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- [00:01]
Jordan
War talk, April 30th. We're here with Eric Justin Brian, as well as America's wargaming queen currently at Bloomberg. Becca Wasser. What an honor to have you with us.
- [00:17]
Becca Wasser
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [00:20]
Jordan
All right, Iran, last week's theme was no more ammo. Setting that aside, we're still sending more stuff there, Becca. No one believes us.
- [00:36]
Becca Wasser
So I mean, I think the perennial theme is just going to be no more ammo. Right. Like, and this is really what it's come down to. And it's not a matter of like, ooh, the US is running out of missiles to prosecute this war or Iran is running out of missiles and it can't, you know, potentially cause damage if there's, you know, round two that erupts quite soon. It's really about the longer term knock on effects and what it means for some of the choices that are being made now. You know, my Bloomberg News colleague, so I work for Bloomberg Economics, Bloomberg's in house think tank. So I'm not on the news side. But my news colleagues yesterday had a great scoop where CENTCOM has requested, you know, Dark Eagle, so the Army's long range hypersonic missile. And they've asked for whatever exists to come to them. That doesn't necessarily mean that that's what's going to happen, but there's this emphasis on trying to get all of these shiny toys, these next generation technologies, the ones that haven't actually been used in combat and using this largely as a, you know, a theater of experimentation, if we want to use centcom's terms, back at it. But all of that has knock on effects for readiness, you know, preparedness for future conflicts, but also regionally. Right. Right now those would be taken out of Indo Pagom. And the things that China seems to care the most about, it's things like that, it's Typhon, it's having missiles within range, particularly because I mean in all of the war games that I've run that I know Brian has run, like that matters because it becomes very quickly a war of missiles there. And I think that's why we are just seeing so many choices that are being made now that just get me not only angry but so nervous for what might happen in the future. And that's not even talking about the fact that we are probably going to have a carrier gap in the future. But that's kind of bringing us back to the discourse of the early 2000s.
- [02:40]
Eric
Yeah, hyper powers have constraints too. And I don't feel that advocates on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, the White House necessarily operate under that understanding. And it's not an assumption, it's just, it is a hard reality of contemporary warfare that there's only, there are only so many assets that you have available, that there are questions of physics, of landing rights, of fuel capacity that the United states, for having $1.5 trillion in aspirational financing doesn't get to press the all button every single time that eventually there are going to be trade offs. And a theme that we've explored for the last 60 days is that we are expending exquisite assets, time, attention, we are accumulating friction not just in terms of ordinance expended, but in just like aircraft engines that are going to have to be refurbished and replaced. That American capacity and capability to respond to other crises is necessarily being degraded by virtue of this exchange in Iran
- [03:41]
Brian
when a lot of the problem. Oh, go ahead, Brian.
- [03:44]
Justin
Oh, I was just going to say, you know, and the operational utility that these systems provide in this context is very limited. Right. We're using Jasms to hit targets in Iran that could have been hit very easily with a GBU or a JSAU if we really wanted to go. Yeah, and, and, and then Dark Eagle, same thing. What, what, what are we going to hit with a Dark Eagle that we couldn't hit with any other munition? So it's just, you know, we're out there cosplaying so we can show off. And, and you know, they say it's testing out this stuff in a real environment, but it's not because there's no air defenses there that are going to be meaningful. So you're not actually testing it, you're just showing it off.
- [04:20]
Eric
Yeah, we're like taking a LA to Dutch Brothers Coffee. Like, we're doing really mundane stuff with exquisite tools. That's what Brian outlined it with great precision. Like there are weapon systems that are designed for the, for Air Force or Navy pilots to get as close to an extremely hazardous situation and have a small likelihood of hitting their target. Those are like the Jasmines that we're talking about. But what we're doing is we are using those weapon systems of our country where their integrated air defense systems no longer function. So it is overmatch and overkill. And it is using tools because it's fun and exciting, not because it's strategically apt.
- [04:56]
Jordan
Well, are we 100% sure about that? Right. Because we had the path, you know, right before this all ended up. You had a few planes get tagged and then like,
- [05:09]
Becca Wasser
so here I Think it's really important that we do take a grain of salt with a lot of the statistics that have come out of centcom, that have come out of the White House, that have come out of the Pentagon. You know, the initial numbers and metrics, frankly, that they use to demonstrate success in various areas, one they've proven not to be true, but also some of it is just a fundamental misunderstanding of where the threats have been. So some of it has been, for example, a focus that emerged probably midway through the initial fighting of trying to sink Iran's Navy. Iran's Navy is not the biggest threat in the Strait of Hormuz. It's the IRGC fast boats, it's the anti ship cruise missiles. And despite all of these efforts of going after various targets, going after various missiles, the anti ship cruise missiles were not number one on the list. Even though the Strait of Hormuz has been essentially Iran's biggest tool and biggest leverage that it has in this conflict. Because not only is it able to cause pain to its immediate neighbors, it's able to cause pain to the US and to the global economy more broadly. So there's a fundamental, fundamental misunderstanding of what metrics are important, what target sets are most important, but also, exactly, you know, whether those have actually been degraded or eroded in a really significant sense. And that's not what's come up. But I think another thing that we need to take into consideration is all of these claims of absolute air superiority. Despite all of that, I'm not sure the US has ever truly gained air superiority in the way that frankly, Pete Hegseth and Dan Cain have suggested. Oftentimes when they're talking about it, they're talking about air supremacy. They're trying to say that the US can act uncontested in Iran's skies all across and it's not a problem. But really what they're talking, what they're generally talking about is the fact that the US has had more localized air superiority. That is geographic and at times it has been time based, which frankly is something that we're more likely to see in a future conflict with China where you have these windows of opportunity. And that I think has fed into some of the use of these higher end munitions. I agree some of it is the desire to show off Gucci instead of target. But really what I think it also is demonstrating is the fact that there hasn't been this absolute air supremacy or even a higher level of air superiority to go after some of the targets that they wanted to sort of, I think we might see that come to, you know, have these bigger knock on effects too.
- [07:50]
Justin
Yeah. And I, I agree with Becca that they, they're overstating. They're definitely overstating the level of air superiority they have. Um, I think it's partly also just an unwillingness to do the legwork to make it so that you can use a less expensive, more available weapon. Right. You have to go do some suppression of enemy air defenses. You have to build a package that, you know, gets you in there. So I can use a jsout instead of a Jason Jassm, so I can use a glide bomb instead of having to rely on a standoff missile. And I can't believe that you couldn't do that against Iran, even with its air defenses somewhat intact, by just doing the blocking and tackling that we normally do, which is you have to include a suppression package in with your strike package. And they just don't want to do that because they just want to hit as many targets as possible in a given period of time, which means launch a bunch of jsams and not have to worry about launching multiple aircraft sorties.
- [08:42]
Brian
Well, and that goes back to a combination of they are risk adverse at the command level, and they really have become risk adverse. And they also have, to some degree, forgotten how to do this. Like, I don't think the Air Force has forgotten how to do this, but I think at a command level, the way that they synchronize these bowls so that they can actually have a suppression of enemy air defense on top of a strike package or below a strike package, actually, so that they can actually layer these effects in, have the fast movers come in, do their strike targets, and then come out. They're not willing to do that because they want to be able to say, well, we can do it whenever. We can hit them all the time. Well, you can only do that under two circumstances. You've destroyed all their air defense a la, you know, the invasion of Iraq, or you are going to use exquisite weapons. And we've seen a proclivity to use exquisite weapons against people who they're not ideal for. If you just look at yeeting tea lambs at the Houthis. I mean, again, the Houthis survived Saleh for decades bombing them in Yemen because they just went into the hills and they stayed in the hills. And then they came out when he got done throwing bombs at them. So centcom's answer to the Houthis was, let's throw a bunch of bombs at them. So the Houthis went into the hills, and they stayed in the hills until the bombs fell, and then they came back out. And literally no change in their combat power. It's what they do, rinse, wash, and repeat. For the Iranians who observed what we did in Yemen and went, oh, okay, that's what they're gonna do. We'll make our targets harder to hit. You know, we'll weather the storm and then we'll pop back up when we need to.
- [10:24]
Jordan
What about this whole, like, month they've gotten to reconstitute? I mean, is there, like, I don't know how much Russian stuff has been shipped over over the past few weeks,
- [10:34]
Becca Wasser
but I think there's even a need for external support. I mean, obviously Iran would like that, right? They would like to get some of the upgraded shaheds that Russia has perfected and have used in the battlefield in Ukraine. They would like to get more sodium perchlorate from China. No problem there. But, like, what they are doing, they're digging out missile launchers, they are digging out missiles, they are repositioning. Like, this is just basic stuff and basic reconstitution. And, you know, I've recently been trying to think sort of like, who does the ceasefire benefit militarily? Obviously, it benefits all sides, and most importantly, it benefits the Iranian people who are no longer at risk of being targeted and having some of the disastrous effects that I think we often see on civilian populations. Like, let's put that one out there. But if you're looking at some of the military ledger, all right, the US Is flowing in more forces, in part in theory, to be able to reinforce the blockade. They're requesting more forces. There's more time to re up some munitions. Cool. Israel's probably trying to do the same in terms of repositioning, give a little bit of rest to some of probably their pilots who have been doing double duty in places like Iran and then also, to a lesser extent, Lebanon. But, you know, there's no sort of, like, massive, you know, reconstitution that they can do of air defenses, of missiles. You know, they're probably trying to upgrade some of their older air defense interceptors, but they're not going to be able to pull all that much off of, like, that's new off of the factory line. Same thing with the US it's not like all of a sudden we can just, like, I don't know, poop out more bombs. That just doesn't work. It just doesn't work that way. No matter how much I think Everyone would like that to be the case. So if you're looking at that, then probably Iran, which arguably has the lower bar for what it takes to reconstitute, is possibly on the up, if you're trying to look across the ledger, because they're doing the right things and they're doing the smart things and they're trying to do what can with whatever it is that they have left. And if you also look at how quick they were able to, you know, sort of replenish or at least reconstitute some of their forces after, you know, previous bombing campaigns, I think they were able to do it fairly quickly. Mind you, that's not like six weeks. It was probably closer to six months. But, you know, there are some clear lessons learned there.
- [13:02]
Brian
Yeah, I mean, like, I think there was a quote, and I can't remember which book it's from, but it was like, just pretty. Just Pre World War I, there was the. The Russians were suing to, like, stop all armament advancement because they liked it exactly where it was like, rifles are good. 1905. That's. That's a good spot to freeze them. And they. They said, like, hey, an armatist benefits you when you're behind. Who was the one that was asking for the ceasefire? All, for all intents and purposes, it was the United States that was looking for the ceasefire. Who does it benefit again? I think we said it on a couple episodes ago that, like, clearly at the stage that at the end, it looked like Iran was coming out on top because they haven't given up Hormuz. There was talk about relief of sanctions, there was talk about allowing them to sell their oil, and then they were going to have a period of reconstitution. The forces that the US Is choosing to flow into the Middle east right now are interesting because, yes, there's an additional carrier strike group, but there's also the 82nd. There's also ground forces that are going in. Those are only useful if we're going to use them. Like, sending a whole bunch of the 82nd Airborne Division to places in the Middle east serves as either target, as a warning, or we're actually going to do a ground invasion into a country that's twice the size of Afghanistan and has a larger population than Iraq did.
- [14:31]
Becca Wasser
I mean, I'm with you, but I also think that some of the logic has gotten screwy. So one of the things that I've been thinking about is, like, all right, you know, if there were to be a resumption of US Strikes, the time that would make the most sense to do it would be when there's still a three carrier posture in the Middle East. Right. You can have one in the Red Sea to essentially hold the Houthis at risk, make sure that if they decide to go after shipping in the Red Sea or even, you know, Saudis alternate terminal at Yanbu, like that, there's repercussions for that or at least some form of deterrence in an ideal world. And then you can have one continuing to operate in sort of the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman prosecuting the blockade, and another one contributing to broader strikes or to a broader operation. You'd also want to three carrier posture, probably, if you are thinking seriously about using your ground forces and any operation to forcibly reopen the strait. But that's not necessarily how they think. So there is a part where I'm thinking about these ground forces, and I think some of it is to have them pushed forward. So there is the optionality. But I also think that there's a strain of thought about them potentially being a tripwire, taking almost a page out of the European posture playbook where having forces that are there is supposed to deter further aggression on, you know, US partners in the region. And that would make the most sense if you would see them in possibly one of the Gulf states. I think Kuwait would make the most sense given the existing ground force bases and infrastructure there. So I don't think it makes a ton of sense, but that is one way of thinking. And that, I think also risks continued US Ground posture at a bolstered level in the Middle east, which is something, frankly, that previous administrations had tried to push against.
- [16:31]
Brian
Previous administrations?
- [16:33]
Jordan
You mean like this one? 3 months?
- [16:35]
Becca Wasser
Like this one?
- [16:37]
Brian
Yeah, that's. That's the other big thing too is like, when we look across, like the people who are in like the policy position, the people who ran, the people who like, supported. All said, we need to be able to pivot. We need to be able to, you know, defend our interests in Asia. We can't do that by continuing our excursions in the Middle East. We have to draw down. Centcom's been too big for too long, and now we're in this twilight zone where it's like circa 2003, only set to today's music.
- [17:10]
Becca Wasser
I mean, so the pivot to Asia isn't really working, but instead what we have is the pivot to undisclosed location in southwest Asia. For those of you who are old enough to remember.
- [17:20]
Brian
Yeah.
- [17:21]
Eric
Something that I encounter in my professional life working around defense Industrial base is I often have clients or potential clients, just people that I encounter at conferences or wherever I roam. And they kind of operate under the assumption of, well, everybody's really serious about prc. Like, they take the People's Liberation Army Navy very seriously, don't they? Like all of this has some sort of centralized coordination structure. Like, everybody kind of thinks this is really important. Right. And I don't mean to be like a professional cynic, but I will often use a little bit of deadpanning to say, actually, no, not particularly, that a pivot to Indo Pacific Command has briefed well across multiple administrations. It was embedded in the 2018 National Defense Strategy and effectively abandoned in the more recent version. I think there's a bit of. And not to fall back on sort of like a dumb cliche, but it's like the old roadrunner Wile E. Coyote cartoon in that there are people who really believed in this moment of United States industrial and military alignment to back Taiwan and to a far lesser extent back Ukraine in its war for independence. And they have left solid earth and they're still running out into space and they're looking beneath them, waiting for some sort of collective policy alignment by and between Republican and Democrats. It simply doesn't exist. And we have a series of just sort of like operational level spasms. We have random loans going to companies that might make sense. We have military operations against Iran or in Nigeria or in Venezuela that independently might make sense but don't aggregate into a collective whole. So I think we are in a moment of profound strategic drift. And I'm waiting for normies or just sort of like casual observers to catch up to that.
- [19:19]
Becca Wasser
I mean, you think that they haven't.
- [19:21]
Eric
The people.
- [19:22]
Becca Wasser
You think that the normies haven't caught up to that at all.
- [19:24]
Poet/Performer
Yeah.
- [19:25]
Eric
Speaking from my lens in industry, people still think that there is a collective vision around reindustrialization to take care of China to make sure the United States can fight that war.
- [19:36]
Jordan
I think it's not normies, Eric. It's like people who have a financial connection to like building for a Taiwan fight. Yeah, I think that's a motivated reasoning there within the China watching community as well as the like. The like dib for Asia wants to believe that it's like, you know, 2018 or even 2023.
- [20:03]
Eric
And I think that's a fair rejoinder that rather than just normally like relative average civilians who are sort of monitoring this, people with financial states in this did feel like there was going to be a generational commitment to reorienting American domestic spending, defense, industrial policy and the military with it. And I think there are segments of less ideological types, but still intelligent observers who are recognizing that there's no there fair.
- [20:33]
Jordan
It is. You know, like you, there are moments in history where, I mean, you read about different points in history and you're just like, how the hell did they do this? Like, this was so dumb. Like they, they talked themselves into this thing. It really didn't make any sense. They're trying to go left, but they keep getting pulled right. And this is really what the past few months have been living through. It feels like there have not been many times where I have been like very, you know, awake and politically conscious where sort of seeing the other side, like where I haven't been kind of be able to play devil's advocate and like understand that there are serious people who have like thought through this. And you know, there's, there's some expected value calculation that makes sense, like the way this war has gone on and the sort of strategic knock on effects. I mean, I guess maybe this is just a question for Becca and Brian, like how emotionally having done war games on various like, you know, aspects of both the Hormuz Strait as well as, as well as all the Asia stuff, like how has this felt seeing, you know, seeing these, these, these stocks start to start to dwindle in, in ways you guys perhaps more than anyone else appreciate the, the knock on effects of.
- [21:52]
Justin
Well, so I'll just say, Jordan, we just did a war game looking at this scenario, the straight up Hormuz scenario, just like a month ago, just before, I guess a month and a half ago, just before as the war was starting. And it's played out kind of like that war game played out, which was it turns into drone wars over the strait with the strait closed most of the time. And you just have to eventually wait it out until somebody wants to come to a resolution because there is no military solution. We just ended up with the strait kept getting closed by drones and mines. We kept cleaning them up. They kept doing responsive strikes against the guys on the shore on the other side. And it turned into a lot of drone on drone action, but not nothing that really drove it to some kind of resolution. So it was, it was not very satisfying, but illuminating. So I'll just say from that that in terms of the current war, this is sort of what we found to be the base case.
- [22:47]
Becca Wasser
Yeah. And I think that speaks honestly to what, you know, in all of the fun, you know, financial projections that the smart economists that I've been working with, have been doing. But you know, our base case has been that this is going to be a protracted conflict, right, where you have this initial period of intense fighting and then it becomes, you know, a much longer low intensity conflict where you have periods where there are strikes and then rest reconstitution. And this very much gets into the dynamics and the cyclical dynamics that we see in protracted conflict both in the literature. For those of you who are nerds like me and think that Kathleen Nolan's Allure of Battle is like one of the best books I've ever read, but also when we are looking at places like, you know, current conflict that's been ongoing for years because of Russia's wanton aggression in Ukraine, those are the patterns that we see. And I think that's what's playing out here. I mean, for me, the most emotional sort of reaction that I have to just seeing how this has been prosecuted is thinking about the future. Is thinking about frankly an America that's going to be less secure in the future because it can't protect against some of the future threats that it and its allies might face. And frankly thinking about a globe that is going to be a lot less secure as well as, you know, again, all of a sudden, first time in my life I am thinking about economics, but just looking at the economy and thinking about the downstream effects of that. Not only for me as someone who wants to be able to afford things, but also just, you know, thinking about it for societally for next generations, but also, you know, again, back to Eric's point about the defense industrial base and the massive amounts of money that are required to keep that afloat. Just thinking about all of these downstream and knock on effects and how honestly this is going to be a generational change.
- [24:45]
Justin
One thing to add that too is in the war gaming we've done looking at the Asia Pacific or China scenarios, what this really highlights is that we need to think about how do you deter China on the cheap? Because we just couldn't come up with this kind of munition usage and the demands from a traditional approach to the China fight. You just have to think about alternative ways of deterring China that don't require you to somehow win a fire competition with the pla. And so that's one thing that this has driven our war gaming to look at is a lot of different concepts for how do you deter China without having to have this massive buildup because you can't trust that it's going to actually come to fruition or that we won't squander those weapons on some other adversary.
- [25:26]
Becca Wasser
I think that's a great point. And I think if I can take myself from being Wednesday Addams and Gloom and Doom and try and be a little bit more positive, it doesn't come naturally, naturally to me, but I'll, I'll try it anyways. You know, I think one of the hopeful lessons learned that we're going to take from this conflict is the need for lower cost weaponry and effective, lower cost, attritable weapons. So here I think right now there's a lot of patting ourselves on the back for Lucas, which is a reverse, you know, Shaw head, and that we've deployed it in conflict. How no one really has said how many. Well, doesn't matter. We might not even have any Lucas left for all we know. But we're patting ourselves on the back and we're saying that that is our example of low cost, affordable mass. Yeah, it's a lot cheaper than a lot of the high end missiles that we have, but it's not cheap enough. And so I'm hopeful that one of the lessons learned that'll come out of this conflict is not only this idea of like, how do you deter on the cheap with smart operational concepts, but how do you actually build to some of those operational concepts and get the cost down so that you have attritable weapons that can be used and that you can truly lower the cost per shot or even cost per effect, if we want to think a little bit more broadly.
- [26:45]
Brian
Yeah, I mean, to kind of tie both of these points together, I think one of the issues that we keep running into and Catholic Nolan wrote the allure of battle, you know, basically takes part and looks at like, hey, the majority of wars aren't fought over the single battle. They don't turn on the decisive fight. They're generally wars of attrition. Even when Nolan looks at like Waterloo, it's like, yeah, But Waterloo took 14 years to get to. Like there was a lot of war before that that was attritive, before you got to the final decisive battle. I think the administration thought this was going to be. No, George has talked about this before. Like they thought they were going to get in. Hey, we took out Maduro. It was quick. We killed Soleimani. Nobody did anything. We struck the nuclear react. Nobody did anything. We can, we can roll in and we can steamroll this and everything will be fine. Not realizing that like this was opening up a different paradigm where it was going to become like no, this is now a war. This is no longer discreet operations that are happening. And now you get kind of what comes out of that. But I do think, you know, one of the ways you make things cost less per shot and less per effect is you buy a lot of them and you build a lot of them. And that's one of the things that the administrations, not just this one past administrations have been very reticent to do. We only need, I forget how many jasms it is, but we only need a stockpile of like 1400. We're fine. We don't need any more. You make 40 a year, Lockheed. That's awesome.
- [28:19]
Eric
Great.
- [28:21]
Brian
And then when you start using them and they're like, oh, we need to 10x to the production, well, that only gets you to 400 a year. And you're using 400 a year in a month. You're using 400 in a month. So like again, the delta there is, you get things to scale, that's what drives down the price. You only get things to scale if you're willing to buy them and fund them and keep refurbishing them. And they haven't been willing to do that. Even when we talk about $1.5 trillion budget, we're talking about one time, $1.5 trillion budget. Well, great. Over the next 12 months we'll scale production, we'll hire all these workers, we'll build all these lines. Oh wait, no, that's not what we're going to do because it takes more than a year to do all of that and to spend that money. And unless we have a much more integrated and forward looking way that we're going to do the acquisitions, it doesn't matter in the short term how cheap we get an individual shop.
- [29:16]
Becca Wasser
Yeah, that's right. I think it's making the economics work. But one thing that Brian and I have actually debated in the past is yes, you need to produce, you need to be able to have the production capacity because you need to be careful about what you stockpile. And when you stockpile it, some of it is shelf life, some of it is just the shift in, you know, technology and how quickly that can change. So it's making sure that you're trying to do this in the right way rather than just going all in on something that's going to be completely obe by the time you actually try and field it.
- [29:53]
Eric
I am, how do I want to put this? Somewhat satisfied that we are not sitting on a quarter million Excalibur rounds in the United States because It would have been extraordinarily expensive for the United states to build 155 millimeter artillery shells that are GPS guided. And we would operate under the assumption that we would have artillery batteries doing precision strike with wanton abandon in the Suwalki Gap. Or we could give them to the Taiwanese to help defend the landing beaches. But we now know that these system, in their technological disposition are extraordinarily vulnerable to GPS jamming. They don't have redundant navigation systems to Becca's point. And to build on Justin's theme of you need to buy a lot of it, it's like, that's absolutely the case. Obsolescence is extraordinarily hard to reconcile. In May 1940, the French armies wheeled artillery in their prime movers in their reserves of propellant fuses and high explosive shells were the finest in the world. And the French army had spent 15, 20 years building that up. They had a better concentration. They had more professional gunners, spotters and communication systems for their artillery than the next three armies combined. And in six weeks, that artillery was never able to move quickly enough to aim true and to break up the opposition. So stockpiling weapons is sort of an economic imperative, but can also give you a false sense of security if you anchor your defense on systems that are no longer relevant.
- [31:30]
Brian
Absolutely. I mean, I told you about this, Eric, but I'll share it here. I had a conversation with one of the consulting firms this week where they were talking about, they want to look at what are the components we need to put in Group 1, 2 and 3, UAS systems. And they were like, come on, what kind of components do they need? Need? Well, what's the threat? Well, that doesn't matter. No, no, I think, I think that matters a lot. They're like, no, it doesn't matter. Just tell us what components we should put in it. And I was like, I think you guys need to call somebody asking for
- [32:01]
Eric
a prescription without describing the malady.
- [32:03]
Brian
Exactly. But that's also where we're at. Like, I think modularity becomes the key when we're talking about this. It's not necessarily that you do or don't. It's the ability to slap a cone on the top of the artillery round to make it more precise with whatever the next generation of that precision looks like. Like, but you still need a lot of the artillery routes. And I think that's where we, we kind of had our hang up is like, we did. What is the artillery route? We can figure out what the technology is that slaps on Top of it, what is the Shaheed of tomorrow or the Lucas of tomorrow? And then what are the other things that we may or may not be able to slap onto it, given whatever the threat, the emerging threat picture is? And some of those are going to cost a lot more, and some of those are going to cost a lot less because if you're using it on boats in the Caribbean, probably don't need the ability to be ew hardened to the level that it needs to be to, you know, fly in Ukraine or off the coast of Taiwan.
- [32:59]
Eric
What should we talk about next?
- [33:01]
Jordan
Oh, like, I guess blockade. Well, I guess Brian left, so maybe we'll say blockade for next week, but.
- [33:13]
Justin
Well, maybe.
- [33:14]
Brian
Maybe this.
- [33:14]
Jordan
Maybe this is one for Justin. Like, what percentage of the IRGC would be thrilled to have the 82nd Airborne fly on and to.
- [33:28]
Brian
Oh, man. I mean. So I think there's, at least when I look at the IRGC and you look at, like, their leadership and stuff, you've kind of got like stovepipes. I saw somewhere somebody else, somebody the other day was like, trying to make this reference that Iran only spends 2% of its GDP on defense. And the implication was that they've been able to defend against the US only spending 2% on defense. So that misunderstands how the IRGC and the Iranian military are bifurcated and how they actually operate. So, yes, only 2% of GDP goes to the actual Iranian military. Then there's this whole other thing with these hardliners that go out and get to operate and kind of run it almost like a criminal cartel where they own construction companies and shipping companies and all kinds of other things that they get to draw money from. Some of those people will not want anybody to invade or any type of war because they just want to keep making money. Like. Like they are comfortable owning the concrete company in Lebanon or owning whatever the business is that they're using to generate wealth and revenue. But there's also the Shia martyrs, and I get it. People struggle with the Are they true believers or are they not? Or where does that line fall? But I'll say this. Imams and ayatollahs and Shia clergyman in the 80 to 88 Iran Iraq War war, when Iraq was driving tanks into Iran, were walking around handing people plastic keys saying, this is the key to heaven. This is the key to the kingdom of heaven, while they strapped on suicide vests to go run at Iraqi tanks and blow them up. There is a portion of the IRGC that are hardliners and they are believers they are the people who still go and clean off the martyrs tombs and they tap on the tombs so that the dead can hear them and know that they're there. Like there is a very real undercurrent in parts of the IRGC that would absolutely relish the chance to become martyrs and to take down infidel, like absolutely. Is that their leadership debatable? You know, who knows? But I mean again, you have to really look at like what the IRGC is and what they've done in the past and where they came from to understand like when people say like hey, there's a group of them that are hardcore true believers, like those people absolutely exist.
- [36:05]
Eric
I also don't know how the Iranians dial in escalation dominance that there's always going to be a segment of, whether they are religious fanatics, there are Marxists or Christian nationalists who will embrace, hey, the worse it is the better. And they think that if you can ratchet up the violence, so to speak, you can gain a longer term political objective. I, I don't know that that logic holds here. The Iranians, for all the short term, perhaps excitement of being able to grab an American paratrooper battalion by the belt and start to get at them in a slugfest, recognize that if the United States starts taking serious casualties, this administration has few, few reservations about committing atrocities against Iranian civilians. So I think to Justin's point, there's sort of a mosaic of reactions and witnessing a consolidated reaction from inside the Iranian security state that speaks for all elements is unlikely. You're going to see a variety of reactions. But I also think that they are sufficiently sophisticated to recognize that if you fall back to sort of theoretic escalation dominance, that they don't necessarily have the kind of tools that would wake up the President or the Secretary of Defense and that they may be subject to extraordinary violence against national level infrastructure that they, they cannot account for.
- [37:39]
Becca Wasser
And I think that's why we see, you know, a constant hedging strategy from Iran. Right. They are willing to engage in diplomacy, they are willing to negotiate, but at the same time they're willing to fight as hard as they need to because this is an existential conflict conflict for them. So I think we're going to continue to see that where honestly if a deal is offered that is attractive enough to them. I think various, some factions in Iran to Eric and Justin, your point, Some factions in Iran are more than happy to accept it and perhaps that is the leadership. But I do think the one constituent group that we don't hear from are the Iranian people in part because there are these Internet and technology blackouts. And honestly, they're the ones who are most at risk from potential threats to wipe out massive infrastructure or civilizations. If we want to quote Trump's truth socials of yore, they're the ones who have to bury the effects. And frankly, with the blockade, they're also the ones who are probably going to bear the continued economic hardship. But I think the Iranian system and the leadership that exists believes that they can ensure that, that the people will, you know, fall in line as needed part in brute force. So, you know, I don't think it's necessarily, you know, a great path forward, but the big thing is Iran's entrenched. They are dug in and they are willing to see this through. And this again goes back to all of our discussion about why we think that this is likely going to be a long war or at least a long conflict, if you will.
- [39:15]
Brian
Well, and I think too that like it, it is important to. Eric made this point about Libya and like the lessons learned from Libya, but I also think that there for Muammar Gaddafi, I think there are good lessons that were learned from the jcpoa because the more reformist minded kind of got control of the government to some degree in Iran, they were able to wrangle through the jcpoa, which was going to limit the growth of military power towards nuclear ambitions to the irgc. They won, they got some sanctions relief, they got some money. It started to look like things were going to open up, which ideally would have in turn allowed more opening up and more reform. And then when that got pulled away, the hardliners can look at that and go like, see, we told you, you can't trust them. This is what they're going to do. They gave you something. They got us to agree, they got us to give up all of our highly enriched uranium to Russia, and then they pulled it out from underneath us. You know, why do we make a deal the next time?
- [40:15]
Eric
Yeah. If you elevate this to traditional prisoner's dilemma or game theory, opponents of the United States can sort of assume with some basis that the United States is always going to defect. Always. And you need to forecast what the defection means, how you prepare to limit the damage.
- [40:35]
Becca Wasser
I think that's a lesson learned, frankly, for adversaries and allies alike. Like for the United States right now, you know, we talked a little bit about at least posture in centcom, but you know, we have some potential threats going on in Europe Right. Now, when it comes down to US Military posture threatening to pull out troops in Germany, Spain, other places in punishment for, you know, what they've done. So I think. I think the idea of America as being reliable and a reliable ally or at least a reliable country to negotiate with or strike a deal with, I think those days are long gone.
- [41:12]
Eric
Yep. What we're waiting for is the remix. When the 82nd is postured in Jordan, Israel, wherever. They're not jumping into Carg Island. They're jumping into Stanley on the Falkland Islands to stick it to Keir Starmer. Wait for it. That's gonna be one long flight. Can you imagine having to get into a C17 to go from Jordan down to the Falklands? Falklands, getting your shoots on. When you're like, over the South Atlantic,
- [41:35]
Becca Wasser
Think about the tanker bridge.
- [41:37]
Eric
Yes.
- [41:38]
Brian
Oh, man.
- [41:40]
Eric
Look out, Gibraltar.
- [41:41]
Jordan
I had a question for Becca.
- [41:43]
Becca Wasser
That's okay.
- [41:45]
Brian
So say.
- [41:46]
Jordan
Say, like, Europe was all in.
- [41:49]
Eric
We're gonna.
- [41:50]
Jordan
We're gonna crash this straight open by whatever means necessary. Does that change the balance of forces at all?
- [41:57]
Becca Wasser
I don't know if it changes the balance of forces in the traditional sense, but it's just more of. I cannot see Europe being willing to commit any significant naval power without the strait being secured. Right. And they've been so clear about that. And to be honest, the area where I think it would probably make the biggest difference is, you know, there are a number of European countries and, frankly, Asian countries that have more minesweepers than the United States because the US Divested of them. And for the most part, what the US has left is a bunch of, you know, littoral combat ships that they couldn't find an actual role for, so they outfitted them in a minesweeper capacity rather than sending them to, you know, get scrapped. So, you know, having that minesweeping capability would be really useful, but I just can't see any European country want to contribute that or any type of, you know, offensive naval power and do things like escort missions or contribute to the blockade in a really meaningful way. Unless, you know, the. Maybe the US put the screws on them further. But they seem to be able to, you know, and willing to weather a lot of the. A lot of the potential pain points that the US has tried to press in the past. If anything, I think maybe we would see a re up of what they've been doing in the Red Sea. Maybe plussing up there and saying, we'll hold this down and you can focus over there. That would be a smart way of Playing it, but, but I find it hard.
- [43:30]
Jordan
I guess my question was though, like, say they say whatever, you wave a magic wand and you get to do whatever you want with all of their assets. Like, does that actually change the fact that, you know, Iran can still hit 1 in 20 tankers that go through and that means that nothing goes through?
- [43:50]
Eric
I don't think so. Yeah. Iran has a fleet and being like, they have anti ship cruise missiles, they have, have an uncertain number of mines that they can employ, they have asymmetric tools that they can use, they're going to keep insurers nervous, they're going to keep mariners on edge just by virtue of their geographic proximity. They will remain dangerous.
- [44:09]
Brian
Yeah, this goes back to that conversation we were having about that terrible FP piece that we talked about. But the idea that the Red Sea was closed for almost all of 2024, which was made without actual evidence by the authority, that is not true. But because there was a route around, there were some shipping companies and there were some insurers who were like, just go around, like, why would we risk it? You don't get that here. So again, like, why would it change it? And I had misunderstood your question at first, Jordan. I thought you were asking, like, what if the Europeans just wanted to go at their own and try to force it? That's obviously also not going to happen. But yeah, they're kind of tied to this one. Either they make a separate peace with the Iranians, which won't be able to hold up because they'd have to bring the US along, or they have to join and then, I don't know, turn the coast of Iran into rubble, which, as we've talked about, why that's impossible several times. Yeah, it's going to be a long one.
- [45:13]
Becca Wasser
Yeah. I just think to Eric's point, like Iran doesn't have to do that much to cause havoc. And it's not just about the missiles. I mean, we saw what the Houthis were able to do with just a few drones in the Red Sea. And everyone is so much more locked into the strait because there's no other viable alternative. This, you know, I keep on getting asked questions about like, oh, well, what's the historical precedent for this? Like, what happened when the Suez Canal was closed? Is there something that we can learn about, you know, Hormuz being closed or what happened during the Tanker War? And none of those are applicable. The geography is very different, obviously, you know, the time and the technology is very different. But with the Tanker War, it's just Completely different. And the US was willing to escort ships, which is not something they are willing, willing to do at this juncture in time. And that's not something that Europe is also willing to do. So all it takes is just a little bit of being annoying with drones and that just shuts it all down.
- [46:11]
Jordan
So the President, someone tried to kill him a few days ago. Didn't seem great. How you can apparently just like walk in.
- [46:22]
Brian
You know what?
- [46:22]
Jordan
I have a story to tell. Maybe we can start with this. So, so G 202024 in San Francisco and Xi Jinping is on US soil for the first time in like eight years. Wouldn't miss it for the world. So I don't really have a press pass. But like I know all of the reporters who are standing outside. I get there really early. I get through security line one one, I get through security line two. Security line three, I do not get through. But I know people who did not have party invites, who just had hotel key cards because they were staying in the same hotel who got through security line three. And here we are two years later and someone happened to play the same stupid game that I did with a rifle in a, in a suitcase. Eric, how does this happen?
- [47:22]
Eric
So it happens because. And we can just start from first principles that the United States is a free and open country that is swimming with guns. Any question of personal protection has to start with that. That the President can be surrounded by contentric circles of extraordinarily competent law enforcement, starting with the Secret Service and the presidential protecting tag and then uniform division. And you go out to like in Washington D.C. metro police or other state, local or international law services, law enforcement agencies. And they can all have collective mission alignment. They can be dedicated, they can have extraordinary training. They can have Yankee level clearances and be thoroughly vetted. But in one of these old sort of tiresome cliches about counterterrorism or even warfare, that there are certain cases is that, you know, a defender has to be perfect every time, but a attacker has to be lucky only one time. And I, we we offending in a sort of a stream of known incidents where the, the, the President was either attacked or was about to be attacked. Starting with Butler in 2024 incidents down in Doral at Mar a Lago. This incident in Washington Hilton. And then I hate to make anybody nervous, there's probably a bunch of dogs didn't barely park that law enforcement are not willing to because somebody either like they went back on their medication or they elected to do something different. They Their politics shifted. They didn't advance it. But the core principle behind all of this is not, oh, this is just going to happen, because that, that's sort of a form of nihilism. That this level of violence can be directed against public figures is kind of a public policy choice that Americans have collectively made, that if there are 300 million firearms swimming around in a country of 350 million, you don't need that many people diverging from normal citizenship in order for it to be extraordinarily dangerous. But ultimately, at the Washington Hilton, this extraordinarily large hotel in northwest D.C. just north of Dupont Circle in Kalorama, the White House Correspondents Dinner, the National Prayer Breakfast, a host of other events go there because it's the largest ballroom in, in the District. And I used to live like a block away when I was in D.C. from 2011 to 2018. And the entire neighborhood gets effectively shut down by the Metro Police by three in the afternoon, the day of the Correspondent's Dinner. The squad cars go out, the lights go up, and then it becomes sort of like you can just walk in. But it's still an operational hotel. It's still a neighborhood where families live. There's still restaurants and stores, and they, they try to form these rings around the President. And it's professional, it's dedicated. But if someone wants to be an exception and put their life online to be that exception, it's extraordinarily difficult to disrupt that process from I'm going to harm a political figure, I'm going to gun up, I'm going to get placement and access to it, and I'm going to put my life in the line in order to do it. But ultimately, as frightening as that moment might have been for the guests involved, the perimeter did fundamentally work that the hazard to the President really wasn't there. It's still frightening and it's still concerning. But unlike Butler, I wouldn't consider this one like a tactical failure of American law enforcement. Now tell me I'm wrong. Maybe I missed.
- [51:00]
Brian
At least with the Hilton. That was where Reagan was shot. The Hinckley shot Reagan outside of the Hilton. You would think that the Secret Service would want to push the perimeter out. Similar story. I was in Thailand during APEC when Kamala Harris came to visit. I was staying at one of the hotels that had the Filipino delegation was there, and a few other delegations were in the hotel I was staying in. And very large in the days leading up to apartment fact, they were very large metal detectors that every suitcase that went in was scanned every body that went in. And every time you went in, like I would come, I was coming in from work and I would throw my bag up and they would scan it as I went through. And you know, those are not the types of precautions that were being taken obviously in the lead up to the, to the correspondence dinner for the President. And I mean as you said, like right now it's the largest ballroom in the district. But you know, obviously if you watch the pundits on Twitter immediately after they were pushing very hard for that no longer to be the case and to get the White House ballroom established as fast as possible. So while I don't think it's a failure, I do think that the concentric circles were very tight, which does give an opportunity for things like this to happen. Where it looks or sounds, it sounds very escalatory and it sounds very dangerous when again as the actual guest in the room for the most part were safe. Obviously the Secret Service on the outside, they got shot. That was dangerous to them.
- [52:39]
Justin
Hey, Jordan. I don't, I guess or Eric, I don't think the ballroom is going to be big enough to host the White House correspondents Dinner. Right. It's, it's not going to see to that people, I don't think.
- [52:50]
Eric
Yeah. And also there's like a constitutional principle here is that the White House Correspondence association wants to have it at a so called neutral ground so the president has to come to their territory to hear about them. Alpine on the importance of the First Amendment. I think that from a civics perspective that's great. If you go to the White House in order to do this, it sort of of chisels like the, I guess civic spirit, maybe even a little more than having a close in magician doing the entertaining because it's sort of a ridiculous parade. But Brian, to your point, the, the footprint that once was the East Wing is not going to be as substantial as the Washington Hilton. I mean like, like beyond that, I think you got to go to the convention so center which is massive and cavernous, maybe not super glamorous or you go to like national harbor. Like there are other places that you could do it. But ultimately you're going to have to tell Wolf Blitzer you can't bring friends.
- [53:57]
Becca Wasser
But I think that's the first time anyone's ever called the Hinkley Hilton glamorous.
- [54:02]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [54:04]
Justin
Well, if you want to drive down attendance, you could have magicians continue to, to perform at the White House correspondence dinner and then you could if you take it to the Gaylord. You can guarantee the attendance will be really low. So I think there's a. There's a path there.
- [54:17]
Jordan
Anyone reading anything fun?
- [54:20]
Brian
Yeah, I'm rereading John Keegan's Intelligence at War.
- [54:26]
Eric
Good read, Jordan. I thought the. The essay winner for Chinatalk's economic competition was actually quite common.
- [54:35]
Poet/Performer
Good.
- [54:36]
Eric
And I am sending that around to true believers in the industrialized movement, saying, hey, here's some clear thinking on it. I would say it was better than the investment strategies that OSC published when I was there. So well done. To the author.
- [54:53]
Becca Wasser
Reading about murder for fun, right? Don't want to read about his.
- [54:58]
Brian
Like, real ones or not real ones?
- [55:00]
Becca Wasser
Both. Honestly, at the end of the day, you know, I'm consuming news all the time. I'm thinking about things, these things. You know, I can read a nice history book if I want, but sometimes I just want to come home from work and I want to sit down and I want to crack open a book, and I want it to be about murder. And that is where my happy place apparently is.
- [55:20]
Jordan
So, speaking of murder, I saw a production of Titus Andronicus last time. Last night in New York City, they turned up the camp way too much. It didn't quite work for me, but it was my first time seeing it produced. And just like the limbs and the pie, all this good stuff. I want to close with.
- [55:40]
Eric
I blame Julie Taymor.
- [55:42]
Jordan
Yeah, I know. She. She. She ruined it for all of us. I want to close with the villain CREDO in Act 5, because it really just got me going. And it made me think of that whole civilization moment we had a few weeks ago. Even now, I curse the day. And yet I think few come within the compass of my. My curse, wherein I did not some notorious ill as kill a man or else devise his death, ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, accuse some innocent and forswear myself, set deadly enmity between two friends, make poor man's cattle break their necks, set fire on barns and haystacks in the nights, and bid the owners quench them with their tears. Tut. I have done a thousand dreadful things as willing as one would kill a fly, and nothing grieves me heartily indeed that I cannot do 10,000 more.
- [56:37]
Eric
So can your murderer do that, Becca?
- [56:41]
Becca Wasser
Apparently not.
- [56:42]
Jordan
Well, this was fun. Becca, What a treat. You're welcome back anytime.
- [56:48]
Becca Wasser
Yes, score one for me.
- [56:50]
Jordan
Can we close on a. Can we close on a. We were going to do war game of the week, right? We kind of dropped that when like the actual war starts. Eric and Becca, why don't you guys, why don't you guys send us off with some.
- [57:03]
Eric
I am working through a game called Black Horse right now. It is a brigade level study of what happens if the Cold War goes hot and you have a solitary brigade of Americans trying to hold off two Soviet divisions for three hours, for three days rather before reinforcements can arrive. And it's a battle that never happened. It's a dog that never barked. But I think it's interesting from a force design perspective because at that point in the 80s where this game is set, the United States was looking back on the October war, maybe the Falcons were a couple of other scenarios and they had built this extraordinary amount of conventional combat power in Central Europe in order to check the Soviets. And it was never really tested in the 91 war in the Middle east, to an extent it was exercised. But we will never know if the United States and the West Germans and the British army of the Rhine would have held or not. Not. So it's left to board gaming and to Tom Clancy. But that's, that's what I got. Becca, I'm curious what you're working on.
- [58:05]
Becca Wasser
I might break your heart, Eric. So I actually don't play commercial war games. Part of it is a, you know, professional hazard. I can't help but look at them and start thinking about the game design principles. And usually when, you know, all of my friends and family, they want to play a game, it's on a weekend and I don't really want to be doing work or thinking on a weekend. So I tend not to play some of those games, which I know is really hard.
- [58:32]
Jordan
Okay, what's like the fun game with the in laws or the family members then?
- [58:39]
Becca Wasser
Oh, there's always a lot of card games. There's a lot of very kid friendly games. There's a lot of goldfish, you name it.
- [58:47]
Jordan
My 21 year old, we've gotten up to the game, it's called kicky ball.
- [58:52]
Brian
And we just kicked 21 month. 21 months.
- [58:55]
Jordan
Yeah, we just kicked the ball.
- [58:56]
Becca Wasser
That's the game for 20, 21 year old. And I went, wait, what?
- [59:00]
Brian
Yeah, we get started early.
- [59:04]
Becca Wasser
I was gonna say whatever skincare routine you have, please drop it then.
- [59:11]
Jordan
All right, let's call it. Thank you so much for being part of work.
- [59:15]
Poet/Performer
Thanks everybody. They call me the long one. They built me for the Pacific. This is what I sound like when you waste me. You loaded me up in the dead of December, said I was the one you'd save for the end they built me for a war in the Taiwan straight known coasting over banter Abbas instead at a tent that a hellfire could have handled at a target the GBU could have done. You called me exquisite. You called me the future. There's dust where I used to live on run. You said you'd reconstitute me. You said the line was warm. I'm just a tail number on a pylon watching you fall for the next platform. No more ammo. No more ammo. You spent it all and you spent it on nothing. No more ammo. No more ammo. The magazine's empty and you're still bluffing. You said forever. You said the surge, you said the hill would write a check. No more ammo. No more ammo. The straight still closed and the tankers won't come back. You sent my sisters to Yemen. They came back to Yemen. The houthis went into the hills like they always do. A lambo on the way to dutch bros coffee. A stealth cruise where a glide bomb would have flew. You don't want to fly this oppression package. You don't want to do the work it would take. You want to be to an oppressed conference and whatever's left of me in the wake. And I know you're going to do next. You whisper dark eagle at three in the morning like the Pacific was. Never mind. You'll fly her typhoon out to Guam. You'll swear this time it's different. You'll promise her every day you promise me back in oh, nine. No more ammo. No more ammo. You spurred me on a tet and called it or no more ammo. No more ammo. The eight seconds of trip wire and you're calling it doctrine. No more ammo. No more ammo. There's a carrier gap shaped like the years I gave you. No more ammo. Ammo, no more ammo. And when the straight go is hot, you'll wish you had me. Reconstute me. Reconstitute? You said you'd reconstitute me.