Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Unpacking Global Threats and Local Politics
When military veterans analyze politics, they bring a unique perspective that cuts through partisan noise. This episode of Left Face offers exactly that as Dick Wilkinson and Adam Gillard engage in a wide-ranging discussion that connects local Colorado politics with global security concerns.
The conversation begins with a firsthand account of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser's town hall event, where both hosts witnessed his commitment to addressing community questions and his track record of challenging executive overreach. This leads to a thoughtful analysis of how tax policies impact veteran retirement decisions – with Dick making a compelling economic case for why states should incentivize military retirees to stay local rather than flee to tax-friendly destinations.
Space Command's announced relocation from Colorado Springs to Huntsville becomes a launching point for examining both immediate local impact and long-term strategic considerations. The veterans offer reassurance about Colorado's enduring space industry presence while acknowledging the potential for gradual shifts in defense contractor investments.
Things take a darker turn as they discuss recent military actions against alleged drug traffickers in international waters, raising profound questions about authorization, oversight, and the disturbing precedent of lethal force without clear accountability. This connects to growing concerns about domestic deployment of military assets and constitutional boundaries between state and federal authorities.
Most alarming is their assessment of the recent summit in China that brought together Putin, Xi Jinping, and other leaders opposed to American interests. Drawing on their military expertise, Dick and Adam break down China's growing capabilities in anti-satellite warfare and what Taiwan's semiconductor industry means for American national security. Their analysis offers a sobering reminder of how economic and military threats intertwine in ways most civilian analysts miss.
Want to join the conversation? Connect with us on social media or attend our upcoming events where veterans and community members come together to discuss the politics that shape our lives.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the Pikes Peaks Region podcast for veterans, where we talk about politics. I am your co-host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined this morning with Adam Gillard. Good morning, adam.
Speaker 2:Good morning Dick. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Doing well. We are filming on location today in front of a non-existent studio audience. So good to have you over at the house. How have you been this week and what? I guess we're doing a potpourri episode. We didn't prep. This time we're just going to go for a free-for-all. So let's start with what's the most interesting topic on your mind this week, adam.
Speaker 2:I'd like to talk about the town hall or the meet and greet that we had over the weekend with Phil Weiser. I thought that was a pretty cool event.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was able to attend that and I was glad I did because I got to see some of the qualities about this candidate that you've seen. So how did you put that together and kind of, what was the affiliations there? Who all was involved in that event?
Speaker 2:So just a good friend of mine, lois, she reached out. She runs the manitou springs portion of the campaign, okay, or one of the volunteers up there doing it. And then she put me in contact with the el paso county reps forum. Uh, and I'd seen him speak at the indivisible event a couple months ago I guess it was now and uh, you know, we probably had probably had 700 people at that meeting and people left really energized listening to him. Good, the community really loves him coming out and talking because so let's say who him is real quick.
Speaker 1:Just let's clear that up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Attorney General Phil Weiser, he's a current Attorney General.
Speaker 2:Current Attorney General running Weiser. He's a current attorney general. He's a current attorney general running for governor. He was kind of one of the first big names to put his name out there. Now Senator Bennett is probably the next biggest competition, but yeah, so running for governor already has a pretty great track record of fighting the Trump administration. He's sued him 35 times already. So, yeah, just somebody that I've seen speak in the community and at that Dem West that we had, he was out there also, so he's getting around the state. You know he's putting in a lot of travel.
Speaker 1:That is a hard part of one of those types of statewide seats where you've got to touch every corner, every county, every little town hall place you can go to, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's got to be a warrior type job. Yeah, I mean we had like an hour with him because he was just kind of passing through from Pueblo back up to Denver. So you know we were able to talk to the IBEW folks and get the hall reserved so that you know, even having an hour out there, you know meeting something and you know we got the word out and you know we had 75, 80 people folks that showed up.
Speaker 1:So I was glad to see that, for, really, it's it's very early in. You know this race situation, so for candidate events like that, you are it's it's iffy, because a lot of people aren't tuned in on what race you're in. You know what. You know they thinking about it next year, right, and so people coming out to primary type events for your campaign, it's um, tends to be the more diehard people that are within the party, right and um. I feel like, though, there was a good representation of not just party diehards that go to every political event in town, but, uh, also people that you know don't necessarily regularly attend those types of events, but but either saw where it was at or him as an interesting uh speaker, so that was encouraging to get a bit a bit of a different cross section of people that were politically motivated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the, uh, the, the marketing, the marketing that we did for you know, I think we got a lot of good veterans out there that you know had a lot of good questions, and I thought his tactic at the end of just kind of taking a lot of questions and then rapid-fire answering, he really tried to leave no question unanswered. So I thought it was really cool that he did that and was respectful of everybody's time too, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:Really cool that he did that and was respectful of everybody's time too. Yeah, so I asked Mr Weiser a question during the rapid fire section because I realized it was the chance to kind of get it out there and I knew that I wouldn't get a very detailed answer. What would you be able to do, or what would be your priorities, to make Colorado attractive to veterans and retirees that are getting out at one of these military bases here and they look at the landscape of options? You know we all would get that last PCS so we can go kind of wherever we want on the government's dime. And people are making a lot of financial decisions based on if they're going to work again or if they're going to live off their retirement and or disability, and so the attractiveness of certain regions comes down to financial choices.
Speaker 1:And I think for all of us that live here in Colorado, we understand that there are in fact other places that are lower cost of living. You know, and we've lived there as military people If you've ever been stationed in Georgia, you understand that it's cheaper to live in Georgia or Oklahoma than it is in Colorado, in Georgia. You understand that it's cheaper to live in Georgia or Oklahoma than it is in Colorado, and so if you had any reason to go back there, you might choose that as your landing spot, because it's a lot cheaper and it's a lot easier for your family to enjoy your retirement, and so that's got to be a priority for anybody in the governor role and at the state legislature level to make policies that are attractive for that population.
Speaker 2:I think right now our retirement gets taxed at like 20% or not 20, so 20,000. I think. I think like it's that's when our uh taxes for the estate taxes really start kicking in. Um, so there's a little bit of you know grace there, but uh, but yeah, a lot of other states. You know that the retirement that we get is not taxed at all. So yeah, it's a lot of other states. You know the retirement that we get is not taxed at all, so yeah it's a lot more.
Speaker 1:It's hard to compete against that if you're not going to. You know if you need the tax money in some areas to make certain programs work, but then in the other hand you try and you know you may be supportive of a tax reduction for certain populations of people. Yeah, the you know we, as the veterans, we have to defend our position and say, well, why do you want that? You know, what do you? Why? You know, thank you for your service is one thing. Right If it's just like, hey, we want to give you a break, we want you to, you know, keep as much money as you can, but but what about? How does that impact the rest of society other than the veterans Right on the show before? But I'll give my my take on it.
Speaker 1:The economic impact of having military retirees in your community is significant, and I can't quote a research study, so I'm speaking anecdotally. But I would like to think that the economic offset of reducing those taxes and keeping, let's say, a couple hundred more veteran families in the community. They mostly work again after the military. They mostly work in high-paying jobs where they're contributing local taxes, they're mostly spending money on local resources and so you've got a really a citizen in your community that is contributing through multiple streams of income and wants to enjoy, you know, whatever you've, whatever you've kind of cultivated for everybody else in the city, and so the economic impact of them being there offsets the tax reduction to the rest of the community because it's poured back in through 100 percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's my take on it.
Speaker 1:You know that's, if anybody in one of those those decision making positions asked, that would be my answer. But then of course, if they ask me, can you, can you show a study on that? Honestly, some of those things are researched and that that information is available, that's something through the uh party committee that we're on, the council that we're on. We should look into getting access to some of that research because I've seen it before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, because you know that's kind of once you throw that in their face, then they want the stats, you got to back it up. Yeah, once something makes sense, I'm like, well, yeah, that does make sense, but you have to have an answer for that.
Speaker 1:You got to back it up, yeah, yeah, because otherwise we have a declared conflict of interest. We would benefit from the tax reduction, and so of course you know if you want to pick up your veteran banner and then use that to lobby to just improve your own life. Man, that's not what we're about.
Speaker 2:The thing that I, like every elected official that I talk to, I try to always talk about active duty taxes. You know, I think our active duty troops should not be paying state taxes, because right now, anybody that's on active duty here, they're going to be a resident of Florida or Texas or Arizona Any of those states that don't have state tax.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, they're incentivized to switch, yeah, so they don't really.
Speaker 2:they live in these communities but they don't vote on who's running our communities. You know they're voting on Arizona or Texas. So yeah, I think if we were to do that you know with, you know current, you know Space Force, you know Peterson, you know all those locations I think you know you'd get a lot more blue people changing their registration than red folks, because red folks are already. You know, red folks already have Texas or Florida. They're happy and they're probably going to go back there. But there's a lot of people working here in these communities that are going to stay in these communities that just don't change their registration because I mean, I didn't.
Speaker 1:I was registered in Texas when I joined, and so why would I change? So I was a citizen of Texas when I joined, so I why would I change, you know? So I was a citizen of Texas when I joined, so I just stayed that way throughout my entire career, because there was never an incentive to change to some local registration or, you know, proof of residence type thing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, when I moved to Arizona, you know we changed, and then you know, coming up here, you know six years later or something like that we didn't change until I retired.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and and I mean I'm in that same boat now that this was the first move I ever made outside of the military where I actually had to like switch everything over, um, and it was. You know, I was like man I'm moving from a lower tax state to a higher tax state and I like can't defend against that. But whatever, I guess you know we're retired now. But uh, the benefit of having old dick wilkinson here you know, I'll speak.
Speaker 1:You know I'll speak on behalf of everybody else I don't know about the benefit of having me around but I can tell you how other veterans impact your community.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, um, I you know thanks for putting that together and I did follow up with uh. They gave me a chance to email one of his campaign coordinator people and I was able to send over a note and say that we'd like to have him on the show and you know when it makes sense for the campaign because, of course, we want to time certain like media things within your cycle of you know, primary or general race type stuff, so there's probably a right time for him to do that. Marry or general race type stuff, so there's probably a right time for him to do that. And then, of course, I offered, you know, to support the campaign. You know to what degree that I could. You know I'm not saying I'm picking a winner or personally endorsing anything, yet you know I haven't heard anything about any other candidates, but so far I mean he.
Speaker 1:I would absolutely vote for him from what I heard, yeah, so that's why I'm willing to help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, because even when he talked about fighting the merger for King, Soopers and Safeway assuming they're going to find that merger he told us that the they were actually like illegally colluding with each other to not hire each other's employees. Yeah, so like, yeah, like, go after everybody man. He is definitely somebody that's going to fight for the working class Sure.
Speaker 1:So that was your top item on mind. I guess I'll share mine and I might surprise some of our listeners. And I might surprise some of our listeners. This week there was Donald Trump. Our president made an announcement that the Space Command is moving to Huntsville, and so that was something that we have talked about on the show and understood it was. You know, we described it as just a ticking clock for whenever that order comes through, and so that happened this week. People reached out to me and said oh hey, dick, are you moving to Alabama now, because I work in the space industry, right?
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I said no, I said I'm not. Space command is for folks that don't necessarily understand this is not the Space Force, this is the Space Combatant Command, which is a joint command of all the military branches put together to do joint operations in a space environment. Right, and that's defensive and offensive and research and everything else. Right, and so that's what the Space Command does. And if there was ever like a weaponization of space and that commander would be the one to authorize like use of force in space, right, that does not impact the rest of the services of the Space Force that they provide to the government and the other military branches and the intelligence community, et cetera. So the management of spacecraft already on orbit space comm has almost nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1:Um. The management of new technologies and new assets coming into the service space command has very little to do with that as well, um, from a acquisition perspective versus the rest of the Space Force. So all the rest of the footprint of the Space Force activities around here, they're not changing. You know Peterson, schriever and Buckley and then NORAD, facilities and capabilities there you know all of that stuff is not going anywhere. And capabilities there, you know all of that stuff is not going anywhere. So the Space Command is a significant footprint here and is a bit of a I want to call it a crown jewel, right, but the overall impact to the space industry and economy here in Colorado Springs I think it's going to be pretty limited.
Speaker 2:I would agree in the short term, but in the long term, I think what you're going to see is a lot of the bigger. Space Command is big here because the space industry is big here, because Space Command and space started really developing here with Schriever and things like that. But as we go forward and they're looking to replace a lot of the getting outdated systems out, of Schriever things are coming up on end of life. They're going to take root somewhere.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you're saying the infrastructure resources will go elsewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll follow the command they're going to follow where the bigwigs are sitting because that's where they make the decisions and that's going to be the communities that they want to help serve the most is the ones where you know the raytheon ceos and you know now got a condo in alabama uh, so you know, wherever those big program managers are sitting and the four-star generals are sitting, that's where the decisions are happening and but I think I guess what I'm saying is there will endure to be senior leadership here at these places in colorado that aren't necessarily part of the combatant command but are still part of the rest of the Space Force management.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Space is pretty heavy in senior leadership right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's all of it. That's really all space is right now. Yeah, you know, I didn't realize there's like only hundreds of people in the Space Force, not thousands, right Like. There's like a thousand people in the Space Force right now or something like that. I'm pretty sure there are a few thousand now. Yeah, maybe, maybe this year they. You know, I know the recruitment's never been a problem, I don't think. But I mean, it's just, it's tiny. I mean, even then, even if it was 10,000 people, like that's tiny you know, Like that's a lot to go around work-wise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're still growing into their mission, I guess, is the point of that well, and they've been slowly kind of transferring the responsibilities yeah out of air force and so, yeah, they just kind of like gain people just through that process, through the um acquisition of other yeah responsibilities yeah, the reserve unit, uh, the reserve plane just shut down this year and that was about a thousand people in that space reserve plane that are now kind of uh, either into the space force or back into the civilian world. So, yeah, yeah, space in general isn't that large of a industry community yeah, yeah, it's very small yeah, it's crazy, and it's crazy and specialist too.
Speaker 1:Um well, for me, you know, the space command being top of mind, I think people that aren't from here saw it as a pretty big blow Politically. You know, I don't really know the impact it could be used as a talking point against people that are currently in office or future candidates, you know. If you want to say, hey, look at what they didn't do to support the community, well, that will be a talking point. And, uh, you know, cherry picking opportunity to say, hey, you messed up. You know.
Speaker 2:I mean, if lamborn did one thing, we still had space, you know. So now you replace them and, you know, immediately goes away. And this is right after crank gets the endorsement from trump too. You remember that oh no, yeah, like a week before trump came out and you know, endorsed crank and you talk about all the great things that he's doing and everything like that. I didn't hear about that yeah, so that happened about a week before, so that's a soften the blow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, he's like hey, man, we're about to take away your one of your toys, but you think you're a cool guy? Yeah, we're not gonna like burn you down and I down and it sells around here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you don't get a whole lot of outrage from the Republican side, or even with the Epstein file release, you know they. It's silent. Yeah, they're not saying anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's true. Speaking of that, I saw that you know Congress is back in session, and so the topic just resumed as though it had never stopped. Really, you know, once Congress left early, even to delay votes on certain things that were regarding Epstein. You know content? Yeah, things have happened during recess. None of it was valid, like new information has been released or anything like that, and so Congress and it's the thing that I'm noticing is that the bipartisan aspect of it is starting to get a little bit louder, that's, there's more Republicans that are getting involved and saying, like this is we're out of bounds here. You know, like, regardless of who may or may not be protected or not by this, like action, the people have demanded this. Yeah, transparency.
Speaker 2:It makes sense yeah.
Speaker 1:What they're asking for makes sense, and so the Republicans are starting to.
Speaker 2:strangely enough, this is a topic where they might step out of ranks a little bit yeah, I think right now four have standing, including uh bobart, or you know, in the fourth district. She's one of the folks that uh said that they would sign the petition, um, and I think they're four short right now on what they need. But, yeah, it's good to see some folks have a backbone because he's even come out and like threaten them saying, like you, yeah, any support of this is an attack on the trump administration like what the hell man I?
Speaker 1:mean that's, uh, that's enforcer stuff right there you know what? I'm saying that's, that's the goon mentality of like hey, step out of line and it's gonna be your ass right like yeah, yeah, but, and so many people are just okay with it, they'll just fall in line and well, it's easier to fall in line than it is to, you know, say something right.
Speaker 1:I mean honestly, and you know, I thought about this, uh, a day or two ago. Um, there are, there's obviously there's just one president and vice president, but there are 500 people in congress over 500 people, there's 400 something. House members and then 100, you know, senators 435, over 500 people, there's 400 something.
Speaker 1:House members, and then 100 senators and so 500 people. That actually does create some room for there to be people that just kind of slip back into the cracks, vote yes on everything but never really get any attention for being like a super hard party liner. And they're just these safe votes that are built into the apparatus. If you will, the Doug Lamborns, if you will, and they don't want to get you know, they will never rock the boat because the local population is a slam dunk reelection and as long as you don't piss off the top of the party, you basically you have guaranteed support from the base. So don't, don't incite the top of the party to come get you, you know, and then you can just cruise like for a long, long time, and so 500 people allows that to happen, you know? Um, good or bad, it's just the state of affairs right now and the whip, the majority minority, whips, they just I don't think there's any motivation for them to do much about that because, like I said, those are just guaranteed votes in your column.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so yeah, and that's you know. When you see folks like Mamdani in New York upsetting things, you know even people on your own side get upset when you start trying to rock that vote.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:You know you try to take away your you know for sure votes on whatever topic it is.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, if you start messing with districts that are those sleepy guaranteed vote districts, yeah you, now you've got the wrong attention you know, so, again, you know, it's just not, it's not conducive to the game of long longevity in politics, can be supported by just kind of slipping into those cracks. You know, know, I don't think anybody joins uh a political office uh to to work like that. But I think once they get in there and kind of see what their left and right limits are, they're like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna do this, yeah, yeah, and you know, again, it's it's. Is it a betrayal of their original intentions or oath or promises or whatever? Maybe?
Speaker 2:I think it's absolutely shameful that they're sitting in the place where our forefathers wrote all these documents, that they sit there and claim the gospel to them and everything and they expound on how great the forefathers were. It's like you're sitting in the same seat Like, go be great, go do something that is true.
Speaker 1:I really like that because, yeah, as I was just giving the example of, there are people that can slip into the cracks. There was no such thing. There's no such thing as somebody in the Continental Congress that was like, hey, I just want to kind of put a name on there, but I don't really want to say it. Yeah, I don't really have any ideas, I'm just here to like sign the document.
Speaker 2:What are we doing for lunch?
Speaker 1:the document. Yeah, what are we doing for lunch? No, everybody there was was highly motivated towards passionate outcomes and whether they agreed or disagreed, they wanted to, you know, push that discourse. And if you could assume one of those roles and then not push the discourse you, what are you doing? Why?
Speaker 2:are you sitting?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's the point? Why did you get that job? Yeah, yeah, that's good, that's a good, a good point.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that the forefathers were not there to just fill a seat right, and most of them, when they would go there, they would, you know, their bank or their farms would go bankrupt oh, yeah, they had personal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they had personal consequences from taking, taking that time and going to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh aoc, just put up the bill to uh outlaw stock trading, like you'd have to likeest your funds and things like that.
Speaker 1:Set everything aside and not move it at all. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 1:That is a conflict of interest of public trust. Because you regulate those industries, you regulate those companies. You can shut those companies down. Google's been on the block recently for antitrust stuff. If you're a celebrity politician like AOC and you start barking real loud about antitrust stuff, you could damage Google and that might be what you want. You know, because you want to back, you know, open AI or something like that. You're like yeah, this is my angle and you do that. Four or five layers removed from the problem is what it looks like, right, but you're pulling that string with your own hand.
Speaker 2:So that conflict of interest is extremely real. Tim Scott works somewhere in the administration now and uh, he just got, you know, kind of caught red handed with you know, legislating over you know millions and millions of dollars that he that he gained in his portfolio. Um, after everybody cries about Pelosi and everything.
Speaker 1:And it's wrong about everybody.
Speaker 2:You know it's wrong for everybody to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is Yep, yep, and that makes sense. That outlaw it for. And you know what I want there to be disincentives to being in Congress for forever, right, and maybe that's one of them. You know, If you have to put your whole nest egg into holdings that you can't manipulate or do anything about, and you're there for 10, 20 years and you lose your money After a couple of terms, you might be like, hey, I don't like the direction this is headed. Yeah, maybe I don't like my own thoughts.
Speaker 1:My lifestyle is not supported by $175,000 a year salary, I got a multimillion-dollar lifestyle. That's right, and I have to go back to being a real worker again. Yeah, right, Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You know a couple of terms of that.
Speaker 2:We may have some hot seats open you know, blows my mind is they get paid really good money.
Speaker 1:They're still doing stuff like this and being you know, it's just shady. Yeah Well, as we said you know, talk about cost of living.
Speaker 2:DC is an expensive bank.
Speaker 1:I'm going to know what they get, you know. But I do know that people they'll own a home in their main district, of course, but then they tend to just rent properties. You know apartments and stuff in DC.
Speaker 2:I think Doug Lamborn's last year in Colorado Springs. He spent like 20 days in the Springs because he had a ranch up in Montana that he would just spend all of his time in. Yeah, that's representation of the people right there yeah. That's what we're here for.
Speaker 1:Well, in our potpourri episode to continue, what else is going on? Is there any, I guess, local stuff? Is there any events coming up soon?
Speaker 2:I mean, we got the. Probably the next thing is October 18th is the next big protest, Okay. So, yeah, we're going to start working on locations for that. It's going to be one of the big nationwide ones that they put a lot of you know kind of weight behind in advertising. Okay, so they're expecting huge numbers again. Yeah, that should be another big day for us. Okay, what I wanted to, I kind of thought about as you're asking that question did you hear about the, the strike that we had on a drug boat in the Caribbean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I did yeah. Military strike, military strike on a boat in international waters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with 11 people on it. Yeah, like that's not a drug running boat man.
Speaker 1:Oh, I mean, I didn't question whether it was or wasn't a drug boat, you know, they go for speed in those Well sure?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know they go for speed in those Well sure. And having 11 extra people on that means you need to yeah Right, yeah, that's true, but still to kill 11 drug runners, even if they are drug runners without you know An active military campaign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, what named campaign did they do that strike under? You know who was the authorizing authority for that, was it you know? Yeah, I mean, what named campaign did they do that strike under? You know who was the authorizing authority for that, was it you know? Yeah, I mean, dea can't order a strike on a boat in international waters, right, so so?
Speaker 2:was it a Navy helicopter? Would you know what it was? I don't know what actually no, yeah, because when you say that, I saw the video. So much of our police forces are militarized now I wouldn't be surprised if it's like miami people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just in case cuba tries to invade yeah, yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So now we're executing people. You know, we're not even like going onto the boat and seeing what's on the boat, right, they just said hey, everybody, this was drugs. These 11 people were carrying drugs. Oh, they trust the intelligence community when they get to blow up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, they trust the intelligence community when they get to blow up a drug boat. No shit, they don't trust the intelligence community, when they're like, hey, I don't think that really happened, yeah, you know. And he's like, yeah, intel's always fishy. Yeah, when the rest of the world, you can authorize a strike to kill people based off of you know no upfront like inspection. Inspection, like you say, of the boat or anything like that's purely intel, right, right, you can rely on intel in that moment, but you can't rely on it in other moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow yeah, okay, yeah, like I really think that that's an international crime right there, like I think that would be chargeable, yeah but you know who doesn't care?
Speaker 1:anybody, all those dead people, they're the only ones that care. Right, like the government, whatever government where the boat actually did come from, isn't gonna say anything. Uh, the international community, like it wasn't a, we didn't smoke a cargo vessel, you know, so that you know that would have got some attention, and even that, like iran does that and nobody does anything, you know, and they blow up cargo vessels on an oil tanker. So you know, I mean, there's, there's no consequences so you know it's uh.
Speaker 1:Is it a good idea? Probably not, but is it uh gonna lead to any outcomes or policy changes? I mean, it'll just keep happening more honestly well, and that's the thing is.
Speaker 2:if people don't like, cause a stink over this, like it's going to happen, yeah, yeah. It's precedent, yeah, and it's going to get closer and closer. Sure, They've already talked about having the armed drones flying over some of the protests. There's predator drone footage of the LA protests.
Speaker 1:It's like why are they being deployed on our own folks? Well, Marines needed something to do. They deployed the Marines and they were like, hey, let's turn on our stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we talked about it last week where you know the guard just kind of hanging out in DC, yeah, just trying to normalize their presence there. I see them more and more at that Union Station that they took over. You know, I think they got a good presence down there, um, but then, uh, there's still a growing.
Speaker 2:You know complaints or whatnot about uh, picking weeds and things like oh sure uh, yeah, I think if we don't get them out of there soon, they're gonna get bored and like just the marines on okinawa aren't a good example Sure, yeah, you don't want idle hands or the you know devil's workshop, right?
Speaker 1:So that's the last thing you need is armed troops walking in circles for months and months with no mission. Yeah, like, yeah. And that's not a knock on the troops or their discipline or anything like that, it's just it turns it into a tinderbox?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:It turns the whole thing into a tinderbox. The citizens and the troops both get worn down by the activity of just walking around. You know being present, right, and then you know people start getting. Something happens on the subway and a soldier gets involved, and you know it's already gonna you know, we're days away from something like that days away from something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, because they are. You know, on the uh, on the subways and everything already you know on public transportation, so I'm sure people aren't being nice at what they say to them. You know it's gonna the tide's gonna turn yeah, the um.
Speaker 1:well, you also mentioned that the chicago push for as far as putting troops out there, right that the mayor says don't come, the governor says don't come.
Speaker 2:The.
Speaker 1:National Guard from Illinois is not going to be activated because you know the governor is giving orders not to do that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, you mentioned that Trump is trying to pull him from other places, right, yeah, so I guess the Texas National Guard is on the hook, offered to be federalized, or whatever. Yeah, so I guess the Texas National Guard is is on the hook, offered to be federalized, or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So now you're going to send another state's national or another state guard? Yeah, in against the state. Yeah, you know that's a. That sounds crazy to me.
Speaker 1:That sounds like an invasion to me, that's what I would call it. Holy shit yeah no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Of your state and just be like okay, do not, you know. No, no authorized entry from blah blah blah types of people. Yeah, like that was happening down in Texas no-transcript, and they said you know you're not authorized to enter here. If you need help with interdiction, you need to tell us what you need, right, but this is it. Like, this is Texas National Guard controlled property and you're federal and you need to get out of here, you know so that happened last year already.
Speaker 2:Right, but that was also like a manufactured crisis. Well, sure. You know, they drove straight down the road and there was like nothing, right. They had all this militarization of this one area and then right down the road, the gates were wide open and nobody was like screaming through it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I got you. I mean, I'm not discussing the accurate, like the appropriateness of that action, but a state national guard already rejected the presence of a federal entity in Texas, right, and that's a very Texas thing to do, oh, yeah and so, but of course it's also super Texas to be like. You want some, you know some shooters, you know you need some gunslingers you know we got those, you know, so I'll loan you a few gunslingers Like that's super Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got those, you know, so I'll loan you a few gunslingers Like that's that's super Texas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the hypocrisy just in general is super Texas.
Speaker 1:Oh, is it Now? I won't own that.
Speaker 2:I don't want to take that you know, that banner.
Speaker 1:I'll hand that banner back to you. I'm also not governor Greg Abbott, so maybe he owns the hypocrisy piece. Yeah, but yes, there is definitely some, some level of like hey, don't.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean it's don't mess with texas and we don't care if you mess with anybody else, they do, because they're going.
Speaker 1:They're going to illinois, that's what I'm saying, that's, that's, it's proof. Like, hey, we said don't mess with texas, you mess with illinois, all you want.
Speaker 2:You know that's very texas and even like the because going back to when he would just ship people out like the human trafficking aspect of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was sending people out to different states, yeah, sanctuary cities, and saying here's your people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no coordination or anything like that. Yeah, just dropping people off with no resources in the middle of the winter. You know that's the good Christian thing to do. Yeah, yeah, so frustrating so frustrating.
Speaker 1:Uh well, what, uh, what do we? What do we see coming up through the, the lens in the rest of the year I.
Speaker 2:Oh, the axis of evil is taking shape military folks.
Speaker 1:We can't take our eye off this ball. You saw the yeah summit out in china this this last week yeah even the, the hot mic between putin.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't catch that. Yeah, him and Xi were saying talking about immortality and organ transplants and stuff.
Speaker 1:Mm wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, yeah, it was weird Good for them.
Speaker 1:I didn't know they had that.
Speaker 2:You know, a couple of years ago, when they're all saying Putin was going to die because he was all swollen and everything like that, yeah, they were saying he had cancer, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:I guess he got new organs without cancer. And he probably got them from you know, chinese farmers that gee, yeah, that's some crazy stuff, yeah, but yeah, I mean Orban was there, um, pretty much everybody who jong wong was there, yeah, um and his daughter. But did you hear what trump said? No he did not condemn it, he did not ask you. Oh sure he was.
Speaker 1:Like I have good relationships with all of them yeah, he was like oh, I did see no he said he was kind of like bummed that he didn't get to tell president g to send my regards to you know, putin, and yeah, like they're my homeboys. Sorry I missed the party.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he's missed out on the.
Speaker 1:You guys playing golf? Nobody told me. Yeah, yes, that did happen. He threw out a shout-out to his homeboys. Yeah, and that's scary. I'm going to say something scary. That's scary right there. Yeah, because those folks are, they're very visibly aligning to not just do a show of force from a military perspective. They did that, they did a parade of, you know, military equipment and people, but they're aligning to show that the BRICS thing that you know is out there, the different financial alignment away from the United States that they feel like they're in a position where they can do that right, where they can execute.
Speaker 1:Like maybe everything's been posturing up to now and it seems like they're all ready to like pull that ripcord and execute yeah, just completely take and I think that, um, putin's behavior over, you know, throughout the war in ukraine, but really since trump took office again, that was sort of the final testing of the waters for him, of like, is he really gonna try to stop this war or is he just gonna let me do what I want to do? Yeah, and we know, we, as we stand right now, we know what has happened. Putin can do whatever he wants to do in ukraine or in eastern europe, right, and there's not going to be any significant consequence, definitely not a military consequence that stops him. He learned that over the past eight months and yeah, that's that to me, was was a big factor in why he would go to a summit like this and be like, hey, like, let's round up all the whatever we want to do, let's get our plans together. Yeah, you know, yeah, let's do it now.
Speaker 2:So that's that's what I saw out of that event man, yeah, yeah, that is definitely a scary to put that into the long-term strategic lens yeah, and I mean obviously we're not worried about russia from a military perspective.
Speaker 1:I mean they're nuclear country, but like an actual conventional ground warfare or even advanced warfare with drones and all this other stuff, they're not. They're not a foe, right, like ukraine has kept them at bay, even made charges into their territory and threatened moscow at times. Yeah, um, yeah, with with pretty, you know, with ease for a country that size and have that funding and back. If they had actual support of us, they could have It'd be a whole different story, right, and so that's what I'm saying is that Russia is not a formidable military foe. China is more than Russia is from, you know, on most fronts, right, people, equipment, technology, reach, they have more than Russia. But are they challenge us and like really have a protracted, like combat situation? I don't know, man, I feel like we're still significantly advantaged over them for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2:Advantage over them for a lot of reasons, From some of the things that I saw when I was still in one. They have a Blue Sea Navy now where they can actually reach out and touch folks, which is big, but one of their big doctrinal things was take out our space command.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, ASAT type stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the anti-satellite ballistic missiles yeah, um, and that's really just uh. We rely on it so much in combat, you know the uh being able to have video and things like that for senior leaders immediately being able to talk immediately on the battlefields.
Speaker 2:We rely on it so much for predator feeds and things like you know all the different drones yeah if they take that out, that's like 80 of our communication right there and they can do it with so much ease and overwhelmingly um, and they have jammers. So if they don't want to do an asat and kind of ruin everything, yeah, they have jammers and lasers, tons of jammers, yeah like battalions of battalions of jammers we have like a couple hundred people down the road here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they got to like get their stuff together. China's deployed already. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they are a scary, formidable opponent. I would say High cost.
Speaker 1:conflict Winnable, but very high cost.
Speaker 2:I don't even think our doctrine considers them near peer anymore. Right, I'm pretty sure they're just peer, okay, like adversaries. So yeah, they're a scary, scary adversary.
Speaker 1:And we'll use the. You know meat grinder, right. That's the—it's a people's—it's a numbers game, right? I mean, obviously, robots are killing robots now. So like it's a numbers game, right? I mean, obviously, robots are killing robots now. So that's not again.
Speaker 1:The war in Ukraine has shown us that drones on the battlefield are absolutely the way of the future. There's just no way around that. Whether it's missile-type drones or more of your quadcopter-like observation drones, they've got from small squad level all the way up to national level assets. Robots are fighting wars now, right, so that changes the landscape a little bit. If you go, well, you got a billion people and you got you know as many people in that exist in america are military aged capable people in china, right, like. And then they've got the another 700 billion people. That are a million people that are not military capable, right, but they can support the war effort, yeah, and so this just from a numbers game. We can't even come close to head. Count on how many bodies can you shove into the meat grinder, right and those folks are already ready to go into the meat grinder.
Speaker 1:They are, and we have a cultural difference of america. We, you know, in vietnam, like we rejected the meat grinder Right, like there's been a lot of opportunities and instances where the democracy pushes back on that, you know, on that military mentality.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But China doesn't have that. You know, go to war, go to jail. There's no jail, we'll just shoot you now. Get in the bus or you're a casualty. One way or the other you can die here. You can die on the battlefield.
Speaker 1:Catch a bullet on the battlefield your family gets a stipend, die right here. Nothing happens, right, you know, we're not even going to bury you, you know. So that's the choice right. And and they've got enough people to coerce that way that they could have a one-to-one head count against every citizen of the United States. So that makes them appear from just that perspective, even if they were doing it with slings and arrows. You know it's a problem, you know. So I definitely. Throughout my time in the military, I never was worried about a government decision from the senior commanders that would push us into real conflict with them. And I know that we're not going to get in a shooting war over Taiwan, like they can swallow that thing up all day, any day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know that's a good point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's probably gone and so you know the pushback on that and that being the, that's the Ukraine of Asia. Yeah, because you know Putin just went over there and said hey, you can get Taiwan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Just whatever you want it.
Speaker 1:Whenever you want to float down in that direction, and it's yours Right, and you know what's not going to happen Anything, you know. And so he said if you want to do it with Trump in office, you need to do it now, and so I would be really surprised if there's not some I don't know if it's going to be military, but some other posture from China towards Taiwan within the next two years, Right, Like I don't know what, but some sort of consumption posture there you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean they keep building land out there and making their pushes, Naval bases out of sand. Basically, yeah, and, like I said, their Navy's grown exponentially in the last 20 years and they can go out on big blue water now.
Speaker 1:And if they take Taiwan, we say okay, let's tie that back in, and then maybe we wrap up on this little piece right here. If China we say so what does that mean to America? Every computer chip you've ever used is made in Taiwan. Right Period.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:I'm saying Like, yes, we have chip factories in America, so no, not every period. You know what I'm saying. Like, yes, we have chip factories in america, so no, not everyone. But we are so tremendously dependent on the technology sector that's in taiwan, the taiwan I can't remember the name of the company, but they make the most chips in the world, right, and so china already has most a lot of that production under their you know control anyway. But taiwan is our safe harbor in as Asia for technology that we import into the United.
Speaker 2:States, yeah, not controlled by the.
Speaker 1:Chinese government and so that that goes away and that leads to an economic impact that ripples across all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know, and it wouldn't be so much of a problem if, say, you let the Chips and Science Act take flight and start building factories here to do that first, which you know, the Biden administration had passed and now all that money is getting taken away too. So even like microchip here locally is shrinking. So yeah, we've become so dependent on it and now we're just going to turn our backs on it and be like, okay, yeah, you guys can have it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that national security issues concerns there as well. Right, that we try to source everything the best we can in the United States, but I promise you we're relying on some commercial technologies that are not 100 percent homegrown. Over Taiwan becoming part of China, most people would think it already is right, they don't know the difference, right, but the impact that would be felt afterwards would be, you know, it would touch everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so All right.
Speaker 1:Hey, that's how we like to do it on Left Face. We like to wrap up on a little sour note.
Speaker 2:It's like our cliffhanger right, you want to come back and hear good news next time.
Speaker 1:Is there going to be an apocalypse this week or not? I doubt it. I'm gonna predict. No, maybe we should start doing that. Yeah, right, you need an octopus that can predict that for us. Right, like the one that picks the super bowl winner yeah, yeah, we need something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll look into that. All right, correct?
Speaker 1:thanks everybody for listening in the left face. We'll catch you again next week, all right?
