← GovDiscovery AI Podcast with Mike Shanley
GovDiscovery AI Podcast with Mike Shanley
Ep 81: Col. Jahara Matisek - Rethinking Warfare around Space, Civil Society, Arctic Domain, and Critical Minerals
00:50:41
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Gov Discovery AI podcast. I'm your host, Mike Shanley. Our guest today is Lt. Col. Jahara Matasek, PhD. Jahara is the Senior fellow, is a senior Fellow at the Paine Institute for Public Policy. He is a visiting scholar at Northwestern University. He is a US Air Force Command pilot, also the most published active duty officer currently serving with two books and over 200 articles on defense, critical minerals, industrial based issues, strategy and warfare. Department of Defense Disclaimer his views are his own. They are not the official position of the U.S. air Force Department of Defense or any part of the US Government. Colonel, great to have you on the podcast today.
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B
Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.
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A
Well, let's get right into your book. Old and new battle spaces, Society, Military power and War. The conversation today is really dominated around the future of warfare's dominated around the talk of munition stockpiles and the cost discrepancy of a $4 million missile taking down a $50,000 drone. In your book you talk more about a broader context for preparing for the future of warfare, including cyberspace, but also civil society. Could you go into a bit about how that conversation is framed in your mind?
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B
Yeah. So what's kind of, I don't want to say fortunate or unfortunate. That book literally came out like just a few days before the, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And I'd like to think the book is still kind of essentially held up under the premise of the importance of civil society in, in fighting wars, but also defending your society. If I could have, you know, been able to like get a few more months in before the book actually would have came out. I wanted to talk about, uh, you know, we're always worried about hybrid threats and, and gray zone warfare. And I, I was trying to develop this idea of, of hybrid defense. And that was based on a trip I had made to Ukraine in August of 2021. And the thing that really surprised me when I was in Ukraine a few months before the war kicked off was of course, August 2021 is also the same month that the Taliban take over Afghanistan. And while I happened to be in Ukraine while that was all happening and it was interesting and I wish I could have gotten this into the book, but unfortunately it gets cut off at a certain point was as I was going around the country meeting government officials, military officials, and also lots of civil society actors, almost every conversation devolved into don't abandon us like you abandon Afghanistan. And I thought it was really interesting because that narrative was not going on in the United States, and in fact, the team I was traveling with, that didn't really cross our mind. But by the end of the trip, we're like, people keep talking about this. And at some point we asked, why does this keep coming up? And the person that was helping us out with the translation, stuff like that, he's like, oh, because the Russians have just been flooding the media in Ukraine about how the Americans will abandon you, just like they abandoned Afghanistan. And I thought that was really fascinating, the fact that, you know, we're very globalized and, you know, all this information is flowing over the place, but it did not really creep into sort of like the US And Western media or social media types of narratives. I thought that was really fascinating. And so the other thing I took out of that trip as well, this was again, pre2022, was how important civil society was in Ukraine, in turn, in terms of protecting the country and arming and supplying a lot of the forces along the contact line. And that was even before the war kicked off. And once the war kicked off, a lot of the NGOs and sort of civil society groups and actors that I had met managed to further scale up all of their activities to, again, support all the forces on the front lines. And I thought it was a really interesting and fascinating way of fighting a war in a way that from a very, you know, US Western NATO perspective, you would never let, like, a local church or, you know, or a local NGO provide your troops. Drones. It'd be verboten, right? Because it, you know, they didn't go through the acquisitions of the program office. And so I thought that was a really fascinating thing. And now here we are over four years into the war, and, you know, the number of organization outfits have sort of become more formalized because it's become good business protecting Ukraine, but also attacking. Attacking Russia. And you've sort of seen, like, this interesting innovation, sort of bubble and drone bubble that has just exploded in Ukraine that now even the Americans and NATO are. Are trying to jointly develop and collaborate on these drones. And it's really interesting, sort of to see how. How much has changed over the last last few years and sort of see the expansion of a civil society getting involved, which, if you go back to, like, World War II and before, it was kind of commonplace for civil society groups to be sort of involved in war. But the way it's become way more formalized now, because now you have to become like a charity or you have to, like, you know, identify yourself as a formal ngo. You know, it's just begun a little, I don't want to say like more bureaucratic, but there's just, it's, it's a process now. Right. But especially in Ukraine where the government was already very weak and you know, a lot of people talked about how a lot of the senior military leaders in Ukraine were corrupt. The civil society actors and groups were actually filling a really important gap in terms of supplying a lot of things that the, you know, that the top down bureaucratic process couldn't do. And so when we look towards the US system, we really haven't budged much. But a little nugget was stuck into the NDAA a couple of years ago that sort of allowed for sort of a informal cyber militia in the sense that it allowed Cybercom. And again, it was very vague, but I was like that. That to me is the first indicator that we're becoming more comfortable with the idea of potentially having civil society actors be a part of at least cyber activities, either in defense of the homeland or to go on the, on the. Obviously I don't know if this has actually been activated or, you know, the titles and authorities been actually used, but they now exist.
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A
So I'm kind of hearing two things here. One is just the awareness of that role in civil society for potential conflict planning in other countries. And then also what is the, so what for the US system, which is going to be different too, and what are the edge cases? So maybe let's start with that first question, Colonel. What do you think military planners should keep in mind in terms of civil society? Threats from the adversary, strategic engagement of our allies, civil society, how should they frame that? Do you think that is a core piece rather than just counting munitions and battlefield preparation? Is that a piece of the planning or do you think there's something that should be more strongly emphasized in, in the war planning?
- [07:35]
B
So it, it really should be part of, of, of proper war planning and also just sort of domestic contingencies. Because it's something that's, it's, it's sort of, it's free power, it's, it's free manpower, it's free labor, it's, it provides a lot of goods and services that your typical Boeing, Lockheed Martin or any other sort of L3Harris would be willing to do for you for the military, but for, you know, thousands of dollars an hour. And what is important about this is it's very peripheral or it's almost, almost viewed as a nuisance or it's sort of viewed as insignificant to the fight. And yet you Know, at the height of, of, of the Russian Ukraine war, per my research, the average, like, Ukrainian drone unit was basically getting about 99% of their drones from NGOs and civil society actors. They were not getting it from the government. They were not getting it from the military. They were getting it from direct pipeline from a civil society actor. And so when you think about that, then you have to start thinking about, like, what do war plans look like in, like, the European theater? And the aha moment I had with this as well was I was in the Baltics, and it was interesting to hear sort of the Estonians, the Latvians, Lithuanians talk about sort of their civil society approach to defending their country. And that, you know, if, if Russia were to invade, they had a way to sort of turn on a lot of the civil society actors and groups to be part of the resistance. And I remember asking a US Planner that was with me, and I was like, so have we worked this into, like, a NATO war game? They're like, no. And I'm like, why? Well, it's sort of hard to put that together. And I'm like, but that's, that's a problem because you are, take. You are just assuming that doesn't exist. And yet, as you've easily seen in the Ukraine war, local resistance has been a huge aspect and element of sort of making it more difficult for the Russians to occupy. And if you don't bring that into sort of like your war planning, you're. You're actually missing out on, again, free labor, free manpower, free intelligence, because these are willing actors that want to help you more than likely, and you don't want them to be subverted by the adversary. Now, from an American perspective, we, again, we just act like the government. The military is going to be the first to act, to intervene, to help. You know, again, we're talking more of like, at this point, you know, like humanitarian type of disaster. But of course, you can, you can look to movies like Red Dawn. That's a great example of sort of a civil society local resistance approach. But in a more practical terms, Hurricane Katrina is actually used a lot as sort of a. Of a case study of the National Guard, the military and government officials having to work together and collaborating. A thing that's sort of actually missed in that whole discussion is the fact that because the National Guard was being, you know, was the primary actor coordinating, they have local ties to all the churches and a lot of other civil society groups, these were people they were able to activate and utilize throughout the crisis for Helping deliver water to people, helping out with search and rescue. There were, it was sort of the, the less discussed and hidden aspect, but it did so much to contributing to sort of keeping the safety and the security of New Orleans and obviously greater Louisiana. And again, this usually gets ignored or it's treated as a nuisance. So I think I heard at like the typical NTC war game, like they almost always just have like a person that's like the crazy cat lady who's just harassing the army the whole time. Have you seen my cat? Have you seen my cat? Right, but it's not a nuisance. It's actually something like to be wielded. You just have to, you know, consider where are you going to put this into it and who's going to be like your liaison? Because again, if, if they are trying to help but you're, you're trying to ignore it, it can actually obviously undermine what you're trying to do or it can just be a distraction. And if you have like a proper liaison coordination cell to handle sort of actors from civil society that want to help and do things for you, you can put them to use so that you can actually use your troops and trained people to do stuff that actually needs to be done. You know, it allows you like in a more efficient and effective way.
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A
It also gives you broader, I don't know, toolbox rather than just your munitions count. So I was actually 20 plus years ago as a Peace Corps volunteer in eastern Ukraine in the Kharkiv oblast. And one thing that surprised me initially in my school in the small town, it's near the town of now Kupyansk was there was a war training class for the kids. So they had dummy landmines, dummy grenades, all that. I don't know how thorough the training was, but there's still these. Some familiarity, some training of every A student that went through there. So just being aware of that's what your population is, that's the experience that they have coming into this. So with civil society, what we're talking about here is really them filling a traditional defense industrial based role. What about the hearts and minds side of it or that local partner engagement? How important is that in, or in this case we're talking about in Ukraine building that local legitimacy through. I know we don't have NATO troops on the ground in that. So that's a little bit different if it is an Iraq situation, say. But what do you see is that, that piece, is it civil site? Just let's get some, you know, a more cost effective way to support what the DIP typically does. Or there are other more that hearts and minds side of things that's good to include in the war games.
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B
No, that's an important thing you brought up because over the last few years we've increasingly seen the Chinese and Russians, but especially the Russians try to sort of so extra discontent during a natural disaster. So I remember in Carolina, I believe it was, I think after that big hurricane, if you remember hearing about like people like were hunting fema, right? Like you had like local radical like militias were hunting FEMA because the Russians were amplifying and spreading propaganda about FEMA was doing wrong, illegal, inappropriate things. So you know, a bunch of country bumpkins were like trying to defend, you know, their areas and towns like from FEMA officials. And that's, you know, sort of like it's, it's, it's the reverse of the heart of mind as it's the reverse of the hearts and minds issue that if you don't get them a part of helping you solve the problem, they might actually become your problem and your nuisance. So it's one of those things, if you don't, you don't. I mean if these have people, these people have the free time to drive around and pick up trucks trying to hunt FEMA officials. If you could have gotten to them before the Russians did, you could have actually put them to good use helping out with again, search and rescue, you know, you know, delivering food and water to elderly, you know, doing something for the local community in a way that isn't sort of, you know, making the problem even worse because now the National Guard has to dedicate forces to now protect FEMA officials. You know, again it complicates the whole sort of disaster response. And I think that's, that's another thing that I am aware that that is sort of being worked into sort of whole man like response issues for disasters and contingencies is the fact that now we basically have to expect an adversary to try and make that natural disaster response even, you know, to try and cripple and undermine it. Because again, it's a great way to sort of sow distrust in government but also, you know, make the American government look weak to its own people. You know, it's all about sort of like slowly cracking and fracturing the image of the United States as being a powerful government with a powerful military, be able to do whatever it needs to do. So again that's another sort of element, aspect of why the civil society element is so important and it's kind of what I was calling like the new battle space. It's one of those things that's really important and if you don't take into consideration this new battle space, you're just asking for adversaries to kick your butt.
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A
So if, what's the so what for the American defense industrial base, our allied industrial base of they're getting a clear signal we need more munitions, ramp up, you know, onshore manufacturing. Obviously that's critical. How would you, what would your advice to them be? Your recommendations on how they should think about their own internal investments, their R and D, their preparation, their partnering strategies to be prepared for this, those, these broader domains.
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B
So the easy answer for me would just be hire people that know how to navigate the DoD and US government bureaucracy for a contract or a grant. That's the easy answer, which actually isn't that easy. The harder answer I would actually give is you need to actually create sort of an organization that has the institutional adaptation ability to figure out the right blend. Again, this is where you have to have really smart people and hire the right mix of people. You need to figure out where you can produce sort of more expensive, exquisite items that you need, but also cheap things in mass. And you got to get that balance right. And that's the hard answer is I can't, you know, I can't tell you what that perfect answer is. You have to war game it out, you have to tabletop exercise it, but you have to figure out what can you do from a manufacturing or industrial point of view to sort of find that sweet spot between really expensive stuff, but also really cheap stuff and figuring out what niche you can basically fill. But also what's your ability to go full expensive or go full cheap and, and build it mass. And I, and again, I'm, I'm actually working on an article about this idea and I'm, I'm, you know, in traditional sort of defense industrial based debates, they call this the getting the high low mix. Right? So when you hear this term the high low mix, it's sort of like, okay, how many, you know, expensive high end weapon systems and munitions are we going to buy versus low end, cheap mass weapon systems like drones and, and dumb weapons like artillery. Right. I'm working towards sort of this idea of what I call the dirty mix. And the dirty mix is again, you have to get all the high end stuff and all the low end stuff, but you have to find that dirty middle because your adversary always has incentive to adapt and you're going to have to have that bloody oily mix of humans and robots where you can't over depend too much on robots because your adversary will just find a way to either jam, deceive, microwave energy gun, you know, basically disable your robots. If you go to full humans again, that's, that becomes also a huge risk and danger as well. So trying to find. And again, I'm trying to build out sort of an approach or a checklist to this or at least a matrix of questions to ask of how do you get that dirty mix just right? Because you can't just say we're going to build, you know, a hundred stealth bombers or like 100 MQ9 drones that cost a lot of money and just say that's our plan, we're going to do that every year. Because that's because you're just asking for defeat in the future. And also you're just wasting a lot of money. It's sort of how can you cheaply innovate each year and iterate. So maybe we buy 10 of the stealth bombers this year and now next year you start working on the next, on the next variant and the next generation because you don't want to get too much into one weapon system. And that's, that's, that's where you, you really dirty it up. And that's, it's kind of like a mix of like the Ukraine war and also World War II where you had new tanks and new bombers, new fighters coming out constantly. Where in the Ukraine war you literally have a new drone coming out essentially every week or every two weeks. Because if you try to invest and build too much of that one drone that's working really great, guess what? The Russians, within a week or two have figured out a way to, to jam it, deceive it or trick it. And you, and that's the dirty part about this, right? You can't invest too much in what you think is the next best thing, right? And our obsession since the 1980s has always been about like tech overmatch, you know, the next offset. And I'm here to tell you that the next off it, at the next offset, it's going to be dirty. It has to be the dirty mix. And that's, that's kind of the argument I'm trying to push for. Again, article not out yet, but I'm really working through this and I hope you enjoy me sort of talking through sort of a, what I think is a 90% almost there idea right now.
- [21:01]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. And when that's published, please, we'll definitely be sure to share it with our LinkedIn following as well. We had retired Admiral Mark Montgomery on the podcast a couple months back. He was talked about being in Ukraine and seeing the drone production and then the drone comes off. He's like, all right, what's the 18 month testing window for this? They're like the testing windows. We're taking this out this afternoon and seeing if it works.
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B
Yeah, for 18 hours. From 18 months to 18 hours.
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A
There you go. Exactly.
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B
And then within 18 days, your adversary has already figured out a way to jam it or counter it or, and you now have to make again a new one that is a little bit different or, you know, operates a new band. I mean, that's, that is the OODA loop of, of death and destruction and learning and adaptation. So again, from, you know, like for your listeners, again, that have a company or firm that's trying to get into this, it's less about the actual tech you're going to make. It's more about the question of how are you going to make the next tech and not just rest on your laurels, how are you going to sort of speed up the learning and understanding of like, okay, so what's, what's next after this? Because you can't just again, build a thousand bombers or drones of that type and just keep doing that and just like assume the status quo is okay. It's like, cool, we built a thousand of these. We need to start moving on to the next variant because those things are, are going to become obsolete if they're used in a conflict or war. And that's, that's the dirty part about this is. And, and unfortunately it also makes it also dirty from a taxpayer like perspective because this, this is going to seem and feel very wasteful because you're going to buy stuff that you maybe never use. But the whole point of this is this is insurance. I think that's probably the small part, the most important idea.
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A
Yeah, sure, deterrence. The goal is to have the big insurance.
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B
You have to dirty it up. But that's the problem though. It's going to be expensive. It's going to be way more expensive than I think we are prepared for. And that's, that's the tough sell that I don't think policymakers in D.C. have really sort of told the American public of war is coming. And we're going to be building a lot of weapon systems and we're going to be, it's going to look very wasteful because we're going to make you know, 50 aircraft of this variant and then a year later and be like, this thing's crap. We're moving on to the next variant and we're. And we're mothballing them or we're going to, we're just going to turn them into basically unmanned, like bomber drones that are, you know, are basically just doing like a kamikaze machine. And you don't care what happens to them because it's like a disposable thing. And that's been talked about too, as well, of using a lot of these aircraft in the boneyard as, you know, could we use these as sort of like, you know, flying bomb drones or something like that to that effect to at least you know, sort of, of mass and oversaturated adversary if needed, you know, and, you know, you got to work through all that problem side as well, because again, that creates another command and control issue and sort of, you know, who's going to actually do those, you know, who's going to mod up those air. Who's going to. I mean, it becomes a very complicated process. Again, it sounds easy, you know, in theory, like, yeah, we'll just take all the aircraft in the boneyard and launch them against an adversary with bomb on them. But again, that there's like the messy, like the messy middle of, like, okay, well, who's going to modify the aircraft? Who's going to fix the aircraft so it's actually flyable? Who's going to put the bomb on this? Who's going to, who's going to feel this up? Who's going to make sure this thing can actually take off, get airborne and not cause like a damage on takeoff? Right. Like, there's all these little things. And that's another thing too, I think is, you know, like for your listeners is, you know, can you map out that entire sort of process, you know, like, can. Can you process, trust that entire, you know, from, you know, airplane or even from the mine all the way to the missile or from the mine to the aircraft? Can you map that all out and, and understand sort of like your, your abilities to sort of, you know, exploit that or also, you know, where are the choke points? Right. And, and I think, I think I saw from all of your questions before we got ready for this podcast was, was talking about sort of like a lot of the choke points and bottlenecks when it comes to making a lot of weapon systems right now, because a lot of it just runs through China or it runs through one or two factories in the US or one or two factories in an allied or partner country.
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A
Yeah, one last thing on this then I want to move into. Some of the other questions is on the strength in the industrial base. A lot of the conversations is what we're just talking about right now, manufacturing munitions production. Do you see as we talked about civil society, a need for new capabilities, more of these traditional, maybe NGO type capabilities. I'm thinking like state departments, industrial base and their partners to come into the defense space for some of the civil society engagement strategy, local stakeholder. Is that a role that you think there is a need and potential budget funding? Maybe you can't comment on that side of it for in defense or is the focus really do you think realistically going to be in terms of what is that demand signal there's actually going to be contracts for is just going to be munitions numbers.
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B
Yeah, I mean you obviously have afworks and softworks and there's also these little, you know, mini funding things that drop from the Department of War. Department of Energy has been dropping some stuff like some grants for people like to fill sort of like the supply chain issues. I believe also the Department of Interior is also, also throwing some things out there. Darpa, you know, there's all these little niche things, but a lot of times it's very formal and rigid where they're putting out this is what we need filled. And then you have to figure out if you can fill it. Obviously, you know, you want to be able to innovate and do other things like of that nature. But again, at the same point, you know. Yeah. At the end of the day, do I feel like there's actually value and the US Government should probably have some sort of mechanism, I mean, for basically funding sort of like drone hobbyist clubs. Yeah, they probably should get into the business of sort of, you know, giving out token amounts to motivated individuals that just want to want. That want to do things that also create a sense of community. Because when you create a sense of community that again is good for resilience, resistance. And also in time of a crisis, you know, having that sort of societal cohesion where people actually want to band together and help and try to actually solve problems before government has to or the government does, but it cost way more when you could have just had like a local NGO or you know, even like a video game club trying to solve a problem because the government just gave them a few hundred bucks a year like to do stuff for them, you know.
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A
Yeah, yeah. I could think like, you know, college student, student groups could, could be great for something like that.
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B
Yeah, yeah, let's move it cost you pennies. No, no, I'm just saying like, sure, it's one of those things. It cost you nothing to buy that type of resilience and societal cohesion. But when you look at it from an abstract sort of taxpayer congressional perspective, it just doesn't, it doesn't bode well saying that we spent a thousand dollars on video game clubs, even though I could probably process trace to you the impact of you doing that on a few college campuses, led these people doing really good things for their community because they became friends. Networks of trust. These are things that you can leverage in time of crisis and also in peacetime. But it's hard to quantify and say we got this huge payoff without really being able to, able to show it. You know, it's just one of those things that's difficult. But I promise you it would work. And it does work because a lot of the Eastern European countries do sort of seed money in that way, a few hundred bucks to like a local book club or you know, little things like that because it contributes to society and like a sense of being. And when you, you have people feeling like they're connected, they're willing to help each other out and they become trusted networks in a crisis.
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A
Let's move to space.
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B
How
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A
Share with me your thoughts on how you're, how you're framing this for. How should companies think about space satellite resiliency, orbital logistics as a core dib requirement capability rather than. That's a niche silo. Oh, you're a space company. You're not a space company.
- [29:19]
B
So this is an article I have coming out in a couple of months in the Space Force magazine. It's about trying to fight but also control the space littorals. And when I talk about the space littorals, I think of it as the range of about 60 ish thousand feet up to about 450 kilometers into outer space. And the reason why I go with that 60,000ft to about 450km area as a region I call like the space littorals is the fact that you can get high altitude balloons that go up to, I believe I think the highest one ever went up to like 150 or 160 kilometers. But also this is an area of, of space that you can cheaply get things up there with a sounding rocket for a million or $2 million. But you're still sort of in like that weird orbital decay. And obviously when you're, you know, at 70 or 80,000ft, this is more of a high altitude type of balloon. But you can put payloads and sensors, things like that. And if you start working out the math, I think that's going to be like the biggest gap to fill in the coming decade is the fact that you can start putting payloads into orbit around there and you can just do the numbers, be like, all right, we can keep it airborne in that space littoral region for a few months. And that's still cheaper than putting a satellite into outer space, into a proper orbit. And you know, you're doing all the, all the space control and all the sort of, of the follow on effects, at least to me. That's where I think this, this is where it's, it's, it's going to go. And it's gonna, it's gonna go there not because the US wants to, it's because it's gonna have to because adversaries are gonna figure out at about the same time as us. Wait, I can cheaply put platforms, you know, that have sort of the, you know, the ISR capabilities of, of, of a, you know, you know, $100 million satellite without having to waste, you know, another hundred million dollars trying to launch in outer space. You know, all these things that you're like, wait, I can just put it up into, into this sort of that weird space littoral area for maybe a few million dollars. And I have a capability for a few weeks or a few months. And that is, you know, again, it's cheap mass. And this is where this is like that dirty mix, right? You're still going to need those really exquisite satellites that are out there at like the Lagrange point. You know, all the, all the stuff that's out there, you're still going to need all that stuff, but you're going to want to get into, into the space, into the space littoral fight because it's just a low barrier of entry. And I think because of that, of that low barrier of entry, that is where I see the next fight. And sort of like the, like the competition economically, but also militarily and commercially obviously all blending into. Because if you can, if you can figure out a way to keep your stuff in that range, you can save a lot of money and make a lot of money too.
- [32:36]
A
At the space symposium in April in Colorado Springs, General Stephen Purdy talked about the importance of AI. And obviously that's not news or anything like that. Everyone's aware of that, but it's so broad. I Actually want to ask it that broadly to you, Colonel. AI and space. Where does your mind go first in terms of what is the, is it a challenge, is it an opportunity, is it a threat like AI in space? What's top of mind for you? Just with those very broad keywords,
- [33:10]
B
I would actually that this is counterintuitive. I'd say industrial based. You can't do outer space and you can't do AI if you don't have the industrial base figured out. And when I say the industrial base, this gets me back to that, that whole mind and missile again we've just taken for granted in sort of this post Cold War order that if you wanted some gallium or some graphite, you just bought it and it, it showed up. That's not happening anymore because the Chinese don't want the Americans getting gallium and graphite and other sort of defense critical minerals and other rare earths. What does this mean for your listeners? It means the US is going to have to start overpaying because for a lot of the minerals and things you need to make the satellites to make AI work. It's, it's, it's sort of, it's like the revenge of the industrial age, if you will, for the digital age. Like the digital age is, is literally hitting a wall right now in terms of we don't have enough transformers, we don't have enough of the circuit breakers. There are so many things you need to make these AI data centers. And we are years in delay of being able to do this. Not only because of the physical infrastructure, we don't have the electrical infrastructure, the power grid to do this anymore. Now I think I last saw that there's at least $60 billion in, in delays and cancellations of AI data centers because they can't get the power or they can't get the water. Like I think I last heard that the average AI data center uses like 5 million gallons of water a day. That's absurd. And that's why you're hearing absurd things of like let's put the data centers in the ocean, let's put the data centers in orbit. That's happening because we're literally hitting sort of a terrestrial sort of ceiling for something that I don't think we envisioned 10 years ago would be an issue of like where does the Internet go? We're actually running out of, out of space for the Internet to work now. It's a bizarre thing that I don't think we saw coming 10 years ago. And the biggest sort of short term Hurdle right now when it comes to sort of like AI in space, by about 2030, the US is going to have a deficit of about 10 million tons of copper. There is not enough copper in this world. And we're really going to like, physically hit the wall by about 2040. And the reason why I'm saying we're going to hit the wall, you can't just say, hey, I know there's copper in that hill. Let's mine that and get it out over the next few months. This takes years to do. It's years. And in the US it takes about 26 to 29 years to open a new mine. And now if you're going, okay, that's because the bureaucrats and the liberals that. Right, no. Anywhere else in the world, even if you have no rules, like you're in the DRC, it's still 16 years from, I think there's metal in that mountain or in that, in that jungle. Let's go and dig it out and get it out in usable amounts. And that's important, important part. Usable amounts, sure. You can start digging in that mountain and you can start getting out like, a few, you know, a few pounds of this and that. That's not usable at the scale that you need. Copper, cobalt, tungsten, graphite. There is just an absurd amount of minerals and materials and chemicals that we are not anywhere near being able to produce in North America right now because we just let the Chinese do it all. Because honestly, most Americans, I mean, you live in Boulder. I don't think you want like, a mine or a refinery or a processing plant in your backyard. It's dirty and gross. And unfortunately, they're all environmentally bad. I don't know of a single miner or refining plant that is clean. And so we are more than happy the last few decades to let the Indians and the Chinese and other countries around the world do this dirty, nasty business. And here's the revenge of globalization, because in North America, we actually have all the minerals and, and, and, and materials we need to sort of, I don't want to say go full autarky, but be, you know, basically independent of, of foreign coercion when it comes to certain minerals and materials. The problem is we just haven't. We don't want to pay for it or we don't want to pollute our own backyard. That's going to have to change. And it's unfortunate, but that's the harsh reality. We're going to have to start seeing a lot of dirty, nasty plants and refineries and yes, are we right to assume that we'll have engineers and the tech sector figure out ways to do this even clearer? Yes. But guess what? Now that's going to make that metal cost two or three times more per pound. That means your iPhone or laptop is now going to cost double or triple. That is a, that is the harsh reality that is coming to us. In America, things are going to start costing way more because we're having to decouple from the Chinese partly out of, you know, sort of industrial sovereignty, but also because the Chinese just aren't willing to sell us certain metals and materials anymore.
- [38:48]
A
How much of that challenge will be addressed by recycling or reclaiming critical minerals?
- [38:57]
B
So in the short term, that is our best shot. So the DOE is currently seeding a few different companies out there to basically do sort of e waste and trying to recover gallium gold, other things like that. And I, I also believe there's an aluminum smelter that I think got a huge investment, like a private public investment. I can't remember the company top my head, but the way you get gallium is from. It's a byproduct of, of making aluminum. American producers and Europeans also stopped making it about 20. I think in Europe, they stopped making it about 10 years ago. The US stopped making it back in the 1980s because the Chinese subsidized the aluminum industry to also get the gallium out of the byproduct because it goes out as a waste and you have to, you know, spend money getting the gallium out. Why is gallium so important? That's what you need to put into some of your most advanced radars and sensors. And when we go back to the story of satellites, guess what? Satellites take a lot of gallium. A lot.
- [40:12]
A
Let's move just because I want to get to a couple your thoughts on a few other topics. Now to the Arctic and so much of the products, solutions, capabilities the last few decades for the US and our allies has been focused on hot climates, desert climates. What concerns do you have? Or do you. Maybe it isn't that big of a concern in terms of our capabilities. The products, the weapons, the warfighter tools, will they function in north of Greenland, north of Russia, in the Arctic Circle? When you think about that domain, what are some of the concerns? Or again, lack of maybe you're like, yeah, it's probably actually not going to be that big of a deal. Operational capability, training, all that's going to function fine up there. Oh,
- [41:08]
B
the United States just, just does not have a robust ability to, to operate in the, in the Arctic Circle. That's partly because it costs money. It's expensive. Yes, our nuclear submarines can go up there. Yes. We can fly F35s up the north Pole and fly them back. That those are sort of token symbolic things to do in the Arctic Circle. The bigger problems is that if you want to control or do anything, you need basic ground forces. And the problem with ground forces, and I've written a lot on what we call polar warfare. There are so many strenuous demands on the individual, but also on the machinery and the equipment and the logistics. If you try to operate militarily in the Arctic Circle, that means, like, your fuel consumption almost doubles, your water and food consumption goes up 50%. You have sort of these compounding effects that make operating Arctic expensive and taxing. And when I say that the US Sort of treats it as a symbolic problem or threat is the fact that up in Anchorage we have the 11th Arctic Angels, the Army unit that is, you know, sort of our Arctic polar warfare train unit. Sounds great on paper. The problem is they're also forced to maintain a jungle warfare competency because their expectation is they do Arctic warfare, but you should be ready for the Indo Pacific fight. So the problem is trying to maintain a dual qualification in Arctic warfare, and at the same time, jungle warfare, you're not really good at either. And this is something that I hear constantly from troops in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, is the fact that, you know, the Americans just don't have a military that is capable of doing this all year round. They'll, they'll do an exercise from. And, you know, like the Norwegians or, you know, the, like the Finns or the Swedes will, you know, will be like, yep, we'll take care of the Americans for this big exercise because we don't want them getting hurt, you know, because they're, they're out there in the Arctic wilderness and it's, it's a difficult exercise. The other thing people don't realize, too, is an, an aircraft carrier, if it's operating in, in the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter, becomes sort of a floating paperweight. And that's because the decks would ice over. There's no way of heating the decks on an aircraft carrier. So effectively, if there's any precipitation, which there's going to be, if you're operating in the Arctic in the middle of winter, your aircraft carrier basically becomes useless and you have to leave.
- [44:05]
A
And for those who haven't operated or lived in that type of a climate, I don't think everyone realizes 0 degrees is different than minus 20, say Celsius minus 40, minus 60, it becomes maybe not exponential, but much more. It's not just, oh, it's cold, it's cold, let's put on a jacket and we're okay. It's different than minus 20.
- [44:23]
B
Yeah, just give you like perspective. Negative 40 Celsius is negative 40 Fahrenheit. Why is that important to know? At negative 47 Celsius, jet fuel freezes. At around negative 12 to negative 20 Celsius, diesel starts to gel over. Now if you have astute listeners, which I know you do, they'll be like, well, yes, you can winterize the fuels. Yes, you, now you're wasting time and money and logistics on winterizing fuels to operate in the Arctic Circle in colder than usual temperatures. You know what that also means? It creates maintenance issues because a lot of the weapon systems that you're operating up there were not designed to operate in the Arctic Circle. So guess what? You have more engine issues. You have more issues when it comes to sort of operating the electronics and the machinery. Oh, by the way, a lot of the touch screens that we put into all of our weapon systems now around negative 20 Celsius, guess what? Your LCD touchscreens no longer work. So now you're having to figure out ways to keep these things warm so they don't, you know, basically make the weapon system, they stop working. So you have again all these compounding issues. And can you make weapons and systems specifically for the Arctic? Yes. The U.S. does not. The Finns do, the Swedes do and the Norwegians do, and obviously Canadians do as well.
- [45:43]
A
And that's what I've heard is this, what's the short term solution? It's the allied industrial base. It's exactly, it's, it's the, it's those three countries, Sweden maybe, and it's engagement with their, and their, their industrial base. And, and that is, and they have the know how to solution.
- [45:57]
B
They can test it easily. And I believe the US inked a deal to buy a bunch of icebreakers from Finland because we don't have the industrial base to do it.
- [46:08]
A
And so that's something I think for our listeners on what's the so what if that's a domain you're looking to provide capabilities in, you might want to think about spending some time in those markets and engaging with some partners in those countries.
- [46:22]
B
Oh, and we're talking Arctic right now. I think the two biggest things going forward, if you're trying to get, I Guess I guess rich off the region. It's trying to figure out a cheap multi domain awareness capability to be able to, you know, provide multi domain sensor coverage in the Arctic Circle and also uncrewed unmanned systems to be a part of sort of like the persistence in the region for persistent coverage but also like for sensors as well. At least to me I believe those are the sort of two biggest like untapped fields for doing things in the Arctic that need a lot more work because ideally you don't want to have to put people up there because again that that creates way more costs and way more issues.
- [47:11]
A
So we're getting ready to wrap up this. I always like to ask, so what for the dip, let's talk to that VP of business development at that mid sized defense contractor. What is the so what? Their job is to obviously win the next contract, you know, build their pipeline, engage with the customer, find the demand signals, provide the solutions, all that we've touched. Space, the future of warfare. Arctic, the Arctic domain. What, what is the so what or so what's that you would leave them with from this conversation?
- [47:51]
B
The United States is basically moving to China proof its economy. So I would contend the number one thing you should be doing as a company is figuring out a way to get China out of your entire supply chain. So if that means you can do it domestically, right, onshore it, next case, friends shore it. And if you can't onshore it, you can't friend shore it. You need to find a way to get the US government to provide you a grant or a loan or some funding to basically get it onshore to the United States. That to me that is the near term problem for the entire industrial base. And mind you, what I think is important about this whole thing, I know we use the word industrial base, defense industrial base. This isn't just a military problem, it's obviously a national security problem, but it's also an economic security problem. Going back to when I was saying iPhones and laptops may be costing double or triple in a few years because we're trying to China proof our economy. That's another element of this as well is this is not only impacting weapons systems and satellites, this is impacting sort of cars, phones, things we just take for granted with the American way of life that is about to be under, under threat and it's going to cost more in the coming years. So if you're a company that can innovate and figure out cheaper ways of scaling up sort of things domestically to fill the gallium gap, to fill the graphite gap, to find ways to do things as close as they can to the cost of China, or at least to say this is the viable alternative for the short term till we develop sort of a cleaner way of doing it. That, to me, is where this is all pushing towards. And a lot of sort of the grants and the government focus seems to be pointing in that direction of we need to get China out of our entire supply chain at this point.
- [49:47]
A
Well, you mentioned several of the articles you're working on, our listeners. Is there a place, website, social, that they can follow you on or go to read some of the articles or to make sure they get notified when these come out?
- [50:00]
B
Yeah, I mean, I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, and then, I don't know, I guess this is a nice thing. My name is Jhara Matasek. There's nobody else in the world. So if you type my, there's there is a 90% chance that if there's something to do with national security or minerals, if you type in my name and, you know a problem or a thing with warfare or strategy, there's a very good chance I probably publish an article on that.
- [50:25]
A
Well, thank you. And we'll have the link to your book, Old and New Battle Spaces, Society, Military Power and War in the show notes, too. Colonel Matasek, thank you very much for being on the podcast today and sharing your expertise with our listeners.
- [50:39]
B
Yeah, thanks, Mike, for the good questions. Appreciate it.