Episode 730: Mid-August Melee

a guest. It's just Mark and myself. We have our list of things that we want to chat about today

in the maritime and National security arena. But as always we're interested in what you're thinking as well, So if you're with us live, go ahead and roll into the chat room and you can just share some observations if you'd like, or if there's a topic or subject that you would like for us to talk about in the course of the next hour, you can put it in there, and if we don't already have it on our list, we will do our best to incorporate it into the

conversation as it goes forward. And if this is the first time you listen to mid or at you're just one of those people that hop in now and then when you catch us live. If you don't already, go ahead and head over to iTunes, Spotify, spreaker, wherever you aggregate your podcast. Look us up. We're there and you can go ahead and subscribe to us that way. If you can't join us with join us live, then you

can listen to us when you have an opportunity. So with all that out of the way, Hey, Mark, Happy Sunday to.

where it was last week, because our after show we talked for ten or fifteen minutes. That's one thing that even during the doldrums of summer, there's there's all there's always something going on that we can chat about.

he did that. But you know, we've got to stop this nonsense of going after people because they you don't you know, they do something you don't agree with, and that does not make them a bad person, unpatriotic, and particularly when you're talking about a guy who was in this case was a French citizen who decided to become an American and goes to war on behalf of this country, UH, saves a bunch of people, UH and get seriously injured, UH taking on a guy wearing a suicide vest and

is awarded the Medal of Honor and and and it's well earned. You know that is that is the kind of discussion and attack on people that that we don't need this country. We we know we can, we can assume, we used to be able to assume at a certain point that people of good faith could have different views on things and we could talk about it. And to to just suddenly throughout this smear especially against uh someone in that in that who's earned the nation's highest medal

UH for combat operations. I I I just it's unfathomably what what what's the word I'm gonna use tacky, tasteless, unfair, and and ridiculous. So I just thought we got to kind of throw that out. As you know, let's let's keep in mind that that there are people on both sides. We have different opinions, and that's what makes the country great.

We can, we should be able to talk about that rather than in declaring that you I don't agree with you, therefore your evil and we're going to get you banned from from things for the rest of your life.

and they can vary very differently from you. But I think you're you're spawn on there is common ground where people who serve this nation. They may disagree with you on architecture, they may disagree with you on tax policy. Our various social issues, or they just might be from a part of the country that one political party or another just makes more sense for him. That's okay. We should be able to meet in the middle on fifty one percent of the items. And at the end of

the day, we're all Americans. We can have a beer together, our kids can marry each other, and we can share our trench together. And I know the individually talking about I'm not going to say the individual's name. I think they thrive off the oxygen of the attention. But you have we run into this on a regular basis where one side of the political spectrum or the other will go after somebody for having impure thoughts from their perspective

and will detegrate their service to our nation. And I don't care whether you served one tour or you or thirty five years in the military. You stepped forward and did more than whatever the percentage is nowadays in the north of ninety five percent. That if people have done and when you are actually somebody who has received the Medal of Honor, what you always have to back up and remember is the amount of people who do receive

the Medal of Honor posthumously. That is exceptional people finding themselves in exceptional circumstances, and their characters revealed what your petty domestic political differences are against us are immaterial and should not detract from the service that they did. And people who do that they deserve to be to be publicly keel hauled and held up for what they are because they've lost the bubble, if they ever had the bubble to begin with. So I'm really glad you brought

that up. That's a great way to start this because we both have friends, acquaintances, followers, people that we email and communicate with on the regulators who disagree with us on lots of different issues. Uh. And that's okay, and that that should be the default option for everybody, especially somebody who has come to this nation and has served it well and it's come out the other end and our nation has decided to recognize their service and support

of our republic. And Uh, if they want to come out and support Betty and Smithfield over fred kaplan for a dogcatcher, that's okay. Let them do that, but don't don't don't degrade them in their in their service. That's can we say that's an American because I think you could probably put that in that category.

you want with it. But that's not my point is that, you know, let's let's look at it from a larger picture, which is it is a when you when you start banning people because they have a different view or it's affecting something, you know, it that that's wrong. I'm not just ban you from a specific publication, but demanding that they be basically a persona non grata for the rest of society because they hold a different opinion than yours.

That that's not the way we're supposed to work. And you know, if you've ever looked at at the federalists, uh and the anti federalist points of view, there were

these are the people who founded the country. They had serious disagreements about how this country was supposed to be organized and and and what the new constitution was going to should be like and what should contain, you know, and they were they had people who fought together as as as brothers in the in the in the in the war for Independence, and who had subscribed to the Declaration of Independence, and they could agree to disagree and

and get it worked out politically. And there were a lot of things that came from that that that we take for granted day, but we forget how how difficult, you know, how challenging it is to get even people who had that kind of shared experiences to h to to do what they did, which was communicate pretty effectively about about what they what their opinions were, and why uh the you know, the opinions of one side should

prevail over over the other. And I think that we have to go back to that example as how as to how we need to approach things and just not start. You know, you're as I said, you know, you're evil, You're bad. I'm not going to talk to you anymore.

they never challenged each other's support of our republic. It was just that creative friction that sometimes throws off bigger sparks than others about how to achieve what we want to achieve without you know, degrading the service one person or another did for our republic. And a lot of times when people they they they personalize the political and and opinion, and they they what was the phrase from the nineteen nineties, the politics of personal destruction when you

back away from it. Those people who don't want to discuss issues, argue issues, don't want to assume good faith in one person an other, and devolve into name calling

and smearing. They really say more about themselves and they do the person they accuse, especially the fact that they for whatever reason, they do not have the ability or the capacity to argue their position, so as opposed to coming to an argument and countering it like that individual speaking at the DNC, there were retired military who spoke at the RNC, you know, compare their two points of view, let them argue. Instead of allowing that open discussion to

take place. They want to eliminate opposition. They want to destroy and diminish anything that's not exactly aligned with them. And again that habits as old as human history. But in a republic like ours, people who do that should be rightfully called out and I really question how those can people can come to defend it. The fun thing is, and I've had a couple of exchanges with folks over

the course of the last day on that. It's nice to see that people on both sides of the spectrum will rise to the occasion and hopefully when the shoes on the other foot and somebody who's on the other side of the political spectrum gets treated the same, that all parties will of good people of good faith and well meaning people will rally around them as well. And I think they will. We've seen that in the past

and we will see this again. But like I said that, now, that was spot on for you to start off our show like that, because you know, silence is approval and things like that. It's important to put a marker down. And again, if people people disagree with that, that's great on great for them, but they're wrong and we should put the marker down like that.

stuff that we've been talking about. And one of the things we looked at just just was the recent announcement by the Australians is they're gonna acquire and developed the Japanese of friggate. You want to talk about that a little bit.

and the Japanese. For a long time, they they were not in the export market, but they and they consistently spent one percent or less of GDP. But when you're the second are are now I think third largest economy in the world, even one percent of GDP Gissey the ability have a really nice military industrial base. And I know you've you spent time in the Pacific. I have as well, though as a predominantly a U Sands sailor and an East Coast guy, I did did do a

tour in the Pacific. When you work with the Japanese on an individual basis, not only are they exceptional professionals, but they build good kit Their submarines are exceptional. Their surface chips you can do surgery on them. They're not only clean, they're very professional. They have a lot of systems that are in common with US obviously as a defense partner with US. They're maintenance facilities or are superb.

And now that everybody's joining the twenty first century, Australia was looking at some European options for the next frigate and the Mogami, which is already under production and it's an expanded Mogami which makes it a little bit larger. It's going to it has everything from a five inch

gun forward. The Australian version, which is the modified Mogami that the Japanese are building for themselves now, is going to have thirty two mark forty one vlsls that the Australians can put all sorts of fun toys in Helo capable, real great modern system. I think off the top of my head the first two or three will be built in Japan, and then they'll have an additional three to five that we built in Australia. So I'm real happy

for the Australians. And it also brings together our two I know the Filipinos might throw a yellow card at me for this, but when you're talking about royal military power and economic power, it's true. Our two big friends in the Western Pacific is Japan and Australia. We have a mutual defense treaty with Japan. We have one with Australia. Australia and Japan don't have one with each other per se, though they have an official acquaintance that happened recently, but

it's not a full blown treaty. However, we're all tied together, and if Australia in Japan, the closer they get together from a military and diplomatic point of view, everybody benefits. In between the Indonesians, the Vietnamese, the Filipinos, the Taiwani. Everybody benefits from Australia in Japan getting closer, and them getting closer will also tie the US back together. It

was just all good news. The only bad thing I thought about it is again, I'm gonna take out one of my hobby horses out of the garage and jump on its back. It used to be whether you're talking about the Charles Adams Class DDG, the Knox frigate, the Oliver Hazard Perry frigate, that the US used to design light destroyers and frigates so well that other nations would license build them. And we haven't done that since the

end of the Cold War. So everybody is building European designs and now Japanese designs, and I'm sure the Koreans, at least in the land component the polls are buying pretty much everything the Koreans can build. It Also, while I smile on one end because I really am enthusiastic about the Japanese the Australian get together, it also is just another car hard to put down on the table.

The fact that our shipbuilding industry and our shipbuilding intelligentsia for both commercial industry and a navsey it's it's broken, it's fixed, and it's so bad that that nobody wants nobody else has anything they want to do with it.

And so we should also acknowledge the fact that nobody's interested in license building anything that we've designed this century, should again redouble everybody's efforts to fix the system that has produced this because we have Lord knows, we have the economy, we have the engineers in theory, we have the business acumen to do it, we just don't have

the ability to. So it's it's going to be a nice frigate and it's it's having the Australia having that, which hopefully should work out pretty well in the Japanese For those that have worked with Japanese industry on the commercial side of the house, they deliver what they promised much more often than anybody. So I think it's going to be a good news story down the road and the one that every all the friends of Australia and Japan should smile with.

had there were somebody was interviewing various mechanics. You know, what, what car would you what cars would you recommend mine? And if they asked twelve mechanics, eleven of them said Toyota or Honda. You know, and some of the Toyotas

and Hondas are built in the US. Great, but you know they've got the engineering skills that we've created this thing where the Japanese vehicles have become uh what we would like to think what once was the Cadillac and they and the Lincoln's and other cars in this country.

But you know that the way it goes, so there's a lot to be admired and the way they the way they've done that, and it carries over to other industries, and it also carries over if they've got the the ability to encourage the Australians and and there and the maybe even the Philippines to start working on those supply chain things. You need to get uh in place so you can you can get the the the non actual

shipyard stuff done. If you want latches for lockers, if you want uh uh you know, all those things components that go into ships. You need to have the quality. And that's where the the the theory that Deming had got Japanese off was that if you only if you bring quality materials into the system, are you able to stick quality produce quality materials at the end of the system. I mean, I don't think it takes a rocket science

to figure that out, but but it was. It was really important for the for the for the Japanese industry to get that, and they that's how you get these things where you know, if they if they're bringing in good supplies from people that they can rely on to be good suppliers. UH, then that makes the whole world of difference. And and those are those are jobs that matter, they matter in this country and and they that and somebody is pointing out I think John in the chat

room that's why uh Tesla had to go. They have a a chain that is uh vertically integrated. And you know, you don't have to be vertically integrated if you have suppliers who are are toeing the line. And that's that's kind of what the the Australians and the and I hope that Japanese are going to encourage in some of the other countries. And I would go with the Philippines in the in the UH in that part of the world. UH so they can can you know, they can get

everybody on board with these projects. And I fail to understand where that the UH Philippines aren't looking at the Japanese. I know they got some other stuff going on with the japan providing some equipment for them, but there are a lot of other countries down that should be looking at some of these Japanese and South Korean ships, all of which are pretty good, pretty good stuff.

and it works out well, that more people will we'll benchmark and replicate that. And you know, not everybody has to work with the US and buy from the US. But if our friends are buying from our friends, as opposed to subsidizing people who aren't our friends, then then

we all benefit from that. And because it seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't the amount of damage that's been done to the US and our allies when you look at our sovereign control over our industry, our supply chains, and our access to raw materials from the China doves who had so much power mostly for economic reasons because there was a lot of money to be made. Is China grew into prominence and that those those phone calls kept the serious national security China hawks

at bay for a long time. But nobody can really argue anymore that the CCP is a force for good. And one thing we talked about in the show I think ties right into that is you were talking that the news broke recently about the software problems that we

have here in the US, where we have whether it's Microsoft or other companies who are creating software for not just military but our civilian infrastructure. You know, with without without power, without water, the whole society can collapse when

you pull the thread on it. A lot of these nominally US companies they have outsourced to PRC nationals and PRC companies themselves, all of who have requirements and obligations with the Chinese Communist Party, and they are writing code and managing software and databases for something that if you

wind up going to war with that country. In prior generations, they would have to put sabotage teams on submarines and sneak up the Long Island Sound and off of Saint Augustine, Florida, and try to dump people off on a raft to go do sabotage. Nowadays, all they have to do is get an IP portal and to click yes or no

on a screen to do incredible amounts of damage. And a lot of that comes from that commercial aspect, where hey, if we do the following steps and offshore of the following items, we can create an additional point zero zero two to five cents per share over the course of

a fiscal year. So let's go ahead and do that, irregardless of the larger national strategic risk we would expose our nation to and our customer base bought why by achieving that per share increase in profit, it's the more news that comes out about this, regardless of how scary it is. That's great because we're at peace. Hopefully that motivates the right people to start making changes. So maybe by twenty thirty we have instead of a one point

zero threat, we have a point one five threat. That would be nice.

are exploiting. So they go in and and and you've got to remember that that it wasn't that long ago when when Microsoft said that they had decided to stop this is a quote, to stop relying on engineers based in China and support to support the Pentagon's use of cloud services. I mean, I am flabbergasted. When you read stuff like that, you go, well, how in the world did they get the Microsoft not get the memo that we don't want Chinese engineers working on this project to

begin with. And and you know, we keep learning, and we got to go back to Dean Chang who who wrote that book years ago, and we talked him about cyber Dragon inside China's information warfare and cyber operations, which I'm going to put a link to up to her in the chat room. But you know, he's been on the show a number of times and he's he was not well. He was one of the early warners that you know, China is very very serious about about this

intrusion into our into our cyber aspects. We we we've talked about it with salmccargliano on the on the cranes that were the Chinese were shipping out that that the various entities in the US government have warned people about these cranes because the information that they are getting gathering is is fed right to China, so and the ports

that they've taken over. So when they scan use a barcode scanner to scan a container, they know what's in that container and if it's full of US defense supplies or Lord goes, what else we could ship that way, then uh, they're going to know exactly where those containers are.

I mean, our protection against this sort of intrusion is it seems to be extremely weak, and we need to get on top of this because and it's I'm sure there are groups that are inside the government that are they're trying to figure out how to get on top of it because it's gotten so so ubiquitous that that you know, it starts. It's like having to find the one weed in your yard full of weeds that I'm gonna pull that particular weed because it's a lot of it, and.

and is despair. Especially the stemfield concentration. Is there for a reason, because that's how you grow industry, that's how you grow your cyber that's also how that's also how you spy and steal. Is you get in our major research institutions and you get involved in a lot of projects. There's a reason why intellectual property theft from the PRC is so huge because not just anybody can leave the PRC to go study or work abroad. They have connections

and requirements back to their government. They have to report. This is not Luxembourg that we're dealing with, and the disparity is huge. I was looking at these figures that as of April of last year, two hundred and ninety thousand citizens of the People's Republic of China were in college in undergraduate and graduate positions, predominantly in STEM fields. The amount of Americans studying in the PRC one thousand.

So it's and I'll guarantee you that of those thousands, the vast majority of the Americans over in the PRC are not studying nuclear engineering, advanced statistics, and computer modeling, much less less stuff in the biomedical field, in epidemiology

and things like that. There's a reason for that. And you talk to people in the university, they go, yeah, but they pay the full ride, Like okay, so what is the price tag at your public university you're willing to accept to subject your nation to significant threat from a hostyle power, which is what it does. And it goes back to an argument I've been really glad to see has come up a lot in the last few years.

Is a lot of times we obsess about, for instance, since GDP and things like that, you have to quit looking at the United States or whatever nation you're a citizen of. It's not an economic zone. It's a nation, and there are things a nation has to do and be concerned with that would be detrimental from an accounting

point of view, from an economic GDP. So if you have to do X for national security reasons to protect yourself from existential threats, maybe to impact point three percent of your GDP if you don't accept two hundred and ninety thousand dollars free ride, and then they're not all free ride because some of these people do get scholarships, and the sentence just assume that it's true. Okay, that's

going to affect your university budget by five to ten percent. Okay, we've identified the price that you put on your contribution to your nation's security. There needs to be more and more of a conversation of about the fact that our nation is not an economic zone. It's a nation, and we have a threat. And you remember the Cold War

better than I do. We didn't let the Soviet Union send over their scientists to study genetic manipulation of infectious disease or nuclear engineering are quantum computing, but we do that with PRC nationals. And it's a conversation I've been glad to hear recently because I'm glad you mentioned Dean, because you're right, Dean. Dean's one of those guys that probably quiet nights poors him self adrinc and go like all great cassandras I told you a decade ago, welcome

to the party. Yeah, Dean Dean has been on this for a while. He's been trying to let us know.

I'm glad they're looking at at a lot of equipment from other you know better like the Aucus thing and the and the possibility of a lot of under sea unmanned UH vessels and stuff because they're they and new Zealand are closest links to Antarctica, and we're noticing and and uh, Elizabeth Buchanan I think we talked about in the pre show has done a great job looking at what's going on and our Antarctica. I mean they have China's put a whole bunch of research stations around that,

uh continent, I guess it is. And and they're also claiming that they are a as we've talked about before the show, they are a near Arctic nations. So they're working on the on the Arctic region too. And and we have we in the NATO countries. The northern NATO countries are the are the nearest nations to those. Canadians, of course, are the nearest nations to those to that water. So you know, we need to talk about we've got these We've talked about it here before. We've talked about

the need for for ice breakers. I'm glad to see that the administration is now seriously looking at buying ice breakers from the from the fins. That's a good thing, and and we need more of that. We also need weaponized ice hardened ships to go up there.

They're trying to make up from their century of humiliation, as they like to call it. You know, that's when you know, in the especially in the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century, that's when all the lack of a better phrase, industrially advanced nations who had the surplus of people in material to go explore the Arctic and the Antarctic. We're mostly European with Americans right behind them.

North Americans don't forget our Canadian friends, though they're in the spot of bother for a while, I think, and so they want to play catch up. But they have absolutely zero reasons and to be in the Arctic, uh, the Antarctic. They want to do quote experimentation and scientific

things down there. I guess sure why not everybody can, but the Arctic they have less than zero reason that had anything to do with the Arctic, but they consider themselves an Arctic nation, and they will roll back at US as like, well, in North America, what are you doing in the Pacific. Well, we've we've fought a few wars over there. We have allies there, we have ah, we.

it's it's a territory. It's the US territory. And we've talked about how they're the Chinese are infiltrating that they they get people in in Saipan to somehow get the Chinese who can get into Saipan without a visa, can can? They've they somehow they've been smuggled into Guam and that has ramifications because a lot of them are ended up on military basis. Yeah, it's you know, they're they're everywhere, and they're doing a lot of things that that nobody

in the world likes. I mean, we've seen their their fishing fleets park themselves off the coast of South America and and Argentina, I think, and some of the other countries have taken a furious action against intrusion into their into their fishing waters. And it's, uh, you know, it is just a matter of they just keep pushing, They keep pushing. They don't you know, it is not it's not like there's a a an act of war or they have just near you know, near acts of war.

If they intrude on fishing water, it's, oh, well, we're sorry, we made a mistake. Of course, their fleets go radio silent, they go dark so that nobody knows they're there. You know. It is just they are going out of their way to keep pushing and pushing, and to the end, every time they claim something or have visited something, it suddenly, somehow magically becomes theirs.

Also on the on the show page. Later on tonight, I'll add a link to it. But there was a neat report they had from twenty nineteen. It kind of ties back to what we were talking about before with universities here in the US. Obviously being Australian, they're very interested in commonwealth issues and all these connections that they've

made in universities in Commonwealth countries. It shows you the fact they're not interested in sociology, they're not interested in business, they're not interested in accounting, they're not interested in ethnic studies or anything like that. The partnerships that these CCP related and PLA related universities, and they've done a really good job connecting the lines and tell them where this

all goes to. It all started in twenty thirteen, so between twenty thirteen and twenty eighteen they made a lot of these connections. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'll just pick a couple of Australian and a couple of UK universities to tell you about. For instance, in Australia, monosh University, their partnership is in started in twenty nineteen and they're researching again, we're building

webs for three D printing. And also at the University of Technology in Sydney they're doing big data, artificial intelligence, quantum information and advanced materials and electronics studies. And a couple of UK universities let's see here at Imperial College London, they're studying aircraft design and materials, aircraft structural integrity. And also let's see University of Nottingham. Let's see what they're doing there. They are studying thermal coatings for turbine blades

and impact damage. You know, you can't make this stuff up. So it's not just a US problem. It's a Western problem. And I'll guarantee you those British and Australian university and there's like a dozen things on here you can look at. They're saying the same things. Yeah, well they you know that they pay the full ride, Yeah they do, and

why are they doing that? And how many Australians are going to major research institutions in China and helping them research cyber technology, cryptological issues, material science, rocketry and things like that. The answer is zero. I don't even have to look it up. We both know it. It's like one person's playing a very serious game. The other one is doing something, though I'm not sure what they are. Well.

beside the the other. Yeah, we're not sending anybody to China to study. I would love to see somebody go in there and study their cyber cyber program. But you know, we also don't have rooms full of people, massive rooms full of people who are constantly trying to hack into systems, you know, the way they do. I mean, it's it's it's it's kind of like when we knew that the omb, the Officer of Personnel Management o PM, got hacked, and everybody who'd ever had any kind of thing to do

with the federal government, either employment or otherwise. You know, you're all of a suden, they've got all your information. Well, who was doing that? It wasn't It wasn't the girls scouts from Rwanda. It was you know, it's the bad guy, so you know, and that and that's the shame of it is we you know, they they are at war. We don't we don't think it's war. But they're doing everything they can to uh to win without fighting, and

and they're pretty darn good at it. And we were talking a little bit earlier about the production of stuff from China. I mean, I I am fascinated. I got my my one of my grandkids got a a robot, you know, a little thing he could assemble and and it bounces around and makes annoying noises, but you know, it says proudly on the outside of the box, you know, designed in California, just like some Apple products designed in California.

But then you look at the finally it took a while, but when I looked at the box down to the bottom, it says manufactured in China. You know, that's that's how they do it. So so when you go on Amazon and when you try and order something, have you ever tried to order anything it wasn't made? You know, I want to I don't want anything. I want a US made product. It's and if you search for US made product, uh, you don't get much.

it's not as functional. Uh. So it's not that they're just slapping cheap stuff together. They do that pretty well.

But in the things that they have to do quality, Uh, it's it's it's well done, and I think that's a good example, just like the Japanese, just the South Koreans, you know, don't don't give me excuses Americans about why our industry can't do X, Y or Z. There are nations who were pretty much bombed into the Stone Age and living memory who now we're getting on the phone and asking them, could you please come over here and tell us how to properly do something today that we

used to be the best in the world at forty years ago. Much much of our problem is internal in that record. But that's that's just a challenge. That's a challenge. And now that we're talking about it, not us, but the imperial we talk about it. I try to be optimistic that you know, the in the National twelve step program, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

And I think we've done that, and it's to follow through and the action on the other end and going back to the top the show, hopefully in a bipartisan manner, because we are all part of the same nation here. UH that there's optimism there. We just need more people in Congress to lean into it. And UH with the support of the right people and the legislative and the executive branch, and there's progress to be made. Yeah, but everything in the oh go ahead. I'm sorry.

to say about them. So it really it really rubs them the wrong way when they see the Philippines standing up for their themselves and their their territory, which is great, which is why we should encourage the Filipinos to to do that and to back their play as much as possible, simply because it frustrates the the Han Chinese so much. Yeah, it's good stuff, but everything on the international scene, it's it's not it's not negative. America is doing some things right.

One thing we talk about in the pretio I wanted to talk about because I'm really first of all, it's it's frustrating to get details of the actual arrangements. But some progress is better than no progress. I know that upcoming here is there's going to be a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska and we'll see what happens with that. There's some discussion to know. The German Chancellor was like, hey,

the European Union would like to have somebody there, and here's been talked about. Well, Zelensky show up or not? Why is the US talking to Russia by the Ukrainian situation? Whatever? Better did jaw jaw than war war? So hey, let's all get together. Even it doesn't accomplish anything. But when you look at the Trump administration has only been here for eight months. I know it seems like eight years, but let's just go back and look at what's happened recently.

The most recent one is I was able to find out some pretty neat details on since the fall of the Soviet Union and those screwed up borders that also had a lot to do with the Russian and Ukraine problem. But Armenia and ozer Berjehan got together and signed a treaty that part of it, it's gonna there's gonna be a It's it's kind of like the say, the same reason why the air force fire is gonna be f F forty seven, but uh, there's gonna be a twenty

mile corridor. And this has been an Ozer Rjon desire since the beginning two because when you look at the map of the of the Southern Caucuses Armenia Jean, there's an auserie territory that is separated from a major part of Rjon. In between it is Armenia Scott. What is that vigial term in exclave I think is the correct term. But to get there, part of the treaty is there's gonna be a twenty mile corridor called the quote Trump

Route for International Peace Security Cordy Corridor. Okay, fine, whatever, It's gonna be managed by an American consortium somehow, I don't know, maybe they's the New Jersey term Pike Authority who does. But it's a ninety nine year lead to allow that connection. Maybe that'll decrease some friction there. There's a lot more cards to come out these people who are always they've hated each other for since the since it forever. So we'll see how that goes. But what's

neat about it is what that does. You already had an existing thing that's called the U two things. It's called the Middle Corridor Project also the trans Caspian Project that connects again commercial whatever China to the Baltic Sea, and it had a little bit of an inefficient jaunt around Armenia. This will give them their ability for this

to be a lot more efficient and effective. And what it really does because it would come out of from ozerber Jean more efficiently, through Georgia and Armenia into Turkey. From Turkey, then it goes up through the Black Sea through Ukraine, pulling the Baltics, et cetera, and so forth. It bypasses Russia, and it bypasses Iran, and it makes them both angry and a lot of those former Soviet republics. The less they can rely on Russia. The better for

them and the better for the international community. And anything that upsets the Iranians is fine with me. I also don't forget that I think it's twenty percent of the population of Iran or actually ethnic Asari, which is a little interesting detail. So that was a pretty neat detail. So that was done last week. So that's an August check. You go back a month to July. Cambodia and Thailand,

multi century rivalry. There, they got to a slapfest and the US managed to get at least a cease fire till they pick it up again at some point down the road. For years, Rwanda and the Democrat Republic of Congo, there's been a conflict there, mostly ethnic base that took place in June, and then India and Pakistan and they got there ongoing conflict clicked off. We helped bring that to a close back in May. So you know, let's give a nice golf clap to the National Security Chain

and the State Department team for the new administration. They've done a heck of a lot to put down some brush wars over their first eight months, which just makes me wonder, you know what we're blinking and Sullivan doing for the last four years, that all this stuff just cascaded with the new administration, new leadership, new approach to

the world. I don't care whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you should be very glad that those four conflicts, at least for the moment, there's no longer rounds being exchanged by the two. So if there's some momentum and that can translate into an imperfect peace is better than an imperfect forever war in Ukraine. Then there's room for optimism in the fact that the US, still when it wants to, can have a positive impact on the world.

better than we remember our past, and they know that we can be, and have been in the past, impartial our our our portrayor for groups that are mad at each other, And you know, that's a good thing to have. And it hasn't always worked in the Middle East where we'd like to, although I will say it looks like the Abraham Accords under the first Trump administration seemed to

be coming back into play. I've seen some reports from Saudis and other people from that area that it's saying, you know, they don't care if they're not worried about Israel's existence any worthy, They just they just want the Palestinians to calm calm down. So it's a it's an interesting time and we'll see what happens again. You know, the Iranians are being quiet, but the Hoofies are still acting up a little bit. And obviously the Gaza thing is just a mess.

that has h taken place in the Gold States. There's been amazing things that have happened to modernize even Saudi Arabia. Since I first put my feet on the ground there in January of nineteen ninety one. Compared to today, Again it's not a Western nation, but it's it's a modernizing nation, and there's they are more bought into an international system that by its its nature, desires stability and peace because that's how you do commerce. There was I think it's cutters.

Royal family are one of the royal families in UAE. I think it's cutter. They've determined actually owns more of London than the English crown owns in London. So they have a lot of investments all over the globe, more international less looking at that, there's smaller concerns and that making peace of Israel. You know, why have an ongoing war that doesn't benefit commerce, it doesn't benefit education, it

doesn't benefit healthcare. I know there's been some one by product of the Abraham Accords is some of the partnerships with some of the hospitals in the Arabian Peninsula because the israelis medical professional cadre or some of the bestial planet. So it's medical diplomacy is always good when you can help people get over cancer and other things like that.

So that you know it's there's positive news, but there's also some things that just there there there, there won't be a pretty resolution to it, but time marches forward elsewhere.

there as guests? Are they there as have many of them become citizens? And if they're citizens, and what do you how do you deal with citizens who don't believe in any of what the other large percent of your population believes are the core values of your country? It is it is. I would not like to be in Ireland these days as a as the and either either as the immigrant or as the Irish, because nobody seems

to be able to get along a situation there. And we're seeing that in in Great Britain now we're seeing that, and in Spain and France and Germany, you know, the countries that refused to accept some of these in the days when they're revegues like Hungary and Poland. You know, they got bad mouth for being racist or whatever the term would be. But they seem to be riding that.

Cafe of all places in downtown Budapest. We were having oh, oh you America pars we were having It's actually a pre World World War II facility that they brought back once the Communists left. It's very nice. It's very Art deco,

Art nouveau. It's pretty cool. But we we were talking about all the travels she had made and what a great time we were having in Budapest and Broadislava, Vienna, Prague, and uh, She's like, yeah, I would much rather I would advise people coming here are Vienna over Paris, because she had just gotten back from Paris a few weeks earlier, visiting some friends who were studying there, and it's very sad, and I think that's going to be the big friction

point in Europe. Besides Russia. Europe's got a lot of internal concerns they're going to have, and I think with the upcoming elections in the next few years in France and the UK as well, uh, there there's going to be a reckoning because part of the problem is is you had a theory that has been proven to be wrong, but that theory is still in power and in laws in the EU, specifically those nations, even though, by the way, even though the UK left the EU, they still are

subject to, by their own choice, the European Commission on Human Rights. As long as you are nodding to ECCHR, which is the implementation force of this theory that has turned out to be wrong, it's very difficult to fix the problem. However, the problem is not economic, it's people.

And how do you resolve a massive people who don't not only don't want to assimilate, but have other plans for your future the next five to ten years in Europe, that's where their concern is going to be and how they internally accept the fact that they have been ruled by a theory that has not worked out, and how do they correct it. It's going to not be pretty, but it'll.

It's like Warsaw in Christmas twenty twenty five is going to be like the rest of Europe was in nineteen ninety five. And they're they're going to have to resolve that. And I don't see how it's going to be done easily,

cheaply or pleasantly one way or another. But again, these are all countries with democratic systems as long as those democratic systems are allowed to function as inefficiently as they do, Like Europeans like to say about the US for a long time, they'll eventually do the right thing after they've tried all other options. But so I try to be optimistic in that regard. But I remember riding over on my blog fifteen years ago. They needed to start fixing there.

It's harder to fix in twenty twenty five than it would be in twenty ten, twenty fifteen. But after they try everything else, will eventually find a way to fix it.

this stuff without coming to blows. I mean, that's you know, I'm I'm not optimistic that it won't come to that because I kind of see that. It's it's uh, the people, the people who have lived lived there longer, are getting a little tired of being told what they have to do by people who just arrived. And and when I was, when I was in Italy several years ago, they were really having trouble with the migrants, uh coming ashore and

and settling in, but they didn't settle. I mean it was they were just this this Uh, they've created this underclass, which which you know that that gets ugly real easily.

from the Center for Naval Analysis is coming on. We've been having him on once a year, like I said, pretty much from the start of the show, and we are going to talk about the latest about Russia, not exclusively about the Russia Ukrainian War and the Russian military. We always kind of touch on lots of different subjects or so for those that wanted to have one of the best minds out there when it comes to just taking a real objective, realistic and calm view of Russia.

Next week is going to be great.