Also media.
Hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here.
It's me James today and I am very lucky to join by Garrison.
Hi Ge, Hello, Hi Garrison.
I've some of you here today to talk about boats, a topic that white men love. But we're not going to talk about like going out on the lake and looking for bass today.
I've only done bass fishing ones. It's not for me.
Do you hold up the fish for the picture? Do you do the picture?
I wasn't blessed with a bass on that trip, but I did get to It was very interesting because the guy had like a purple boat with gold flex in it. It didn't represent who I thought he was as a person. Turned out actually he had a boat sponsorship and he was going to sell it. But ah, it was a cool boat. I got to drive that boat pretty fast through some doughnuts and stuff. So that's another thing that calls to a part of my soul. I want to
talk about private maritime security today. The reason why I've course is that Iran is currently attacking boats in the Strait of Horn Moves and elsewhere. Right there's some boats were attacked in portant Basara yesterday. We're recording this on Thursday. At the time of recording, they have attacked six boats. It's more likely than not that there will be more boats attacked by the time you are listening to this.
It's been a really bad week for boat guys.
It's been a bad year for boats in general.
Oh, Venezuela.
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about private maritime security.
So, like, when these boats are.
Transmitting the Strait of horn Moves, right, the United States has offered and then rescinded the offer to escort them through the Straight of Horn Moves. It's very unlikely that the United States is going to be able to sufficiently escort every boat that goes through the State of Horn Moves. And this is a longstanding issue, right. I think probably lots of listeners won't be aware of the long history
of private security on ships. Right. I'm only going to talk about this in the context of the twenty first century, but this goes.
A lot further back.
It's largely a consequence of the way the law governs the ocean. It's actually the same wow, sorry, yeah, daddy, long legs.
I don't know if it's an American word for that that I don't.
Know Daddy long legs.
That's okay, Yeah, absolute unit has just entered my office space. World LM be the reason that we can have private security contractors, often with machine guns, etc. On boats, It's the same reason that horrific labor abuses are perpetrated on
boats on a daily basis. Right, Perhaps the most well documented are among the most well documented are the ones off Thailand on fishing ships, which often involve Burmese refugees or people fleeing me anma right there essentially enslaved on these boats or in sort of indentured servitude of trying to quote unquote pay off their trip out of the country they were fleeing. Right, I'm not talking about labor abuses today. I want to talk more about private security.
Most of security provided two boats in the world.
In general, it's not.
Provided by states. It is provided by private military contractors.
Right.
Earlier on in the twentieth century, the typical profile of one of these people would have been that they'd left the military in a state in the global north. They had found let's say, life for employment in the civilian world to be difficult for them. And I've met a
number of these people in a number of places. Many of them went to parts of Africa thinking that they were going to work protecting wildlife and then ending up protecting large container ships instead, or attempting to work for a company that would one day let them protect wildlife or something similar. Generally, the companies they end up working for are generally referred to as private maritime security companies PMSCs, as opposed to PMC private military contractor, although it is
a version of the same thing. Generally, these companies offer a shipping company a sort of package, and it's not just armed. Security also include stuff like intelligence, crisis response, and potential intervention. I spoke to someone, for instance, who had worked for a shipping company and his major job was to deal with when people were kidnapped off the boats. He would then either go and rescue the people or negotiate with the people who would kidnapped them.
These are like cargo ships, oil tankers like what kind of.
Yeah, so mostly they are on large commercial vessels, right, cargo ships, oil tankers, things with an expensive cargo, although it is not unheard of for pmsc's. For instance, you may have a maritime security company to secure your large mega yacht.
Sure, right, or another boat that you're worried about. Did these happen on my cruise ships? Sometimes?
Yes, there was a shootout in the early two thousand so I shoot out, it's probably private security characters on it. I think it was an Italian cruise ship fired at pirates who are attempting to board cruise ship.
Huh.
It's a lot less uncommon than you would think.
So when we're planning the twenty twenty eight Cool Zone Media Cruise all access included, we're going to have to contact with one of these companies.
I think we can probably bring that in house. I think that that would be the goal at that point. Right within the Greater iHeart Ecosystem Garrison, we have so many automatic weapons. You don't listen to the like Belfed Machine Gun podcast, the iHeart Militia. It's US and TED cruise and we're we haven't really agreed on very much other than gun ownership. Maybe we should talk about when the real reason like PMSCs took off in the twenty first century was the rise in piracy of Somalia. Right
before this piracy had existed, mostly in Southeast Asia. On piracy has guested for as long as people going on boats has existed, right, Let's specifically piracy off Southeast Asia had before this been more of a like a smash and grab kind of situation, like turn up, take what
you can leave. What was distinct in this piracy that we began to see from like two thousand and eight onwards was that pirates were either trying to see the entire cargo of a vessel the vessel itself, or to kidnap people from the vessel and hold them for ransom. I guess the most high profile case was called the Maskalabama.
Are you familiar with this one?
No?
Okay, this is that's good because you get to hear a story.
I don't keep up with piratenews dot org.
Really, I can see you being like pirate curious. No, you're not interested in.
I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with pirates, Okay, you know, undeniably cool in some way, also a little bit messy.
They can be messy.
Yeah, yeah, lots of overlap between pirates and anarchism.
I'm sure you've this is true.
Yeah, some of my same critiques there for you both sides.
Yeah. Yeah, I can also be messy.
As soon as the pirates all start wearing matching black suits, then we can talk.
I think that's inherently like the piracy isn't about that. Piracy is about self expression.
That's the thing, got it.
Yeah, well, yeah, great, disagree. I like a diverse pirate outfit personally, in this case, a small vessel, right. I think they had four or five pirates.
They had like.
Pretty basic weaponry RTE like kalashnikovs. I think they boarded the mess Galabama. The boat had a pirate alarm, and they sounded the pirate alarm. In this you have to struggle to repress your like eighteenth century like mind pallas, right, Yeah. Yeah, the crew sheltered in. They had like a safe room. Yeah, they went in this safe room. Well, they captured the
captain of the ship pretty quickly. The ship didn't have any means of defending itself other than it tried to, like I'm not a massive boat understander, it tried to use its rudder to swamp the pirate ship as it was coming up, so like kind of flick it and that didn't work. Yeah, And one member of the ship's crew who hid himself with a knife and successfully subdued and captured the leader of the pirates and the crew
then attempted to trade this person for their captain. They tied up the pirate who they had captured attempted to trade him for their captain. The pirates took the leader of the pirates and then never gave the crew their captain and then made off in a lifeboat with a large amount of cash and the captain. This resulted in a standoff. Now, the Mescalabama was a I believe a US flagged ship. It may have been a US Dutch ship, but it was flagged to like a nation in the
major in the global north right. This would become relevant later. The United States sent two boats which proceeded to engage in a standoff with the lifeboat for several days, where they first attempted to drop a SAP phone and a mobile phone to.
The pirates in the lifeboat.
The pirates through those in the ocean because they thought that they were using them to communicate with the captain of the ship. At one point, the captain, who they'd held hostage, ended up in the ocean, but then he got back into the lifeboat. The situation was resolved eventually by the Navy seals shooting all the pirates. They were based on one of the US ships, and they used siper rifles to shoot the pirates.
Really yep, they shot.
Them all off the lifeboat while the captain of the ship was also in the lifeboat. WHOA, yeah, no, then I would be shocked if that's not a film about this, or I know the captain of the ship has written a book about his time being captured. But obviously, like this kind of rattled the world, right, It scared a lot of people, specifically in the shipping industry, because this is a scary thing to happen, and specifically this change in the nature of piracy from taking stuff to potentially
capturing people. And I believe the goal of the pirates here was to get the captain ashore where they could hide.
Him more easily, right in Somalia.
And then it becomes entirely different issue when you're trying to get US troops into a completely different country to rescue someone.
A different land mass. Yeah.
Yeah, And I think it's really important to talk about like the jurisdictional issues here because they are what gives the pmsc is so much leeway. I think we'll take a little break talking about jurisdiction and then we will come back.
All right, we're back.
So to understand private maritime security companies, you've got to understand the world of flags of convenience first. Familiar with flags the convenience garrison. No, No, okay, this is good. This is James gets to download shit that he reads that no, for no reason at like eleven o'clock at night. There are nations in the world states that allow vessels to register under their flag even if the owner of the vessel it's not a citizen of that country.
It's called an open registry.
So if you hang out in the port, spend time looking at boats, to look at the flags of other boats, you will often see flags of a few countries. The most common ones are Liberia, Panama, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The reason that boat owners might choose let's say you Garrison have a boat right or a shipping company Garrison Davis Boats Incorporated, and you don't want to register them in Canada or the United States, might
be to avoid tax liability. Might be to avoid like what you consider to be burdens and safety regulations, okay, might be to avoid the frustrating constraints of Canadian labor law, or it might be to avoid some ecological constraints on your boats which your flag nation might impose. And generally flags of convenience have very little in the way of taxation and regulation, right and so people might choose to flag their vessel in Liberia, Panama, Publican, Marshall Islands, Hong
Kong instead to avoid some of those issues. Right now, the issue comes when you read say you register your boat in Liberia and your boat is off on its way delivering things, and then some pirates sees your boat.
I'm guessing Liberia is not going to be of much assistance.
Yeah, they're not coming, yeah, yeah, the Liberian Navy is not available to help you in that instance right now. Because there tends to be very little constraint on flags of convenience, there's also very little constraint on what can happen on those boats, right so you could hire a private maritime security company and they could protect your boat, and the chances are the flagger convenience country would not regulate anything that they did on your boat or the
weaponry they held on your boat. Ah, the rMIDAS the Marshall Islands does, does regulate somewhat the weaponry that the Marshal Islands flagged boats could have. I think the reason there are so many boats flagged in the Marshall Islands, at least in part, is because half the world's tuna is caught in Marshall Islands waters. So a lot of those vessels will probably have They'll choose for the Marshal Islands flag because it allows them to fish in territorial waters.
Would be my guess. I've met some some contractors on Marshal Lea's boat, so I'm not a guy who is a helicopter pilot for a tuna fishing boat in a bar once. I guess they fly the helicopter to look for the fish and then the boat comes and catches the fish.
Huh Yeah, fascinating world.
I don't think it's a highly enjoyable job, but I think it's people do it tog They're flight hours up so they can do other things. So because of this legal it's not really a legal gray area, just the fact that these people are not regulated in any way.
Right people can carry weapons on ships.
Now, in the case of piracy off Somalia specifically, the United Nations did authorize military action against Somali pirates, and between twenty and forty boats were there at any given time in the next four years trying to police piracy. But that's not enough boats because every boat that is
moving through that area is at risk for piracy. And pirates can use very small boats to board very big boats, right, And unless that very big boat is somehow able to defend itself, all they need is a few weapons and the ability to get out board, and they're hard to truck, right. I've heard from people who did contracting in the pre two thousand and eight era that basically that they put barbed wire on the edge of the boat to stop people getting on, and then they had the l rap
like they was that long range the sound weapon. Yeah, the sound weapon, And I'm not sure that it was there as a weapon. I think it was there to notify other ships like get out the way, but that it could be weaponized. And then after that it was like big sticks and harsh words, I guess. So like when you have the guys who took over the mesk Alabama coming in with a few kalashnikov they have the balance of force on their side, right, That.
Is no longer the case anymore.
Initially in two thousand and nine, groups like Blackwater tried to get in on this, and they did it actually by more or less, I guess, like copying the privateer model that we'd seen in the nineteenth century. They refitted commercial boats with weapons and offered them like for higher as like a rental, like as an accompaniment.
They would like gas scort another ship.
Yeah, they'd escort you through this dangerous area and then turn around and escort someone who was going the other way.
Or that was the idea.
Yes, sure, it didn't really work a because it was expensive right to run these vessels, and b because you need so many of them, and so what they ended up doing instead was actually stationing people on the vessels. So these security contractors will now live on the oil tanker or the container ship, either for its all journey or for the duration of the time which it's considered danger well.
And also, I mean, if pirates try to get onto the big ship and all of the military guys are on a different ship a little bit behind, you have to get those guys onto the other ship, right.
And then then now you're shooting at the ship that you're supposed to be protecting. And I can see that big.
That does just make it a little bit more complicated.
Yeah, yeah, Unfortunately, the way, according to reports I've read, I should say, the way they have got around this issue is by preemptively shooting at vessels that they consider to be a threat. Sure, and there are plenty of allegations of them. We'll get onto the lack of really any means of legal accountability at some point. What they do instead is they allow contractors to go on the ships, and these contractors then have.
To be armed. Right.
The way they tend to be armed is depending on the flag of the ship and what regulations it has. Right generally, if they're entering into an area where they can't be armed, they have what are called floating armories.
Those are what they sound like.
You don't understand how long in my freelance career I spent trying to get onto one of these particular boats.
It was a long time.
So is this just like a tiny boat on a string with a whole winch of guns on it? Like what it could be?
It could be an old oil platform, it could be a little boat, could be a big boat. Sometimes the contractors themselves will like that's where the contractors will meet the big boat, right and they'll get on it there, so they have like an area they can hang out, like it has living facilities.
Huh.
I've spoken to a few people in this world, but you know, if you happen to be listening and you're boat secure, guy, I know. This is continues to fascinate me as an area where like the state doesn't exist and we have this like post state private militarization.
It's like anarcho capitalism. Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, exactly it is. It is a vision of the ancap future that I don't love. That is very interesting.
Right, there were states that offered to have like vessel detachments.
The Dutch did this.
I believe they would be like, we will send you I'm not familiar with the Dutch military. Sorry, Dutch listeners, Dutch marines, I imagine, right, and you can have a few of them on your boat. But even Dutch companies are Dutch flag vessels weren't using it because it was so much paperwork and the government couldn't keep up with their demands.
So they might now what to get some guys, what's pay them? Fine?
Yeah, the state has more or less completely removed itself from the sphere and removed itself from doing anything approaching accountability, and so it is extremely hard for these people to be held accountable for things that they do in international waters. Right, there are like industry standards in the industry itself sets, in the same way that there are standards for cops that the cops themselves set, and those have generally not
been the best means of accountability. Right in the theory, anytime they engage someone, certainly, if they kill someone, the ship's authorities should report that.
Yeah hopefully, Yeah cool, I'm sure they will. I'm sure they love to do the paperwork. But then who would they report it to?
Right?
Do they report it to the country they suspect the people they are shooting at their country? Do they report it to the flag of convenience country? Do they report it to the company they work for? Like, I'm sure there is some jurisdiction of maritime law which would give us an answer to that, But in practice there appears to be very little mechanism for accountability, in the same way that there is very little mechanism for accountability for
labor law violations at sea. I would recommend if people haven't listened this podcast called Outlaw Ocean. It's probably five or six years old at this point. I think it was in New York Times Investigation along with someone else. It was a good podcast about labor violations at sea, and they specifically looked at some of these fishing vessels and the fact that they use people who are essentially an indentured servitude. But they also touched on private maritime security.
These days we see a lot less piracy off Somalia right it has reached its peak. I found this little chunk in an article I was reading on jastore this morning that I thought was interesting. Quote maritime security companies have been consulted on greenpeace activists attempt to climb onto a gas prom off your platform in September twenty thirteen to protest ruling in the Arctic and attacks against oil and gas installations by the Movement for the Emancipation as
a Niche a Delta. So I guess these people have a wide remit in which they operate. As I say, they's somewhat different from like land based PMCs because land brace private military contractors are generally operating either with backup from a state or as back up to a state, and so there is like an accountability mechanism somewhat there.
We saw in the Global War on Terror that we still lack accountability mechanisms for private military contractors on land, but that certainly remains the case on the ocean.
Right.
Yeah, So another thing we should consider here is a historical parallels, right, And the obvious historical parallel would be looked to nineteen eighty seven and the what's generally referred to as the tanker War. Right. What the United States attempted to do was to open up a channel. The straightform moves is very narrow. As I said, it's narrowest point. It's just twenty one miles. There are two channels because obviously not the entire twenty one miles is deep enough
ships to go through. There are two channels that are each about two miles wide, and they're three kilometers wide. It's still not very great at that conversion. So the United States attempted is to open one channel and then run a convoy system.
Right.
Think about when you have roadworks and you know, the cars go one way, and then the cars go the other way, and someone goes in front of you and they have like a flashing light tow you to follow them or what have you. And the United States attempted to escort convoys of mostly reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers through
the straight Horn moves right. The very first escort mission involved a Kuwaiti oil tanker that had reflagged as an American tanker become the Bridgeton, and it was the Bridgeton that struck an underwater mine on that very first mission. I didn't cause any casualties, it did cause damage to the ship. During that same operation in the United States ship also struck a mine. The it was called the United States Samuel Roberts Samuel B.
Roberts.
I believe it struck a mine while transiting international waters. It just goes to show that when there are minds in this area, in any area, it's very hard to know when they've all been removed, and it's very hard to know where they all are right now. During that same operation, a United States warship mistakenly shot down an Aralian civilian flight, killing all two hundred and ninety people
on board. This goes to show how crowded the space is around the straight Before moves, and it goes to show how I mean, even in a relatively modern war rate, the possibility for mistakes is very high. And that's before you even consider the fact that the Trump administration is.
Willing to accept.
Even among administrations as the United States, they are willing to accept a very high number of innocent deaths. I also want to talk about, because this is such a small straight to crowded straight rape, the possibility of attack is not just limited to naval attack, right to boats. We know that US destroyed most of Iran's navy, and we're going to speak about how the IGC navy is not the same as Iran's regular flag navy. Right when we talk about the Iranian navy big gray boats, Yes,
the US has destroyed many of those. With the IGC, we're looking at much smaller, fast attack vessels, right, sometimes civilian vessels with a machine gun mounted to them.
Those have not all been destroyed.
It will be very hard for United States to destroy those all from the air, as it will be for the United States to destroy the ground attack capability that Iran has.
Right.
They have Hormus missiles, they have Shahied drones, they can use regular unguided rockets, a shahed drone from anywhere in the country of Iran, given its range, could hit a boat in the Strait of Hormos. These Hornmus class missiles, they're called Hormus missiles, so they're launch from vehicles.
Right.
It looks like a lorry and it comes out and it pops up its back lifts like the miss island launches it. These are very easy to hide, right. Lots of entities in this region use tunnels and caves to hide things. I'm sure the Iranian state does too. But you could hide one of these missile launches anywhere in a city in a cave and a tunnel. It only needs to pop out deliver its missile, and then it can be abandoned right, or it can go back into
its cave whatever it wants. But the Iranians don't need to destroy every ship that transits the Strait of horn Moves to close the Straight of horn Moos. First of all, there are only two three kilometer channels.
Right.
If there is a wrecked ship in one of those channels, the channel gets smaller and smaller, and therefore your chance of hitting the mines that are there gets higher and higher. Right, Because there's less way to go around them. The Iranians only have to make transiting the Straight of Horn moves uninsurable to succeed. Right, So, what has happened with private maritime security contractors so far is that their presence has made transiting high risk areas areas at high risk for
piracy an insurable effort. Because frequently you will hear that a ship with armed security has never been taken by pirates. That's really hard for us to confirm, right like, there's no independent data on that, but certainly it likely reduces a chance of them being taken by pirates, and that
has made them insurable. The Iranians knocking out one or two tankers will make the Straight of Horn moons an uninsurable passage, or it will make that insurance so costly that commercial entities will not be willing to undertake that journey. Right now, Donald Trump has said the United States will act as the insurer, I know, man like, it will be a lot of tankers for us to buy the if the Iranians keep you know, they've they've knocked out
two large vessels overnight, it seems unlikely. Donal Trump's said a lot of things, right, not all of them are true very well. Even in the last few weeks or Trump to said a lot of things about the Straight of Horror moves that were not true. So we will see. But I wanted to explain some of those threats. Have to talk about the specific naval threat now that IGC Navy, all right, So let's move on to discussing what exactly
this means in the current era. Right when the United States is saying the Straight of Horror moves is open except for Iran shooting at ships, and Iran is radioing ships right now and telling them that they're not allowed to enter the Straight of Horror moos and thenre obviously threatening them if they do. So, what we will see right now in the Straight of Horror moves is this situation where Iran has a few mechanisms for attacking these
these ships. Right, the one that's being talked about the most are minds, and the minds that are run has to my understanding, and just straight up World War two le C minds. If you ever played Mine Sweeper Garrison, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So they look like that, right. They have these big contact fuses on them, that is
what they are, right. The way the current works in a straight up horn moves if they can kind of circulate around, okay, which will make them you know, you can't be like, okay that this area is mine.
We're just going to avoid the mines. Yeah, right, Like this whole strait is mine now. And as we covered in ed on Friday, the US doesn't have a great capacity to remove those mines.
But the thing which has been less discussed is that the IIGC has tons and if they don't have, if they run out, it's very easy to make more, right of like.
Civilian fast boats.
Think of a little boat with a motor on the back and a belt fed machine gun in the front, right like, very easy to take those boats and swarm a large vessel, right Like, even if that vessel has private security on board. The straightforward moves is twenty one miles across. Like you could harass people if you had a jet ski.
Yeah, you could have a little jet ski technical or just tell yeah yeah with an RPG on the back. Yeah yeah. Yeah.
The most dudes rock vessel that it's ever taken to the seas. Yeah, I might have to hand it to that LGC if they did that, but under very few I don't know. Circumstances. Yeah, do you have to hand it to the Yeah, the Iranian state in any capacity. Now I'm shitting around like I think the state of irun is terrible, misogynist, violent and oppressive entity and shouldn't exist. Just to be like super duper clear. They also have what are called uncrewed surface vessels.
I'm sure they use like the gender neutral framing, but they are.
Think of a large Think of a boat that doesn't have anyone driving it, right, And it was uncrewed surface vessels that they used last night at the time of recording to explode a tanker in the port in Barcera. Right, Okay, very hard for the United States to stop these uncrewed surface vessels, right, They are like the Shihi drone of the ocean. This boat's not coming home. It's designed to eliminate another boat, but it can be It could be steered, right,
It's not just like a torpedo. So what exactly are the options I guess for the United States. Trump has offered to secure shipping through the straight ofform moose.
Right.
He offered to accompany ships. The Navy doesn't have the capacity to do that, to accompany the amount of the world. Shipping that goes through the straight ofform moos would require masses of ships to accompany them, right, They'd have to travel at the same speed as these ships. Some of these ships are flagged to countries all over the world, right, including countries the US doesn't have the best relationship with,
especially right now. The companies could hire more private marriage security, and I'm sure they will, but also like part of the role of private maritime security companies is to be like, don't do that, it's too dangerous. And going through a straight upward moves right now is probably too dangerous, right, sure, So I don't know how you would quickly equip a ship in a way that you could be like cast iron secure that it will be able to fend off like a little swarm of little boats.
Trying to attack it. Right.
I don't think an RPG could sink one of these ships, but it could really fucking give it a bad day. Oh you know, Like it's not a good situation when there's a hole in your boat, from what I understand. So, like, the other option would be for the US to put personnel on these ships, which would be problematic from a
number of approaches. Right, it is a Liberian flagship, and now you're asking, like what US marines to risk their lives to defend the Liberian flagship so everyone can get their TIMU purchases, and like, we can not slow.
Down glow trade.
There is not a good option here, Like the state, the States of the world couldn't find a good option when we were dealing with piracy in two thousand and nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Right, they felt better outsourcing the accountability for that to private companies.
The States didn't want to have to wear the reputation damage for like this boat once again opened up with a belt fed on what turned out to be a fishing vessel, or they felt like that liability was too much for them, right, So they didn't want to do it, and they would much rather have private companies do it. I don't really see an option here that makes the shipping safe going through this area.
You could not start a war with Iran.
Yeah, yeah, that is a really good option, actually one that one that sadly that ship has sailed as they say, garrison, but yeah, it is. This industry is already problematic, Like even before the United States started bombing Venezuela and the Colombian fishing vessels or vessels that it accused of being drug traffickers. There has been a long history of a lack of accountability for people being killed at sea and
for people being abused at sea through labor violations. I don't really see a way we come out of this without more damage to innocent lives, right, Like, either the United States just decides that it's going to go like scorched earth on any boat it sees in the straight ofform moves isn't like a big tanker. But even then, these these like these vessels, they're not all US flagged, right, the US doesn't have a means to be like, yeah, okay, you can go now, you can't go now. The straightform
moves is not in the United States. It doesn't control that water, and so I don't really see a solution for this now. Like, one thing that the world of private maritime security shows us is that neoliberal globalism is willing to look the other way a great deal and allow a great deal of violence on behalf of corporations,
not on behalf of the state. Right Like, when people are getting engaged by these vessels, it is to protect property, granted, sometimes it is also to protect life, right, Like these pirates have killed people and kidnap people as such. But the state has been willing to seed its monopoly on violence at the high seas because it could find a good solution to this, and it's been willing to overlook
a lot of loss of life. And I just don't see a way that this doesn't lead to more loss of life, and that is probably what we have to look forward to. It may have already begun happening in the Strait of Hormus between when we record this and when you hear it, but it is deeply concerning and pretty shit given that there are so many people just trying to make their way and live their lives in that area. Yeah, it's a happy one. Shout out to Greenpeace also for also patronizing these companies.
Yeah, you told me this was going to be a recording about pirates.
There were pirates in it. That was a big yeah. But I know, if you're a pirate and you're listening, I would love to hear from more pirates.
Between the pirates, the private maritime contractors, and the governments, it's like everyone here has their own issues. Yeah, and all these issues are getting massively intensified by the conflict and aran obviously.
Yeah, before we even talk about the ecological crisis that we will see in the Gulf, right, Like, you start putting holes in oil tankers, that is going to be absolutely horrific for the environment. Again in an area where people are ready to struggling to make it by I.
Mean, why don't they just pull a pull of fitz Coronaldo. Why don't they just pull those ships up? Oh God, avoid them straight altogether.
Maybe people haven't seen this, and this surface is like every three days right now on Twitter, Like, why don't they just go across land? It turns out that mountains, big mountains, hard water doesn't like going uphill, quite a challenging terrain to transit. I think maybe people don't realize that eighty percent think I believe it's eighty percent.
Of global trade still travels by boat.
Yeah, Like it is still the way that most things get to most places. And I think we are about to find out that the boat ignorers are about to find out if this continues for weeks or months, then it will be incredibly detrimental.
Is this a good or a bad time to enter the private mirriortime contracting business. How much are you enjoying your life decently? Well, okay, yeah, probably stay out of it and bye with you. Because they got to be getting a lot of money. But also they're in the one of the most highest positions they've probably ever been in.
And so yeah, this was already an area of military contracting that people look to get into and get out of. I would say, like the bulk of these folks now will be the ones I've met. I've been Colombians. The Colombians provide a lot of military contractors around the world. Now, the people who are able to get out of it will do business in other areas, right Like they'll do other private close protection and stuff like that. There are protective details for journalists I know in who are operating
in Iraq right now. Sure, yeah, these people will be making a lot of money, I think, especially like probably consulting right now with global shipping. I was reading about
the East India Company this morning. I was learning, for instance, that the value of a t ship leave it in China was a billion dollars in twenty twenty four money, which is how like these private maritime security companies in another age were able to develop, right because it was worth boat jacking, that boat pirating, whatever that's called, because of the value of tea.
At that time.
So it's not a new problem. But there was a relatively short period of time in global trade history in which the state attempted to advance any form of hegemony over the high seas, and it is comple deletely retreated from that in the twenty first century. It will be very difficult for any state to try and regain that now, Like, I don't see even the United States doesn't really.
Have the capacity to do that. Garrison looks ponderous.
Yeah, well, I guess I'll cancel my TEAMU orders.
They'll come someone someone right now is strapping a belt fed machine gun to a.
Boat to make sure that you.
Get your team orders. It is like, really kind of fucked that we're asking like people to run a mine field, right, Like an understand global train is not just TEAMU orders, but certainly a lot of stuff is consumed when the global and author doesn't need.
To be consumed.
And it is wild that right now the solution of the global shipping industry seems to be some of these people will die, but we will keep the oil moving and the treats moving. But that has been as I hope I've illustrated here, right, Like some people will die, but we will keep the treats moving. Has been pretty much status of the shipping industry for most of the twenty first century.
Yeah, that's this status of the entire world at this point. Yeah, yeah, that is the capitalist logic, right. It's just it's like particularly I think, particularly naked here.
Yeah.
I highly recommend the Outlaw Ocean podcast if you're interested in learning more about this. I will link to some of the Jstore deep dive that I went on this morning if you are able to get past the jay Store paywall and would like to read that. I think that's about all we got. Anything else you want to say about boats Garrison.
Now is the age of pirates.
Yeah, our flag means a complete lack of accountability.
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