The Revolution in Military Affairs: Weapons Sales

An F16 Fighter jet

Our series on the revolution in military affairs continues with the geopolitics of weapons sales. Why does Europe buy US weapons? And will they continue to do so?

Let’s start with the US weapons. They are designed for fighting like an American, aka fighting wars far from home against greater numbers and tough conditions. But that’s not quite what the Europeans need. The Europeans are facing off with a much closer adversary in Russia, who churns out cheap, mass-produced, short-range weapons like nobody’s business. And those Europeans should probably be taking a page out of the Russians playbook here.

So why is it that Europe continues to buy US weapons systems? Well, there’s that sweet little thing called an implicit security guarantee. You know, if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. And sure, having weapons that are consistent across NATO doesn’t hurt either. Oh, and those billions of dollars that have already been committed aren’t helping. But, that oh-so-important “implicit security guarantee” might be crumbling.

If Trump continues down his current path, the Europeans can’t be sure that Uncle Sam will step in if (and when) they need him. So, it’s looking like it might be time for a sourcing trip somewhere else…

Transcript

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re going to talk about the geopolitics of weapon sales, particularly American weapon sales or what the US builds, the sort of weapon systems that fields. And so therefore what it sells are largely driven by America’s own geographic options and constraints. The whole goal going back to the time of reconstruction 150 years ago, has been to make sure that if the United States is going to be involved in a war, that it happens over there and not over here. 

So we have a forward deployed military, wherever possible, that tries to keep potential violence as far away from American shores as we can, preferably away from the entirety of the Western Hemisphere. And over the decades, weapons systems that we use, have evolved to mirror that prerogative. So we started with the Monroe Doctrine and blocked sea access to the United States. 

Then we projected out on our sea lanes, and then eventually with World War One and World War Two, were actually fighting in the Eastern hemisphere in major conflicts. And the weapon systems that have evolved since then reflect the fact that the bulk of the fight happens over there. So if you look at every weapon systems that the United States has, it’s built on two basic cons or three basic concepts. 

Number one, we will always, always be outnumbered no matter where we are. And so the weapon systems have to punch much harder than everybody else is to make up for it. Second, we’re going to be fighting at the very end of a very long logistical chain, which means that the US has to excel at logistics and have allies that can help with logistics. 

And then the weapons systems themselves have to be much longer range than anything they’re fighting against, both because basing can be limited. And we have to make sure that the fight is happening as far away from our bases as they possibly can. And then the third system is these systems have to be durable. So whether it’s the F-16 or the Abrams or the now the F-35, it has to be able to fight in a contested environment that will always be contested by a greater number of things. 

And it has to be able to take as many hits as possible before it goes down. So yes, the US Abrams is the most badass tank on the planet, can take several direct hits and probably just shrug them off. Things like the F-16 can actually take anything shy of a missile hit and keep flying. And of course, the F-35. 

It’s a stealth issue. These aren’t by accident. This isn’t something that the United States just stumbled across. It’s something that we discovered with blood and with money over the decades for what was necessary for us to project power. And it affects everything from the hardware to the alliance structure. The Russians have a very different system. The Russians knew that all fights are always going to happen on their immediate periphery. 

And so they don’t need a long range system. 

They don’t need an excellent logistical tale. They don’t even need durable stuff. They want numbers. They want to be able to mass the other side with more jets than anyone else can field. They can be short range. That’s fine. They’re fighting from their own territory. They don’t need to worry about the logistical tail. They don’t have to be particular lethal. Sure. 

Maybe the opponent vessel can take eight hits. Hit him with 100. And so you go for cheap, short range and disposable. You fight with numbers, which makes the American Alliance with Europe somewhat odd. Why the U.S. wants to fight in Europe is obvious. 

Keep the fight over there and why the U.S. wants American basing rights in Europe is obvious. You want that logistical tale in place with competent people. But why? The Europeans would purchase American weapons? That’s a bit of a mystery, because ultimately the Europeans know that their fights are going to be in their near abroad. The Russians are right there. 

And if Ukraine falls over there, right, right. Right there. So you would expect the Europeans to develop systems that are much shorter range, that are much less durable, that are much cheaper, that can be fielded larger and larger numbers. And when you look at the weapons systems that the Europeans have fielded themselves, most of them crowd into that category. 

And yet they still buy weapons from the Americans. In fact, half of their military procurement is from the United States. But their weapons systems that are broadly inappropriate for their needs. They do this for two reasons. Number one is the NATO alliance. If there ever is a fight, the United States assumes immediate control of all European militaries, and interoperability of military forces is critical, especially to the United States, considering its robust logistical needs. 

The second reason is a little bit more tutti frutti. The Europeans would like the Americans to offer the Europeans as many security guarantees as possible. And while NATO is there from a legal structure, using American systems implies a degree of involvement in European militaries, because the manufacturing is in the United States, the services comes from the United States, the technicians from the United States. 

All the equipment comes through the United States, and the weaponry comes from the United States. And so maintaining that commercial relationship maintains an implicit security guarantee that is every bit as important as the article five guarantee of NATO. Or at least that’s where we were a few weeks ago. The last few weeks, the United States has proven the Trump administration has proven to the Europeans that none of this means anything. 

United States is clearly moving away from supporting article five on any issue that matters to the Europeans, most notably Ukraine and Russia. The United States is publicly debating whether it should withdraw from military command of NATO, which is the basically the same thing is withdrawing from NATO itself, since it’s illegal in the United States for any other country to command U.S. forces. 

That would mean an end to the NATO alliance. and that is the explicit security guarantee. And the Americans have already withdrawn weapons support and intelligence support for Ukraine, which is, you know, the fight of the age from the NATO point of view, especially from the European point of view. And the Europeans seen that the Trump administration is directly militarily threatening NATO allies now in places like Denmark and Greenland. 

Everyone’s wondering, why did we buy any of this stuff in the first place? If ultimately the Americans simply are going to stop supporting it. And so the Europeans, every country is basically in the midst of having a debate with itself over whether and how to stop buying American weapons systems and moving to something that is more appropriate for their needs, their geography, and especially the war that is on their horizon right now. 

A great example is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a fighter bomber with stealth capabilities. It’s perfect for the United States. It’s got stealth capabilities, got okay range, really good hitting power, very tough plane, largely pointless for everyone in Europe. It’s got too much range for what they need. Cost too much. Over $100 million per platform. And so far, the Europeans have committed to purchasing enough to spend about 75 to $80 billion. 

And then over the lifecycle of the jet, that’s another 250 to 300 billion. That’s a lot of money to spend on a relatively small number of planes that are not designed for your theater or your needs. And so the Europeans are looking to back away from all of those purchases and spend it on something that’s more appropriate. 

Now, at break of European purchase of American weaponry means a lot of things to a lot of people in a lot of places, and will require a lot of words for me to explain all the connotations. And that’s going to have to be tomorrow’s video.

Trump Calls in the Marines for California’s Protests

Photo of soldiers at the California 2025 ICE protests. Image by Wikimedia commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Los_Angeles_riots_-_June_2025_-_20250613.jpg

Anyone remember that 2011 movie called Battle Los Angeles? It’s beginning to look a lot like that again, just with a different kind of aliens this time.

Earlier this week, immigration enforcement began arresting suspected undocumented immigrants, which triggered protests. Trump deployed National Guard troops and Marines to LA, despite strong objections from the CA governor and LA’s mayor. Trump can legally enforce immigration laws and declare a state of emergency, so he stands on pretty firm legal ground.

The use of military forces like the Marines should be setting off alarm bells because this is not in their job description. Putting Marines that are trained for combat, into a situation where they will interact with civilians and act as law enforcement, is risky to say the least.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these protests is the scale. With CA’s size and political leaning, larger turnouts would be expected. Despite this, Trump clearly has no issues pushing California’s buttons, especially if it means political gain for him.

Transcript

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan coming to you from a hotel room where I’m about to give a presentation. I figured that with everything going on in California, I’d better say hello and let you know my $0.02 on what’s going on. Short version is that we have protests and a little bit of rioting in the Los Angeles area specifically. 

What happened is, a few days ago, immigration enforcement went into communities and started rounding up people that they thought may or may not be illegal. There have been several hundred arrests, and that has triggered protests and action. That has prompted Donald Trump to send in about 4000 National Guard troops from local units, over the objection of the la mayor and the California governor. 

And as of a few hours ago, 700 Marines have, joined them as well. So few things here to unpack. Step one. Does Donald Trump have the legal right to do this? Of course he does. Enforcing immigration laws is why Ice exists. So of course, Donald Trump can send in, their forces in order to root out what they see is an illegal community. Were these folks doing anything particularly bad? Not really.  

One of the things that, the Trump administration has discovered is that if you want to treat immigration as a law enforcement issue, the step one is to investigate and figure out if someone’s actually breaking a law aside from being in the country illegally. That’s what Trump campaigned on. But that takes time. And, per agent, if you can get an arrest every few days, that’s actually pretty good. 

And Trump wants to uproot people and hundreds of thousands moving into the millions. And so that just doesn’t get the numbers that Trump is after. So he’s going into places where illegal immigrants are known to congregate. In the case of this California case, they started at the Home Depot and went after the day laborers and then eventually went into the communities and places that were known to employ illegals. 

And that’s how this all got started. Can Donald Trump declare a state of emergency and mobilize the national Guard over the objections of local authorities? That’s a bit more mixed, but probably yes. The federal government political leaders have the right to declare states of emergency and bypass some of the laws that we consider to be normal, especially if you’re dealing with someone who isn’t an American citizen. 

So Governor Newsom and the LA mayor have both sued, and the initial court case will be heard, today when you’re seeing this on Thursday. But I really doubt it’s going to go their way. The courts generally give a very wide latitude to any administration when it comes to issues. Federal law enforcement, if there’s going to be a check on the president’s power in this specific instance, that’s probably going to have to come from Congress, because they’re the ones who determine when states of emergency can and cannot be declared. 

And at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any appetite in Congress to challenge the president on this or any other issue. So this is probably going to work out just fine for Trump from a legal point of view. That, of course, leaves the practicalities. Honestly, if I were the one writing this headline, I’d be like only 17,000 people in California protest. 

I mean, the protest movement in California has this high on self-righteousness and huge. And to consider that we are now in, I reemerge April, May in the fifth month of the Trump administration, and we haven’t seen widespread protests. That’s kind of surprising to me, especially in California. So the numbers of people involved here, the level of skullduggery or violence, if that’s what you’re after, is really very, very low by normal California standards, much less by the standards of what the Trump administration say triggered the first time around. So, this is very clearly, from my point of view, Trump trying to instigate an issue, California is on the opposite side of the political aisle from this administration. It is the most powerful economy in the country, and arguably the sixth or seventh most powerful one in the world. And Trump would love to take it down a notch. Now, will that work? Well, that’s really up to the rest of the country and Congress. 

But I think it is worth pointing out that this has the potential to get really, really ugly. The military is designed to kill people. We discovered in the war on terror that we do not like it when our military is responsible for civilian control and law enforcement. They are not trained for it, and it’s only in the last 24 hours that the Marines have started to get trained on non-lethal munitions and things like riot shields. 

So they’re being deployed with minimal training, but a lot of testosterone into an environment that is becoming deliberately volatile. That is not the sort of mix I feel great about now. Legally, unless it’s things get really out of hand, the military can’t be used for law enforcement, so they’re technically there to protect, say, federal sites. The Marines are not a protection force. 

The Marines are go in there and kick some ass force. And so putting the military in this sort of position is really awkward for everybody. Now, the last time the California authorities requested government assistance for things like law enforcement was the Rodney King riots that dated back to, you know, the early 1990s. Anyone who participated in that has been long since left the federal bureaucracy. 

And another thing to consider is that Donald Trump’s gutting of the federal bureaucracy goes up, and to include the military itself. So most of the people who would tell him that this is a horrendously bad idea have already been fired, and we’re all going to have to learn the hard way.

The Revolution in Military Affairs: Series Intro

Photo of a solider throwing a drone into the air

Today, we’re launching into our new series on the future of military affairs. Before we get into what is coming, let’s first discuss what past revolutions in warfare have looked like.

The industrial era brought about the first major shift, with the rise of mass-produced weapons, railroads, and field hospitals. The second shift was seen in the late 20th century as digitization led to the introduction of precision-guided weapons and satellite systems. Now, we’re entering a third revolution.

With breakthroughs in digitization, energy transfer, and materials science, we’re seeing things like drones change the way wars are fought. Without adaptation and changes to traditional infantry and armor, these forces will soon be obsolete.

Some are better positioned for this coming revolution; take the US for example, they have money, industrial infrastructure, and they’re not in a major conflict. Other countries, like Ukraine, will be the guinea pigs for this coming technological shift. However, this new era of warfare will sneak up on everyone eventually…

Transcript

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, right outside the Country Music Hall of Fame. Today we’re launching a fresh series on the future of military technology and specifically how it’s going to change strategic efforts by various countries, and the policy that goes along with it. And before we can go forward, we need to take a big step back and understand the last couple of major revolutions in military affairs. 

The first one really begins with the dawn of the industrial era, and how the advancement of things like gunpowder and steel and electricity started to interface with the way we ran the military and the conflicts in question, or the Crimean War of the 1850s and the American Civil War of the 1860s. 

Both of these conflicts, we saw technologies that had been percolating for decades suddenly come into their own very real way, where they could be mass produced as opposed to individually crafted. 

And it changed the nature of war ever since. These include things like rifling muskets to give them better range and faster reloads and lower breech chance. This includes the, early efforts with the telegraph for mass communication and sending information to and for very quickly, the railroads for the rapid distribution of troops, field hospitals to prevent casualties from turning into fatalities. 

And of course, things like the ironclad, which gave rise to modern navies and all of these cases, if you were using a pre-industrial military force, if you came up against these forces, you were pretty much wiped out. The ratios were absolutely horrific and the more militarized of the countries did better. So this is not just having a little technological edge. 

This is operating in a fundamentally different technological era, Stone age versus Bronze Age versus Iron Age versus sedentary agriculture versus industrialization. It was one of those kind of seminal jumps that redefined what was possible. The Crimean War, I think, is particularly instructive because you saw the early industrial powers, most notably the Brits and the French, going against a completely, industrialized power, primarily Russia. 

And they laid a few miles of rail track and set up a couple of field hospitals. And that alone was enough to absolutely gut the Russians. The Russians simply could not maneuver fast enough to keep up with what the Brits could do. Via rail on the Crimean peninsula. That’s phase one. The phase two of the revolution. And military affairs happened much more recently, in the 1980s and then into the early 1990s, which digitization, basically taking the computer and applying it to military technology, started out in the Gulf War in a very big way with things that we call Jams now, joint direct attack munitions, where you take a relatively dumb bomb, put a fin kit on it, and a GPS locator can hit within about ten meters of its target. We’ve obviously gotten better since then. That against the Iraqi army. The Iraqis had no chance. And then you throw in things like not just satellite reconnaissance, but satellite communications, and you get cruise missiles and all the fun things that come from that direction. 

And that is now kind of the leading edge of what is possible with the US military today. And again, when we hit this point at the end of the Cold War, there was no competitor. And so every country that the United States came across was two, maybe even three generations of weapons behind. And there really hasn’t been a fair fight since. 

Unless the United States is in a situation where its advantages are denied it, like, say, in a long term occupation in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, we are now at the verge of something new. In the last five years, we’ve had ever mounting breakthroughs in a number of sectors that are not related to military technology, most notably digitization, energy transfer and materials science. 

And those three building revolutions are combining to generate an entirely new form of warfare, of which drones are only the very leading edge. We don’t know where this is going to go. We don’t know what the military technologies are going to look like in ten, 20, 40 years. But we do know from previous periods that when the old technology comes up against the new technology, things get really exciting really quickly because either the new stuff crashes and burns because it’s inappropriate, not ready, or the old stuff is destroyed and everyone has to rip up the playbook. 

It appears at this moment that it’s going to be some version of the latter in the Ukraine war. To this point, about two thirds of the fatalities that the Russians have suffered have been because of first person drones, which is not even a particularly sophisticated technology that combines digitization, material science and energy transfer. It hasn’t gone into the second generation of technology yet. 

We’re still and basically mass producing cheap things with a small explosives on. Once the kinks get worked out, it is difficult to see any military, most notably infantry and armor, surviving in the new environment unless they can develop their own countermeasures, which will mean an additional technological revolution. So we’re nearing the point now where we need to start having the conversation as a country, as a culture, as a military, as to what it is that we want, what we’re willing to pay to get it, and how big of a technological jump we’re willing to take to try. 

Now, in this, the United States has a couple of advantages. Number one, cache. Number two, a existing military industrial complex that can always be retooled. But third, and most importantly, at the moment, we are not in a hot conflict. And the countries that we are most likely to be facing down Russia, China, Iran are already in this technological shift. 

So we get to watch what they do and learn a few things in this. The Ukraine war is going to be most instructive, because the Ukrainians have been at the vanguard of this entire transition process and are coming up against a much larger conventional military being supplied by the Chinese who are providing the bulk. And yet they’re still there. 

And that should tell us a lot of what we need to know about the technological changes that are going to be sticking with us for the years to come. 

Bottom line. The human race is about to experience a higher form of war. That means, of course, new weapons. But from that comes new everything else.

Should the US Military Invade Mexico?

A military scout on overwatch

With rising violence in Mexico, is it time that the US military steps in? To quote Michael Scott, “No God please no!”

The spike in violence can be attributed to the rise of fentanyl, an easy to produce synthetic drug. This has led to the fragmentation of cartels into smaller and more violent actors. On top of that, the Sinaloa cartel has splintered due to US-led efforts in dismantling its leadership, causing further instability in the region. And the relatively new kid on the block, Jalisco New Generation, likes to lead with an iron fist. So, Mexico’s security landscape is in shambles.

But does that mean the US military needs to step in? There are a few ways to answer that question, but the bottom line is that the US needs to stop doing drugs!

Transcript

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from above Telephone Canyon and Zion National Park. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon crowd, specifically considering that over the last year, Mexico has just gotten more and more violent, is now the time to consider some sort of U.S. military action across the border? The short version is. Oh, God….Please. No. But it it’s a real question. I don’t mean to dismiss it. We do need to break this down. First things first. We need to understand why the violence has gotten so much worse. And it has really nothing to do with policy in Mexico. It has to do with the nature of the drug war itself. 

For the longest time, the drug war was about cocaine. So that was a mechanic that we understood. There was a supply chain that we knew was an agricultural product. It was produced in the Andean region of South America, and then it was shuttled by plane or boat, north to Central America or southern Mexico, where it then got into the hands of what we now know was cartels and moved its way north to the US border, where it was then distributed by the gangs. 

Over time, this structure has evolved. Central America is a relatively new addition to the trafficking route because we got better at interdicting things at seas. And we went from having one giant cartel to regional cartels and then ultimately, ultimately local cartels. There are more coalitions now than hierarchical organizations. 

Anyway, that’s how it was in the last few years, fentanyl has exploded upon the scene, and fentanyl is not an agricultural product. It is a synthetic. It is made in the lab. And it takes very few people with very little experience to cook up hundreds of thousands of doses in a very short period of time. So all you have to do is basically get some synthetic, components, cook them together in your garage, literally, and then cut them into powder and mix them tablets. 

So if you do a gram of cocaine and don’t do cocaine, it represents somewhere between 4 and 8 man hours of effort from the point of view of the plantain to the bailey and to the processing, to the shuttling, to the smuggling, where is if you take a hit of fentanyl and don’t do fentanyl either. 

It represents just a few man seconds of work because it’s so much easier to produce. Well, what this has done is change the cartel landscape. 

So two things have changed. First of all, the organization that is today, the Sinaloa Cartel, a large cartel, largest drug trafficking organization on the planet, under the Obama administration, we captured, El Chapo and basically beheaded the organization. And it’s been basically experiencing a slow motion, disintegration from an organizational point of view, ever since its fracturing. 

And those factions are becoming, violent with one another. That was accelerate in the last couple of years when the United States and Mexico, working together, managed to get a few other, senior lieutenants. In the meantime, the replacement cartel called Wholesale New Generation, is an order of magnitude more violent. And not nearly, as corporate, in terms of its activities, and they see intimidation as a much more potent tool for shaping local behaviors than bribes. 

So that’s part of the violence. The other part is the fentanyl side, because any mom and pop can basically cook up $1 million of the stuff in their garage over a couple of weeks. 

We now, instead of having three broad cartel alliances, have literally hundreds of small organizations that can basically print cash with fentanyl in a short period of time, and they don’t see the reason why they need to be part of the cartel structures. 

And so most of them have basically gone into business for themselves. Think of it as the digital economy where everyone has a gig, except for the gig is fentanyl. You put all that together and you now have, instead of some large cartels that kind of hold together like Sinaloa used to. 

You know, how hundreds of small, crime organizations out for themselves? These two things together have basically made Mexico a bit of a shit show from a security point of view. Now we can start talking about what the United States can do. Basically, there’s five options. Only one of them doesn’t suck. The first option, use drones, monitor the border, maybe even do some targeted strikes. 

We’re kind of halfway into this already. The Mexicans tried to talk us out of doing border monitoring. But Trump administration didn’t care. We haven’t started using the drones in an armed capacity to strike on the other side of the border. And honestly, this doesn’t do a whole lot. I mean, yes, you can see the border and go deeper, but consider the volumes involved. 

If you have 20 pounds of cocaine in a backpack, that’s a quarter of $1 million. If you have 20 pounds of fentanyl, pure fentanyl, and you want to bring it across the border and cut into pills, that could be up to $10 million. So you’re not going to pick that up with a drone, that can be smuggled in your glove compartment. 

It just it’s not an effective tool against that type of activity. It’s not that it does nothing. It just doesn’t do much. So that’s one number two, we’re at the point we’re starting to discuss this. Start sending special forces across the border, and going after the cartels themselves. Now, this is something we’ve actually already started, kind of doing. 

There is a task force based out of El Paso, as it’s been explained to me, that is Mexican citizens, but they use American equipment, American Intel, they have American distribution. They use they use American intelligence. They’re paid for by the United States. They’re just Mexican citizens, but they go every day south of the border and basically bust heads in the cartels. 

But because they’re Mexican citizens, it’s not considered an invasion. Now, this has been going on for well over a decade. And while I don’t want to say that it hasn’t achieved anything, it really hasn’t moved the needle very much. So if all of a sudden you’re gonna start throw some Rangers and Seals into this, all that does is ramp up the angst probably doesn’t change much because as we have seen with El Chapo and his sons, the torpedoes and other leaders of the cartels, when you take out the guys at the top, the rest of the organization doesn’t fall apart in the traditional sense. 

It just goes at its own throat as there’s a fight for succession and it breaks into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces that are more and more and more violent. So it feels good to get the guys, sure, but it doesn’t actually change the math on the ground except make it more violent and have more independent producers and trans transporters of the drugs. 

Option number three, which I have not seen seriously considered but has been floated out there, cross the border with the army and encircle and administer, take over, invade, take over, conquer all the border cities, places like Juarez, and Tijuana. 

20 pounds of cocaine is a quarter of $1 million. 20 pounds of fentanyl is $10 million. Even if you move the border, there’s still a way through, especially if you’re going to have a commercial relationship with a country like Mexico that is our largest trading partner in every economic sector manufacturing, agriculture and, energy. So putting Americans in charge of security south of the border, you know, to be perfectly blunt, we tried this for 20 years in Afghanistan, in Iraq, countries where we did not care and were not exposed to the local economies. 

In Mexico, we are. So if you were to do something that breaks down those corporate relationships, then you’re talking about having a recession in the United States, it is at a minimum four times as bad as what we went through back in 2007 to 2009. I would recommend against that. The final one is, even more dramatic, but might not be quite as bad economically. 

Draw a line in Mexico that roughly goes from Monterrey to Durango, and just take everything north of that line. Basically have a second Mexican-American War, where you, the United States, basically annexes the northern states that are most tightly integrated with the United States, establish a security line south of that, where you basically build a new wall that as much shorter and perhaps more effective than the stupid one that we’ve got on the northern border right now, because all that one did was build a bunch of construction lines and roads across the desert and made it easy to cross. 

Dumbest thing we’ve seen in a long time basically increase the economics of illegal migration. But if you do it further south would be shorter and keep all of the industrial plant that is integrated into the United States north of that line and basically just swallow annex parts of Mexico and make them part of the United States. The economic case for that is more robust. 

The security case for that is more robust. You’re simply invading, conquering, 30 to 35 million people and trying to make them Americans. Now again, we tried a version of this in Iraq and Afghanistan, just because I think it’s a less horrific option than just grabbing the border cities, does not mean it gets the zillion stamp of approval. 

But unless you’re willing to consider something like that, there is no military option here that makes any sense. Which brings us to the fifth option. We could stop using fentanyl, cocaine.

Ukraine Strikes Russian Strategic Bombers

Imagine of a drone firing missiles

Ukraine just did more to enhance American national security than any country since 1945. Here’s what went down…

Transcript

Hey all. Peter Zeihan here come to you from Colorado where we’re about to get a storm. Anyway, it is the 1st of June. You’re going to be seeing this tomorrow, on Monday the second. And the big news is, a few hours ago, the Ukrainians launched what is the most significant strategic attack on Russian territory since at least World War two? 

What? It seems that they did is they took a bunch of trucks, some flatbeds loaded sheds on top of them and drove them deep into Russia, like, thousands of miles into Russia, and then parked them and remotely retracted the ruse and launched over 100 drones and sent them at two air bases where they took out strategic bombers by strategic mean long range bombers whose primary purpose is to nuke the United States and hit, naval convoys that are crossing the Atlantic to support the Europeans in case of a Russian invasion. 

The tradecraft of this, the defense craft, the audacity of this is immense. And the damage caused was immense. The simplest report I have seen, the lowest casualty report, suggests at least 40 of these long range aircraft were destroyed. There are some indications it was a lot more than that. It’s not just that. This is billions of dollars of equipment, that it would take the Russians literally over a decade to replace. 

It’s the nature of the weapons involved. 

What? The Ukrainians did not particularly sophisticated drone. The audacity was getting the drones into target and launching them from relatively close in the. The real importance is what was hit, these weapons can be used. They have been used in order to bomb Ukrainian cities and military sites. 

There’s no doubt there, but not from where they are currently based. The two locations in questions are acute, which is way out in Siberia, basically further from the Ukrainian border than Miami is from Seattle. And the other one was up in Murmansk. Basically at the Arctic Circle. These are not locations that the Russians would be using to do tactical in theater attacks on Ukraine. 

These are where you put your bombers when you’re getting ready to bomb the United States. And for those of you who are Russian apologists, the Russians have never stopped getting ready to bomb the United States. So fuck off. Anyway, this is the single biggest strategic achievement for American security since at least 1945. We have never had any ally deliver this sort of blow to someone who is targeting the American homeland and to take out so much military capacity that was designed around hurting the United States in this. 

So when I think of the political ramifications of this, I have to think of something that Donald Trump said when he had Zelensky in the white House. You don’t have any cards. You can’t hurt Russia. That is clearly now false. The question is whether there’s someone in the Trump administration who’s smart enough to realize what just happened and brave enough to make policy around it when it goes opposite of what’s been coming out of the white House for the last few months. 

Ukraine just proved in the day that they have what it takes to guarantee American security. And that’s probably going to take us some really interesting directions.

The Future of Piracy (ARRRGH!)

Photo of a pirate ship on the seas

As the US withdraws from its position as global protector of the seas, will the age of pirates return once more? Okay, maybe Blackbeard won’t be making a comeback, but piracy will have a role in the future of trade.

Countries are likely to fall into one of two camps: combating piracy or embracing it. And it will largely depend on self-sufficiency. Places that need a little outside maritime help (especially for energy imports), like France, Italy, Japan, and Southeast Asian nations, will oppose piracy and protect shipping routes.

For places like Turkey, where trade happens over land, and they are largely self-reliant, more aggressive policies like protection rackets might become the norm. We could even see a bloc between Turkey, Israel, and Egypt form, leveraging the different strengths of each nation.

And of course, there will be some exceptions. A country like India might oppose piracy to its west but tolerate it to the east.

The decline of global maritime stability will lead to the regionalization of control, with different powers making the rules in each route. And if there was a place to watch, keep an eye on critical energy routes in and around the Persian Gulf.

Transcript

Hey, Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Kodachrome State Park in Utah. And today we are taking a question from the Patreon crowd about piracy. Argh. And the idea is, as it becomes obvious to everyone that the United States is incapable of maintaining freedom of the seas for commercial shipping. What sort of states fall on which side of the divide? 

Pro pirate or anti-pirate? Great question. Okay, so, the dividing line between those two groups, those who will become pirates and those who will fight the pirates basically comes down to the degree of self-sufficiency that they have. So if you have your own food, your own energy, your own manufacturing capacity, and you’re not dependent upon the seas for transport for any of those things. 

Then all of a sudden, piracy looks like a really interesting option. And you can do this as a group with other countries that are like minded or part of a network. However, if you’re on the flip side where you are dependent upon cross seas transport to maintain anything, then all of a sudden pirates are the bad guy. So let’s start with the folks who are going to need to maintain a degree of connection. 

At the top of that list are going to be France and Italy. These are countries that are regional powers, have reasonably powerful navies that are about right size to their needs. But far more importantly, they are going to need at least limited degrees of interaction with other regions. In both cases, you’re looking at countries that, for example, need to import almost all of their oil and natural gas and that absolutely has to come, from the water. 

So the French Navy, the Italian maybe are going to look, very negatively at things like pirates when it comes to their national security. Let me continue with that list of countries, Southeast Asian Japan, countries that, for a mix of reasons, are going to maintain, a naval presence. Japan is pretty self-explanatory. 

It’s very poor in natural resources, most notably energy. Southeast Asia is a cluster of countries that I think are actually going to do really well moving forward. Their agricultural conditions are pretty good, their energy conditions are pretty good. And there a series of peninsulas and mountains and highlands and jungles and islands. That means that they have to integrate via water, as opposed to integrate via land. 

And so anyone who could be sand in the gears is going to be a problem. And I can absolutely see the Japanese and the Southeast Asians for any number of reasons, collaborating moving forward. Again, somebody who would be the sand in the gears. Now, the problems that these groups Italy, France, Southeast Asia, Japan are going to face are unfortunately fairly close to home because in both cases, you’ve got blocks of powers that really don’t fall into these categories. 

Most of their interests are on land. And at the top of that list, if you’re looking from the west side in the Mediterranean, that’s Turkey. Now, Turkey is already a massive industrial power, and it has been moving in the direction of a more coherent industrial policy for the last 20 years, as the Europeans have basically started to age out. 

The Turks know in their bones that over the next generation, any product that they’re going to need, they’re going to have to produce themselves. And they’re probably going to do this with some countries, like I say, in Southeast Europe, most notably Bulgarian Romania. But when it comes to say, energy Iraq and as a region are right there, you don’t need to sell to get to either of those places. 

So you can see the Turks being very, very aggressive in enforcing basically protection rackets in the eastern Mediterranean. The only real question is whether or not Israel and Egypt are going to join them or be hostile to that sort of effort. It would make so much more sense for all three powers to be aligned in a bloc, because Israel has the air power and the intelligence capabilities. 

Egypt controls the canal and just has a sheer mass, as well as not insignificant energy reserves of its own. The three of them together would be a very powerful bloc that be very hostile to anyone who is on the outside, most notably the French and the Italians. And if this starts to feel like Middle Ages political alignments, you’re not wrong. 

On this other side of the equation in the Indian Ocean. The power to watch, of course, is India. India is, self-sufficient in its food. It’s becoming a massive industrial power already that’s going to probably double as the Chinese system collapses. But the real fun thing to keep in mind is, while the Indians do need to import a lot of energy, they’re really the first major market out of sight of the Middle East. 

So I can see them being a hybrid position to their west. They’d really frowned upon piracy to their east. I think piracy is a wonderful idea. So I actually see India as being the country that’s most likely to get into privateering. And privateering is basically state sponsored piracy. They would just have a very geographic area where they would support it, and then a very specific geographic area where they would not. 

So that’s kind of the sum up. It’s all about how you regulate energy going to and from the Persian Gulf, because when it comes to big global manufacturers trade, that’s pretty much dust in the wind at this point. And anyone who is anyone is going to be looking for a more stable partnership. And if you’re in Europe, that means you have to basically make do with what you have. 

If you are in Asia, you might be looking across the Pacific towards the Americas, but you’re certainly not going to look at going through zones that are interrupted with places like Turkey or India who are going to be out for their own good. All right. That’s all I got. You guys take care.

The Fire Hose of Chaos: What Is Hegseth Doing?

Official government photo of Pete Hegseth

Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of Defense, has been doing his best to completely dismantle the United States’ ability to fight a war now or in the future. Let’s look at why this is happening…

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For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Transcript

Peter Zeihan here. It’s Easter Monday. You’ll see this on Easter Tuesday. And today we have to talk about the Department of Defense and in particular, the Secretary of Defense. A guy by the name of Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth is the least qualified, most incompetent secretary of defense the United States has had. And over the couple of months that he has been in the office, he has done more to destroy the United States’ capacity to fight a current war, much less a future war, than really anyone in American history. 

And it’s worth exploring why. The big news that came out over Easter weekend that has prompted me to talk about this topic is that if you remember back a few weeks ago, we had the SignalGate issue where the Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, set up a chat room with a bunch of other top national security folks, as well as the Treasury Secretary. 

And somehow a reporter got invited onto it, and on an unsecured platform that the Russians had cracked the security on, started discussing active war plans and operational intelligence—something that under normal circumstances would have gotten everyone involved fired. But this is the Trump administration, and decisions are made differently these days. Anyway, turns out that around the same time that he did that, Hegseth had another single chat—again unsecured—but this time with personal friends, his personal lawyer, his wife, no one who had a security clearance. 

And to be clear, this is a felony that would get anyone in the armed forces put away forever and dishonorably discharged in a matter of seconds. The Trump administration has already said they see nothing wrong with this, and Hegseth will continue in his position. I think it’s worth understanding why the United States military is the most powerful military force in human history, and how Hegseth is looking to rip that up, root and branch. 

The first issue is education. When you have a force that spans the globe, you will need dozens of different skill sets, especially in your officer corps. So the United States maintains the most advanced staffed college system in human history to train up their mid-career officers for any possible outcome, as well as to teach them things like history, economics, trade, technology, electricity, energy, and all the rest. 

One of the things that Hegseth has said is that anything that does not directly encourage activities for an active war fighter should be cut. That includes all of the staff colleges, which is where we get all of our officers. Basically, it’s a return—or an attempt to return—the training system to something that was much more reminiscent of what we had in the Civil War, where you just threw bodies at everything. 

Gone would be the efforts of leveraging technology or anything else. The second issue is these educational institutions that we have to keep in mind: globe-spanning military force. So we do two things. Number one, we fly the troops to the educators. We try to fly the educators to the troops based on the circumstances. In addition, there’s the little issue of allies. Because the United States has the best training system in the world, we kind of lend it out, if you will. We invite other war fighters from allied countries to come to our training institutions to basically get a doctorate in the American way of warfighting, as well as seal up alliances and potential alliances with countries that are not, yes, treaty allies. Well, that requires people moving about. 

And one of the things that Hegseth has done is a blanket travel ban on all the educators so that they can’t travel. So if you want a war fighter to get trained, he now absolutely has to come to where the university happens to be, whether that’s in Annapolis or in Monterey. And everyone else is just shit out of luck. 

So we’ve seen what is arguably, in my opinion, the single biggest advantage we have long-term whittled down to just a weak spot. Then there’s technology. You may have noticed, but since the age of computers, the type of hardware that we are using in the world has been evolving, especially in the last few years with the Ukraine war. 

So, for example, the military gets a lot of crap, I think, fairly or unfairly, for being kind of stodgy because the technologies that they have used really haven’t evolved or mutated a lot in the last hundred years. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got jets after World War Two or at the end of World War Two. We got tanks at the end of World War One. We developed missiles during the Cold War. But guns, artillery, missiles, jets, helicopters, ships—you know, the general playbook hasn’t evolved all that much. The same basic platforms haven’t evolved. We just upgrade specific technologies and put them together in different packages and throw them at different problems in different ways. 

But the pieces really haven’t changed all that much. Well, starting about five, ten years ago, that really started to shift because we got breakthroughs in things like information technology and energy transfer and digitization, and they’re all happening at the same time, and they’re combining into new weapons systems that we’re only now starting to game out and design. And the Ukraine war is famous, of course, for drones. 

And drones are absolutely the leading edge of this revolution. But we don’t know what this is going to look like in five years or ten years or 15 years or 30 years. And keep in mind that we have a lot of weapon platforms that we designed back in the ’50s that we’re still using. So you have to have an institution within the military that games out the future. 

This takes two forms. First, you get the best and the brightest from the Intel systems within the military. You put them together in a room and get them to imagine the sort of thing that the president is going to be demanding of the military forces in ten, twenty, forty, eighty years. Then you need a technical team that can design a weapons system that will not just be useful ten and twenty years from now but can be upgraded and still be used a generation or two from now. 

Well, Hegseth is firing all of those people. The Office of Net Assessment—whose job it is to do the first part of that, imagine the future—has already been disbanded, and we’re seeing massive cutbacks in excess of 70% for all the officers that do the technical work. So basically, the United States is taking a giant technological step backward in its warfighting under Hegseth. 

And then the third issue is recruitment. Remember, we don’t know what the weapons of the future are going to be. So why in the world would you put any restrictions on how someone might choose to serve their country? We need everyone of every background. And if you look back at the history of the U.S. military going all the way back to before the Civil War, it’s not just that the military has always been a social ladder for underprivileged groups to attain status within a society. 

It’s a way they can attain leadership. They can get the skills that they need to remake their own futures. And from the American point of view, from the military point of view, from the tactical point of view, from the warfighter point of view—we need everyone we can get. Newsflash, folks: straight white dudes are less than one third of the population. 

And if you put restrictions on how the other two thirds of the population can choose to serve the country, you will never meet your recruitment goals. So in the last two months, we’ve seen a series of things go down. Most notably, Hegseth recently changed the physical requirements for what you have to match in order to serve in the military. 

Gold review phraseology—a policy that almost seems like it was custom-designed to kick all women out of the U.S. military. And then, of course, recruitment for any place that is not totally stocked with white dudes has basically been cut to zero. Even Black engineering universities are no longer being visited. And I know, I know, some people are going to say, well, if you’ve got a standard and everyone can’t meet it, it doesn’t work. 

No, no, no, no, no. The Israelis broke the seal on women in the military over 50 years ago. And today, every first-world military has a substantial proportion of women in the field. So if you can’t adjust for that, you’re going back to the 1840s. Moreover, there are some jobs—like, say, fighter pilots—where women are better because they can handle the G-forces better. 

So is Hegseth going to change the policy so only chicks are fighting in the jets? I don’t think so. What we’re seeing is it’s all adding up to the greatest degradation of American warfighting potential that we have ever seen. And this is only two months in. I also don’t think this is the end of it. Yes, Hegseth has now committed multiple felonies. 

Yes, Hegseth is an unmitigated disaster in his leadership. And yes, his entire inner office has now been fired. Oh, this is rich—he fired everybody in his office saying that they were all leaking information. I have no idea if that is true, but Hegseth has a history—especially in the SignalGate stuff—of saying something that is just a bald-faced lie, knowing that the information is out there to prove him wrong. 

And it’s usually released in the next couple of days. So by the time we see this video, we will probably have multiple lawsuits against Hegseth personally, for people firing, quitting, etc. So by the time you see this video, it’s entirely possible that the office that was fired—they will have all issued wrongful termination lawsuits and provided the information that will prove this guy is just an absolute moron. 

Okay. Do I think he’s going to go? No. Remember, the Trump administration did not build its cabinet because it thought these people were capable or change agents. He chose them because they were incompetent. The first time around, when Donald Trump became president, he really didn’t expect it. He thought he was going to lose to Hillary Clinton. And so he didn’t have a cadre of people around him because he had never been in government. 

Well, he reached into the Republican Party, pulled their policy experts, and—especially on security affairs—relied very heavily on generals and admirals to fill out the billets. Well, what he discovered in that environment is when you have generals and admirals who have been through the staff training program and they know how the world works intimately, they have opinions about how things should be done, and they can point out consequences if you do things the wrong way. 

Well, whenever that happened, Trump fired them. And so he went through more cabinet members than any American president in history. Just a huge number of generals rotated through the White House in positions like, say, Secretary of Defense or CIA Director. Fast forward to this most recent race. 

Trump had decided while he was out of power that rather than build a team of competent people who could push an agenda through, he wanted to make sure that there was never anyone in the room who would tell him no. So he reached out and hired people like Pete Hegseth, who I would argue three months before he became Secretary of Defense, had no idea that that was in his future. 

Well, because Trump values incompetence near him, there is no reason to expect Hegseth to be dismissed. I mean, of course he should be dismissed. But of course, in a normal administration, he would have never been nominated, much less confirmed. And that brings us to the next problem: Hegseth and people who are at his level of general incompetence—that includes the Director of National Intelligence, who is Tulsi Gabbard, or the Health and Human Services Secretary, who is Robert Kennedy Jr. 

All of these people should not be in their spots, but they’re going to stay because Trump values their lack of expertise. He values their yes-man mentality. He values the fact that they’re not keeping him informed because it allows him to live in his hermetically sealed, Obama-esque bubble. The only way that these people can go away is if they are impeached. 

And since the Trump team has basically gutted the Senate of anyone who is willing to stand out, that’s a really tall order. As Senator Murkowski of Alaska pointed out, retaliation against Trump is real. And so she’s considering leaving the party and being an independent in her home state of Alaska. That would still leave us with 52 Republican senators who are either unwilling or unable to stand against the president on issues of national security. 

And if you’re going to impeach someone, you have to get two thirds of both houses of Congress. So now you’re talking about roughly 20 Republican senators having to flip. In this political environment, I just don’t see that as feasible. So we are looking into the long, painful, drawn-out crash of the United States’ ability to manage its national security concerns under a leadership that is thin, that is broken, that is incompetent—and unfortunately, that we are stuck with for the foreseeable future.

Signalgate. It’s Worse Than You Think.

Photo of a phone opening the Signal App
We’re less than a week out from the next Live Q&A!

Our next Live Q&A on Patreon is here! On April 9, Peter will join the Analyst members on Patreon for question time! In order to get in on the fun, join the ‘Analyst tier’ on Patreon before April 9.

You can join the Patreon page

Signalgate. Well…Shit.

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For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. We have to talk about this whole signal gate thing. Oh, my God, so many, so many, so many things going wrong. Signal gate is this little scandal that has popped up in Washington because a number of top Trump administration national security officials had a chat on a third party unsecured platform about tactical military operations involving the strike on Yemen in mid-March, I think was the 12th and 13th of March. 

Anyway, reason we know about this is a reporter from the Atlantic was accidentally keyed on the conversation and basically had the whole thing. So we’re going to talk a little bit about classifications then, and secrecy issues and operational security. And then we’re going to talk about more of the implications of this and what it actually means for us as a country. 

And it’s not a happy story. So, from my brief and limited experience in the government, both in the State Department and the Defense Department, it’s drilled into you as an intern, operational security, the things you don’t talk about, the things you do talk about, where you talk about them with, who you talk about them. And the key thing is that every topic has its own set of rules. 

So if you have a certain level of security clearance, that doesn’t mean you can just go into the archives and read everything. There has to be a certain need to know. And if there’s a conversation on a certain topic that is sensitive, those conversations can only happen on specific locations or on specific platforms, none of which involve third party software. 

Which is very vulnerable to hacking. More on that in a minute. Anyway, so the fact that this conversation happened at all is bad. The idea that it happened with the people who were involved is worse, because one of those people was in Russia at the time using his personal phone, and one of those people was the Treasury secretary, who had no business being on a communication about tactical military operations at a place like Yemen. 

And then, of course, this was tactical military operations. What pushes you way above the, you know, the classic classification of top secret and is the ultimate of the need to know. Now, anyone who is a rival to the United States, or honestly just curious, is going to be targeting our Treasury secretary, because he apparently is involved in these conversations that have nothing to do with the Treasury Department, and there nothing in his background, and there’s no one in his circle that suggests he has any experience in operational security. 

So we just identified our top finance individual as being a leaker and intelligence target for intelligence operations for the rest of his term. That is a disaster in of of itself. But now let’s talk about the actual format here. Signals a third party app for communications. No third party apps are allowed anywhere in the State Department or the Defense Department or the intelligence agencies specifically because it’s illegal. 

It’s a bad idea to be communicating outside of government channels. When you’re talking about information that should be classified, part of it is illegal, because the little simple thing of the Freedom of Information Act, so that decades from now, we know how things happen on the inside. Part of it is to help future administrations see inside the decision making process for the current administration. 

All that information will be lost, but most importantly, it’s because it’s fucking hackable. And specifically with signal. The week that this went down, the Defense Department warned everyone in the defense Department that the Russians were actively circumventing the security measures on signal. So Pete Hegseth, who was the defense secretary, is the one who set this up. And he should have known better at every possible level. 

And every person who was involved in the chat should have known that everything about this at every level was not just a bad idea in poor statecraft, but illegal as well, for all the right reasons. That all of that is part one. second issue is the general mismanagement of information in the public sphere of the Trump administration at this point. Now, when this story broke, the smart play, the national security conscious play would have been to contact the reporter and make sure that information got wiped. Instead, they did what they always do, and they went on the attack saying that, nothing was shared. 

That was a war plan or classified information. And it is the fault of the reporter who doesn’t even have a security clearance, that this information was out at all. In fact, it got so bad that Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national Intelligence, even went to Congress and testified that this is no big deal. Now, I have an opinion. 

Most of the intelligence community in the defense community are of the opinion that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian agent that is actively working against American interests, right at the very top. Little professional tip, Miss Gabbard. If you don’t want people to think you’re a Russian agent, quit acting like a Russian agent. So, for example, lying to Congress about the use of the platform at the use of security, about the use of commercial information, and then actually what was in the conversation in the first place, because within hours of her doing that nonsense, the reporters like, well, if you don’t think this is classified information, I guess I can release it. 

And he did. And holy shit, it talked about specific assets, specific attack vector, specific times and locations. This is as high as it gets in terms of operational security needs. Which brings us to the third question why? Why is the Trump national security team so moronic? Two things going on here. First, Trump himself. When most leaders spend time out of power, they reflect on what went wrong and they build a team that fills in the gaps of what they don’t have. 

And they put together legislation so that when they get back into power, they can actually make their vision reality and make it last beyond their term. Trump didn’t do that. Trump fired everyone from his circle, inner and outer, who knew anything about anything. Because people who know things share what they know. And that means that Trump can’t be the smartest person in the room. 

He instead surrounded himself with loyalists, people who, you know, the recruiting process, competence didn’t make the list for anything that he wanted. So we have a DNI who works for a foreign power. We have a defense secretary that is a former TV host, and it shows. The second issue is when you’re first asked, when you get into the white House, is to pardon the people who protested and rioted on January 6th, complete with those who had attacked law enforcement personnel. 

Anyone who knows anything about national security won’t work for you because they’re like, fuck that noise. So the pool of people that Trump could draw from self-selected out, leaving only the people who would be personal, loyal, loyal, and really didn’t know anything about the process. Trump then went on to gut the upper echelons of every single department, not just the undersecretaries and the deputy secretaries, but everyone down as far as he possibly could fire. 

Removing all the knowledge base of everyone throughout the entire federal government and then replacing them with lackeys. And so we have people like this who literally have no idea how to keep information secure, who are making policy on behalf of all of us. And so, of course, it is all going horribly wrong. And that’s before you even start talking about the specifics of what those policies are.

Introducing the Next Generation Air Dominance Platform, F-47

President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have announced the approval of the Air Force’s newest toy, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform, aka the F-47 fighter jet.

In recent times we’ve seen the very impressive F-22 built for air superiority and the lackluster F-35 designed as a multi-purpose aircraft. Shifting priorities have sidelined the F-22 in favor of the F-35, but how will the F-47 fit into the picture? Here are some of the big concerns I have.

This thing will be expensive, posing problems for foreign buyers. The details are still unclear on this aircraft, so we’re not sure if the limitations that faced the F-35 will persist. Since this will be an air superiority fighter, a ground attack jet will still be needed. And given the evolving tech, manned fighters could be rendered obsolete before reaching full deployment.

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For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from a sunny Colorado. Today is the 21st of March. And there was just a press conference between American President Donald Trump and American Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, where they announced the launch of a new fighter program called the NGAD, the next generation air dominance fighter. It’s been, dubbed the F 47 because it’s Trump’s the 47th president. 

 But anyway, you can’t make this stuff up anyway. It in theory will be made by Boeing and should come into manufacture in a few years. That’s the goal. Before we go forward and talk about what it can do and implications, let’s talk about how we got here. So if you dial back to the 1990s and the early 2000, the Defense Department realized that they had a window. 

The Soviet Union had collapsed, and the Russian Federation, which emerged from it, was a pale shadow of its predecessors. And so there was going to be an extended period of time where the Soviet slash Russians weren’t going to be able to develop new air products. No new bombers, no new fighters. They did get a couple off the drawing board, but they were never able to produce more than one of them at a time. 

And even now, 35 years later, they only have 12 of some of their more advanced fighters. And that meant you had an opportunity to skip a generation. So Donald Rumsfeld, who was working with the Defense Department at the time, had this idea that we will look at the best technologies we have available right now and build the absolute minimum that we possibly can, and then research the next generation. 

Back at the time, we were dealing with F-15s and F-16s and the two programs that were greenlighted to proceed on that limited production basis were the F-22 air superiority fighter, which I think is one of the most badass pieces of military technology I’ve even heard of. It can hit supersonic speeds without using its afterburners, and all of its weapons are internal bay, so it has the radar cross-section of a small bird. 

I mean, it is bad ass. And then the other one is the F-35 joint strike factor, which is a flying pig. From my point of view, yes, it’s better than what we had, but its range isn’t very good. And the technology that’s gone into it has had all kinds of teething pains, and this has driven up the cost of the fighters to over $100 million per fighter. 

And it’s not very good at doing what it needs to do because its range is so limited. And that’s even before you put external weapons on it. The problem is it’s a Joint Strike fighter. It’s designed for both air to air combat and ground assault. And by being a multi-role platform, yes, you can do more, but you don’t do any of it particularly well. 

So we only made a few less than 200 of the f-22s, even though they are the perfect tool for the job, because we also need ground strike. And so the decision was made to do more and more and more of the F-35s, despite its many, many shortcomings. And that meant looping in lots of allies in order to help defray the overall production cost. 

And that brought it down to $100 million per airframe. Anyway, Rumsfeld and people like him thought, you know, we’ll just build the minimum we possibly can and then launch forward. And then the war on terror happened. And in the war on terror, what we discovered is we don’t need an air superiority con or a fighter against the Taliban because they don’t even have blimps, much less jets. 

But we do need ground strike. And so the F-22 was pushed to the side, kind of stuck with that initial plan of just a limited run. And the F-35 went into mass production. And we’re getting lots and lots and lots of those. Fast forward to today, because of the war on terror, we spent 20 years fighting ground wars, and we weren’t able to put the resources that would have been ideal under the Rumsfeld plan into the next generation. 

We’re only now getting there, took this long, and the end gap is supposed to be an air superiority fighter. The next generation after the F-22. Well, that leaves us with four complications. Problems. The first is cost. We saw the cost of the F-35 go up and up and up and up and up, and the end guard got a really nasty review from an internal Pentagon audit. 

I think it was just last year or the year before where they said it looked like the cost could be upward of $300 million per airframe. And the days of us being able to spread that out across the alliance are gone. The Trump administration is careening very rapidly to breaking most of our alliances, including the NATO alliance, which is where almost all of the F-35 sales we’re making are going. 

And every country that is committed to buying them is now rethinking it. Because if the United States is not going to be there in a real fight, not only are you not getting the implicit security guarantee that you thought you were getting, but if the Americans are responsible for all the tech and all the technicians and all the repair work and all the servicing, all the software and a lot of the weapons, do you really want to be dependent on the Americans at all in this brave new world we seem to be falling into so the F-35 is likely to get even more expensive, and no one is likely to sign up for the end guard at all. Problem two range. This is a black issue. It’s just an issue of, classification. We don’t know what the range of the guard is yet. It is in limited production, very limited, basically handmade. Nothing manufactured. The manufacturing wouldn’t be in for a few years yet. 

Three at the absolute low end. So this is a weapon system for the future, not for tomorrow. And until we know that range, it’s really hard to know if this is going to give us some of the advantages of the F-16 and the F-22, or weigh us down with some of the restrictions of the F-35. We’re just going to have to wait for more details on that. 

The third problem is that the end guard is going to need a complement. It is an air superiority fighter in the vein of the F-22, and we will still need something for ground attack. And if it’s going to be the Joint Strike Fighter, if that’s what we’re going to use for the next 30 years, then that puts some really huge limitations on what the United States can do militarily. 

Its range is just about 600 miles. Not great in terms of deep strike. And if we are moving into a world where the United States is walking away from most of its alliances, then we’re losing all the forward bases that allow us to launch these things in any meaningful way in the first place, which means we will also need a new ground strike jet. And that is an entirely new program that is going to have its own cost structure. And overlaying all of this is the question of technology during the course of the last 60 years. We haven’t seen actually almost 80 years. We haven’t seen a lot of changes. I mean, yes, yes, yes, we’ve gotten better at stealth. 

Yes, yes, yes, our missiles have gotten more accurate. All that’s true. But we haven’t really seen a change in what, a fighter or what a fighter bomber does. Until really recently, in the last few years, we’ve had building breakthroughs in things like materials science and digitization and energy transfer. And we don’t know where this is going to take us in terms of military technology. 

Yet the end guard looks interesting to me. It’s basically like a narrower version of the B-2 bomber, which is a badass piece of equipment, but it’s not a fundamental break. The stealth is cool. Don’t get me wrong, stealth is awesome, but it doesn’t do anything that you wouldn’t expect an air superiority fighter to do. These three breakthroughs in technology are in the very, very beginning stages, giving us drone technology, and we have discovered that the Ukrainians, for less than 20,000 a pop, can build a thousand drones that can saturate a battlefield, or for something closer to $200,000 a pop, develop rocket drones that can strike targets that are about as far away as the F-35 can reach. So we’re seeing these newer technologies come in and we don’t know how they’re going to mature. And so investing billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions into a new manned fighter program, you got to wonder if this is the right call. I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying we don’t know. And in a world where the United States is walking from its alliance structure, the new systems are probably not appropriate to what bases we’re going to have in a few years. 

I don’t mean this so much as a condemnation of Trump, although there’s plenty of that going around right now, but just a recognition that as our technological envelope evolves, one of two things has happen. Either we develop technologies to match the geography of our deployments, or we change our deployments to match the evolution of the technology. 

And there’s plenty of examples throughout history of both happening. We don’t know where we’re at yet. What we do know is if we try to do both.

Gaza Goes Back to Square One

Photo of Gaza with destroyed buildings

Israel has resumed military operations in Gaza, so any ceasefire or hostage deal that was on the table can be kissed goodbye.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened; much of the housing has been destroyed, food supplies remain critical, and supply chains have been disrupted. Given these conditions and the dense urban area that Hamas operates in, it will continue to have a stream of new recruits that will make elimination a near-impossible task.

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Transcript

Hello from Vegas. Just a real quick one today. Earlier this week, the Israelis, went back into Gaza. So we’ve had multiple hundreds of strikes and basically full military operations that began again. And so the, the peace for hostages deal that may have been kind of, sort of in place is clearly gone now. And anyone who’s interested in negotiating a ceasefire or a truce is just going to have to start from scratch. 

Unfortunately. Fortunately, I words are kind of insufficient. Most of the population had tried to return to their homes, only 

discover that, two thirds of the housing stock has been destroyed. And keep in mind that it takes about a thousand trucks a day coming in with food aid in order to keep the population alive. And that at a time when the greenhouses were working, which they no longer are. 

So we’re once again right back into the humanitarian catastrophe. And if you are Israel, we are once again right back into the situation where Hamas is strong. Keep in mind that you’ve got over 2 million people living in an open air prison camp with absolutely no prospects. You can’t get out of the, Gaza Strip. Unless the Israelis specifically allow you almost on a case by case basis. 

And because of that, you’re basically just in this cauldron. It’s a horrible way to live. And it makes it very, very easy for militant groups like Hamas to recruit. So if you think of all the big successes that Israel has had recently, they gutted Hezbollah with a brilliant, long term intelligence operations where they blew up cell phones. 

They’ve gutted the, Lebanese government. The Syrian government has fallen, and with airstrikes, they basically removed all the heavy equipment that Syria has built up over the last 60 years. And Iran is on the back foot throughout the entire region. But Hamas is different because it’s basically in an urban zone and doing door to door clearing of an urban zone, especially when you can tunnel under it is just an order of magnitude more difficult. 

It’s not that Israel’s been unwilling to put the men in the materials to the work to try to root out Hamas. It’s just that as long as there’s 2.3 million people there, Hamas will always, always, always, always be able to recruit more. 

And unfortunately, that just means that a conflict like this doesn’t have an end. It’s just a question of what minimum tolerance the Israelis are willing to put up with in terms of violence. And it appears, at least for this government, that means keeping troops on the ground and active military operations for the foreseeable future.