Welcome to mid Rats with Foul from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagles Speak at Sea or Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in all things maritime. And good afternoon, everybody. I hope you remember to springboard. It's a lot easier nowadays because everything goes forward an hour automatically. We are, of course live, and if you're with us live, I already see a couple of folks have already taken us up on the invitation.
Go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of the show page. That's where you will find the chat room. We'll be launchoring that during the course of the show, and if you have some observations you would like to share, or even a question or topic that you would like for my co host and I to chat about in the course of the next hour, that's a perfect
place to put it. Because we are open mic, open lines, open chat room, and of course open phones, and if you would like to, you can look up at the top of the show page that has our studio number, and you're even free to call in because we will be keeping an eye on that. Besides that, we're going to take charge and have our little melee format and just bounce all over the place as we deem fit and my co host is tanned, rested, and ready after traveling the Eastern
Seaboard. Good afternoon, Mark, Great to talk to you. Hey, sl good to talk to you. We got a rainy day here in North Carolina, and driving an the rain is always fun and delightful. Well, hopefully this would be a more relaxing the experience than driving in the rain. Yeah, down down in the Free State of Florida. We just had a plain, old beautiful day, bright, bright blue skies, about seventy degrees. Can't complain about it at all, um, and life was good in
springtime. We've got no reason to complain. We during the pre show for our friends and out in California, be careful what you ask for. You were in some participation, you got it. We were chatting a little bit about the Tahoe area, where we both spent a little bit of time. And when you when you measure, you're still in meters are yards. That's usually not a good thing. But I think the droughts done for our friends
in California. Yeah, when I was a kid, we lived in in the Central Valley at Castle Air Force Base and we used to drive around and you know, the flood flooding wasn't that uncommon back in those days. And we probably need the word droughts. But yeah, when they talk about dams bursting, and uh, what counties anyone one of the count of my Monterey area, and people haven't evacuated houses, you know, so they got they
got water, they got tons of snow. Hopefully this will recharge boast of if they've if they've kept any reservoirs, this will recharge the reservoirs they need to keep going forward and allow us to have delightful things like California almonds and all that good stuff. It's an opportunity to excel for their hum state officials and their politicians and everything else. And um, I guess that's a strange lead in, but not really. Um. Again, during the pre show
for our listeners, we have one of our melee formats. We both throw our cards on the ground and see if they overlap where we wanted to talk about today, and we kind of wandered in to a topic that's kind of fundamental. If you're in the national security arena, whether you're wearing a uniform or you're on the civilian side, because it's something that we either execute or
we experience or both on an almost daily basis. And I think it applies not just to the military or government service, but absolutely applies in the civilian sector and in a way even in your own family. And they're often used interchangeably, or you will see where one is best used the other one is, and that is management during leadership. I remember as a jo for those
that are going to have an eye twitch what I mentioned it. Remember the mid nineties, everybody got decided that they wanted to get with Demming and his total quality management. Of course, the didn't want to use management in the military, so they just changed the word total quality leadership. That you oppose one of the reasons why it didn't last very long. But that argument's been going on for a long time as far as their characteristics and their utility and
win their most appropriate and um, you know, leadership versus management. Um, what do you think mark is? Are they? Are they both useful? And in the military context, should you have one and more than the other? Um? Where do people get them confused? I mean when I when I throw that out there, what's something that comes to mind. Yeah, they're they're both essential and they're and they are they are tied together if
you have a good organization. And let me let me preface it by saying, I used to teach these leadership and management seminar back in the dark ages. Um So, I mean one of the things I always am impressed with is when you go to an organization and they have and this is we used to write these. Remember the days we used to write mission statements, and you had you were supposed to get a clear idea of what your primary the job of your company was, what you were trying to do with whatever organization
you had. And then you would have you have mission, and you'd have a vision statement which is supposed to tell you how we're going to get there. And then you had this had the what I consider the other part where the values. So and every time I saw an organization that had problems, it seemed to me they would sometimes get their values mixed up with what their
primary mission was. So if your primary mission, let's take the United States and NABY primary mission is to provide the naval component for national defense, and your your mission is to make sure you have the assets and the equipment, and you made the argument and you've gotten the people and you were leading them so that they understand their job is as we as we start every day. Your job that day is to make sure that we're ready to go to war
and you will protect the United States and its constitution and its people. Okay, so you know, I mean that's my mission statement for the Navy. Maybe maybe the Navy has another mission statement. But then you tie into that, you know, vision how we're going to get there, Yeah, yeah, And then you tie it that that your values and your values are we're gonna you know, that's where you get to the we're going to treat people and in such and such a way, we're going to treat people equally.
We're going to treat people, uh fairly, We're gonna we're gonna make sure that our people have the tools they need to do the job. And where you get into the DEMI side of it, because TQM really involves getting part of the DEMI missionists make sure your workers have the tools they needed to do as a job right and and so you know, you want to make sure you have the best equipment that the that the people know how to you, and that it fulfills the functions you see when you come up with your mission
of defending the country. So I think they're tied very closely together. The leadership involves making sure you have your vision, your your mission clearly stated, and you don't mix up the the vision and the and the U values to the extent that they you let them override your primary mission. So sometimes you're going to say, I can't take care of my people because the mission is such that I've got to We're gonna have to make some sacrifices that we're gonna
have to send people in harms away. And if you ever have seen the John Wayne movie and uh they were expendable. You've got these pt boats and and they literally were uh expendable. They were they were there too. They were not capable of surviving. Well, that you know that is if your if your value is I can't let any of my people die, you've got a problem. If your mission is sometimes you have to send your essuch, you have to sometimes send your people into harm's way. That makes sense,
it does. But there's a reason why people can spend almost an entire semester studying this. I've always find that a lot of the conflict comes from it's in the same neighborhood as making sure you know the difference between what is legal,
what is ethical, and one is moral. And you have a mission and the old phrase that sometimes is used incorrectly, but that's not who we are or the American way of doing things is if you have a mission, and inside every mission, do you have restraints and constraints, constraints or things externally that can prevent you from doing things like the polar ice cap will stop your hydropol of working. You know, that's that's that's a constraint. Restraint
is something that you impose yourself on what you're going to do. And I think you can make a condition a conditional relationship, if not a direct one, betraying restraints and values how they inform each other. There's values, of course, can be subjective, but sometimes they are codified into rules of engagement, our national caveats what you will or will not do. But your values
can restrain your mission. I remember a conversation we had back in the late double Zeros with a guy who officially defined himself as a retired Ukrainian major general. He really was a retired Soviet major general. He was the J two in Afghanistan in the middle late nineteen eighties, and overall the NATO's side of
the house, we were telling them what we were planning to do. This is right before mccarnan took over, and he made a comment roughly yet, this is very similar to what we did, except we would have done other things to try to were I think we were talking about the Ring Road. They said, yeah, we would pretty much. We would mind these valleys and then we would bomb the villages on the mountain side. And that caused a few people to laugh, some people to just stare into the distance.
But that's a value system that restrained the mission that we are trying to accomplish. Because the Soviets had a different set of values and NATO had a distinctly different set of values. They both ultimately resulted in defeat for both powers. But I think that's one way to look at values and how that can influence
your mission as part of your constraints. And of course that can change really fast when there is a change in leadership, where you can get a different set of commander's intent or a different direction and guidance and sometimes those can be mechanical economic logistics, but sometimes they're based on values. We will no longer do this, we will do that. It's in many ways it's it's inside our control. And I think we saw in people rightfully are still discussing this.
Is it used to be that America pride itself, that least not officially to do what some people would define as torture. And I remember before nine to eleven there was actually some great discussions, one of which was about the World War Two. German Luftwaffe's best interrogator never laid a hand on anybody and got the most information out of the American and British aviators. That external things can change a value system such that it can change how you restrain how you're
going to try to conduct a mission. If your Intel Forces mission is to find out where senior leaders are, the values are going to restrain what they are allowed to do or not to do. And external stressors can cause people and organizations to rather rapidly change their value system such that a few years earlier, if you had said that down in Guantanamo Bay would be policy to water board and do a variety of things to people we had captured, people wouldn't
think it had been as easy as it actually turned out to be. And I think it's a hard topic because then you go is that good or bad? What depends upon your point of view, your system of morality. And then as you go up to change is an ethical issue i e. You are breaking regulations or is a legal issue? Where he's now a professor at UC Berkeley Law, I believe Yao or Yo I forget his name, he was the guy who changed, found a way to change what was allowed or
not allowed in Guantanamo. I think that whole, that whole spectrum and how it informs both directions is a fascinating and ongoing topic. And you can even it internal to an organization, I know and Afghanistan or any type of coalition
evolution. If you have a certain mission come up, you have some nations that can come with you, and some people say I'm sorry, I can't simply because their nation won't allow you to the argument about what was considered counter terrorism versus other missions was always a big argument, and it had to do with that spectrum from legal to ethical to moral values. I can't really it
might come to my mind in a second. But we almost need doctor Kerr and Shanks get Paula in here to talk about what's the difference between values and morality, because I believe there is a different definitional issue. But how that practically execute itself. I think it's a little harder to define. Yeah,
I think that's a real challenge. I mean, you look back at the you know, there's a there's a national morality, so that when the stories break about my lie say or um, which was the attack on a village in Vietnam where uh, Lieutenant Kelly let his platoon or a company wherever he had go crazy and they killed a bunch of people that should have killed stopped by a by the way as much as possible by a warrant officer who landed
his helicopter and h told him to stop. He finally, by the way, I got recognized for his h his actions for that, and uh you know, awarded some some metal for that. But that was national that it was a national value that was broken by by this this group in Vietnam. And the other one was the treement of the prisoners at at the Abu Grab
prison. You know, that is again a national morality and This is when the newspapers and the news services do a service for us as they raise these things, say this is this is something you know that your your people did. Are you happy with this? And you know obviously uh no, nobody was telling these people to do the stuff they did. They just they did it and it was wrong by the standards of the nation. Now has has you know, the more complicated issue, I'm sure we really do need to
get a professor on to discuss. This is when you when your morality changes. When when when groups of people um can can justify actions burning down police stations on the basis that to them, immoral things happen in those stations and therefore they have the right to take action against it. You know what,
what lines are you drawing? But I think you know that we can get down with the weeds on this and probably shouldn't because my point was really that, you know the focus of an organization like the Navy, and the Navy says our mission is to recruit, train, equipment, organized over combat, reading and evil forces to win conflicts and ors while managed to security, deterrence, the sustained forward presence. That's fine, that's a mission and our values
are honor, courage, and commitment. You know, uh, those are great, But what are you doing if your values are those you know, what are you doing about the issue of somebody that a seal chief petty officers say, who who does something that in many people's eyes is horrendous or you know, or you're not treating all your all your people equally. You know,
what are we what are we doing with those values? But can we let those discussions and those problems bubble up to the point where they begin to dominate and control roll the leadership that should be devoting itself to the fulfilling its main mission, which is uh national security and and having ready naval forces.
And I think that's the that's where we see the rubs sometimes when when people on blog no one shall be named, of course, who point out that, you know, we're letting our ships rust Well, now we see the navy leadership saying we don't want rusty ships, right, So so that has an effect. Somebody has said, yeah, that's a good point, and it's my job as a leader to make sure that our people have the tools
and the time and the equipment they need to help straighten that out. That I mean that isn't that what we want from our from our leaders and our managers. You know, the management side of it is all that tools and equipment and and and time for your people to fix that problem. So I think they're as we were discussing before. I think they're they're very closely related. And the the moral issues are also and value issues are also tied in
there. The question is how we bounced those things back and forth and which which value becomes a priority over other value and how going to and share something that we did in the pre show because I think he made a really good point about it. Is when I was looking at the maritime side of the house, is we're trying to look at management versus leadership. I think good
people can can argue the specifics of what he's doing. However, General Burger, the coming out of the Marine Corps in the last especially eighteen months, I think the time fly that might have been longer in pursuit of his EA
BO concept. He's been out there within his restraints and constraints and his job responsibilities to move the conversation, move policies, move equipment training towards what he thinks the Marine Corps should focus on to accomplish the mission in westpac you know, driving that conversation, making it very clear what your priorities are and what you want to focus on. I think that at the highest level, if you have good people, you tell them what your intent is and where you
want to be and will help get you there. But I thought he's done a real good job at that, Whereas I mentioned that a lot of what we see from the Chief Naval Operations, Admiral Guilday, I think is more along the management side of the house. And you made a very good point that and I don't have a really good grasp of how this goes in the Army and the Air Force. One church very somewhere that you know General Burger being embedded inside the Navy umbrella, he's got a little more time to invest
in what he's doing. Whereas as Cno that trained man and equipped for the entire US Navy, and I believe we have this number right. If not, we got we got John Conrad over in the in the chat room. We are blessed to have him joined with the usual suspects. You may correct us the wrong, but I think it was op NAV when you include all
their shipyards has eighty thousand employees. There's a lot of management that has to do to lead an organization like that, So perhaps inside of his roles and responsibilities in that position, that is what you want him to be, more of a manager than a leader. Of course, that begs the question who's going to do the Burger version on the Navy side of the house. Maybe that's a institutional design challenge, and other cnos perhaps have done the mix differently,
for better or worse. It also depends upon what you allocate to your subordinates. But I think if you look at Guilda's background, and this isn't a negative thing because everybody has your strengths and weaknesses, I think he comes from more of the managerial vice a leadership background, So I think maybe he's
playing to his strengths in that regard. But I think when you get up really really high up like that, depending upon the mix of people that you have working for you, you can delegate certain areas too, and what your specialty is that perhaps it's okay to be at a variety of different points along that leadership to management spectrum. Yeah, I mean, you know, Eisenhower as a manager, a lot of people think and you know it was. Was he a combat leader? I don't. I don't think so. But
he certainly managed a coalition that he needed to manage. And I have great feral guilde. You know, if you look at the structure of the Navy, he's got all these semi autonomous groups working that are there, that are you know, so you've got NAVC I think as a group that has an
eighty thousand civilian employees. Um, you know you've got you've got your submarine community, You've got your aviation community, got the surface community, You've got the Special Operations Forces, you've got uh you've got you know, the supply corps, you've got gental, you know everything that the whole the whole range of stuff that that would seemingly be under his umbrella. And and who's coordinating.
Somebody's got to coordinate all these leads because you know that the sub folks are going, well, we're the most important force, and you know the the aviation guys, we're the most important for us. And you know it is it is the Department of Defense writ a little smaller in the Department of the Navy. And uh to I think you really do need to have both
leadership and management skills to to kind of get this to work. And uh, you know that the question is who um you know, if you're looking at it from from where we want to be and and you know, every now and then we see like I think they just called a halt to building the some of the m FIBs for a while. Uh, you know, what are we doing? Somebody has to ask that question, what are we doing? And how does this? How is this affecting our mission? I
think that happens, and that is a leadership job. Uh you know, where are we on? And here's where you get to the leadersion. Where are we on the on meeting our goals? And can I get all can all of you competing entities inside the house? Uh agree that we need to really have a discussion about which is the most you know, one of the most vital things we need right now to when the when the American public calls on us to do our job, that we don't go oh uh ge uh.
You know, only a third of our m FIBs are ready to sail. So you know who's whose Whose problem is that? Is that surface? Guys? Is that the NAFC, folks, is it is it? You know, where does that come from? And how do we fix this?
So when they went to the aviation guys, and because the F eighteens weren't operating at very high level, you know, that was a major effort and kind of embarrasses they had to put all that work into getting a the F eighteen community so that it was what I think capable for other than wherever the loan number was before that. John Conrad gave us the facts here. It's
like Nasty is eighty six thousand, Navre is forty thousand submariners. I'm sure they have quite a bit interesting data point though US Coastguard writ large just forty thousand. It's the Navy is an absolute, huge, huge organization. And yeah, speaking of the you know on the submarine side of the house, kind of switching gears for a little bit. Um. I guess some of the big news in the last week is everybody's anticipating. I assume the Australian
Prime Minister is coming to San Diego as well. I don't know, I didn't see that in the articles I read, but I know the British Prime Minister is going to San Diego to meet with President Biden about the Aucus submarine announcement. And from what we've heard initially, and this is the argument that I've made before that I don't see why other people made because I'm wrong that
other people haven't really seen this. But the initial plan that's leaked so far is that Australia, in order to get them up on step faster, they'll get five US Virginia class submarines, and while they have our work on a modified version of the British Stute class submarine as a sin are, I think is what they're talking about. Both of the concerns go back to something we've talked about quite a bit here and has to do with our incredibly fragile,
thin and underresourced industrial sector for submarines. And the pushback for a lot of people who don't like it is they don't want to see what few US submarines we have because we just can't put the switch and build another one for him. So it logically is going to come out of US production lines. That they don't like that because that stops US from building our submarine fleet faster. I don't that makes sense. I think if you don't look beyond a very
blinkered left and right. In the larger sense, when you look at any major conflict of last century, plus the UK and have fought with us, and if anything happens in the West Pack, probably the only European nation that will help us in any regard will be the British. The French might help a little bit on the periphery to protect their self interest in their economic zones of influence and southern and southeastern Pacific, but I don't think we can rely
on them. And as a result, those five Virginias they may be flying a different flag, but they'll be in the fight the same way the US are. And there's a greater gain to be had by helping make Australia, which is not a large nation. It's roughly the size of the Netherlands and Belgium the Benelux if you made a nation out of them, they're a medium power at best, but they've got a huge continent, huge resources. You can't beat their geography, and more importantly, when you include the UK,
that's three of the five eyes. New Zealand and Canada will be a rounding error any Pacific war. So anything we can do to make Australia and the UK closer to us. That's as important to Japan Philippines. I would I would love to see if doing more stuff with Indonesia. And as a side issue, having had dinners for months on end with Australians and couple, they
have a very interesting relationship with Malaysia, which is no small creature. They both also have even you could argue, if not more, at least equal to influence in Singapore. So there's just a lot of game there that I think, if nothing else, if people want to go into by warble because they're missing five submarine command slot because we can't build faster, well maybe that's a great opportunity to make a larger discussion about our industrial base when it comes
to nuclear power. Yeah, and you know we're talking about leadership. I will commend the the the Biden administration, UH, and the and the Navy for getting getting this thing, rolling this this this UH. This is good leadership. This is what we want. If you're going to lead the free world and in a China, then by golly got to lead it. And the way you lead it is by saying we're willing to share our toys so that so that the correct the sea lanes will remain open. And those are
sea lanes benefit everyone. And by the way, China, including your dirt bags, you ungrateful dirtbag. So this is this is this is this is great. This is leadership and and you know, I think we this is one of those cases of situations where the faster the better. Uh. You know, I've suggested at one point that we take a couple of hubs and and uh let's you know, let's drag them on down there went and but yeah, they're still active. We don't. You know, it's not a
it is not a it's a net loss to US Navy. It's not a net loss to the Allied to the Allied course that we need and we need, you know, we need to think a little bigger in this case, because the area we're talking about out there in the in the far reaches of the Pacific from Washington, DC, that it's like a zillion miles and might
as well be on the moon. But uh, you know, that's a that's a huge area, and we need all the friends there we can get, and we need all the equipment out there we can get you over the comments section, Uh, Peter k my favorite uh New York Greek American whose last name I can never pronounity allowed to keep me again. He brought up a good point that what I mentioned was really phase two and phase three of
the operation. Phase one we believe UM is going to be US Virginia class submarines basing out of Australia in some capacity here or not, which opens the door to in the smart world mixed cruise. So as the Australians wait for their own, they already are building up a cadre of officer and enlisted experience in the Virginia class. And boy, you talk, you talk about easy billets to fill. Okay, who was to get its the PCs get overseas
credit for Australia. You'll have no problem filling those billets. You'll be able to do be very competitive. So I'm a little envious of our of our submarine sailors who might have an opportunity tocation in Australia. There are worse places to be UM. But that that again makes said. And I like how you tied it into leadership, because there's personal leadership and there's national leadership, and UM, I think for those that are moving this in the direction it
is. We've both individually on mid Rats, we've been critical of decisions that have been made in a variety of areas, but I agree with you in this particular case. And there's always room to screw it up. But this is turning into a really good news story about UM national leadership with friends and partners doing something where the collective effort is going to be much greater than some
of its individual parts. Yes, I know the French are a little grumpy about it, but if I was an Australian, I would have a lot more confidence in being able to get to a statisfactory conclusion with the with the British and Americans, and I would the French, just not just for economic size, but also for cultural reasons and historical reasons. It's it's we'll see how it plays out. But so far, bravo Zulu to the folks that are moving the ball down the road here. So far it's looking really good.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's excellent. I think also the you know, I keep thinking we're we are embrace it with Japan, and you know they have these excellent uh they have an excellent submarine force themselves. And they're not nukes, but they're there. They are excellent boats. And uh, you know, I think it's my my suggestion for helping for them, helping us is to buy some of their flying boats, which we could
could really and we've already discussed that on other occasions. But you know, let's let's really be partners and and uh and and let's do this right, so, uh, partner. Certain part of leaderships. Part of leadership is mutual respect. Um, you have to respect your your friends, your allies, your partners, your subordinates, those that are weaker than you as much as stronger than you. And I, like I said, we've gone down this rabbit hole again. But it did, it did trigger me. But
I think it goes back to our discussion we started with about leadership. Is sometimes you the deal breaker to do something or not do something, or something that moves it from a forty percent yes to fifty one percent yes. Is to step back and go this is an opportunity to demonstrate and to help build
the bonds that connect us. Um, it's a little bit of respect, it's a little bit of acknowledgement, and goodness knows, the US Navy and our friends on the Coast Guard really could use that capability, especially in the Western Pacific. And I feel shocked at naw there. I guess if it doesn't have an afterburner, they're not going to advocate for it. But if anybody's seen how many sharks there are in the Western Pacific, you don't want
to float around and there for days on enduntil you die a thirst. You want you want something to can come pick you up out of range of helicopters and ships. But that would be a great sign of respect and acknowledgement of the fact they do buy a lot of American kit If we got a few dozen of those assets that should the balloon go up, they will not be under employed. Yeah. And speaking of respect, I think it's the other the other group that we have not always treated well but which we really need
to embraces, the Philippines. And uh, I mean we've we've had a long relationship with them. It hasn't always been uh as friendly as we would
like. We left under kind of a cloud. But but you know we need as as John Conrad has pointed out, and good for you, John, U. The Philippine Marriors comprise a huge percentage of civilian marrors around the world, and they're they're really good at what they do, and we need to to help the Philippines allow us to help those marriners and uh and and work with them to to to make sure that our country understands how important those
marriers are to us and why we really need to embrace the our relationshship with the Philippines as as fermonial as we can. Yeah, they're they're great. I mean, there's there's been, you know, political issues that have made things a little rough on a nation and nation basis on occasion, depending upon the personality and the winds. But as an individual and as a people, the Filipinos are just such great mariners. They're great sailors, and they're great
Americans. There's a huge Filipino American community here in town. It's such a national partnership that really did it didn't die on the vine, but it really faded. And I don't know where you could draw the line at, but I know your generation who were Jo's at the tail end of the Vietnam War. I mean, you remember what a huge presence Filipino Americans and Philippine nationals
had and especially in the US Navy and on naval bases. And I saw the tail end of that when I was a JO in the nineteen nineties. UM it's not as much of a presence, especially once our younger sailors now that at once did. It would be really interesting to see if we can rekindle that partnership that we would You're not going to see you recruiting stations propping up again, but especially if we were able to find a way to better
integrate their civilian mariners, that that partnership could be rekindled. But they definitely UM as a nationality and ethnicity, however you want to look at it, they did used to be a much larger presence in our navy. They still are because you look at multigenerational service in the Navy, that definitely is in UM in that community. Yeah, and I'll tell you the shipyard in Civic
Bay was a fantastic facility. I mean, you could get stuff done there and and and that would be hard to have got done it and any shipyard in the world. This guys were, I mean just great workers, highly skilled at what they did. And I've always wondered why when we forced to
close down that shipyard. We didn't try and export as many of those invite as many of those workers as we could to some of the other shipyards because we were they were they were just extraordinarily So you know, like when it was the Midway got run into by a freighter and had a bunch of damage to it like an elevator, and uh, I think it's whole port side got tamed pretty well. You know, they took it back into Subic and within a few weeks they had that ship back on the line. So uh,
it's just it's just that that was a great loss. We lost Pacific Bay, uh Naval Shipyard and the other facilities there. And uh, I would hope that won't we won't let that opportunity. If we get a chance to have a great relationship with us with the Philippines again, that would be wonderful. But you know a lot of something, sir, go ahead, go ahead, please, I was I was going to shift. You know, we were talking about headlines to that that so much of our our leadership
is driven by by things that appear in the paper. And you're you're pointing out that that when you when you look at at some of the other, uh, other countries press that they have a whole different way of looking at the world than than than our media does. So why don't you talk about that little bit? Because I thought it was it was interesting we're talking about earlier. Sure, I mean I I may pay a subscriber to the Washington Post, um, mostly because this opposition of research for me. Uh,
there there's a there's a certain reality. Um, Washington Post and the New York Times are a huge influence in our national conversation. UM, lesser extent to Wall Street Journal. You don't have to like it, you just have to recognize it. So if you want to know what a lot of decision makers and policymakers are looking at, you've you've got to read two out of the three of those organizations newspapers, New York Times, Washington Posts, and
Wall Street Journals. UM. Just to placate myself, I my sacrifice to all is I do not pay for New York Times, but I do pay for full access to Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. And uh yeah, because I want to know what people are that are making these decisions are are reading. And when you look at the Washington Post, you pull it up, they're talking about Silicon Valley Bank because a certain socioeconomic group all their friends
are get it. There's there's an interesting discussion about Arctic protections of an oil project, not really military. Um they want to talk about how important callous areas. Give me a break murder. In the final four there's a little bit of discussion about the nuclear sub deal with with Australia, mostly about Admiral Richardson being paid, which, by the way, if I was Australia, I pay him too. That's just because he's a cno. But he's a
nuke. If you've got to get a program up and running, talk to somebody who's running. He's a reactors guy. I have no problem with him. I don't think it's cash out. And of course the usual stuff talking about pop culture. Now when you go over to France twenty four they're English side of the house, you get a very different equation dominating not just above the fold. That uses up fourth fists of the page is about the Chmut
offensive in Ukraine. It talks about Italy season, migrants in the Mediterranean, and if you do look at the Washington Post, there is a small article about people die in at sea trying to get to San Diego by sea. And of course if you go over to the BBC every day there's an article about their lack of enforcement of the channel. Something we could do an entire show just on that, which I think we have in the past. But it talks about Israel, it talks about a little bit of the problem with
the snow in California. But there's three articles on China, there's more about Ukraine. This it's just a much more of an international focus. Now. The argument could be will Francis on the continent exist and so forth? In twenty twenty three, the Atlantic is a ditch the way time travels and aircraft travels. You know, heck, if you if you follow on Twitter live tracker, we had a B fifty two today. It flew from the US, entered the Baltic Sea, went right up to Russian airspace. Kind of
funny. Somebody made the comment about they they blew their exhausted into Russian airspace, which it was pretty tight, and then it flew over the Baltic Republics, went down the Soilhoste Gap and then proceeded onto the Balkans. There's a lot of there's no reason why what I derisively called the Imperial Capitals newspaper record should should so ill inform people about the world. When a medium power like France, you go look at their website and it's much more international focused.
It's the Washington Post is one of the first places to complain. You know. They do these like National Geographic in nineteen fifty five going into the Amazon to look at tribes and occasionally send a report order to West Virginia or Alabama to go look at their nation. They like to talk about the ignorance of the American people and how shortsighted we are. Well, they need to heal
myself. If we have a lot of people in their primary readership, who if they rely on the Washington Times, not the Washington Time, have Fortia slip Washington Post to inform the world form, Yeah, they're going to be ignorant. It's just it's very frustrating to me the difference that the newspaper record in our capital is versus other peoples whose nations arguably don't have but a fraction of the international influence ours do. And ignorant populace, ignorant decision makers and
ignorance and lawmakers does not make for a good policy. So yeah, I kind of live on a little bit of a rant there. How do you fix it? I don't know. I'm not in the media business. Yeah, but you know how to fix it? I mean, bezos, he owns the Washington Post and his leadership should be you know, to if he
wants to influence public opinion. Let's just let's assume that that. Let's go back to the you know, the the purposes of papers as they used to as they used to work before they became you know, one paper per town.
There used to be a lots of papers. Uh. You know, he wants to influence public opinion, Well, he were good and influence being public opinion if he would help educate the public about the issues that are you know why the issues are so so important now he you know, people say, well, nobody pays attention to you know, people do pay attention to what is presented to him if it's presented to him an interesting way. So if if the issues of that the the national issues of what happens when you
drain the petroleum strategic patroleum reserve? What does that do to uh A our strategic position in the world. You know, those types of issues that need to be explored in depth. I don't see that kind of coverage except it seems to me on somebody's sub stack post or on the occasional blog. I don't know where those stories go if they're if they're not being covered in in
what should be our national media. As you say, and you know, they Washing Post and the New York Times pride themselves on their leadership, but their issues are all um are not necessarily in tune with the people who would who would read them if they were actually interested, instead of presenting some some
what is the word insular view of of of what is important. So you know, I appreciate there are people who have a lot of different opinions about transgenderism, but I don't think that in the great scheme of things, it's important. But it's you know, it's not as vital as gosh, as our navy Air Force big enough? Are they big enough to deal with this? Uh? This a threat from China? And can you present that realistically? So so folks on both sides could argue the issue, you know,
you know, I don't want the paper to represent only my view. I want the issues to be brought out so that we can have a public debate about this stuff instead of well, you know, I read in the Washington Post, so that's all I have to know where I heard it on NPR. That's all I have to know. Are you know the whole function of our society, the whole way we set up our setate no House, was to allow debate and have these national issues raised. And they're not helped by
by these at myopic media pieces. In a classic example of that, I'll just beat up on the Washington Post because we all need hobbies. But anybody can do that. They can go over I don't know if you have to be a paid subscriber to do this or not, but if you do, just you just go over there and hit their search button. And a lot of them we talked today about China. We haven't used the T word,
not trans Taiwan. Ultimately, it's all about Taiwan. So you know, go ahead and he searched Taiwan and one, two, three, four or five six things come up on my iPad when you do that. Of over the last six days, so basic average, one one a day, one a day. Something about Taiwan leaks on to the Washington Post. Of those, two of them actually tie into a conversation we had last week. Washington Post listens to mid Rats. I guess it talks about the outer islands on
Taiwan. Somebody cut their cables so they didn't have internet. So a couple of islands off Taiwan had their cables cut under the water and they lost their internet. So mark one up for mid Rats, you know. I although if we should take credit of it four, but why not. Besides that, there's an article which I okay, good on them from a couple of days ago about speaker McCarthy not going to visit Taiwan but instead we'll meet him in California. Taiwan is one of four things mentioned at a hearing up the
Hill, and the other two are about baseball. It we talked about the Philippines before and talk about back to the future. A guy I served with who was a year group ahead of mean great individual. His father. I think I'm getting this right. His father was in the US Air Force, met his wife when he was stationed in the had to be early early sixties
in Taiwan. His mom was originally from Taiwan, and there used to be quite the military president in Taiwan, and that's, you know, something that I don't know who's going to break the seal on that where more and more Americans go there to exercise, maybe to be stationed at some point. There was a survey that's been going on in Taiwan. The graph that I saw went back to nineteen ninety four and it talks about independence, and it's a
pretty pretty interesting one where they say, do you want independence now? Do you want to maintain the status quo work towards independence? Do you want to join with China now? Do you want to maintain the status quo and then eventually join China or do you just want to maintain the status quo? And they got a couple of other things on it, and it's interesting how it has tracked the national mood in Taiwan. And when you look at unification with
mainland China either immediately are eventually with a status quo. Since nineteen ninety four, those two combined have gone from twenty percent down to six percent. And inversely, those that say I want independence now or I want to maintain the status quo but work towards independence has gone from ten to thirty percent. The status quo hasn't changed that much. From forty eight percent to fifty seven percent want the status quo, and to consider, the status quo is pretty much
independent of mainland China. So that's eighty seven percent of the Taiwanese don't want to have anything to do with China. So does that change? It takes two to tango. But if this whole thing revolves around keeping the People's Republic of China but from having ownership and the largest aircraft carrier athwart Japan's sea lines of communication, then when do we take the next step in our partnership? And should we take that next step of the partnership. I think that's an
open question. I can argue both sides. But when you're looking, just like we had to wait politically for the environment to be right in the Philippines for us to move closer to each other, hopefully this time with a more respect respectful and equitable relationship, when will that card in Taiwan be pulled? Because the Taiwanese are in a way very similar to the Singaporees um. They are their own distinct culture, but they're Western adjacent just like the Japanese or
Western adjacent UM they're turnkey and being able to work closely together. I guess the argument is is is the risk worth the reward or the other way around. That's a I mean, it's a it's a complicated issue that again, you know, we we there may be discussions being held in the in the halls of Congress and it's maybe them we're been closed session or whatever. But you know, with somebody has got to step up and and and and lead
instead of the we've got. We've given so many mixed messages just I can just think in the last few months, I mean, the messages of of the Speaker of the House going to visit, the messages of oh yeah, well world defend them. Oh way, I didn't you know the President mistated when he said that. I mean, uh, there is a there is a certain um quality, I guess of keeping an ambivalent policy if you can.
But I'm not sure that that. Sometimes you just have to say, yeah, we're you know, we're gonna we'll do what we have to do. And uh so you just you just you don't don't do anything silly. China so well, they had a wonderful, free and fair election. So Chairman g I always told I mispronounced that he's been reelected with was it one hundred percent or ninety eight point seven percent? I don't know what it is,
but it's it's a miracle. He and Putin need to get together as the only massively re elected to politicians in the face of the planet, one of the Kim except for the Kim current Kim and Korea North Korea Today's present quick not again. Maybe it's just me. I don't know, but one of the least persuasive pushbacks I've heard about US support for Ukraine has been that it's driving Russia and China closer together. I'm sorry, they're already in bed
with each other. I mean, dragon bear is not a new concept there, you know, b r C the countries Russia and China is in there. India doesn't much like them, and Brazil is the nation of the future, has been and always will be. But isn't of course, China and Russia are going to be closer together. They're international pariahs, and I mean does China besides maybe Near and mar which I still prefer to call Burma, but I've been informed I'm not allowed to do that. Maybe as a friend
or OHI maybe Cambodia. I don't know. But China doesn't have any friends because she's not very friendly. Again, it goes back to that mutual respect thing that comes with the leadership in the international community that they're not too good at. At the Munich Conference, supposedly, I only saw two articles about it. But the Chinese did not make friends at the Munich Security Conference. But I don't think they feel like they need to make friends, um,
which which is unfortunate, but that's okay. It plays to our advantage. But yeah, I'm not I'm not too worried about any type of Chinese Russian partnership. It's already there. Yeah, I agree, And you know, China, the only the only difficulty I see is a China Russian I have to decide who is the center of the universe and and who should be countowing to whom so um, you know, China. China's view of the world is is is thousands of years old, and regardless of whether they call themselves
a communist country or whatever you know, it is it is. We are the we are the Middle Kingdom. Everybody owes us some kind of obessience. That's the right word. Anyway, uh, whatever the right word is. They want they want to the old ways back. And we have run on our mouth for another whole hour. My gosh, amazing how that works. We had a we had a real active chat room because I don't like to read the chat room while I talk because I already have a hard enough time
speaking English as it is. So we had a real active chat room today. So that was great. I appreciate all of y'all. Way and end, it did steal a couple of your ideas. And it has been another quick hour, and I guess we'll let everybody get on with your day. Yeah. I apologize for those of you who are headed to the selection show for the NCAAF ncable a March Madness stuff, because I know you've started six man. After all, the high prior won't be nothing to be known until
six thirty. But I don't have a For some reason, that chat does not work for me. I'm gonna have to to look into why that's not working. So I apologize for not being in there because I usually get a lot of greats from the people who do show up. So anyway, everybody gonna have a great day. We're gonna we're gonna have a guest again. One we do. We have a couple of guests lined up that have had to shift to the right for reasons that you'll find out when we when we
have them as our guests. And unfortunately, and this will be a topic we'll do an other time the well, I'm not going to say that. Um, it can be a challenge for some individuals to be able to come on and speak and talk about even relatively benign topics because there is there are
some restraints to constraints. So I'd go out there for those that are in positions of leadership and management, my two cents is one of the best ways you can show respect and you can show trust and confidence in your junior personnel, especially in the NaSTA security space. Let them get out there and write, let them get out there and speak, let them come out and be part of the discourse. Well, whatever fear you have, it's it's unfounded.
We have great individuals with great ideas that really can contribute to the conversation that aren't in a place to do that. We've talked about this for over a decade here on mid Rats, but just an opportunity to remind because from what I've seen incidentally, that aperture are starting to tighten again where they don't want people to get out there. And there's just a few people who are
in different areas that have a leadership to understand that. So if you're on the fence with somebody, trust your subordinates to go out there and be a conversation. Nine percent chance they're going to make you proud, and they're going to make our services look great because when they get out there and speak on topics, are right on topics, the American public will feel better about the people who they trusted their securities. And that's my soapbox. And until next
time, I hope everybody has a great Navy day. I will see you soon. Cheers Mamma money, having Patty a king like my lonely want to marry me and not believed that all your being to blame my love family to old messy faulting your the team. It's a long way. It's a long way. It's a long way to I don't by godly well, let's talk. Well, it's a long long way to get my Ron. It's but my heart