1900. And what that means when I say ecosystem, when you're a manufacturing power in the way that China is today, you don't just have factories, you've got all these attendant people that work around it, the engineers, the tool producers, the guys and gals who work on the manufacturing line, all these people trained and thinking about and working in manufacturing all the time, going back and forth between all these companies. The defense industry relied on that. That's what made it great. And so here we are in this position in 2025 where the defense industry.

[Steve Bannon]

But hang on for a second, I'm going to take, I'm going to go from 1940. So we in. It shouldn't be lost on anybody. It was the ramp up in 39 and 40 that got us out of the Great Depression. He tried everything. When he first took, when FDR first came in in 1932, he tried all the different types of industrial policy he had. And they were throwing, and they admitted they were throwing stuff up on the wall. And it worked for a while. Right. The bank in particular in 34, 35, 36 starts slowing down. By 38, they're just about back to where they were in 32. You know, it wasn't 25% unemployment, but it was a lot. And it was the ramp up of the industrial power pre Pearl Harbor.

[Christopher Leonard]

Right.

[Steve Bannon]

They kind of saw over the horizon what was coming. Whether they initiated part of it or not is another question. But they certainly saw what was engulfing the world. How so at 19 in 1945, we're untouched. Our two allies, the Chinese or besides the Brits, but our Chinese and the in the Russians are completely eviscerated. Right? With they fought the land wars in their territory. Our other partner, the British, is essentially destroyed. You know, they're hanging on to the empire but barely. And their industrial base has been essentially eviscerated. We're untouched. How do we go from a manufacturing hegemon to cut to the early 1970s or whatever, this decline? And why would anybody ever give it up? You're a hegemon, have total world control and can see peace and prosperity, can actually see the sunlit uplands as you're the manufacturing thing. And it's taken you from the industrial revolution, which is really created in England. You kind of become the big player in it for 100 years. The people who were so smart that helped win the war. How did the quote unquote the greatest generation, when Kennedy and LYNDON JOHNSON, the 1960s come in? How did essentially the greatest generation as leaders allow our greatest power, the manufacturing hegemon superpower, to just leave?

[Christopher Leonard]

I mean the multi, multi trillion dollar question, and a huge question and a complicated one.

[Steve Bannon]

This is essentially what you're studying, how.

[Christopher Leonard]

That happened, how that happened, what it means for us, where it leaves us today, what it meant for us all along the way to become the world superpower at the end of World War II. And exactly what you're talking about. You know, the Roosevelt administration was studying this stuff in the, in the late 30s. They were caught by surprise by Pearl Harbor. I know that whatever's going on with that, but we were ready.

[Steve Bannon]

But let me tell you. So Hitler and Roosevelt come to power in the same year? Yes, 1932.

[Christopher Leonard]

Yes.

[Steve Bannon]

The Germans are actually in a worse. The Great Depression as bad as is. The Germans are actually in a worse situation. They got the hyperinflation, they have the breadlines. I mean, they're actually in worse shape. In one level, it seems to me they immediately get the joke that if you're going to pull out of something that you've got to go back to the basics. They start rearming immediately. And that rearming starts to take their economy out of. And this is why Hitler gets so much popular support. He's put people who had no hope to work. It's not the political ideology. They don't even understand that. That kind of comes later. They have jobs, they have manufacturing jobs. All of a sudden people have income. Young people are put to work. Roosevelt tries many different things in that time, but not an arms. Not, not a rearmament, not a rearmament program. We lagged that. But then somehow the light bulb goes on, right? The light bulb goes on because I think they're also looking at Germany and saying, look how those guys are doing it. And you can tell they're getting more and more dangerous because eventually you got to use the weapons.

[Christopher Leonard]

You're getting right into it. It's it. You know, in the 30s, FDR was watching Germany rearm, getting very concerned. But there was tremendous opposition within the US Body politic to A, the arms industry and B, the idea of foreign intervention. One of the guys I'm writing about was the senator from. I think he's from Iowa or Nebraska. Gerald Nye.

[Steve Bannon]

Yes.

[Christopher Leonard]

He led this commission that was looking into the arms companies. World War I. Nye Commission.

[Steve Bannon]

Well, because. Go back in more history. This is why there were not so many huge movies about World War I in this country. Left a bitter taste.

[Christopher Leonard]

Yes.

[Steve Bannon]

It was not, you know, World War I, the Yanks are coming, everything like that. It left a bitter taste. And particularly we didn't approve the what? The world, the World League. We didn't approve the nations. The League of Nations. We wanted nothing to do with it. We had gone to Europe because it was a slaughterhouse. I think we lost 250,000 troops in about 100 days of fighting. And people wanted nothing more to do with this. Particularly the heartland of the country. The America first movement, the original American First Movement, which was isolationist, has said, hey, Roosevelt, Wilson and these guys sucked us in here. After he promised us we'd never get involved. We got involved. We showed we could do it. But there was very few patriotic movies or waving flags or anything like that. People were quite bitter about World War I and that rolled into the 1930s.

[Christopher Leonard]

It totally did. And it's fascinating when you look at it. You think people were disillusioned by Vietnam. World War I was way more intense. I mean, people.

[Steve Bannon]

I tell this all the time, just tell about that. And again, we know Vietnam because it's so recent and media was so much bigger. But the disillusionment over that, the Spanish flu, the League of Nations, it was bitter and they didn't want anything more to do with it.

[Christopher Leonard]

And I've been reading all these Senate hearings from the 30s and the transcripts of that. There was a broad movement in, in the U.S. as you said, based in the heartland, literally, America First, Charles Lindbergh, all that stuff. There was a sentiment that we had gotten drawn into an imperial war. You know, anti imperialism is woven into the fabric.

[Steve Bannon]

America, revolutionary thing. We're not an imperial power. That's what I think. Back then it was still a live, living, breathing thing, particularly in the heartland of this country.

[Christopher Leonard]

Absolutely. And pardon me, let me mute this, but you had FDR and the people around him saying, this thing's going to come to us. Okay? Germany's rearming, Europe is.

[Steve Bannon]

But that's also. You're starting to see the first of kind of the globalists. Right. Some with Wilson and thing. But that exists. These guys are thinking how these parts interconnect and how the economy get in. And you have. And they blame it now as a fascistic movement. It wasn't the America First. It wasn't. It was very much in the direct lineage of kind of Jackson and the revolutionary generation and what they warned us about. No foreign entanglements. Don't go looking for monsters to slay. We got enough to do here. It was a huge divide in this country.

[Christopher Leonard]

Huge divide. You know, FDR did not have the political capital to arm or mobilize or send troops overseas. He fought again. It fought against it constantly. If I could back up for one second, because one thing I want to.

[Steve Bannon]

Talk about, I could talk about this for days.

[Christopher Leonard]

I. I can tell.

[Steve Bannon]

I know, dude, you're in my wheelhouse now.

[Christopher Leonard]

I know. And. And the stuff about them studying the global system in 1940 is. It would blow your mind. Have you I mean, you probably know about it, but you've heard of Isaiah Bose Bowman, Isaiah geographer to fu.

[Steve Bannon]

But I want to get into all that. I want the audience.

[Christopher Leonard]

But let's let.

[Steve Bannon]

This is what the book's going to be about.

[Christopher Leonard]

Part of it totally.

[Steve Bannon]

Oh, you're going to blow people's minds.

[Christopher Leonard]

And.

[Steve Bannon]

But because this history is not known well, only to very specific period that stayed the period. And it's so important for today.

[Christopher Leonard]

It shapes our world. It shapes our world. But to keep it kind of focused on the defense industrial base and the military industrial complex, look at the world that existed in 1930 in the United States. Okay. Let's actually go back to 1914, right before World War I. We were the manufacturing powerhouse of planet earth. We produce 33% of all manufactured goods in the world. Our economy was bigger than Germany, France and Britain combined. Okay. We had built up that system over about a hundred years. So we had this enormous manufacturing power at the disposal of the Roosevelt administration, but tremendous political resistance to using it for war. People truly were embittered, did not like weapons companies. I mean, these debates in the 30s.

[Steve Bannon]

Were brutal because they said that the war. There was recriminations about how we got in here about was it global financiers or was it weapons manufacturers for profits people because of the dead, because of the level of casualties that people were not prepared for because of mustard gas and the horrible techniques that were used. There were a lot of people, particularly people whose sons had been sacrificed, that wanted to know exactly how this. What happened. And there was a lot of finger pointing in these commissions, in committee hearings on the arms manufacturers. Was this profiteering the people get into. Did we get sucked into this thing to make people money?

[Christopher Leonard]

Exactly. You know, you've been accused of fiery rhetoric at times. That was. It was super heated back then. So let's get. Please.

[Steve Bannon]

What do you mean, superheated? And what we had to. Give me an example.

[Christopher Leonard]

Oh, my God, man. You look at this guy, Gerald Nye, a senator, and I'm sorry, you're kind of catching me off guard. I'm in the weeds. I think he was from Nebraska, and he was accused of everything under the sun. And then there was this whole ecosystem of journalists and politicians around that because.

[Steve Bannon]

He was trying to get the army. He was trying to go after the arms manufacturers and see what happened.

[Christopher Leonard]

Go after the arms manufacturers.

[Steve Bannon]

And so he's a Midwest populist. He's one of these guys.

[Christopher Leonard]

Absolutely. And when I say fiery, I mean all this rhetoric around the merchants of Death, the financiers.

[Steve Bannon]

I mean, this stuff, it was ugly.

[Christopher Leonard]

This stuff was hot. Let's jump to 1941. FDR has been trying to build political support for this program because he sees a real, real danger on the horizon. Pearl harbor happens now at that time. As I said, we are the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. And FDR consolidates control. You know, we talk a lot about the New Deal as sort of this new hybrid of government, industry, partnership or control. That stuff was actually built on the first prototypes of government controlled industries from World War I, the War Production Board. Okay, so FDR gets the entire force of government to essentially. It's not a hyperbole to say this to take over American industry.

[Steve Bannon]

This is the World War II World War production.

[Christopher Leonard]

We are now in World War II. Okay? The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Americans are on board. We've been attacked. Let's fight. And when we think about where we are today, what's important is that the US Government was able to harness the manufacturing power of commercial industry. They took over Ford, General Motors, they took over the airplane company.

[Steve Bannon]

Took over. Tell people how. What level of this was pretty shocking. What level of takeover was it by the federal government?

[Christopher Leonard]

I mean, one of the characters in the book is this guy, Robert Lovett.

[Steve Bannon]

Okay, Pablo, who was the book the Best and the Brightest starts. The whole first part is Lovett, how revered he is among the establishment and young Jack Kennedy as just President. The whole thing's about Lovett. And it flashes back to what he had done in World War II and why he was kind of a dean of the American establishment.

[Christopher Leonard]

And he built the Air Force. His great group built the United States Air Force. We were producing like 7,000 planes a year in early 1940. By 1945, it was like 50,000 at least. My numbers are a little fuzzy. Forgive me, I'm in the weeds. But when you talk about the level of control, I mean, the War Production Board was telling people, you can make this many screws, this many nuts, this many bolts, you will produce this many planes. We will, you know, we will regulate your profit margins. I mean, they had US Military personnel inside the airplane factories. It was. It is not an overstatement to say the government took over. I mean, they told General Motors and Ford, hey, good morning, you're going to make tanks now. Thank you for the Red Rouge river plant. And, and I kind of want to always keep bringing it back today. So could I jump? Okay, go ahead.

[Steve Bannon]

I've got a question, because I've said this a lot in the last couple of weeks that right now we have a full embargo against the Chinese Communist Party coming to the United States. I think the people going to Walmart and Costco going to talk, talk to President Trump and saying, hey, look, in about 90 days we're going to have empty shelves. And it's not going to be Biden's empty shelves on baby formula or things like this. This is going to be empty shelves because you have a full embargo on with your 145% tariffs, you have a full embargo. And I keep talking about, we went up the escalatory ladder on the terrorist part quickly, but because they've blocked us from rare earths, which is important, from magnets, from ball bearings, from this. That for us to go up the escalatory ladder would be even more restrictions on chips to cut them off. But that, that would be analogous to cutting off Japan in July or August of 1941 of oil, which was really the third act of the pre war drama that essentially the Japanese drove them to attack America. Because America is basically saying we're going to cut you off economically. Given the fact that people tell me, Steve, you can't go up the excretory ladder for chips. As we have no industrial base, we could not actually thwart the Chinese even if we went to war, Particularly since they are so the supply chain. They control the supply chain, particularly in so much military technology. It's the exact opposite of 1941 where we actually had the entire supply chain here. Is that accurate?

[Christopher Leonard]

That is accurate. You know, now you're jumping ahead. I think the military industrial complex has three phases. What we're talking about World War II, Cold War up until the end of the Cold War, that's the phase one. And we're relying on our manufacturing base to create our military industrial power. Right. And then in 1993, I think we have the so called Last Supper where the Pentagon tells all the defense contractors to merge and combine and that this.

[Steve Bannon]

Is the war, this is the Cold War. Berlin Wall's fallen, the Russians, the Bolsheviks have fallen. We're now it's the end of history. Cordoner. Fukuyama. Fukuyama. And so this actually happens in the Pentagon. They call it the Last Supper. They actually sit and say, guys, if you're going to survive, you have to consolidate from 12 great companies down to a handful.

[Christopher Leonard]

Yeah, and we can talk about that. So that initiates phase two, which brings us up to basically February 2023, when Putin invades Ukraine and thus begins where we Are now. But where we are now. To get back to your question, the manufacturing might that I just described to you that existed in 1940 now essentially exists in China, Mexico, Vietnam and elsewhere. It is not on our shores. And the defense companies are kind of like these islands of high tech, sophisticated manufacturing inside the United States that live in a kind of desert.

[Steve Bannon]

Manufacturing or assembly, do they actually manufacture or they assemble final assembly with parts, key parts from other places. Okay, so like the automotive industry, the Ford Motor doesn't really make any car. They don't manufacture cars here. The ones they do, the small percentage they do or the percentage they do, they assemble from high value added parts made in other places.

[Christopher Leonard]

I mean that. Oh, great point. And I mean like I was down in Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth complex where they make the F35 and you're right, like the magnets, the rare earth, a lot of stuff that goes into that plane comes from China. Parts of that plane are produced in Europe and then assembled. But they, I think I will stand by my thing. They do still manufacturing the United States, they're fabricating parts from raw aluminum. They're putting these planes together. The Hellfire missile down in Orlando, Florida, they're putting this stuff along assembly lines. But the pinch point to me is you've got these shipbuilding facilities out, let's say in Virginia, Newport beach or Norfolk.

[Steve Bannon]

Newport News, Tenneco, the strip building the major ship. That's the only place we can still build a submarine, isn't it? And they maybe Groton, maybe up in Groton, but it's one of the biggest shipbuilding. They do the carriers there and everything.

[Christopher Leonard]

And they can't find welders. They can't find welders. They've got to train welders up from nothing over a long time and then maybe lose that person. Whereas when you've got the ecosystem in place, you got all these welders, tool machine operators, engineers, all these people you can draw from. That's what the world looked like during World War II is, you know, Lockheed Martin or Lockheed Aircraft had this Burbank facility that was surrounded by a Douglas aircraft and all these other people and they shared personnel. So now we're at this point where we're trying to develop military industrial might without that commercial manufacturing base around it. And it has put us in a precarious situation. I think that that's accurate to say it's put us in a precarious situation where we're drawing down our munitions and so forth.

[Steve Bannon]

Well, this is what we did in the First Trump term. I mean, we use the military industrial emergency to. To I think was three or one. We used a bunch of these things to. To basically steel and aluminum. I mean, we used the Defense Production act, didn't we? I mean, Peter Navarro is not shy. Peter Navarro is not shy about. About having President Trump implement this to try to get at least some manufacturing going, is he not?

[Christopher Leonard]

Well, he is. And as you know, Navarro's talking about that right now. Yes, I mean Navarro's still talking about that right now. So that's in my mind, the bigger project.

[Steve Bannon]

Let me go back. In World War II, we're a hegemon at the end of the war, untouched. How over time. Because it is just economics. They want to get to cheaper labor. We're the dominant and we have the ecosystem and it's all working. Society is kind of happy. The war is over. This is. You have the baby boom of the 1950s because people have well paying good jobs from big companies in the. All smaller companies that feed around it, whether you're in Wichita, Kansas or Fort Worth, Texas or in Southern California. I mean, I lived in Manhattan beach for years and in turn from Manhattan beach and torrents, these places and then out in Birmingham, the entire aircraft industry was out there. A lot of that's gone now. So what happened to our leadership to allow us to basically give up being a hegemon? It would seem like you'd want to keep that forever.

[Christopher Leonard]

Okay.

[Steve Bannon]

As a crown jewel.

[Christopher Leonard]

Enormous question. And also I've got a caveat. You caught me unexpected this morning. I'm still working on this. I'm not done. I've got a lot of work left to do. But in I would say.

[Steve Bannon]

Okay, I got to say that we're going to go to break here in a second. I'll give you when. So knowing Christopher and he knew how I fell in love with the book immediately. We spent a lot of time. I just wanted to understand and understand because he went back to the research. He went back to the minutes of the Federal Reserve. Your book is magnificent. I mean, you lay out such a compelling case just on the facts, no editorializing at all. On the Lords of Easy Money. When you read it, your head blows up. And so I ask Chris, because he's such a. Christopher, so such a great researcher and author, what are you working on next? And he says, I'm thinking of something on the Defense Industrial complex and the Defense Department. I go, man, you can't waste your time on that. You can't waste your time on that. You got to do something you're in a finance specialist. There's so many other things to do. And then as I've thought about it over the last year or so, it was absolutely genius because now in the heart of this gets to be one of the biggest things we have to talk about which is we have a defense budget. It's over a trillion dollars and we can't. It's a centerpiece I made of the argument last night. The converging crises we have of the beginning of the kinetic part of the third World war in this we're shifting more to a hemispheric defense which is require a totally different outlook of what we do. We don't need big army in the Eurasian landmass, particularly in centcom that we have to turn the defense budget back to what our strategy is where the Central Pacific becomes like a barrier. And you could cut the defense budget hundreds of billions of dollars if you did that. In fact I've argued you could cut it $200 billion on the back of an envelope. And of course that's meeting with a stony silence in Washington D.C. in the Republican party there's. I've actually had people say and I'm the advocate of raising taxes for the, for the upper bracket. As much as they hate that I've had people that are close to me going of the ideas they hate the most in the imperial capital. You're cutting the defense budget right now is the idea they hate the most because that's really the industrial policy United States. That's of the little bit of manufacturing we have in Huntsville, Alabama and all these places in these red states. That's we got Christopher Leonard's with us, the author of Lord of Easy Money. We're talking about the defense industrial base. As you know, Peter Navarro in his four years here is co host one of the topics that he had between the first and second term absolutely vital to the day. We're going to return back to the worm in a moment.

[Christopher Leonard]

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[Steve Bannon]

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[C]

China's undertaking the fastest, most rapid, most expansive peacetime military buildup in the history of the world. Not in modern history, in the history of the world. Meanwhile, the United States has lagged behind for a variety of different reasons. You talk about the Navy as an example. We don't have a shipbuilding industry. We have some shipbuilding in the United States, but not nearly at the scale the Chinese do. It's not just that we're not spending the money on it. It's we don't have the ability to do it because we allowed the nation to be de industrialized. We allowed the United States to become deindustrialized, especially since 1991 with both free trade agreements and the cheating that we allowed when we assumed the allowed China to ascend to the World Trade Organization. And what it has done is de industrialized us. We can't just build ships. Boeing struggles to build planes. We can't make pharmaceuticals. We depend on China for 88% of all the active ingredients in most of the pharmaceuticals that we rely on in our country. You can go down issue after issue after issue, and you can see that it's not just that we're not spending money on it. It's that we can't do it because the industries that would produce it domestically are long gone. They were outsourced. They were sent somewhere else. Not just to China, but other places, but primarily to China. That's dangerous. It cannot continue.

[Steve Bannon]

Christopher Leonard is Secretary of State. Rubio have a deal on your book? Because right there, he's pitching. He's pitching industrial defense, industrial base. We don't have it. It's a huge restriction. We don't have any shipbuilding. We don't have anything. What Is this a topic at top of mind of the US Government right now?

[Christopher Leonard]

This is a topic that is top, top of mind. And I mean I'm telling you, I had not seen that Rubio clip Navarro is really, really keen on. This has been from the first administration. But I'm telling you down to the colonel level inside the Pentagon and this started in 2022 when we there is real concern about our ability to keep up from 2022. Why?

[Steve Bannon]

Because of the beginning of the Ukraine war and understanding you're back in a big ground war on the Eurasian landmass.

[Christopher Leonard]

Exactly. And the thing that caught everybody by surprise in Ukraine was that we were having a World War II style trench warfare. Again, everybody thought now military conflicts are quick and fast with precision bombing and all the rest of it, the lessons.

[Steve Bannon]

From the Gulf War all the way.

[Christopher Leonard]

Up through the war on terror and what we were doing. And listen, by the way, I really try to stay non political. You know, I prize my independence.

[Steve Bannon]

You were totally non political in the Wall street book. That's the power of it. You don't have a point of view. You're laying out a set of fact backed by documents that are. That blow you away because you're not taking a point of view. Same thing here.

[Christopher Leonard]

That's exactly right. And so like when we get to the war in Ukraine, I'm not going to weigh in on it. But what I will say is talking to people in the Pentagon, there was a concern that we were essentially burning our seed corn, if you will, sending these munition stocks over there. At the same time we had to supply other countries and supply our own military. We had a finite. You remember the Biden administration had to resort to using these cluster bombs that they did not want to use because we were burning down these inventories.

[Steve Bannon]

Yes.

[Christopher Leonard]

And so then you think about and.

[Steve Bannon]

They got grief from the left who had supported the war about the lethality of the cluster bombs and how inhumane they are.

[Christopher Leonard]

That's right. And within the administration itself there was a lot of that concern was voiced. And the point is China right now I've read has a manufacturing advantage against us of 200 to 1 manufacturing power compared to the United States.

[Steve Bannon]

Now what do you mean by that? That's shocking.

[Christopher Leonard]

That is their industrial capacity compared to ours. And I'm talking domestic onshore that they have a manufacturing capability that is 200 to 1. And I'm taking this from a really great article in American affairs, that journal, I forget the name of it. Forgive me, but you know, when we went to war against Japan in World War II. We had a manufacturing of advantage of 30 to 1 against Japan. And a lot of people said it was Japan could not beat us.

[Steve Bannon]

Well, a lot of people on the Japanese, I mean inside the Japanese staff and particularly the Navy, a couple of guys had gone to Harvard. Remember a lot of guys were educated here and they were saying, what are we doing here? If we don't take these guys out totally, they're just not going to sit down. They're such a manufacturing superpower eventually, because all wars are wars of attrition. They'll get us. And that's why the Japanese high command felt that they had to have a knockout blow against the foreign devils. The beginning to scare us off. I mean, that was not lost on people that were smart at the time how big a manufacturing superpower we were then.

[Christopher Leonard]

That's exactly right. I'm reading a book now about the aerial bombing of Japan. Really great book called Reign of Ruin. And you know, what we had to build to get to the point that we were and not weighing on the morality of any of this war is hell. But to get those bombers to Japan was an enormous industrial effort. I mean, those B29s were burning up in the air. They had a huge failure rate. And you got to ask yourself right now, where's the capacity to do that now? Technology, innovation, these things matter a lot. It's not just raw manufacturing power. But these are enormous questions that are definitely top of mind for the government.

[Steve Bannon]

They're inside the look when you talk about aerial bombings. One of the obsessions here, in fact the. Is it Glassner or Gladwell? Gladwell wrote the kind of. I thought ripped from the pages of the war Room how obsessed we are with 12 o'clock high about focus on command and duty. But the precision daylight bombing was that you couldn't get it done at night. There's mathematical formulas of lift capacity. You send over amount of bombs you've got to drop to take down an industrial power. And it wasn't getting done because guys were waving off and just natural human. They were afraid and the formations. And it was really the whiz kids and it was the mathematics. And you see this and was it Foggle War, that great documentary of Earl Morris on McNamara. The mathematical precision. A lot of the guys there, LeMay were then shifted to the Pacific because they were going to firebomb and they firebombed. I mean, as bad as the nuclear weapons were as far as destructive power, the firebombing of Kyoto and Tokyo probably had more inhumane, if you have to call it like that, destructive power than dropping nuclear weapons.

[Christopher Leonard]

That's exactly right. You know, more people might have died in those firebombings. I think maybe more people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I think the thing about the atomic bomb was it was this matter of, I don't want to use the word efficiency, but it was this thing. We can do this with one bomb. But we had been, oh, that's Oppenheimer.

[Steve Bannon]

I mean, you have to detach yourself when I say, but it was about efficiency. This is what happened in Vietnam later. It got too mathematical. The human element got taken out of it. Those guys thought as an industrial power, they fought an industrial war. The Russian, the Russian, the Red army would have never won if our production capacity had not been able to give them the arms and the munitions they needed to take on the verbac. Now they lost, what, I don't know, 20 million people in that effort. But it gets down to modern warfare. At least in the 20th century, the most barbaric century we've ever had was a combination of advanced mathematics and calculus coupled with technology and science on the art of the thing that's cruelest in the World War. And that's why those lessons, you know, I keep saying we got to learn how to beat our swords into plowshares, which we have not done yet.

[Christopher Leonard]

Could I share a thought when you talk about that? I've studied the rise of American air power from the 30s up through Nagasaki, and it started as a theory. A small group of people, Gladwell wrote about this a little bit. But I think the thing we need to remember is that when you have a technology at hand, there's a logic to war and it takes over. And that's exactly what we saw in World War II, which is that by the end, Curtis LeMay was immolating cities in a way that a lot of the military brass was completely against in the 30s. And I'm thinking about this right now with AI, you know, we've got this tool on the shelf and I've met a lot of folks who are good people, yes, like patriotic, thoughtful people developing this technology, whom I can relate with. But what I'm saying is that once the technology is on the shelf, the logic of war is going to mandate itself.

[Steve Bannon]

Yes, I want to go back to the LeMay thing because they had done such a good job. And remember, the story's kind of there was another general, but it's kind of about LeMay in 12 o'clock high that the general had to lead and was going to lead the bombings because guys were afraid and would break up from the formation. And the formation, not the individual. The formation was the thing that you had to keep. Even if it's your roommate or your best friend, you got to let the plane go and keep the formation. The formation is the objective, to get the bombs over mathematically when LeMay went back, because remember, LeMay's group didn't know anything about an atomic bomb. They knew nothing. Their mission was to take down industrial Japan and make sure we didn't have to land 4 million men and lose a million men in the process. And so they had a mandate. That's why island hopped to get, you know, Saipan was going to be a major air base, right. To get closer, there's a story, I think it's in a book called Torch to the Enemy. It's a book right after the war, like in the late 40s, early 50s. And there's a scene in there where they're calculating the staff and LeMay, you know, is a taskmaster and they're calculating the. Now the bombing of Kyoto and Tokyo at low levels because they're not being that accurate. High. He wants to go in at treetop level, basically with napalm, which is a new thing because the ball. And they invented at Harvard, invented at Harvard and technology, finding a purpose, right, for war. And they're doing calculations because the Japanese had taken the factories and put them into the rice huts. The town is basically made of wood, right? But they got the ball bearing plants again or the manufacturing, the manufacturing ecosystem in this. Because guys are saying, we can't do this. Tokyo is a civilian population. Said, no, they have this and they're doing calculations. And LeMay's saying, you can't go in here. I want it down high. And there's some guy on the staff that's doing some math and goes, look, you know, if we do that and the napalm works, you're going to have tornadic activity. And this will actually create firestorms. What's a firestorm? It could burn down the entire. You could lose. You could kill 2 million people. And they go, hmm, interesting. What's that calculation again? What do we have to do for the tornadic activity? And I think it was mentioned at the time, hey, we got to win this. Because this is the kind of thing, maybe they get guys for war crimes for later on. So we got to win this war and make sure that we're running the thing they had even on the staffs. It just wasn't guys outside in the 30s, even on the staffs, they were doing it. There were some questions about what are we doing here. Right. What is the logic of this? We understand we have an overall thing we got to destroy this industrial base. We have to do it because we don't want to have to invade because then the Japanese will be destroyed. Will be destroyed because this is getting more and more bitter. More islands we take, you know, Iwo Jima, it's just more and more bitter. The air war is more bitter. The Japanese people. But in the calculation of the logic of war taking over, what science and technology has given you is a perfect example and that is absolutely artificial intelligence today. That's why I'm the big, I'm a Luddite. I'm forming, we're working a group of a lot of progressives and people on the right that are coming together and saying there's more. If you look at the four oligarchs in this country that run artificial intelligence, you have to have. There's more regulation for a young Korean girl to open one of these nail salons in Washington D.C. than there is on artificial intelligence. And the destruct potential destructive power of artificial intelligence could be far worse than nuclear weapons.

[Christopher Leonard]

I'll, I'll leave it at that. I mean powerful technology will ultimately become a subject to the mandates of war once the shooting starts. It has a logic of its own and this stuff must be thought about very carefully from a lot of points of view. You know, I could try to tackle the question of why we gave away our manufacturing knife.

[Steve Bannon]

Can you do that? Why did we do that? Because this is kind of why we're in the shape we're in today.

[Christopher Leonard]

This is my best assessment at this point. Still working on it. But you know, first of all, when we talked about that manufacturing powerhouse that existed in the 40s that was built over 100 years using tariffs with a lot of other tariffs were part of.

[Steve Bannon]

The President Trump, McKinley and his favorite group back there in the late 19th century.

[Christopher Leonard]

And I am not in any the.

[Steve Bannon]

American plant but it's Hamilton, it's Lincoln, that whole throughput part of the, not just civil war but part of the tension in the country has always been the non tariff guys versus the tariff and protectionist guys.

[Christopher Leonard]

But you got to look at who we were at the time. The tariffs were a wall to keep out Britain and other developed powers from dumping on us. We needed to build up our own industries. We built a wall around the economy and it worked. And we had this huge thing. There's obviously the super pivotal moment when we win World War II and we are a superpower like no other that has ever existed in the history of.

[Steve Bannon]

Greater than Rome, greater than the British, greater than anything, world's greatest hegemon, greater.

[Christopher Leonard]

Than all of it. And the people running the country, which was a surprise, surprisingly small group of people, and they all went to Harvard and they all went to Yale, and they all came from this world and they looked at the globe like a map. But of course, it wasn't just like a small group of people. Here's what I'm saying. There was this tectonic shift where we realize we're not the colony anymore, trying to stoke our own. We are the empire now. We are the hegemon. We like free trade because now we're the global banking capital of the planet Earth. The dollar becomes the reserve currency. We create the imf, we create the Bretton Woods Accord, all of these things. And so we started saying, okay, now we're in the catbird seat and we're essentially running the global economy. We are the peak, the pinnacle of it. And it's therefore in our interest to be engaged more in running the entire system than being the workshop of the system. And so that's kind of the fundamental mentality shift that starts to happen. And then you see it accelerate through the 1970s because we kind of hit this moment of economic crisis. You know, there's less profitability for US Corporations. And that's when the offshoring really starts because companies are searching to boost profit margins and all the rest of it. And the other nations are getting built up through our largesse.

[Steve Bannon]

But you go, you go, let's go back into the 60s because you have Vietnam. We do have an industrial base that's supplying Vietnam. A lot of people accuse people today that the Vietnam War was driven by the profitability of the arms. Just the same types of things they argued in World War I. You have Lyndon Johnson passes the Great Society, you have the guns and butterfly. We're not, although we're a manufacturing superpower, when Nixon comes in, kind of the crisis of the Arab oil embargo, the dollar, we get off the gold standard. You have the Arab oil embargo. All of a sudden America goes from this, what everybody just says from the post war era of like, we're the most biggest power in the world. We're losing in Vietnam with all these advanced weapons. The cities are on fire. We're not. We have runaway inflation. We have gas lines around the country. How did that all go when it's still, at the time, we still are the manufacturing superpower. We're about to lose that. The 70s were about to farm that out. But how do we have that crisis of confidence that all these things happen? And this is why I'm saying today we're right now in a series of. We're going to have a convergence of many crises that's going to last years and no easy decisions, because the easy decisions are decades ago. It's going to be back to like the 60s and 70s when we had a similar thing and we kind of abandoned core things like being a manufacturing superpower. We walked away from it.

[Christopher Leonard]

Geez. Yes. I mean these are huge, huge forces you're talking about. And also when we talk about converging crises, not to get back to the Fed, but as you know, our interest payments on debt right now cost more than the entire military budget.

[Steve Bannon]

1.4 trillion, a lot more.

[Christopher Leonard]

So that is the gross.

[Steve Bannon]

Yeah, that's everything. No, that's what I said. Like that is the central. That the still the Fed and the economy and no growth rate and all that, no manufacturing base, no high value added jobs on top of the debt. That's why I just figured out in this conversation, Leonard, you're the guy that's actually looked at the two central parts of the crisis now for the last 10 years of your life. You're probably the only individual, you're not probably the only individual that's done this. You've looked at the financial fiasco and if you read your book, you're shocked that it could happen like this. Right? What the Fed was arguing at the time. And now you're into the defense. What you're seeing what happened to the manufacturing base.

[Christopher Leonard]

Well, the thing is, as a reporter, you want to look at what matters and it's not too difficult to pick out really powerful institutions and parts of our economy. Start looking at how do things work. It's pretty simple, I guess, at the end of the day. And I think that the defense industry is at the core of American power. Particularly since World War II when we became a globe spanning truly hegemonic power. This thing's been wrapped up with that from the get go. I guess to get back to the crisis of the 70s and the offshoring that began at that time. Time we felt we could trade away the manufacturing base and that we would benefit from the trade that would result from the financialization that we're the world's bank, right? And then it accelerates. It accelerates into the 90s. And it particularly accelerates during the 2000s after China joins WTO in 2001, the China shock. I mean, that's when it really gathers speed. And what I'm saying is that now the policies are being reevaluated. I think it's fair to say we're like, wait a minute, let me, let me tell you this. I was just at one of the world's largest arms trade shows. It was wild, man. You had people from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Pakistan, the Russians, the Chinese, they were all there. And I'm stating the obvious, but it's fair to say we're entering a new geopolitical era of blocks blocs and like a divided world where we're facing this kind of, I don't want to use the word conflict, but a dynamic we haven't faced, I'm telling you, in decades.

[Steve Bannon]

This is the heart of my speech last night. The converging crises and what's going to happen. I say the early kinetic place of the Third World War if President Trump doesn't try to get or doesn't get peace. If you look at from 1939 in Poland to 1941, the invasion of Russia and Operation Barbarossa by the, by the Germans, the casualties there are nothing compared to the Ukraine and Gaza. We gotta go. We only got a minute left. You're amazing.

[Christopher Leonard]

Hey, thanks for the time.

[Steve Bannon]

I can't believe the heart of the issues you're getting to are just so incredible for today. Look forward to having you back. And amazing research. Can't wait for the book to come out. Lords of Easy Money. If you want to understand the financial situation we're in, it is absolutely a primer. You read that, you will be gobsmacked. One of the concerns I have is regardless of politics, you have President Trump, but that second and third tier of leadership, right As a nation, because you look at the giant we're standing on shoulders of giants from back in the 19th century and the early 20th century that had a view and had a vision and had America both prosperous and peaceful at one time. Okay, 10am Tomorrow morning. We'll be here. We'll be live from Rome. President will be there for the funeral of Bergoglia. And we'll be live in Rome with Ben Harwell. See you Tomorrow morning at 10am what if he had the brightest mind in the war room delivering critical financial research every month? Steve Bannon here. War room listeners know Jim Rickards. I love this guy. He's Our wise man. A former CIA, Pentagon and White House adviser with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets. Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself. Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11, a moment that could define Trump's presidency and your financial future. His latest book, MoneyGPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm driven crashes, and even threats to national security. Right now, War Room members get a free copy of MoneyGPT when they sign up for Strategic Intelligence. This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence. I read it. You should read it. Time is running out. Go to Rickards War room dot com. That's all one word. Rickards War Rooms. Rickards with an S. Go now and claim your free book. That's Rickards War room dot com. Do it today.

[D]

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