Power at the Edge of Failure

Welcome to the New York City traffic report for finding hotels. You're listening to American Power. I'm Nat Towson, your host standup comedian, writer, all sorts of writer, speech writer, article writer, and most importantly, and likely to outlast me podcast host. I am here with my

panel of experts as always, our expert on both the military policy and so many other things.

Chat, chat, how you doing? I'm doing well, Nat. Glad to be here. Good to see you guys. Good to see you, too, man. And joining us as always, of course, our expert on oil, renewable energy, the energy

“sector as a whole, Mr. Global, Matt Randolph. Matt, how you doing? Great. How are you?”

I am full of energy excited to talk about our rapidly declining world. I was hoping on that note that Matt, we could start with you. We are recording this a little early. It's the afternoon of Monday, April 27th, as we're speaking right now. And the global energy markets are unsurprisingly in flux. Once again, and Mr. Global, I was hoping you could give us a big picture look at what's going on in the world of energy right now.

Well, I think most importantly, here at home, wholesale fuel prices have risen to their highest levels. It's June of 2022. If you remember, 2022, fuel was really high. Now, we haven't reached those levels, but it's the highest since then. So a lot of this is due to the huge increase in

“exports out of the United States. Everyone's celebrating the tankers coming. It's like, you know,”

it's we're going to have a parade. Those takers are leaving with our gas and our diesel. And that makes it significantly more expensive for us. So even though oil prices are about $25 a barrel cheaper than they were at month ago, gas prices are going to surpass where they were a month ago easily. Average price of gas today was 4/11 diesel. I've somewhere like 5.45. Those are going to start increasing more and more. They're up about 15 cents from a week ago.

It takes a few days for these wholesale prices to sort of bleed into the retail market. Another thing that Opus is reporting and Opus is a paid subscription service that oil companies use to track, oil and gas. Is that an acronym? Oil production information services. Yes,

“gentlemen named Tom Closa is the founder. They are reporting that margins at the convenience store”

or wherever you buy your gas are about a third of what they typically are. And that's a bad sign.

What that means is that gas stations themselves are pushing down gas prices by taking less profit. A lot of people think that they're gouging. They're actually not. So nationwide on average, they're making about 11 cents a gallon. Right now is what a typical gas station is making going to gallon a gas. That's normally somewhere between 3035 cents. And why are they reducing those prices in this specific amount? To keep traffic, mostly to keep traffic from coming into

their stores or to keep traffic coming into their stores. That's where they really make their money. They don't make a ton of money on gas. And they're afraid of demand destruction. They're afraid of people buying less gas. And that means less people coming in the store. And so you're talking about the specific point of sale with gas stations like consumer facing gas. And what I'm understanding is that these run on something of the comedy club model, where

the comedy is not actually what makes money. It's the booze and bad hamburgers that you sell. That's actually the profit driver. So similarly, I'm learning now for the first time that sit-go is making a profit off slim gyms and, you know, old hot dogs, just enough monster energy drink to kill a toddler versus the oil itself, which is what gets people in the door. Yeah, that's where they make all their money in the store.

It's slightly more related when might be the popcorn at a movie theater, but I've spent a lot of time in comedy clubs. Yeah, interesting factoid. If you go to a convenience store and you fill up your gas tank and you buy a Snickers bar, they make more money on that Snickers bar than that entire $70 worth of gas you bought. Wow. Yeah, because they just don't make that my choned gas. But this reduction in profit margin at the station, at the point of sale, like you're talking about,

that almost always drops in times like this where you see big oil price jumps, but they always

recover. And the amount to which they bounce back and recover is usually relative to how far they

what they're saying is we could see a 30 or 40 cent increase in gas prices, even if oil prices don't move anymore. And then when you stack on top of that, declining inventories when they say by July, our commercial inventories in the United States will be below the operational minimums, which is really bad. So not looking good. Wait, what explain what that means to me, below the operational minimum, as in like we will have two little surplus to function as usual.

So basically, you know, the EIA says, based on how much fuel you use in a day, every country needs to have an operational minimum amount of fuel in storage to run their country, right? And once you

“get to that, you should probably stop exporting, right? But what are you going to do that?”

Logically to me, a non-oil expert, yes. Yeah. So for the United States, it's 200 million barrels,

is our operational minimum. If we get below that, I don't think we'll stop exporting, but we will reduce the additional exports that are currently, because our exports have increased by one and a half million barrels a day. I think that'll get reduced, and because we will have to maintain operational minimums, or the prices will just go parabolic from wherever they are then. So that's a really bad spot to be in when the industry is talking about hitting operational

minimums for commercial, you know, diesel and gasoline inventories. That's a really bad thing. But you don't ever want to hear that. You don't want to get close. No, you don't want to get. So if I'm processing this correctly, the closing of the street of the Hormuz has made oil

scarce in such a way that's driven up the cost per barrel, so U.S. stores of oil are being sold

more. They're being exported more now, because there's a higher profit margin, thus depleting local reserves of oil and driving up prices domestically, causing gas stations

“to make less profit as well. Is that correct? Or am I getting the cause of that there?”

Pretty much sums it up, and there's not a lot we can do about it, because we're refining at maximum capacity. So we can't, you know, they're like within the U.S. We're refining at max. Okay. So when that's talk about increasing oil production and selling oil out of the strategic reserve, it doesn't matter, because we are refining. We cannot make any more gas and diesel and jet fuel, then we're making no matter how much oil we have. And when inventory levels

get as low, we literally can't get it out of the ground faster than we're currently,

like we can produce it. We just can't define it. Oh, sorry. I shouldn't get it out of the ground. We can't prepare the crude fast enough. Exactly. So what we're going to see, I predicted this last week, you might see crude, crude inventories actually rise, while inventories of distillates. So distillates are diesel for the people that don't know. That's

“your diesel in your home eating oil. And your inventories for gasoline and jet fuel are all going”

to be dropping as crude levels rise, because we can't refine any more than we currently are. We're maxed out. And if we lose a refinery, holy shit. That would, this would be the worst time to appreciate my degree. Sorry. What's that, Chad? How could that happen? Well, they blow up all the time. You know, anything can happen. Yeah. So you're saying with the fall, hurricane season comes along. Oh, yeah. Hurricanes. Oh, my God. Yeah. So if any of the, the regularly

occurring reasons that a refinery could fail work to happen right now, we would be in a particularly vulnerable moment. Yeah. We're walking a tight road based not to give anyone ideas, but we can't really afford for anything to fail. You know, we usually have some redundancy built into the system where it's okay. We've kind of wiped that out. So are we seeing a, so I guess I have a question, are we seeing a closure of the, the futures versus the spot price or is that still kind of a wide gap that's

kind of unprecedented? Because I keep trying to explain to people, they're like, well, they go Google that price and they're like, why is my gas prices? So I want, I'm like, the spot price is still really high versus the futures. But I'm also hearing that that's starting to normalize again. Is that what you're seeing? So they normalized for the wrong reason. And now there's a gap again. So the reason they normalized was the big lie that came out last week about the ceasefire and the

peace talks were oil crashed by like $20 or whatever. That caused physical prices to come down to the closest point to futures prices than they had been in about a month. But now that prices are rising again, they're starting to gap a little bit more. So there's a little bit more separation there, but everyone is saying that that gap won't get its biggest. It was a few weeks ago. When physical oil was 150 and the futures market was at 110, they said that's not going to come back. Like the

market has kind of figured out what's happening. So we'll see what happens. Matt, there's so much going on right now. I want to make sure I know what you're talking about.

last since they've heard of the wish of Trump's lies that affected the oil markets temporarily.

“Are you referring to it? Well, it wasn't just Trump's lie. It was a wrong slide too. But when”

they said the straight-of-harmers was open, it was never open. And that caused oil prices to fall

by more than $20 burrow, but it never actually opened. And by the time they came out and said, yeah, it's not really open anymore. Like the oil had already fallen. So that's the big lie. I'm talking. That's this particular big lie. Yeah. So on that note, where are we at with negotiations with Iran right now? It feels like we've gone back and forth. It feels like they have effectively flailed a number of times. I don't understand where things are breaking down. I'm hoping Chad,

you could talk to us a little bit about what the current status of that is. Well, I mean, obviously, the big kind of up front news is it seems that the negotiations are at a complete standstill. Trump has pulled with cough and Kushner. I'm glad he has their awful negotiators. I don't think they've ever negotiated anything worth talking about in their careers, whether it was Russia or Iran doesn't matter. But the primary problem is that both the United States and Iran think they

have the upper hand. And both sides are actually wrong. United States obviously has the upper hand militarily. And that's really not something that's very debate. Well, I see people talk about how

“the Iranians have held off the US Navy, the US military. But the fact is, we're not truly”

forcing open the state of Hormuz. We're not fully shutting down Carg Island. We're not actually doing the things that we have the capability to do. But we just don't have the political will. It's about choices for the United States and our capability. I'd like to jump in here. One of the things that we've talked about in the past is like, yeah, we could do a full-scale ground invasion of Iran's massive and we'd be pulling troops from elsewhere in the world and we'd be exposing ourselves

in other vulnerable territories where we'd be pulling those people from. Or also even just sort of depicting what the actual scale of our military, but rather than making it hypothetical. It would be a massive endeavor. US casualties would be huge, regional chaos. It'd be a long-term war with costing hundreds of billions dollars. It's not something we want to do and Iran understands that. They know that that's not where we want to go. So they believe though that they have the upper hand

in these negotiations because the United States is unwilling to go all the way. And so they say, well, we're holding this key choke point at risk, which is the straight-up removes and kind of the red sea through Bob L. and Deb. And they're exploiting the political toxicity of what Trump

“has already done. And that's what you see it in there propaganda. The videos they send out and”

things like that. So they believe they could survive the storm. The problem is that both sides

are mistaken because it's never going to allow for them to come to a true negotiating table. The mistake Iran makes is there may come a point where if they keep saying no, Washington is going to have to do something with their overwhelming military power. And that would be a disastrous day for Iran. We know that Trump has this willingness to use force. But on the American side, there's the mistake is having us bounce between all these negotiating positions. I counted over

seven weeks, the administration moving through five different phases of negotiations. And they're different where their position is going to stand. And I'll go over and I can say all five of them. Basically, the first one is there was a military punishment, large amounts of force. It was generally successful from a tactical level that seemed kind of a mix bag on the strategic level. Kind of leaning towards strategic failure. Obviously, we're dealing with this right now. So

because of the tactical strength that the military showed, Trump came out beating his chest, maximal demands. We want full dismantle of nuclear program and your support of your proxies has below the hoothees, dismantle all the missiles and drones. And at one point, he even hinted at complete regime change. That obviously didn't happen. Close to say the straight-of-port moves leveraged shifted and a reactionary ceasefire bargaining deal over the straight-of-port

moves started. That was the third item. Now, fourth, we're still reacting. Everything is reactionary.

Now, which is always problematic. Try to counter blockade, didn't pursue the desired results

from producing produced. And then fifth, now we're to our fifth phase in this whole thing. Where everything's come off the table. We're not talking about nuclear issues. We're not talking about the missile and drone program. It's just we are dealing with the straight-of-port moves. And Iran has watched as this position continuously changes. And so they just sit back and go, we have no reason to believe Trump is serious, has the discipline or the commitment to stick to

something. And that's an advantage to Iran. So, this is why we're probably not going to get a deal. That is very good. And certainly not going to be as good as the Obama joint comprehensive plan of action. And so, from a standpoint of the negotiations, we're essentially at an impasse because both sides think they're winning, but both sides have a huge amount to lose, and

Trump keeps telling the American people we're winning. But then, and he says things like Iran

is begging to negotiate. But the visible reality, everything we all see is he is back pedaling consistently. It's like he talks about our performative strength that then back pedals

“peat headset back pedals. And I'll kind of close out this point here with, I think peat headset,”

the Secretary of Defense, if you don't, if you're not aware of it, is feeding Trump a steady diet of tactical updates without the diplomatic context. He's talking about all the cool things the military is doing, the targets they hit, the ships that they've stopped. But the tactical success is not the same thing as strategic success. We have historically dominated every military and

every war throughout history. But rarely got any kind of a good strategic outcome, whether it was

Vietnam, the Afghanistan, obviously, that went back to the Taliban. Every war eventually ends through diplomacy. I just do not think the leadership we have in place have the diplomatic chops to close this Iran chapter out. I think we're facing down a problem where we have to go

“to a diplomatic move because the military has kind of run out of it. It's capability to”

inflict damage on Iran without doing some really atrocious things. And because of that, the diplomatic effort is just not there. And it's going to cause us to continue to fail and kick the candle on the road. And we're just going to hear Trump talk about how awesome everything is when we all know it's none. And I want to talk a little bit more about how we could possibly move forward for this. But I'm curious, because there has been a lot of reporting. If you're

watching mainstream news and you're looking at what's going on in Iran, it does sound like there's a lot of diplomatic back and forth. Where is that information coming from? And is Trump really in there negotiating or are we just sort of getting PR? Well, so it's it's very interesting you ask

“that, because a large portion of the reporting about negotiations and peace happened to come from”

one person that works for Axios who happens to be a huge Trump supporter. And you might read a story on a Reuters or see it on CNN or Fox News. But if you know how the media works, if one person puts out a story, it's picked up and shared by every major media outlet. And we have figured out that this one person with Axios keeps reporting on all of these peace negotiations. And we've also figured out that most of them are completely false. They regurgitate old news and re-rap it as new

news. So it's really hard to put a finger on what is actually happening concerning negotiations. All we know is every time Donald Trump says there's negotiations happening. Iran says there aren't and then nothing happens. Like we know that. But we also know that 12 different stories released by this same reporter with Axios that were all released within three to five minutes of the market opening were all false. And we know that that reporter is a huge supporter of Donald Trump. So you know

that leads to a lot of confusion and what appears to be contributing to potential market manipulation and other things like that. Some of the stories also dropped a few minutes before markets closed. So the timing and inaccuracy of these reports are very have been picked up like people are noticing. So just do what you're saying. Does this indicate coordination or does this indicate a person who you need not coordinate with the president to serve his interests? But I'm curious as to does this

feel like just a PR wing of the White House or is this more... Do you would just suspect more of an independent arm of support? What am I actually of his? I mean the reporter is Israeli, but I can't say there's coordination. All I can say is report to keep coming from the same reporter that are shared by the larger media moments before markets open about peace deals. And they keep happening. Yeah, I'm not suggesting conspiracy. It's conspiracy need not exist to be mutually beneficial.

I'm just curious. And as you're suggesting, the media environment in which a fast-breaking story people run with maybe with a little less fact checking and a little less independent reporting, then a slower media environment used to allow for. So if someone has a bussy story about this sort of thing, it can often get repeated into fact because it's been now reported by a series of different

interconnecting web of sources, whereas you're saying ultimately there's one source for a lot of

this information that sounds a little regurgitated or repackaged or completely false in certain cases.

respected, those organizations, you know, when Axios report something, people pay attention. You know, I would, you know, I don't, maybe up there with warriors, maybe not, but the point is they're not known to be fake news or hyperbolic. Like they're generally considered more of a newswire, like, yeah, there's more anti-heroiders level level, objectivity. They're considered to be an international newswire that's like, trustable for basic facts. Yeah, but all of these

reports have come from this one person, right? And it's not from the organization. It's a whole, it's one person within Axios that keeps putting out these reports about peace and negotiations, that not one of these stories has turned out to be true in any way. So that's something to look.

I tell people, you know, get always get a second opinion. It's just like anything else.

But it's tough for people when all of the news media is sharing the same original story that can be false. And so someone goes to get a second opinion and say they see it on Fox News or they see it on CNN. They're like, well, I got a second opinion and they're saying the same thing. No, they're just sharing the same story that was originally false to begin with. Right, exactly. You got to be careful with that. And just to put a finer point on it, what does that do to the markets? Like, if there is

cheerful or optimistic news, but oh, negotiations are actually going really well. And that's the

“currently believed status of Iran at the moment the markets open. What does that do?”

It moves the market. You know, if just spelling it out, I'm just being very clear, like, what are we implicated here? Yeah, we've had many days where we were expecting to see big jumps in oil prices, which lead to big jumps in gas prices. And then five minutes before the market opens, it's, hey, peace, you know, oil falls, $10, $15 a barrel. And the real good belief that this will be dealt with and that the prices will, that oil will be less scarce as a result of these imaginary

negotiations, drive oil prices down versus or prevents them from climbing up a little further due to the fake optimistic news. And the dangerous thing with this is that it makes when the real oil prices come, right? When the market figures out, it makes it a lot worse when you've suppressed it for so long. It's, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like putting a bandaid on a broken leg and thinking, ah, to be okay, you know, while it's sitting there festering and rotting or whatever.

Like, it's going to be worse because you didn't, you know, a lot of people and I agree, a lot of people believe that we need to allow oil and gas prices to just go however high they're going to go because that will naturally cause demand destruction, which lowers the demand and can correct the market. But by continually artificially manipulating it, you're just making the problem worse.

“You're not treating the disease. You have to treat the disease to fix it. And by giving it”

Tylenol, when it needs antibiotics, you're just making it worse. Oh, do we better that? You have to leave it alone like this is how free markets work. You have to, you know, when it's going to be scary and it's going to be bad. But you're only making the future worse by prolonging that from happening because people look at oil prices and like, ah, that's not that bad. It was worse in 22. All you're doing is is what is going to happen in three months from now, six months

now with inflation and food prices and all of the other things that are going to be impacted by this,

you're making the future significantly worse by basically not taking your medicine now.

You're also prolonging a war, which I believe would end much quicker. If oil hit $150, I believe that would end pretty quick. Like, if it got there and stayed there for, you know, a couple of weeks, the piece negotiations would happen and they would figure it out. But keeping because the average person would feel the impact of it, do you think? Well, just politically, it would be so bad politically for Washington DC that they would have to end it. They're like,

we have to end this. Like, this is the work. But specifically, I'm asking is that because citizens

“are experiencing the pain point, the distance, they've been protected from until now. Because I think”

that's, you know, I want to ask you this because you're also a renewable energy expert. And I think one of the, I sort of heard this bandied about, I think it's an interesting point, which is that like, I've heard people explain that most Americans don't actually understand what oil or gasoline costs, partially because, I mean, I remember going to the UK when I was younger and said, oh my god, why is the gas twice as expensive here? And I had it explained to me that, oh, some of this is,

these are subsidies in the US. There's, there's tax breaks. And I quite frankly, until going to the UK and my late teens or 20s was not aware of how manipulated just at the pump, our gas prices are. At what point, I mean, because I've heard a lot of people in the renewable energy sector say, like,

oh, heart of the problem is that Americans don't know how expensive gases they don't know

conflict in Iran, but that even before this rapidly fluctuating oil market that Americans are generally politicians desperately want to keep the price at the pump down and we'll do what it takes to do that. And as a result, we don't actually realize what the cost of our, of our energy is. Honestly, I think Americans are going to have to kind of own that themselves. I don't feel like this price shock would induce more investments in renewable energy, you know, commercially,

but it would induce a lot more investment in renewable energy personally with people, more EVs,

“more at home solar, which is really, I mean, if we're being honest about it, that's how”

that's probably the biggest pie of how renewable energy is going to grow in the future.

It's just people doing it themselves. Instead of waiting for billion dollar corporations to save them,

they're going to get libertarian approach. Yeah, they're going to go get solar. They're going to figure it out. Like, I mean, you're seeing happen a lot of plug-in solar is, is, you know, Arizona's got a bill. Utah has got a bill. Colorado's New York has the sunny act. Looks like it's going to pass. I mean, it's blowing up in other countries right now. I mean, like Germany is, it's got a huge balcony solar movement going on right now. Yeah, I told you, I don't know how I was supposed to

tan my sexy ankles, but otherwise I do support. I mean, it's blocking the front of my balcony. And I think about all the meaming Tom's out there who watched me every day. I mean, is that really worth the cost of our environment? I guess I'm willing to sacrifice it for them. Just say there's an emotional cost. However, it does, okay, it does bother me a little bit, but we're like, all right, well, we all know wind and solar's cheaper, but now Trump is giving carve out to the oil industry.

And like, I live in New York state where we then passed a, you know, three years ago. We passed the bill to get on 70% clean energy by 2030, and now they're telling us it's not possible to even start until then. And it just feels like it's getting smaller and small. Okay, so if I, if the state won't, we can't do it federally, we'll do it at the state. Okay, our Democrat governor hired a Republican fossil fuel lawyer to run the power authority. All right, we'll do it within the city. Okay,

am I allowed to, am I allowed to have a potato clock on my desk? How, or is the price of produce due to shipping oil going to get so expensive that I can't have a little penny, the, a penny plugged into my potato clock is going to be too costly for me, a Casio watch with a, with a little solar panel, like I, I support balcony and rooftop solar as much as we can do it, but it does drive

me insane where it's like, oh, the, the, the, the solution is going to be, all right, final do it myself.

“Well, it's a, there's a broader problem, I think, with, there's a fascinating book that”

called "Line Nations Fail." And it, this energy problem kind of correlates to some of the other problems that come up in that book where there may be a necessity for it, there may be a need for it, there may be a, even a market driver for it, but if you have a leadership, if you have a regime or an administration or whatever you want to call it in place that is actively blocking it, it'll never take off. The people, unfortunately, even in the United States, even though we have

a bit more power than other countries, but have this, have a problem where even if their voice had, there's an overwhelming majority of people that want to have cleaner energy, cheaper energy, if the, the, the powers that be, whether it's the Trump administration or even Democrats or whoever aren't playing ball or actively going against it, it won't happen all the way to the destruction of that country. We've seen it historically happen over and over again. Obviously,

that was energy wasn't the reason back then. It was usually things like an unpopular war or they've made policies that cause massive amounts of famine, things like that. But I see a correlation there where we can have all the political will within the populist we want and yeah, I'll get my own personal solar, but if we want to have it at scale in huge amounts, if there's, if there's a hostile government towards it, major companies aren't going to fight that hostile government. I don't think so.

“I think that's a great lead into a question. I want to ask Chad talking about”

things being at critical or chaos levels to keep them more profitable because we're hearing,

and I don't know if it's true at all. So, Chad, is that true in the defense contractor world? Because we've been hearing lately that like maybe we don't have the missiles, you know, and I don't know if any of that's true. Like if we're short on ammunition, missiles, things like that, is that something that occurs in that world? And is there any truth or do you know like, do we have stockpile issues? Maybe with stuff we've sent to Ukraine and now fighting this

war? Can you talk about that? I guess it depends on what the outcome of the fight you're looking at. Like if we're trying to fight another like regional skirmish, like we are in Iran, we largely are going to be fine. The problem comes when we're trying to look at things like the

do with not necessarily the current stockpiles we have in the near term, it's the industrial

“base to continue replenishment. That is something that China outpaces us on a pretty significant”

scale, the ability to build not just missiles, munitions, but things like ships. Like they one singular Chinese shipmaker has made more ships in the last five years than the entirety of the US shipbuilding capacity since World War II. So, it's a pretty significant problem that we would run into in a near-peer fight. That being said, we do have the stockpiles currently that could sustain us long enough to probably get to what I would say the negotiating table. We could put

enough pain on a country that they don't want to continue fighting us, but if we go into a protracted

war, like what I would call the World War III scenario or the scenario where we have the fight

two foes at the same time, not used to be the kind of the primary effort of the United States was the simultaneous, what they called it, the ability to fight two wars or two point five wars. It's not at the same time. We just don't have that capacity anymore to do so largely because we over extend ourselves within things like Iran and can't get to an negotiated settlement. And it leads us down a path where we previously, when it came to Iraq 2003 or whatever,

we had the ability to kind of eat away at our munitions because there wasn't really a peer foe out there that was challenging us now there are. And so we do have a problem with with munitions on a grander scale from a manufacturing standpoint, the ability for us to build them in real time kind of like how we did in World War II where we turned a forward plant into building like

“aircraft and things like that. So yeah, there is a problem there for sure. And I think they were”

being more specific to intercept our missiles. Yeah, well Patriots, what they call the exquisite weaponry is like those types of weapons are, it's the weapons we would use like we have

huge amounts of dumb bombs, but those weapons were never meant to destroy an Iran. They were meant to

counter what we would call a near-peer adversary and I did air quotes there. So it's like this adversary that is kind of fights the same way we do. And really the only near-peer adversary we have is China. People could say Russia, but I disagree. And that near-peer adversary with China, that's where that exquisite weaponry, the very expensive Patriot missiles, the jazams which are kind of the air to surface missiles that are extraordinarily expensive, but they're effective in the type of

fight we need for Iran using that type of weaponry on our excuse me with China. Are they using that type of weaponry on Iran has depleted our stockpiles and unfortunate that we are to a place now where if Iran were to start the fight up again, because negotiations fail, we would have to prioritize. Do we want to fight Iran still while I'm looking across the globe at potential adversaries in China, and we'd have to make those decisions. So there's a lot of

to do with misunderstandings with culture in Iran, the culture in China, Russia, etc. in our negotiating positions and how we understand that. So if these negotiations fail, that's the situation that we find ourselves in. But what's going on with these negotiations obviously things aren't quite working, but why are they breaking down? Well, there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how these countries think. And it's not just Iran, the Trump administration views Iran,

Russia, North Korea through a Western lens. And you see the rhetoric here, you see from Trump Hegseth, even his supporters that there's this almost rabid instincts to ramp up pressure, keep hurting Iran, keep intensifying the pain force them to the table, make them capitulate, but that misses cultural context. They just don't built to respond that way. Iran has endured

“almost 50 years of economic pain, brutal wars, sanctions, isolation, etc. And you have to separate”

obviously the Iranian people from the Islamic Republic, because I'm not trying to say we should apply more pain to the Iranian people. But things like the Islamic Revolution, I guard Corothea, Tola, they have a massive capacity to absorb a huge amount of pain. So when you see Trump and his administration look at it through a lens of, well, what would hurt me as an American? What would I not want to happen? And then try to apply that logic to Iran. It doesn't work. It leads to failure.

And Western countries, are we talking, casualties are we talking, economic, economic realities are going to get effects, or all of the above. It's all of the above. Any kind of just sanctions

greater than what we have in the West. And we react almost emotionally to small economic shocks,

“global instability, political pain. Iran, Russia, North Korea, they live inside of a world”

that is painful for them because of the way they operate. And it goes back to the teachings of the

Ayatollah when he came to power some 50 years ago, he argued that the Islamic Republic should never

compromise on their core principles. And they should never capitulate to an enemy without exact exhausting every option to fight. And this value is ancient. It's a deeply held Persian value where the word for compromise, which is, say, yes, as A, Z, E, S, H, I might be saying that wrong, because I don't speak Persian or Farsi or whatever they speak on that. But they take it as a slur. To them, instead of it, meaning compromise where we see it as compromise. Yes, we're working together.

They see it as selling out. Different word, different cultural education. So they feel that to compromise this cowardice and strength is showing that you can take punishment, keep moving forward.

“And that connects the, how the Iranian hardliners are seeing these negotiations. And it goes”

back to the Soviet Union. They watched his Gorbachev compromise. He compromised the Soviet principles because he thought the West would save the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union collapsing. And the Ayatollah watched that. And it shaped his view. And so Iran, it walks into these negotiations, believing that if they compromise, it would be capitulation. They would act, we asked the US. And that's existential for them. And you're not really important distinction between, obviously, the Islamic Republic,

the Islamic Republic and the people of Iran. But I'm curious, because Matt and I were talking where we were all talking earlier about essentially the American consumer is protected from

sticker shock at all costs. Right. Like we are, we are, the most important thing is that we don't

think that our economy is failing. Like we will do anything to manipulate to the point where the American consumer doesn't have to think that they are financially unstable. That's a massive

“cultural value. Right. Like that's a massive way of doing things here. Is that different in Iran?”

Are you saying, like, obviously, like the civilians and the government are different, but but our is in Iranian culture, our people are more directly connected to the impacts of what their government is doing in the way that Western societies have been all protected from. Unfortunately, for the Iranian people, the negative effects amplify for them, but the positive effects are minimized. So whenever something positive happens to Iran, it's generally similar

with Russia, a small group of powerful people, often obviously men, nearly all men, obviously, benefit from it. But when painful actions take place like sanctions or say a war, namely like the Iran Iraq war, it is hugely disproportionately the people that are impacted.

The problem is those people have very little means to react to it. We saw the protests,

we thought, oh, protests, those are happening at great, they failed. Because the Iranian regime, the Islamic Republic killed anywhere between 15 to 40,000 of them, machine gunned them down. And so they, they unfortunately do not have that outlet to find a way to overthrow the regime. And it makes that regime incredibly resilient. And so any pain we apply to the Islamic Republic, they're going to just by the nature of their design are going to be able to weather it more so than

we are as Americans because the Islamic Republic will say kill thousands of people. We aren't willing to do that. And they're completely willing to pass that. Yeah. And so we're not inflicting any damage on the Islamic Republic themselves with these sanctions necessarily as of what is on the civilian population. But they're not responding to the civilian population in the way that, I mean, obviously America's catapulting towards authoritarianism, but we have

elections and people are still worried about winning them. Yeah, we're, I mean, to be clear, we're nowhere near gunning our people down in the streets like the Islamic Republic. I get concerned about what we have, what we're headed. We gun some people down on the street this year. Let's not, like we haven't said. That is true. That is true. Labeled federal troops to murder civilians. You are in Minnesota earlier this year. You are correct. Several times over the last few years. So we

are not, not at that point. We are just not doing it as regularly and on math. Yeah. But we've crossed a very significant line there in recent years. Yeah. And we have in the past, I mean, obviously, you have can't stay back to cities and things like that. But it was such a huge deal because it wants. And, you know, of course, it happened to white people too. That's the other way.

looks at the Islamic Republic and thinks, if I do what hurts what would hurt us to them,

they think that's a negotiating tactic and it's not going to work. This tactic, he's learning a real time why it took the Obama administration, John Kerry, Jake Sullivan, all of them, well over 18 months, some say up to five years of secret negotiations to reach just a singular negotiation on the joint comprehensive plan of action. It took that long just to talk about only the nuclear program. And now Trump is trying to say, do this or you're going to get hurt and

“the Iranians are like, that's our life. Our life is pain. You can't hurt us more than we already are.”

And if you're going to hurt us, we're just going to transfer that pain to our people. And they know

that we are more humanitarian focused. That has more of a, that plays more of the heart strings of

Americans. We will watch the news and be upset that this is happening, whereas they, they don't care and what ends up happening is they leverage that as a negotiating tactic. And so when Trump says, I'm going to hurt the Islamic Republic, they're he's playing right into their wheelhouse, what they want. Yeah, sure. I apply the pain. Go ahead. We can take it. It's the same thing Russia did. It's the same thing, North Korea. These are countries built on pain. And unfortunately,

if we want to overcome that, we would have to do extraordinarily atrocious things, which I hope

“to God we don't, but yeah. So the negotiating tactic seems to be fully, but yeah. And”

it can only really double down on that, but doesn't seem to understand or acceptably. It's that it's not, it just isn't going to work with people who are seemingly immune to that. Yeah, it's definitely a, what we would in the nice word is a pressure campaign, but it's not a pressure campaign gives the era of its strategy. It's not a strategy for him. It's him. I'm upset. I'm pissed. And I want to hurt them. And that's where we hear the mega base come in

and say, hurt them more until they capitulate. And that's not the way out of this. But that, the way out of this is a whole, another podcast discussion. But yeah, perhaps I'll talk about a next week or the following week or in between now and then, probably not. On that note, I'd like to go to a segment that we call the least worst part of my week. Let's look at a little bit of optimism. If not optimism, a story that's turning up is less horrible than

everything else in the world of the military, energy, or American culture and power in general. Matt, what's the least worst part of your week? I fell in love with a monkey. I don't know if, I don't know if you guys have heard of UG, but UG is a 1.4 pound pothus monkey in Mexico whose mother has rejected her. So she wakes up every morning, cuddling a little like a teddy bear dog thing. And they're trying to figure out how to

what, uh, introduce UG to her, uh, you know, family, species, whatever, however you say that. And this little bit of tiny, so I have it like this little toy snowser her name's Tilly, and she weighs two pounds. And this dog isn't any bigger than my foot. So I, this little monkeys, like this little bit of tiny, and I implore you to read about UG, the Mexican baby pothus monkey. It's, it's a really cool story. She has swept the hearts and minds of people in Mexico.

That's a small monkey. I'm 0.4 pounds. I want to say I love when there's a celebrity animal. I live on an animal, which could not possibly understand its level of celebrity becomes famous.

Let's let them, every celebrity just appoints you. You're never like, oh, Grumpy Cat was racist.

“Like, no, it's fine. He lived a good life. Remember that hot gorilla?”

There was like, there was a gorilla that a lot of people were attracted to. You're talking about her on Bay? No, I was on the gorilla that was unjustly murdered. The gorilla lived a long full life. It was a phenomenon in Japan a few years ago that there was a gorilla in a zoo that people thought was like incredibly handsome. And I mean, I got to say the guy's got to go and on. Like, if you, if you Google handsome gorilla, you'll look at it.

I'd be like, I mean, he's distinguished. But again, I just love handsome gorilla is never going to have like problematic tweets. Where do we can root for? I'm not for celebrity culture, but I like sure. So with the money I end or whatever, I can get behind that. So I do have a question on this

you start to wonder, why is this monkey keeping rejected by its people? Like, are they looking at

this monkey and it's like, oh, no, it really is racist. Maybe it's like, this guy's really sucks. And the humans are intervening. Is that? I hope not. I hope it's that I'm like derailing the good news story with the with like my cynical views. But no, I just wonder, why does this monkey? Why is everyone hate this monkey? And the monkey I know is that hours after giving birth, like, smells like us. Eugene's mother, Kamaria, began exhibiting a regular behavior and struggle to

hold this monkey correctly, leaving the infant unable to secure a grip on its mother. And ever since then, that people have taken over. So for whatever reason, maybe it's got so small. It's only

“1.4 pounds. I don't know. I don't know a lot about monkeys, honestly. Our producer just said he has”

bad energy. Yeah, it's better. Yeah, it just has bad vibes. There is a bad vibe around perhaps.

You know, I've got a least worst story that's similar. Matt, you're speaking my language, because I love a very small animal. I love several verys. I'm sorry. I love every very small animal. If I'm hungry. Some. But I thought of B was cute the other day. It's all like, there's no, it's all happening for me at this point. I get to look at all lizard and be like, looks so cutly. But Nepal discovered in Nepal, in the past week, past month, I believe the first

sighting of a long thought extinct otter, the world's smallest species of otter, the Oriental otter, was sighted in Nepal for the first time for 185 years, not actually extinct, just very small. My wife is a large person. That's her favorite animal. She'll love that news. The elusive otter that she thought long thought extinct. No, just otters in general don't make a lot more sense. Yes,

“the elusive Oriental small, clawed otter. So old that we were still calling things Oriental at the time.”

That otter do for an update. You know how I said, celebrity animals will never

disappoint you. That is a problematic otter title and we need to update that otter. It's not his fault. He's been hiding 185 years. I can go seek world champion right there. I don't know. Yeah, there you go. I don't, I don't have an animal. No, that's not really the focus. We've just skewed that way. My, my never is fun. But this is, I think this is some good news. And it kind of ties back into what y'all were talking about earlier with the clean energy. We've reached a huge milestone

where the clean, all the clean out, the clean power, all new global electric demand is in clean power now and not in fossil fuels. So kind of refraize that because I was stumbling over that. But basically we, the new clean energy being built is outpacing. Yes, new demand for energy. Which was yeah. So my story until Matt had a cute one and I wanted to do a cute one. Oh, so then you, so you had the same thing, my phone. Yeah, so I thought that was very cool because

it's just, and honestly it was I found this before the whole conversation on clean energy and whatnot.

“But yeah, the only thing is the reason it's a least worst story and not, because I usually say,”

well, this is the best story is because it's driven largely by the Chinese, which is a good thing because the Chinese really are the biggest polluter still in the world as a country. But it means that the United States is not doing what it needs to do. Oh, of course not. I've just cleaned energy production in the past 15 years. Yeah, enormous growth. And it's actually going to help them geopolitically in the future.

They still are the largest polluter as a country mainly because of their, the industry and stuff like that. But, and the number of people that have, but also they, all of this new solar power, like 50% of all new solar energy was in China. And it's, that's a good thing. It means it's a good thing for humanity in the globe. But it also means that we need to step our game up here in the United States so that we can get going on the clean energy to be better with it. But that being said,

we have reached that milestone of all new energy requirements are now covered by clean energy. So that's, that's a good news. Yeah, and for all our old Cold War enthusiasts, you can say, "You don't shine at a beat us at clean energy. Do you?" I'm not saying we should be a nationalist. But I was like, there's, those people exist already. You know, tap into whatever, prefer it. It's like the Olympics. I mean, it doesn't matter how globalist you are when

the Olympics happen. My country is going to beat yours. I don't know. I was, I was written for that Turkish sharpshooter who wasn't wearing pretzels. Oh, yes, this is personally. I learned very quickly that my country loyalty is immediately overridden by someone who looks a little cool. Oh, absolutely. I mean, don't give me wrong. I'm, I'm rooting for our curling team. But that's mostly mustache-baves. I just like their vibe. Yeah. Next week, we'll talk a little bit

more about the negotiations in Iran and how we could actually, in the long term, get out of

for our chat Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph. I'm Nat Taosen. This has been American power from Findout Media. Remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts, American League.