This is Deep State radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio i...
subbasement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C. and from other undisclosed locations
across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to Need to Know. I'm David Rothkuff here host and today, as every time we get together, we're going to have a conversation with somebody we think can help shed some light on the news today, where especially fortunate to have with us Ken Harba, Ken is a former Navy pilot of veteran advocate, political
commentator, president of the Valor Media Network, where they have produced a whole bunch of interesting documentaries on subjects about which we will talk a little bit now. And he has also written a number of important articles, including a couple months ago one that I thought was really great, called The Warrior, which is of Ukraine's resistance
“in the Atlantic, if you want to go look for it, hey Ken, how are you doing?”
I'm good David, thanks for having me. Well, it's great to have you here. I've got 20 subjects that I'd like to cover, so I'm going to sort of go rapid fire here because I'd like to get into the zip code of that article that you wrote, but I want
to do it headlines first because you were Navy pilot and when you watch what's going on
with the USS Abraham Lincoln and off the coast of Iran, you must have some reaction. I got thoughts. And so, share your thought. I think it's important to point out to listeners to everybody, really, to the American people, that what we're seeing on board the USS Abraham Lincoln are complaints that are
not really about food or conditions.
“This is a breakdown of faith in leadership, because life at sea is hard, life for deployed”
is tough, sailors endure rough conditions, and I understand this is a long deployment. It has been extended, promises have been broken, and yeah, they're running out of fresh food and vegetables, and some of the pictures coming off the ship are pretty horrifying unless you've been in a trench and endure those kind of circumstances. But Navy sailors and families, especially, they don't gripe like this unless there is a fundamental
breakdown in their faith in their leadership. And I'm talking about the civilian leadership mainly here, especially when you have complaints that are so easily and callously dismissed by the president and by the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Defense calling the complaints about lack of food fake news. The president, when asked if the deployment had gone on to long, said no, not nearly long
enough. And when he was asked about families who were worried about their loved ones on board, he said no, they're not. That kind of thing is way more devastating to morale aboard a ship or in any unit than the conditions themselves, which we are trained to put up with.
OK, so let me break it down into component parts, because there's several stories going on here, right? One of them is has to do with military readiness and mismanagement and the Department of Defense
“with regard to an unnecessary and illegal war, right?”
So, part of it is, you know, when you take a carrier battle group and you put it out for 250 days or 260 days, I don't think most people realize that that's longer than usual. And then what it then means is the carrier battle group comes off the table for the next 17 or 18 months, because it's got to go back and it's got to be repurbished. In this particular case, not only is that going to have to happen, but they're bringing
the George Washington carrier battle group around from Asia. It was the primary group that we had off the coast of China. It's removing a capability that we may need to have. Combine this with the fact that we've apparently used up significant portion of precision guided weapons, atomic hop missiles and other kinds of things, which by the way, people knew
was a problem for several years.
They didn't know that they were going to take some of these down by 90 percent of what
We held down to next to nothing.
And I don't think people realized that, you know, that this, I mean, the war was a necessary. Using any of them was unnecessary. It was hugely costly. These weapons are hugely costly, but this is going to take many, many years to fix. And they're going to go in.
They're going to make a bunch of announcements and say, here's a contract, and they're
going to put this on fast, but the reality is that with regard to restoring the stock
files of these weapons, that's going to take years. Take these things together, and you've got carrier battle groups out of commission. You've got weapons that we need to have that we don't have, and that makes us vulnerable, and it makes us unable to advance our interests anywhere in the world.
“Not for the next few weeks, but for the next several years, right?”
And I don't know that people get that. No, they don't. And I think it also needs to be pointed out that this isn't just about poor planning and production bottlenecks when it comes to replenishing the diminished missile stockpiles. It's about really stupid employment of these systems.
I saw a stat recently from a trustworthy source that said, between us and our allies in the region, after launching this, as you point out, illegal unnecessary. I'll add stupid war of choice against Iran. We have expended 900 of our prestige interceptors against Iranian drones and missiles flying at our bases and allied capitals across the region, 900.
The Ukrainians in the last three years have shot 600. What they are doing to counter this threat that is not new.
“We've known what a shahed drone can do for years.”
They are shooting them down with smaller cheaper, more nimble drones that cost a few thousand dollars each.
Meanwhile, we are launching in some cases two or three, multi-million dollar interceptors
to knock down a $20,000 Iranian shahed flying at a US air base. And even then, they are getting through. The first six KIAs killed in actions in this conflict with Iran were at a base in Kuwait that did not have the kind of protection they needed from the Shahed drones. And that blood is on the hands of our civilian leadership for not preparing for this.
But their answer seems to be not to take help from the Ukrainians who figured this out years ago to launch as many missiles as they possibly can at these cheap drones and in that engagement, Iran wins every time because they don't even need to get the drone through if they soak up millions of dollars of US ordinance and to plead our stockpile. And make us weaker around the world because I guarantee you China is watching every minute
of this.
Yeah, and by the way, they also sent a message to the Iranians saying, keep using the
$10,000 drones, one of the things we've done in the context of this war is give Iran new strategic tools in the region and that includes, of course, the straight. I want to get to a different thing on drones in a minute because that's something that you're very familiar with. But also as a veteran and as somebody has been through this, you know, you talk about
morale, like a food being held out on these missions for a long time. You talk about morale and the context of the kind of war on the defense department that eggs at this run in terms of if you don't believe in a certain way or if you're black
“or if you're a woman, they've gone after you, but I think another one that really resonates”
with me is they're allies about the casualties associated with this war. And it's a betrayal of trust to the military, it's a betrayal of trust to the American people. And I get the impression we still really don't know how damaging a lot of these Iranian attacks were on our bases throughout the region and what a significant impact they have
on our capacity there. Quite quite beyond what the, the human tool was. I mean, I think it was last week. We learned, oh, 600 people have been injured in the course of this war. And they were hiding the data.
Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because it used to be that this kind of thing, this kind of reporting was just pro forma. The thought that it would be politicized, I'm talking about the actual reporting of numbers decast, the defense casualty analysis system, I didn't even know what it was called until
a few weeks ago, it was just a website where you could go get the latest on these casualty numbers and sure there was some, there were some adjustment at the margins for security reasons. You don't report when certain troops are engaged on, in covert missions and we lose them.
The four Americans who were killed in Jordan after the ceasefire was signed, ...
from decast again, if you're a sailor aboard the USS Lincoln, you're already not doing
“great because you're down to canned food and beef jerky.”
And you hear that this administration, the secretary of defense, the president himself, or lying about the sacrifices being made, that has just a devastating effect on morale. The other thing that that I want to point out is just how idiotic the whole approach is. The thought that they could get away with this, if they're that stupid when it comes to messaging, I guarantee you they're not any smarter when it comes to actually how to fight
this war. That should be the real concern, if you've got a loved one for deployed, if you've got a sailor on board the Lincoln, they can't even hide four KIAs, I guarantee that they're
planning on how to win this war isn't going any better.
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“Right, and that's why we're losing to a much more a much weaker, smaller,”
felt that we shouldn't have entered the war, but at the end of this war, regardless of the amount of damage that's been inflicted on Iran, they will have more leverage in this region than they had before. More tools for exercising that leverage than they had before. We will be severely depleted.
We will have damaged our alliances. I mean, the decision to pull out of joint exercises with the South Koreans, absolutely vital ally, because they didn't support this crazy war, was crazy. Now, the fact that he added to that, he kind of likes Kim Jong Un better than he likes the South
Koreans, absolutely not so, and you know, the whiplash that members of the military must have, that our allies must have, when they see this kind of quote, a quote leadership on the US side, is mind-boggling. If not for our alliance with South Korea, I would have not had an airfield to land at when I lost an engine patrolling the DMZ.
One of my main ALRs before 9/11, everything shifted to the Middle East after, but I flew recon missions off of North Korea and Russia. And the reason we have joint exercises is not as a favor to our allies. It's to make our military better. It's to make sure that we can fight in areas of the world where we are less familiar than our
allies or joint operability helps the American military as much or more as it does our allies. And canceling or scaling back those exercises, because you've got a good personal relationship with a murderous dictator, with whom you've exchanged love letters. Again, not paraphrasing to Donald Trump's describes his love letters to Kim Jong Un, a man who assassinates his political foes with anti-aircraft fire and starving dogs.
That's who we're talking about. It is, if there could be conceived in more brutal regime than Russia, it would be North Korea. And I just think when Donald Trump sees reports like that, he thinks power. He thinks, "I wish I had that kind of control over my population."
“And I honestly think he looks up more to G and Kim Jong Un and Putin.”
Then he does are the leaders of our democratic allies around the world, because he worships power. Yeah, for sure that's true, but he's strengthened them all. I mean, you know, seriously what this decision regarding South Korea, strengthens Kim Jong Un, we've taken decisions in Ukraine. We've taken decisions in Iran.
We've taken decisions with regard to sanctions on Iranian oil that have benefited the Russians. We've taken decisions with regard to sort of pulling back our support for Ukraine that have benefited the Russians. We've benefited the Iranians. We've benefited the Chinese and all of these things.
Our allies are getting weaker, our enemies are getting stronger.
Some of that has to do with, as you say, really, really bad decision-making at the top.
“And I want to talk about that in a few manifestations, but, you know, I noticed that you guys”
at Valor Media had done an interesting documentary on drones and on the future of drone warfare. And, you know, what's happened in Ukraine, but also subsequently in Iran is we've seen the reinvention of the future of war. We realized that unmanned weapons platforms, drones, and both flying drones, and sea going drones are the future of conflict, and we've watched, by the way, as the Ukrainians, out of necessity have turned themselves into world's leading experts, you know, sort of
best in class on this kind of thing. But I noticed, and I'd sort of like to use this as the jumping up point, a story yesterday, where, apparently, we had a group in Europe focusing on drones and
“drone warfare and try to give us this capability, and he had since just shut it down, and said,”
yeah, let's, let's go, you know, we don't, this is a distraction. We need to, you know, we need war fighters. We need the warrior ethos. He's actually trying to turn back the clock, so it is the rest of the world moves forward. We're not ready for it. It's going to take a, and I shutter saying this, it's going to take a 9/11 moment, or a Pearl Harbor moment, to wake up the American people and to wake up this administration, to the, the severity of this threat. And it's no longer hypothetical.
I would point to Operation Spider Web a year and change ago in which the Ukrainian who are military
intelligence directorate smuggled less than a million dollars of drones deep into Russia on these
“tractor trucks, and over the course of several minutes, just a few minutes, they deployed these drones”
and took out up to a third of Putin's strategic air fleet. It was a master stroke of, of Intel and subterfuge, and there is absolutely nothing for vending something similar from happening, not just on an interstate running it next to an American strategic air command base, but outside Baltimore Harbor, or sea tech, or a major American airport. You look at how vulnerable Russia's wild berries, logistics facilities are. If you take out one or two Amazon distribution
centers, which our adversaries could do tomorrow, it would shut down commerce across the country. It would send insurance rates through the roof, and we do not have an answer for it and out of pride and hubris, we are refusing to learn from the one country that has figured this out Ukraine. Yeah, that's figuring it out every day. We saw just this week examples of sending 8,900 drones out 1,000 miles into Russia. We've seen them essentially attack every major oil refining facility
in Russia. We've seen them using sea going drones, and and air going drones, then sort of neutralize Russia's black sea fleet. And you know, frankly, the Crimean Peninsula looks wobbly now in a way
that we never thought that it was was going to look before, and we're dialing it back. By the way,
we're dialing it back, because we really need Trump class battleships, even though even though which are going to cost tens of billions of dollars, even though everybody realized we didn't need battleships, you know, 80 years ago. And we need the golden dome, which by the way, no expert that I speak to who understands missile defense, thinks can work in a country the size of the United States. And it's going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. So, you know,
I want to talk to a CEO, and I said, what's your main focus? He said, the job of every CEO is asset allocation. And when you look at the defense department's asset allocation, this war, these crazy systems, you know, working behind the scenes with Palantir saying, hey, let's come up with the most destructive AI we possibly can. It's crazy, and I would go further, and I really, you know, I was looking forward to talking to you, because I don't think people are
framing it properly. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think we are actually
At a moment of national defense crisis during the United States.
bad decisions, the wrong wars, undermining alliances, empowering enemies, bad asset allocation,
“wrong priorities, undermining morale. I mean, it's just everywhere you look, we are becoming weaker,”
our enemies are becoming stronger, and we are at greater risk. Yeah. And it's not just a leadership and management failure. There are some deep systemic issues when you look at
incentivization. The Ukrainians are going to probably build five million drones this year.
It's why Russia is losing between 35,000 and 40,000 casualties on the front every month. That's a Vietnam's war worth of casualties every six weeks. But when you're a US contractor, when the US government, especially Pete Higgs-Seth's Pentagon, there is enough of a profit margin on a cheap handheld FPV drone to justify investing in a system like that. So yeah, we have deep structural problems that we have to address. I worry that it's going to take that 9/11
moment to wake us up and make us realize that we don't need a battleship. We don't need to rip out the steam or rip out the electromagnetic catapults on carriers and replace them with an a world war two. Yeah, we're really, we're really glad Trump Trump intervened on that one.
“It's it's bananas. And look, I think the battleship is a, it's kind of a perfect metaphor for”
this mismanagement, this style over substance approach to running the US military. The Secretary of the Navy himself said it's going to be the best looking warship on the seas. Sailors don't care about that. They don't care how something looks. They needed to work. And, you know, little, I think interesting footnote as a history geek. There is only one battleship right now that remains on active duty in the US Navy. And it's the USS Arizona at the bottom of Pearl Harbor,
because we refuse to take it off our roster of active ships with its 1176 dealers entombed on board still. But there's a reason we don't have other battleships and it's because they're obsolete.
“They might look good, which is all the president cares about. But you can sink one over the horizon,”
used to be with aircraft now, it's with drones. Yeah, and the reality is what's the direction
with Navy is what's the direction with air forces, what's the direction with ground forces to unmanned. It's using robots, it's using autonomous weapons platforms. And we're, it's like, you know, you're on a highway, you know, it's like a 12-blade highway, and all 11 lanes are heading in that direction, and all of a sudden we're going back. Yeah. And, you know, it's got, it's got a gruesome consequence. But, you know, part of the part of that consequence is due to the fact
that we're not only making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons from the wrong people in terms of acid allocation or in terms of weapon systems or in terms of, you know, this, this, this war in Iran. But we are systematically attacking our allies as in South Korea, as with NATO. And you've spent a bunch of time in Ukraine, and I'm, you know, I'm particularly frustrated by the fact that the reversal of U.S. policy towards Ukraine was egregious. It happened the minute Trump went
in. We switch sides really towards the Russians, even if we kept providing a little bit to the Ukrainians, a little bit of intelligence, Ukraine. And we've sort of left them out there on their own to conduct a war that in terms of our own national security interests has had the greatest return on investment of any such operation in the modern history of the U.S. military. I mean,
you're what Ukraine has done to deplete the second greatest military power, which was, you know,
our principal adversary for a long time is just astonishing. And because Donald Trump likes Russians and doesn't like Ukrainians, you know, we fucked them over. Ukraine is defending not just all of Europe, but the free world. Ukraine is defending Taiwan. And the Taiwanese know this. You actually have Ukrainian experts in Taiwan instructing them on how to meet the, the looming Chinese threat
Across the straight of of Taiwan.
are going to be. He is already encroaching into Poland and the Baltics. He has already testing
“NATO's not just their defenses, but their resolve with these drone over flights. We had a ballistic”
missile hit Poland a couple weeks ago. And you're right about the ROI on this investment in Ukraine. I would much rather see Russian ballistic missiles knock down over Kiev by missiles that we provide them than have to knock them down over American bases or God help us American cities. The Ukrainians are going to emerge from this conflict as not just a military superpower, but I would argue a moral superpower for having carried the torch of democracy after we carried it for
250 years. They are the example the rest of the world is now looking to for what it takes to defend
a democracy in their case against an existential threat.
“Well, other reasons, you know, I go around meeting in Washington and in the past couple of years,”
I've heard so many people go, well, you know my grandfather was from the Ukraine or you know, I'm Ukrainian and it's like people are like, they want to own it because they're proud and amazed, frankly, moved and not frankly every single day. There are new stories of strikes deeper into Russia, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, in Siberia, and you're like holy macro. These people were supposed to lose in three days. I sat in the National Security Adviser's office
three weeks before the war began. The upscaling of the war began and they were like, "Yeah, they're going to come in this way and they're going to do this and they're probably the over and you know, this many days." And history has been rewritten by the courage and the, you know, it doesn't get talked about a lot, but the creativity of this nation in this war and, you know, while we're headed in the other direction, and it is driven in Ukraine by a really
simple value, which is the value of freedom and the value of life. And that might sound like, you know, just a phrase, just a slogan, but it has direct tactical consequences. And three hours, I'm boarding another plane for Ukraine for my next Atlantic story about casualty evacuations. And Ukraine has pioneered the use, you've talked about aerial and sea drones. They're using ground drones to rescue wounded soldiers, deep-eyed enemy lines, where a conventional rescue
would be a suicide mission. And the amount of resources and energy the Ukrainians spend on saving lives and rescuing lives is, it's a tribute to Ukrainian society. It is a, it talks about their values and it is a damning indictment of how Russia is waging this war. Ukrainian generals, I've heard them describe the Russian infantry as human radar, because they send them forward in waves, wherever the bodies pile up, that's where the Ukrainian strong points are. By contrast, I have seen video and,
and heard first-person accounts of the most heroic actions of soldiers rescuing their buddies.
And that just doesn't happen on the Russian side. This really is a clash of civilizations. And we better really better realize it and pick the right side soon. Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the admonition. I got some bad news for you. We picked the wrong side. And, you know, Whitkoff talks about how close he is to Putin, and we have played into Putin's hands
“over and over again. I think neglected in this past weeks, latest love note to Kim Jong-un,”
is the fact that they're North Koreans fighting for the Russians in Ukraine. In other words, they're actually, we are actually a Trump actually embraced part of the enemy in this conflict. Here, the other point, which I think is worth rigging out and what you're saying is, as they develop, you know, unmanned alternatives for rescuing casualties and so forth, they're not just saving Ukrainian lives. They're showing us how to save American lives. You know, they're showing us
how to take better care of our troops, not that this President particularly cares about that. Before you go, because this was where we started on this whole thing. You're last Atlantic article,
The Warrior Witches of Ukraine's Resistance.
should be a movie. Please go sell the movie at one of the same money. But, but just talk a little
bit about that, because I think it also speaks to this issue of this incredible combination,
this cocktail of creativity and courage. Well, I have to preface just about everything I say with regard to the story by saying that the Ukrainians want to told now. As you might imagine, stories about resistance activities deep in the occupied territories. I'm talking about those parts of Ukraine that Russia has taken and is brutalizing. Those are tough stories to get out.
“You have to walk a real fine line in how you tell them and there is probably 10 stories that I had”
to leave out for every story that made it into the Atlantic peace. But the reason the Ukrainians
want this story told now about what they are doing behind enemy lines to drive the Russians out
is that there is a palpable fear that America is going to try to impose a peace and for those just listening. That's an air quotes that forces Ukraine to surrender part of its own country. And for anyone who is seen what the Russians did in Bucha, I've seen the mass grave there for anyone who was read about what they did in mario pool or continue to do in the east. Surrendering parts of your country to that is like cutting off a part of your body. It's not peace. The brutality
that the Russians inflict every day. In fact, on the left bank of the Nupar river in herestone, the Russians advertise the locations of their torture chambers. They dump the bodies on the streets in the morning in full view of the drone cameras, not to mention the public, because they want Ukrainians to know what they are capable of. It is a degree of depravity that I can't think of many times in human history that it has been matched. But the resistance fighting it is it's the most
heroic work of this war and it is exceedingly lonely. It's not like the French resistance where you gather in an abacement and sipped your your coffee or wine or whatever and talked about the next day's operations. Most of these operators and most of them are women at this point.
“That's why they are the warrior witches of Ukraine's resistance. They operate alone. And they might”
have no idea that there are other operatives in their apartment complex. But for the fact,
that Russians are dying around them every day. And it is their job to provide critical
intelligence, coordinates, identities, these kinds of things to the drone operators in free Ukraine. And that is the nexus. The Intel feeds the drone campaign. That is striking Russian occupation targets. And it's also the reason David that Crimea is now shaky, because the M14 highway, the land bridge to Crimea, is basically impossible now because of the intelligence provided by the resistance and being acted upon by these drone squadrons, which I also embedded with
for this article, just an amazing network. Yeah. And I might have, you know, how we cover a war obviously impacts how we see it. And I talked to a lot of sort of traditional war reporters who are there. And they were reporting the fighting on the Eastern Front in this war was like World War One. And the message of that was, this is not winnable. And it supported the message that Trump and a bunch of other people in the U.S., we're embracing that, well, look, it's unrealistic to think
that Ukraine could reclaim all its territory. But that's not the story. This is a 21st century war being fought in 21st century ways that have enabled a much smaller country, not only to defend itself, but to inflict great damage on one of the worlds, at least former superpowers, still a great power in military terms. And again, it's just how you cast the story
“and it's not being done. But I say what you're doing, super important, because I think it's”
telling the story the right way. And I wish you luck on this trip, and I hope you stay safe, and I hope we can keep having this conversation. And, you know, folks, I hope everybody is listening and recognizing that this is not just a Pete Higgs-Seth is a dope and Donald Trump is a dope, and they've got, you know, the Trump's sons are, you know, running some scam for defense
Contracting.
And some of it may be idiocy, and some of it may be corruption. Some of it almost inevitably
“is something else. And it's super dangerous, and we need to be aware of it, and people like Ken”
are out there reporting it. I would encourage you to go to the Valor Media Network, too, because
yet now you've got some documentaries and things on this stuff that people want to see it.
“And I think they're, they're worth looking at. Anyway, thank you, Ken. Thanks David.”
Safe travels. Thank everybody, and we'll see you again next week. Bye, bye.
