¶ Dexter Filkins joins the Chuck ToddCast
So joining me now is somebody I have I always make a priority to read when he has one of his big deep dives in whatever news periodical he's working for at the time. Currently, Dexter Filkins is with The New Yorker these days and has been there for a while. He's probably our country's best sort of war correspondent in
the written word these days. Yeah, I was just going to say, I don't think Dexter's going to stop me there, and he you know, you do it in such a way where it is it is both enlightening illuminating, but at the same time it lacks an agenda. And I mean that in a positive way. In our era of journalism where everybody's assuming there's an agenda behind every story, that is not how you work. You work more like an anthropologist, I think, in trying to put the puzzle together,
unpack it, and things like that. And it's your most recent piece. Is what sort of drove me to to to get you on the pod? Here is America ready for the next war, which was really powered It seems like by lessons that military planners are learning from Israel and Ukraine at the moment. But Dexter welcome.
Thank you so much, and thanks for the nice intro.
No, please, it's it's well deserved. And I learned a little something extra that you're you got you cut your teeth down in Miami back in the day.
I miss Miami, you know.
I what I say about Miami and I I love visiting and my daughter's a resident now. It's a great place to be from It's a it's a weird place to live. It's a tough place to live sometimes, but it's a Yes, they keep adding people, and they you know, you can't widen us one the ocean gets the the way,
¶ Is the U.S. military vulnerable to small tech innovation?
you know, or yeah, yeah, they haven't figured that out, but let's start is you know, it was a pretty provocative headline, is US Is the US ready for the next war? It feels like this is one of those where we're a big military superpower that suddenly is vulnerable to uh, small tech innovation. Is that the Is that the good subhead?
Yeah? I mean I think it's everything's changing really fast, and I think it's been changing kind of under the
¶ U.S. military is studying Ukraine and Israel's innovations
radar for some time. But what's happened in the last couple of years is is Ukraine And that's just that's like a real time laboratory for for for for war, you know, uh, for war as it happens. And so everybody's been studying that war. The Pentagon has been studying that war. It's kind of unfolded in ways that are
very very different. And then you have and then you have Israel, which is I think somewhat also under the radar, but they've made extensive use of artificial intelligence in targeting Hamas and Hesbola and Iran and just the most interesting ways. And you know, we can discuss that. There's sort of pros and cons and ups and downs, but those two things, I think kind of drones and unmanned systems, say in Ukraine and artificial intelligence in Israel is kind of changing everything really fast.
How where are we on drone warfare? And on one hand, it was I remember when Barack Obama was accused of over using drones and over relying on drones, and it looked like we were ahead of the game. Are we no longer ahead of the game.
I think we do okay with with you know, we're I should say we're catching up in kind of drones themselves. But I think I think the really big issue that the Pentagon is grappling with and I think, you know, the smart people are kind of panicking, and that is
¶ U.S. military relies on few, very expensive weapons
that the US military has built. What the US military that they've built, it essentially relies on really really expensive weapons that they don't build very many of. So like we have, you know, we have something like eleven aircraft carriers. They cost you know, fifteen billion dollars each, and they take it, they take a decade to make. We have F thirty fives that cost the fighter jets to cost
one hundred million dollars each. And you know, just the other day in the in the Arabian Sea, two F thirty five slid off an aircraft carrier and fell into the water, you know, and they and they sank to the bottom and there, you know, there's two hundred million dollars just down the drain. And and so what's happened. That's us. And then what you what you see in Ukraine is and where like I visited this factory in
Ukraine which I write about. They can make really really accurate, super lethal drones for five hundred bucks apiece, and they crag them out and crag them out and crack them out. And so if you're suddenly if you're an aircraft carrier that costs ten billion dollars, and what do you do if there's a thousand of those coming your way? And I think that's kind of that's what has gotten everybody's attention.
So what's the you know, the infamous military industrial complex, right, which which essentially where defense contractors have successfully convinced members of Congress of how many jobs are created with all
¶ Legacy weapon systems get updated, rarely replaced
of these things, and it becomes all untouchable. But you it also strikes me is that this is why legacy weapons systems stay and never get replaced, and so that it gets layered, right, It's it's a total, it's a layering. I assume that's where we are at the moment, right.
Yeah, So depending on itself is like an aircraft carrier, and so it's you know, sailing steadily in one direction and it's not easy to turn and it's certainly not easy to turn around, which is what they need to do. And and that, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. You can't suddenly wake up one morning and say, you know what, we're not going to build aircraft carriers anymore.
That's thousands and thousands of jobs spread, you know, very precisely to factories all around the country, and so all the all the members of Congress wake up and say, no, hang on, hang on, hang out. We got to have that and so and so that's kind of that that's a big part of the problem, which is you've got the you've got some very smart people in the Pentagon, and they're saying, look, we need to change, we need to change really fast.
Or do we still have smart people at the Pentagon? Dexter like that, there's a creature.
So there are creatures. Many of them are creatures of
¶ Congress defends status quo to protect jobs in their district
kind of group think, but but there's a lot there's a lot of right people who realize what's going on, but they can't be heard and that and that's the problem because it gets drowned out by what we're talking about, which is, let's carry on with the status quo. Because the status quo, you know, employees five thousand people in my district and so that's hard to change. And it's and that's kind of like that's exactly what the Pentagon is kind of grappling with in Congress.
I feel like you wrote a similar story fifteen years ago about the transition from conventional military to counter terrorism and in some ways that and that we were in a similar place. Then this belief that hey, we're not. We don't have the military. We don't have the military that we need to deal with the threats of today. And it is this has this not been a sort of a twenty five year problem.
Yeah, that's a good point. I think we did. We woke up, you know, we woke up on September eleventh and said, oh my god, what do we do? Yeah, the military doesn't turn on a dime, it just doesn't, and so and so so we spend you know, the country spends nearly a trillion dollars a year. I mean it's like whatever, eight hundred and fifty billion dollar, which is unbelievable amount of money.
Look, there is the reason why this zip code that I live in, Okay, in Arlington County. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's surrounded. I mean I sit here. In the thirty five years that I've lived here, this has become one of the you know, these counties in Northern Virginia
¶ America spends huge money, doesn't get bang for buck
become three of the wealthiest counties in America, and they were not that way thirty five years ago. And it's all defense contractors. It is all depends contractors.
Yep, and that those are like vested interests. But but that's the irony, which is, we spend so much money and we're not really getting a lot of bang for our bucket anymore. We're really not. And so all these efforts to kind of say, well, we gotta we gotta do something different, it's really hard, even though even though there's like a mountain of cash to draw from, you know, it's it's basically it's all tied up.
Is there Is there a little initiatives or is a starting to work?
Yes, yes, And they're little, they're little, give me little, you know, little relatives of the Pentagon budget is like can actually be pretty big.
So it's a ten billion dollar program, right, yeah, And.
It's you know, you talk to people to Pentagon, and it's it's hard to you know, it's hard to get to the Pentagon. It's hard to get inside of it. It's hard to find the right people. I mean, it's just such a vast place. But like you talk to them and they they talk about these kind of tiny initiatives and they're you know, they're very kind of rightly proud of them. But like you think, boy, that ain't that much, but they're doing it. There's a thing. There's
¶ Pentagon has new program making cheap, accurate drones
a thing. For instance, there's a program called the Replicator Initiative, and it's basically the Pentagon making drones, you know, the Pentagon making cheap accurate Do.
We have factories that make drones in this country.
Yes, we do, not not enough. They're like the company that I wrote about, which is called androill Uh and they're they're a very interesting company run by the one by this very interesting kind of mad scientists. They're building. They're building a big factory outside of Columbus, Ohio, for instance.
So and I because I think one of the things that one of the things that's also become clear is that our defense industrial base, you know, along with the rest of our industrial base, but particularly with defense, it's just been thinned out. There's not that much there. Like there's a I mentioned this way down in the story, and it's a long story, so everybody will be forgiven
for not making it to the end. But there's a company called Govini, and Govini is a software company, and the Pentagon came to them and they said, look, find out trace all of our supply lines for all of our weapons systems and tell us come back and tell
¶ 50,000 American defense supply chains lead back to China
us where they came from. Fifty thousand supply lines go to China for and everything from you know, B one bombers, B two bombers, F thirty fives, microchip everything. Fifty thousand supply chains go to China for our weapons. And so we just don't make this stuff here, you know, we still't make it. And so again, like like these conversations are happening, but you know, like change is very slow, but everybody's kind of there is a kind of collective awakening like, oh my god, this.
Is the leverage China has over this in these trade disputes.
Oh my god. It's like all you have to do is turn it off, you know, which they would do, of course, I mean, of course they would turn it off. So, yeah, we're in a lot of trouble.
Obviously, there's been rhetoric that we're trying to reverse this. Have you seen much evidence yet, Yeah.
There's some, there's some. It's just again it's like, I mean, you know this as a denizen of Washington, but change comes very slowly, and particularly to a bureaucracy the size of the Pentagon. You know, you know, the famous story of the Pentagon is you know, like the did you hear the one about the kid that went in as a private you know, when he got lost in the Pentagon he emerged like ten years later as like a
bird colonel, you know. But it's like and it's true, but it's like that is kind of it's a good metaphor because the place is so gigantic and unwieldly it's hard to tell what goes on inside. You can't get your arms around it, and it doesn't move, you know that, And that's kind of that's basically what everybody's waken up
to right now. And I think that you know that the danger is the danger is like we don't move fast enough, you know, and and something bad happens, you know, something bad, like you know Taiwan, say.
Well, let's tuck Taiwan. Because you referenced a war game, I actually held a war game. I convened one on China and Taiwan about three years ago as a as a little streaming special report that we did Who won?
¶ Defending Taiwan is a massive logistical challenge
Who wins every Time? Right? China? You know it was they even used a nuclear weapon sort of they didn't launch it anywhere, but they exploded one just to show that they could off the coast of the Pacific well in this war game. But what was clear was it's a huge logistics challenge, right to turn Taiwan, to do for Taiwan what we did for Ukraine. You know, we had seventy years of NATO to essentially streamline supply lines and coordination and all of that. There is no Asian NATO,
right and you just see that. You know, if this is a hot war in twenty twenty seven, which is
¶ Is America ready to help Taiwan survive war with China?
what some generals have predicted, is America ready to help Taiwan survive it?
We're not ready. We're not ready. I don't know what you know. And you you know, for this, as so many other issues, we have to peer into the mind of Donald Trump and wonder, uh, you know, what would he decide to defend Taiwan or not?
Yeah, I think would be shocked. I look, and I say this, forget Donald Trump, dexter. I always say this. If I put that on a poll question and I asked the American people whether our sons and daughters should be sent to defend this island, you know, I don't think you'd get the majority. I mean it isn't This isn't something that I think America would be signed up for. They'd sign up for a direct war with China, but not not a proxy one.
Well, I agree, I agree with you on the on the politics of it. I think I think when you when you start to contemplate, say, a successful Chinese capture
¶ Taiwan produces 90% of the world's advanced microchips
of Taiwan, it would be catastrophic for the United States, and and and that takes I mean, I think that's true. And I think if you just start with it's crazy Taiwan, I mean, who knew I didn't know this. Taiwan makes ninety percent of the world's advanced microchips, and so what that means effectively is that, I mean they're all made in one place. They're all made in one factory called TSMC in Taiwan.
Talk about another like head scratcher, Why did you do that? Happen for this long? And you know who who gave Taiwan the resources to do this? The United States of America? Right, yeah, yeah, And.
It's a you know, it's a it's a super enterprising country and people work incredibly hard, and but like the.
Necessity is the mother of invention, right A innovention?
Yes, and the and the but the advanced industrial economies, I think it's fair to say would be they would
¶ If Taiwan falls, the world economy would grind to a halt
come to a halt. I mean, if not, and if not a halt, they would be severely constricted. If Taiwan, if the micro chips of Taiwan makes suddenly were no longer available, And that's just you can't, like, if you're the president of United States, you have go God, like, what, you know, what are we going to do? And in fact, I remember I was in Taiwan a few years ago and and the joke was, you know, if the Chinese invade,
what's the safest place going to be in Taiwan? And they said, well, it's the basement of TSMC.
Yeah, okay, nobody's going to on the Chinese can't afford to lose access to that either, right, Yeah, and like, but but.
Just to answer your question more fully, I think, you know, I think that if if the Chinese were to capture Taiwan, I mean, their their goal pretty clearly, they've made it very clear, is to basically push the United States out of the Western Pacific.
Right.
Uh, that's Japan, that's the Philippines. Those are our friends and allies and fellow democracies and so and.
Hopefully we've seen in a lot of trouble are in there too, right, Yeah, I mean that was the question I remember in this war game with the Assi sign on, with the South Koreans work with the Japanese to do this, like there isn't this isn't like the alliance that the
¶ The Asian-Pacific alliance isn't rock solid
US would need isn't necessarily rock solid yet? Right?
No? No, not at all, not at all. And that in fact that I wrote about in the piece there's a little bit I went to a wargame. God, it was like really scary, as was probably the one you did. Yeah, a lot of people died, They got out of control very very quickly. But one of those one of those questions was like what are the Japanese going to do? Are they going to jump in on our side?
You know?
What's the Philippines going to do? What are the Chinese going to do? Are the Chinese gonna Are they going to strike the American mainland? Which they can do? They didn't in this in this war game. They did not.
Did they get I'm curious in your wargame, did the North Koreans get involved?
No? No, But that was.
Another fear in our war game that the Chinese.
Interesting that the guy who's running the war game this is at the think tank Center for Strategic International Studies, he said, okay, no no nuclear weapons today. No, so.
Okay then, but they do.
Like I know, they just ran one with nukes available if you wanted to use them. But as it happened the wargame that that I went to, and it it didn't start with an invasion of Taiwan. It started started very slowly. It was a blockade. It was a Chinese blockade. Some American planes got shot down. Well I mean the
¶ War between the U.S. and China would be ugly
they blockaded and then blockaded Taiwan. But then once the shooting started, it just took off, you know, it just took off. And so you know, we were striking China and they they didn't strike the mainland, but but they they destroyed like a quarter of the American air force. Uh, thousands of people died on each side, you know. According to this, I thought, pretty pretty realistic wargame. We stopped
the war game after like four go rounds. Like it was ugly, ugly, you know, hideous, not something you want to ever happen in real life.
¶ Low-earth orbit satellites are vulnerable to attack
Another fear factor that I've heard about that that that we haven't brought up yet is low orbit space and satellites, and that are we that that would be among the first things China might do and whether you know which is the impetus of the space force. You know, people laughed at it at the time, but this is a serious issue, security in low orbit space and and and our satellites. I know this was a big concern about
five or six years ago. Have things gotten better? Do we feel more confident that we could have security and superiority in low orbit?
Nobody, nobody could answer that question for me, and I think everybody's really nervous about that. But would I mean, I think it's a it's a huge issue because when you think about it, let's say the worst starts and suddenly either you know, either we shoot down their satellites
¶ Destroying the satellite network is mutually assured destruction
or they shoot down ours. You know, the lights go out right like you're done, you know.
But it's like, we're so reliant on these lowerbit satellites now we haven't fully realized that. Yeah, we used to keep the lights on without satellites, but that isn't how it works anymore.
No, Like we would be dead in the water, as would they. And so in a way, it's kind of mutual assured destruction. In fact, the one answer I did get from a couple of people was nobody wants to go there because if you if you ended up shooting a lot of satellites, low orbit satellites, it would make essentially it would make a band around the Earth kind of uninhabitable to other satellites for years and years and years. And no, and nobody wants to go.
The entire planet goes into the dark ages.
Yeah, I mean it's like, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like a science fiction movie. But but I think the short answer is everybody's trying to figure that out, you know, militarily, like how do we destroy their satellites? But they're doing the same to us, And so I think everybody's trying to be like kind of you know, reasonable about it.
What do we think the Chinese have learned from the Ukraine War? Right, we're learning something from the Ukrainians. One would assume, you know, they've never tested their military.
¶ China is watching the U.S. response to Ukraine war
That's right. I mean, I think they have that tiny little war with nasty little war Vietnam that lasted a couple of months, you know, like in the seventies. But they're watching the war. Yeah, well, I think I think that's pretty clear that the Chinese are watching the war in Ukraine, but they're they're watching us, you know, they
want to see what we do. And I think I think what I mean by that is, you know, are the Americans is going to tough it out here or are they going to are they going to get bored and give up and go home?
And the signal that hey, go grab Taiwan, you might be able to get it without firing.
A shot exactly. And so so there's one of the debates that's going on inside the White House. I mean, it's like happening as we speak.
And I say that, and it's funny. I'm glad you put up. Look, there's a lot of debates that don't happen that should happen in this White House. On this there's a real debate because there actually are multiple factions, right Rubios and Rubio does have his ear to an extent, and then you have the Vance Wing and some of these other isolations that are in a different spot. And it's a real debate.
That exactly right it is. It's a real debate and you can see like one day one side wins in the the other one.
No, I mean you see it in Trump's tweets sometimes. Yeah, And like I think here.
I think that you know, you have the one faction, what's called the Vance faction, who cares about Ukraine. Forget about Ukraine. There's the number three guy at the Pentagon Bridge, Colby, under Secretary for Policy. You know, he would say if he were on your show, he'd say, we have to get ready for China, like everything for China. So like Ukraine, the Europeans have to worry about that. We got to
get we got to get ready. I think the problem with that argument, which you know, I'd like to hear him talk, But the problem with that argument is that the Chinese are watching very very closely, and I think they're watching our resolve as much as they are our capabilities. And so if we abandon an ally in the middle of Europe, what does that say about our resolve to say, support our friends in the Pacific? You know, and I think that the Chinese are taking notes for sure.
¶ Would Japan jump into a war between the U.S. and China?
I assume that Japanese are taken note as well. Yes, right, I mean, you know, and you know they're obviously investing in military, doing more investments than they ever had before. It seems almost as a way of trying to preserve the relationship with US.
Yes, though there you know, there's it's a big question if if the usn't go and China go to war over Taiwan, what does Japan do. They're not obligated to jump in. I think I think the chances are pretty great that they would because if only because there's these giant American bases in Japan, you know, Air Force, Navy, everything, Yakuska, and certainly I think almost certainly in a war with the United States, the Chinese would attack those bases. That's
Japanese soil. So I think the odds are pretty strong that the Japanese would get in. But and that's the that's the thing that's so scary like about these war games is like it goes from being this like nothing
¶ Israel's military is using AI for targeting
thing in the straits of Taiwan and it's like it within like forty eight hours, you're in World War three. You know, it just escalates so quickly.
Yeah, let's go to Israel, uh and their use of artificial intelligence, which you know, when I was reading about it, you know, there was a there's you're just sitting there going there's a there's a part of me that just is scared and nervous that a computer is deciding who to kill. Right, You're just sitting there going and once a computer decides, there's no human to stop it if it turns out you had bad intel, right, I mean,
you know AI AI is. You know, it's a probability model, and I get that, but not everybody understands that, and they you know, there is this almost you know, the fear I have is there's almost like this belief in a super capability of AI that you they're never wrong. And it's like okay, and it does feel like, you know, the Israelis are relying on it. Now, is it really this reliable?
Well, I mean I think the short answers it's not always reliable. I mean, I think we can see the evidence on the ground. But I think what's so interesting about the Israelis you're doing? And I'll just sort of walk you through as it was explained to me before every war that Israel has had with Gaza, with Hasbola, they have a target list. You know, they have like two thousand names and like and their name, their names, they're people. There's a file there's a photo like we're
going to kill Abu Ahmed. The moment the balloon goes up, that guy's dead, we're going after him. There's like two thousand of those. So what happens in the current war, the one that started in October twenty twenty three, the Israeli shot that target list in a couple of days. They went after everybody, and they wanted to keep going.
And so this is where AI comes in. So AI is essentially identifying people who they don't know, like who is that guy in the ground, And so what AI does gathers like everything drone footage, social media posts, uh, telephone records, property records, and so it says, we don't know who that guy is, but he's going into a house that like Hamas uses, his brother's in jamas and yesterday morning he was on the phone with another guy
who's in Amas. So so the AI machine spits out this target and it's basically a coordinate hit this and that, and so the Israelis will say, you know, they'll pound the table when they say this. They'll say, like, it's the computer's not deciding, you know, the human always has has the decision making power. But it's like yeah, but if you get the recommendation, like how many times are they detailing that? Now that again there's Raelis will say, you know, we only we only hit the target that
¶ What is Palantir's role with military applications?
AI recommends, you know, one in every five times or one in every ten. But still, you know, there's been a lot of there's been a lot of mistakes for sure.
What you know, there's been some big announcements that you have, like Puenteer in particular, is going to be more involved in the Pentagon. Obviously they've been pretty involved with what Israel has been doing. What what is it that Palenteer can do?
Well, now, that's like it's such a great question because it's so basic, and what Palenteer does is so basic. I mean it's super important and it's really difficult, but it's like really basic all Palenteer does. Somebody describe it to me as they said, like you know Anderil, you know the company that makes drones. They're the front end. We're the back end. They're they're like the back end they Pollunteer basically connects computer systems and brings all the
data into one place. And so at a place like well if if in a place like Washington, where they're now doing billions of dollars with their contracts, billions they you know, if they go to the Pentagon and the think and says, look, we've got the CIA, we have the National Intelligence Agency, we have UH, the the National Reconnaissance Agency, we have the Geospatial Satellite Agency, all these different agencies, all these different satellites, all these different sensors,
¶ Military systems aren't interconnected for cybersecurity safety
and none of them talk to each other. Like they're all completely different. So if you're trying to you know, I hate to go there, but if you're if you're trying to run a war in the Pacific, you need to do you need to have all of them. And so literally none of these systems talk to each other. They don't communicate with each other.
Don't let me push back on that. Now here's what somebody, a cybersecurity person would say, Hey, that's a feature not above.
That's a really good point. That's a really good point.
Like they operate a big fear, right, the big fear I went knee deep into in the cyst sence and the cybersecurity folks, and a weird connection with a parent friend of you know, one of these weird parent connections you end up learning more about out a certain part and that, you know, because when you look at the government and think, hey, why isn't there sort of more shared cybersecurity, it would be yeah, well here's the problem.
Do you want one agency down for a day or do you want the entire federal government shutdown with the cyber attack and so and I assume that's you know, times one hundred in our national security.
Yeah, totally. I mean you hear. The great example I got was about how hacked up and chopped up the Pentagon is, and say said, look, if you're if you're a pilot in an F thirty five flying around and there's a pilot right next to you in an F eighteen, they can't talk to each other. So the only way, the only way they can communicate is like right on
¶ Modern warfare will require a rapid decision making process
pieces of paper and like hold it up to the windshield. You know, these things cost one hundred million dollars each. You know. But I think the I think the imperative, as they would say, is that the modern war as they see it, will require really really rapid decision making and rapid coordination of all these assets. Which is to say, if you can, if you can imagine as they're trying
to do. If you can imagine a fleet of Chinese ships traveling through the Pacific, there's like three or four different satellites that have to work together in order to target those ships. Uh, and and so that and and you know, guide the guide the weapons to them, and they and and so it's it's almost like a ballet. And so that that ballet is like not possible at the moment. It's just it would take a long time. No.
And then what you're describing though, is like I'm having a warped flashback to the movie War Games, where suddenly it is computers essentially playing a game with each other while us humans watch.
Look, I think some of this stuff is pretty scary when you when you play it out. And I you know, the Brian Schimp, who's this incredibly smart guy that runs
¶ Autonomous targeting required to avoid jamming
and Orill the Weapons Company, he described the scenario and he said, imagine, you know, like a big area in the Pacific. Let's say it's you know, thirty miles by thirty miles, and let's say there's a squadron of Chinese ships that's moving through it. Now, you know, the Pacific's a big place. Let's say there's a squadron of ships.
What we want to be able to do is fire a bunch of missiles at those ships and that's it, and then sit back, basically, because we're going to assume that we will be cut off from communications with all of our weapons anyway, because the Chinese will be jamming everything, but that those weapons individually will be able to find the ships. They'll be able to figure out with each other so that they don't duplicate each other's efforts, and they'll be able to do these things on their own,
which means like thinking and talking. And you know, they've got brains, these these these weapons, and so it's not difficult to imagine that getting out of control. It's not that hard. You know, Like what happens if they what happens if the ships aren't there? They go somewhere else, you know, or they turn around? I mean, I you know, like what happens? Yeah, I mean to say nothing of like, how do you know that ship is a battleship and not a hospital ship? You know?
Is is it? Palenteer, that's the the main UH company help in the Israelis it's one It's one of them,
¶ Modern targeting systems are incredibly advanced
It's one of them. Palenteer does this it's it's amazing, it really is.
I sat in the Palenteer office in Washington and they've got they've got a bunch of different offices. But because I said, like, you know what, can you just start showing me what you're doing, you know, And so they took me in this room and it was a huge map, an aerial map of eastern Ukraine. And they said, look, this is just a notional map. It's not like a real time thing. But basically it was everything that you
could possibly see on the ground. You could see it the Russian military formations, the Ukrainian military formations, all the communications that were happening. And then so you know, we were just looking at this map and he said, the guy Palterer, said, let's go, let's go down to the ground. Take a closer look. He's like that thing right there, what's that that looks like a tank? That looks like a Russian tank? Do you want to take out that
Russian tank? Let's see what's available to take out that Russian tank. So then he clicked on something and then it was like, well, there's some drones up here that we could use, or there's some artillery we could use. But you know, the drones, the Russian tanks are kind of a low priority target. So we're going to use a drone, you have to wait for a while. Why don't we use the artillery. That's a lot faster. Click click, click was done. We didn't. We didn't, As it happens,
we didn't blow that tank up. But that's kind of what they do. So all of the satellites, sensors, every every piece of information you could imagine was being channeled into that screen. And that's green is called Maven by the way. That's that's the problem. And the palent here, I mean, really, to their credit, they gave it to the Ukrainians. They just like gave it to them when the war started. They said, just take it, will help
¶ How much is war desensitized by its video game nature?
you run it. You're going to need this. And the Ukrainians use it. But but the Americans used that, like the Pentagon uses that Maven all over the place. And it's software, but it's like incredibly effective.
How much does this desensitize war? I'm sorry, how much does this desensitize war? You know, if you see it as a video game board, I mean, I'm sorry to be calling it that, but that's what, right, it's you know, you're, you're, you're it's a target, it's not a human, right, and
so it's this extra you know. I know, this was a conversation that was had about fifteen years ago when these drone pilots in Nevada, Yeah, we're killing people in f a Stan in Pakistan and then going you know, oh, all right, my shifts up and now I'm supposed to you know, and some of them internalized it, some of them didn't. I mean, this is an entirely and I don't know, like, how does the Pentagon deal with that? Is there? Do they even think about those things?
I think so? But but as you say, I mean, that's it's a it feels remote and it looks remote, and you know it is remote, and.
And it makes it easier to do and you're not you're.
Not hearing the screams. Yeah, that that that is for sure. And like the for instance, when I was in Israel, I had a long conversation with a targeter. He was one of the guys that was basically pulling the trigger, and he was he was explaining me how AI works, and he said, you know it, you know, grinds all this information and then it spits out a target and it says like do you you know you should hit this target? Eighty percent certainty that it's a bad guy.
And then like you know, he talks a couple be blowing like signs off on it, and like we we had this whole conversation over like a really nice lunch, like not far from the Mediterranean in tel Aviv. You know, it doesn't make it.
Full setting, right, tel Aviv doesn't make me a Miami guy. I remember the first time I went to tele Aviv,
¶ Recruiting problems for the U.S. military
I went, hey, this is Miami beach.
Yeah, yes it is.
My look, yeah, well this is a good transition to uh military recruitment.
This has been an ongoing problem, both quality and quantity. Any has this turned around at all? And is there a concern that it's recruitment's getting say politicized.
It has turned around. It has turned around, and I think Donald Trump would take credit for that, and and he he, he may be entitled to it. I mean, it's very it's very difficult to understand. I mean, it's not it's not where it needs to be. But you know, we can sort of talk about all those all those reasons why. But I wrote about this problem like a year and a half ago when it was really really at a low, and it is. It's like they, you know, they can't get people to join, and.
There's nothing like an economic downturn that will increase military recruiting.
I mean, thing that shocked me, the thing that shocked
¶ 75% of prime age military recruits don't quality for service
me about about reporting that story was I you know that the numbers are astounding. It's something like three quarters of American men and women between the ages of eighteen and thirty four, sort of prime physical years of your life, do not qualify for military service because they're either they're too overweight, or they have some prior illness or some
kind of mental disability can't pass the test. Three quarters, like gone, seventy seven percent of young people in this country are out right away.
Have our standards changed or I mean, well, what's what I did? Was I the army. The Army, like you know, they're they're the guys that are dealing with this are freaking out.
So they they set up I can't remember. It's like it's called something has some glorified name, like the Future Soldier Training Courts or something, but it's basically a fat farm, you know, And so you come there you show up if you're overweight, because you know, you can't just you can't be like obese and join the military. You have to be like your weight has to has to you know, it has to match essentially your hide. And there's you know, there's various.
The Army is going to be kind of like the greatest, biggest procure of Ozempica.
Yes, yes, I well they haven't, they haven't gone there yet,
¶ Military has set up a pre-boot camp for recruits to lose weight
but you know, I think that's next, right, but if you so so many you know, close to three quarters of the kids can't qualify because they're too overweight. And so they've set up a kind of pre boot camp boot camp and basically you're there to lose weight. And so I went down to this camp and you know, the great thing about and it's like, you know, you you kind of fall in love with America when you
go to a place like this, because the kids are amazing. Yeah, they talked about anything, They talked about their whole lives. And like I remember talking to this one woman, she's like nineteen, you know, and she came in and she was really really overweight, and I can't remember, you know, she weighed like, you know, two hundred and fifty pounds and she was gonna make way Like she was all the way down. She was like two pounds away.
She had show the way you're it was amazing.
But you know, she was like she's from some small town in Ohio and like, you know, like her dad had like a band in the family, and like she'd helped like you know, raise like her brothers and like, and you know, she's like, I was just eating like really bad food and like and playing video games all day. And that's kind of like, you know, it's like the
world we live in, you know. And so, but but what was really touching about hanging out with all these nineteen year olds is like, you know, they're they're super motivated, like they want to do it, like they really want it,
¶ What size of military force do we need?
and like they were they were doing it, you know, they they were doing it.
What sizes of force do we need? Like we just spent half an hour talking about her, you know, right, so and at the same time we're saying, we're our recruitment's down, but what do we need?
You know that it's a great question because when you you know, you the first half of this conversation we talked about, you know, drones and AI and automating all these things that don't need people. And I remember this guy. I was talking to this general and we were talking about just the subject, and he said, you know, we really need we need like cyber we need like cyber warriors and any kind of pause and he said, like fat kids welcome. That kids welcome, But the truth is
like fat kids aren't welcome. But you know, it makes you think you're thinking, like, look, if all we're doing is like or if a good chunk of the military now is basically just you know, doing cyber war and radar and tracking and satellites, do they really need to be able to fit? You know, they're not gonna you know, they don't have to do a ten mile hike. And then you know, cut somebody's throat, so like do do
they really need that? And so that's one debate and then the other as you say, like why do we need all these people anyway to do what? Like I don't think seems like it's a good bet we're not going to a rock or Afghanistan anytime. Sint like the country's like, no way, We're.
¶ The fracturing of U.S. alliances in an era of nationalism
Not nation building for at least the rest of my I guess the rest of our time on earth. Right, maybe you know, maybe that'll come back in twenty five years, but that ain't.
Happening once everybody forgets about it.
Yeah, right, we did Vietnam and this, we tried that. Then you know, thirty years later we try it again. I guess maybe every thirty years we touk ourselves into it. Well, that then dovetails to fractured alliances. Right, what made our military so strong was NATO and these incredible you know, that's sort of the It's obviously the biggest symbol of our alliances, but frankly seamless. It was becoming a seamless alliance. And now obviously the rise of nationalism. It's not just
here in the UK, it's everywhere. And the rise of nationalism is going to mean less cooperation even among our allies. What kind of peril does this put our military in?
Well, like, we're not strong enough that we don't need friends. You know, nobody is. They got to have friends. It's good to have friends. And I think, look there, you know Trump, Trump has spent the last six months bashing the Europeans, our friends, our best friends who we need. But so's it's a little it's a little hard to kind of figure out that whole act because you know, Trump is very crude, he's overbearing. Uh, he threatens to
¶ Trump scared the Europeans into increasing defense spending
leave the Alliance. He's like, we don't need you, screw you, We're out of here. NATO's a joke. But he hasn't
done any of that, you know. I mean, we still have a lot of troops in Europe on the front line, you know, Lithuania and other places, and and so, but he has like scared the hell out of the Europeans, and so they're now they've now committed, I think, pretty resolutely to increase their dispense defense spending, which I think you're when you said the Alliance is like at the point where it was seamless, it was worth you know, incredibly, but it was it was ours basically, like we paid
for everything.
Well, but I sort of viewed it that way, you know. You know, it's hard to tell the tell average American like, no, no, no, no, no, this is this is the moderns almost what I want to tell Trump, which is, you don't want more land for the United States. We got Europe without actually having to pay sold security benefits, Like we got Europe without actually having the responsibility of governing. It isn't that the
best of all worlds. I hate to be that crass about it, but but that is one way to think about you know, quote you know, we it was a new type of imperialism.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think yeah, I mean, look, I think if they if they start paying more for their own defense and they become more powerful, they're going to be They're going to be more difficult, right for sure.
I mean every you know, when the Germans build a military usually goes really well.
But it is, you know, it is a it's a it's quite a moment for Europe. It really is, because when you think, I mean, all these countries after the Second World War, they basically said, okay, like we're done. You know, like fifty million people just died. We're not doing that again again. Right, And they needn't entirely disarmed,
¶ Putin has been clear he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union
but almost they spend tiny percentages of their GDP on you know, let's let the United States worry about our defense. And Trump has sufficiently like scared the daylights out of them that we're not going to be there. And you know, at the same time that putin, I think has given every indication I mean He's practically beat Trump over the head with the idea of I'm not stopping. We want all of Ukraine, right, And if they get all of Ukraine,
where are they going to go next? He wants to reconstitute the old Soviet Union and so what does that mean?
¶ Would Trump defend/liberate the Baltics in an article 5 scenario?
That means like probably Moldova, and you know, he's already got part of Georgia, and then like maybe the Baltic States and.
Like, and another question I have is, you know, is Donald is Donald Trump willing to accept an Article five request from Lithuania?
Well, I think that's that's the sixty four thousand dollars question. I think it helps that there's a brigade I think roughly thirty five hundred American troops in Lithuania and the other Baltic states, and so in a way they're kind
of a trick wire. But so if the Russians tried to roll in, but you know, place like Lithuania is so tiny, the Russians would be at the Baltic Sea, you know, by the end of the day, you know, or the next day, and like and then and then it would be like, are we going to go to war? Deliberate Lithuania? You know, not just defend it. And you know, Lithuania is a long way away, and like it's not really connected to the other countries in the alliance or
¶ If Europe gets serious about defense, Trump did a good thing
just just kind of barely, and so those are really hard questions. But I but I think the weird thing about Trump is that again he's like, he's very crude. But I but I think if the net resulted that is that the Europeans are going to start paying more and they're going to get serious about defending themselves than than Trump did a good thing.
I was just going to say, I mean, you know, I was impressed when all those European leaders came with Elenski because it showed that, wow, Europe's never that united.
With each other. Yeah.
Yeah, you had the Prime Minister of Italy who you know, who was not exactly you know, tight with Macron or you know, and yet they're not even share the same ideology these days when it comes to migrants of all these things. But they're you know, this defense Alliance does seem pretty durable in a way that I don't know if any of us thought that would have been the case even ten years ago.
Well, I think I think Putin has focused their minds.
Yeah, sure, Well and you add in Finland and Sweden and you've added for a couple of pretty good armies, right yeah.
I mean it's weird when you think about it, like what what a terrible miscalculation Putin made?
Oh my god, I mean huge?
Right yeah, like has expanded NATO's rearming, you know, and
¶ How did defense/military become your beat?
you know the troops that it initially invaded, the Russian troops that initially invaded Ukraine. You know, they brought their parade uniforms with them because they were going in for the victory parade like seventy two hours later, you know, and it's like it didn't work out.
Let me get you out of here. On more of a person, how did you end up that this was your beat? You know? You just sort of you know, like I've always been. It's like, how did you end up? Like as you're this guy and I say this with utmost respect, there's really no peer. I'm guessing you didn't set out to be you know sort of this was going to be your beat and you have this incredible beat that that I wish we would have if it was gone type of mindset. How'd you get there? You know?
It was like one thing led to another. You know, I covered I started as like a police reporter for the Miami Herald in west On Beach. Uh and that was that was a fun job. And I covered the County Commission in Miami, and and then and then I, you know, I I one thing led to another. But basically I never set out to do it. And I and I and I should say, I like, I've done a lot of crazy stuff, but I haven't done anything
really crazy for some time. Uh not not really since, uh not for more than a decade, like really really lunatic like I used to do. And I think the
¶ Surviving close calls when covering a war zone
last thing, I just go into war zones.
Maybe with that, yeah, well I like that.
Well, you know, I've kind of learned how to do them in a way that's pretty safe. Like you know, I was in Ukraine, but I didn't go to the front line and Craine for instance. But but but I mean the last I've had more close calls than I deserve, you know, way more than nine lives. And I did. I did have a couple of realizations. Again this is about a decade ago. There was one in particular in Afghanistan where I thought like, oh my god, like what
are you doing? And you know, because being in a war zone like that, anyone will tell you it's like playing poker, and like if you stay at the table long enough, you're going to lose, you know, like cards are going to come up bad for you. So I so I just sort of cash most of that most of that in. But to answer your question, I had no idea that I would end up running around the world in this way.
Who's the first war that you covered? God, that's a really good question, you know.
I got I was living in India for the La Times in the late nineteen nineties, and this was kind
¶ Watching a live execution at the Kabul sports stadium in the 90s
of how I got started because it was I went I got a visa to go to Afghanistan and it was in the late nineteen nineties, so it was the first Taliban government. The first thing I did the first morning I got there, it was a Friday morning, and that's when they do public executions and amputations. And I went to the Cobbles sports Stadium and I watched an execution and an amputation as.
They were reading the sports stadium.
Think about that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was like I was a special guest. I mean, they were very pleased to have me and Yeah, that was That was really something. And there was a civil war going on inside the country at the time, because you know, there was a big part of the country that didn't want to be part of the Taliman.
But did we know what there was there yet or no, it was did we know Ben Laden was in Afghanistan?
Oh my god, I mean it was all you know, if I could do it all again, I'd do very differently. But I remember, I remember in that this is the
¶ Seeing the jihadi training camps in Afghanistan prior to 9/11
late nineteen nineties, so it was a few years before nine to eleven. Right, It was all over town. You know, they said, look, if you go, I'm not kidding. There used to be a volleyball game that they would all play and they'd say, look that Jihads all play Bin Laden. They all played volleyball outside of town. And those are the guys, you know, they fought against the Russians when the Russians are here, but they never went home. And they all speak Arabic. Don't let them see you they
see it Western or they're gonna go crazy. But everybody kind of knew that we're there. There were training camps that were there. I mean those are been Lauden's training camps. So it was all kind of there and it was sort of below the surface and you could kind of see it, but it was very difficult to kind of figure out what it meant, you know. I mean when nine to eleven happened, I knew immediately decided, oh god, you know I just watched all that.
You saw it, right, it was like that. I assumed it made you jump right into that.
Well. No, I mean I was covering the Bronx for the New York Times, and I was an absolutely failed
¶ Any desire to cover an active war zone again?
Bronx reporter. But they Yeah, somebody came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said, haven't you been to Afghanistan? And like I was like the only person in the news or had been there, and I said, yes, yes, I've been five times. And so they put me on a plane and kind of you know, uh history, Yeah, yeah.
How do you uh you say that you've cast your chips, But every war correspondent I know has this. The adrenaline is there, it's a dopamine. How have you replaced it?
Well, I think I've successfully weaned myself from from all from all that, from from getting because the like I never really people have asked me many times they say, like, do you do you get Are you addicted to violence? You know, no, like, no way, No. It's scary as hell to be out there and I don't want to get killed and I don't like to play those kinds of games. But what what what you do get kind of addicted to a bit is is kind of the largeness of it, because you know, to be in the
middle of a war. Wars are very big things and and people are fighting and dying and putting their lives in the line, and and you know, in a place like a rock, I watched a whole society and disintegrate like in front of my eyes. And I, you know, I knew Iraqis, I was friends with them, and I saw this kind of happening, and those are you know, you feel that the continental plates are like literally shifting in front of you, and history is kind of unfolding
in front of you. And that's that is kind of addictive.
You know.
That's uh, that's like breathing pure oxygen. It's extraordinary. You know, it's amazing, and I'm lucky to have survived a lot of those things. But that's that's the allure. It's not so much the violence as the largeness.
Well then you get at the and that's it makes us. You know, I've I've always felt too detached from it. You know. Area was covering the political implications, the policy implications, and these are very but not to be on the front lines. I always felt like I was missing something and it probably made it meaning that there were questions I wasn't asking that I would know to ask if I were there, right like that to me, that's irreplaceable, right.
Well, yes and no, because I would I felt the same way being down there in the ground going the other way, going out, like what are they talking about? You know, what what are they going to do next? And so it's hard to it's hard to take it all in. So again it's if it's a big, big thing like that, and if you could say the same in Ukraine today, Yeah, it's it starts in Washington and goes all the way down to the ground. Yeah.
Well, dexter Man, this is uh, this was this was fantastic. Like I said, I'd love reading your stuff. I know you think you right, you know that they're too long, But the New Yorkers has pretty good editors. They would they would tell you if it wasn't getting read. They're along, they would tell you if it wasn't getting read. And you know the way New Yorker subscribers are. They read all the way to the end, and they find the grammatical errors.
Yes, weird most people. Well, well, Chuck, thank you so much for having me that brother,