The Future of War Is Flying Overhead

You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Tausen, stand-up comedians, beach writer, prose writer, many other kinds of writer, and most likely to be carved in stone upon my death podcast host.

I'm joined as always by my panel of experts,

our expert on the military and foreign policy, Chad Scott, Chad, how are you doing? I'm doing great, really looking forward to speaking with a good friend of mine here. This is going to be awesome. Yeah, this is going to be a great episode.

I'm really excited and I can't wait to hear what you guys get into as well. I'll be here to explain what the past of the average American does not understand, because you guys are both experts. So I'm excited to really get into it with you both. And joining us, of course, as always,

our expert on energy, both renewable, oil,

global oil markets, you know them as Mr. Global, Matt Randolph, Matt, how's it going?

Oh, it's great. I'm knee deep in the swamp and the capital police have already seized my Yeti cup, and I'm sitting here feeling very lonely without it. And are you enjoying your complimentary NSA bug hotel room?

“Yes, I am. That's why we're having all these tech difficulties.”

No, they took my Yeti cup, and if you're from the south, your Yeti cup is like your child's. Like your emotional support cup. Yes, that's maybe a real cultural insult to you. I'm like, dude, I'm just trying to get into a gift shop.

Like, I could get my wife something for I leave. Like, and they took it, and then they lost it. Is the logic that Yeti's are large enough to conceal a handgun? I don't because I've seen some of that. I haven't had a handgun on it, so that was probably scary.

I mean, yeti's are, I think they don't sponsor the podcast, but yeti comes with a handle on it is a blunt object. You could take out a security guard with it. You get past three, you could like three steps closer to the president or the Yeti cup with a handle. I'm kind of on their side at this point.

For those of you listening who have not gathered this from context. I don't blame you for not being a deep reader. However, Mr. Global is joining us from the swamp itself, Washington, D.C. right now.

“Yeah, where he is, what do you want to tell our listeners a little about what you're doing there?”

Or, as soon as we're done here, I'm going to sit with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and we're going to talk about energy policy and how high energy prices impact people right out my window is the Supreme Court of the United States. So like I'm literally in the middle of the swamp, and I need to take a shower. I feel like I feel a dirty.

I like that we've reclaimed that now that Washington has been infected. Just by the worst people on earth. Well, you heard it here first listeners, if we do not reach a sensible national energy policy, it's because I went long on this episode of the podcast and Mr. Global is left. Right. So if humanity's doomed, you can blame me.

But for this episode, I don't want you to blame our guests because it will be my fault if we don't

reach climate. If we don't reach 350 parts per million in the atmosphere, climate solidar.

In the next week, however, I'm so excited to bring this guest to the podcast. We're really excited to talk to him. He is the host of War Stories, a podcast that breaks down War conflict geopolitics in a digestible way, making it easier for everyday people to understand, sound familiar. He's a former U.S. Army officer and West Point graduate with a degree in international relations and has served at an officer in the 101st Airborne, the Texas National

Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve in Tennessee. He has a massive following across multiple social media platforms and networks and does amazing works of charity for 198 Ukrainian causes. That's I love. He does amazing works of charity for Ukrainian causes. I'm so excited to bring to the podcast. Welcome, Preston Stewart. Thank you so much for the introduction. I look forward to chatting today with my buddy Chad and

getting to meet Matt and chapter first time here. So happy to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us, Preston. I was hoping for those of you who might not be for the listeners, rather who might not be as familiar with your work. In spite of my stellar introduction that explained almost everything was hoping that you could go into a little bit more detail. Can you tell us a bit about your background and sort of how you went

“from military service to being a content creator who comments on these sort of things?”

Yeah, absolutely, man. So left active duty in 2014. So it stopped being my full-time job then from 2014 to 2025. I was in the Guard and Reserve. So bounced around between those two. So part-time job still had full civilian employment, but wasn't ever super happy or excited about what I was doing and started making content during COVID of subjects that I was interested in. Primarily military history, a lot to do with World War II. My background in college was international

to actually be something that you would focus on day to day and started to look in that direction

“for some jobs. But when the war in Ukraine kicked off, they're all of a sudden where a lot of people”

looking to the internet looking to TikTok and Instagram and YouTube for updates on what is a tank versus artillery. What is air defense mean? fighter versus bomber. All of those little things that for those of us in the military you take for granted and there was all of a sudden an audience looking for that information and it just kept going. So I started spending more and more time on that and I've been fortunate now for a few years for this to be my full-time job.

Introduce me to some great people. I've made some incredible connections and some awesome

trips. Yeah, love it. But the primary focus right now is war in conflict around the world. So a lot of that attention right now is obviously focused on on Ukraine, the Russian Ukraine war and then as other conflicts have kind of come and gone, you know, Iran, US, which as of today, I don't know, maybe it's over. I wouldn't say it's another word. Go on. Get in and head as well. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you with my pessimism. My skepticism. I'm curious. You touch on

this briefly, but what's the difference between a tank and artillery? You know, like I'm sure when you talk to other people who have served, for example, in the military or who work with military, you know, work with the military in government. There's a lot of jargon. There's a lot of

shared vocabulary. And you know, obviously one of the things that we try to do in this podcast is

open up these conversations to other people. And I personally as a somewhat without a lot of military expertise, I find that what often happens when we discuss especially, you know, military action abroad is that we use these same phrases and everyone's kind of parroting each other. And you even hear in civilian conversations, people saying these phrases that we don't 100% understand because it's like, okay, someone gave me some building blocks and I know how to rearrange these to have an

opinion on Ukraine, which is not to say people are like, you know, not trying to understand the situation, but what I'm curious with you is like, how do you break through that kind of jargon or that kind of established vocabulary to like, it sounds like people are really reacting to the clarity of your media. Like, how do you cut through? How do you know, as a person who's really on the inside of it,

“what you need to make available to other people, or a comprehensiveble to the average American?”

I'll be honest at it. It's kind of a daily thought process. Is this too far in the weeds or not? And I try to navigate that with pulling on experts. So we'll do interviews from time to time with people that are very well versed in a certain subject and try to kind of pick their brain rather than my trying to get too far down in the weeds. But it is, it genuinely is a balance. So if the military jargon could be really cool and it could sound awesome, right? The effects on

targets and target packets and all sorts of things you can put together, the number of acronyms through the roof, like you mentioned, and you can use that. It's kind of speaking code to your tribe in certain ways. But the number of people relative to the rest of the audience that understand that's pretty miniscule. So I try to take that information from military sources, be it Ukraine, Russia, or here in the United States, Israel, Iran, and kind of just back

it off a stepper to. So instead of the model of the missile and the nomenclature of the missile, maybe it's an intermediate range missile that can travel this far. With the hope that somebody can

hear it for the first time and need no background and kind of get an understanding of what it is

we're talking about. What I'm curious when you, and this is clearly me, the podcast host, looking for professional comparisons. But I'm curious when you bring on experts, do you find yourself

“being the sort of audience surrogate? Like, do you find that you have to ask for a little”

translation as well? Does that help you to translate to a listening audience of? No, you don't use that, it's your personal jargon. So if you want to open it up to people who aren't, who haven't served, and aren't the one really weird guy from everyone's high school, who memorized all that jargon, even though he didn't go into the military. How do you translate from an expert to the people who know less than you? Do you find that your comprehension is able

to filter that? Sometimes, again, it's a constant thought. And there's a guy we had on recently talking about, all the situation in Mali. And it's a great example of, I don't even know how to pronounce most of those towns. I don't know what the geography of Mali is. I don't know the history there. I can read some articles on it and get an idea, but he would just dive right it to like, what's happening on the northern approaches to the capital city? We had to back out a little bit

and say, hey, higher level, what is this group? What is that group? How do they play together? So it's selfishly kind of, I love it because I get to learn and talk to these guys and ask the questions, the very simple questions. I don't know any idea what you're talking about. Can you start

interviews. We do some with Ukrainian soldiers and when you get through a translator or it's a

second language, it gets a little bit harder to kind of walk that line. But I think it's important

“man. I think that's what you guys are doing here, too. It's just an ability to reach a larger audience.”

Yeah, it's kind of funny because we'll, it even cross services we run it because off conversations with Alex are mutual friend Alex Hollings and he's like an air power guy. And I'm like, okay, whoa, I'm, you just because we were both in the military, we can often speak different languages. I mean, that was a ground logistics guy. He's an air power Marine. So it is kind of fascinating. But kind of diving into more of what you've been doing recently as an avid follower of your content.

I know you got back from Ukraine. I think it was just a few weeks ago, maybe a little longer, based on the release timelines. Before I get into that discussion on the tactics and strategy

and all the cool people you met and everything, I do have a question and it's something I've always

wanted to ask you when you go there, how, how do you actually get in and do the things you do? Like, do you go through Romania? Is it pulling, do you fly there, then get on a rail, meet with a liaison, and then they kind of prep and you work together. And then the other question is, do you just shoot

“the footage like for for Opsack operational security reasons and release it when you get back to your home?”

Or are you allowed to just edit on site and show what's going on as we're going as you're going through it? Yeah, I appreciate the commitment to the show because we text, you could have just sent these over. We talked on the phone. Could have just kept it on your own point. You held it in this environment? Yeah, I appreciate that. I don't know what I'm trying to do. I don't want to do it. And where do you get the ticket, uh, who you ask? So the, it's been different. I've been over two

times and the first one my parents actually described as an adventure and the second time more as a business trip and they were, they kind of matched that. So the first time around we went through is all personally funded. Like I bought the tickets and went through roommate or excuse me, uh, pulling. So we landed in Warsaw to get anybody can get to Poland, normal flights, uh, bounce around a little bit from Warsaw, then it's a, uh, a train into key. And I was like 17 hours. So it's an

overnight train pretty comfortable. All things considered, uh, the second entrance was through

Moldova. She never thought I'd interested in being in Moldova. Yeah. And it's like a two-lane road.

You flying to that airport, it's pretty small. We got on a bus as a, as a group this time. And they brought us through, uh, kind of a southern entrance into Ukraine down near Odessa. Customs is a mess getting in and getting out. It's just, it's a, it's an active war zone. So it takes forever. Yeah. Um, but then getting around the country is a bit different and a bit unique. I was fortunate my first time to effectively be with the military start to finish. So I was with an American volunteer this

spot there since 2022. So we were in a military vehicle and able to just go through checkpoints and go to straight to military headquarters. You wouldn't be able to do that if you just showed up. But the weird thing about Ukraine is any one of you guys can just show up right now in key. You can get there and start walking around. In terms of the opposite in the recording, there were a handful of times where they would say no pictures, no phones, uh, instances where we

couldn't even bring phones into an area, command posts, uh, some drone factories, things like that. And then with no phone, there's clearly no recording with anything else.

“Most of it was pretty open. Like I was pretty surprised. I think that I, I have been, I think I've”

had better access to Ukrainian military technology and operational security in the last few months than I could get from the US military. Like I think I would get stopped going on a fort camel and they would say, you can't go to this command post even during a training exercise. Are you can't look at these screens? And Ukraine, they're so proud of what they're doing. They want to show it off that it's kind of the other way around. They're like, yeah, I record whatever.

And then after the fact, somebody will say, you can't show that screen. You got to blur that part out. We got to leave this a long time to publish. But yeah. Yeah. Do you ever know? I mean, so you, you're cognizant of not wanting to have like give away positions and things by just record at it because we've gotten pretty good at it. We can turn around a video pretty quick. So usually you're back state side and posting those videos afterwards, correct?

It makes bag at the very least not in that location anymore. Yeah. Definitely not day of. And depending on the unit or depending who you're with, sometimes they'll ask to see it before it goes public. And you know, it's mixed. We had some where you send it over to them and they say, it's fine. Do whatever. Like we've taken pictures in drone labs where they're fixing up these drones out of the front. And they say, it's fine. Go for it. Like zero issue at all. Then

there was another one where we talked with some of the guys from the middle strike campaign. And it was over the top where they let us record anything. But then they wanted

You know, run it through. But in retrospect, I wish they would have given us that information up front.

We would have gone about it in a little different manner. But teamwork, I'd say, start finished. So when you say middle strike, you're talking about like, obviously not frontline. But obviously not deep strike hitting Moscow. You're talking about kind of their logistics

“in the back. The command post, that's when you say middle strike. That's what you mean.”

Yeah, man. It's getting wild. It's they they showed us a drone that it's a bomber. So fixed wing drone dropped something about the size of an 82 millimeter motor. And it's relatively autonomous. As in, they set the coordinates with the bombs. They send this thing off. Because there's not a direct connection of controlling it. It's very hard for Russia to intercept it. It's very hard for EW to jam it. It has an accuracy for five meters. Yeah,

there we go. Thank you. Thank you. And they have a good night. That's my turn rate on these things. So they can fly out past 50 kilometers. And I think they said they're launching multiple missions a night. They've lost one in like the last four months in trouble. So to be clear, that's like there's no transmission that can be interrupted because they're pre-programmed. So they're not exactly detectable. And that's the same way. Interesting. Yeah. There are still ways to shoot it down.

“I mean, you can shoot it shoot it down. Of course, but compared with other drones that are being”

controlled, start to finish, there's just fewer ways for Russia to do that. So that's the kind of step that's starting to emerge. So step and back from the kind of the drones and what we definitely get out of into that, because I've like, as I've said previously in my videos, there are drone super power in my opinion. But I kind of want to get a big picture before we go down the rabbit holes here and Matt, Mr. Global Jumping, because I know energy is a big part of that

and their infrastructure. But as you said, you just got back from Ukraine. I mean, we're hearing from some of the experts, but it's like the Ponditree. I mean, I'm one of those, the think tanks. You see map animations showing broadly what's going on in Ukraine. But you were actually physically there talking to those soldiers, the drone operators, the commanders all the way down to the company level and all the people that are living in the war. Based on that, what is your sense of where this war in

Ukraine is really headed as of right now? Like, is there an optimism? Is it something that we can point to, this is the turning point and now these drones are making Russia less effective in their movements, or is this just kind of another flash in the pan tactic where, yeah, Ukraine has found some some distance to have tactical advantages, but really Russia will catch up and we'll be back to a stalemate kind of situation. What are your thoughts on that? Overall, much more optimistic than

my first visit. Maybe it was weather. This was springtime in Odessa, which is a beautiful city in

the south. Last time was winter in eastern Ukraine on dirt roads. So I don't know, maybe that plain is a part into it. But overly optimistic in the sense that Ukraine is now, I would argue for the first time in the war, at least in the last few years, not in the entire war. They have Russia on their back foot. Russia is trying to adapt and trying to respond, and they're having hard time doing that. Now, we should expect that Russia will find a way to stop the volume of these drones flying

between 50 and 300 kilometers, but they haven't yet, and it's been a growing issue over the last couple weeks, and I'm excited to get maths take on this, because we're, we're seeing the refineries

“get hit, but it's very hard to pin down like what does that actually mean for the war effort?”

I would add that the winter to the black sea security forum, and in there, they were maybe a little too optimistic. I would argue, there was a lot of talk about after the war, especially with technology and innovation, and how they can bring drones to the rest of Europe, and I get the desire to want to start talking about that. I think it's the right move at that level, but shows you how far it's come. Just very nice to share with you all the recommendations, just for a listener.

That was in Odessa, it's something called the black sea security forum. It was a pretty cool event. They had these military conferences, essentially around the world, and this is one that's hosted on the black sea in Odessa, so a southern port in Ukraine.

I want to say this is the third year they've held it, but you know, kind of a think tank type

tech companies come in, military companies come in, units come in, politicians. The U.S. was represented by Senator Kelly, Senator Geigo, and Senator Blumenthal, we're all there speaking. It's pretty wild. It's a pretty big, big discrepancy. When you're up, I just want to make sure our listeners understand where, like who are the players having these conversations, and you're saying that they was pretty optimistic or overly optimistic

even in the framing of anything. I think so, but it's also that that's a bit different than

going to keep doing that job. As you go up the chain to the politicians that are trying to

solicit more investment into their country and to try to paint a good picture. So I understand it, but very optimistic at the higher levels I would say. Matt, you, so you've been the energy expert

“and the president was alluding to this, is there? I think that's Russia's target that they're”

effort right now is to destroy that energy infrastructure is between what you saw on the ground president and Matt, you as the expert. Is there something that is this an adequate way forward for Russia do you think that their energy can be exploited in a way that is they manned up. We're all talking about the optimism. That is the one thing I think Russia could be effective at is really hurting the Ukrainian people by striking that energy. You know better than all of us, Matt,

what that looks like. Do you have any thoughts on that or any discussion on what you think with the energy situation there? So actually, one of the things that I agreed with from the Trump administration, I think Preston would agree with me, under the Obama administration, they really did not want Ukraine striking Russian energy infrastructure. I don't know whether it was through

“agreements through, you know, the weapons we were given them or whatever, but Ukraine was really”

kind of hands off with Russian energy infrastructure under the Obama administration. You mean Biden, you mean Biden? Yeah, the Biden, did I say Obama? Yeah, the Biden, yeah, people will use that against me now. You're going to Congress with the most recent president. But no, really, when Trump came in, he was like, you know, have had it. And so since Trump got into office, they've really been hammering Russia's energy infrastructure. And what's amazing is to see, you know, Ukraine will wipe out

some refinery. And the moment Russia gets it back online, they just wipe it out again. Like,

so it's just this never ending thing. But what kind of got wrapped up in all of this? So first of all,

China was buying the vast majority of Russia in a while, because it was under sanction. So it wasn't really getting to the market and having much of an effect on prices globally. But then you had the whole, you know, US Israel or on thing, kick off. And that really muddied everything that was happening everywhere, because most of this oil from all these places was going to China. As far as how it, it's not really had a huge impact on energy prices globally. But the lifting of sanctions against

Russia by the United States has helped Russia tremendously. Being able to sell oil to countries that were facing shortages to like, you know, Europe and Southeast Asia. And so that's, that's given Russia a huge boost in money, basically. They've made a lot of money on this. It's going to be really interesting to see how this works with the Iran deal, maybe or maybe not wrapping up and how, because the fact the matter is, most, most all,

Iran's oil went to China, most all of Russia's oil went to China. So it was never absorbed by

the paper market, right? You know, the price you see when you Google oil prices. Is that going to continue? If Iran's sanctions are lifted, our Russia's sanctions, what's going to happen there, because it seems like they're lifted and then put back in place and then lifted, all of that things, all of those things matter. And now Russia or China has been just greatly reduced their imports, and that pushes a lot of oil back onto the global market, which has helped oil prices come down,

because they've got over a billion barrels of really cheap $30 and $40 oil in storage. And how all this is going to play out is really going to be fascinating, because we could get to a point in the near future where oil still hits $150, we could also get to a point where it completely crashes to like $40, because if we're still dumping all the oil from all the strategic reserves around the world and China continues to not buy any of the Russian or Iranian oil,

“we could end up in an oversupply scenario pretty quickly. So that's how volatile these markets are here”

in the United States and in China. So, but it is, it's funny to see Ukraine blow something up and then as soon as Russia fixes it, they just blow it up again. And I'm not a military expert, but it seems like Russia can't stop it. It really feels like they just can't stop it. And is there going to be a point where they just don't fix it? That's where I'm at. I mean, we see a lot of it. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to ask it. Where's the

line between Russian exports and Russian domestic consumption? How does that play in here?

vastly, uh, energy independent. Kind of like Canada. They produce a lot more than they consume.

“So, and they rely on those exports. For I think it's about a third of their entire economy.”

That's a huge deal and it's a huge deal for their war budget, you know, however they allocate funds for that. So that's a huge deal for Russia. And I was from the beginning, I was like, why isn't Ukraine hitting their energy like that's their life blood? And, uh, and now that they are, they've been doing it for a year and a half now or whatever. And I think they're, I think it's leading to a lot of their success. Yeah. So that gets the question though. It's like that's one vulnerability they have.

And I think right now, there's a kind of a big focus on Crimea because you're talking about

the impact of energy on the domestic audience within Russia. Russia's largely insulated from their

own energy woes with the exception. It seems of Crimea. When you were there, I'm not sure if you're there when this whole Crimea thinks started, they, they close that land bridge that runs through Mario Poul, Malay to Poul all the way to, to Crimea. Was that something that the, the Ukrainians, they were very much focused on is, is it now becoming more of the Crimea as the center of gravity or is that more of a kind of a symbolic victory? Because that's, that's kind of Putin's crown jewel.

We're seeing these lines for fuel. They have to cross back into Russia and there are 500 vehicles. How, how do you see that with regard to what the Ukrainians were doing on the ground? Is this a

very dedicated tactic? They just want to now start inflicting, essentially bring the war to the

Russians. So they feel the same thing that Ukrainians do?

“I think there's definitely some symbolism here. We know how important Crimea is to”

Putin and to Russia. But there's, there's also this dilemma that, that Ukraine is forcing to pawn Russia by going after Crimea. And that's the relocation of their air defense assets. Whether it's their, you know, large manufactured tour, pantsier, things like that, more their mobile air defense teams. Like the simplest way to describe it is there are too many targets inside of Russia, not enough air defense systems. Ukraine has been expanding the range

and the quantity of their drones. So I think there's a refinery north of Moscow. God hit overnight. Like that hadn't, I don't know that that had been targeted before. Now they have to defend that. So forcing the conversation around Crimea opening up the roads, keeping the bridge safe, keeping the airfield safe, and keeping the citizens feeling safe and, and supply there, is going to eat up some of Russia's resources, and those have to come from somewhere else.

I mean, they are manufacturing new things. They do have drone interceptors. They do have these mobile

“counter-drone teams, but not enough for what they have to protect. And I think if this same”

situation was playing out, maybe in Belgorod or Kursk, other territories of Russia, it wouldn't have the same impact. But it really isn't all that hard to withdraw in at least significantly disrupt the flow of supplies and personnel into Crimea. I think it's, I think it's multifaceted. But it is playing out right now. I mean, you can see Russia struggling with the decision here. We see potentially Crimea as a future building block to our domino that if they can eject the

Russians, potentially even just enough Russians from Crimea, that the France elsewhere, because we, you and I, we keep an eye on this. We've seen Gaines and Zeprija by the Ukrainians up and done yet. We've seen some Gaines. We've also seen, uh, Russia takes some territory. I mean, I believe they just recently took costume to New York, and at least temporarily, they love to do that. And you talked about that that show up with the flag wave it and say we got this and then leave. But, um, are you, broadly, are you

seeing these small territorial gains and the suffocation of Crimea as a potential for a broader collapse? Are we looking at a tactical, just small tactical victories? Or is this going to lead to a strategic failure eventually for Russia? Do you think, is that how the Ukrainians possibly see it? This is why I think we're in a really unique phase in this war, because you can pretty clearly say, see how one leads the two leads to three. And I don't think it's the loss of Crimea or the isolation

of Crimea. I think that's just part of what is playing out here, which is the isolation of the southern occupied territories. So to get supplies of the front, there's only a few ways to do that. And it, it's essentially through Crimea and the south, or through rostomondon in the east. And while Ukraine is isolating the peninsula, they're also hitting those supply roads in the south. There is a report from a Russian correspondent a few days ago that there was no fuel at gas stations

between, I want to say, the net's city and rostomondon. Those are areas, especially as you go

even since 2014. So it's getting harder for Russia to bring supplies forward. And that is just

a matter of time for the front to hold on. You just cannot have troops at the front for very long. If you can't get them water, if you can't get them food, if you can't get them fuel and you can't get re-supplies. Now, it doesn't require going to zero. But if that drops from 100% of what they want to, I mean, chatty, probably have some insight here, but I don't know, 70%, 80% and offensive operations are off the table. If that drops to 40 or 50%, you might have to withdraw those troops

because they can't be sustained. So the big picture of this, if it continues and if Russia cannot control these supply roads, it will lead to a collapse in the front. I have a question that just jumping off of that, though, which is, because you're talking a lot about the front, and I'm curious,

I should have said this earlier, but we're recording this on Tuesday, June 16th. So right now,

“the G7 summit is currently happening as we discuss this. And I believe that Ukraine has”

drone strike an oil refinery today, an oil facility today, according to Zelensky in response to a couple of attacks on Kiev for the, for the listener, on Monday, June 15th, Russia bombed Kiev and other civilian areas destroyed a, I believe, a damage to church in Kiev. And curious, in these kinds of strikes are these things asymmetrical in terms of, seems like Ukraine's very tactically attacking refineries, military bases, sources of power. Is this asymmetrical in terms of attacks

on civilian populations, or am I just reading the news asymmetrical myself? We have started to see more of that, and I think you're going to continue to see more. There's, we're back to the point where you're getting the, the pro-Russian crowd screaming, well, once they start fighting, and when they start taking this seriously and actually start going after real targets in in in in in Kiev, then things will change. Well, come on, we're four and a

half years into this thing. They've clearly been going after a lot of targets. They're not holding back on something. So as Russia runs into some challenges here, it's very hard to clear up the supply lines in the south, and that is having a direct impact on their military capabilities. The easiest thing for them to do is to inflict tear. They're, they're capable of doing that. They're willing to do that, and we've seen that time and again. So whether that involves the direct

targeting of civilian infrastructure or just kind of mass fires, you know, kind of comes in different

“waves, but I don't think that's, I think that's connected to the Ukrainian strikes right now.”

And is Ukraine employing the same tactic or is it a little more tactical as, as my perception was? Because I, I'm not proclaim to be an expert. I'm basing a lot of this on the reporting that I've seen. Ukraine generally speaking tries a lot harder to only go after military targets in Russian. I don't think it's close. There's some good footage today, actually, of people standing on their balcony, of their apartment complex, and recording Ukrainian drones fly overhead,

and then strike a refinery across the street. Wow. So like they're very clearly going after that's a military target. That is a civilian target hit the military target. Now, from Ukraine's in, they also have had historically had fewer munitions. So they've had to be very careful. It doesn't do any good to to blow up a Russian apartment complex with the one munition you have. You'd rather hit the command post. But it's not entirely up because it's difficult as well.

“There's a part of that. Yeah. I mean, I'd intertwine those there, but no doubt Ukraine has made”

mistakes. There has been collateral damage, but by and large, the, the tardine of civilians is a one sided issue in this war. Interesting. And I would add that one thing I've noticed, Ukraine has done, and I don't know if there's, if it's because maybe air defenses are weaker with Russia, or, you know, I don't know how this came about, but Ukraine has gotten significantly better at strategically attacking the right parts of the refineries when they hit them. Like in the

early days, they would hit a refinery, and it would just be some random tank, or just, you know, and it, it would be a good strike, but it wouldn't be effective in shutting it down for a couple of

months. And now, every time they hit a refinery, they're hitting a very critical piece of equipment

that is basically like the heart of the refinery. And I've noticed that progress, and I don't know if that's from Russia being weaker, or they're getting smarter, maybe it's a combination, but as far as the energy side, the very strategic and very tactical in that sense. I mean, these refineries are huge, right? But massive facility. So if, if you just hit the side of it, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Yeah, it doesn't. Now, this is the death star. You got to

know where that one vulnerable part is. Hopefully it's on the other side. I mean, basically, yeah, it's huge. They probably don't put it on the other side like in the movie, but, you know, I'll kick Chad, I'm curious about that, because obviously drone, drone, technology is, I mean,

wanted to talk about Ukraine as an emerging drone superpower. To what extent are we seeing the their tactics, the technology, the strategies evolved throughout the course of this conflict.

“And then either press in our chat if you want to speak to this, but how are we seeing that”

advance as a result of this conflict throughout the conflict? And how does that position, you know, obviously Russia is this overwhelming force, and we're describing Ukraine as a little bit necessarily more tactical and targeted power. How has the emergence of drones in the past five years plus, you know, how is that tip of the power in the struggle? I'm curious to hear you talk about that. I'll defer to Preston, because he was there. He got a touch of him. He got to work with

him. So he would really feel like far better because they're I've never seen such amazing resilience

and innovation combined in a modern war. The last time we probably saw such innovation and resilience from a battlefield perspective is probably over one when they had to figure out a way out of the trench warfare problem. And it was kind of similar. They had to figure out a way out of the trench warfare problem in Ukraine, but it just absolutely credible. So yeah, if you could just kind of speak on what you saw, not only just the one way of tax drones, maybe the reconnaissance,

ground drones, maritime, and can we, can we or should we really be learning from them at this point? We loved to tout ourselves as America, the most powerful military largely we are in the history of the world, but they have some things I think they can definitely teach us and learn from.

So can you can kind of speak to that a bit on what they were doing there?

And this is this is a deep one. So we could go for hours on this one just to be clear, but at a

“high level, the best way to frame this is at the beginning of the war, Russia and Ukraine started fighting”

Russia wanted to achieve air superiority. So shut down the skies, they run control over Ukraine. Like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and to a degree did in Iran. They did not achieve that. What that led to was rather positional ground warfare. A lot of artillery strikes and if you were called at the beginning of the war, a lot of the conversation was, can the United States or can anybody produce as many artillery rounds as Russia? That was the calculation and it was crazy stats

of like 20,000 Russian shells fired a day, just devastating stuff to live through. Ukraine can't fight that fight. They don't want to. We don't want to, to be clear. Nobody wants to get into an artillery war with Russia. So Ukraine started innovating. Now both sides did this, but Ukraine found a way out of the trenches through the use of drones. And they, they really pushed the innovation down to where it's not a headquarters or a company

“saying this is the munition and this is the type you're going to use. It was soldiers coming up with a”

new 3D printed design and what type of battery works better in these conditions and how far does it fly in the winter versus the summer and these individuals became experts. That then worked its way up into companies that started mass-produced these things. So they've been able to leverage kind of a wide range of expertise whereas we generally in the United States. It's a bit more top down, right? Lockheed says this is your new system. Good luck figuring it out.

So a very ground up approach and that's something 100% we should learn from. Now both sides are doing this throughout the war. This is not a unique unique to Ukraine by any stretch and we've seen waves. The fiber optic drones that are on a cable. So one of the challenges that in this conflict is there's electronic warfare jammer. You can turn it on. Nothing works. Or at least certain frequencies don't work. Got it. That's as in like transmission doesn't work.

Like you can't communicate to something. It's not like an MP or it's preventing like everything. It's okay. It can be any more. Yeah. Oh, interesting. You can take control of enemy drones, depending on how secure it is. It can just remove navigation. So the drone doesn't know where it is. I can just force it to crash. There's effectively like it's a force field of sorts. One of the ways around that was Russia started by putting little cables on the drone,

which means you couldn't jam this anymore because it's hardwired to the opera. And they were flying these things 10 plus miles to carry out a strike. You're talking in the game changing. A cable going back to the source. Yes. It spools out of the drone. The drone carries the spool. And it takes the spool. We're describing very well like a fishing line like a spool though. Yeah. It spools off. Interesting. Interesting. A really long one. If you are in 1990's solution.

Just give the final longer cord. Take it into the other room. Watch. Watch Preston's content is

incredible. That's it. I did not know about that. That's interesting. That's like that's the first

place. I was on a Preston's channel. I mean, they did. They've done some really cool things like and I don't know if you saw any of this stuff. Obviously, their aerial drones are impressive. But I'm starting to get more impressed with what they're doing on the ground. We're seeing a lot of first of this. We saw the first drone shooting down another drone. We've seen suicide drones hitting

Russians in a town surrendered to a Ukrainian drone, a ground drone that had machine gun on it. And the Russians came out waving the white flag to a drone on the ground with tracks and everything and showing them on the camera. It was the first time in history. Russia had basically surrendered

to a ground drone. It's just incredible. What we're seeing, I see a lot of the unmanned surface

vessels, the boat, the drone boats. Obviously, Iran learned from that. I just, it's very, very

“fascinating. And I'm keeping out of it this because it's just, I think it's just really,”

really, really fascinating. It's the one thing that Ukraine has had a very good PR campaign. And so I guess the question I have is from your perspective when you are there, are these drones really as good as we're being shown? Because me and you love to show all the cool footage. I showed the flamethrower drone and got like 10 million views on that video. And all these cool stuff is it really, are they, are they really as good as, as it's, they're showing or is it a very good

propaganda PR campaign coming out of them? So actually, what we see is not the top of the line.

So we see, yeah, we see very limited releases of what's seen at the front and by the time it makes it too footage because anybody can learn from that and see like this is what the targeting mechanism is or this is the range. So generally speaking, there are better systems in use before

“that stuff comes out. Now it's not like night and day, but increased range, increased clarity,”

bigger payload, things like that. It's, yeah, every single day. This is one of the challenges that we have for the United States is we're not in a war. So the innovation cycle is going to be nowhere near as fast. They are weeks, like in a matter of weeks and that this goes back to the electronic warfare issue. So it's not static. You find out that they're using certain frequencies. So you start jamming those frequencies. So people keep the soldiers in the front, constantly changing, constantly

adapting, and genuinely something that worked yesterday might never work again. So it's that type of

innovation that's happening every single day. Sorry, I'm just going to jump in one thing because you guys are both military geeks in a very interesting way. And I just want to, I just want to provide a small civilian perspective, which is the idea of a drone landing in a civilian population

“and people surrendering, or in a civilian area in people surrendering to a robot cop is terrifying.”

So I'm just curious, like, what's your perspective? I'm saying you guys are, you know, have a lot of military experience. So I'm just saying this is an average civilian. Like all of this innovation is interesting. And I always also fear the imperial boomerang and that these things will end up in American cities that will be patrolled by autonomous robot police or military presence. Obviously, this technology is advancing rapidly no matter what. And we're talking a little bit

about the Russian and American overwhelming force strategies versus this very targeted drone warfare strategy. Is there a degree to which, you know, I'm very much of the, as someone who didn't serve in the military, I'm very much of the opinion that there are no good wars that wars absolutely a last resort. And I also understand that military conflict is sometimes inevitable. Is there any way, and maybe I'm being too optimistic, but is this leading to a style of war that

would mean fewer civilian casualties? Like, is there any, I don't, you know, obviously there's no there's no good conflict, but obviously some of these conflicts need to happen and Ukraine is remarkably defended itself against this massive overwhelming occupying force, which, you know, in theory, I very much support. And I don't want civilians on either side to die. There's still people. But is this innovation leading us to a style of warfare that might not require so much

civilian casualties, or, you know, I mean, like you said, Russia's still inflicting terror no matter what, but how is this change that the Tamber and style of warfare or and, and how do you predict it will continue to do so? Oh, you pressed. Oh, I can't, I mean, no one's going to hold you to these predictions, but in your, in your opinion, how is this progress? Because like, it's like an arms rate, not an arms race, maybe it is literally, but also like, it is a constant race of innovation.

So like, what direction is that? I'll, I'll say it's a wonderful theory. It's a theory that we've iterated in a way that, yes, we aren't carpet bombing. We aren't fire bombing dressed in anymore. We aren't doing those things, but except for lateral damage, except for in a lot of places, unfortunately, whether you're looking at Gaza, whether you're looking at Iran, whether the Iran, what we're doing in Iran, justified on striking potentially for civilian infrastructure, there's going to

deadliness of warfare is only going to get more easy. So if we have, it's, it's like, when you're

“on the front line and, or even like, when I was on a convoy running through Iraq and we had,”

kids with, like, that would run, they would be pushed out in front by their parents, for, unfortunately, for propaganda purposes, they'd be pushed into our front of our vehicles. It really just boils down to, yes, technology is nice, but at the very basic level, you're still killing people, unfortunately, and that is not something, and Preston can probably echo this, the people that probably won't war the least would be soldiers. I mean, I can guarantee you that,

like, a lot of us don't sign up just because we're going to be like, I want to go shoot that guy in the face over there in that other country. No, it's, though, I mean, the famous quote,

I'm going to ruin it is, something along the lines of those who've seen, or those who've never

seen war, those, again, are the ones that experience it. And so, I just, yes, drones are going to help in that regard, but it's also going to de-personalize killing, even more. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of weird. And I don't need to, like, deflate the excitement about the technology,

“but I, I mean, no, no frames here, you know, then you're not. Absolutely. I mean, what are your thoughts?”

What are your thoughts, Preston? Because I do think that it's good. We're limiting collateral damage, but also it makes war easier to wage. I mean, I mean, one big, part of the thing I think of why Trump is now going in and hitting things with ease is because he's like, the easy button, drones, strikes, missiles, we're not sending our people in. If we were sending our people, we'd be thinking twice about it. But just because we're not dying, someone is so, I don't know,

what are your thoughts in that regard? It's mixed, man. I, there's a level of precision involved here that is good. Like, it's a good friend of, I mean, we've seen videos where a drone is flown into a guy and the people next to him get up and move away. Like, that's very difficult to do 30 miles away. So, and you can see it on camera, until the last second and make a decision, right? So, like, a hellfire missile. Once that thing's going, you're not, you're not really pulling that back. But with

the drone, you can come in and say, wait a minute, that's a school bus, not a fuel tanker and veer up. And maybe go, like, there's a lot of good possibilities there. However, the stuff is also very inexpensive right now. And I'm kind of concerned of the non-state actors flying these days into stadium or a building here. And like, it's, like, very, very simple to build. I mean, just buy a drone, strap and cheap homemade explosive to it. And that would be, it'd be pretty terrifying the first time

“it. Well, first time when it does happen, there's no doubt that's going to happen, right?”

Yeah. So, kind of, I do want to kind of pivot because you have some really amazing insight,

because you've got to actually talk to these people. And I, I trained Ukrainians in Germany at Owen Fels at the Joint Multination Writing Center. So I have experience, unfortunately, I've made away a few of them have lost their lives in this war. It's the nature of the beast. But you've been able to go there recently and talk to these soldiers. What, what are you seeing from a personal level, these soldiers? What's their morale? What do they, they look like? Not so much the public

relations version, kind of their, their real morale, what are they exhausted and just wanting this war to end no matter what? Or are they feeling pretty good about things more optimistic, thinking they can hold on an eventually drive rush out permanently? It's interesting because my experience with war has been on deployments to Afghanistan, where everybody's got the, the countdown. They generally know when they're coming home or they know when they're going over and it's such

a different mindset in Ukraine. We, I made the mistake early on, a couple years ago, asking soldiers and interviews, what they plan to do in the war was over. And to a man, they said, not thinking about it. I've got a job to do. And this most recent trip, I was with some guys that also asked that question, and it was exact same answers. Like they've got that dialed in. So they're very focused on what they have to do. They're serious about it. They understand the risk. They don't

want to do it. They, you can tell they just rather be doing anything else. And they're very happy to talk about what they did before the war. It's not celebrated. It's not cheered on. But to me, at least, it came across as very professional every time, every interaction. And I want to stress this wasn't like ghosts sit down with the brigade commander or something. Like we would just randomly bump into units and like go to a drone facility and talk to a private that's building the

drones. So we got a pretty wide range and very professional, very just committed to seeing this through recognizing that it might, it might not be over in the near future. So I will, I just kind of want to look at when you hear those stories, when you, you actually face to face with what I'm saying,

if not Western democracy, from a mass of aggressor, I get frustrated with the United States.

And you've, you've probably seen maybe just where I'm very frustrated. I was frustrated with the Biden administration frustrated on the Trump administration. It doesn't matter. I got very frustrated. So what, what do we need Americans to know right now? What do they need to hear? Why should Americans care about this war? I mean, if you had like five minutes to go on TV and speak directly to the American public, you've been there. You've seen the battle field. You've seen their faces.

“You've talked to them. What would you say to the American people who are very much not part of it?”

I mean, there's the famous saying is when we, when when when when when we went to Iraq and Afghanistan, America's not at war, the military is at war. America's at the mall. That's,

so kind of that, that idea of their, the, the criticality of what they're doing versus our disconnect

of it. And I do think the tough just to jump in also that is exacerbated by the drone culture that you're describing. So I'm curious, Preston, if you think that that disconnect is even greater now. Sorry to just want to add to trans question. Well, I think this, this goes back to the initial beginning of the war. There I think there's bad messaging in the United States and the Biden administration about what to expect and why we were doing this. And that just became harder and harder

over time. So I think there is a disconnect with the American people. I don't know that gap can be bridged at this point. It's, and then we get distracted. Now we've got the Iran war. That's that clearly has more of a direct impact on us. If, if for no other reason, then we have our sons and daughters

“in harm's way. I think the message that I would try to get across is Ukraine is not asking for our soldiers.”

They don't, they're not asking for us to fight their war. They're not even asking for us to fight along side them. But allowing them, providing for them, the opportunity to defend themselves, reduces the likelihood that we would end up in that situation. So they have a fight on their doorstep. What can we do to make them successful? Because their success pushes down the road even further the possibility that we get directly involved in a conflict. And to that chat, I would say that

on the ground, it's just not a considerate. Like, as you know, think about it, it's like a split. There's moving on, right? But one of these drone, one of the aspects of drone warfare is Ukraine is so focused on this because they're not getting enough supplies from the West. So they said, we'll have to figure this out ourselves. And that's kind of what led to a lot of these innovations. I wish that they could be flying these drones alongside US Tomahawk's and more F-16s and

more Abrams and more Bradley's. They're not. So they're finding their own way to do it. Yeah, I just strangely have noticed, maybe not strangely. But I've noticed anytime there's a major

“Ukrainian success. There tends to be more support in the United States. And so I think one of the ways”

to get more Americans on board is showing how well they're doing. The other side of that of look how bad Russia is. Look at these awful bombings. Look at these casualties. It seems like folks just tuned that out. Yeah. So Matt, do you, I mean, I have a couple more questions in order starting to run long on time here with President's time super valuable. Did you have any other questions for him, Matt, energy-wise or whatever curiosities? It's not really energy-wise.

It's, uh, I don't think the vast majority of Americans understand the potential implications if Russia wins that war, like on the rest of the world. Would you like to give your opinion on that as far as further Russian aggression or do you think they would stop there? I haven't heard anybody yet that thinks they would stop there. What do you think about that? It's a tough one because it's very hard to look at the Russian army right now, stuck in the nets and say, if they win,

they're gonna roll into Poland next because it's a little bit of, what are we? Like, if they're not getting through Ukraine, do we really think they're gonna be able to take on NATO? So I kind of try to thread the needle on that. I don't think that we are a year or two away from the Russian army, even a reconstitute Russian army rolling into NATO territory with their militaries. What it would do is it would free up the Russian military to start to reconstitute, start to rebuild, start to

innovate in this drone space. And I think that they would see the biggest piece here is that the West is not standing by some of these commitments. So before a tanks rolling into Poland, I think we'd probably see something very similar to 2014, the little green men moving into some of the Baltics. Where? Look, if the US and NATO is gonna stand by in Eastern Ukraine and not even provide funding and equipment, why wouldn't Putin roll the dice on some of these Baltic states that they will

also view as historically Russian? That I think is the next thing. Now, if they never get through

it's off the table. So to me, that's the thing. Is if we allow this to continue, if Putin is able

“to achieve some degree of success, I think it would embalden him to push further. And I'm biased.”

I think NATO has been a good thing. I think the post-World War II order has been good for the United States, selfishly. And if we start to see NATO questioned, like that, I think it would run the risk

of kind of changing the entire world as we know it. Just two final questions for you. The first

one, before we get into some of what Ukraine could be needing from your perspective, is there anything that really stuck with you there, like the specific conversation? It doesn't have to even be with the soldier. Maybe you met with just someone in the city somewhere. Was there something that was like, yeah, this is why this is good, this is that we need to support them. Why there's, this is the moral fight to support Ukraine, or maybe maybe somewhere in

the other direction, something that stuck with you as tragic or something. Is there, do you have a moment that you can talk about that drove home? What's going on with this war, specifically

“while you're there? Absolutely. So we've got the opportunity to go down to Harrison, a city, and kind”

of the south eastern portion of Ukraine now right along the Danipro River. And it's a unique place because the forces are separated by that river. Across the river or Russians, on this side of the river, Ukrainians to include civilians who as an act of defiance against Putin have said, we're not leaving our home. And this territory was occupied by Russia for a period to begin into war. We went there. It's an area known as the drone safari, the human safari where Russians are

actively using every single day, using drones to kill Ukrainian civilians that remain there. We went to a school to drop off some supplies, and it was a beautiful day outside, so we walked out and the kids were nowhere to be seen. We went outside and we're checking out the playground and the drone detector went off, meaning there was a Russian drone somewhere nearby. And they said, well, clear skies means more Russian drones, so the kids are in the basement all

day. So school kids, you know, here in the U.S., for my daughter, she's going in a third grade,

when it's a rainy day or an overcast day, they might have inside recess because they don't want to get dirty and wet. In that portion of Ukraine, that is the only time they can play outside. Because sunny skies mean more Russian drones and Russian drones target civilians. It kits man. So based on that, what do you, what do you think? We all hear the headlines. I hear the broadly Patriot missiles, things like that. What specifically do the Ukrainians you talk to say they need the

most? And it can be either pieces of equipment or some of the cool charity stuff where that you do with the vehicles or even just broadly Americans to understand, hey, we're a shield right now against a really terrible autocratic government. What do you think the Ukrainians have as their most urgent need, whether soldiers or diplomatically or whatever? Interceptors, first and foremost. It's the measure, it's the method of Russian terror right now. They're doing a pretty good job of shooting down

Russian drones, but the missiles are another story. They could use more interceptors, whether that comes from the United States or anyone else abroad. Ukraine is working on developing their own, but that's a, that's a shortcoming right now. It's been a while since I've heard anyone in Ukraine ask for offensive type munitions. I don't know the last time we heard about more Bradley's because they're not really that used or high Mars or attack them is because they've found other systems

to fill that gap. Something that I didn't really hear from anyone in Ukraine, but kind of is in my mind, is some assistance in the drone production. If we're able to move some of these facilities into NATO territory, ramp up production, move it out of the, some of these facilities get hit by

Russian missiles, and they have to rebuild them and move them to a new location. That's an incredible

choke point in their manufacturing line. So even opening up some NATO territory to mass produce these the Ukrainian drones, higher Ukrainians, bring them there to build these things and ship them back into the country by the tens of thousands. I think that could be a big difference as well. So before I let that kind of close out with you on stuff, just, you do all this charitable work, it's incredible stuff. I admire everything you do. Where can Americans who listen to us are

“whatever number it is, 20,000 subscribers as podcasts? Whoever, I think it's probably. Where can they?”

Yeah, it's all Mr. Global. He's the one driving it. But where can they, well, now we got pressed and so I mean, but where can they just tell us where can they help? Where can Americans who are listening to this, listen to the story, the terrible story about the schools, whatever. Where can they come in and say, hey, I want to donate money or time or whatever you think is the best. What can they do? So there's there's three organizations that I've worked with

give you guys the links to each of these. We're doing a year-long campaign to provide trucks

because things get hit by drones and then they can't get soldiers to and from the front. So these trucks are used to get people to and from dangerous locations to evacuate the wounded to bring supplies forward food water medicine. So it's a non-lethal type of aid. There's Ukraine aid operations, which is a 501c3. So tax deductions for charitable donations there. They do everything. A lot of drones through that organization, very, very transparent on exactly where the money is going and how

it's being spent and very effective. And then Ziggus Paul, which is actually a Ukrainian organization, based in built in Ukraine, based in Leviv and the one of the founders is a drone pilot now in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and they just do incredible work. So again, very transparent. They team up with specific units and we'll provide drones or medical supplies or vehicles even during Christmas time. They do this thing where they have a wish list from the soldiers and you can log in and choose

a gift for a soldier and it'll be you know from Chad and it might be a $35 thing it might be a $200 or $200, right? It's whatever the soldier wants and they go out and they deliver the Christmas presents from the donors with your card to the soldiers all across the front. That's Ziggus Paul.

“They do a great job as well. So I'm curious again coming from a bit of a civilian perspective, right?”

I've never donated to a international military. This is all very new in my cultural perspective.

And one of the things that I think is complicating my perception of this and I think this is true for a lot of Americans is the fact that Ukraine essentially seemed to be potentially overwhelmed at first and has fought back in a way that was unexpected. I think people in general understand Russia to be an autocratic superpower and that their consolidating power is overall globally bad for the cause of freedom globally. Although I think the average American may not think about

Russian aggression all that commonly. Now the complicated thing for the average American following who's not necessarily a Trump zealot, who is following the news, is that it does appear as if our commander-in-chief has a massive heart on for autocrats and will let them do anything and is sort of nominally supporting Ukraine while still admiring Vladimir Putin. And I shouldn't make that sexual. I just mean that he actually really, really admit, I know it's it's too cheap to come

okay. It's not about that. It's about he admires sociopathic autocrats and I'm curious, you know, you know, we're at the G7 summit right now and Trump's position on Ukraine and Russia seems confusing to me. And so I'm curious, like what is it like, as a member of the military, as a military expert and what advice would you give to average Americans for like,

“how does that complicate this conflict? And because I think that makes it a lot harder for a lot of”

people to understand that they're not really even sure where our country stands on this. I think that's a good point. It's frustrating. I wish we were pursuing a different policy right now with Russia and Ukraine. I think that would be better for the United States. And some of the guys on this trip actually were from pretty right-leaning news organizations and their whole point is to show how supporting Ukraine is actually a net benefit to us for our national security and

for our economic interests abroad. So I wish we were pursuing different policy. We're not. That said, so like I'm recommending Trump literally said today that he has nothing to do with a war that's

thousands of miles. So I mean, he's always saying stupid shit, but I think it has a lot to do with

another war that's thousands of miles away if I remember correctly. But you know, essentially seems to be trying to distance himself from Ukraine at the summit right now. Is that... I guess I don't understand enough quite about military operations. Like how much of that is top down from his philosophy and how much of the... It doesn't restrict the ability to provide aid to Ukraine, both from our military and from, you know, other aid operations that still require visas and other

forms of transportation that go through the federal government. Officially, yes.

“It's harder across the board. He limits. I mean, we've got the Ukraine aid package that I believe”

passed a house a week or two ago and everybody just assumes that it's going to get vetoed by the president, which is absurd. So a lot of that is far away. And that's your loyalty to Putin or what's the... I mean, I know he doesn't have to state logic, but what is your calculation is to why the veto is so such a foregone conclusion. My understanding is he views that that Trump views that that takes negotiating power away from him. As in, this needs to be done, he needs to have the

full say in what can and can't happen and that takes out of his hands. I'm in the camp that I think that would add pressure and help his cause probably not going to happen. But there are

to Ukraine are being provided by Eric Schmidt. The, I think a founder or former CEO of Google stood

up a drone company. They're hammering Russian logistics in Crimea right now. That's a private entity

“working with the Ukrainian military. So while we are not providing, I think, very much if at all”

direct military support from our government, we haven't yet hit that switch of private citizens and private corporations cannot interact with the Ukraine. So companies are to go back to Mr. Globals point a few minutes ago about certain areas within these refineries getting hit. Two weeks ago, report came out that there is a US satellite provider giving or selling their real time intelligence to Ukraine. They're using that for their analysis to say, "Oh, we hit something a little too far

to the right. Looks like the more sensitive target is there on the left." And they're, you know,

the next day launched in a strike. So it has made it more complicated. That I wish it wasn't

this complicated, but there are still plenty of ways with companies and with individuals to assist this effort. Okay. So then let me ask you one more question, which is when American companies learn to profit on something they refuse to let it go ever until forced to. So is there a risk of letting the private sector increase their grips on the war machine profit from it more and be unwilling to relinquish those profits because these are publicly traded companies? I don't think I understand

yes. I guess I'm actually disagreeing. Does this create a vulnerability, but either militarily or just culturally, like does this move us towards a culture of profiting off of war, if our like is Trump's unwillingness to help allowing for a new industry that profiting off war to

“to emerge? I think it's already there. And I think what we're seeing are some of these private companies”

move into Ukraine and move into this space because they see an opening. I wish it was for any number

of different reasons of the morally right thing to do or it helps the United States, but it's kind of how this space works is they see profits, they see the ability to make some money so they're going for it. In a short term, I think that's going to be a net benefit, but long term, it's probably pretty similar to what we're looking at right now with a general military industrial complex. So those companies are better, this is just the emerging market for it, unfortunately, or fortunately.

Yeah, they've been doing this for like this, this is a product of going all the way back to Vietnam and the Iraq War. We got three different types of MRAP because contracts were made. I mean, I think the that the military industrial complex is going to be opportunistic to any war. And whether we like it or not, we've seen our military industry, we even outside of wars that we are directly involved with as a government, they will obviously with the permission

“of the government, sell their munitions and it's all a money-making endeavor for them. So I think”

of course, when it comes to things like Ukraine, kind of as President of saying, I think it does have a benefit in the near term, the concern as you brought up, Matt is if these really high-tech drones, they are starting to be used against American citizens in certain ways and surveillance and things. Again, though, that's where we've got a political system that we've unfortunately got a lean on that hopefully in the future becomes a little bit more effective.

But yeah, do you think that is not also tumbling towards a talk or see? But yes, I do think that it is, it's one of those where I do believe that I'm glad that these companies can help, whereas I where I don't like a lot of Elon Musk's stances, I do, I am happy that he is Starlink is providing just because he's the world's most famous white supremacist. Well, and there's that, so there's that. But for sure, when you look

at the benefit, I wish he would open it up to be allow strikes into Russian territory with using Starlink, but he's at least allowing them to communicate internal to Ukrainian territory. That is a prime example of, yeah, where you have a singular individual that can control an entire mode of communication, which is a pillar of military operations, you shoot, we've communicate, and his ability to do that. But yeah, so somebody's accountable to

no one also. It is, it is an unfortunate, almost like Tony Starkist, like in that realm of they are the creators of the weapons we use. We can only try to govern our way into more control. We'll see, but I do know that Elon Musk would become an alcoholic and have a panic attack and see the error of his ways like Tony Stark. Yeah, and you're going to put him in a cave. But I think we've put him in a cave, Preston Stewart. Thank you so much on that note for joining us.

This has been a truly enlightening discussion. I've learned a lot and Chad also thank you for humanizing a lot of this for me. I think this was, I hope that you guys were able to talk on

discussed. There's a lot up in the air, especially because the G7 summit is happening as we record

“this right now. So I'm sure that we'll have the next month or two. We'll reveal a lot of”

execution of what we're talking about right now. So I hope you can come back and join us again sometime. Really appreciate you joining us here on the podcast. Listeners, check out Preston Stewart on YouTube. He is Preston Stewart underscore on X and Instagram. And he is at Preston Stewart on TikTok. Find him everywhere else. Preston Stewart, anything else you want our listeners to check out before we let you go. That's great, Nat, Matt, Chad. Thank you guys so much for the conversation.

And thank you so much for the work you're doing here. It's incredible stuff. Hey, you too. We

really appreciate your channel and all your work to make this to elucidate this for people and make it easier to understand. Love your work. Thank you so much for being on the show and come back and chat with us again. Absolutely. Preston Stewart, ladies and gentlemen, and that's our conversation with military expert and content creator Preston Stewart. Again, check out his multiple channels on every social media platform that you subscribe to. Chad, Matt, how do you feel

about the conversation? Chad, did you feel like you were able to get some clarity on things you were interested in? I mean, for sure. Yeah, I like I said, me and Preston are Preston and I have conversations about this throughout texting and things. We have an outside relationships separate

from the social media, but just a super good dude all the charity that he does. It's easy for me

because we align very much on a lot of things. I'm very much, and if you watch my my feeds and things, I'm for all intents and purposes quite anti-Russian, and it comes from my my history of dealing with them and training Ukrainians and Germany and stuff. And so we align very much on those things, and it's just super cool to get someone with the firepower, the knowledge, the ability to go and see the actual front line. So I'm just super glad that he was able to come on. I definitely want to

bring one because if you haven't seen this channel, he's a wealth of knowledge on everything around the he made just he had discussions on Venezuela. So he's kind of like that all around front policy guy like I am as well with a military background. So just super glad that he was able

to get on and whatnot. And I know we don't have a math guy to get going. First his congressional

is it's all of him do his thing. Yeah, Maddie closing thoughts? Yeah, you know, one thing that's great about Preston. He does something very similar to what I do. He has a talent of explaining very complex things in a very simple way where any person can understand it. And that's something

“that I work really hard on. And you can just tell that comes naturally from him. And that's why”

you know, I'm a scroller. I don't watch a lot of content because I'm busy making content usually, but if I'm scrolling I see Preston I stop because I know I'm going to learn something, right? But he is really good at that. He's really good at taking something nobody understands and making it and breaking it down and making a simple form. And that's what I really appreciate about Preston because when people do that, there's like this vibe that they really care about what they're saying

because they're working hard to ensure you understand it. And I really appreciate that about him. Yeah, and it's essentially what we talked about in the beginning. Like it's the mystified of jargon jargon's useful for shorthand, but also it is a way of even, you know, I hear myself saying terms I don't totally understand because they were in the news and he does a really good job of like you said creating something that they're speaking in a way that creates an image in your head.

Oh, I know what I'm talking about now. I know what I'm what you're what's being described. Okay, did you have something you want to have? No, I just, I was just going to say, did you have what were your feelings on his visit next? I know I feel like I know a lot more than I did an hour ago. You know, essentially like I said, I've been reading up in the G7 summit and you're following all this through Trump's twisted perspective and I'm a very anti-war person,

but I'm also anti-autocracy and I don't think that Russia should just be able to annex territories.

“So I think I appreciate his willingness to not only talk to me about logistical questions,”

but the ethical ramifications of war and I am extremely concerned with the imperial boomerang, especially in an authoritarian administration that would happily use drones on its own citizens. It's happily sent federal troops to, you know, civilian areas already. So I think I appreciate, you know, I know some people who have military service who are much more resolutes for the military and really believe in everything that the US military has ever done and I really appreciate,

I don't mean to undermine but I appreciate his willingness to entertain me on, you know, ethical questions and the real world ramifications of this kind of thing for civilians and not only the US, but Russia and Ukraine, of course. So I thought it was a really even conversation and I want to know more, but yeah, like I said, it's certainly helped me get a firmer understanding of the situation, even in just the hour. So happy to have him on. For our listeners, again, he is pressed

and Stuart at Preston Stu or at Preston Stu underscored, depending on the platform because that's

with a segment in which we highlight, if not the best, the least worst story or part of our week,

“and it's called the least worst part of my week. Anyone want to go first? I feel like I'm stealing”

this from someone, but the Nick's winning. I'll have you know before you get into this, you guys said, talking about the Nick's in four and they lost that night. They lost that night when I called it. Donald Trump, who's his fault? But they did win in five. They shared it. Look, I initially told the spurs people like, yeah, I'll root for the spurs, whatever. I got to be honest, they're so

dirty I couldn't root for them. I've never seen a dirty or team in my life. But watching the next

beat the spurs on their home court, and then smoking, great big fat cigars on the middle of their home court was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. And I thought it was awesome. It made me feel warm inside to see that. That cigar, like, and standing on that, like your mascot is literally a boot accessory. Like, you didn't even qualify for the whole boot. You got an accessory to a boot that's meant for kicking Santa Antonio horse handles. And, but now all, all kidding inside,

uh, very happy for the Nick's. It's cool. It's a bit of good when we do it, you know? Yeah, symbolically. I loved it. It was a great series. It really was. I, I loved it. It's fantastic.

I'm sorry. You know, I'm happy with that one. Thank you, Mr. Global. I will, I do want you to know

the restraint. It took to not come to this recording wherein a triple quadruple XL boot like Nick's championship t-shirt. I'm trying to be professional because we had a guest. Chad, what was the least worst part of your week? Yeah. So, I mean, it happened actually. This, the least worst part would be happened just like in the last hour or so, actually on this show, European leaders at the G7 summit. Something I did not expect. Came to a consensus about once again implementing sanctions

on Russia. And, by consensus, I mean, Trump was on board as well. Surprisingly, I made a video yesterday

“on TikTok where I talked about how I think the G7 summit was going to be a big nothing burger.”

I've just kind of playcating and talking about Iran, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that seems that whatever Putin has been doing to piss Trump off who knows, whatever the reason is, I don't even care what the reason is. The fact that the G7 leaders have once again come together and decided, yeah, what Russia's doing needs to be addressed at least in the near term right now with may change in 12 hours based on the whims of leaders, obviously, but it looks like Russia's

going to get hammered with some major sanctions here soon, which is good because, as Mr. Global was alluding to, I think if oil, whether it goes up or that's going to go up probably in the near term because this is not going to be fixed, but eventually, if it does go down, it can be a double whammy for Russia where Russia is losing revenue because of cheaper oil versus, and then adding sanctions on top of that, it could really crush their economy and then drive away. That's the

“the only way we're going to see it into this war is if Russia's pain level internally”

outweighs Putin's zealotry quite frankly. So that is going to help. We'll see if it sticks, but I am optimistic there. So I want to do, I'm going to take you back off, Matt's a little bit here. I, because you did steal it directly from me. No, I, my, the least worst part of my week, obviously, slightly inaccurately read the future T leaves of a, I should have predicted that Donald Trump's presence would be so toxic as to even interrupt the nicks historic winning streak and really just ruin the

vibes surrounding Madison Square Garden due to the amount of necessary security, which is why no other president has gone and made it about themselves in that way. However, the part of the nicks

winning obviously the nicks took the final first time in my entire life that that has happened

since before I was born, obviously I'm thrilled. But the thing that's really the least worst part of my week is the reaction in New York City to the finals. This people keep saying this feels like a movie. It feels like the end of a movie and I want to remind you in our media saturated culture that this is the kind of thing that movies try their hardest to replicate. Life doesn't feel like a movie. A movie would be lucky to feel like New York felt in the last week.

I'm not a big scroller, but I was addicted to Instagram because I'm watching everyone watching in every bar in the city, watch party. My local Delhi put up a piece of cardboard that's got to be four feet wide and projected the game onto that. And now they have written the world cup schedule

But like these watch parties sprung up everywhere and now they're having them for other things. And

“now all of a sudden, you know, this is a city that was devastated pretty hard by the pandemic.”

And not just, I mean, we lived with a lot, we were the epicenter. We lived with the, with, you know, a lot of presence of death and trauma in our lives for a long time. But it also dealt a really big blow to community in New York because a lot of community spaces closed, things stop staying open, late, people with less traditional schedules weren't able to gather as much. And, you know, everything got more expensive. So it made it harder to gather. And this was really the biggest

confluence of culture and of community I've seen in New York since the lockdown. And it was really amazing to see people come together. And, you know, not just for these watch parties, but for celebrations, dancing people are wearing costumes, people are climbing up street lamps. I'm glad

for the most part, people are safe. And, you know, I'm always going to throw this element in

of collectivism, uh, the NYPD, which is the world's fifth largest military force. I'm calling them that because they have military equipment, bases on five continents and a budget larger than every military in the world other than four of them. The NYPD couldn't stop. New Yorkers from launch and fireworks and climbing all over the city and taking over city buses. And it is a wonderful reminder. I've heard people say, oh, I wish people would show up like this for Palestine

for Gaza. I absolutely agree. But it is a really good reminder that the people of New York are stronger than any other part of New York, that people when they gather together, it's not

“always an anger. It can be in joy, but that we have this power in community. And I think it was”

really amazing to see all these people, a lot of whom moved to New York in the pandemic or graduated or went to college in this time when they were really suppressed socially, learning the value of

community. And it doesn't have to always be angry. It can be silly. It can be celebratory. And I just

hope that people realize that in a year in which a million of us got together to elect Zora and Mom Donnie in which thousands of community events sprung up organically that we can, we can point this at the change that we want to make in the world. And I know it sounds silly to say that about the nicks winning, because we had no control over that unless you believe in the collective unconscious, which I only do when it comes to sports. But I do think it was an amazing depiction

of the power of collectivism and of the culture of the city reawakening. And that's the least worst part of my week. Awesome. Awesome. I'm happy for the nicks. I hope to get some sleep this week. I'm so tired. And this has been, sorry guys, enjoy enjoy your sleep and on the other side of it, Matt enjoy talking to Congress. Good luck with that. Yeah, I can't wait to hear more about your visit next week. And this has been American power for a Chad Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph.

I'm Nat Towson. We'll be back next week to hear all about Matt's trip to DC and recap the G7 summit

“and all sorts of other things. This has been American power. And remember, power corrupts.”

But American power corrupts. Americanly.