Peter Zeihan Returns: China, Ukraine, and What Comes Next - Danger Close w/ Jack Carr

this is the danger close podcast beyond the books with me Jack Carr [Music] welcome to the danger close podcast in Ironclad original presented by Navy Federal Credit Union my upcoming novel Only The Dead hits shelves this may and is available for pre-order right now my guest today geopolitical strategist Peter zehan he is the author of these books right here just United Nations accidental superpower absent superpower and his most recent the end of the world is just the beginning and now without further ado Peter zihan all right Peter how's it going hey doing all right help yourself Jack ah good to see you man I'm sure you have been extremely busy you're always extremely busy but I can only imagine that this last year since Ukraine and then you're gonna Rogan last month and I can only imagine how busy uh you are across the board so thanks for taking time to sit down it's been pretty much non-stop since I saw you last I bet I bet oh man where do you even start I mean I wish everybody would read all of your books by the way I have them all right here I just had get them in hardcover and get them in the trade right here this is my original uh that's what started it all right here I read this on the way to Africa back in 2016 and uh this really informed True Believer my second novel so The Accidental superpower right here and you've been going strong ever since uh absolutely yeah Wild World what uh so what's uh what's been going on what's the what what have you been asked to do more than anything else over the past year since Ukraine has it been all you rain or is it Ukraine China is it Ukraine China Russia or there's some other things out there that people need to be aware of as well that they're asking you to talk about it think about it my career to this point has been convincing people the demographics and geopolitics matter and that generates a series of forecasts and until the Ukraine war happened I don't think a whole lot of my clients really believed any of it they just found me a an interesting thought leader somebody who could come up with a new framework contingency planning soundboarding that sort of stuff well since Ukraine where they're like holy crap this is actually all going down we got to have him back so last year was by far the busiest year I've ever had and now of course it's Ukraine and its economic After Effects and now that people have kind of admitted to themselves that China is in terminal decline the conversation has now shifted to you know the house and the Wares and the what so it's yeah it's been I'm a busy busy boy I bet I bet well but before we kick off all that stuff what is up with the Spy balloon I mean it was in the news recently what is going on there we have one that was like a not maybe a Chinese five balloon but it was a little uh hobby group that's in something up perhaps that got shot down and one that was a Chinese balloon that went across the whole country and then maybe another one possibly that got shot down before but what's uh what's the deal with those are those always been coming over or what are that something that's brand new no it's relatively new now there are balloons all over the place for weather for science for whatever else uh the the balloon in question that the U.S shot down over the Carolina seabed uh was definitely a spy balloon so let me just kind of dial back and give you an idea of how this happened on the Chinese side because it really is happening so chairman G is now Consolidated more power unto his person than any human in history and as part of that Purge he has removed everyone from any position of decision making within the Chinese system who is competent uh and so it really is a one-man show I mean we can look at Russia and talk about he really only has half a dozen advisors anymore and we can talk about Obama and how he locked himself into the White House the G has no one no one will bring him any information because they don't know how react and he often reacts violently and that's you know shooting the messenger is not good for information flow in this sort of environment China has made a series of catastrophic mistakes over the course of the last couple of years wolf Warrior diplomacy destroyed his relations with most of the world uh because now people they're they're literally proud of their genocides in China now and that does not resonate with anyone we've got relations with the United States which are their security guarantor for their trade and their primary consumer base and the country that allows them to import all their food and their energy that's just cheesed off at them completely and they're even ruining relations with the Europeans over the Ukraine war so one way or another it has finally perkulated up to G of just how deep in the they really are so he sends out these peace feelers saying that okay we won't be quite so crazy uh and blinken the U.S Secretary of State was on his way to the airport to get on a plane to come to China but because there's no information exchanged within the Chinese system at all some dumbass in their intelligence operation said hey I got an idea because we're an occult of personality and the great leader hates all things the United States I am going to float a 350 foot across balloon over the United States that you don't even need binoculars to see and I'm going to dangle a chunk of apparatus it's as big as an embryere jet now if you've ever been to a regional airport you know those well they're the ones with two seats on one side and one on the other okay they're very very small they're very very cramped unless you're dangling it from a balloon okay and then it's going to spend seven days going across the United States we're not going to get any intelligence from this because the things I'm going to send it over the missile bases I don't know if you knew this but unless you're actually launching the nukes the missile silos are closed and so there's no information that could be gathered uh from a balloon that you can get from a satellite even better the Americans are gonna have a YouTube jet above it and a spy helicopter below it all seven days with whisper sensors recording every bit of transmission it does looking at what it does learning the echo charger it will be the intelligence coup of the decade for the Americans and at the end of the day they're going to shoot it down and get the hardware too so they're going to get the codes and the sequencing and the routing information all of it it is arguably the dumbest thing that I have seen any country do in the last 20 years and the Chinese government for the most part didn't even know what was happening their defense department didn't know their their foreign ministry didn't know it's pretty obvious from the calls that she didn't know it was just some idiot in the intelligence services that is the degree of decision making breakdown we are seeing in China today that someone would think that this is a good idea and then not be able to stop because the information exchange up and down the system is now so destroyed that you can't even have a basic conversation do you think that person it's off with their head right now that oh I'm sure if they're not dead already they wish they were oh my gosh how many people are around G is it uh there's no more there's zero so who comes who has to knock on that door and go in and be like ah sir we just lost a uh a spy balloon over yeah exactly who's that guy do you want to be that guy yeah I don't know you definitely don't want to be the messenger no is there something similar to the what is it the Russian Security Council where they have the uh semi-newly appointed Deputy chairman um and then the chairman which is the President of Russia and then heads of intelligence agencies and then it kind of filters down to some Regional District representatives and other people there is but the problem is she spent his first five years purging the country of all of his political opponents and then he spent his next five years purging the country of all theoretical opponents which meant anyone who could think there's nobody left so yes those institutions do exist to a degree but they're either staffed by people who are utterly incompetent or patsies who got their job because their personal loyalty even in Russia which is not what we would call an information free Society there are still a handful of people at the top that will talk to Putin and tell him uncomfortable truths now three of them are competent three of them are not interesting so he is getting set of steady spread of I'm sorry a steady stream of misinformation and propaganda but there are three people who will tell them the truth she has nothing like that because we think of things from our perspective we think of okay what are our uh top uh geopolitical uh issues of the day is it is it China is it Russia energy whatever it might be for us do they have a list like that do you think that they they look at and they're thinking like okay we have Taiwan we have maybe some but chips and semiconductor type uh infrastructure out there that we might want that might help us if we had it um we have what do we have as far as mining goes and they look at those sorts of things uh or I'm sure that they used to yeah uh but uh so if you want to go back a little bit if you remember ding Xiaoping he was the second generation leader the guy after Mao he was probably the best leader that China has ever had because he realized what the strengths and the weaknesses of the Chinese system were and he worked assiduously internationally to address the the weaknesses and leverage the strength so he is the guy who met with Nixon and was brought into the American World War post World War II Cold War uh International globalization structures and that set the stage for the industrial expansion that to create the China that we now know and he wanted to make sure that they never had a repeat of Mao so he personally selected not just his successor but the following guy too and that's Zhang's him in who Town between the two of them they ruled China for 20 years and that has been the gold native China but he knew that he was not smart enough to figure out who should run the country 30 years on and so he left it to those two factions to come up with a compromise candidate and the compromise candidate was Xi Jinping unfortunately for Zhang and who uh ji spent his first five years out maneuvering them and gutting both factions and then the second five-year period getting rid of anyone who might theoretically form a new faction and so if you remember when he crowned himself president for life about a year ago who Jin Tao was up on the one of the in one of the desks on stage when it all went on and they publicly escorted him out to underscore to the country just how there was no opposing Power Center anywhere even theoretically in China anymore it's just Jean geez what is it and one child one child policy when did that come into effect and what do they did they not project forward off what that was gonna gonna do to them or were they just looking at a 10-year plan a 20-year plan and now they're at the 40 50 year side of this and what's what's going on there yeah so the one child policy was adopted about 40 years ago and Mao was concerned that this up and coming post curio post Japan occupation generation was going to expand so quickly that it was going to literally eat the country alive and it has contributed now to the terminal demographic decline that China is in uh but I don't think it's quite accurate maybe a little unfair to put all of the fault on the one child policy it was in time proven to be a bad policy I'm not disputing that but when you move off the farm and into the town you go from kids being free labor and so you have as many as you can put up with plus one because that's how you find out it's too many to kids being a luxury good and just the source of migraines you know if you go back just to the 1950s they were having seven and eight kids per woman now in the cities it's less than one geez uh and obviously the one child policy played a role in that but just the urbanization process overall greatly depresses birth rates and now we've got China which is the fastest urbanizing country in history did it in 40 years and on top of that they've got the one child policy so you put those two together and the result is the death of the country we're near the end gee what steps are they taking to uh to mitigate any of that or they just blindly going forward uh no they're not being blind about it this is one of the last things that was decided before G ushered the last competent people out of the room I like the product placement there there it is his back is it in bam end of the world is just the beginning so it's been out for a year so I want to talk to you about that too uh the changes that have happened over the last oh I think you see that there it is look at that everybody should read this book for sure so the the Chinese went to a two China policy and then a three-child policy and then they did away with it all and there's now no restrictions and in fact the population management Bureau I can't remember the name of it that's responsible for enforcing population controls is now basically a needle natalist uh arm of the government who helps people have kids and try helps them to try to find child care and things like that so you know they from a policy point of view they've done more or less what they can without a complete upheaval but it's too late too many people are living in condos and so their birth rate is going down down down down down and then we had three years of covid and one of the many many many outcomes of covid is when you're not sure if your economic future you're less willing to have a kid and the the specific Chinese flavor of that is when you can't see your mistress every week which is apparently really popular uh your marriage falls apart oh so we've had this Maryland advice I wasn't expecting that so yeah I know so apparently we've had this collapse in uh marriage rates in China during covid and then of course three years of lower birth rate so from 2018 until the last data we have in 2021 the birth rate dropped by like 40 percent even though they were liberalizing the laws on having kids at the same time so it's just we're so far past the point of no return now and so what does Taiwan give them if they were to uh re-annex retake um nothing bad really yeah so China about the only Advantage would be a mild strategic Advantage because Taiwan is part of the first island chain and those those line of barrier islands that are populated that separate China from the rest of the world and China's never been able to penetrate through that in a sustained way certainly not in a corporate manner um but they don't get semiconductors because the Chinese can't operate their own semiconductors so if they suddenly found themselves in possession of the world's most advanced system they wouldn't know what to do with it it would be like a spaceship Landing in the United States and you know we'd give it a good try but we wouldn't have any idea what we're doing um it would lead to a military conflict that they couldn't win uh remember the Chinese Navy while it has a lot of vessels under combat conditions most over 80 percent can only say about 400 miles from Shore and their oil comes from 5 000 miles away so someone Japan the United States Australia Taiwan Vietnam India someone will put two destroyers in the Indian Ocean Basin and cut the energy line and that is literally all he wrote also remember that China is the world's largest importer of food and they import the vast majority of the inputs that allow them to grow their own so you're you'd be looking at a de-industrialization collapse that would trigger a famine in a matter of months and as of four years ago the Chinese government realized that there's an open question now with G purging the system so much of whether or not he actually buys into the propaganda we just don't know one of the beautiful beautiful things in the Ukraine war is the United States has demonstrated that it's listening in to every meeting and every phone call and reading every email and every blog that Putin touches you can't do that with you because he doesn't speak with anyone there's no one to hack so we just don't know you know I mean he's gone he's gone old school what does it do to us if there's a uh prolonged conflict over Taiwan to do something to our semiconductor industry like maybe make it uh Revitalize it here or are we looking at that anyways no so semiconductors are a really really method space um you've got three main types you've got your 10 nanometer and smaller those are your super Advanced ones those are used in most AI programs so that would include things like satellites that would include things like um AI I'm sorry um self-driving um at the bottom you've got your 90 nanometers and bigger and these are almost analog shifts they can only do like one or two things so like the the chip that's in your smart bulbs uh would be one of those and then in the middle 90 to 10 everything else that's the vast bulk of the market uh and that's everything from Aerospace to Automotive to power regulation the really really good stuff the top 10 requires a constellation of almost everyone 13 different countries so you're getting lenses from the Germans light sources from The Californians laser etching systems from the Dutch the wafer fabrication comes from the Japanese Americans do the design and they're manufactured in primarily Taiwan into a lesser than Korea and if a single country falls out of that constellation none of it works because there is no backup for any of it okay so if we do have a war in Taiwan that is Meaningful in any way we lose the good chips and that means AI goes into a winter for at least a decade dang that's wild on the low end the 90 and bigger the dumb chips those are almost exclusively China okay so when China goes no matter how China goes we lose the internet of things and everything that comes from that everything in the middle is actually significantly more durable the chips aren't Advanced their production is comes from different places there's some in Europe there's some in Japan there's some in South Korea there's a lot in the United States in fact by value the United States yeah words by value the United States produces more chips than the rest of the world put together those were the 10 nanometer and higher those are really expensive chips there's just not a lot of them and the 90 nanometer and Below there's a lot of them but they're just not very expensive so everything in the middle for your cars for your planes and so on were probably okay with the China meltdown or even a Taiwanese capture or destruction yeah that doesn't mean it's immune to all the shocks that are going on out there uh there's a lot especially with the Ukraine war I'm concerned about it but we're not really worried about the infrastructure of the industrial plant and you know in this world that's that's about as good as the news gets jeez I know uh the the title of your book wouldn't suggest this but you are actually hopeful about the future when it comes to the United States in particular uh we're going to be really good I mean we're pretty good now we're already the world's largest economy the highest standard of living uh energy secure Foods you hear blah blah blah blah blah ten years from now once we've built out the industrial plant to replace a lot of these places like China that are Falling Away uh we're also going to have lower costs of production and more secure production and higher employment and the employment here will be fueling the factories that are selling the products to the people who are consuming here and will be broadly immune to International shocks this this is a good story yeah but the path from here to there yeah there are a lot of bumps in it yeah I'm gonna stay in the mountains I think uh and then I hear you and watch it when you're on the mountains too I know you're uh I'm out in state you know um but not nearly as remote as you though all right today I want to talk about protect.com that is [Music] p-r-o-t-e-k-t.com started by my buddy Nick Norris from the SEAL Teams who was recently on the podcast he's all about health and wellness and living that best life so what we have here hydration immunity energy rest liquid packs because we all want to feel our best we dream of waking up with plenty of energy to excel at our work our personal lives and have a great workout every single day but the reality is very few of us do that that's why protect was started and you can grab a convenient pack right here this is energy so this has been boosting me through my latest novel and look at that it's a liquid pack right there you just bam add it to a glass add a little water and you are good to go so hydration love the hydration and the immunity and the clarity which I'm going to take as soon as this podcast is over and I get back to writing so all of that plus the rest how important is that rest right here take that an hour and a half before bed for some great sleep and for hydration right here 30 minutes after you wake up and right before your workout so swap that daily energy drink for the energy try that hydration that immunity that rest and they also have products like this reef safe sunscreen SPF 50 protect right there and right now you can get 25 off go to protect.com that is p r o t e k t.com slash danger close 425 off check them out you know I want to take you back a little bit not to the beginning but to the beginning of a lot of where this uh post-world War II uh uh geopolitical framework was created uh in the summer of 1944 uh you talk about it in your in your books a lot of people just don't get this in school they'll get this from parents don't know what really the Bretton Accords was unless they read your book or if they type it into a search engine you know things will will pop up but it's fascinating in that we changed we there was such a paradigm shift out of uh what New Hampshire 1944 and I can only imagine what it would have been like New Hampshire of all places all in all places and bringing all those people from all corners of the World Imagine that's a little bit of a a hit to the to the ego having to come here to this essentially new country United States and uh and sit down and not grovel but find a wonder what's going to come out of this and then getting almost the season Ski Resort and then getting the opposite probably of what a lot of them thought so can you take us back to that summer and talk a little bit about where all this uh kind of started and why sure so let's let's deal with it first from the Strategic point of view and then we can deal with it from the economic point of view so uh one of the things that the Europeans refused to admit is after the American Civil War with reconstruction while the United States was kind of off by its own it was digesting a continent and over the course of reconstruction and knitting the country back together and conquering the West we became not just the largest economy in the world we were that before the Civil War we became a larger economy than the British Empire the French Empire and the German Empire combined and so when World War II came around if you're if you're willing to like you know step back and like ignore the emotion and just look at the numbers there was no way that the war was going to win in any way other than American domination and so when once we got to 1944 and it was clear that the Soviets had broken the back of the Germans in the East and at the norm Indian the Italian invasions were going to be successful uh everyone realized it was time to prepare for what's next and for most of the Europeans they thought what's next was going to be an American Empire that occupied Western Europe and they were in the process of making their peace with that because they realized they didn't have much of an option because if you were like Dane or Dutch uh you were you know you were you were in Exile and so the deals that you cut when the Americans invited you to discuss the post-war system we're going to determine the nature of your occupation and in the opening speech the United States made it very clear that was not what was up we were going to create a fundamentally different system with the goal of making global war Unthinkable so in the war in the world before World War II it was Imperial everyone had their own Navy everyone patrolled their own supply lines everybody guarded them jealously and everybody fought over the supply lines and the market access and the colonies the American Vision for the post-war environment would be that the U.S which had a huge navy at that time would Patrol the global oceans for everyone so that anyone could go anywhere at any time and access any commodity and trade with any partner and the real kicker was that the Americans would open their Market first because there wasn't a European market in the in the in the aftermath of the War uh all you had to do was let us write your security policies because we saw the world differently it wasn't about economics for us it was about security we saw the stalin-esque Soviet War Machine rampaging through the East we were getting reports uh from our intelligence to what the Soviets were doing in Ukraine and eventually in Poland was worse than what the Nazis had done in many ways which was you know mind-boggling and we realized that there was no way that we operating from a different continent could fight that unless we had literally millions of bodies between us and the Red Army and since the Europeans were coming out of the most destructive war in human history they were in no position to do anything unless they could be properly incentivized so the whole idea of globalization from the American point of view was to give the entire world an economic reason to stand up to Stalin and it worked because it used to be pre pre-industrial or pre-World War II if you had food and oil and coal and iron ore you could industrialize and you could make something of yourself and maybe expand but if you were missing even one of those things you weren't just backwards you weren't just a loser you were probably a colony well globalization meant you didn't meet all four you just needed one and you could trade for the others under American protection and that literally created the world that we knew from the American point of view we think of this as containment and it was from the rest of the world's point of view it was everyone getting on the road to civilization more or less at the same time from different starting points going at different speeds but for the first time in history we were all industrializing and that changed everything and that creates the environment that we're in today and the Soviets were at uh Brenton Woods right didn't they have representatives there they were invited but when it became clear that it wasn't about staliness central control uh their delegation broke down and left fairly shortly thereafter a lot of the um what we consider the central European countries were there and did sign but then they became Soviet block satellites and obviously didn't participate in the deals that happened on the back side jeez and do you think because most of the world I guess everyone that was there um was who had studied their history and uh it was kind of like in their their DNA to think oh okay we've been conquered again okay now that what happens okay tariffs over here okay somebody who occupies here uh and they were they kind of pre-programmed going in uh for a for a different outcome and then all of a sudden the United States says hey we're going to take care of uh the security of the globe essentially allow you to trade freely it won't cost you a dime we got it um and uh and our markets are are open to you um yeah but just just think about the time difference between now and then so you know we are roughly 80 years from World War II now roughly 70 years from the Korean War think about what was 1780 years before World War II you had all of the franco-german wars you had the rise of Imperial Germany and so people knew in their bones that when a large country captured another country it was theirs yeah and this went a very different direction what do you think if you're sitting there one of these delegates do you think they had a heads up ahead of time are they just sitting there kind of thinking here it comes here's the next one all right give it to us because the Brits came in with a plan for taking over the world again that the Americans were going to pay for oh no kidding so everyone had their preconceived notions the Brits were just you know wacko on that point but you know everyone's parents a little odd when they get older interesting um but but for everybody else yeah the question was you know what are the American terms going to be because you know why would they why why why would they bring us to a off-season ski resort and nowhere if it wasn't just to grind into us just how little Maneuvers to show us we make we're making them come here to New Hampshire the ski resort and now we're going to tell you in the New World Order and uh it's like apparent there's this great story I've read about apparently the Dutch rep went down to the bar the night before the talks and discovered there was no boost there because it was in the off season and he was just like oh what's our future going to be uh I'm sure they've rectified that uh what was our who's our guy there was it white is that his last name what was the guy that uh uh yes white was one of the main negotiators and and uh who are the people outside of uh brentwood's beforehand that uh that talked about all this figured all this out and then people went down to present it obviously but I was curious if along the way in World War II like 1942 we started realizing this and talking about it or after D-Day and then Okay no Okay now we're now before 1942 I don't think this was even a whisper in anyone's ear yeah uh the Americans are not known for long-term plans uh I I think that the real shift happened after Stalingrad because that was when we realized just how potent the Soviets were ultimately going to be uh one of the things with the Ukraine war now is we're discovering and you know everyone discovered this in World War II and in World War one and in every war the Russians have ever been in year one is a disaster and then in year two the Russians mobilize and start throwing bodies at the problem and by the time we got to Stalingrad there were a lot of bodies thrown and in the assault going both East and especially West into Germany uh the the Russians were regularly suffering four to one casualty ratios but they just kept coming so uh and when we realized that that was going to be the nature of the fight uh post Germany uh the only way you stop the bodies in that number is with even more bodies and since there were as many Soviets as there were Europeans we needed everyone jeez is that part of the uh the calculus for Ukraine now that this is the year where we throw bodies at it type of a thing well yeah absolutely so um it's it's Russia so data who knows um but our best guess is that by the time we get to May uh the ukrainians will broaden 60 000 fresh troops that have trained with NATO with new gear that will be make it the the toughest fighting force in Europe aside from the United States itself uh and arguably considering our horse posture in Europe maybe even tougher but the Russians will have another half million men in theater and so you're talking about six to seven hundred thousand Russians on the front compared to the one hundred thousand that they started with so this is this is we're about to start the second chapter this is a fundamentally different conflict now and they look at it they look at the bodies and that's just part of their their planning they're not looking at technology and how to how to mitigate risk to force and that sort of a thing they're just looking at like they have yeah previously uh they go back in their history and say oh we just throw another 500 000 people at this um this is a numbers game yeah there's pros and cons if you're not Russian I mean if you're Russian the numbers are pretty obvious uh I mean the cons is you know that's that's a lot of people and uh Ukraine can only win this if it's a battle of movement where they can inflict eight to one casualty ratios and we've had a muddy winter it hasn't gotten cold enough to freeze the ground they haven't been able to move it with their tanks at all and so they've been stuck in these head-to-head battles in places like Lockwood uh where they're suffering casualties they can't afford and in a battle where the ukrainians kill three three times as many Russians as they lose that's that's a battle the ukrainians lost they need to get this up to at least eight to one to have a chance on the other side uh by the end of this year the Russians will have committed at least a hundred thousand men were already approaching 200 000 casualties which probably means approaching 200 000 deaths because Russian Battlefield triage and medical is atrocious um a million men have fled there are eight million men in their 20s in Russia so one million is gone not coming back the other million is getting chopped up that still leaves them six million to go but this is Russia's last generation so even if the Russians do manage to overwhelm Ukraine this year and start and start what will turn into the greatest genocide uh since World War II um this is going to take a lot of men and this is the last conventional war that the Russians will be capable of fighting yeah you talk about that in here which was uh 2014 is that when you when this came out uh it sounds about right yeah yeah 2014 I read it in 2016 but you essentially have a few paragraphs in here that talk about talks about the exact not just what was going to happen but the exact year that it was going to happen by I mean it's absolutely incredible when they started going down I've read this somewhere before because I used it in a novel and then I went back to this book I'm like oh my goodness and not only does he say because a lot of people can say hey it's going to happen and then throw it out there when it does they say oh look I was brilliant uh and these things are very obvious but you put it the exact date on it you said it will happen by this date because of X Y and Z and sure enough it exactly happened that way like there was a month not even a month to spare essentially it's uh it's it's quite remarkable I mean well thank you very much and not to toot my own to Horn although you know tutu um that wasn't the only word that I think is going to happen uh the second book is about the three big conflicts of the air that we're in now in the Ukraine war is just the first one we've got we've got two more Brewing one in the Middle East between the the Persians and the Saudis and another one uh in the East uh Eastern rim of Asia most likely involving the Chinese and the Japanese whether it's because of the Japanese throwing a Hail Mary I'm sorry whether it's because of the Chinese throwing a Hail Mary or the the war that follows the Chinese disintegration uh you know there's going to be a flood match out there oh man before we get to that one let's talk about the uh the Middle East then what's uh what's happening what's happening there what's what's on the horizon well I don't know if you'd heard this but the Americans are sick of it uh so we've left uh we we can all have conversations about whether we could have left more cleanly and that's legitimate but oh my God we're out and if we hadn't been out then what's going on in Ukraine would be much more difficult if not impossible uh and we would not have the political and Military bandwidth to do other things I had that reaction there because you inspired a part of my next novel that's coming out here in may only the dead and I was a little nervous about bringing a couple of points up because I it's turned in and I can't go back and fix it now if you tell me I'm totally wrong so when you say something that that it's kind of on on point I'm like yes awesome I cannot wait to see it and you're in the acknowledgments of course because all of this uh I mean informs the the writing of my novels of course but it's just it's all just so brilliant um and fascinating um but uh but anyway sorry so I have that that point that that exact point in there so I got excited for a second but uh yeah so you know with the American withdrawal you know Biden got a lot of rap but you know Trump didn't want to pull out because he didn't want to deal with the day of the pull out same with Obama uh so this this is a scab that we needed to rip off and we can argue about how if could we have done it better and maybe but we always knew the Afghan government was going to collapse shortly after we left now we didn't think it was going to be the second after we left we thought they might last a year no one thought it was going to last two yeah yeah anyway yeah so Middle East what's our next War what's going to pull us back in here so I don't think it's going to pull us back in I mean the TBD but uh the pull out is pretty much complete we've got a couple hundred Special Forces running around Syria their time is limited and as soon as they're gone there is no reason to consider uh The Descent comb base and gutter needs to be there anymore because it's not doing anything it should be back in the United States uh the last big thing that they did was do security briefs for the World Cup and I'm sorry that is not a worth of sitcom's attention uh so we don't even have carriers that are in the golf regular anymore because we are now completely energy independent again uh and we are the world's largest exporter of refined products so the energy argument for being involved is no longer there uh in this sort of environment the Iranians have done wonders in leveraging the American position to rile up sectarian groups throughout the region to overthrow governments and cause General chaos that has generated a an ongoing backlash with the Saudis now in The Fray because they realize the Americans aren't going to fight their Wars for them but whereas the Iranians ultimately want to use these minority groups to get control the Saudis don't care about what it looks like so long as the Iranians lose so they have been willing to use Terror groups and militant groups to just burn down everything to its foundation you get two groups one that wants to overthrow the majority and then one that cons itself has the representative to the majority just wants to destroy everything this is going to end badly uh the two scenarios to consider uh number one is a straight up slug Fest between the two powers that put half of all Maritime transported oil in the crosshairs in between them that'd be bad option two is the two of them basically engage in Rising proxy conflicts that destroy every country in Mesopotamia most notably Iraq no matter how that goes down uh you get a big hit to energy supplies and the country that is at the very end of the energy kick chain is China and they're the ones who will have to suck up the majority of the Lost yeah are they getting any uh uh oil and gas from Russia they are uh the problem with or well problem with natural gas is you can't redirect to it at all you have to have specialized shipment systems and if the pipes aren't there it just goes offline and that is the case that we're seeing with natural gas oil is a little bit more flexible because it's a liquid um but the time it would take to build infrastructure from the Western Siberian fields that used to supply the Europeans okay to the coast of China you know that that's a 15 20 year project that cost over 100 billion dollars wow we're talking China we're talking Russia these are countries not intimidated by the concept of scale but you don't do that fast yeah so what we're seeing is tankers taking crude from the Baltic and the Black Sea ports going west at some point either in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean uh taking these small shuttle tankers and reloading them onto super tankers and then sailing around Africa and India and Vietnam to get to China and the volume that is going that way is about a million maybe a million and a half barrels a day with another roughly million going to India okay a couple problems here number one is insurance and you know don't get bored this will be quick and it's interesting every reinsurance company in the world has said they will no longer cover any Russian cargo so the only companies that will ensure it are State companies from India and China who have never insured anything before and so the first time we have an incident where we have an insurance payout it's going to go directly into International arbitration and that will take years and at that point no one will want to get an Indian or Chinese insurance policy anymore Uh Russian pressure will build up in the pipes from the export Point all the way back to the fields and most of this crude comes from the permafrost and if for whatever reason the pressure backs up to the well the well will still shut because the oil will coagulate into a gel and the water that comes up as a byproduct will freeze into water and the water when one art freezes into ice it it expands and it pops the wells from the inside okay and that's all she wrote when we lose three four million barrels a day of Russian crude so not only are the Chinese now getting oil from twice as far away as they normally did which was already the most risky energy transport route in in history uh they're now getting it from a supply system that is eminently unstable and it is going to break down sooner or later and they're still picking a fight with the United States which controls the security of this route so it doesn't matter really at this point which piece of the system breaks the Chinese are the ones that lose all of it so jeez and then if you throw Japan China into the mix and China's Hail Mary what does that look like uh when I say hail Mary it's not that I think they can win one of the things to remember about the Ukraine war is that the Russians get what they're after which is a more securable exterior crustal defense they actually do buy themselves some by themselves some more time there's nowhere that the Chinese can conquer that buys them time so the only reason that the Chinese would launch a war is to try to preemptively remove Japan and you and uh Japan in Taiwan from the equation maybe Vietnam two or if they're like me and they believe that they're facing the economic and Agriculture and financial and political and demographic breakdown and they know that the end is nigh anyway picking the time in the place of the fight so that at home you can write The Narrative of the national defeat that might be enough for the CCP to retain control as the country collapses maybe so you know basically fight a war and for the low low price of 500 million dead countrymen you're still in charge what surprised you over the last year um Ukraine yeah it surprised you there's something to surprise you that it went what surprised you about it that they're still there I mean I I was probably among the most optimistic people for the ukrainians uh because they have done a lot in the last eight years since the donbos war to build up a military and establish a sense of identity and politically unify the country they made some real gains but I don't even I didn't think they were going to last a year much less all of a sudden it's I don't want to call it a peer conflict it's not but you know be in the same class uh this should not have happened the ukrainians have over performed by every possible measure the Europeans have stepped up to the plate in a way that I didn't think they were capable of the Americans have joined in and I thought with European feckleness and general disinterest from Obama and Trump and Biden that we wouldn't get involved and then of course most of all the Russians have just proven to plumb The Depths uh and the frontiers of incompetence in every possible military field it took that combination of things for Ukraine to still be in the game I hope it continues but this is still Russia's War to lose and what about a negotiated settlement what does that look like it seems like there could have been something Don boss region take that kind of earlier yeah eat opportunities no there have been eight negotiated settlements with the Russians and they just wait a few months to a year or two and then they push on it gives the Russians times to consolidate and move on remember that when when the Soviet system existed they controlled every one of the access points to the Eurasian plane where the Russian heartlands are it was the most secure that the Russians had ever been they had spent 350 years building that exterior position and they finally got it in 1945. uh 1992 they lost all but one of those access points and everything that Moscow has done not just Putin everything that Moscow has done since 1992 has been about rebuilding that Crystal defense so this is the caraba war settlements this is the Georgia War the abcause war the the Kazakh intervention the donbos were the Crimea where all of these are part of the same chapter of Russian history and so if there was a negotiated settlement they would grab the territory they would reinforce it they would consolidate it and then as soon as they felt they were ready they would launch another conflict just like they did the last eight times this one seems to be a little a little different for them um yes they thought that they could get Ukraine all in one go and they thought to a degree like I did back in January that the Europeans and the Americans were not going to pick up for Ukraine and I just like they miscalculated interesting well maybe I wonder if you don't miscalculate much but maybe it's because uh we we needed another War we're out we're out of Iraq we're out of Afghanistan what are we going to do we have a lot of uh defense Industries I don't I don't know anyone in the Army who's like oh yeah let's go back to work oh no no not the Army I'm talking more about politicians and I wonder if we were still still in Iraq and Afghanistan those same numbers what would would our support for Ukraine look different if we were oh yeah we were depend upon the Russians to supply our forces in Afghanistan so I mean we would have had we would have had a risk of having our entire military force in Afghanistan gutted well because we were coming through the stands we're coming through K2 and yeah yeah interesting that's wild yeah I think it would look different I'm curious what it would look like if we were at the uh the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we have some examples of that a couple different examples of the incursions that you just talked about with Russia when we were in Iraq and Afghanistan and they barely even they were really a blip on our radar it seemed like anyway uh certainly not front page for more than a more than a day um yeah I mean if there was a time to stop the Russians from this process and try to force them into negotiations over a non-soviet future in which we all you know get along if that's the right phrase the time was 2004. because that was when the Russians invaded Georgia and Georgia was a country that was attempting to westernize attempting to get rid of corruption attempting to join the EU and because we were involved in Iraq we had absolutely no diplomatic and especially military bandwidth so the Russians invaded Georgia while Putin was in a box at the Olympics with George Bush to underline that there was nothing that he could do wow and she I didn't know that he was at the Olympics that's amazing um but yeah it seems like we're distracted elsewhere we pay very little attention to some of these other uh things going on that people can't really find especially we have we have something we haven't had in the United States now in 20 years we have dry powder uh yeah exactly gotta use it see that's what I mean uh well the point of dry powder is not to use it the point of direct dry powder is you you have these because you got to replenish it you got to replenish it yeah you know I mean it's it's been it's been four years now since we did the the withdrawal from Iraq and so we now have an army that is rested and recouped and has had a chance to retrain and re-equip and uh and build out its numbers again it's capable I don't think anybody in the military doubts that but political support in the United States for any sort of ground war that's going to take another decade and that's not going to be in Ukraine no no unless something significant shifts in the Strategic picture so if Ukraine collapses this year uh we will have forces in Poland and we will be at a very high risk of a nuclear exchange with the Russians that's one of the reasons why we're trying so hard to support the Ukrainian so that that doesn't happen that we aren't put into that position because there's no there's no buffer anymore uh there's no buffer States right and we now know that the Russians are so militarily incompetent that in a face-to-face fight with NATO they would be obliterated and so the only tool that they would have are nukes and the Russians feel rightly that if they can't get to that Crystal defense again their demographic decline is so steep that they'll cease to exist in 20 years and they're right so for the Russians they're all in and that means every tool is on the table yeah wild shifting gears I want to ask you what your thoughts are on the AI side of the house artificial intelligence and Quantum Computing and chat GPT and uh all that stuff that uh has been in the news recently what's uh what are your thoughts on I mean you for I mean it's coming it's been coming we foresaw it in all sorts of uh all sorts of uh science fiction novels and movies so what do you think let me give you three things here so uh first of all um there are two types of AI you've got applied AI which is what we use in say Automation and programming where you have a very complex decision tree and if anything falls out of that decision tree the whole thing uh falls apart so that's a programming issue that's um applied mechanics applied intelligence if you want to call it that but it's really more accurately thought of as machine learning okay and it requires a lot of people one of the reasons the Chinese are pretty decent at this space is they have a lot of people and so when you throw a lot of folks who earn only fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year at a problem like this you can do a lot of programming General AI machines that can think machines that can operate independently this is not this is like getting into like um automated driving for example but you don't like right is that is that are you uh you don't have a Tesla uh well that's an Eevee EV and AV two different things okay we can talk about EVS later so you can do an automatic driving with a conventional vehicle uh it's more common with electric just because you already have the computers in there because you're driving a computer essentially right yeah exactly uh it's just it's more common with electric vehicles certainly because you it's a different Power load uh whereas a an internal combustion engine is going to be you know diesel or gasoline driven it just doesn't generate nearly as much electricity it can be modified to be an AV but it's not it's more of a conversion than you can do for an Eevee okay uh anyway applied intelligence um I'm sorry I got that wrong General AI general intelligence we don't have that yet we're not close we're not within 30 years doesn't mean it can't happen it's just not going to happen soon so lots and lots and lots and lots of human programming to establish this decision tree that the machine then tries to follow but it's not very good at doing things like recognize stuff on the shoulders so for example the way it was explained to me I think most effectively is if you've got a stop sign on a road an EV or an AV car will see that and it will stop but what if the stop sign is on the side of the building and it's part of a marketing campaign it's like driving by the building and it just stops because that's the context that it knows it in uh so decisions that a three-year-old is capable of making AI today can't make so if it involves math and physical processes and crunching no problem it's great but if it requires decision making not so much so that's your first issue yeah your second issue is that true AI especially General AI but to a degree even the applied stuff that requires those chips that are four nanometer or ten nanometers or smaller really the four nanometer types are the ones you need and if anything goes wrong with the international trading system those just go away for a decade and we're going to see that happen in the next year or two so it's not that this is a dead sector it's not that there's no potential but the hype has gotten ahead of where our capabilities are and the hype has gone way ahead of what our material constraints are state so what is chat GPT fall on this is it uh is it more like hey the high school kid College kid's going to have their paper written for them by something and say hey write this in my well so it sounds like me and because this chat GPT stuff I think I haven't played around with it much I've been writing so I haven't had a chance um you can relate but uh like it can go you I think you give it access to or you can give it access to all of your stuff on your computer so it is now kind of learning can learn how to talk like you essentially and maybe for for what is basically an alpha test it is remarkably sophisticated I mean there aren't a lot of people out there if you put a chat GPT paper in front of them they're gonna think that a human wrote it but for a first generation it's really good so I would expect that to come a lot further along now one of the things you can remember about gbt in any sort of internet based AI system that's based on a server that doesn't have to worry about the mechanics of movement and that means you can do things with that on at scale that you can't do with some of these other applications that people are really excited about so that is definitely a technology to keep an eye on that you had gvt I'm going to mess around with it a little bit somebody sent me something they said right the next chapter in Jack Carr's book um sounding like Jack arnick and they said it to me and it wasn't great but it was I mean but it was it made it for something that came out of 40 Keys that's pretty good not but yeah exactly like it was on the right track um but uh yes it was really really interesting so I might play around with that uh a little bit going forward here and just see how yeah I typed in tell me what Peter Zion thinks about Bitcoin and wow I swear a lot when AI does it what do you think about Bitcoin what's going on with uh oh I should have brought it up I'm so sorry you did though you did all kinds of hit me oh my God what was I think are you an investor were you in a FTX are you down in the Bahamas I'm of the general view that not all of Bitcoin is fraud some of it's just a pyramid scheme I I there is no use case I think this is going to be kind of like uh betamax um a few years from now that people will look back on it and just you know why why did we ever think that was a good idea ah betamax had better quality than VHS I think back in the day okay let's go with Beanie Babies how about that oh man so uh so you're not an investor in in uh in cryptocurrencies no no I mean the blockchain that's behind that is really interesting and I think it's going to revolutionize the number of sectors but it's really hard to invest in the blockchain it's because it's a it's a digital technology as opposed to a product speaking of products though um EVS so I know you're not a fan what uh so so what's um what's going on with with EVs and why aren't you a fan I think I know but uh maybe let everybody else know so two problems uh number one uh most EPS in most places are not green at all uh the the places that we have chosen to do the processing and the way we do the processing is very it's Optical intensive and so the energy intensity to generate one of these things in the first place is an order of magnitude more than a normal car so battery you're talking about the lithium or the what is it it's primarily but the lithium but not just the lithium so like the frame is a um an alloy of silicon and aluminum and most of the stuff is processed in China on with coal with silicon you basically bake it with coal until everything that's not silicon boils away and aluminum is the most energy intensive metal that humans create and again it's processed with coal power in China uh and so if you're looking at like the the tesna Tesla uh propaganda they basically claim that their cars are made with 100 Green Tech and that doesn't happen anywhere in the world it's almost exclusively coal uh second uh we're gonna have a material shortage uh for us to do the green transition in a way that we're talking about with the technologies that we know solar wind EVs and so on we need three times as much copper and ten times as much nickel and 18 times as much graphite and on and on and on and on and Humanity has never in six thousand years doubled the amount of any industrial material that we already had in use ever and we're going to do this now for 12 different materials and we're going to do it without Russia and we're going to do it without China so we need to look within the constraints of what we actually have and might be able to build out in the next 10 and 20 years and then we need to take a really hard look not just at the economic footprint but the carbon footprint of the Technologies in question and we're gonna have to do something we really don't like to do in this country make some choices and putting solar where it's stunning slam dunk do that putting wind where it's windy slam dunk do that with EVS maybe some fleet vehicles in communities where it's sunny or windy so Phoenix sure Denver sure you drive an EV and you put up solar panels in New York you have increased your carbon footprint with those choices and since we're not going to have enough materials to do this at scale anyway we're going to have to choose where to put this stuff now the environmental movement is moving this direction and I actually have to say I'm a little impressed because they're not a group that is known for making long-term math-based decisions nothing what's going on in Europe right now is because the natural gas from the Russians going into Germany has basically gone to zero they're discovering that their solar in their wind system or not all that it's cracked up to be because Germany is a very non-windy non-sunning country and they've had to plug the Gap with soft coal lignite and so it's now about half of their electricity generation don't look at the German step the Germans lie about their stats they um they go by power used not by power generated so when the sun comes up in the morning they count all of their green power but a lignite power plant takes more than a day to spin up and down and they need it for the night but that means I also have to leave it running for the day so they don't count what happens during the day even though it's more than the Sun uh anyway so if you look at it from a more non-enron more honest approach uh they're getting about half of their power from coal now making it one of the dirtier economies out there so the German green and the California greens two geographies that have relatively similar policies when it comes to adopting Green Tech they're having a conversation about the numbers The Californians have spent about one-third as much in putting up Green Tech but they get five times as much electricity because it's actually sunny in California and the conversation of why it's working in one place and another that you know this conversation you know it has an easy answer basic geography and they should have had this conversation 15 years ago but they're having it now and as it as it becomes obvious that we're not going to have as much zinc and lithium and the rest we're going to have to choose where this stuff goes and it's not going to go in Germany man and I know so we're creeping up on an hour I know usually have something to jump onto because you are a busy guy um but uh really quick about so National Security space what do we Outsource to uh let's say ideological enemies uh that might turn into actual physical adversarial enemies uh what have we outsourced that is uh that is dangerous so we can't pull back immediately and why did we do that or have we done that sure well let's start with the Russians um the Russians are a major exporter of any number of energy food and Industrial Commodities they were an exporter of none of them except for oil if you go back to 1992. so they're they're now the top or second or third top producer for coal for oil for natural gas for Palladium for platinum uh for wheat for fertilizer and then on and on and on and they were number three for oil 30 years ago and part of the post Cold War globalization era is bringing in parts of the system that had not been part of it before Russia makes that list the single biggest vulnerability of the United States has from the Russians is palladium because you use that in every single semiconductor and they are 40 of the global total we cannot have chips in volume without the Russians there's just no way around that uh we will we will work on being better with efficiency and that'll help but we're still looking at us needing to reduce Global output of chips by at least a third because of that one thing okay uh China is much more significant China came in basically at the same time as the Russians but instead of being in raw Commodities they do process Commodities and Manufacturing so we need to relocate the entire Electronics manufacturing base that will be hard uh to do electronics manufacturing you need to differentiated labor force because the person who does the Die Cast does not do the wiring does not do the Coatings does not do the programming does not do the camera does not do the lenses does not do the motherboard and so on each of those is a different labor force and you've got a dozen different labor forces in the East Asian Rim that have been able to trade peaceably for the last few decades and that's where Electronics goes we can partially recreate that ecosystem with Colombia and Mexico but it's not going to be on the same scale and it's going to cost more uh the biggest problem is shorter term and that is materials processing so China is the world's processor not just for steel and aluminum but for lithium and copper and Cobalt and molybdenum and all arrests and none of this is difficult most of its 1940s or earlier technology a lot of it's not even expensive and the United States is the cheapest energy in the world because we've got great wind great solar in the Shale Revolution so it's not that we can't do it it's just that the whole kitten convertible has to be relocated before we can consider anything else because if you can't get the raw materials it doesn't matter if you've got the electronic supply chain system set up so we need to rebuild that the Gulf Coast is The Logical choice because that's where the cheapest energy is and the most what's a non-biased way to say this the least discriminating development policies where they're fine with heavy industry are in the Gulf Coast uh that's where I would expect most of this to go but we've got to make the decision to build that facilities those facilities and once we pull the trigger it's still going to be a minimum of two years before it's all moved and so is this next decade um for us for the United States very very telling with a lot of a lot of bumps to come out on the other side what is this next 10 years and does it take uh people in well bureaucrats elected officials uh maybe uh senior level Military Officers the citizens to be a little bit more informed about what's going on and make longer term uh decisions based on logic uh like what are we looking at here and can we do that and you know even capable of doing that anymore Oh and before we do that I'm going to let you go here in one second but I wanted to ask you um gosh think back to 1975 85 95 do you think we were happier as a country without social media and all this division that it allows uh whether it's International or not because it can be weaponized or you could just weaponize it yourself uh without any outside entity trying to do it or a political party trying to do it to Galvanize the base you can just it just seems to naturally bring out a lot of the worst in people and it was meant to bring together but it seems to have done the opposite uh how does that how does social media weaponization have or just it existing uh play in to this next 10 years and can it help us where we need to go or is it going to be a detriment this isn't the first time that the information dissemination business has become liberalized and democratized uh and every time it becomes easier to move information you go through an adjustment period that can be regime shaking so in the 1970s and early 80s the big technology with information was the fax machine and what that did is it broke down the Government Contracting structure and freed up private Enterprise now we look back on that as a plus but I think a lot of people who were in business at that time remember how nut cut throughout the competition were and if in movies the idea of the excess of the 80s that was a direct outcome of the freeing of private Enterprise because they could control their own information throughout we did the same thing in the 1890s with the telegraph that brought us yellow journalism which feels a lot like social media today that contributed to the Spanish-American War so we shouldn't uh we shouldn't under estimate the threats of what misinformation can do but in both of those cases culture in the United States was able to adapt and use the Technologies to expand the economy make for a more stable Society we just first had to deal with things like libel laws and so what we what we need if that's the right word is for Congress to step in and actually put in a regulation structure for social media and the internet that is more appropriate to the way the technology has evolved in I mean this isn't 1996 anymore the Telecommunications Act of 96 is what said that anyone who hosted any information on the internet was not criminally liable for anything that was there unless it involved child porn we need something like that to be expanded to be involve General misinformation and if we do that people like Vladimir Putin and amenijah of Iran and Corey Bush of the Democrats the major Tyler green of the Republicans will just go away hmm that is interesting so I think I've we had a uh a point other than the I look back to the Civil War for hope it sounds strange but uh that is strange in the aftermath of the Civil War I mean we fought this war where uh numbers of Americans who died uh exceed any other War we've ever been in and somehow afterward we came back together um so I look at this time and all this distrust in government um I look at all the uh the weaponization of social media and everything else and just having these two sides and it's my side your side it's it I look back to the Civil Wars we came out of that where we actually fought a war uh here we're just squabbling and everybody's you know can say whatever they want anytime they want and then regret it a few minutes later or the day later and try to delete it whatever that's different than actually fighting a war and killing your neighbor uh yeah I can build on that so I mean two things number one we're nowhere close to a Civil War and unlike in the Civil War where there was a very clear Regional limiter north south we don't have that anymore we're much more integrated not just uh state to state but within States so you know we we're not capable of that sort of conflict uh and then number two one of the things that I saw in the midterms was uh I spoke to a political analyst yesterday and he outlined some really interesting things for me uh Independence as a rule really don't like Biden especially as economic programs but they decisively voted for him in the midterms and the Democrats because the information and the whack or the misinformation and The Wack of candidates that Trump came up with so alienated the moderates that they didn't just show up to a midterm which almost never happens they showed up in force to vote for a guy they didn't care for uh and if the moderates in this country are motivated for a midterm you can imagine how many are going to show up for a general so the challenge for the Democrats and the Republicans up and down the ticket is to nominate the least crazy people because the moderates have finally been roused do you think we're drawing the right kind of people to politics that's a whole other question well we haven't for the last five years I'm going to reserve judgment for the next two because like I just oh my gosh put yourself well the problem's the primary system both of the Democrats and the Republicans you've got a primary system that encourages people to play to the base rather than to play to the middle and that means we combined with gerrymandering we get more and more Wackadoo candidates now we've been here before I think we talked about this last time the political reorganication that's going on happens every generation or two and the factions move around but at the point when the factions are moving around everything is game and the fact that we've got uh social media at the same time that's just bad luck so right now the voices from the extremes are very loud but even if you take the extreme on the left and the extreme on the right you're still talking less than a fifth of the American population probably less than a tenth uh and again now that the moderates are actually feel they've got some skin in the game for the first time in decades I think this is going to go lot more constructively than we might fear interesting how about some of those people that are drawn to politics because they see it's a as a way to get wealthy you go in and make 120 000 a year and then 10 years later you come out with 10 million dollars or whatever it is uh they're various student investors it seems a lot of these people the money doesn't come from your salary the money comes from what you do on the back end so like you go open a consulting firm or you go on the speaking circuit the consulting firms with family members and and all the rest of it uh seems it's quite lucrative I don't know if that's the right reason to go in to politics uh I would agree it's not the best reason um I like the way it used to be where we'd have citizens who would come in from various fields and you know surf for a term or four or whatever and then go out um but since we haven't had that political reshuffling in the United States since the 30s we have a lot of lawyers and lawyers see personal and recompense from a different point of view oh yeah I put that in uh this last book as well the one coming out here in May all right let's wait just read it well uh I'll let you go but the end of the world is just the beginning it is out now everybody should get it it came out last June um but all the other books too I mean and for gosh for high school kids just read these you know what I mean like like take a week off of school and read these it'll do more good than sitting in that classroom I'm sure um gosh uh what's what are you working on now is there another book in the works or what are you uh are you taking a breath and doing your Consulting what are you doing I'm taking a breath right now I gave 179 presentations last year so maybe I'm not taking a breath but I haven't had a lot of time to write no um there I am noodling over a number five uh but TBD okay okay got it I got it man thank you so much for spending some time today I sincerely appreciate it uh and one more thing I just want to end on a little bit of Hope sure so you are hopeful but you're just we're just gonna we're gonna take some we're gonna take some hits over this next decade but we're gonna come out the other side stronger for it is that how you look at it I don't I mean think about what these hits are we need to double the size of the industrial plan in order to build things here that's a good story that's not a hit the hit is when China breaks down we might not have some of the stuff we're used to for a while so be modified to build it our damn cells this this is good okay uh it doesn't mean that it's risk-free anytime we have significant change in the international environment there is risk but the American political system the American population doesn't have an interest in a ground war and there are too many countries that are hostile to the United States that are dependent upon the United States Russia and China are two of the countries most dependent on International Trade so honestly if we really want to break um all we got to do is go home interesting interesting all right man thank you so much for being out there I love your perspective it's always a little bit different than uh than most people's um because you put a lot of thought into this you've obviously dedicated your entire life to being able to build a foundation so you can put that kind of deep thought into these things so uh thank you so much sincerely appreciate it thank you for the books and for all the ideas that you uh that you give me um I go back and I revisit them uh constantly so it's uh everybody go out and get these books ice and I uh I highly recommend that we'd be a more informed country everybody read these so one mayor called us on thank you my friend all right take care awesome take care bye awesome thank you so much all right Navy Federal Credit Union those dreaded finances managing your money can be hard their competing goals growing savings paying debt managing every day and unexpected expenses plus a little having fun Navy Federal Credit Union takes the legwork out of saving and investing with a variety of choices want to supersize your savings earnings they're offering some of their highest rates in 10 years and whether you choose savings or Investments you can make it easier by automating plus their website has articles tips and tools that make complicated subjects easier to understand I have been a member since 1996 my first year in the Navy for those watching you can see my Navy Federal Credit Union cue card right there and they have been awesome to me and my family over all these years so check out Navy Federal's supercharged rates at navyfederal.org slash save and invest saving products insured by NC UA investment options are available through Navy Federal Investment Services and are not insured by ncua check them out navyfederal.org let's talk about AimPoint proven reliable trusted the original Red Dot since 1975. originally developed for hunting purposes their sites were adopted by the U.S Army in 1997. I've been using them for over 20 years now absolutely love AimPoint if you go to my Instagram Jack carrusa you can scroll down and see a few pictures of me running an AimPoint in Afghanistan in the early days but I want to talk about right now is the acro P2 right here look at this thing that is solid so AimPoint revolutionized Red Dot pistol Optics with the acro P1 now the acro P2 represents the next generation of pistol mounted Optics it features a brighter more efficient LED emitter coupled with a higher capacity battery to provide over five years of constant on use that's right over five years it's designed to withstand shock vibration and extreme temperatures this thing is solid absolutely I love it I'm going to get a few of these things and I love it so much it is in my upcoming novel only the dead so I have big plans for this awesome I also want to mention the comp M5 m5s right here so this thing is awesome what I really love about this is that it has a triple a battery so you can find Triple A's pretty much anywhere so that is a huge advantage in my opinion on this right here it features battle proven AimPoint comp series now in a lightweight compact model takes that AAA battery and that resolves a lot of travel restriction issues and it's compatible with AimPoint three by and six by magnifiers one of which I have right there and all generations of night vision devices and is compatible with multiple Mounting Solutions just awesome finally the comp M4 m4s it features professional quality Red Dot optic for use under extremely harsh conditions the US Army has chosen a member of the AimPoint comp M4 series of sites as their m68 CCO close combat optic for over two decades it's powered by a single double A battery for over 80 000 hours eight years of continuous use and over 500 000 hours in the night vision setting it's compatible with aim point three by magnifiers and all generations of night vision during the month of March receive a free signed copy of the devil's hand in hardcover with your purchase of any AimPoint comp series or micro T2 optic visit aimpoint.info slash Jack Carr and use code Jack Carr j a c k c a r r check them out today's episode is also brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee Company grab a can of Black Rifle coffees ready to drink the perfect balance of quality and convenience if you want a Spartan level caffeine kick try ready to drink 300 available in salted caramel vanilla bomb and more made with an electrifying blend of MCT oil and amino acids ready to drink 300 packs a caffeine punch that'll supercharge your day ready to drink is perfect if you need your coffee quick and shopping with Black Rifle coffee helps give back to the veterans and First Responders who serve our nation you can stock up on cans at blackriflecoffee.com or grab an ice cold can at a convenience store near you stock up at Black riflecoffee.com slash danger close and use code danger close 20 at checkout for 20 off your purchase and your first coffee Club order black rafflecoffee.com danger close or 20 off welcome to the Gear highlight portion of the danger close podcast first off thank you to badass workbench for this incredible desk this thing is so solid I absolutely love it check them out Badass Dash workbench.com and thank you guys this is amazing all right first up headlamps if you know me you know I am a big headlamp fan can't have too many of these things this is a variation of one of their originals from petzl right here and when I found out they were discontinuing this model I bought a ton of these uh but I just made the transition this last year to their new ones because I'm kind of running out of those and I actually really like it so everybody at Christmas got these in their stockings in this household we have them scattered in the cars in drawers in backpacks can't have too many headlamps as far as I'm concerned so that is the petzl and uh really liking that new one right there all right black raffle coffee fueling me up with the espresso 300 triple shot as I work on this novel coming out in May Only The Dead this has been fueling me so black raffle coffee company thank you guys and if you go to officialjackcar.com you can get a Yeti mug just like this and a bunch of other cool stuff on there as well so check that out Sig all right this is the p210 Target right here so there's a lot of history to this pistol and it is awesome if you have not fired one of these you should and you can check out the Vickers guide also they have a Sig book that is amazing incredible pictures hard to find I don't think you can get them anymore but they might be doing a reprint but ton of History here with this p210 is beautiful and it shoots like a dream absolutely love this so Sig thank you guys so much oh also on that uh website official jackcaller.com look at that right there oh that looks familiar doesn't it yep that's right Land Cruiser fj62 and uh those are on there as well protect uh my buddy Nick Norris he's just on the podcast recently we had an amazing conversation uh incredible guy what a story but he started this and it's p-r-o-t-e-k-t.com this is their hydration liquid formula right here so I have that every day and then when I need the Boost energy liquid formula right here but it's all about clean energy and optimizing performance in life so Nick thank you so much and for everything you guys are doing out there at Pro tax awesome Head Hunter blades oh Harley Elmore right here this is the rat and I think I've talked about this before but this is just a sweet little blade so check them out incredible history behind this blade as well and you can find some of that history online so check them out headhunterblades.com and this one came with the trainer because training obviously is vastly important so if you're going to have a pistol carry the blade uh tourniquet all those things uh get the training so bam that is very cool thank you guys so much and moving on AIM point the acro right here I have big plans for this Acro and so this is a pistol mounted uh Red Dot sight check that thing out but it's fully enclosed and that means it is tough right here this thing can withstand some abuse uh check out warhog tactical they do a whole video on the last couple videos on their YouTube channel so go check out that Rick Hogg over there former Army Special Operations guy and done on the podcast as well so AimPoint thank you so much I'm gonna get a few more of these big plans all right right here bubbler ropes.com uh Bubba off-road recovery gear this is our Snatch Strap and uh yeah living up here in the mountains they call it the power stretch recovery rope and this one's fairly robust but they have all types of different recovery ropes on there so go check them out Bubba gear right here so in Arc Vehicles up here we have tow straps we have the snatch straps shovels uh Max tracks all the things you need living up here in the mountains to pull yourself out so you can self-rescue or help out your neighbor so check them out right there bubble ropes.com and all right Magpul look at this this is awesome so this is the DACA grid organizer it fits in I'm sure a bunch of different cases but in this case case it is the Vault this large Vault from Pelican and this allows you to arrange these to organize whatever you have in there so you can see this picture right here that's how they have the rifle set up so I'm going to be playing around with this build a fantastic idea because you're not cutting out the uh Pelican case foam you can move this around and get your weapon system all set up in there and customize it so check it out DACA grid organizer from Magpul that is it thank you so much Big Bear out there thank you for tuning in to the danger close podcast and Ironclad original presented by Navy Federal Credit Union my next novel Only The Dead hits shelves this may and is available for pre-order right now to find out more about my guest Peter zihan go to zihan on politics and that is z e i h a n.com you can link to his social channels from there be sure to pick up his books just United Nations academic superpower absent superpower and his latest the end of the world is just the beginning you can follow me on the social channels at Jack carrusa officialjackcar.com that is the website you can go click on shop in the upper right hand corner for the merch and if you enjoyed this conversation be sure and leave a five star rating in review wherever you get your podcasts and until the next time take care out there stay safe be strong keep fighting [Music]

Channel: JackCarrUSA

Views: 1,435,250

Keywords: danger close, jack carr

Id: 4jMQ-azCtv8

Length: 85min 1sec (5101 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

i love you op, thank you so much for the post

please note that all posts should be funny and about diplomacy or geopolitics, if your post doesn't meet those requirements here's some other subs that might fit better:

• More Serious Geopolitical Discussion: /r/CredibleDiplomacy

• Military Shitposting: /r/NonCredibleDefense

• Domestic Political or General Shitposting: /r/neocentrism

• Being Racist: /r/worldnews

thx bb luv u

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.