What Happens If NATO Falls Apart?

You're listening to American Power? I'm your host, Nat Towson.

Stand up comedians, speech writer, many other forms of writer, and most likely to elicit follow-up questions when applying for an apartment podcast host. As usual, I am joined by our panel of experts up first our foreign policy and military expert, Chad Scott Chad, how's it going? That's going really great. Looks like Matt here if you're on the YouTube video didn't get the blue plaid shirt memo on what we're supposed to be wearing today.

“I only sent it out psychically, so I think he's close to receiving me is what I'm saying.”

Yeah, you're not accepting my energies at this time, he's declined. That's fair.

Toggle off. And as previously discussed, missing the uniform, but always, as always in his own uniform,

the same hat is always the global brand himself. Our expert on all energy markets, renewable oil and other Mr. Global himself Matt Randolph Matt, how you doing? Man, that was a fantastic. Yeah, I'm going to come out to close close close up the world to use or something. I too am a comedian, but I am a sit-down comedian, not a stand-up comedian, and it's raining outside, which I am in love with because I live in Oklahoma where that just does not happen very often. So nice, cool, rainy, July day. Not without

tornadoes. Anyways, that's nice. Yeah, congratulations on normal weather. I sound sarcastic. That's just part of my cultural upbringing. We have an interesting show ahead of us. A lot's

going on in the world right now. I want to jump in first, just talk a little bit about

recent news. Can we talk a little bit about the Iran situation? Obviously, we've gone back and forth on whether the straight is open or close, and whether there is a legitimate ceasefire going on. The negotiations keep breaking down. I've told Matt, you could give us a little recap on what's happened recently. Sure, real quick, you know, Iran read the MOU as what happened and they understood it. And the United States didn't because the fact that we read on a six grade level apparently goes

all the way to the administration, paragraph five of the MOU clearly gave Iran control of the straighted form is and the United States didn't like the way they were doing it. You shouldn't give it to him. But anyway, Iran gave Iran struck some ships. The wars restarted. You've heard all of this by now. The things that are particularly different this time is both sides are striking a lot of oil and gas energy infrastructure. Today, Iran is striking offshore oil platforms of Kuwait.

So these are things that are going to have long potentially, long lasting effects here at home, oil and gas prices and stuff like that. One side, the US is claiming the straights open.

“Iran is claiming the straights closed. You just look at the straight and see. Like, you know what I mean?”

We can't take anything either side says anymore seriously at all. And it is disappointing that we're in the middle of a war here in the United States and we're being fed our victims of a huge misinformation campaign against our own people that just seems a little out of sorts. I don't did do that in World War II. It was Harry Truman selling out misinformation every day about, you know, what was going on? I mean, not in this style. I don't think we were immune to propaganda in the

1940s. It's talking about a very closed media environment versus the one that we have right now. But I think when you're talking about a deliberate, I mean, yes, there's obviously pro-US propaganda during World War II. But I think you're talking about a drastically more deliberate misinformation campaign rather than skewing the narrative. Yeah. And as of today, we are recording this, you know, a couple days of fort launches. We do know there has been some additional

loss of life of US soldiers over this weekend, Saturday and Sunday so far. That's not clear yet.

“But yeah, that's what's going on. So it is different because now Donald Trump is out of cards.”

So to speak, like he literally has to leave or he's talking about taking Carguelind, which a lot of people don't maybe don't realize that that means ground invasion. Like, you know, because Carguelind, there's actually ground there and there would actually be boots on it. So that is a ground invasion. And that would suggest a prolonged war. So I'm not saying that's going to happen because this is the most unpredictable war I've ever seen in my life. Tomorrow, everything

could be roses who knows. But it's certainly not looking good as Iran continues to fight their

war and not wanting to admit that Iran is not fighting the same war. We are, that's why they keep pulling us back into it. They're trying to hurt us economically and the Gulf States. Irgulf nations

“economically. And that's what's happening. And what's the, what's the change? Like, how does that”

affect us differently now that they're hitting gas and oil refineries more specifically? Well, specifically it means less production, less refining capacity. If everything does settle, it extends the time for oil and gas flows to normalize. I said from the very beginning,

the straight of foremost being closed is the second worst thing that can happen. The first

worst thing that can happen is the infrastructure getting blown up because you can open the straight in a few days. You cannot rebuild refineries in a few days. So yet to be seen how much, you know, total damage will be done to all that. But it could be, you know, it could end up being significant. So we'll just have to see what happens. And that would have a multiplicative effect on prices in the industry. Yeah, or it's I'm sure. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, do you want to comment on that at all? Well, I would just say that kind of going back to the, propaganda misinformation campaign that Trump is using against his own people. I will say that is completely unprecedented. We may have seen some of that in Vietnam, where you saw Johnson

perhaps flexing on like the New York Times to say, hey, can we rewrite this or can we just hold

off on publishing it a few days? That was the extent. Yeah. We all remember not like we were there. But we all saw the cartoons like Looney Tunes. They were very much like the anti-Japanese anti-German

“cartoons that they're only showing more because they're not just the cartoons, I believe.”

Well, they're both because I'm not not defending racist bugs bunny or anything. Just to say, I'm trying to know. No, no, no, yeah, they were the door above goes and fights in Japan or something. Yeah, I was, the only reason I know is because I just saw some TikToks on some of them and it was, it was just, but the thing is, is the government, if there was going to be anything, it was just hiding it from us. And usually it was, you know, like the loose-lips synchhips type of thing,

but now it's like just overlies that are very viable, like in the internet world. And it's, and people are starting to ask, why are you even lying to us about this? The American people generally can understand, like even when we went back to the Iraq War or Afghanistan. And there was, like, a mass casualty event, which maybe a helicopter goes down in the mountains of Afghanistan. The President comes out and says, hey, this happened. The American people mourn it. We understand it.

“Now, we are like, I think for the first time ever, we're questioning the level of death,”

and destruction of American soldiers and facilities, not because there's a lag in the new cycle getting from the theater itself, from the battlefield itself to here, but we don't know if the headset, department of defense, and again, I'm not calling it as department of war, this dumb, the, it's not involved that. No, it's not. Congress has to change that. So anyway, so they, we're questioning, are they just not being truthful with us? Are they just hiding these numbers?

And so that's, that's where I think there's a big difference, and that's where our big concern is,

because if there's anything that the United States has always guaranteed, it is that

everyone comes home. We still have people in Vietnam searching for the remains of fallen soldiers, nithers teams that do this. And if we're starting to lie about the number of deaths, it undermines, and I'm not saying they're actually doing this. I'm just saying we just are losing that trust. It undermines the, the ability for us to say, yeah, everyone comes home. Whether you're getting on a plane with your buddies or you're getting on a plane with a flag drip over your

coffin, you always come home. And now we have an administration that might be lying about these casualties in the destruction. Yeah, just a comment on how that narrative or how the government's narrative, you know, the federal government's narrative regarding a war, you know, how it advertisers that to its people, how presents that to its people has changed. Like I mentioned, we did used to be a much more closed society, right? Like a access to media

of a war was restricted to a very specific subset of people. So, you know, when you're watching optimistic newsrails during World War II, you're getting a very specific channel of information, right, that was still real footage. It was still reporting on things that were happening in the war. You talk about Vietnam, and you know, that was a sort of broadening of the media landscape. All of a sudden there's television cameras. There's more portable, you know, film cameras

going to be over the shoulder, all of a sudden during Vietnam, people were shooting on, I believe, CP-16s, and all of a sudden you could, you know, there was way more access to footage of violence, and one of the major media narratives that the mainstream media, the government enforced after that was that you don't see body bags on television. Like they essentially, the public narrative around

And, but again, it was a matter of like how open was our media landscape. And I think what you're seeing now is very different from those two pinpoints in time, because, hey, like I've mentioned many

“times on this show, you know, we harder to tell, you know, like what's happening in Gaza, right?”

You're harder to tell the people one story when they're seeing it happen on their phones, but the thing that I think more or more pertinent to our conversation that you see evolve in is that the Trump administration has a much more, I would like in it much more to the Putin administration, like in terms of the Russian style of propaganda now, which is they are not closing the one channel of information to people, like we were doing in previous wars or the very narrow spectrum of channels,

it's they are putting out true information, false information, they are varying the sources of information that's reliable and unreliable intentionally, they are causing far, you know, I mean,

he's always done this signal to noise ratio, right? Just dominate the 24 hour news cycle by

causing as much chaos as possible. So there's that, but there's also, you know, developed by Putin, there's this very clear and you know, his strategist, there's this very clear modern misinformation strategy of prevent of presenting real information versus falsehoods. And we did have, you know, the Bush administration controlling, you know, to your point about about the numbers of deaths, there was a while when the number of deaths in Iraq reported were about a tenth of what was

was actually happening, but to your point, the specifics about deaths of American soldiers were

“eventually verified and that is still a change in like the way that it's being reported. So I think”

that that feels like a notable shift and also the shift of strategy from just we are narrowing what you see to like we're telling you the truth, we're telling you a lie, we're telling you

half truths, just to exhaust the populists, like the cultists will always believe him,

there will be doubters who never believe anything, and the idea is to create, you know, exhaustion, nihilists, just people who are too tired to respond to the news. And so you are seeing like a very new form of disinformation and now it's being regarded, you know, that was that was applied domestically in the past and now you're seeing that applied to war for really the first time in America, and it is very different. I wonder what those guys on the Big Lebowski

think about the war, you know the analysts on the, yeah, do you think they're out there and they're black spandex suits, like karate chopping stuff, but you know, I mean, that's a surreal analysts out there, I don't know. No, I look, I believe that lying about war, I know why they do it, they're trying to like tamp down resistance to what we're doing. I think lying about it creates more resistance than telling the truth. You come out and you tell the truth, you're like, hey, war is hell. This is what

war looks like. People need to like know, this is what war looks like, and this is what it's going to have to look like for us to win. You come out and lie, and lie, especially as bad as Donald Trump lies. He is the worst liar I've ever seen in my life. I think that in itself creates more resistance and worse poll numbers than just telling the truth. I think Americans are begging for someone to tell them to truth for once and God knows how many decades and we're just not

getting it. So I don't understand the thought process, but I'm not there either, but I would think

telling the truth is always better. If poll numbers and resistance is your concern.

Yeah, I don't know that that's his strategy. I mean, I think the strategy has tell so many lies that it's exhausting the fact checkers. It's like why bother? If you tell enough lies, enough people will repeat these things unquestionably. You might see one thing you believe debunked, but if you believe 20 lies in a week, you're not going to find the fact checker. The people who are trying to publicize that Donald Trump lied three days ago in a very specific way are not going

to catch up with all the people who believed the lie the first time around or just didn't bother to see if it was true the first time around. That's what I'm saying. It's like this adding as much chaos to the understanding of truth as possible is actually way more dangerous than being like we control

“the narrative and this is what the truth is. Because I don't know anything. You know?”

Yeah, and it's funny because Donald Trump did something that no other president has done and it's what he actually didn't do. And I think this is undermining his stance is one. He's flooding the message, the flooding the field, as you said, with just bullshit that is irrelevant in general. It's like instead of talking about the problems and the future solutions, he's just saying, we're winning our greatest military ever. We're beating them and then he shares AI videos of

of military strikes that aren't real. Shears Israeli strikes and claims it is his own.

before going to war went in front of the American people or Congress. So Franklin Roosevelt

“after Pearl Harbor went to Congress gave that amazing speech and the day of infamy speech and”

Congress declared war and that was shared with the American people. Truman addressed the American people after South Korea was invaded by North Korea. Johnson for all his faults and terribleness in Vietnam, he addressed the nation before every single escalation took place or immediately after things like the Gulf of Tonken, Gulf War, the George W. Bush addressed the nation, George W. Bush addressed the nation before both of Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump just didn't do that.

He just went, same thing, when I get to Venezuela, there was an era of secrecy with that because

it was special operations forces doing the thing. But a major escalation like Iran, for him not to do

that, it immediately created confusion because a president's soul duty is to tell the American people why we're committing our treasure and why are committing our sons and daughters to a battlefield before or immediately after the hostility start and he just didn't do that and now he's just chasing and just lying and trying to fill the void with just raw, raw propaganda that isn't telling us what's going on in reality and what the future plans are because I just don't think they have the

plans. Chad, do you think Americans in the past 20 years started in the post September 11th era, like with the Bush doctrine have gotten, obviously we had two very major wars that last at a long time under Bush. But do you think that there's more, if not comfort like lack of resistance to like military actions that are not labeled as war, like do you think that Trump in what I'm speculating here is like Venezuela was a very different situation. The US is constantly taking military

actions that are not declarations of war. Do you think that the US populist is like too comfortable with that now? Do you think he thought he could slide that under there? Like as in, oh, we're not starting a war. We're just removing another dictator. We're just cleaning things up with the military.

“I think, well, two things. I think the American people are too ignorant. I think they think and it's”

not necessarily hit on them. I just think they've been failed to be informed that the president yes, he is the commander in chief of the armed forces. He has the power to deploy forces within a certain window. But then Congress has to pick up the ball and do the approvals. Where I think the abdication of power comes from and this more comfort with the president is doing whatever he wants is in Congress. I think Congress, yeah, shares at least, if not, probably about 40% of the blame for

this Iran situation. Yes, the decision to go was Trump. He's absolutely the one to blame. But every day that this goes by and there's we move up the escalation ladder or move down it or prices go up and it hurts the American public. That is a failure of Congress. So the American people, I just don't think they know and traditionally the system was supposed to be we're electing a representative that knows what needs to happen and to speak on behalf of us and they're just not. They're just

all paying field to Trump. And so the American people don't necessarily know or they have just maybe you're right. Maybe they have just given up and said, well, the president, he's now this new version of a kind of a weird pseudo king who when it comes to the military and whatever he says goes and then Congress just has to be drug along behind him and it's not how the system was intended, unfortunately. Anything? Also, it's not limited to Congress under Trump. I mean, we've seen

or you're under Obama and we're funding the IDF under Biden. I mean, obviously, that is a lot of congressional support for that as well. But like, Obama took independent military actions that weren't there had no declaration of war and have speech to the American people. And I'm sorry, do you even declare war since World War II? Yeah, sorry. But I mean without the big announcement

“of military action, the American people. And I think we have seen some erosion of that”

resistance to like, okay, you know, the essentially the president going over Congress to to do acts of war that are not technically war. And I think, you know, whether the American people are under informed or it's just like, oh, that's it's become a norm in many ways. And I think that didn't used to be the case. Let's talk a little bit about the global balance of power in this current situation, because obviously Iran is increasingly in stable. The Mr. Global,

can we get, when I first say global, can we just get that piped in or maybe like six women singing

your name in harmony? It's just an idea for a sting. If anyone wants to, if anyone has a kid, the club remakes to be like, why on point? If you haven't seen the old lady on the internet that says Mr. Global runs the world, we got to get there. Have you seen that touch? I mean, I have not seen

Mr. Global that run the world. And she'll make a video like in a dark room and she runs the world

“and then I'll like stitch it where I'm like eating an ice cream cone, looking around like, what do I do?”

What do I do? I like the idea to have to get in a dark room. Otherwise, you know, the like security cameras or hit your hidden cameras are going to get you, even though you're recording, plus people in the tinfoil business running. I was helping me could talk about global concerns. The data summit has wrapped by now, and I was hoping we could talk about some takeaways from their both pertaining to Iran and in general, Chad, could you give us a little wrap up of

the recent data summit? Yeah, sure. So obviously going into the summit, there was a lot of concern

that this was going to be yet another breakdown of what the probably the most successful

alliance in the history of ever has ever been in that's NATO. And honestly, I was pleasantly surprised. It ended up being a much better outcome. I was just hopeful it'd be a big nothing burger, and we could just kind of walk away with the status quo, but this summit was good for NATO itself. It was good for the United States. It was good for Ukraine, and it was objectively bad for Russia. Now, despite there was some, despite all that, there was some eye-rolling drama.

Obviously, Trump came in hot with his client claims about Greenland. He came in talking about how Spain is a terrible partner. But from what I'm hearing in backdoor meetings with Denmark, who is that they're the ones that oversee Greenland, and Mark Ruta, the NATO Secretary General, they presented some pretty compelling arguments to why Greenland can help the Trump administration in their current wishes, and without having Denmark give it up. So there was some positives there.

“I believe that was all backdoor though. This is all stuff that's like back channel stuff that I'm”

hearing that. The discussions in the backgrounds were all very, very good. And actually Trump came out and said it was a very, he said something very weird. He said it was like a loving environment between everyone. So fair enough, I'll take it. But the biggest news probably to come out was the US to allow the Ukraine's to manufacture the Patriot missile. We're the only country that makes a missile that is so that capable that can shoot down any Russian missile. I don't care whether they

use the BS moniker of hypersonic or it's a bullet signal. The Patriot missile is the most capable. The concern is the timeline. What I'm hearing from Ukrainian experts is if they transition one of their current missiles production facilities to manufacture the Patriot. One of the biggest problems is just having the radar and the interceptor trackers and the software. Everything else is already ready to go in Ukraine. And so they've had some optimistic estimates that within three

months, they could start rolling a few of these off the line. We'll see, I'm not 100% sure, understand that Germany has had the license for two years, but they're a bit more bureaucratic. So there's a lag there. And unfortunately during that lag, Russia is going to continue to strike Ukraine because Ukraine is effectively out of these missiles. So on top of that, every NATO country, including the United States publicly reaffirmed Article 5, which is that article that is in attack

“on one is an attack on all. That was one of the key concerns that the Trump administration”

presented early on in last year was we may not respond to Article 5. So upfront for the U.S. to be a part of that reaffirming that. That's a good, it's a core strategy. It's the only reason this alliance is effective. And then one that really surprised me was all NATO countries, including the U.S. explicitly named Russia as a long-term threat. That was surprising to me previously the U.S. had decided that they were not going to be a part of that because last

years, NATO summit, they tried to do the same thing in the U.S. kind of abstained for it from that.

And so there's some other things that the Ukrainians are going to get $70 billion, which is

excuse me, $70 billion Euro, which is about $80 billion in aid commitments. And NATO said they're going to do that through 2027. There was a joint announcement for NATO manufacturing and they're calling it made NATO, where $50 billion is going to grow NATO manufacturing, including in the U.S. So some really good stuff. And Trump was seemed to be all about it. He had a good conversation it seemed with Zelensky. And I don't know if you guys saw where Trump was kind of caught off guard, but it was

kind of a fun moment where Trump said he talked to Putin about having a meeting between Zelensky and Putin in Moscow. And he turns to Zelensky and says, "Would you go to Moscow to meet with Putin in Zelensky?" He's like, "Ah, I don't know if it's safe because there's a lot of Ukrainian drones over there." And so I was like, that's a pretty solid joke. I know it's a great man. Was it comedian?

It's very, very fascinating career trajectory. And then I'll just kind of find it finish.

So Turkey hosted this, which usually benefited them. So Turkey previously was banned from a lot of U.S. technology because they decided to kind of align with Russia more and more over the last 20 years. They reversed complete course, rejected Russia completely. Apparently the S-400 that they bought, which is an air defense missile that they bought from Russia, which is what triggered the U.S. saying, "We're not going to sell you our weapons because you have Russian weapons that can

be used to kind of track and understand our weapons better." They got rid of that.

“And so that's why Trump said he might live sanctions on everything, including the F-35,”

which is our most advanced fighter. Turkey came away very successful, but they're a key partner because they manage our southern flank and the Black Sea. So it's all very, it was all very good. It was Putin was pretty pissed. I think one of the best ways to determine if some it was successful is the Russian response. They were a pretty pissed. I mean, they came out with a message almost every hour and said things like, "Well, this is clearly

Europe militarizing. This is clearly they're preparing for a conflict with Russia. They're going to aid Ukraine." And I'm like, "Yeah, fucking right exactly." That's exactly what we're fucking doing. Like, you're in the find-out phase of fuck around. You decided you were going to go into Ukraine and then start conducting asymmetric operations at Romania, Poland, the Baltics, and make threats, and now you're surprised that NATO is like, "Let's all come together and

deal with this." I really do think that Putin thought that he could use Trump to crack the alliance.

“And Putin doesn't like to attach to a loser and Russia's losing right now. And so I think he”

switched sides because he sees a little bit of winning to attach to a loser. Yeah, exactly. You're right. Yeah. So Trump doesn't like to attach to a loser. And because of that, there's a lot of good changes have happened. So Russia's mad. I don't care. They'll have to deal with it. So this is a good news coming out of there. For sure. Kind of fascinating that the thing that can crack Trump's autocrat warship is a successful

insurgency, I guess. I mean, we've talked about it a million times, but it's like, yeah, his

fickleness and one of our biggest threats, one of the biggest threats of far the US from Russia is just that our commander-in-chief admires their leader. And that that could undermine truly everything. And so it's kind of fascinating that I hadn't occurred to me like, oh, right. But he only, he only, you know, he only worships people when they seem infinitely strong. So that the situation Ukraine could actually affect our support, or, you know, our sympathy to Russia, our being the US,

you know, federal government, of course. I want to ask you, when, you know, when you're talking about the US reaffirming article five, for example, where's that logistically coming front? Like, like, is this literally the whims of our commander-in-chief is this a result of Rubio Hexeth, these, these people meeting or 20ths of staff? Like, how do we, how do we establish domestically or not domestically? But internally, what our policy will be towards a native stuff

“summit? How does that get decided in advance in the US? So one thing to be, you have to understand”

that, so the article, first of all, I want to say that Trump doing all these things

is great. It could change tomorrow. So there's that, first of all, he could turn and get pissed about something, whatever. But article five, so again, it goes back to the core of the, the actual treaty, but you, but it doesn't necessarily mean deploying troops. It's a response that you would provide in some way. And that response could just be as little as a strongly word of letter. So you could, like, a country could be attacked and we could say, well,

part of our response is providing aid. It doesn't necessarily mean deploying troops. That's a misconception that an article five means that we go fight a war. Now, in the case of like a rush at invading Poland, largely everyone believes that's what's going to happen even under the Trump administration. I do think that there's a lot of the Rubio old school, more international or Reagan-style Republicans that drive that the, the Lindsey Graham's for instance, who just passed away.

But the, um, he's another one of those. He was just in Ukraine pushing for the sanctions. So this type of countering the Soviet Union, and now they see this Putin Russia as a kind of an extension of that. So article five is a policy within the United States, traditionally for us, as we understand, it was to deploy troops, deploy logistics, be a part of the effort, aid where we can. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we just have the troops there already in Europe.

Now, article five for, say, Spain means something different. It could just mean, well, we're going

heartburn came about where this proportionality, like the U.S. is providing all of this and, and Spain

is only providing this much. It's very small compared to the U.S. and a lot of Americans were like,

“why the hell are we providing so much and Spain is providing so little? You have to, like I said,”

article five is provide what you can. It's not a hard article that says, you must deploy troops and go to war for, uh, on the same side as Poland and Germany to go in and, and, uh, get Russia. Understand also, article five doesn't apply to an attacking member. This is why we didn't see the United States, uh, try to join the Falclans war with the British. And so, because of that, it's, it's a defensive treaty. If we get attacked, we respond, but if we're the ones doing the attacking,

we can't suddenly claim article five. And historically, the United States has been the only country that's ever benefited from article five. And that was after September 11th, right? Yeah, that's the

first time was ever officially invoked, right? Well, so it's not, it's not, it was not a funny story,

but it's an interesting story. So it wasn't technically invoked. It was just assumed that the United States was going to invoke it. And eventually, they were. The United States was going to, it's just NATO saw what was going on, saw the chaos and immediately responded. And that's the beauty of NATO is we all have a shared values within this country and our student within this alliance. And so we look at what happened in 9/11 and they had, they could respond without us having to do the

formal invocation of article five, the bureaucracy of it. So like we had NATO A-Wax, so NATO has its own early warning aircraft that they own themselves. It's part of the alliance. They deployed them over the US saying, hey, we're going to help you with your radar coverage, because you know there's gaps in there right now and something's going on. Didn't require invoking article five. Yes, US would have eventually evoked it, but a lot of people like to

get me on that technicality. Like the US truly didn't invoke it. I'm like they would have. I didn't can it have provided a huge benefit for us where they were providing not only safe passage for airlines that couldn't fly home. These people were taking in Americans into their homes that they got toverted from places like New York into Canada. And so they would just, after all this and the air, there was a Canadian air force was flying along the border as a part of

NORAD to free up the US assets to defend internally. It all lasted just a few days. We all kind of normalized after that as best we could, but that's just some of the small benefits of NATO. And there's there's a massive amount. And I get that question all the time. Well, it's been if - well, it's NATO by my pay in for NATO when they're not doing anything. Well, I can go down that rabbit hole somewhere. Well, maybe we could talk a little bit to expand this discussion a

little bit on the topic of our podcast about what is the effect of this agreement on the global oil market and specifically what are the results of this, you know, how do the results of this latest summit affect a pretty volatile global market right now? So it's important that people understand, you know, sort of the basic purpose of NATO is to maintain peace around the world.

“Right, Chad? I mean, isn't that? That's what it means. It's generally a defensive alliance.”

It's not supposed to be an expeditionary to, that's why it's not really ever, but yeah, it's a stability and peace within the alliance and they're very good at it actually. And they're very good at maintaining peace around the world. And maintaining peace around the world is the number one way to mitigate a lot of volatility in energy markets, a strong NATO delivering peace, delivers low gas prices for all of you people that hate NATO and think it's a joke,

but love your low gas prices. That's what the benefit of NATO is to you, whether, you know, you like that or not. And so NATO is key in that. Because war as we know, we've seen it on a

Iran, like we saw it when Russia hit Ukraine, we saw it in the Gulf War, that is almost always what

causes unbelievably high and volatile gas oil prices. So that is one of the many ways that NATO benefits Americans and other people all around the world. So I totally support a very strong NATO because while oftentimes the lack of peace around the world, it doesn't impact us with war here at home, we are impacted economically by it. So NATO is a huge benefit in many, many ways,

“far beyond oil and gas prices. But that's just one of the things that I think Americans would”

latch on to, they love their low gas prices and that's something that NATO helps deliver to you,

this idea that we're spending, we're paying for NATO and the MAGA movement loves to echo that. Well, I'm tired of spending my tax dollars. I'm tired of all of my money going to NATO to supply some common in France or whatever. That's hugely wrong. What Trump is doing is conflating NATO's common budget with our total defense budget. So NATO's common budget for 2026 is around

$5.3 billion. The US pays about 15% of that, which is the same amount as Germany. So the United

States directly spends around $790 million a year on NATO's common fund. That's like $2 to $2 $2 to $2.50 per American. And that is not just money, we're giving them. We, that's it pays for things like our command and control system satellites, fuel pipelines, access to the Air and Naval facilities, the NATO A-Wax program I just talked about that helped us in on 9/11. All of these infrastructure systems that we plug into to operate in Europe. But when Trump is saying things like

we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to defend NATO, he's actually talking about, yeah, he'll say trillions, which I don't know where that's coming from. We're not spending

“trillions on anything in that realm. He's trying to get a $1.5 trillion budget past, which I think is”

nonsense. But the current budget is 950 billion. And what he's trying to do is pretend that 950

billion is going to NATO. We would be spending that anyways. That's, that would be our budget anyway. In fact, I would argue that we would be spending more because we would have less allies to to lean on things like our basing rights in other countries. We use them as Lily Pats to jump. Like when I, when I, when I deployed to Iraq, I went to Ireland, which, and then I went to, and then on my way back, I went through Germany. They have hospitals where our wounded

soldiers go to at launch dual, which is outside of Ramstein Air Base. If we have a soldier get wounded severely, they'll go to Germany first to get the, the, the, the second line level of care behind the normal hospitals in theater. Those are huge assets for us. But if I'm going to talk to the magma crowd specifically about what is actually that it affects their pocketbook, because that's their big concern. First of all, with this alliance generates an enormous amount of money. And I

know, uh, probably many of the listeners, and you included that. And actually, I'm a big, uh, kind of a, I'm not a big proponent of this either. Our military industrial complex benefits massively from NATO. The, the, the, the British, the polils, the, um, uh, the Germans. These are countries that are buying our stuff because we need standardization across the, the entire alliance. And so you'll see Abrams tanks in Poland and F-35s being bought by countries, Patriot missiles. And those are

defense dollars that are coming to us that create jobs and create, uh, tax revenue for the United States. So if magma is just wanting to make this a business transactional relationship at its core, it's that we're actually, it's a bargain. We're getting billions upon billions of dollars.

And also we pay as 800 million. I, I don't like that notion that it's just that transactional.

But if it hammers into their head that this is a good alliance, I'll go that route.

“Yeah, I think I'll call this an even if apart, uh, argument, which is even if you don't”

see this, see these other practices problematic. And you are, even if you only view this as a business transaction, even though there's probably a lot more going on, if you only view this as a business transaction, we gave more money. I mean, what, what's the ice budget? $38 billion? Yeah, right? Like we gave more money to Disney last year than NATO. And not only in, like, uh, tax refunds, but subsidies. We gave more, we gave, we gave 10 times that are more to Elon Musk last year. I mean,

the amount of, the, like, I don't want to sound like $800 million isn't a lot of money that we shouldn't spend well. But in the scheme of federal budgeting, like, to, first of all, it's not like a line item that you'd like you said. It's not like, uh, it's not like a tax that we're being, we're not like, like, being paid. We're not paying our NATO membership fee and they're taking advantage of us. It's, it's money that we'd be spending. But even if you're only looking

at it that way, like, you are, you are missing the force for the trees, like, but if you are focusing on that one $800 million, what, like, we have casually given that to movie studios, sneaker companies and Trump's best friends 400 times this year. I mean, God knows what oil

“companies are making, you know, based on just, you know, backdoor deals. Well, that was, that's what”

I was about to say. We give 20 more than 20 times more to oil and gas industry in the United States than NATO. And, and, but people don't look at NATO and think about it the way, you know, the jobs and the industry that is created with that alliance, he's talking about defense contractors, how we're building all of this, all these military assets, the F-35s and the

So, and I would guess, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I would guess that

that business probably brings more tax revenue back into the U.S. Treasury than oil and gas. Now, of course, the thing that you're going to wait, now it's my turn to say, uh, we should divest from both of those industries as soon as possible. And, uh, as soon as stable as possible,

“I will say, but, you know, I think if you tell me, like, one of the big things that you could”

criticize about NATO is this strengthening of the military industrial complex and this sort of cold war reasoning that like, oh, we do need to continue to build to prevent Russian dominance in the global sphere or something like that. Do I want Russia to control the global sphere? Absolutely not. I am anti-authoritarian. However, I think cold war mentality is something to watch out

of watch out for as we build for also, you know, we start to look at threats from China and not

start to, but we continue to look at threats from China. I think we do have to be a little bit careful. And again, I don't see NATO as a line item anymore than I see the fire department. So, like, I don't it's not like, I don't think the argument of like, should this cost money is a good way of, it's not smart analysis, but I do think it's worth criticizing that, I essentially financial investment in the continuation of Cold War ideology. I think that's a little bit dangerous for

“it. I'm not saying we should back out of NATO and dissolve it. I think we need to look at,”

unfortunately, we're in one of the worst administrations in history for this, but I think we need to look at the way that we approach global safety with this de-escalation in mind. And I think that's really complicated, obviously, with, you know, nuclear enemies. There's a whole other side of the finance as well, because I don't know what the number would be, because it would be pure speculation,

but could you imagine what the cost of the Iran war? It's like 40 billion right now is what we

said. As what the official numbers, I think are coming out. If we didn't have the ability to land in Germany to move over, we were, instead, we were having to fuel leapfrog fuel across the entire globe to get to the Middle East. We had to deploy more carriers because we didn't have basing rights or assistance from, now granted, some countries decided to say no, Italy, Spain, eventually Italy said, okay, it's fine, go ahead and use them. But those bases saved us money. Now, I'm not trying to

say we should be fighting wars because they're in the Middle East, but yes. But yeah, we're saved money there. And also, the Trump from wasting more of the money. Yeah, exactly. And so NATO was specifically designed, whether it's that, that's the case now, to counter the Soviet Union. Now it's designed to counter Russia. I can guarantee you if the NATO alliance dissolved and disappeared, the Russia would take huge advantage of that. They would move on Estonia. They would move on

the other Baltic nations, Latvia, Lithuania. And they would, these smaller countries would have to rely on the good graces of a poll under a Finland to maybe come in and help them, but Russia would still be able to move on these. And if the United States, it becomes a World War 3 scenario. The cost and the cost to us would be exponentially greater than what we'd be paying, it would be in the trillions of dollars to fight a World War 3. And it would be tens of thousands if not more American

lives. And NATO has brought one of the largest, peace, the areas of peace to the European continent. We've had skirmishes, sure, the Yugoslav wars, all of the stuff that was at Kosovo and the Balkans states, yeah. Yeah, all of the, what those that came out under the Clinton administration stuff, those were kind of small skirmishes, but again, that was NATO coming together to help in that situation as well. And then we have the non-NATO countries like Georgia, got invaded by Russia, Ukraine,

got invaded by Russia. You can just know that that's going to continue to happen if NATO didn't exist. And so not only do we make a bunch of money by having, unfortunately, our military industrial complex that gets all of this money from other countries, we're going to save money to the ton of trillions of dollars to prevent a future war that who knows how it would have happened if NATO didn't exist during the Cold War. They would have probably gone hot for sure. And the world

“would be very different. And so it's also, and I said this, I think, last episode, it's also”

stopped proliferation nuclear weapons. So that's just objectively good across the board. And I just wanted to point out that I get a lot of people saying, why am I paying for NATO? Well, you're not really, it's not that much. We'd still be paying it's 0.01% of our military budget. What was your NATO bill this month? My mind was lower than kind of. Yeah, I mean, my electric bill. Yeah. Yeah, I was, the, honestly, the NATO bill's not really my from my worry these days. I know that

the increase in my Netflix bill is more than than whole NATO bill. So I know, let me share my neighbors, but Netflix. Yeah. It was less than the tax on my Netflix bill, actually. Yeah. So I, hey, you know what they call NATO in France? Oh, it's, oh, isn't it, Oton?

it's, it's, it's Oton. And it's like because it's like the way French speaking, it's like the organizational treaty, something NATO is an, or, yeah, I think it's, yeah, no, it's organization, organization, do try to do a lot, a lot long-tique north. I believe if I'm good. Yeah. Holy shit. That's actually

“what you look at the, when you look at the logo, that's why it says NATO and then Oton”

underneath it. It's kind of fascinating. So I know that was a fun fact. Yeah, I heard that having that in Turkey this year gave Donald Trump a great excuse for falling asleep. He just got the blame it on the trip to fan. I told you that I'm a sit-down comic. I know. I'm just wondering how long you're waiting to say that. Bringing those newly grand, I was just trying to work it in during the NATO, during the deeper part of the NATO conversation. I had to wait

and I was hoping it would still land. I appreciate, I appreciate your dedication, though. No, this is gonna, this is gonna land. Far beyond from me to miss the opportunity and then bring

the joke up again. I do, I never say I'm above that. Yes, Chad, what's up? I do have a question

from out, though. So what do you thoughts, like I know we kind of talked about the stability of oil in the past? What? Like, and I hate putting you on the spot for making assumptions,

“but this is a pretty, I think we're pretty stable in NATO, especially after this summit.”

But what would you, what do you think would happen to gas and oil and diesel prices in the U.S. if NATO did dissolve? Like, do you have any thoughts on that at all? Like, where we go? I don't think the dissolution of it itself would trigger what could happen. It was what the dissolution could trigger. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, the digital wars or something instability. Yeah, additional wars pop up and that would trigger, you know, a lot of craziness

and oil and gas markets. And, you know, I think it would definitely make a lot of people in the nervous, though, especially in markets, energy markets. They would be shooting their pants for lack of a better word. Because then they're losing like this huge

cushion, like energy traders or like, we always got NATO, like, you know, keep the peace.

Once you lose the thing that keeps the peace, you add an enormous amount of risk to energy markets.

“But I think in this day and time, where traders mostly have to”

and this sounds, it's going to sound wrong, but they actually do need to see it to believe it before they move markets much anymore, because of the amount of misinformation that they've been fed. So now they're in a place where it's like, I got to see it to believe it. Like, and that actually kind of reduces war premiums a little bit. But I don't know, I think you could get pretty sketchy. Yeah, for sure. That's a tough thing to think about.

I can't imagine it happening now. Like, that's one of those. No, I'm just, I also never would have imagined the straightest form of a sort of enclosed. And until the day Donald Trump said, we're going to attack Iran. And then I was like, yeah, they're going to close the straightest form. I want to talk to you about one more news item that came across this week, an update on the situation in Gaza, which is that Hamas has dissolved their government chat. I was hoping you could talk

a little bit about what that means and where that stands in the, at least in the text of the ceasefire negotiations, which obviously have not been respected so far. Yeah, it's definitely not been respected. That's for sure by Israel or frankly, Hamas is real more so. And to be fair, the U.S. brokered this with the understanding that we were going to hold Israel to a higher standard, and that has not happened either. And so it, Israel's just kind of run ramped over

this, a run rough shot over this entire deal and it's ridiculous. But when it comes to Hamas, they have formally dissolved the governing body that managed to Gaza. It was the committee that was running all of Gaza's civilian ministries. And they are saying that they're going to hand over the government. They're totally ready to hand it over to some Palestinian technocratic government. Now that means that it's going to be engineers to help rebuild diplomats, people that can help

rebuild all of the departments, whether it's aid, education, everything. So they're saying we're ready to do that and they have officially dissolved the government. It was a part of the ceasefire

ceasefire agreement. So Hamas has executed this in good faith. I'm not a Hamas fan. Never have been

there. I think that organization needs to just be gone forever. But they are, but they are a real reality on the ground. And there's nothing we can do other than continue to hurt civilians in order to get to them. And that's just unacceptable. So what's happening though is Israel has essentially rejected this, this new, all of branch to say Hamas has moved forward. They're saying no,

strikes in to Gaza. And if you saw the footage, it was really sad because it just was, it looked

“like Israel was just striking a pile of rubble again. And so it's just piles of rubble in Gaza.”

And they're arguing that this is just a political trick to give the apparent appearance of their abiding by the rules, which even the United States has come forward and said, yeah, Hamas did dissolve their government. And maybe it's time for Israel. You guys to, to, to make some movement on the things you've promised. But their Israel's blocking or delaying the government from taking over many of the officials that were supposed to be picked to join the government or scare that they're

going to be off to by Israel the minute they show up. And so Hamas said flat out on social media, we gave up civilian control. So Israel must withdraw. That was the deal. That Israel agreed to. Israel is saying, nope, you still have weapons. So you didn't really give up control. Bottom line is Hamas did dissolve its government. But Israel is not operating in good faith at this point. And what's really interesting was, sorry, was really pushing the weapons like part of the

text of the ceasefire deal at all? Or they're just riveting the narrative around it? No, it was. So a part of the deal was there was supposed to be a phase. The, the, the Hamas, or so Hamas was going to give up their weapons. The minute Israel backed out. Right. It's, that's a problem though in negotiation.

It's always the first mover's problem. So Israel is, and they have some legitimacy is claiming,

well, if we back out, and Hamas still has their weapons, Hamas can just move in and take everything again, and we're back to square one of having to deal with this. Hamas, but Hamas on their side, they have a legitimate claim to saying, well, we're not going to give up our weapons, because Israel is still advancing on us. So in negotiations, this is always a problem when it comes to negotiating

“the end of a war. It's who moves first, because the trust is destroyed. And that's what we're”

looking at. So Hamas giving up their weapons is contingent on Israel leaving, but Israel's not leaving until Hamas gets a chicken and egg game. And I just, this has been something that they've tried to negotiate for decades. And I just don't think we're going to see this going anywhere, because news side trusts each other at all. And the United States doesn't have enough of a skin in the game to, to enforce either side. We just, and it's going to require some sort of peacekeeper,

and no country on earth is willing to do that right now, not even the United States. So there's been discussion from a coalition in France of European countries to potentially do that, but no one is even then everyone's like, we're not sending our people into this. This is going to cause major, not only death and destruction of our own people, but political problems here at home, and they still have to answer to voters. So that's kind of where we're at. It's, it looked like Hamas did,

“and again, I truly believe they're a horrible terrorist organization, but they're a product of”

no one else was defending the Palestinians in Gaza. So they rose up as the counter organization, and what Israel's doing is no better than what they're doing at this point, either with their killing. So we're now looking at two terrible organizations that are essentially not moving from their position, except for Hamas did move briefly. And Israel said, don't buy it. We're not doing anything about it. Everyone else can just kick rocks. We're going to continue to bomb as we see fit.

It's kind of a play out of what we talked about last week on in Lebanon. They're just going to continue doing whatever they want, no matter what the international community says. Yeah, and it seems like the PR machine is just kind of their paying lip service to, you know, whatever the issue of the day is, but they're clearly trying to take over the region. They're clearly trying to transform civilian areas. They're talking about the dropping bombs on rubble.

Yeah, the only development happening in Gaza is like, you know, colonists, developers by buying land that's been destroyed. And like otherwise, it's, you know, people have just been run out of their homes and it's completely devastated. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's all these actions are still just consistent with this, you know, this, the, I'm not saying the stated intentions of Israel. I'm saying the actions of Israel,

which I've just essentially been to take over territory using U.S. weapons. You know, regardless of what the, what the stated purposes. Yeah, it's, I, I will say that going back to what we talked about at the beginning, Israel's very good at exercising the propaganda to move in place, especially West Bank. Oh, there was a terrorist in this house. We took over it. Oh, there was,

there was, they decided that we just heard gunfire from over there. So tank round through the second floor.

And so that's one of those, I'm not saying they're not all illegitimate. I'm just saying that there's pretty solid evidence that a good chunk of them are, they're using the current situation on the ground to advance their goals in a way that traditionally would not have been accepted at the very least, let alone, or even possibly allowed by the United States were a different administration in the seat. Yeah, and also I think we're seeing just in terms of the

we see these cases where, you know, the idea will call someone who's in their car and be like,

get away from the car, if you don't want to stop a drone, if you don't want us to drone strike your entire family that's in the car, get away from the car, the person leaves and is shot down by a drone, right? Like they have that level, we have a enormous level of precision in

“terms of like not only like striking individual people, but like finding the target, right?”

And then meanwhile, you see like a hospital get bombed because like Hamas was inside it or something. And just the level of precision that is advertised and utilized seems to fluctuate really drastically, regardless of what Israel's, you know, what the idea of in the Israeli government's dominant narrative is in the media. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a missile, and I have to talk to Alex Holling, who's the, he's the missile guy. He's our air power guy that knows a lot, but um,

there's a Hellfire missile that's, it's like nicknamed the Samurai missile or the Ninja bomb. It doesn't even use explosives. The United States has one. Israel has its own precision strike version of this. We haven't ever seen it really used, but they can actually strike you ever seen as, it's pretty disgusting because it's a devastating weapon for the individual that gets targeted, but this weapon essentially is fired like an normal missile has no explosive. It deploys like six

or eight blades outward, and then just spins and basically blends its target. It's does disgusting,

but it will hit, we've, the United States has been able to hit a single person in a car

“and the driver survived because it hit through the, hit the passenger. That's how precise”

weapons that are in the US sphere of opera, which is Israeli, absolutely, sphere of weapons making. That's how precise we can be. I don't know why that's not something that has been used more readily. I don't know if it's just a terror tactic because explosions, they cause a lifetime of terror. I can tell you. I've see PTSD every day. I have a very minor version of it myself, and so explosions do cause things that life long and it does change a populist and it's frustrating because

if we can do it, if we can, we in the US can kill a dude in a passenger seat, that is a

terrorist and he's a known terrorist and he just needs to die because he's awful. It is real can do it too without hitting a bunch of kids and innocent people. Yeah, if you can blow up someone's beeper. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of strategies. It turns out other than, yeah, blowing up a school or a hospital and hoping that you catch the person inside of it, who you are allegedly aiming for. And yeah, I want to reiterate your point and I unfortunately have some personal experience with

this myself, but that yeah, witnessing large-scale devastation, witnessing explosions is deeply traumatic. It will give you PTSD for life. And then we go and say, how come this five-year-old who watched that happen down town across the street from his home as a child in Gaza didn't grow up with a nuanced position on the history of Israel versus Palestine? Of course, people are radicalized by events like this. It's a permanent psychological effect. And we're fortunate

to have access to support after events like that. And people just grow up around that devastation. And it's unsurprising that organizations disgusting it as it is, is like Hamas and as they are to so many people is able to take control. You see, you see, they're able to really season in that

“pocket of devastation. And I don't think that's a good thing, but I think it's really,”

I don't want to say predictable, but it's understandable how these things develop. Yeah, Lieutenant General Peter Trely said, he was the commander in Iraq said for every one that I kill I create ten more. I mean, speaking specifically about terrorist organizations or, yeah, so, I mean, the sad things is that the broader military knows this. It's just the cycle of violence doesn't stop even with this knowledge. My daughter is a drum pilot in the US Air Force.

Oh, really? And there's a lot of stuff she can't tell me, but what she can't tell me, I can piece together how much the technology has evolved just in the last eight years because she started doing it eight years ago. Eight years ago, you know, she would be piloting a drone in the Middle East, sitting in a room in New Mexico. And there would be, what's the spy plane, Chad? Predator? The UV, yeah, whatever the spy plane. The reaper or the pre- Predator? A spy plane,

high-value targets and taking them out, specific people. The spy plane would find them and then

“she would fly the drone. And then there would actually be a, what do they call the person that just fires”

them? The munitions is not the pilot. It's another person. The whiz of the weapon specialist, yeah, weapon specialist, which happens to be your husband. And they would, they would be able to pin point a single person in some country and take that person out. And that was eight years ago. And now it's well, they don't even really need us to fly the drones anymore. And they don't even really need the spy planes anymore because the drones can be equipped with the same technology.

And so this is like becoming so automated, like she's actually looking for another job because pretty soon, you know, according to her, we're not going to need drone pilots anymore. You're just punching a coordinate and it'll just do its own thing. You just send it free. Fly, fly a little birdy fly. Oh, yeah, that's not sending and terrifying in its own way. But that's kind of a sign

that these major bombings are basically, you know, it's just to inspire terror or when we have

that kind of technology. If we know what this specific targets are, especially. Well, drone operators and it's different. So I'm not specifically saying this about your daughter, but drone operators have actually determined to have a higher level of psychological distress coming because it's kind of fascinating detachment situation where they're like you said in New Mexico, striking targets or whatever. And often there is a psychological stress and anxiety that are a guilt that comes from it

because you feel almost the same way as as someone who accidentally hits someone in with a car. It'll stay with you forever. Whereas the difference is it's like a soldier who's on ground, they can, they can process it a little differently because they can say, well, I was just defending myself. My life was in danger. I fought back so I can go home. It's either he goes home or I go home and that's just the way it is. So there's finding this interesting correlation where

drone operators don't necessarily having, they have actually a lower PTSD rate, but they have a different type of psychological stress because it's like a disassociation from the battlefield is fascinating because we loved our drone operators when we were in there. Every time a drone was over, we knew we were much safer on the ground. So well, they do limit the mission

second fly. They got better for sure. But another thing they do is the image that the drone pilot

or the West weapons systems person, the image that they're looking at, it's not the live image of the person. Yeah. They literally try to make it look like a video game to detach them from that personal, you know, feeling of you're hitting a person like and she's like it doesn't work. I still know what I'm doing. It's the same. Yeah. It's wild. The stuff she's totally. Well, the same thing as we used to look at the premise of Ender's Game and toys starring Robin Williams

from 1992, and like, that was making it look like a video game for sure. Yeah. And all goes back to like

“we used to like going back to the cartoon thing. We used to present, I don't know if you ever remember”

the cartoons, whether it was Disney or Warner Brothers or whatever, they would present the Germans as monsters and they present the Japanese is like Donkeys or something like that and it was just yeah, it's all that. It's just varying levels of getting people to normalize that they aren't human, dehumanize them. Yeah. Yeah, bummer. But thank your daughter for me for it. Don't do we need more jokes. Yeah, we do. We are tackling some pretty serious subject matter.

I do want to, and not making light of because, you know, it is, you know, we don't want to, we don't want war to become a thing where we look at it like a video game and then, you know, become that detached one could argue we're already there. I don't want to gloss over the fact, however, that Matt said that his daughter and her husband works side by side as drawn

“violence and I, I got to know if that's how they met. They met in basic. Oh, wow.”

And it's quite a rom-com. I don't know what happened like for them to end up being together and honestly, that's not allowed. But Carrie, well, good for them, though. I'm just Carrie selling the work comes home. Oh, wow. They're like, honey, I threw the garbage towards the garbage can. You

me that because she was so proud because when you're a drone pilot, you're considered an air force pilot.

“Yeah, like you get a flight suit and everything. And she was just so proud of that. Like,”

and I, I thought it was funny because I was like, yeah, you're not really a pilot. I was looking at it from the guy that flies the F 35 perspective because he's looking at her like, you're not a pilot. I'm a pilot anyway. That's some top-guin stuff. But I did question. I was like, how is it possible that both of you are doing this together? That doesn't seem like that's something that seems to be like that's something they would lead. Like, you know what I mean? Interestingly, they don't.

They find that they'll try to, I will say, I would be surprised if he is her weapon systems operator. I would be surprised if he is, that's a different situation. More than likely has been. He's not okay more. He has been. Yeah. Sort of. Yeah, so that I would see that. But to be honest, the military will try to keep couples together so that they can, it's kind of a time-off situation. You both have the same time. You're not deploying

it different times. You're going together. And actually, in the army, I don't know how they are forces. But couples, the married couples that deploy together, they get their own quarters overseas so that they can still be married and stuff. Now, there's a big to do and they have to do a bunch of stuff to make sure that they don't undermine the mission by doing things like getting pregnant and stuff like that. But yeah, the military tries as best

they can without degrading the mission to keep couples together in similar units and without obviously conflicts of interest and stuff like that. So yeah, it's a morale thing.

“We're nearing the end of our recording, so I think it's time to move to our final segment”

of the show where we talk about if not a positive, a less negative thing that happened to us

since the last episode. In a segment we call the least worst part of my week. Anyone want to go first?

I heard some about a frog from Matt. That was interesting. Matt, what do you got for us? It has to happen to us? No. It's not even countered this news in this week, you know, it's part of your week because you heard about it. So carrying on with the recent rash of medical discoveries I've been talking about. Japanese scientists have discovered a bacteria that lies within the intestine of Japanese tree frogs. This tree frog is called the

uningeless Americana or something. But this bacteria kills cancer tumors. And that apparently has the tree frog. I don't know if he's eaten it or not. But it's like this is yet another really cool medical discovery. Of course, they haven't gotten anybody any humans to eat the tree frogs yet or I don't know how that works. But it's working in other frogs. It's like the healer monster where we get GLP ones from now or something like that. That's where all the weight loss drugs

is they don't come from any more. They figured out a synthetic version. But the original it came from healer monster venom or something. But this is like the cured cancer. They've like killed tumors in mice already. It's working in mammal. They're doing some trials. It works instantly. That feels exciting. It kind of does. So now we just need to find some brave souls that will suck on a tree frog or whatever it has to happen for them to get that bacteria.

I don't know how you do. They just cut these animals up and just like break out all of the different things that exist within them and test them individually on cancer cells. Like because it's a bacteria that's only found in the intestinal tract and this one tree frog. That's fascinating. Yeah. It's just wild. Yeah, you're just testing every chemical that is created in nature to see if it has restorative properties. Did they notice that the

Japanese tree frog never gets cancer or something like that? Are they interested in immunity?

It was kind of fascinating where it just lingered. Let's shot in the dark. We can't

“allow the things that cure cancer to get cancer. Well, that's what I'm saying. If it was a species”

that was immune or something, maybe that's how they figured it out. But I'm purely speculating right now. Well, it's fascinating. You know, they said some people were immune to COVID, right? A lot of people are immune to COVID and they were trying to figure out why. That way they could, you know, right from that a cure or a vaccine or whatever. Back to that GLP one thing with like those empathic and like, is that bound in all those? So there's a scientist who was trying to figure out

how to counter helimoster bite because it affects the pancreas. The bite actually, that's what

weird metabolic quirk where the helimoster is only eat a few times a year, but their blood sugar

“stays remarkably stable between meals. So it's part of the venom development they have. And so”

he sequenced it and turned made it into, he went through a peptide sequencing and he isolated it and that's where we get the weight loss drugs now that all of Hollywood, got a substance at all. So it's his fault that every famous person is 35 pounds under weight now. Yeah, so it's, but yeah, I wonder, but it's basically they're just trying to, I wonder if they're trying to figure out a cure, he, they're trying to figure out a cure for getting like, it's kind

of like the poison dart frog type thing or something like that and then it's discovering a cancer cure or something there. They're probably trying to find a weight loss drug and they're like, they're probably, we found it, we'll do it better a boner pill. Yeah, we got a, we're in the boner versus weight loss Evan flow. We're been very weight loss mode right now. Yeah, it's just happening to make old guys horny, you know, are you going to give them stronger boners or you're going to make

“young, younger people look younger. What's your, what's your plan for the pedophile class?”

Doesn't it seem like everything we find to cure something is something that already existed on the

planet? We just didn't know about like it's never used or something we make, synthetic, yeah.

A lot of times it's something that just existed in some other animal or plant. Well, it's also like we've spent what the better part of two centuries just suppressing our natural ecosystem like to some degree. Yeah, like it shouldn't be a surprise. It's like, yeah, this was at one point a functioning ecosystem where everything healed each other and, you know, would recuperate and the ecology was self-sustaining. And it's like only because we have been stomping on everything for decades, if not centuries,

are we like, surprisingly well, like it's, it's healing how that happened. We are the sickness as what you're saying. I mean, not to go full agent Smith on you, but I would say industrial capitalism is the sickness, but yeah, we're dumping a lot of stuff and we're dumping a lot of stuff in the rivers for a while, which brings me to not least worst part of my week, which is yesterday morning, I went to Governor's Island in Manhattan, which is in New York, which is now open to the

public, has been for about 15 years, historic island off the coast of New York that traded hands between the New York New Jersey, the Navy, the Army for many years. I used to go there growing up because my grandfather worked for the military and we could actually visit the base when it wasn't

open to the public, but I got to go back there and volunteer with a group called the billion oyster

project. For those who don't know, this sounds made up, but New York, the big Apple used to be known as the big oyster. Oysters were so prevalent here that they were not considered a delicacy food, everyone ate them, they were dirt cheap, poor people, poor people rich people, everyone loved them. New York used to export oysters. We would pick up an export, then there was so abundant that they were an export here. Of course, as a result of mostly factories, upstate dumping chemicals

directly into the Hudson River, the New York Harbor got deeply polluted and still as it's at the bottom layer, there's what they call black mayo, just sort of a sludge that would take, you know, dredging it would be almost impossibly practical. But the interesting thing about this is that New York used to be an oyster town and the oysters are, you know, as we were just discussing, it turns out some of the cures for our ailments are in nature and oysters naturally clean

water and they actually clean sewage out of water and they naturally clean a water supply but not only that, that when there's enough of them, they create a self-sustaining environment. So, essentially to create an oyster habitat where oysters can grow, what you need is a lot of

“oysters growing and that's what the premise of this project is, essentially they're rebuilding”

reefs within the New York Bay and Harbor here where creating artificial reefs from clam and oyster shells, so we were taking a giant pile of oyster shells, cleaning them, putting them through these rock, these tumblers essentially, and then packaging them to build new reefs. And because they have this calcium chloride quality to the shells, oysters can latch on and grow there.

And their goal was to get New York to a billion oysters by 2035, but thanks to donations,

the new goal is 2030. And I think that's really great. I think it's, you know, it's kind of a great combination of, for me, you know, ecological history and New York history. And, you know, I would grow up and we would learn these things about New York and all these things that you see amazing about it, like they were fun facts. And it's just exciting to me to see people targeting a single project with an achievable goal and we can restore some of this. We don't just have to accept

everything as inevitable and the, you know, our environment used to be one way. It's another way.

interesting that this one group chose this specific way, and it seems like they'll be meeting their goals. That's awesome. Yeah, and I'll care to expand. Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't, I think they

“had plenty of volunteers, but if you want to donate to the billion oyster project, they, they're”

definitely, you know, striking other territories. They're going to get rid of that black mail. Well, you know, it turns out you can kind of filter a body of water, not from everything that gets dumped into the water, but from sewage, specifically, by, you know, growing on top of it,

and they're building these reefs into it rather than, you know, we'll probably never be able

to dredge the bottom of the river. Like the, the amount, the exhaustive, like there is just just in our, in our sewer systems and in our river itself, there is just this centuries of ways. But essentially, you know, what we need to do is create ecology that can filter and heal itself. And this is like a step in that direction. And I thought that was really cool. So much though that I got up early on a Saturday morning. Yeah, they, uh, we're just way, they'll figure

out a way to clean it up if they find out black mail, like, can be turned into a boner pillar,

“or a weight loss pill. And you could have killed source. Yeah, that's what we got. We got to figure”

out how to care can't, no, sorry, make people lose weight, uh, get boners, or, uh, you know, lower their energy bills. Yes. Yeah, it's like those bacteria, though, that they, it's almost like, what was it? Jeff Goldblum and Jurassic Park, when he was like life finds away where those, those bacteria that he plastic in the, and so they've, they've discovered this bacteria has formed that, he's plastic. And so hopefully, uh, yeah, I'm good stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'm not the first person

to say this, but if every human being disappeared from the earth today, or our factory is all stopped functioning today, the earth would heal. Like me, the ecosystem is not at the point where it cannot heal itself, uh, quickly and quickly, but we are currently, you know, we're currently still on on trajectory to lose 50% of our biodiversity in the next half century. Right, we're talking about half of the species on earth now going extinct. So again, when you talk about, like, a massive,

habitat that was just destroyed through, you know, industrialization through a lack of care,

“through zero regulation that was going on in the industrial revolution, uh, I think it's really”

heartening to see people, we, we are going to lose more. Even if we do everything right to fight climate change to fight for the environment, we are going to have to live with the fact that things exist now that we're going to lose. So I also think it's really heartening to see people sort of rebuilding things that we've already lost. Yeah, I'll even just, it was proven during COVID, like, and, yeah, oh, just like just the outside my window in five weeks or something.

No, I like people could see mountain ranges that they had never seen, like in the history of

their country, since the industrial age or whatever, like the earth, we literally got to saw, see in real time, the earth healing itself during COVID, just from a reduction in activity, another elimination, you know, activity reduced by, say, 20%. And you could literally see it happening, um, if you were just paying attention. Mm-hmm. The earth was healing itself. Yeah, and not to be-- I didn't have dolphins outside my window. I don't know what.

Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. But it's both low. But it's in both low. See life was coming back here on the, on the, on the water, but, you know, I don't, not to be, not to be too honest or philosophical, but, uh, yeah, the planet will heal itself, even if that means rejecting us. So our choices to help it heal itself, or be the thing it heals itself from. Well, that's the best part of your age, Carlin right now.

I mean, you're sounding like George Carlin. That guy, we have a huge compliment. That's a huge compliment. You're listening to that? The earth would shake us off like a dog shaking off, please. Yeah, you said it way better than I know. We're no threat to the earth. We're just a threat to ourselves. Like the earth will just shake us off when it's done. Yeah, and you know, I used to feel like, yeah,

George, and I always liked him, but like growing up as a young, arrogant community. You know,

I was like, I get it. He's telling, and you go back and watch that last special now, where he's like, it's a big club, and you're not in it. At the time, I was still like a pretty loyal Democrat. And now I'm like, nah, he's right. He was like, well, so right. He was way more right than we could have proven at the time. Uh, and obviously he says more than that sentence. But his, you know, semi-paranoid global financially, uh, perspective proved out to be pretty, uh, pretty

accurate. So my favorite thing he did was when he broke down the 10 commandments and called it a marketing scheme, because you know, number 10, the doodestinal system and all that, and he's like, you only need to, like, that was my favorite thing he ever did. The man was, I would say, I hate to say ahead of his time, because he was like, one of the best voices of his time. But like, I would say he was cogent in his time in a way that has, you know,

like, more cogent. Hey, do you have a best, at least where's part of your week, chat?

“Yeah. So I had a, I had a joke from, interestingly, the Russians, the, it was, it was on”

Russian mill blog, which is, which were traditionally very, very anti Ukrainian and very pro-Cremlin, pro-war, this joke. So this, I'll tell this joke, this man and this woman, they're sitting in these gas lines. Uh, they're sitting about their 12th hour, waiting to get gas. They've been sitting there for 12 hours. Man looks to his wife and goes, I am fed up. I'm done with sitting in this gas line. I'm going to go, and I'm going to go assassinate Vladimir Putin. I'm tired of this war causing this.

I'm going to go kill Vladimir Putin. Two days later, he comes back to his wife. She's like, what the hell? I thought you were going to go kill Vladimir Putin. He said, I have the line to kill him was longer. So I just, I could, so I thought that was just kind of funny joke, but that being said, it has some implications that that kind of joke doesn't fly in Russia, usually. That's kind of joke that then puts you in jail and there's more and more of that

happening in Russia where these people are getting more and more angry and, and probably not,

you know, better than anyone, satires, always that kind of the needle that starts to,

it's the wedge that starts to dry, open the cracks. And so they can use satire to start movements

“and things like that. And I think that's where we are, are starting to see things moving.”

And that jokes like that, because that was, that was one of several. That was the only one that was relatively clean. There were some pretty horrific ones, but the, that, that satire came up. There's an interesting study where they're pivoting back to when the Soviet Union fell and the rise of comedy before the fall of the Soviet Union being critical of the Kremlin. And there's almost a parallel line we're seeing now starting in that same route to where, once again,

these social movements, they usually will start with people who are just kind of like, hey, I'm going to say this very real problem. But oh yeah, just joking. And then people are like, wait a minute, this is a real problem. And it starts a movement. And we're starting to see that take place in Russia right now. And I'm hoping that like when the fall of the Soviet Union took place in the Berlin Wall came down, we're in an era where comedy and levity and satire

can drive a wedge in this authoritarian Kremlin government and potentially see a change for the better in the future. That one, I'm skeptical, but hopeful, but nonetheless we're seeing that movement

“in that direction. Well, I mean, I think it's interesting that you can see, you know,”

you can use comedy as kind of the skeleton key towards civilian attitudes, right? Like, I'm a comedian and I will be the first person to tell you that I don't think comedy, I don't think political

comedy is necessarily revolutionary. I think it can be cathartic. I think a lot of liberal comedy

for example is making liberals feel superior. But I don't think it's like, we didn't satire Trump out of office the first time. Okay. We're not satiring them out of here. The second time. But it can be like you said like a bell weather, it can be the like canary in the coal mine of something falling apart, right? And it can be a way that people communicate attitudes. First of all, in a close society safely around censorship or around, you know, a way to not get flagged as

insurgent, right? But also, I think it's fascinating from a global perspective that, you know, we can sort of figure out the shift in civilian attitudes that way. And, you know, to give it a slightly historical population, sorry, perspective. Like, I've studied a lot of comedy historically, you know, going back to even like the year 1100, right? And what's fascinating about it is that you can see perspectives that are recognizable. And you go, oh, not everyone was

a zealot for the emperor or whatever. Like, oh, there's all these jokes about how arrogant this person was or all of these jokes about, you know, these leaders. And then we understand a little bit more of the culture at the time. Even, I'm sorry, this is a bummer topic for our levity segment. But one of the reasons that we knew that people that we know historically, what was happening, that people contemporaneously knew what was happening in the concentration camps during World War II versus

the a historical fact that only people, people in civilian populations in Europe only ever found out after World War II is that there are records of jokes within Jewish Germany of people referencing what was actually happening in the concentration camps, ironically. And we even have records of humor that was developed within the concentration camps because people were liberated. So it's like,

but it's also this fast, it becomes this historical document because you can say, oh, no, no one

knew or no one, everyone in Russia still believed in Putin and often, you know, later administrations

will say that. But those jokes, they they hold up as almost like historical pinpoints of how

“people actually felt. Which I think is really for sure. As a comedian, I love it when comedy is important.”

Yeah. Well, I think that's the end of our episode. And let's, sorry, Matt, did you want to say

no. And then that's the end of our episode. That brings us to the end of our episode.

“Once again, you've been listening to American Power from Findout Media. Make sure to subscribe”

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“means. For Mr. Global and Chad Scott, I'm Nat Taos and you've been listening to American Power from”

Findout Media. No, I was remember. Power corrupts. But American Power, corrupts. Americanly.