Kitbag Conversations - Episode 9: Tessaron News

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

I am joined this week with Tessaron News, and fellow news and intelligence page on Instagram. By sharing a similar background, Tessaron and I look at several topics through and analytical lens, including (but not limited to): - Russian capabilities assets in Ukraine - The future of the United States Marine Corps via Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) - And China's recent military past and projected future   

Hello everyone and welcome back. You're listening to Crow Towing Report and I'm sure you're going to be really excited for this guest. I'm speaking this week with Tesseron News, a very popular news page on Instagram and one you most likely follow. So, Tesseron, how are you doing today? Hey, I'm doing good. Thanks for having me on and I look forward to the conversation.

Too easy, man. Hey, real quick, where does Tesseron come from? Yeah, so I guess when I was trying to come up with the page for the name or the name for the page, a lot, a lot of information out there. I know you are in the Intel community, so was I, and we'll get into my background here a little bit. But I wanted, I wanted a name that kind of, kind of like data mining where taking all these conflicting narratives, taking all this information and, and kind of merging

it into something that's digestible to the, to the average person. So just got on Google and I was like, okay, what's some good names? And it wasn't really, wasn't really finding anything. Atlas actually came up. I know we all follow Atlas news and that was one of the suggestions. And I ran it by one of my buddies that I worked with. He's like, oh, are you a religious guy? No, no, not really religious.

He's like, well, there was an old Assyrian theologist back in the fifth century who actually tried to combine the narratives of the Bible, you know, the Gospels into one coherent timeline, one coherent narrative. And that's called the Diatesseron. So I really fell in love with that idea. Felt like the Diatesseron was a little bit of mouthful, so I just cut off the Diat. So a little bit of play on words, you know, disclaimer. Yeah, Catholic, not extremely devout.

You know, both my, both my kids are confirmed and I'm confirmed. So, yeah, just play on words from Diatesseron. Cool, man. Did you, is that the name you've been using the whole time or did you have like an early, early draft? Like before I was click news where I was like, oh, company or company level Intel. So that's pretty cute, but I kind of branched away and made it more organic or yeah, something of my own.

So have you always been Tesseron? Yeah, it's funny that you asked that because when I originally started out on Twitter and I was calling it the Tesseron forum, because I really wanted it to be more of a kind of just like meeting the minds thing. However, you know, I was running that for about a week, getting some interaction with the page, but how social media is currently set up unless you really make it like a closed off page, which I didn't want to do invite only. It's kind of hard to control the conversation as I'm sure you're aware and your listeners

are aware. So I just changed the news because that's really what it was doing. I was putting flash updates on there and people were just running away with it. So I've tried to dip into Twitter before and it's a little difficult to throw out because I know we used to be analysts, man. It's you write the full picture and then have the assessment. You're building the pieces. It's really hard to work on Twitter.

So it's really cool to see guys like Intel Crab and those do really well delivering like quick flashpoint news. But have you had any success on Twitter because it's really hard for me to break out into there? No, I mean, I think people like find me on Twitter and follow it. I've gotten a few updates past few weeks. It's up to like 200 followers. I don't really use it that much.

My biggest gripe with Twitter when it comes to open source analysis, trying to put some fleshed out content is just the character cap. There's not enough space to actually put some good info that I want to put out. Really good for flash news updates. And I use Twitter a lot. If there's someone on the ground, there's an explosion in Kabul. There's a fire in India. Someone reports it.

Can you hear me? Can you still hear me? Can you hear me? Okay, sorry. Yeah, I might have to edit that. So you want to just rephrase the question. I was getting a phone call and it just jacked me up. Yeah, not a problem.

Talking about Twitter and building your profile on there. Yeah, yeah. So up to about 200 followers, I don't really use it that much for sharing content. And that's mostly because of the character cap. I find it's really difficult to get my point across. I don't remember what the character cap is, but it's really small. 250. Yeah, 250.

Most of the captions I use on Instagram usually are sitting around like 250 words. So 250 characters is definitely not it. Also, kind of find like the interface, kind of not friendly to, you know, discussion, kind of like on Reddit, how like comments drop down. I've kind of found, I found it kind of hard to follow. But great for great for flash reporting. I use it a lot. You know, when the blue check marks got something to say, that's usually a good indicator of policy or important events. Or, you know, flash news too, if there's someone on the ground, you know, there's an explosion in Kabul this morning, there's an explosion in Karachi, someone's putting it on Twitter.

And then I can use that to start peeling back the envelope there. Do you throw in the Boolean logic and try to narrow down your focus if you're doing a little research? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I, you know, I've got a lot of people ask me, oh, why are you so quick at this stuff? You know, how are you getting this much content out? And it's AI. I would absolutely drown if, well, you know what, I wouldn't even drown. I would drown all day looking for stuff.

I'd probably miss 90% of it, and then I wouldn't be able to put out as much if, if I didn't use AI. When I was in, when I was in the Marine Corps, I was given access to a lot of analytical tools, data miner, Palantir, or the just, yeah, they just scrub social media, scrub local major news assets. And that's really what feeds me. If I, you need that tool, if you're, if you're planning on doing, you know, a page like we have, or you're trying to be a journalist, you need something to help you sift through the noise. And I absolutely agree. And it's really good to see that your page exploded because this luck is out there. And it seems like my page number one, and almost everyone in the community, they've really stagnated, but you're one of the few that continues to grow. And I know you threw out a few days ago or a few weeks ago that said like, Hey, if you're reading this, please reshare something, please comment, please subscribe or something, because it helps with the algorithm build your page.

And out of everyone that said that, yours is the only one that stays consistent outside of, you know, Atlas or popular front, but it's really good to see that, regardless of the shadow band, and I know you are, that you're actually still doing really well. Yeah. And it's actually kind of frustrating. I was actually on the phone, my brother and all the other day and I told him, you know, he's from Cuba and I told him to check out my page because I had just reported on that gas leak explosion at the Saratoga hotel. He said, I can't even look up your page. Really frustrating. And that's one of the reasons why I'm heavily debating just moving completely off of Instagram and onto Atlas. You know, Atlas, Atlas News, the website, if any of your followers haven't checked it out, highly recommend it.

He definitely, he's doing something that I don't think has been done for a long time. And I think for the first time in this weird niche social media open source intelligence community that we're a part of, because we do rely on the infrastructure and the backbone of a company that has its own, its own shareholders, its own narrative, its own motivation. So, you know, on the one end, it frustrates me. And on the other end, it's like, you know, I'm relying off your stuff to do my reporting. So it's a love hate relationship. But, but yeah, really, you know, it blew up probably right around, you know, definitely doubled in followers since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because I was fortunate enough to be in a place where I could report on it. You know, when they actually did invade, so I was able to get some, you know, firsthand account of what was going on within a NATO country that is that has a land border with Russia. And I think people really attached to that.

And yeah, I'm just happy people keep following and I'll keep doing what I'm doing until Instagram bans me, I guess. Man, it's really good to hear it real quick before we dive into the meat of this. You're absolutely killing it on the Atlas app. It's like Atlas is number one posting most of the stuff and then it's you. And so how did that come up? Did he DM you or do you talk to him regularly because I know he's got his whole his entire thing going on. But it's really interesting to see like, like you're just saying considering moving off of Instagram and Twitter onto the Atlas app and you're absolutely driving that entire focus. Um, yeah, so, you know, I don't want to peel back the onion too much on him and his team.

But, you know, it's a group of individuals that had a vision that were frustrated with how real, you know, and I say real news, like, not this cushy rosy narrative that you see on CNN or Fox News. It's like actual war. I call it war reporting war reporting is more accurate than news. Um, and he saw, you know, accounts being blocked, accounts being bank contact content being taken down, which is in the, you know, purview of that company, they're allowed to do that. So he got together with a bunch of his buddies and and made their own site. Once he had the site up and running and the funding, you know, which he, you know, personally funded, which just, you know, really attributes to to his vision. Yeah, he hit me up. It was Instagram DM go figure.

He's like, Hey, I'd like to like to get on a call with you. See if you'd like to come on as a writer. And I didn't really know what he meant by that because I didn't know he was working on a website. So I was like, what are you going to give me like your login info on Instagram and like I'd write articles for you. I'm trying to do my own thing. He's like, no, no, I'm making this website. And then it flourished from there. Yeah, I'm up to something like 60 or so articles since the website launched and I think it launched in in February.

So I was just really fortunate. I was grateful to be brought on because, you know, I really value the people with vision. And I think Atlas news is going to go a long way. You know, we're talking White House credentials eventually, hopefully. That's good stuff, man. Really good to hear it. Yeah, Atlas is absolutely killing it. He followed him.

But I remember when he was the war blog in like 2014, I found him at 200 or so followers when you or Crimea was annexed and he was the only one talking about it at like a real low level niche area. And it's really good to see where where he's at today. But so I really want to talk to you about because we're, you know, both used to be analysts in the Marine Corps about the Russian armor in Ukraine because they've been absolutely eaten up. And honestly, since let's just talk about some aviation, too, about how badly they've performed in the entire entirety of the invasion, because our background, everyone thought the Russians were better than they were. And they're like, you don't you don't mess with the T 72 and you don't mess with the hind. And then no, they're just getting eaten up by and laws and all the good jazz that was supplied by the US. So what's your take on that? Yeah, so I guess before I get into my take, I'll just tell your readers.

I was an intelligence officer Marine Corps 0207 got out about this time last year and now I work for the organization for security and cooperation in Europe, which is NGO. It's got a government, it's got a branch office here in the United States and then its main office is in Vienna. And OSCE has a special mission deployed Ukraine, they've been there since 2014 to enforce the Minsk protocols and the Minsk agreements between Ukraine and Russia. So that's kind of where I'm coming from in my experience, my passion about this. So, yeah, so you look at the Russian tank park, what's active, what's reserve, your readers will have to actually get on there because I don't have the numbers in front of me. But we're easily talking about, you know, more than 6000 reserve and probably three to 4000 active largest tank park in the world. And that's mainly due because the Russians sell their ship, besides energy arms export, arms exports is one of the leading drivers of the Russian economy. They make all these export variants T64, T72, T80, T90, I'm sure we're gonna see a export version of the T14 Armada here soon.

So it's always important to flesh that out because when you look at American planners and how we planned to fight Russia, we knew that their center of gravity is their huge tank park, their motorized rifle brigades, their guards tank army. And that's what led the thrust into Ukraine. And that's exactly what we would assume. Now, American planners have been looking at, you know, you have the Klinengrad enclave, which is their, you know, sometimes warm water port in the Baltic. You know, American planners like, oh, well, we got to close the, we got to close this Milwaukee gap and make sure that the Russians don't send 3000 tanks across the border in Napoleon to connect mainland Russia with Klinengrad. Obviously, that's not what happened. Instead, went for Ukraine. And this is now returning Europe to an age of ground wars in Europe. So we identified that as their center of gravity. And what did we do? We built really kick ass weapon systems that defeat. Obviously, don't don't need to interrupt, man, but it kind of goes back to the Cold War, how we always knew that the Russians, you know, former Soviet doctrine, their entire thing is overwhelming firepower through already and through tanks. Like, how do you counteract that with planes? We made the A10 Warthog, which is the tank buster. We're like, yeah, we'll just, they don't have planes, we'll just secure the skies.

But it's really interesting to see that javelins are absolutely destroying these preconceived notion of the dominant on the Soviet because they keep waving the Soviet flag and the Russian central gravity. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, I know you're an Intel analyst, you've probably done a center of gravity analysis before. I know I have, when you have a center of gravity, identify the critical vulnerability. And once you identify the critical vulnerability, you export it. So we identified the center of gravity, the Russian ground forces as their huge tank parts. So we developed, we developed javelins, loitering munitions, MQ-9 with micro munitions, armor piercing, high explosive rounds. And then we funneled all that shit to Ukraine. You know, I've seen some estimates from the, for the center of strategic international studies, the United States has sent a third of its entire javelin inventory to Ukraine. I know some people were upset about that in the intelligence community. Some politicians are sounding off about it. But, you know, we developed these weapons over the course of 50, 60 years, we've been building up our inventory, you know, for the same amount of time, with the purpose of destroying Russian tanks in a So in some ways we're completing that objective, but we don't have to put American service members in danger. So it's actually working out, the weapons obviously are working as designed. And, yeah, you look, you know, there's been some footage of the past few days of a couple T-90s from the 136 guards motorized a rifle brigade in Luhansk with their tops blown off.

You know, in the spirit of keeping with the discussion question, you know, their performance, President Zelensky said that 1000 Russian tanks have been destroyed in Ukraine so far. Take that with a grain of salt, considering it's from the Ukrainian president. But, you know, let's say they had 4000 in their active tank park, and President Ukraine is saying 1000 have been destroyed. You know, like I said, take with grain of salt, but that's a fourth of their tank park destroyed since February. Huge loss for them. One of the things I want to highlight about the T-72, the T-80 and the T-90, as I'm sure you're aware and some of your listeners are going to be aware, CNN just covered it yesterday, this jack in the box thing. You know, you've seen the jack in the box vulnerability, how the Russian tanks store their munitions in the turret. So, you know, you could get a mobility kill, but on the T-90 through the T-72. But if that fire breaks out into the turret, where most of these top-down attack weapons hit, you know, the secondary explosions from that, that's what's killing the crew, and that's what's popping off the turret off these chassis. Which is one of the reasons why, you know, I really got to applaud the Russians on their late ingenuity because the Abrams has been storing the ammunition, not in the turret, you know, for the past 30 years. Now the T-14 Armada is going to have an auto loader in the turret and the crew compartment is going to be completely isolated from munitions stores. So that's how the Russians are trying to fix it.

Obviously, you know, the T-14 is kind of dead in the water. I don't know if you saw the video during the Moscow military parade in 2014, I believe it was. They had a T-14, but it broke down on the parade ground and had to tow it off. So they've still got some way to go with that. But yeah, a critical design flaw, and that's why these American weapons, which I got to say again, that's the reason why they were designed to be attacked down is to take advantage of this jack-in-the-box vulnerability. They're doing what they were designed to do. You know, I have this video pulled up from my page right now, footage from Brovara, Ukraine, where there's literally an entire Russian tank company hemmed up in this suburban area and they're getting destroyed by Ukrainian artillery and a couple of Ukrainian T-64s and T-72s. It's like a platoon minus of their tanks versus off against this company that's bottlenecked. And, you know, while this is a single tactical scenario, I think it is telling of the overall performance of the Russian ground forces in Ukraine. They're logistical supply lines, just poor tactics. You know, when you're rushing over this walkie-gap in flat, rural terrain, it's easier to mass armored power and use your artillery. But when you're fighting in suburban areas like we saw outside Kiev, it really negated any advantage that their armor gave them. And in some ways, actually created liabilities, because now you're just a big hulking target and, God, everyone's starting by the TB-2 by-rock tar. You know, maybe this is the end of the age of tanks. I know a lot of people don't agree with that. A lot of retired forces are Marine Corps generals don't agree with that.

But I think if you watch, you know, even an hour of armored combat footage Ukraine, it is not the same success, even remote success that American tanks had in the 2003 push-to-back deaths. You know, that's a really good point because, and we'll get into this later about the old hats talking about the end of the age of tanks and how it's not true. But looking at the early days of the war and how the Russians would send an armored column without infantry support in it, Kharkov or Kiev, it's like, hey, man, I'm not a smart guy. But I don't, do you think any Russian sat down and said, no, we need to send, why are we sending an armored column by itself and do an urban area? That's in the American military, especially the Marine Corps, you don't do that because tanks are vulnerable as is. They're, and it's crazy to see that the Russians are still doing it and it's been, what, seven days? And so it's really, like you just said, those American weapons and those British weapons that are being sent over who are doing the exact same job they were designed to do are eating up the Russians. And it's on one hand, it's almost like they don't want to change their tactics.

But on the second, and I know we both know this, they're very top down. So I think a lot of the failures that are being found on the tactical level are not reaching the operational and strategical. And so they're just being told to keep going. And so you'll see a loan, T-72 being sent to reinforce the front in the Northeast. But we just know it's not going to do anything. It's the armor's been called out and it's not going to work. And armor is a really intimidating factor. But if you could take it out for nothing, oh, it's just a big jack in the box like you just mentioned.

So it's, I don't want to say mind boggling, but to see that the Russians, whose ace in the hole was used overwhelming armored force, essentially to roll into urban areas did not use. And I'm sure they watched the 91 invasion of Kuwait and Iraq or the O3 invasion of Iraq again. It's weird to see that they didn't take a single after action and went, yeah, let's do that. They just kind of doubled down into that old mindset of, yeah, what do we do? Yeah, we're going to keep doing that. We have a doctrine. We're going to follow it. It's going to come from the top.

It's going to go all the way down to the bottom. And that little, you know, 19 year old Lance Corporal is going to drive this tank straight into an urban area with no support. Yeah. And you know, that's actually something to, that's actually something that I think we should flush out. You know, I brought up, I brought up the performance of American tanks, you know, not only in the O3 push to Baghdad, but also the first Gulf War. You know, you look at the battle of 73 Eastings. I do have to put the disclaimer that very different operating environment, you know, against the Iraqi Guard Corps tank park there. And Abrams in a desert environment, completely rural, you know, you look at all the, the technical advantages that the M182 had over Iraqi T64, T72s.

You had integrated night vision. So the gunner didn't have to look at a night scope and then look through the firing scope. That was one of the reasons why single Abrams was able to destroy something like 12 Iraqi T72s. Not the same, obviously not the same scenario in Ukraine, not only in terms of geography, but also capability. I would put, you know, Ukrainian T72s against Russian T72s, it's the same, it's the same platform. But yeah, you know, I agree completely with with everything you said, you know, when they said, you know, 2000 plus tanks pretty much into their own backyard, thinking, you know, the war is going to be over in three days. We're going to push the key. We're going to, you know, strangle and ski up in the street.

And then as soon as they started running into significant resistance to being bogged down, the fog of the war got to them, not only with their logistics, but also their frontline units. And yeah, boggles my mind. I still got this video up from Brevari, just completely on a column of T72s completely unsupported by infantry. And, you know, obviously can't see any video if it's being supported by by attack air, or, or, or murdering munitions or, or artillery. But yeah, I think the fog of war definitely reached the Russians in the first couple of days. One thing I do want to say though, because, you know, a lot of folks, you know, a lot of disparaging comments about the conduct of the Russian military. Got to remember that, yeah, they're, they're getting, you know, they're getting turned back. Obviously, they're not, they're not actively assaulting Northern and Northwestern Ukraine anymore.

They've kind of relocated their strategic objectives to the east and the south. They still did get into the suburbs of Kiev. And, you know, you can make the argument, oh, the Ukrainian military wasn't ready. The Ukrainian military with Western support, pretty capable force. So I don't want readers to just hear another, oh, Russian military sucks. I think they are, I think they are extremely capable. And if Ukraine hadn't been supplied the weapon system that exploited the critical vulnerability of Russia's center of gravity, I think Kiev would have fallen. Obviously not the first three days, but, you know, maybe by mid-March, if, if America, UK, Russia, Poland, Romania weren't actively supplying them with these advanced weapons.

So something really interesting to bring up, because if you look at combat footage from the Netsk in 2015, or the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian military was criminally underdeveloped. They were still wearing old Soviet fatigues. They were wearing the old World War II tin helmets. The Russians, if they wanted to do it, they would have absolutely curbsnapped American history, exile Ukraine, because everyone kind of pushed them to the side is like the sick man of Europe, essentially, because you get the largest landmass and one of the largest populations. But their economy has been in shambles since the fall of the Soviet Union. And so at that point, it's like the Western forces, especially NATO said, no, we got to reinforce these guys. So it's really cool to see a picture of a Ukrainian soldier in 2010 compared to Ukrainian soldier in 2014. And it looks like, because they're wearing all Army ACUs or multi-cam, and they look like an American reinforced military.

So I wonder if the Russians took that into consideration when they were planning this invasion, because back in the day, they didn't have any optics on their weapons. Another AK-74s are equally mashed in terms of capabilities with the Russians. So you're bringing up all these tactical standpoints in the Ukrainian military. Everyone talks about the Netsk airport. That was a slaughter. The Ukrainians, they held out, but it's because they were in defensive positions. It's really easy to hold out, but 1-1, they were not doing very well. And so we also talk about, or you just mentioned, they got to the suburbs of Kiev. And if the Russians are invading a country with 200,000 military personnel, let's say that's 70,000 combat units. And the remainder of that is logistical supports in your, you know, your enablers or something like that.

Fighting not even one-on-one in an urban environment. Pretty sure Americans trained to fight 3-on-1 or 5-on-1 to take a city. And they were doing that all at the same time. And they took Kyrsten pretty quick, but the remaining large cities, they got bogged down. And I think it's because maybe A, they didn't take into consideration that overwhelming support, or B, they really thought they were still fighting the same Ukrainians from 2014. Yeah, you know, yeah, I completely agree with what you said. You know, as you were saying that, I was thinking, you know, what are the, what are the main differences between 2014 Ukraine and 2021 Ukraine? One of the things that, you know, I find it ironic that our president now was also vice president when the Russians first tried this. So I am a big fan of the policy changes that happened.

I don't think the, I don't think the United States was in a position to support the Ukrainian military in 2014 because of the reason that you outlined because they were so horribly corrupt and inept. We didn't want to give advanced weapons to a force where we couldn't trust them to turn around and just, you know, hand some of that gear over the Russians, not saying that that was an issue. And maybe that was or was not a part of the calculus. I'm definitely not saying anything disparaging about the Ukrainian military. But since then, a lot of the officer positions I've rotated through, obviously the political leadership has rotated through. And then also, you know, you look at 2014 versus, you know, 2022 Ukraine, what's exploded in the last eight years, social media, the information war. The only reason why, well, maybe not the only reason, but one of the large reasons why Russia hasn't been able to quote unquote, get away with it this time is they lost the information war. You know, I've seen some estimates up to 70,000 Russian troops entered Ukraine during the 2014 Donbass war. Obviously the Russian, the second invasion is a lot harder to ignore. But, you know, back in 2014, you didn't have guys, you did to some extent, but you didn't have it definitely to the level that we're seeing now.

You didn't have people like, like Cossack on the, you know, a Nasslan or Sean Pinner, you didn't have them posting live updates, GoPro footage. You didn't have this huge pouring out of international support. Because people didn't have didn't have ground access, didn't actually see what was going on. And, you know, let me reiterate again, part of that is due to, you know, the explosion of social media in the last 10 years and then part of it is also due to just the dirtiness of the Russian operation. So yeah, definitely. A lot of people like to point their finger at the Arab Spring is the big, almost the first social media war that insurgents kind of revolutionaries were coordinating attacks via Twitter. And they were saying we're hey, we're here and it was open comms, but they were moving in and doing their things and the whole world could watch and you're right that social media wasn't too popular back then. But today it's the Russians completely lost the information war because Cossack gun these been there in Ukraine for years, and he's been the number one outlet for like a Western idea from the outside looking in. So everyone's pretty tuned into what they're saying, even if he was banned twice and had a relatively low follower count, he was still putting out information.

And so maybe it's because on one hand, no one really thought there was going to be a large scale ground war in Europe. But on the other hand, it's maybe people back in 2014, they just really didn't care. They're like, Oh, well, there was a revolution in Ukraine. Don't they want to be Russian? You know, one of those things. But looking at it today is very critical and almost like a fork in the road of how the next ground war is going to go and say Taiwan or something, where the whole world's going to be on the defender side, because if you're being told in media and video games and on TV for 30 years, let's say let's say post 9 11 for 20 plus years that the Chinese and the Russians are the bad guys, whatever they're going to do, the whole world's going to be on the side of the defender. So I'm really interested to see how and maybe we want to segue into that how the Chinese would handle a very similar situation. Yeah, I mean, you brought up, you brought up some really good points. And I actually hadn't even considered, you know, the culture kind of pre battle fires that you know, American video game companies, media have portrayed. That's something I'll take back.

Every Call of Duty every Call of Duty since 2007 has been the Russians are the bad guys. And if you watch any gangster movie or just media in general, we need a quick we need a quick villain. It's going to be the Russians super easy super default. What are the Russians going to do stop us? No. So, yeah, because, you know, realistically, you know, Ukraine is a great not euphemism but great as comparison for for what could easily happen to Taiwan in the next 10 years. Yeah, so I don't know if you want to get into the Chinese aspect right now. I kind of want to, I would definitely like to dip into that. So real quick, we talked about it earlier. Marine Corps ditched tanks and already within the last five years under the current commandant. And I've talked to him on it before. And he's very much committed, because this happened before the war in Ukraine, he was like tanks, got to go, it's not going to work. And a lot of the old hats were very upset going. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's changing too much about the Marine Corps. But after the war in Ukraine, he was almost completely vindicated because of the Chinese are training to counteract tanks. What do you do? You drop tanks. So, I don't know if you have an experience without or have any background knowledge or anything, but

Yeah, so. Okay, so the was a temporary manual on expeditionary advanced basing operations that is the living document that the commandant and his advisors are trying to flesh out right now. You know, every day I'm on Marine Corps is that the United States Naval Institute proceedings where everyone is debating this hot topic. General, General von Reiper retired four star Marine Corps. He was writing under the sunam as a Marinus for a while on the proceedings, basically coming out and bashing the commandant. Yeah, you were right. Obviously in Marine Corps ditched tanks so completely divested sent a lot of them to the army sold some to Australia, and then you know put them in a reserve tank bar for possible future use. As for the artillery, I haven't seen the exact numbers on which M77 batteries are being stood down. I know that it is happening, but I don't have the official number so that's something your readers can go research while running our apps. I know I used to work with guys in eighth Marines and they a lot of already guys, and they were pretty upset that they essentially lost their job that already was going away and I know the Marine Corps kept a few and they've had the force with the Marine Littorial Regiment or third Marines rather out in Hawaii, but it's, it's amazing to see that there was a lot of foresight on the front end of you know America's expeditionary force that's going to be the first in any combat zone.

Project in the future going yeah we're we're ditching this who are we fighting China where's the fight China we're not fighting the Russians anymore. Cool we'll let, we'll let the Europeans deal with Russia, and it was I think it was a lot of Trump hold over, but I think it's a lot of being prepared for the next fight because the Marine Corps is being painted as the second army for a while, and everyone really wanted to get away from that. And so, the new EABO plan is essentially island hopping from World War Two, or World War Two, and securing that first island chain and preventing any of the Chinese troop movement in that area in the event of a war. Yeah, so. Yeah, a lot a lot of stuff here to unpack. You know, while you're talking I actually pulled up the actual numbers for what the what the Marine Corps divesting. So 24 infantry battalions we're going to go down to 21 artillery batteries from 21 to five and phibious vehicle companies from six to four and reduced tilt rotor attack and heavy lift squatters. Now exactly what you're just saying, you know, EABO, you know, how do tanks help us do that, how do artillery batteries help us do that. How do all these legacy systems help us do that, not only help us do that because obviously amphibious vehicle companies artillery can be used in EABO operations. However,

when you look at what happened in Guadalcanal in 1942, infantry Marines cut off in the jungles, no naval support, no air support, basically acting as a guerrilla force. That's called distributed operations. That's what the Marine Corps is trying to get back to. Probably two fold. Yes, definitely to prepare for combat with China, because with China, extremely modern military, probably second to us. Yeah, probably second to us in terms of size and also advanced capabilities. I definitely say they're more capable than the United Kingdom, more capable than France. So it's kind of us to be definitely more capable than all of our allies that are located near and around China, you know, Australia, Japan. So, but there's also a second aspect to that which you hit on Marine Corps being identified as the second land army. Throughout the history of the Marine Corps there has been six or seven attempts to absorb the Marine Corps into the army.

Now, a lot of the reason why that hasn't happened is because the Marine Corps propaganda machine is strong. We publish books, we have nice uniforms, we're physically fit, we're able to sell to the American people, hey, allow us to have money to be Marines, have our own uniforms do our own thing. We will win battles for you. And this is how we're going to do it. And this is why we're different from the army. So yeah, with that groundwork played, you know, we talked about what the Marine Corps is divesting from, but what are we gaining? MQ-9 Reaper, yeah, MQ-9 Reaper. There's currently four VMUs which are the Marine unmanned area of vehicle squadrons in the Marine Corps that fly the RQ-21 Blackjack. What's going to happen in the next five years is VMU-1 and VMU-3, which are on the west coast in Hawaii, they're going to be given the MQ-9. VMU-2 is going to continue to operate the RQ-21 until they run out of money for that program record.

And those VMUs on the west coast in Hawaii are going to stand up a 24-7 orbit of MQ-9 in the Indo-Paycom region for the Marine Corps. So we don't have to keep begging the Air Force for ISR. We're getting that capability. We're also getting the Marine Latour Regiments. Now the Marine Latour Regiments, you can say a lot about it whether you disagree or agree with their combat power. But, you know, just looking at it flat face value, it's composed of one infantry battalion, one ship-killing battery, one anti-air battery, and one combat logistics battalion. Now, obviously, that anti-air battery probably can be operated by LAD. I don't know what that ship-killing battery is going to look like. I don't even know which weapon system they're going to be using. But that's how the Marine Corps is planning to do distributed operations.

They want to take these Marine Latour Regiments, drop them off on an island, and, hey, reduce your electromagnetic signature, reduce your ability to get killed. We don't want you to have these huge Iron Mountain deposits of logistics. We don't want you to have these huge headquarters set up. We want you to survive against mass precision fires from the People's Liberation Army rocket force and the People's Liberation Army Air Force. You're absolutely right. The Marine Corps is really doubling down on their decision. And I, in passing, spoke with a commandant a few months ago, and he was very serious and almost wanted to sit down. He's like, do you have four hours? We could talk about this. I'm like, I do not have four hours, but very serious, very committed, and Marine Corps is going right back to where it came from. And if you think about it, big picture, there's two divisions in the Pacific. One, Third Marine Division, second, Second Infantry Division in Korea.

Their whole job is to stop the Koreans, not the Chinese, because if a war starts, we can go tenfold ahead theory here. Pretty sure China is going to absorb the North Korean government and pour in from the South, just kind of keep those guys down and disregard the second Busan perimeter situation. But the Marines are out there, so they have to stay ahead of the curve, one or three or maybe five steps to be able to counteract this rapidly militarized states. And so what is, I want to know your theories about this. The Chinese government based their entire military doctrine around the Soviets back in the day, and they've been stepping away from it, but they haven't had a single war and a conventional fight in a while. So how do you think they would perform one on one, because the Russians haven't either, but they've been training in, they fought in Afghanistan 40 years ago, but they were also in Syria, and they fought in Chechnya, they fought in Georgia, and they use all those little micro awards to kind of plan their doctrine around. Did they listen to it? Probably not, but the Chinese really haven't. So how do you think they would, in comparison to the Russians right now, how do you think they would perform? And this might be just, you know, a long shutter conversation that can go for hours, but.

Yeah, I mean, you look at, you know, Chinese military doctrine, but also Chinese culture, you know, I definitely think President Xi Jinping has done an excellent job of gearing up the Chinese psyche for an offensive war. You know, I'm not going to say that the Chinese military hasn't had any experience in fighting foreign wars. The Chinese supply the largest percentage of troops to the UN mission in Africa, and you've got Chinese soldiers being killed by militants in Africa, so they're definitely seeing combat there. Also, you've got People Liberation Army Navy vessels doing anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa and East Africa, they've got their base in Djibouti. So they're out there, they're hooking jab, and definitely not to the extent of the Russians in, you know, getting their black eye in Ukraine, not to our extent in executing the global war on terror. But, you know, there's a lot of ways to learn, you can learn by experience, you can learn by observation. And, you know, as we know, the Chinese intellectual property theft, hacking, all of our, most of our after action reports are unclassified when it comes to doctrine and tactics. So, you know, I don't want people to be wrapped up in the idea that, hey, the Chinese haven't fought a foreign war, so the second that the Chinese soldier faces off against an American ring, they're going to crumble.

I don't think that's necessarily true, I think it's wishful thinking. But, you know, there is some value to that in having that experience. You know, as soon as you induce friction into a war plan, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, not having that experience of getting punched in the face once on a operational and a strategic level. Yeah, I think it is going to have some sway, but I don't want people to go into a conflict with China thinking we got this, because you know, extremely capable. Yeah, and we can, I can kind of get into the composition, disposition of the People's Liberation Army Navy and what that would look like against Taiwan, if you want to get into that. Real quick, before we get into that, I want to not draw a comparison, but mention that Russia invaded Crimea, and Europe really didn't do anything, but China builds an aircraft carrier and Japan builds three, and Australia builds two. And it's almost like there's a naval arms race going on in the Pacific, not seen since the 1930s, where the local states are very hesitant at trusting any Chinese increase in military size or capability, where in Europe they were going, oh, the Russians won't do anything. Which is, you can take that as you will, you know, I know a lot of NATO partner forces, especially Poland went, no, you can't trust the Russians.

And we were training the Ukrainians, but the Japanese on their own are rewriting their constitution to say, yeah, the territorial defense force, it's got to go, we live next to China. So it's, you're absolutely right though, and I do want to bring the back up before we do this, that the Chinese have been sending military forces to Africa, and a peacekeeping humanitarian role, and not a lot of people talk about that, because in Africa, who we usually talk to, or talk about the French in Mali, who just lost against the insurgents and then Wagner was hired by the local government through the Russians to help stabilize the region. But the Chinese just showed up and said, like, yeah, we're here to help. And they're also exporting a lot of their industrial capabilities into that region, but I do know that the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Taiwanese, the Australians, maybe not New Zealand, but those local neighbors are more mobilizing and very passive tense for anything that may happen. Yeah, and I'm really glad that you brought that up because, you know, you and I have the foresight and, you know, based on being in the intelligence background and then also knowing the geopolitical relationships there. I see a lot of talking heads talking about China, the United States, it would never be China, the United States. I don't see, I don't see any scenario playing out where, you know, if you've read 20, I think the book is called 2040, or they do a great job and sorry, I'm kind of all over the place with this because I'm extremely passionate about this one issue. You look, you read Ghostfleet. Ghostfleet presents a scenario which I think is extremely unrealistic, in which case the Marines in Okinawa get wiped out in a Russian and Chinese joint attack, kind of like Pearl Harbor, and our allies don't do anything. Australia doesn't do anything, Japan doesn't do anything, South Korea doesn't do anything. I don't see a scenario where American ships are being sunk in the South China Sea, or American bases in Guam, Japan, South Korea are being hit, and those partner countries don't get involved. China does not have a lot of alliances, at least in good faith. They do have alliances with Myanmar. They do have a tentative partnership with North Korea, but I don't see it as a, I got to choose my words carefully here.

I do see it as an ideological support in that they are all authoritarian, authoritarian dictatorships. However, you know, you look at the bonds that hold together, you know, cultural, political, historical, Australia, South Korea, and the United States fighting defensive wars with them against the Japanese Empire in the 40s. And then all the nation building that we did in Japan, which built this great alliance between us and them, you don't have that between Russia, excuse me, between China and their kind of satellite nations that they're buying out. So, you know, yeah, you probably see the Myanmar military and the North Korean military get involved. But I think the, through AUKUS and then through the Quad, I think the United States has set itself up comfortably to combat China with the allies there. That is true. And we just talked about those humanitarians being sent to Africa, if China and Myanmar are a quasi relationship, and Myanmar has a had a coup go down last year. Don't you think if you want to be good friends, you would send your peacekeepers to help stabilize the region almost like Kazakhstan and the Russians back in January, where just, I'm not totally dialed into that entire relationship, maybe you are, but I think Yeah, with the alliances, huh? Yeah, with Myanmar, that relationship, China and Myanmar. Yeah, I don't know if you want to elaborate on that. Can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah, I might have to edit a little bit of that. So the relationship between the Burmese government, Myanmar, if your listeners aren't familiar, Myanmar and Burma can be used synonymously. But China has helped the Burmese government and their northern borders. They've turned away ethnic fighters at the border. China has engaged outposts of ethnic fighters on the border. There's a significant Chinese population along the northeast border between Myanmar and China, which China tries to protect by negotiating with the Myanmar government. But Chinese companies also have extensive mining rights in northern Myanmar that China obviously wants to see flourish and they don't want regional conflicts to affect their bottom line. So, you know, I think China wants to keep that border secure. They want to keep their interests engaged. They also want Belt and Road to thrive in Myanmar. They want access to their ports and infrastructure. So that's why, you know, when I was talking about the health of the relationship, it's definitely more of an economic, political one as opposed to, you know, the Myanmar are our brothers and we want to protect them. Yeah. That's kind of how I see that relationship. Sorry to catch off.

Yeah, I can definitely see that working out. And if you're the Chinese and you have to find allies somewhere, you're probably going to partner with the locals, your local neighbors. What is China border? 17 countries, 1900s. It's, they already have the North Koreans in the bag. They're kind of like the road state, but nothing happens in North Korea without the Chinese consent. But yeah, I wasn't totally educated on that relationship of sending support to the northern border with Myanmar or Burma. But yeah, it's a really good, it's a really good point to bring up. And yeah, you're absolutely right about, I don't see a kinetic war between the U.S. and China going down anytime soon, because the two economies are so intertwined that both would be, especially the Chinese, they'd be ruined. Because if they're an export government or export economy and the whole world sees them as the aggressor against the neighboring state, no one's going to buy their stuff. I mean, you could look at Lithuania who recognized Taiwan and immediately the Chinese try to shut that down, but the Lithuanians are going, I'm over here. What are you going to do? Yeah, and you know, you bring up the, you know, what a conflict between the United States and China would look like, you know, where both countries are building towards the possibility of it, but what that would actually look like. Yeah, I brought up ghost fleet kind of unrealistic scenario made for a great read. And then I read 2040, which in my mind was a extremely plausible scenario in which case you have kinetic, at least the first half of the book when it starts going nuclear that becomes a little less, you know, I buy awful

But you know what happens in the book in case your, your, your listeners haven't read it. China has a spy ship. It's disguised underneath the people's maritime militia. It's disguised as a fishing vessel, but it's actually full of crypto gear and it's a listening ship. And it has a onboard emergency and a United States destroyer and Arleigh Burke class destroyer tries to render a vessel, they board it realize it's a spy ship and then they try and steal or steal, then they seize the crypto logical gear. And then the Chinese military sinks that ship. And then that just rolls downhill into a full kinetic war and then you have nuclear weapons being used against San Diego, Shanghai. So made for a great read, but I think those opening moves are extremely plausible. All it takes is single a single miscalculation between two ship captains, or one battery commander. And, you know, you and I know this, maybe your, your listeners don't the centralized command authority of the Russian Federation looks like a playground compared to how centralized decision making is in the Chinese military. You know, you have direct direct control coming from Beijing to tactical units. So, you know, yeah, is the is it possible that a, you know, a low level Chinese commander will make a decision and sink an American vessel. Maybe not likely. But, you know, as as China continues to build up the people's liberation Army Navy capability and they're putting more ships out to see the possibilities for miscalculations are just going to increase. And I want to look back a little bit, because we were just talking about one social media into China's allies and their previous kinetic conflicts. Number one, China's sensors, a lot of their almost the entire Internet

sensor, the Russians, they can do whatever though the second largest or were the second largest native speaker on the Internet outside of English. It's Russians were really intertwined with what's going on. And that's why Americans or Ukrainians or Dutch could go on to a Yelp review and talk about what's going on a war, or what's going on in the war in Ukraine by commenting on a coffee shop in, you know, St. Petersburg, but the Chinese don't have that. The Chinese have a very centralized education system where you just talked about their preparing their population for a potential war that the Russians were doing that too, but they were also really tied into the West, where China is very centralized. Number two, I don't think a lot of people remember that China supported North Korea during the Korean War and invaded and surrounded the Marines. That's kind of like a famous story. But two, they were sending a lot of their guys to Hanoi during the Vietnam War to support combat operations against the Americans. And once the Americans left in South Vietnam fell, they had a land war against North Vietnam or just Vietnam at that point. And so the Vietnamese are very hesitant. And even if you want to look at like political ideology, they're both communist governments. But the North Koreans do not, or the Vietnamese do not like them. And so it's almost a presence in the region because these boards are very recent that the Chinese, if they go somewhere, or they have any kinetic relationship with a Allied force, they almost potentially, and I could be wrong, don't want to trust them in the full extent because they went, I remember you supported Vietnam, then you invaded them, and then immediately had a border clash with the Indians. And then they're still having border clashes with the Indians today. But Social media aspects are really big because they have TikTok, but it's very censored. And the only TikToks they get from the West are from state approved and you just said it's centralized. So the government is approving down to the lowest TikTok account with six followers or whatever.

What gets shown in China and it better be pro-Chinese. So I don't know if you want to elaborate on that. Yeah, I mean, you know, China got internet access in 1988 and then the Great Firewall was thrown up almost immediately. I've never been on Chinese internet, but I've seen screenshots of it. I've gotten a few demos with some virtual machines. And it's like another world, just the site access you can get. I've been on WeChat. I've been on Weibo. I've seen Little Red Book and I've seen Duyen, which is their primary social media platforms. And this is what really worries me the most because this authoritarian model where you have, it's hyper techno authoritarianism is one of the terms that I really like that I've seen used to describe the CCP. Surveillance of their citizens, state run social media, it's extremely pervasive, extremely censored, complete control of information and then obviously making access to Western internet illegal through the use of VPNs. That's what worries me the most because you know the Chinese military, hard power, really simple ways to combat that what we've been doing, you know, since friggin 1775. However, this explosion of social media and how the Chinese are packaging their hyper techno authoritarianism into an exploitable model.

I think that's where everyone needs to be worried about because if they find a way to package this system in a way that other countries can start buying it and implementing it on their citizens. That's where you really see the paradigm shift in global politics. You know, the Western Judeo Christian ideals of liberty, enlightenment thinking, all that crap that we sell. Sorry, not crap, all that ideals that we sell, you know, America's here to bring you freedom that kind of stuff. If that is displaced as the as the global hegemony for this hyper techno authoritarianism in which case you can just censor everything you want and surveil your citizens and crack down the social credit scores. I think that's where we see America losing. Well, we can look at I don't mean to interrupt you, but there was the Olympics in China recently. And when these Olympians were going to China, they were not allowed to talk about the living conditions, but a few Australian Olympians brought a phone like a burner phone and we're posting the living conditions how the rooms were

disgusting. The water pipes would break. They were getting fed Mount Mount nourished meals to where the Chinese, the Chinese Olympians were getting fed, you know, full, really nutritious meals. But the everyone else was getting fed next to nothing or undercooked chicken and that the Chinese authorities were showing up to these do the Australian Olympian compound and went, Yeah, give me your phone. And they recorded these interviews are not these breakings of the Chinese authorities saying no delete this. No, you can't show anyone this. And they reported that to the Olympic Committee, and they said, Hey, shut up. We're at the Olympics. We kind of want to win. So it came down to almost like a the Chinese essentially one where you can look at CNN or BBC or Al Jazeera that reported on this, but it was a one or two article piece. And then quickly died because they went everyone went, Oh, yeah, we all partner with the Chinese. We don't really want to ruffle that relationship. But yeah, I haven't had not thought about how other nations would adopt that social credit system, but we can look at it on Instagram. I mean, we're all shadow band. Yes. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, the vignette that you mentioned about the Olympics, if China cracks the code on how to make that the popular way of doing business mainstream in the world. That's where that's where you see the United States stopping the world's superpower. So yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah. So we're gonna to about that time. So if you have anything you would like to plug, go right ahead. Yeah, I mean, obviously, run the test run news page on Instagram. If you want to follow it, you got to look up test run news to and then follow the link to the original page since I am shadow band and you can't look it up. Also go on the Atlas news.com right now on there as well. Yeah. And, you know, everything that we talked about here today, I hope sparks some sort of interest that way you go out and research it yourselves. When I was in the Marine Corps, I would, when I would have the initial counseling with my Marines, I would tell them, you know, this is one of the metrics that you're going to be graded on for your foot rep is being an auto didact. I need you to not be, I need you to be an intelligent intelligence Marine 24 seven meaning when you get off work. It doesn't stop. You got to have to be reading all the time. You have to be researching stuff all the time and you have to one give a shit and then to be interested, which are kind of synonymous. But yeah, so I highly encourage all your listeners to just fact check everything we said, and, and, you know, I hope to spark some interest and I hope it was worth your time as well and thanks for having me on.

Of course, and real quick, last question. Do you have one Instagram one Twitter one YouTube page and one book that you recommend for getting pretty good dialed in information? For a general sense. I have a ton of resources. Yes, you can't use single source reporting, but it's like, yeah, you just go to Atlas news, like that's the best. Yeah, I guess I guess that would be if you're just looking for like flash military reporting, I would say, you know, all those all those pages that make up our niche little open source community on on Instagram. One, one thing that people don't freaking read and I think they should, especially if you're an American, the Congressional Research Service, they publish articles daily. And this is what Congressmen and women are reading to get spun up on issues. So if you Google Congressional Research Service on the website, and you can probably read some articles that they just published today, and they cover everything.

Not your own policy funding. Yeah, highly recommend your readers read that as well. Okay, well, that's wrong. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much, man. Anytime. All right, take it easy. Yeah.