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- [00:02]
A
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark. This is Command Post on the Bulwark takes feed, joined as always by the Bulwark Zone, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. General, it's great to see you again. We got a lot to talk about. We have to start with the breaking news from the Atlantic, which is more Signal stuff. We were just talking a little bit before we went live here about some of your experiences with Signal. So I'll just summarize the story real quick and say that the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State slash National Security Advisor and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had their own private Signal chat. Even after there was the whole signal gate thing. In the early months, this administration where a bunch of senior national security officials in the chump cabinet invited the editor of the Atlantic into their secret Signal chat where they were planning military strikes. And even after the President said hey, maybe don't use Signal so much, they've still been using Signal extensively for sensitive and official government business. General, is there any way this is a good thing?
- [01:00]
B
There is no way it's a good thing, Ben. And it's also sort of an illegal thing. You know, when I first joined the Joint Staff, one of the first messages I got, which I had never heard before, was that all of my communications on both the secret Internet protocol router and and the non classified Internet proto router, the Nipper and the sipper nets, which what we use to communicate with and anything that was on our official BlackBerry we're subject to collection after our time in the job because it's part of historical records. Now the Presidential Archives act specifically designates that for members of the administration. But there are all kinds of different people who have any kind of records keeping or on government equipment kept for historical purposes and for the potential of class action suits or legal matters or all that. So you know the Atlantic article about the three of them, specifically Secretary Hexa, Secretary Rubio and Chairman of the Joint Staff Cain having an auto deleting chat room if you will, tells me they don't want to save some of the things and we don't know whether they're classified or unclassified. I know very well one of the authors of this article, Nancy Youssef, who's a terrific reporter, she was embedded with me in Iraq for a long time. She's top notch, she understands this kind of stuff and I think she understands it a whole lot more than some of the people that are using these networks.
- [02:36]
A
Yeah, ditto Shane Harris, an excellent and very experienced national security reporter. I remember when I was an intern at one point in the government, you know, we had a whole training about the Federal Records act. And, you know, anything you produce that has to do with your job that you write down is a federal record. So remember at the end of the summer, I was an intern, I had to turn in all my meeting notes. You know, I couldn't just throw those out. You can't just throw that out because that could be a federal record. Just because I was in a meeting taking notes for people. So, yeah, auto deleting signal chat at the highest levels of the administration, not a good thing. And as you mentioned, we have these rules because we want people in the executive branch, people in the legislative branch, future historians, to be able to go through and look at what was happening. We had a question when we did our mailbag episode about can you do an after action report for policy? And the answer is that's what a lot of historians and scholars do, is they do the after action report. But it takes 25, 50 years to get the right perspective. And if we have auto deleting federal records, we're not going to get that perspective and we're not going to learn lessons.
- [03:35]
B
Yeah. And it gets to the point if people remember back when we were talking about AARS after action Review, the first step is what was supposed to happen, what did happen. And these kind of things that are being deleted tell you what actually happened. So the person who's involved doesn't get to say five years later, well, what I really did was this. No, no, no, it's right here in record. This is what you did. And that's what drives the point. But we're now talking about process and after action. We haven't yet talked about security. Oh, yeah, that's kind of a big thing. But it doesn't seem to be such a big thing with many in this administration. Every nation, every, let's put it this way, every major nation in the world can hack into signals or WhatsApp. They can read the conversations as they are ongoing. They don't even have to wait until the chat's open. It's, it's over the airways. And I don't think that message has become clear to some of these people because as I understand it, isn't the Atlantic the same one that published the first story about this?
- [04:41]
A
Wasn't that right? Yeah.
- [04:43]
B
Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, that's kind of an after action in and of itself. You were doing it then, you're still doing it now. You ought to really Knock it off. Because you're giving our enemies our secrets.
- [04:53]
A
Yeah. And we should just emphasize that that's not conjecture. We know, we know for a fact that signal, you know, if it's me and my friends on a signal chat for whatever reason, because you know, we have different, you know, some people are on Android, some people are on Apple, whatever. Yeah, that's probably more secure than, you know, Facebook messenger or whatever. But it's not government secure, it's not multi billions of dollars in secure communications and one time pads and all the fancy technology. Oh, and by the way, here's Representative Don Bacon who is a one star general in the Air Force saying signal is not secure. It is not secure. I was notified by law enforcement, he says, and house cyber experts that Russia hacked my signal months ago.
- [05:36]
B
Okay, I don't, I don't know how you want me to couch this, Ben, but what I would say, I know Representative Bacon. He was once a cohort of mine in Iraq. He was on the staff in Iraq when I was there commanding a division, not my staff, but the headquarters in Baghdad. And he was one of their planners. He is also a very adamant opponent of Russia's intervention in Ukraine. And what I will tell you, and I can't tell you how I know this, but I know that there were several retired and active general officers who were notified by quote law enforcement. And what I'm talking about is the cyber division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Russia hacking general officer signals and WhatsApp channels. And those who were hacked, and I know this for a fact, were told what to do about it. And if that's not enough information, I don't want to give you any more. But having been banned from Russia because of my support for Ukraine in one of the early listed Putin gave out, I would tell you, I know quite a few of the people who were being monitored on signals and WhatsApp. It's not hard to do.
- [06:55]
A
Yeah. Again, we know this isn't a hypothetical, this isn't a, oh, this might be a threat. When they don't say you might be hacked, they say you've been hacked and here's what to do. Now they give you instructions. Yeah, that's. Speaking of those lists of people who've been banned from Russia, I'm really disappointed they stopped putting those out because I was really gunning for a position on one of those for a while. I was doing my best to try to get banned. They never, they didn't pay attention to me.
- [07:17]
B
Oh, well, well, I was on the Very first list. So, yeah, I got that going for me.
- [07:20]
A
You know, that is. That is. That is a major decoration in my
- [07:23]
B
mind, along with 950 other people, of which about six of them were dead. So I don't know what that means either.
- [07:31]
A
But, yeah, they really can't go to Russia. All right, we should move on from the latest signal gate and talk about the latest in Iran briefly. You've written a lot for us. One of the themes that you always return to is that when we are trying to accomplish something in foreign policy, all the different elements of national power have to work together. The economic power that we can bring to bear, the intelligence and diplomatic power, and the military power all have to be orchestrated to achieve the same result. Like, it's like using all of your limbs together. You know, you wouldn't try to open a pickle jar with one hand and drive your car with the other. Right. But I think what we're seeing now is we're trying these sort of seriatim. Like, we tried the economic lever and then we tried the military lever, and. And now we are holding indirect negotiations with the Iranians in Doha. We are represented by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and they are meeting with the Qataris, who are then meeting with the Iranians, but we're not meeting directly with the Iranians. And meanwhile, there's more fighting in the street of Hormuz. Again, except when it stops. I mean, is this just how it's going to be forever? Is this a frozen conflict now?
- [08:38]
B
No, because frozen conflicts usually don't have as much craziness as part of them. You know, who's on each side. What I would say is what you just teed up is exactly right, that this is a chaotic approach to attempting to reach strategic objectives. When you don't have those strategic objectives at the very beginning, when you're not really sure what you want to do, when you haven't included elements of your own government as well as allies and supporters and. And understand what foes are looking for, this is the kind of sclerotic action you get where it becomes piecemeal and somewhat ad hoc. Dealing with the Qataris, okay, that might be good. There might be an inroad, but there might not be either. I mean, the Iranians are basically saying, we don't want to deal with the Qataris. The Iranians are saying, every time President Trump or Secretary Rubio says something about what is going to happen next, they say, that's not happening. We're not doing that. And why do you think that that's what's going to occur when you haven't talked to us? It's an issue that both sides, Ben, are saying the other side is violating the memorandum of understanding. And that in of itself is kind of crazy because the memorandum of understanding is not a document that requires adherence. It's something that says we're going to talk about these things and even going into future talks. And this is one of the reasons Iran walked away from last weekend. You have to commit to doing certain things. And every time we said we've committed through Vice President Vance or Secretary Rubio, President Trump will put something else up as a tweet saying we're going to blow Iran to smithereens or bomb them on their head or whatever he happens to say. So it's just, it gets back to that favorite movie of mine, Drumline. There has not been one band, one sound in all of this.
- [10:41]
A
Yeah, it is really more of a memorandum of misunderstanding. From the very beginning when we first saw the leaked text and people were going through and finding or not we first saw the official text, we were going through and finding the differences between the English and Farsi versions. And they were kind of significant differences in meaning. And, you know, the administration is trying to negotiate from a position of strength, but they don't have one. We do have this clip of Trump and I want to play this and then we'll comment on sort of what kind of position we're actually negotiating from.
- [11:15]
C
You've been meeting with Secretary Hexess and General Kaine about potentially returning to an all out war with Iran. Does this mean you've been unhappy with Iran's adherence to the, the mou?
- [11:25]
D
Well, I think they've come a long way. We hit them very hard last week. I think they're fine. I think we're going to. It's the nuclearization of Iran. It's very simple. And Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Otherwise, all of this stuff that we look at, all of these things that we do.
- [11:45]
B
So can I, can I point out two things? First, please, we have the president. And I'm sure he's a great family man, but behind him we're standing John, Don Jr. And Eric, and I think it was Don Jr's new wife. These individuals are privy to all the inside information inside the beast, which they're about to get into, as well as flying around on Air Force One. I mean, let's go back to the Signals app again. It seems like national security is an open book right now. We're telling those who are business people who are making deals with foreign government big deals like Don Jr. And Eric have just made everything that's going on within the government. Okay, let's go fast forward now to what the President just said. We hit them very hard again last weekend. And my response to that is yeah, and it didn't do anything other than what we've been doing in the past because they are, Iran is still adamant about their approach. And you know, there's been a lot of, and I'll say this Ben, because we're trying to give the inside information for our listeners. When you see a lot of media reports saying that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Kaine and Secretary Hegseth are meeting with the President to talk about options, future military options, that happens all the time. This is what's called course of action development. But the media will tend to smack onto and glom onto what's going on in the military because that's an indicator of what bombs are going to fall next. They aren't reporting as much of meetings with the economic advisors, with the Secretary of the treasury, with the Director of the CIA, with the ODNI acting. So we don't know what's going on in those spaces because they're not sexy. I'm kind of concluding truthfully that not a whole lot is going on in those spaces.
- [13:39]
A
Yes, I think that's right.
- [13:41]
B
So go figure. We have Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff leading delegations, two businessmen and God bless them for being businessmen, I could care less. But they're trying to deal with Iranians, Persians who are well versed in what diplomacy is and how precise words are important on documents. Like you said, the difference between Farsi and English is going to be know, a huge chasm. So all of these things are contributing to some of our, I don't want to say failures, but I kind of do want to say failures.
- [14:21]
A
Yeah, I mean it's not a success.
- [14:24]
B
This is not a well performing team. And I don't, it's not because I have Trump derangement syndrome or you know, that I'm a libtard or anything like that. It's just this is now, this is not how these things are done and it's causing problems on the world stage.
- [14:40]
A
I think, I think Trump got convinced after, you know, maybe after Venezuela, maybe after a whole series of small scale military interventions and operations in a few different places that the, if he, if he clicked the military button, good things would happen. And he has not updated that mental calculus since His Warner on failed and when it failed to achieve his objectives, you can tell because he keeps on changing the objectives, even the one he just listed.
- [15:09]
B
Right.
- [15:10]
A
The denuclearization of Iran. They give up their nuclear. Well, they just announced for the first time ever we are publicly committing to getting nuclear weapons. They always kept that secret before. Now it's not a secret right now. They just announced it. So Trump, it's the definition of insanity. He keeps on thinking if we drop more bombs, maybe the next bomb will do with the previous thousand didn't. And there's just no reason to believe that. Also, if you look at what the, what Central Command has announced that they were targeting in Iran, it was missile infrastructure, it was missile storage facilities and it was radar systems, all of which Iran has reconstituted. And we've talked about this reconstituted since we were bombing those heavily in March and April. So we're just going after the same targets. As you always say, every time you think you've got the last one, there's always more. I don't see how we get any. I don't see how we don't keep just doing this stupid dance again and again and again until one day, Iran, it's a nuclear weapon. Yeah.
- [16:07]
B
I think there have been, and I can't recall the names of the individuals, but there have been several economists who have really weighed the price of this war in terms of the tit for tat, US versus Iran. And it was mostly in terms of fiscal resources. And we are far outspending anything that might be considered a minor action. This has turned into a major conflict from the resource standpoint. And people are still there and they're still prepared to drop bombs. And as the president continues to think that that's the solution to a problem, if he continues to drop more, it's not only going to cost more, but it's going to further deplete an already announced depleted supply of munitions.
- [16:55]
A
Yeah. It is in some ways war on the cheap. It is in other ways war on the very expensive. And this is just the way that basically since Vietnam, the United States has chosen to make war is that we will spend more money in exchange for losing fewer people.
- [17:14]
B
I'll interrupt you there, Ben, for a second and say in past war, we have. Because we always try and find the technologically advanced solution. Right. But at the same time, in past wars, I think we've attempted to adapt. Adapt and to change our patterns. I haven't seen any of that in this conflict.
- [17:32]
A
No, I think that's exactly Right. What I mean, Trump is more than happy to deplete munition stocks to, you know, reveal some of our most exquisite capabilities, like some of the. Some of the sea drones that the Navy has been using in the Strait of Hormuz to, you know, tip our hand to some of our adversaries, which is the next thing we're going to talk about. It's just when we face casualties that he gets really uncomfortable, and that's put him in this bind where if he wants to do something more aggressive in Iran, it's going to cause casualties, and he's not willing to do that. But he also can't think of anything to do other than lob a few bombs every now and again, and that's clearly not working, is just going around and around in circles, and it's very frustrating. But we did want to talk about, you know, are. Are we learning? Are we adapting? How are we going about this? Are we making good decisions?
- [18:20]
B
And.
- [18:21]
A
And how are people around the world answering those questions? You pointed me to this really interesting article in Defense One by Peter Singer in which he tries to imagine a conversation basically between Chinese intelligence and the American government about the US Military and the Iran war. So tell us a little bit about what you thought while reading this really interesting article.
- [18:45]
D
Yeah.
- [18:45]
B
What Mr. Singer does in a very unique way, is he puts himself in the position of a Chinese analyst reporting to the People's Republic, the ccc, what's called the Chairman's Committee within the People's Liberation Army. And what it is is, truthfully, a kind of document that many of us in the military have seen throughout our career. It is, here's the intelligence that we're seeing, here's what we're seeing, here's how it applies to how the other nation is doing their business, and here's what it generates for us, and in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and how we can either counter their strengths or attack their weaknesses. So that's what Singer does in this piece, and he does it in five different categories. What the Chinese military is learning from the US Military, from our actions in Iran, and how they can apply it in the future. Fascinating article. I would highly recommend it to everyone. It's not behind a paywall. It's on Defense one. And what you and I are going to do and what I think we've already done, if I can give a prelude, we've taken it beyond China. And I was so enamored with this article that I thought I'd write something about not just what the Chinese are looking at, but what everyone in different parts of the globe is watching in terms of the American actions in Iran and how it's affecting both our friends and our foes.
- [20:18]
A
So the first country I know you wanted to talk about was our closest ally, historically our closest ally in many ways, period, the United Kingdom. What do you think they are thinking? And their defense intelligence, excuse me, their defense and intelligence establishment about what just happened in Iran?
- [20:34]
B
Well, in, in all the countries that I talk about, and I'll, I'll go back to the UK in just a second. They all conclude that the military, the United States has the best military in the world, the preeminent military, that they can do things that a lot of other nations can't do, even those that are bigger, like the Chinese military. But in the case of the uk, what they are most concerned about is alliance, information and communication, intelligence sharing and how allies play a part. So if you break down what we did and didn't do during the Iran war, we really were kind of non committal in each of those three areas that are pretty important to the uk. I mean, you started off by saying they're one of our most important allies. And they are. They've always been with us. Even during tough times when their prime ministers have taken heat for some American bad actions. They've still been with us in Iraq and Afghanistan. So what they're concluding, first of all, being a member of Five Eyes, that they're not sure they want to share intelligence with us because they know we're not going to share intelligence with them. From the standpoint of diplomacy, they were not notified according to public record on what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. They were then treated like second class citizens in terms of allies. When they were browbeaten by the President saying let us use some of your ships, how come you're not ship ship in your navy, the world's best navy, allegedly to help us in the Persian Gulf. So all of those things compound a relationship that has been built on truthfully, probably about 200 years worth of partnering in different conflicts where we've always stood together against different threats.
- [22:23]
A
So what do you think? I mean, if you are, let's say, the next long term Prime Minister,