Jeff Duden (16:52)

So let's dig just a little deeper into drones and maybe capabilities of current machines out there today in our military. The things that we know about are drones being used for reconnaissance by our forces, used in combination with troops, in combination with aircraft, to be able to do recon, to be able to identify threats. We see videos on the Internet now of strikes being recorded. I assume that many of those recordings are being taken by drones. Drones doing targeting so that an aircraft many miles away just has to launch, and it keeps our people out of harm's way. So, you know, my question is, and I know a lot of this is probably classified, and I know it's evolved in the time that you've been out of public service, but range, fuel sources, you know, you hear speculation from people that, well, these don't have a heat signature and they would have to have. If they're coming in from the ocean, they would have to have something other than battery to accomplish the range and the duration of the flights that people are observing. Of course, all of this is speculation. People are, People are trying. We take disparate pieces of information and we try to put a narrative that helps it make sense inside of our head. But what would you have to say about the capabilities of drones that the general public may not be aware of? And then secondarily, would these things be launched from fixed bases or are we talking mobile bases like carriers or even perhaps submarines?

Tony Tata (18:38)

Yeah, so drone capability. You know, Iran and China have developed significant capability with, in fact, Iran is selling or providing in trade to Russia their shahed drone that is quite capable. It's an attack drone. And, and so when there's, there's near parity between the United States, Russia, Iran, China on drone capability, you know, we, we have the, the Reaper, you know, the Predator that, that can both do reconnaissance, Global Hawk from, you know, high levels.

Jeff Duden (19:33)

And are those fixed wing. Are those fixed wing drones?

Tony Tata (19:37)

Yeah, they are. They're. They, they need a Runway to take off and, and then they get up at certain altitudes. I got to be careful what I say here. And then they have really good cameras and they carry weapons on a rail on their wings and they're able to engage and destroy. Those kinds of things would not typically be visible to the naked eye. If we're talking about an adversary, similar capability, it would not be flying through the streets of Manhattan or, you know, over low, low and slow over on New Jersey. Those, those kinds of drones typically would be high, collecting and reporting back. And then, you know, if you see what you're looking for, you can engage it. You know, the fact that nothing has been fired from any of these drones to our knowledge, the. Tells me that it's. It's a reconnaissance of some type. And again, it's. It's one of three. Are we looking for something or are they looking for something, or is somebody from outer space looking for something? Which, you know, the government said that. Yeah, I was all prepared to believe the UFO thing until the Government said they were real, but I, I, with, with respect to the capabilities in, in the launch platform, that's when, when I did my research for writing the books, I thought that a, a merchant ship of some kind would be the best launch platform because it's like a Trojan horse. You know, we do trade all over the world. We have thousands of ships every year coming into our, our ports on the west coast, on the east coast and the Gulf coast. And, and, and you know, we, we, I don't know, 10% of, of the containers that come in, I think that number is going up now, but that's just, you know, even if you've transloaded and, you know, in my fictional scenarios, there's one where, you know, there's a container full of drones, swarming drones and all that, that have, have made it into the United States. But that, yeah, you can just. Yeah, I got the idea. I was, I was actually surfing one day in Virginia Beach a long time ago, and, and I'm sitting out there and I see like 10 ships lined up waiting to go into the channel, whether it's in the Norfolk port or up the Baltimore channel up to Baltimore. And I'm like, man, if those were bad guys, they could be doing whatever they wanted. And they're, they're only a mile or two offshore. And so when you think of range, you know, even, even commercial drones could go out and come back and do what they wanted to do, relatively speaking, on that battery power. So I, I don't know that I think you can overcome the range issues based upon the platform you choose. And if you're a bad guy, if these are bad guy drones, then you can get a container into the United States and then have some people that you've infiltrated across the border or connected or paid to take that container and then operate these drones out of, you know, some, some warehouse somewhere, you know, out in the countryside or in a dense area where, you know, nobody's going to really notice, or you could have that mobile platform of a ship. Now, I saw the New Jersey assemblyman's report of a mothership, and I'm not, I'm not sure what that would look like, but in my book, Besieged, I do have an airplane that drops smaller drones out and they swarm and they go do what they got to do. So it doesn't take, I think, a whole lot of suspension of disbelief to understand that there are capabilities out there, that when you combine them, you could be delivering these, these types of drones. If in fact, that's what we're seeing to. To do whatever. And if it's us looking for stuff, then, you know, we would want to be discreet about where these drones are coming from because we, we don't, you know, we don't want to scare people unnecessarily. And maybe from a national security standpoint, the calculation is, I can't. I'm not part of these discussions, so I can't pretend to know what's being said. But it might be that it's better to have people freaked out a little bit over seeing these drones than to say, hey, we're pretty sure there's a dirty bomb somewhere and we need to find it and, you know, call 1-800-whatever-FREATE, dirty bomb, you know, so. But there. There is a public responsibility that if they. If they're greater than a certain amount of certainty, if they're certain. If they've reached a certain level of certainty, then they should tell people and evacuate the area. Right? I mean, so there's that, you know, is this a bogus report like a bomb threat at a school? And it's just, you know, or is there something real and maybe that's what they're trying to identify? Yeah.

Jeff Duden (26:18)

Look, Tony, I think one of the greatest emerging characteristics of the American people is skepticism. Skepticism. When I look at the information that's out there for us to review about the drones right now, I'm looking at all of the videos posted by people, and I'm like, those could be created with AI. I'm looking at the information being put out by members of Congress saying, you know, we want. They may have already been briefed, but they're saying, we want more information. We want full disclosure. Because they're trying to maintain cover for an operation that were. That is important to the interest of the United States and the safety of the American people. But, you know, they're not at liberty to say so, but they have to say something. So, you know, we're trying to. To triangulate all of this information out there. Now, if. If. If this is something that were. If this is, you know, I lean towards. These would have to be our machines, us Machines that are out there searching for something. There was reports this morning now that they've been spotted in Colorado and Nebraska. And we don't know if that's hysteria. If people, you know, once you. Once you're looking, I think the great Tony Robbins thing, you know, once I tell you to look for the color red, you see it everywhere type thing. So now people are. People are looking at the sky and looking for things that are up there. But I mean, it would be in my understanding that we have military bases in Colorado and Nebraska and out in the Midwest, important military assets and installations out there, the Northeast, The Capitol, Washington D.C. there was a lot of sightings in and around the Capitol building, in and around D.C. so is that a defensive protective measure really intensifying the search if something's trying to get into Washington D.C. and then a few reports coming out of California where we also have military bases and of course access to the ocean where things can come in from and, and then go back to. So as you start to look at it, it, you know, it looks like a coordinated defensive investigative effort, you know, by the, by the US Government, by our Department of Defense or whoever's in charge of that.

Tony Tata (28:44)

Yeah, I, I tend to agree with you. That's, that's kind of where I'm 51 on that side of the conversation. When you know, you have official intelligence sources that, that provide the, you know, nsa, Cyber Command, the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, FBI, dni, you know, all the Alphabet soups of the intelligence community to absorb information, analyze it and then provide that to decision makers. That's the purpose of the intelligence community.

Jeff Duden (29:27)

Okay, so Tony, inside of that matrix of organizations, in a situation like this, where is the single point of truth? Where does it all come? Where does it all flow downhill to? And who is sitting in a room around a big table looking at it all and has the complete in home.

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Jeff Duden (30:17)

Picture.

Tony Tata (30:19)

Well to, to reverse engineer from that it would be the national command authority with the President, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, FBI Director, CIA, sitting around with some version and the Director of National Intelligence of the reports. So if it's an internal thing, somebody's directing it to be done right. Whether that's Homeland security, whether that's FBI, whether that's, you know, the, you know, CIA, DoD are really external. They're not supposed to be operating within the territorial United States without any kind of presidential authority. But that presidential authority authority may have been given to them, we don't know, a very severe lack of transparency that's been going on the last few years. And, and so, but it would be generally those people in the Situation Room or in the Oval Office saying, we have authorized this mission, these missions to look for this. Here's the intelligence we've got that there's a, a dirty bomb, let's just say that's what they're looking for. Or, or that there's a coordinated attack against our military installations that, you know, I, I mean, it's really not out of the realm of plausibility because, you know, thousands of terrorists have been estimated to have crossed the border.

Jeff Duden (32:10)

Right, right.

Tony Tata (32:11)

So, so if you're again, a bad guy wanting to do bad stuff in the United States, you've had a really good opportunity last four years. And so now maybe it's all gelling and maybe they want to do something over on New Year's Eve and Times Square at the inauguration of the new president. And one thing I'll tell you is that, just to digress for a minute, is that anytime you have a change of command, whether that's a rifle platoon in combat in Afghanistan or Vietnam or whatever, or a presidential change of command or anything in between, the enemy always probes the wire and they want to see how the new guy reacts. And it's also maximum time of confusion, transition, who's in charge. Like, seriously, who's in charge? Right now you've got President Trump, the Alpha out there already starting meetings, already naming his cabinet, doing what he should be doing. And then you've got Biden and Harris that blew off the Army Navy game. They're not visible. They're not yet. President Trump take a press conference, you know, for, I don't know, hour and a half yesterday, I don't know how long it was. And, and, you know, answered unscripted questions from everybody. And, and so the enemy sees this and they say, you know, there's a, there's a, you know, between November 5th and January 20th, there's a window of opportunity. Now, now is the time to, to do something. And, and so my, my guess is that there are indicators and warnings that our adversaries, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea have some kind of operation inside the United States targeting key infrastructure and mass casualty producing venues. And there's probably some indicators and warning to do that. You know, you had the FBI director step down, what, two days ago?

Jeff Duden (34:28)

Right.

Tony Tata (34:29)

And so at a time, at probably the most critical time, the guy doesn't have the patriotic sense to see it through to keep the nation safe. And it tells you a lot about some people that, I mean, you have a duty to the country to keep the country secure. That's your oath of office. Whether you're the FBI director or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the secretary of whatever, you have an obligation to the people, the citizens of this country. And for political reasons or whatever, this guy steps down during the most vulnerable period of time in any nation in the United States. The way we do business, it's a transition. And if there are these threats out there, I don't think history will treat that individual kindly. If, if it bears out that these threats were manifesting and he just said, peace out, I'm out of here. But, you know, maybe it's a good thing. Maybe there's somebody that takes it more seriously. I don't know. I don't. I don't know any of those. Those people.

Jeff Duden (35:49)

Well, look, at the risk of creating, you know, creating hysteria that doesn't currently exist. I mean, as I'm listening to you speak here, you said something interesting about, you know, a dirty bomb and an armory that would make those weapons and, and that those munitions unusable for us, and we don't have a lot of redundancy there. And it led me to think about, okay, what are the five. What are the five areas that any de minimis strike that would cause interruption if done simultaneously would be a real problem. Because we saw in Covid you, you know, we're out of toilet paper, the world's going crazy, you know, I mean. And, you know, so, I mean, if you, you know, as I, I think about, you know, defense capabilities, one, communications, telephony and Internet, number two, supply chain, which is impacted by. By. By communications, you know, trucks, food, those types of things. Then you got the power grid, and then you have our financial markets. Okay, those are. Those are all things that at one point or another have been disrupted over the last five years. Whether it be the storms in Texas and the power grid, whether it be the financial markets through Covid through computer virus, you have all of these different vulnerabilities. I mean, it wouldn't take much for a coordinated, maybe even a multinational effort of people that don't care much for the United States to. To do some, you know, especially with how many operatives they now have thanks to the border situation operating inside of this country. And, and then the. The drones capability of us. Not really. I mean, can you fight drones with drones? I mean, you can't put Apache helicopters up there and defend against these drones. It's just not, just not going to be capable to defend against these drones. They're going to be too quick flying, too, stopping, starting, you know, so if you, if you think about that, and you know, and I'm, I'm not particularly, I'm not one that worries about, about things like that on a daily basis, but just as a natural progression to the conversation, you know, the, this situation, if these are, if these were foreign drones, that would be a, that would be a catastrophic concern that we would have foreign drones having their way with us flying anywhere they want to in this country and we do not have the ability. And when I go back to my comment about skepticism, I used to believe that regardless of whatever administration was in power and whoever was in Congress and who was moving in and moving out, there were people like you that were running our defense that were, you know, that were working, that. We had a huge group of people that had been running our defense for, you know, decade after decade that understood how it all worked, that were staying ahead of global threats. That, and, and that, that, that we were safe, that generally we were the most powerful country and that we were safe. I don't know that I believe that anymore. I think that the way that just the indications of conflicts or the way the weaponizing of certain departments for political purposes, I think power, individual power has now has overcome the people's, people's deep seated patriotism in being country first. And it seems like, you know, I just, I'm just not sure anymore that there's that, that one group of people that regardless of what else is going on politically, that they are thinking about the short and long term defense and survival of the United States.

Tony Tata (39:59)

Yeah, that's a really insightful comment and a lot packed in there. It sort of goes back to the FBI director resigning during a period of transition for his own purposes. Where's the sense of duty to the nation? Where's the sense of obligation when, when he swore to protect and defend the top law enforcement officer in the country if indeed we do have some threat out there? You know, he's more concerned about himself and, and you see it, you know, even with, you know, with any incoming president, everybody wants these high powered jobs because, you know, you make these connections and then, you know, you have power, then you have fame or wealth or you know, whatever that ensues. And, and you know, as a, as a kid raised by two school teachers and my mom always said whatever you do, try to make a difference, that the sense of patriotic duty with Folks that I know that I spent my time in the military and in education, transportation, and dodge. There's. I see a winnowing of that where people are really just out to get theirs. And regardless of what they think they can contribute or how they believe that they can best serve the people. And, you know, there are a lot of good people out there that want to serve the people. But when I think about what's going on right now, you have a lot of. It's ideologically driven. And I think about the transition we had when President Trump left in 2021. We had the Abraham Accords. I'll just use this as an example where the uae, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt was starting to come on board. Qatar was starting to come on board, peace with Israel, economic use an economic lever of national power to drive peace in the Middle East. And it was happening, right? And because of this insecurity in the incoming administration with Jake Sullivan and that crowd and Blinken, they undid all of that. And not only did they undo all of that, they made Mohammed bin Salman public enemy number one because of the Khashoggi thing. And so. And then Sullivan, the week before October 7th, two years ago, or whenever the year ago, publishes a paper that says the Middle east is the best it's ever been. And then, of course, you know, all hell breaks loose in the Middle East. And so the, the. It's. It's this ideology. It's sort of like the conversation we were having about the, the news and being critical thinkers and, and, you know, President Trump's America first philosophy and vision, Commander's intent, whatever you want to call it, is really remarkable in that it's, it's simple to understand. It's the right thing to do. And, and if you think about every decision you make when I was under Secretary or, or whatever, it's like, what's in the best interest of the American people? How can I serve the American people best? Not how can I serve the Ukrainian people the best? There may be some derivative. Okay, well, NATO is important to the US So we've got to make sure NATO can do what it needs to do. But at the end of the day, you have to be able to answer the question, are you doing what's in the best interest of the American people? And, and so I know we've drifted away from the drone subject a little bit, but I think we're really talking about the skepticism that you mentioned, where the American people right now have lost so much trust, faith and confidence in the US Government because of the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability. And I think it was most starkly put on display during the Afghanistan withdrawal. That was about as bad as anything since Saigon, right? If not worse. And there it was. You had a generation of veterans that had served for 20 years in Afghanistan, rotating in, rotating out, rotating in, rotating out. And, you know, all of us lost friends and comrades in, in that specific conflict and not to mention Iraq. And the callousness with which Biden and Secretary Austin and Mark Milley and, you know, I worked for Austin Direct Report twice. I'm friends with Mark Milley. And so these are people I know well. And the fact that they did not break the narrative that everything was so wonderful and that we evacuated all these people. What about all the people we left behind? What about the 13 servicemen and women that were killed because, you know, you needed the 8,000 mile screwdriver to make a decision to shoot a suicide bomber. And, you know, so I think about the lack of transparency and accountability, and I think that's where it kind of broke for a lot of people, because every person in this country knows somebody that went to Afghanistan because it involved National Guard, it involved Reserves, it involved active duty. And I had soldiers calling me up, upset, crying, saying, sir, did I waste my time? Was it worth it? And I said, you did your duty, you served your country, you kept America safe. You prevented terrorist attacks from being plan in Afghanistan against the United States. But the, the, the sweeping up all the broken glass that people like me and, you know, millions of other veterans had to do because some people politically didn't want to break the narrative that they were off. Nobody got fired. Frank McKenzie, who made the, the four star out of Central Command, you know, a couple of years later, retires, you know, he laughs during the press conference, you know, after they killed, you know, a water guy distributing water who they would claim was the suicide bomber, you know, killed a bunch of kids. It was about as bad as it could possibly be. And nobody, nobody was held accountable for that. And to me, that has transcended this entire administration and will transcend into the next one. If there is a lack of accountability, because the American people expect accountability. They expect people to put their best interests in mind first. What is right for the American people. Not for some global government, not for the United nations, for the United States. You got to get into realist foreign policy, realist domestic policy, what will make America the best, strongest nation in the world. And I think that's why President Trump won, because that's, that's his MOTIVATING factor. And he understands the interplay between economics and diplomacy and the military and information messaging and, and all the other elements of national power.

Jeff Duden (48:29)

You know, to your point, Tony, as we look at the waning days of the Biden administration right now, there's a laundry list of things that are getting done as people are cleaning out the White House and getting ready to leave. We've got pardons that are happening en masse. And I don't know how you, I don't know how you do the research on 1500 pardons or however many have been done, but there's obvious, obviously they've been queued up for a while and then you see big checks getting written, $773 billion here and there and going out. And, you know, are those things that the administration believes are promises that they need to deliver upon, are those payments in, in exchange for support during the administration? I guess it's kind of hard to tell. But, you know, every, every party has the things that they believe in and they're taking actions to do as much as they can to deliver upon the promises they've made or the agendas that they have chosen to follow. And I, I think that every administration's going to have their bucket list of things when they, when they know that they've only got six weeks to go. But that being said, is, is, is that part of the problem? Because you know how much I sit there and I watch the going, going ons of, of the government and I ask myself, the question that you just spoke to is said, you know, how does any of this have to do with what's the best interest of the United States of America? You know, not in our short term for our security, for our prosperity, and then also for our long term interests in maintaining our position or improving our position in the obligations that we have in the world. And as I look at this, I mean, the distractions of the political gamesmanship that go on, where does that create holes inside of our defense, whether it be in communication, interagency trust, all of these things. And, and I think that, you know, this, you know, I think there's a general uneasiness about these drones, particularly because I think so many people like me have had their eyes open. The fact that, you know, it's, you know, we don't know who's actually paying attention and then who's going to be motivated to act and who's going to have the authority to do so.

Tony Tata (51:12)

Yeah. You know, during the transition four years ago. Four years ago, this time, the Biden administration had a transition team talking to people in DOD and making notes and all that. And I'm not sure what the purpose of all that was because they didn't continue to do anything that we were doing and much to their demise, and they came in with an ideological bent in this hubris that they were smarter, better, you know, etc. And you know, if Trump was doing it, do the opposite, and which they very quickly learned with the Afghanistan example that they were, they were wrong. And not, for example, they purged on the first week every single Trump appointee on the Defense Policy Board. I was one of those names. I know Lloyd Austin. I worked with him many years in the military. He knows my, my character and what kind of person I am and how much I love this country. And, and, you know, he does this to me. And so they came in with this, with this hubris that they were better and, and, you know, that both saying about pride, right, going before the fall, now at the end, I, I think it's, it's sort of like the Afghanistan. It's a big, giant middle finger to the rest of the country. And the good thing about all this money that's being obligated is that, you know, the government can cancel a contract typically anytime it wants, depending upon the writing of, of what's in the contract. But so hopefully there's, there are people within the Trump administration, incoming Trump administration, that are keeping tabs on all of this so they can look and see is this money well spent or not? Is this, at the end of the day, does this serve the best interests of the American people? If it does, then maybe keep it in place. If it doesn't, then of course, undo it and recoup that money, harvest that money and put it towards something that does serve the best interests of the American people. So I really, this, this last gasp of serving special interests by the outgoing administration is, it's not surprising to me at all, the pardons. You know, every president pardons people, but that's right, you know, you know, and there's always, there's always, you know, gnashing of teeth when, when, when that happens. But, you know, and in politics is in part about returning favors that people have done for you to get you to power and all of that. So all of that stuff, I just kind of, you know, I as, as much as you can clean it up, clean it up, but I don't think you're ever going to fully get rid of it now that the, the, I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that it happens, it just is. Right, right, exactly. And on, on the other stuff though, with each of these agencies burning through money that we really don't have to serve special interests and you know, there ought to be some forensics done or people given money to Corporation X and then six months later they're employed by Corporation X. Those kinds of things are, are the, the graft that, that you really got to watch for because these are government funds and you know, these, every company, as you know, is out there scraping, trying to crack the nut. Do business, make a profit, serve shareholder interests. And if people are doling out government funds to pad their personal interests, that's criminal, legitimately criminal. It's against the law and they should be held accountable for that. So that's why I hope that we're watching this and we're able to, you know, verify, you know, if this is something that's good for the American people. Okay. If it's, if it's not, then recoup it. And if it's sole purpose was to hire Joe Smith, you know, six months later into a great job and to use part of the money he, the government money he gave to Acme Corporation to make him the vice president of, you know, national security or whatever, with a half a million dollar year salary out of that government money, then that's illegal and that ought to be tracked. So I'm not saying any of that's happening. I'm just. You gotta watch for that because, you know, it gets back to our earlier conversation about people. Kind of the lost sense of patriotic duty and this emerging, I don't know if it's emerging, it's probably always been there, but this more profound sense of selfishness, not selflessness and taking care of oneself as opposed to taking care of the charges that you've been appointed to lead.

Jeff Duden (57:16)

Yeah, there's a great quote. And the essence of it is that you don't need violence to overthrow a civilization. All you need is for that civilization to develop an indifference to the values upon which it was created. And it will, it will fall in upon itself.

Tony Tata (57:35)

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, no, I agree.

Jeff Duden (57:38)

Let's finish back up on these, on these drones, at what point in the trend line do you see that robotics, drones and artificial intelligence fueling it all will become almost exclusively our military? And that we will need less and less humans and just deploy greater and greater technology? And now battles will be fought, you know, by proxy through technology.

Tony Tata (58:14)

Yeah, it's a great question. It's kind of an age old question about the, the pace of technological development versus tactical development. And you can go all the way back to, you know, the invention of the musket created, you know, a standoff where you could shoot people instead of close with and Braveheart like have to, you know, get up close and personal. And then there was the machine gun. And they think about the World War II, World War I trenches that the machine gun and artillery and chemical weapons created this beaten zone. And then, then tanks came in, you know, the Blitzkrieg and World War II and airplanes and aerial combat and then you know, helicopters with that great tactical mobility and paratroopers being able to jump behind enemy lines. And, and now you've got, you know, then you had nuclear weapons and now you got drones that are able to in satellites gather intelligence and inform decision making. And I really look at, you know, having been in a joint operations center with a drone, multiple drone feeds up on the Jumbotron in the jock, as we call it a joint operations center. And, and standing there with my, all my relevant people around me advising me about whether or not to pull the trigger on a launch of a Hellfire missile or telling, approving the pulling the trigger. The, the, you know, you get that soda straw view of what that drone is seeing. Is it nested with, you know, greater regional developments or even greater tactical developments? Not sure. The. So you know, you've got intelligence gatherers and then you have attack and combat capability, right? And many times they're on the same platform. But, but it's very limited. You have certain number of missiles on each, you know, Predator drone for example. And, and so in a counterinsurgency where you have complete air supremacy and you have nobody challenging anything, you have flying in the sky, you can use drones at will if you're in aerial or if you're in, you know, a land war on Taiwan against China, you're in aerial combat, you're in naval combat, you're in ground combat to secure, retake, reclaim, whatever. And so I just think it's situational dependent. There will be more advancement of unmanned aircraft that can do more advanced things and people will fly them from Nevada or wherever they fly them from nowadays and the decision making will be informed by hopefully better intelligence. I think we're a ways off from completely automated armies. The, the. And this gets to the application of the elements of national power. You know, it's. As a guy who's been in combat, as a guy who has lost friends in combat, you know, I don't want any more combat. I don't want my kids that I have to deal. Your kids have to deal with a world that's at war. And, but I, I won't say it's inevitable, but if you look at his history, it's, you know, the history is rife with conflict, right? Over whether it's territorial disputes or resource disputes or just revanchist claims of, you know, this is mine, or just pure autocracy and hatred and, and power hungry mad men or women. And I would hope with the evolution of the drone capabilities, you also have an evolution of a capability for communication and resolving disputes before they materialize into combat. And so the greater capability you can develop, the greater threat you'll be. And it's sort of that peace through strength deal. So we ought to keep investing in our military and we ought to keep investing in the things that make our enemies fear us so that we can carry that big stick and speak softly or speak frequently probably is a better way to put it. And the more you have dialogue, you know, everybody gives Trump grief for talking to Kim Jong Un or Putin or whomever. I mean, we need to talk to these people to get them to understand our capabilities. This, this idea that you're going to resolve a dispute, whether it's a husband or wife or two world leaders, by not talking is not, is, you know, it doesn't make any sense. Any therapist can tell you that. And so I'm not saying they should be, you know, buddies or anything, but you've, you've got to, you've got to, the more conversation you have and the more in person conversation you have, it's easy online to get mad at people. It's, it's really hard in person to, to, to have, have this sort of, you know, anger that you might feel like from afar. And once you get to know people and, and if you can get them to understand your authenticity. And maybe it's Pollyanna for me to say this, but I, I think that you, when you're in person, you can deal, you can strike better deals, you can make people understand. You're serious. You know, I look at like Ukraine, you know, Putin didn't do anything in Ukraine for the four years Trump was present. He did it under Obama and he did it under Biden.

Jeff Duden (65:08)

Right?

Tony Tata (65:08)

What, what, you know, so what was the secret sauce there? And, well, have you seen the Reagan movie? I have not yet actually.

Jeff Duden (65:20)

So, yeah, highly, highly recommend. I just watched it on a plane recently. The in person communication with the leadership of the, you know of the Soviet Union was instrumental in the furtherance of that relationship in the ending of the Cold War. And it's exactly what you're talking about. It was an unpopular thing to do, but it. It really, until people are sitting across the table and you can negotiate and you can walk away and people can see your intent and your seriousness, that is, that is a way to break down barriers and to, you know, get down to it. Well, Tony, this has been. It's been fantastic this morning. I really appreciate your time. Final question for you. How would you advise the American citizens to think about these. These drones and, and. And, you know, you know, not that there's any action that we necessarily need to take, but as an American citizen yourself, you know, how would you advise people to think about this, at least here in the short term?

Tony Tata (66:37)

Yeah, I think be a critical thinker. If you see something, think about it, and if you think it's worth reporting to, you know, just putting out their own X or, or reporting to the authorities, report it. And, and the more of that, we can. We can get the, like, yeah, I call it painting the invisible man. The more baking powder or whatever it was finally gave him away. You can throw at the invisible man, the more you can see what's actually going on. And so the more reports we have that are. That are not AI or, you know, because I do agree with you, I think some people are playing games with this and having fun with it. Kind of like Gorson Wells. But if you see something, think about it. And if you think it's real, say something. And make sure you know you're doing.

Jeff Duden (67:34)

Your civic duty based on your experience. When do you think we'll know the truth?

Tony Tata (67:40)

January 21st.

Jeff Duden (67:44)

Great answer. Great answer. Well, Tony, as always, thanks for coming on the home front. We appreciate not only your service to this country, but your perspective and your guidance and your wisdom. Thanks for being on.

Tony Tata (67:58)

Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it.

Jeff Duden (68:00)

All right, this has been Tony Tata and I am Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.

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