← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
What's up everybody?
- [00:01]
Bretzky
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Announcer/Disclaimer Voice
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- [00:31]
Kiana
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- [00:57]
Andrew Egger
Start your free trial@shopify.com hello everybody. Welcome to the Bulwarks command post. I am Andrew Egger filling in for Ben Parker who is on vacation this week, joined as always by Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, the Bulwarks military analyst. Mark, how are you doing today?
- [01:12]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
I'm doing great. I. I have to admit, Andrew, I'm having trouble seeing the screen. I just had my eyes dilated to get a new prescription. So you're all fuzzy and I'll just call you Ben for the rest of the show. Okay?
- [01:25]
Andrew Egger
Yes, yes. We're holding the show together today with scotch tape and chewing gum. Hertling can't see. I don't know anything about foreign affairs unlike Ben Parker. So we're gonna soldier ahead. I think it'll be a good show though. There's a lot to talk about. Wanted to start with a thing that has been swirling around the war in Iran for quite some time which is the question of our various stockpiles of missiles. There has been a number of stories new reporting this week, even though this is a thing we've been talking about for a while, that there is a particular urgency now we have new reporting from Reuters on Aug. 4. The U.S. has used virtually all of its long range precision missiles during the Iran war. Sources say Reuters reports the army has used up much of its global stockpile of highly accurate long range missiles during its five month war with Iran. Of course, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military's readiness for future conflicts. The missiles are principally the army's surface to surface weapons known as army tactical missile systems and precision strike missiles. The U.S. has used, quote, virtually all of these weapons, according to two of the sources. We should note that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has disputed this. Specifically, he was responding to correlating reporting from cnn, basically saying the same thing. Hegseth, sort of true to type says that banner's not true. Cnn, shame on you. We don't hate the fake news media enough. So that's the official, official word here, contra the US Military sources for these news outlets. So General, let me just ask you because seems bad on the box, that does not seem like the kind of headline you want to be reading in the middle of a major military conflict or ever beyond. That, that's, that's kind of where my expertise ends, is like you'd want to have those missiles probably, but, but could you just kind of walk us through what we're actually talking about here, what the missiles in question are and just kind of give us a primer on what it seems that we're running short of these days?
- [03:27]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, Andrew, that's a great question. And I think most of Americans don't understand when they see a headline like that, they immediately begin to think, oh my gosh, we're, we're completely out of ammunition. Well, the headline is a little bit misleading when it talks about precision strike missiles. That is a category. And I'll show you some pictures. Matt, why don't you bring up the Himars photo first. And that's a device right there. That's a piece of equipment called Himars. And when you look at the back of this, this is the vehicle and the equipment that Ukraine was fighting for back in 2023. They wanted a lot of these because it's different from an artillery which shoots around into the sky. It lands somewhere within a circular error of probability of, you know, 100 to 200 yards. These missiles. And there are, there are two six packs on the back of this vehicle. You can see those little round things on the left hand side of the screen. This will shoot Himars missiles. And they are about a million to a million and a half dollars per missile. But they are very precise. They travel much longer than an artillery shell. Artillery goes anywhere from 20 to 25 kilometers. These missiles can go up to 50 to 70 kilometers and strike a target within five meters of where they're aiming. So they're very accurate. That's why Ukraine wanted them. As the conflict went on in Ukraine. Matt, could you bring up the atacms? Ukraine wanted atacms missiles Fired from the same vehicle, but there's only a couple of them in the back, as opposed to a six pack, there's only four. So these things go much further. They can go up to 300 kilometers, 170 or 180 miles. And Ukraine wanted them for deep strike capabilities. And we gave a lot of these to Ukraine for the primary reason that the US military was replacing the atacms. Because our analysis showed that even though it was deep strike out to 300km, for some of our contingency plans like Taiwan or South Korea, we needed longer range. So a few years ago they started developing something called the precision strike missile, the Prism. Matt, go ahead and show that one. Here's the precision strike missile. Now that can go, and I can't give you the exact total depth of the battlefield, but let's just say it goes much further than 300km. So for some of our contingency operations, ground to ground, this would be shooting from the ground to another target on the ground. These things can go a very long way. But they are also much more expensive.
- [06:24]
Announcer/Disclaimer Voice
So
- [06:27]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
a Thaad missile, I'm sorry, a Patriot is anywhere from four to five million dollars a copy. The Thads are anywhere from. I'm sorry, I'm getting into a different category of missile. My bad. The attack, the first one was about a million and a half dollars a copy. The, the Prism missiles, the second one I showed you is about $2 million a copy. So these things are expensive and they're very difficult to manufacture by the different defense industries that manufacture them. Now the other strike missiles we're talking about are the air defense interceptors. These are the missiles that intercept incoming cruise missiles, incoming enemy aircraft, or, or in some cases even they're used against important and larger drone systems. Matt, can you show the picture of the Patriot system? Now that looks similar to the things we've already been describing. But these systems are their proximity fuses. They will strike a missile that's incoming or a cruise missile or an aircraft. And they are very capable in terms of knocking down short range to a degree. Cruise missiles and aircraft, these cost about four to five million dollars a copy. Show the Thaad interceptors, Matt, if you will. This is a newer version of the Patriot, which is much more expensive because it has more capability. This is the Thaad, and those things cost 12 to 15 million dollars a missile. So I guess what I'm showing you, Andrew, is all the different ground to ground and ground to air systems that are so important in a theater where cruise missiles have become Prevalent and aircraft continue to be a problem. But we've got another issue, and that is short range stuff like drones, smaller drones. And the last thing I'll show is the Stinger. Matt, if you can pull that out, that's a Stinger missile being used by a Mujahideen in Afghanistan a long time ago. But those are short range missiles. They travel out from anywhere from 4 to 6 km. They are not that expensive. You could use them against a drone, even though the missile itself and the device will cost likely more than a couple of thousand dollars drone. So you see, this is all contributing to layered defense. And when you're talking about a counter cruise missile and a counter aircraft environment like we see in Iran and what we're fighting with Iran launching missiles at ships and at U.S. facilities and gulf supporting nations like Oman or Jordan or uae, all of these missiles are getting a workout and that's why this campaign is so expensive. But the other thing, and I think we're going to talk about this a little bit as well, Ukraine desperately needs these missiles as well, all of them. And they've been asking for all of them. For four years. We've been delivering, the US has been delivering all of these systems to Ukraine in a great number. But they're coming off the shelves of those. How do I want to say this? It's like food on the shelf of a grocery store. They're expiring. So we have been given expiring missiles to Ukraine and rebuilding new stocks for our own. But now when we've got competing conflicts between Ukraine and Iran, we're running out. And you know, Secretary Hegseth can post any post he wants saying that it's fake news, saying this. It's, I mean, he had one of his combatant commanders, the combatant commander from Pacific Command talk about how he was very concerned given the fact that he had dedicated a lot of his stocks which were allocated for his contingencies. What are those? Taiwan, South Korea, any other thing that happens in the India Pacific region, they've all been kind of shifted to Central Command and the fight against Iran. So you can see where an unconstrained resource environment where the President is saying conduct more strikes, hit more targets, defend ourselves, defend our allies. It rapidly is first of all costing a lot of money, but secondly, depleting the supplies of ammunition. And I'm sorry I got so geeky in that explanation, but that's the best long view I can give of all those missile systems.
- [11:16]
Andrew Egger
No, no, I really appreciate that. And folks, you know, he Knows this stuff front to back because, because he did it without being able to see his screen with his dilated eyes. But I want to drill down a little bit on some of these more abstract questions of which I guess they're really abstract questions, but some of these higher order questions of which stockpiles are depleted and which are not. But before we do that, just because you mentioned Ukraine, let's talk a little bit about the breaking news out of there, which is that just overnight we have had yet another attack of Russia really pummeling Kyiv. This is opposed to obviously from Volodymyr Zelensky. As of now, 44 people have been reported injured in the massive Russian strike on Kyiv. In the kyiv region, another 17 people tragically were killed. A heavy strike, 24 ballistic missiles, 4 zircon missiles, another 115 drones. Jet powered. Main targets were warehouse facilities belonging to civilian businesses. Also strikes on infrastructure. And then to your point of what you were just talking about, he gets to the ask here. Ballistic missile interceptors could have saved the lives of those killed today. It's very important that our partners understand that delays in supply, supplying them or an unwillingness to provide anti ballistic systems lead directly to such horrific casualties and destruction. Partners who are not yet ready to play a more active role in supplying interceptors can help by implementing new sanctions. A significant share of Russia's ballistic missile production is still not under sanctions. So early in the Trump administration, this sort of thing would have seemed like purely a matter of will. Right? Purely a matter of like will the Trump administration continue to squeeze Zelensky or will it sort of open the pocketbook and move these things over? To what extent are we now constrained? I mean, there are certain classes that are now depleted, certain classes that are not. But at this point, when it comes to just our general conversation about more missile aid to Ukraine, are we reaching the point where the stores are just so bare that political will hardly matters so much in the short term?
- [13:15]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And when you take on a war that you didn't have to execute and when there was some, and I'm going to say this, some not well thought out intelligence and strategies linked to the intelligence. I mean, during the period 2024 to 2025, the intelligence community said that the capability of Iran in terms of shooting multiple cruise missiles or other kinds of missiles was certainly limited. Well, that hasn't proven to be the case. That was bad intelligence. We often underestimate our enemies in the intelligence community because frankly, you can't see a missile store from a satellite imagery. And there's very few human intelligence inside of the country of Iran. So we really didn't have a 100% clear view, intelligence wise, of what Iran had in terms of missiles. We've always known what Russia has had. But, Matt, if you can put that tweet back up from President Zelensky, what I find important in this, Andrew, is some. Some key things. All of these missiles, this was. This was a targeted operation by Russia on Kyiv itself, the capital. And they seem to be focusing not only on the capital city, but the province, The. The area of the Kiev region. We're seeing 24 ballistic missiles. That's a lot. But Russia has fired dozens more than that on any given night.
- [14:47]
Kiana
The.
- [14:48]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
The. The oric missiles and 115 drones. That's telling me something that's important. Russia is running low of weapons to use against Ukraine, and they're focusing it on the capital of the country. So they're trying to affect the will of the Ukrainian people, and they're trying to truthfully embarrass, to a degree, the Western unity from both NATO and the United States in terms of providing these missiles. So the interceptors, the Patriots, and that's others from European Union nations like the nasm, which is a whole different set of pieces of equipment. But what Zelensky is saying is, hey, it's really apparent that Russia is running low. They're on their last legs, but so are we. And they're continuing to attack our citizens, trying to influence our will, something that Russia has been trying to do over the past four years. And Zelensky's holding strong. He's doing good. But he has 17 of his citizens killed. He's got 44 wounded in one couple of strikes. That's pretty important. And he's got to address that, hoping for more help until he can counter some of these things. Now, when we talk about Ukraine, I've been watching them very closely because of my time with them when I was still in uniform. Spent a lot of time in Ukraine working with their military. They have done a masterful job. And in terms of creating their drone systems and striking deep targets inside of Russia, I mean, the big thing that's been on the news over the last week or so is the large strike on the wild berries distribution facility, which is the Russian equivalent of Amazon. So they're striking to bring some targeted issues against the Russian people so they know they're not out of harm's way. They're striking inside of Moscow they're striking targets. They assassinated last night the guy who was kind of the father of the Russian drone program blowing up a Mercedes outside of Russia that he was in or attempted to assassinate. I don't know if he's dead or alive. But these are all things that Ukraine is trying to do in an asymmetric way. Not fighting the interceptor war because they can't, but taking the fight deep into Russian territory and causing President Putin more harm. Both of them are on their back feet, to be honest with you. They're on their back legs fighting this fight, and it's really troubling to see where this goes.
- [17:31]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Let me ask you one more question about the Reuters report of these stockpile shortages, which is, at least according to their reporting. The two classes of missile that you were talking about before that are really quite depleted now are those ATACMs and the PRisms. Obviously, there is a certain amount of overlap between the possible strategic use of all of these systems. Running dry of one doesn't necessarily take a specific play out of your playbook. But when you're talking about running short on those two systems in particular, and of course, potentially there are others that are also in bad shape, although not depleted to the same extent, what does that mean on the ground, say, in the war in Iran? I mean, like, are there tactical objectives that our military might want to pursue over there that would be made more difficult by these particular shortages, or is it. Are we still at a point where, at least in that theater, this is mostly still stuff that we can. We can, you know, compensate for with other classes of weapon?
- [18:30]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, it's very difficult to do that. The only other classes of weapons that can deliver these kind of strikes in a long distance are aircraft. You know, when you're talking about strike aircraft that go against the target, and as soon as you start doing that, you're. You're basically replacing an unmanned system that can go a long distance to hit a target with a manned system. And that takes a whole lot of intelligence to make sure you prepare the way. And there's no air defense interceptors to knock those planes down and kill the pilots. It takes refueling capabilities, because an aircraft going over ground, it doesn't just go from one place to another and explode. It has to loiter, find the target, and then come back to their base, which subjects the pilot and the crew to more dangers. I mean, it's easier to strike these with a missile that's unmanned. Here's the thing, though, Andrew, and this is. I think this is the important thing to point out, you know, there may be a lot of Americans saying what the hell's going on? How come you guys haven't prepared for this? Well, the atacms, the Prisms, the Patriots and the thads are all systems that were designed many, many years ago and started to be produced for specific types of combat. Yeah. Did the American military understand that there was a potential for the use of drone in combat operations? Yes, they did. But truthfully, Andrew, we're playing catch up right now. The ubiquitous drones on the battlefield right now are something we would have never expected to the extent that they're being used four or five years ago. So when you're talking about these precision missiles that take a very long time to build, they are expensive. So they're competing with other systems in the Department of Defense. Do we build a thousand more Patriot missiles or do we build maybe a battleship? I don't know. I'm throwing that out there. But those are the kind of day to day decisions that go on in the Department of Defense in the acquisition community. So it's a lot harder than it looks. And I think sometimes the American public believes when we fight wars, it's a lot like a video game where you just like the old dream of Genie, I'm dating myself, where you cross your arms and blink and everything comes out okay. And it doesn't work that way. That's why the importance of setting a strategy, of understanding the implications of what you want to do before you go into a war and to connect your end state with your ways of conducting operations and the means you have available to do it. The so called ends, ways and means approach to strategy is so very important. And that's why when you go into a war and you're not sure what you're going to get out of it, it's real easy to enter, it's real hard to get out. And that's what we're seeing in terms of not only us in Iran, but what Russia is doing in Ukraine. They thought it was going to be a three week operation. It's now five years later and they're still fighting there.
- [21:42]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you one more sort of meta question about all of this and then we'll throw to a quick ad the Secretary of Defense's post there. Obviously he's denying the reporting about these stockpiles. But. But the shot at the media is interesting that you don't hate the media enough thing that's kind of a crude version of an argument that you do see a certain amount Made that this type of reporting on net hurts the United States. Right. Even if you are a military correspondent who is able to find out about the current state of our various missile stockpiles, maybe you ought to keep that to yourself, because that's not something you want Iran to be able to open the New York Times or log on to Reuters or CNN and be able to see. As a, as a journalist, that kind of argument has always kind of rankled me, but I guess it seems more applicable in this kind of case than it would for a lot of stories where it's just, you know, public officials grouching about people pointing out the things that are going wrong. I'm just curious how, how you tackle. How you see that whole question when it comes to public scrutiny of this.
- [22:51]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, I see the whole question of the multiple times I've been in combat, always had embedded reporters with us. And when you have those embedded reporters, the conversation we're having right now about constraining ammunition is something that, you know, the public affairs officer or even the commander myself could sit down and talk with a reporter and say, hey, you're about to report this. Here's the rest of the story. Just so you have both sides of it. When you don't have that, the whole story doesn't get out. And you get what Hegseth is calling fake news. Another bullshit expression is him saying, I don't like what people are reporting. Okay, well, then why don't you explain to him the other side of the story? If you don't do that either at the Pentagon or in the forward locations, the story's not going to get out. There has not been a Pentagon press briefing since the first week of May. People don't know what's going on. And I gotta tell you, I made truthfully, I mean, I'll give you the truth. I hated having reporters around me. They're a pain in the neck. They're always asking questions, and you're always having to take time to explain it to them. But it's important for an understanding by the American public of what its military is doing. Hell, the American public, the men and women of America are giving me their sons and daughters. They want me to make sure I'm doing the right things. When the American public doesn't know, doesn't know what's happening to their sons and daughters, they start having a lack of trust in the institution and they start asking a lot of questions that are answerable. Can I give you another example? That something that went in the news yesterday Which I just kind of laughed at. This is the report, and I can't remember which agency, I think it was cnn that reported it, saying how the military intelligence officials in CENTCOM were sending emails out to other intelligence officials saying, hey, give us some good ideas on how we can continue to pressure the. The Iranians. And boy, there was a flare up on that and saying, boy, this. Maybe you should have thought of that before the war started. Or maybe, you know, why are you asking these questions of getting input from others? That happens all the time in the military. I wanted my intelligence people, my planners, to look for new ideas. That's what any organizational leader would want to have happen. If you're stymied a little bit by what's going on in combat, reach out to your partners. There's a school for the army at Fort Leavenworth called the School of Advanced Military Studies, which I went through. 48 people were in that course when I went through. And when we graduated as young majors, we. We all went to different divisions in the Army. And this was before Desert Storm. During Desert Storm, we had an internal chat mechanism saying, here's what we're doing. What are you doing? Give us some ideas. How can we do better? That's what good organizations do. So that report about asking others in the intelligence community or the planning area for ideas is something the military does all the time, but it becomes a big story that. Because no one explains it to the reporters who are reporting it.
- [26:08]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, no, that's such an interesting perspective on that. And what you lose, that would even reflect well on what's going on in the military right now by this extremely, extremely hostile approach. Thanks for that. We have a couple more stories to hit on TikTok of what's going on in Iran and in the Strait of Hormuz right now, as well as some troubling cyber attacks that seem to be on the rise against American infrastructure. Before we hit those, let's throw to a quick ad.
- [26:39]
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- [28:07]
Andrew Egger
So we've got some, some good news which is that the president is letting people know that this war, it might be about over just around the corner. We might be, we might be minutes away from a deal which is, which is always good to hear. Let's, let's hear the President talking to Fox News last night.
- [28:22]
Announcer/Disclaimer Voice
Very hard, but the hard hit is yet to come and hopefully we won't have to use it. I hope we won't have to. We're having very good discussions. They don't like to admit that but you know, it's a little bit disconcerting. You tell people like you we're having wonderful discussions and then some guy will come out of Iran say we have not met, we have not since just all day long. You understand? It's just incredible. We didn't do it. They'll say we didn't talk about nuclear. Well, what do we talk about? We're sending that climate twiddling our thumbs. Right. So, but it doesn't matter. That's talk. The only thing that matters is action and they want to make a deal. We'll see what happens. If they don't make a deal, it's going to be too bad.
- [29:03]
Andrew Egger
We've been hearing this. They want to make a deal for, for quite some time. So, so General, what's the hold up?
- [29:09]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, a couple of things, Andrew. You know, first of all, it's interesting to hear the president continue to say that because the US Choice continues to be either massive escalation or political extrication. And that leaves Iran with significant control over the Strait of Hormuz. And I'd even add to that the Bab El Mandan Strait at the southern part of the Suez Canal area. And truthfully, the administration isn't prepared well for either one, either extrication or escalation. As we talked about, we're low on ammunition. The political masters aren't dealing with the President in the right way. So we'll continue in this vein. But there was a little bit of ray of hope this morning which isn't favorable to the United States. And I'll set this up by saying that the original memorandum of understanding between the US And Iran envisioned reopening the Straits of hornuz during a 60 day negotiation period. But unfortunately that never happened. And one of the things they were going to negotiate was who would actually control the ship movements, which has now become the central dispute step in Oman, with the potential for a joint maritime management system, that's what they're calling it, which even Iran doesn't agree to. So in Oman's view, what they proposed was that Iran and Oman would share the oversight of commercial shipping through the strait. The transits through there would gradually return to normal, and both countries, Iran in the north, Oman in the south, would coordinate the vehicle clearances. Tehran gave a counter proposal which said Iran would control all inbound shipping along the northern route of the strait. And ships departing the Gulf would use a designated outbound corridor between the Strait and Omani waters. And Omani would administrate the outbound movement, but only after notifying Iran who was leaving. So if you boil this down into common sense terms, Iran is attempting to institutionalize what they have sought for decades. A de facto recognition that they own the straits, political leverage over Gulf shipping, and a mechanism that they can use to regulate global energy commerce. It sounds like a pretty good deal in terms of what they're negotiating right now. And I just read a minute ago, before I got my eyes dilated, that Iran is asking for a 7% fee for any ship that comes into the Gulf. That doesn't sound too bad. 7% if it's using your waterway and coming in. Except for the fact that before this war started, Iran was charging 0% fee to enter the Gulf. So that's the state of play right now. The President is just say not being completely can. Isn't using candor to the extreme when he's talking to Fox News. He still hasn't realized that when you negotiate not just with Iran, but any Middle Eastern country, you're negotiating with three sets of people, usually the theocracy, the military and the government. And he's got Witkoff and Rubio only talking to the government. Well, the theocracy and the military. The IRGC has a say in this, Mattaw. And that's why it seems to be so confusing.
- [32:57]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. One thing I don't have a very clear picture of here is, is what we should make of Oman's role in all of this. I mean, is the fact that they are now sitting down with Iran and actually talking through what a proposal might look like here. I mean, does, does that suggest that Iran's neighbors are all basically resigned to this being the new status quo and that rather than be left out in the cold, they at least Oman might want to try to get a piece of the action? Or is there some other read that I'm, that I'm missing here?
- [33:29]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, I'm not sure. Matt, do we have the map of the Strait of Hormuz that you can. Yeah, there we go. Okay, here's. I mean, it boils down to this. You see the strait, that little point going up toward Iran, but the occupiers of the southern part, that little jutted out piece of land is Oman. And they're basically, basically saying, hey, we don't want Iran to control our energy and our commerce going in and out of a, of a waterway that we use just as much as they do. So they, I mean, they really took the bone and took the bull by the horn. Sorry for the mixed metaphor, and saying, we're going to try and negotiate between the United States and Iran and us and give all of us a better path forward. And the better path forward, they thought, was sharing the fees and the control of the strait between Iran and Oman. President Trump doesn't want to buy that. He thinks he should have a say. And the question would be, okay, what are you doing for that part of the world, Mr. President? Are you providing something that we don't have? And the answer right now is, yeah, you could potentially convoy escort with the US Navy ships in and out of there, but, boy, that would take an awful lot of resources. And as we had on command post last week, we had Admiral John Kirby, who has spent a lot of time as a naval officer before he became a strategic maven in the Strait of Hormuz. And he was there during convoy operations during the Reagan years and said, it's really difficult to do in terms of escorting ships in and out of there. So I guess to answer your question, that's a long way around your question, Andrew. I think to answer it, Oman wants a piece of the pie. They see as much importance in their country as Iran sees in theirs. But they also know that they've got to get back to the status quo of having ships come in and out, because right now they don't have that. And they're losing quite a bit on their economy as well.
- [35:30]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really is remarkable how we've sort of been having the same conversation about this straight now for basically five months running. Right. Which is just like, boy, it sure would be nice if ships could move through under almost any auspices. Right? I mean, like, like this, this, this new status quo between, you know, with Iran essentially controlling the traffic is much worse than the, the status quo ante than what we had before the war. But it would be so much better than what the current situation is that, that it's hard to imagine that it has taken so long for the various part out that just allows, allows transit through.
- [36:08]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
But of course, yeah, the one more point I'd bring up too is normally this is international water. Any ship can go through that strait without paying anybody. But Iran sees an advantage here. They've been attacked by Israel, they've been attacked by other Middle Eastern countries. So they're saying, okay, we're tired of being attacked, so we're going to squeeze in ways that we haven't been able to squeeze in the past. And, and that's not through military to military approaches. It's through our economy approach to your military. So you keep firing on us, we're gonna close down your economy. That is the true definition of asymmetric warfare.
- [36:48]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. Well, and actually that's a pretty good segue to the last thing that we wanted to talk about, which is apparently reportedly another way that Iran has been really squeezing us or beginning to squeeze us or to try trying to figure out how to squeeze us in an asymmetric way, and that is with these cyber attacks we have. Reporting from the New York Times, Scope of hacks on US Water supply widens as evidence points to Iran. There are seven states that have seen a large uptick in cyber attacks specifically aimed at their water infrastructure. And according to US Intelligence, there are ties. There are reasons to believe that the origin of these attacks is Iran. I know very little about this story other than what I have just said to you right now. I know very little about this, this, this whole world, this whole world of Cyber attacks coming in and our efforts to stave them off. I know it's getting a lot scarier with AI capabilities that are, that are coming online, giving everybody a lot more hacking, hacking muscle than they had before. But general, can you just kind of walk us through? I mean, is this a new thing for Iran to be reaching out and trying to hit the US in this way? Is it just new on this scale? And what's, what's your read on, what's your reaction when you read a story like this?
- [37:58]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well, I actually wrote a story for the Bulwark yesterday on, on the cyber attack, Andrew. And it has to do with. This is something that the intelligence community, the national security community, the military community and our government has known about for decades, the potential of cyber attacks. I'm going to say something that's pretty provocative and I'm going to say that any major cyber attack, a complete cyber attack, a complete shutdown of the government, is possible. It is along the same lines as a nuclear weapon. We haven't seen a complete cyber attack. The closest any nation has seen to a complete cyber attack was the nation of Estonia in 2007 when the Russian government, it was proven later on, they didn't know who did it. At the first, there was suspicions that it was Russia completely did a denial of services across the board in Estonia over a month period of time, shut down hospitals, government agencies, infrastructure, traffic lights. Everything was shut down to include personal computers, both in the government and in the private sector. And it was over something really silly. I won't get into the whole story. I outlined that in the article, but it took a month for Estonia to recover. After they recovered in 2007, they could have drawn into their hole and said, hey, we're not going to do anything on cyber anymore. But instead, they took the opposite approach and became the vanguard of cyber expertise. And in fact, in Tallinn right now, the capital of Estonia is the NATO Cyber center of Excellence. So they provide all kinds of cyber information for the other two countries of NATO. And they've been warning against these kind of things. The major cyber actors besides us are Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. There was an incident that attributed to the Israelis a couple of years ago where the Israelis shut down a nuclear reactor through cyber attacks within Iran. And that in and of itself is a story it Israel could claim, hey, we didn't do it, but they did. And that came out later on. But the fact that you can potentially any country that has these capabilities can shut down elements of an infrastructure or a system in Any other country is scary as hell. In this case, we, we kind of presume that it was Iran. I truthfully have said a couple of times on the bulwark that that's the next shoe that's going to drop. They are going to conduct a cyber attack against the United States. As soon as the strike in Michigan happened, or, I'm sorry, Minnesota happened, and allegedly six other states, the early indication is it might have been Iran. But we can't say that. The FBI may be able to. The cyber security folks within our government may be able to. But I'll point out something else. Mr. Musk and Doge actually basically leveled a lot of our cybersecurity threat agencies during their Doge fight. So we are not as prepared as we once were to counter some of these things. We still have some within the FBI. There's still a cybersecurity element within the FBI, but it's certainly not as big as CISA, the Cyber Security Infrastructure Security Agency was when Mr. Musk decided to level that organization back during the DOGE cuts. What can this do? I mean, the President saying that it was Governor Walsh attacking his own state as a false flag.
- [41:48]
Andrew Egger
I mean, can we play that, can we play that clip really quick? I mean, it's just an amazing, just since you bring it up.
- [41:59]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
No, I think Minnesota, Minnesota is behind it.
- [42:02]
Announcer/Disclaimer Voice
You know, is behind it Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent. I think the governor is behind it. I don't think there was an Iranian cyber attack. I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together.
- [42:14]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, the best and brightest are on the case. But sorry, you were, you were saying.
- [42:18]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
It's fascinating because we all know the President is a world renowned master of cyber attacks. So he, he brings up some very good points. It could have been someone else other than Iran. For him to say, I, I don't believe it was Iran is much like when he said, I don't believe it's Russia attacking our elections. So it's just troubling because it not only is a falsehood, but it also puts, it creates a lack of trust in government institutions that are supposed to be addressing these kind of issues. Do I believe it was Iran likely? Likely. I'm not going to say for sure because I don't know. But I got to tell you, Andrew, during my time in combat, we use cyber activity. That's as much as I will say. It's not only part of every military plan. I was surprised in 2022 when Russia did not use their massive cyber attacks. Against Ukraine before they invaded. I know we use cyber activity against Venezuela. When we conducted our assault into that country a few months ago, it was obvious in terms of all the lights going off in the city and some of the command and control structures of the Venezuelan military being shut down. So, yeah, it's what you do in modern day operations. And I think there's a good probability that this was generated by Iran hitting a bunch of states in the United States to cause specifically disruptions in our government and a lack of trust that the governors of those various states can control a defense of their infrastructure. And the President weighed right into that by saying, oh yeah, sure, I thought it was Waltz that did it. It's just contributing to information operations and cyber attacks by our own government.
- [44:18]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really is astonishing when you put it that way. I think we can call it there. General Hertling, thanks as always for coming on and talking through all this. Stu. Super illuminating to everybody, including to me. I love being able to be here and hear all this stuff. So thank you. Thanks to everybody out there for watching, for subscribing. Hope you subscribe to the Bulwark Command Post will be back again here next Wednesday. It'll be Ben Parker back in the chair. Thanks to you all and we'll see you next time.
- [44:48]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Thanks for sitting in.