Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 17: China Chat

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Hey all, this week we are joined by S2 Forward (@_s2_fwd_) and Kagan Dunlap (@kagan.dunlap), a former Marine infantrymen. This week we talk about: - US Marine Corps life style - Chinese economic situation - Camp Schwab, Okinawa - And the logistical capabilities of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Crow Tone Report. You're in for a treat this week because they're all former and current Marines hanging out on this podcast today. We're joined again by again, S2 Forward, who's been on my podcast a few times. You've seen him around working with the Leaf of Minds Journal, who's also like a sponsor for the podcast. Give them a look, give them a shout. And then this week we're joined by Kagan, who is a prior infantryman in the Marine Corps, is now lap moving or going to the dark sides, they would call it military, becoming an officer and he's working his way up. And now you've probably seen him floating around the community talking about China, Asia, funny videos, these kind of things. So I think it'd be really fun to have a conversation with us for about an hour or so. So hey, guys, how you doing?

So, yeah, as a crotone said, I'm sdford. I cover mainly Middle East and European news. But in regards to Asia, I cover pretty much the situation with Taiwan. I'm a recentCEINT guy, news aggregator, current military guy. And yeah, like he was saying, Croton introduced me. My name is Kagan. Prior to the three guy was a tow gunner for five years out in the third Marine division before two, three deactivated and didn't didn't EO program. And now I'm getting ready to go towards more of a support role. Um, I kind of been just pushing a lot of different types of content. A lot of it's like funny stuff just for entertainment purposes, but then I also enjoy the current events stuff because I think it's important that people stay informed as to what's going on around the world

because it directly affects us and impacts us and shapes a lot of the way that we approach situations. So I find that stuff pretty important. And I've seen a lot of the stuff that, you know, Lethal Minds Journal has been putting out, Kro Toner Report and S2 Forward and Alcon and all these other great pages. And, you know, if there's any ever way that I can help magnify that message so

that more people can be informed, I think that's a great way to do business. So happy to be here. Absolutely. We appreciate you guys coming on. I mean, big topics in the last few weeks, Russia is at six months now on the right gridlock. Nancy Pelosi just went to Taiwan and called China's bluff and it really just highlighted how primitive and fractured their military is internally. And then we have everything going on in Africa where one person could say that they're being colonized by the Chinese and no one really wants to talk about that. Or you could just say like, Hey, it's a business opportunity that's incredibly flawed so I mean we could just take this one in

any direction really if you spent time out with uh in the pacific I mean that would probably be a good spot to like launch from. S2, did you ever have an opportunity to go out there? I'm actually really about to like in this next like month or so uh I haven't ever been I've only ever been to the Middle East, like Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, but not actually anywhere in the Pacific. You going out to UDP or something? Yeah, I am. Hitting up to Camp Schwab in Okinawa? Yeah, man. This place is a prison colony.

Yeah, I was being facetious. Yeah, the Yeah, it's like, all my Marines are like messaging to me is like, this place kind of sucks. It's not too bad. But it's kind of what you make of it to a certain degree. I've done three UDPs out there with two, three, but we went to we went to Hanson, the three times I went. I don't know. I don't know how it's working with like how they determine if it's Schwab or Hanson that people go to nowadays. But, you know, it really is what you make of it. You know, if you're sitting in the barracks the whole time, not doing anything, just playing video

games, you're probably going to be bored. But the yacht and like you get your scuba shirt while you're there, you go explore the town or you zip line and you're you do stuff outside go hike and go go see some of the historical sites like the the the castle that's there. Pretty this is some cool stuff. I mean, they got what's it called hacksaw Ridge is there. So that's like pretty popular destination for guys to go check out. You know, so no, when I was there during like the COVID period,

that they were just dumping every access body onto Schwab's. That little rink-a-dink PX was just flooded every single day. You never got a haircut, period. So it was really chill. And then there was never booze on the shelf because it was pretty much a dry city because everyone was just slamming bruskies. And then, yeah, it was a pretty good time. But yeah, I'm not really sure how they determine who goes

where anymore. I've been out for a few years. So yeah, I'm not sure. I know that for the longest time, Thurberines was rotating out specifically from Hanson. I know that the last time we went to Schwab, at least from my knowledge was the deployment that they went on the UDP they won on on 20, I believe it was 2012. They went to they went to Schwab. But then after that, they just did back to back to to Hanson, they pretty much locked down the barracks that are over near the the main gym, the House of Pain over there. over near the main gym, the House of Pain over there. So, which is going to be in that area. I'm sorry. I was going to say like the House of Pain, I think it's across from like third Intel,

like that just whole intersection. Yeah, yeah, right over by the little, the small PX and everything. Yeah, but talking about third Marines, how we feel about the Littoral Regiment because Hanging rubbing elbows with friends who are still in and working at headquarters Marine Corps It seems to be not a very popular idea They were like why would we create a Littoral Regiment when they were already doing the same job? We just rebranded So I guess my really only hang up is the name Littoral Regiment like we're Littoral Marines Because you know Littoral is inherent in the name Marines.

They could have just retask organized the regiment. That's really my only hang up. Like with the whole entire First Island Chain strategy or however you want to talk about it regarding EABO and operations in the disputed... What is it called? The WES? the the the the the

the the the the the the the the Regiment is, it would have happened anyways, either it would have been like, here's a Marine Regiment but at the same time would they deploy and you're going to get a bunch of attachments. But having your own organic, like your Lad guys, your more EW guys, organic to the Infantry Regiment is more group to UAS operators, is going to be kind of necessary in any sort of fight on an island

somewhere because the you have to move from island to island or just anticipate being on an island for a hot minute according to EABO. Okay, sorry, Operation Contestant Environment. That's what it's called the LOS. I couldn't remember for the life of me. Or Littoral Operations and Contestant Environment. So this is essentially saying, have a plan to be there supporting

the maritime environment. So surface warfare, but from a marine perspective. So obviously the ground combat element and the religious combat element and having your own organic anti-air assets and your own organic um uas operators not like your stalker not soccer uh not your puma or raven operators or skydio operators but your your stalker operator so the actual ones i could last for like 18 16 12 hours depending on the battery life and the weather. That's like where the money makers, like at least that's what I think, they recently,

I don't know if it was the third MLR, but it was the Marine Corps as a whole talking about purchasing ships with the sole task of putting Marines on the first island chain or an island somewhere to do their EABO. So honestly I think that's pretty interesting. I know it's widely... Oh go ahead. Oh yeah go right ahead man. I remember like, well not remember, I know that like the whole EABO and the whole Marines

shifting from getting ready to take some more rockets, more stuff pushed down to the infantry regiment that isn't infantry is widely unpopular within the Marine Corps, but it seems almost necessary to fight in the next fight, you know, and we're also kind of seeing that in Ukraine right now with, for example, UAS operators. Like there's footage everywhere showing that UAS operators are vectoring fires. They're having a more fidelity on whatever they're shooting at, you know, because we won't be able to have like a guy somewhere being able to be a spotter. We have to rely on drones for that kind of crap. I don't know if you guys are of the similar mindset, but when I was doing a lot of research into EABO and planning and sitting in on those, you know, G2 meetings with three MF and third Marine division, I went, did the Japanese try to put guys on island and the US just went around? And they were like, shut up. That's like, all right, I'm pretty sure that's the same plan we're doing. And I'm not gonna say I'm a pessimist or anything, but if we just went around the Japanese, what's

to say the Chinese won't do that too? So that's just something I thought of immediately. And a lot of the brass were like, Hey, go stand over there. I was like, all right, cool, whatever. I mean, I think that is a valid point. That's worth discussing the like with the whole entire, you know, island hopping campaign America did is like, we don't have to take all the islands. We just have to take every other island to prevent logistics from going to those islands and essentially starve them out or wait

them out to force a force of surrender so that's really worth talking about but the I guess the idea of having a long-range rocket or having a drone capable of flying out to a distance in order to you know vector in fires is where they're really pushing. I think that's like the argument for it. Yeah I think that there's a lot of merit to the design and the implementation of it and we had a lot of briefs while I was still in Quantico the past year about the whole plan. The commandant actually came in and spoke to us about it briefly and so did a few other generals.

They wanted to just get our opinions and go over it a little bit and just kind of touch on some of the different subject matters within the design. And I think there's a lot to it that is going to make us more flexible. And I think that we're going to be preparing for different things that we may not have encountered in the past when we were operating in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where it was like a primarily a large land-based battle. Um, I think the one thing that's probably going to be a hurdle for us is figuring out logistics and the supply aspect of things. Um, because I mean, the last time we did something like this, uh, was, was I think that we are probably

the best or one of the best nations at that specifically. And I think that we are probably the best or one of the best nations at that specifically. And I think that we are probably the best or one of the best nations at that specifically.

And I think that we are probably the best or one of the best nations at that, specifically, just because we've been engaging in that for the past 20 years plus. Right. So we got really frickin good at it, especially when it comes to working with other branches. And a lot of you'll see, like, the difference, the big difference between us and like the Chinese Chinese for example, is they're kind of a top down mentality where we're kind of a bottom up, right? And because of that decentralization that we're able to have, there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff that can get done at lower levels without having to get approval from the commandant of the Marine Corps or from the president of the United States. Whereas oftentimes the CCP, you know, they may be making like, they may want to like do a fire mission, but they might have to get approval for much higher up than we will. Same thing kind of idea. And that's just because they kind of like their force design is very similar to that of the

Russians. It's a lot more similar to their military design than ours is. So I think that's going to be a key thing in the future if there is any type of engagement or any type of deterring actions that we're participating in out there. I think it's twofold where traditionally third Marine division's whole job is to soak up as many bullets as possible until first Marine can get there and the rest of the army. They're like, can you just keep the Chinese there? But after the Chinese mobilized or whatever, several thousand guys to invade Taiwan at a moment's notice and failed, I was like, oh, actually, I think we would win. I don't think there is much of a problem here. Like you just said, logistics are real big on our side. We have what's interesting is like the

British and Australians are moving back into that area. The British has sent their aircraft carrier that way. It's like one we can interoperate very well with other branches. But on another hand, we have the Japanese, we have the British, we have the Australians, New Zealanders, all these other countries are kind of on our side going like, yeah, let's try to figure this out. And so we can look at one thing, RIMPAC, where everyone kind of jumps in and shows off their new toys, but then also just saying like, oh, they're organically moving into these areas. It's not because the Americans are telling them to, it's because everyone's trying to contain the Chinese. And if we call the Chinese bluff, it's going, oh yeah. But then it goes right back to like, well, the biggest issue is moving guys to those islands and like the sporadicallys are the parasail in the South China Sea

I think that would be the biggest issue Yeah, I think that I mean exercises like rim pack are important because like we do get the opportunity to work with our allies and see how how effective we can be When we're combining our forces and we're having to operate with each other. And that's another thing we've had a lot of experience with in the Middle East is, you know, working with other nations and figuring out ways

how we're gonna fund different things and how we're gonna get those requirements funded or fulfilled. I mean, we've got spots all over the world that we can fulfill requirements for units that are operating in that region, regardless of who we need to pay. And there's ways to do it. So like that's gonna be a pretty big aspect

when it comes to anything going on out there for sure, especially since we've got such a good, we've got a really good foundation built obviously in Japan and in Okinawa and even South Korea. We have a lot of resources out there and a lot of, we have a lot of resources out there and a lot of We have a lot of options that we can tap into if need be for for different ventures Primarily for like the Eastern Theater Command the Chinese command that's pretty much sole purpose in life is to take the islands in the East China Sea or Taiwan I really I'm honestly more concerned about their projection of their rocket forces like we saw during that exercise, quote unquote exercise slash show of force when old girl Nancy was on the island of Taiwan. I'm more really worried about the rocket forces

conducting any sort of attacks and the Air Force before I'm really worried about them projecting conducting any sort of attacks and the Air Force before I'm really worried about them projecting their ground forces onto Taiwan because I really am, I don't have a lot of confidence in their amphibious capabilities right now, frankly. Well, yeah, of course, like going back to traditional offensive operations, you have to soften the area. So you're going to send in your aircraft, you're going to send in your rockets. The Russians did that for the first, what, 24 hours before they actually kick their guys in to Ukraine. And then at that point, they were trying to seize territory, but that's land to land. That's not sending a couple of guys on a boat a hundred miles away to seize a few beachheads.

And then the entire time when these military is designed to defend, they're not take back the mainland, that slogan's gone. No, their whole job is to defend. They're not take back the mainland that slogans gone. No, their whole job is to defend against the Chinese. If the Chinese conduct amphibious exercises or whatever, but they have zero combat experience, period ever, and winning a war and or fighting a successful offensive operation. It's going like, Hey, I think the fate the odds are in favor of Taiwan here. I think another thing that's probably important to remember is that even before any type of long, long range strikes happen, I think the first thing, the very first thing that's going to happen is cyber.

And I think that that you can see that that's one of the first things that started happening over in Ukraine before even the Russians invaded there, you know, as they were conducting tons and tons of cyber attacks on all kinds of stuff on their power grid, on their defense infrastructure, on their, uh, their, their air defense systems on everything. And I think that would be the Chinese have a huge contingency set aside that specifically focuses on those types of things. And I believe that that would be the number one way they would initiate because that's

the first thing they would want to do is disable our ability to counter their long range assets, you know, and the only way to do that is with cyber. And ultimately that's where the space force would kind of come in. You know, that's one of the reasons why I think that that branch was kind of like separated off was because of the, the importance of, of that whole part of warfare now, which is that's a new thing. You know, that's something that we're going to have to, we're going to go through some growing pains with that. I think every country bases any type of offensive operation off of Gulf War I, where the Americans just spent a hundred hours

destroying the Iraqi defenses and blowing up all the logistics hubs and other munitions depots and just destroying the logistical capabilities of the Iraqis. And also that's psychological where they're like, oh, well, we're getting pummeled. We can't see the enemy. Plus they haven't even invaded yet. And so we look at the Russians and the Chinese, they're probably basing their entire model on that. We did it again in 03 and I think the Iraqis did a far better job the second time.

But yeah, when it comes to cyber operations, the Chinese, of course, you can look down to like, oh, they're going to attack websites and government computers and these things. And then it's also down to like, TikTok, which is just a weapon of demoralizing the average Taiwanese citizen by calling them dogs and all these other kinds of things where they're like, oh, you're Chinese. Don't think you're, uh, don't think you're off the hook. No, we're coming for you. Don't think you're off the hook. No, we're coming for you. Yeah, I think, well, the interesting thing about the Gulf War was that that was kind of a really good test for us because a lot of people like to underestimate the quality

and the, I guess, the overall level of capabilities of the Iraqi military at that time. But I think most people don't realize that Iraq had just gotten out of a very, very vicious war with Iran at that point. So everybody was combat hardened. And I'm talking human waves, trench warfare, everything. And these guys were, they were pretty damn salty by the time we actually started engaging them. And so one of the things that we did, like you're talking about is all these, these strikes

we initiated by trying to target anything logistically to cripple them as much as we could. So they not, not only could they, nobody could talk to each other, nobody could coordinate. They weren't able to, to set up and they didn't have any like, you know, lateral signal plans set up in case all their communications went down. And I think I can't remember I had a friend of mine who was talking about or talking to the other day, it was a prior Oh, 340, Oh, 341. He works for Northrop Grumman. And he was explaining to me that, uh, we did some sort, we did so many sorties during that, during that period of time that it's, I think it's set the record for the number of sorties ran within a short period of time because of how coordinated

and how like how we had masked sorties to cripple these logistics and these communication abilities that they had because we wanted to make sure that when we did finally start sending in ground troops they were so disorganized and unable to coordinate with each other that we would just destroy them. You know, when we start stepping away from the golf war one, I don't think a lot of people realize that, like you said, one, they fought that eight year Iran Iraq war, where they were launching scud missiles at each other, like bottle rockets and trench warfare was like 1914.

Again, these guys were combat veterans. Also Iraq had the fourth largest military on the planet behind us, the Chinese and the Russians, the Chinese and the Soviets at the time. It was like, they were a very capable force and the US absolutely ran through them. And so like going back to, like I said, where every country I want to say today tries to base their offensive doctrine on Gulf War I and the most picture perfect example of how a war could be fought because it was over in days.

Americans are saying such minimal casualties, let alone allies. And so looking at going back to what S.T. Ford said about amphibious operations, that's 100 miles from the closest point between China and Taiwan. It's like there's no way there's no way it's going to work. Or not saying it's not going to work in like a perfect world that might for the Chinese, but same way they would sustain such heavy losses and casualties and logistical ships and that's just not including, you know, if they can get to the beach, that would just be a bloodbath.

Why not not only that they got to cover how many how many miles of water of open water? Yeah, it's like 100 miles. It's insane. Yeah, like the whole planet would know they were leaving on the way, you know. So that's not to say they wouldn't do it. But, you know, everyone would be quite aware of what was going on. I talked about this with Al-Khan as to before, but the Chinese have that 2049 plan where they have to have Taiwan by 2049. And I mentioned it all the time that that's not invasion by 2049. That's incorporation by 2049, which takes like a generation of squishing resistance and getting rid of public dissent. So they would have to do it relatively soon. And so going back to what you said of they base their entire military

in that former Soviet doctrine and the Russians doctrine and it's not really seeming to work because it is that top down command structure. It's not the bottom up which the Taiwanese is based on. It's going like well the Chinese days are numbered. Everyone knows that they can't mobilize their forces and their people are pretty upset about what's going on internally. Oh yeah that's another thing that people don't usually talk about is they got a lot of internal strife within their own country right now, just like we do. So regarding successful of a Chinese amphibious assault on

Taiwan, I think a couple things that have to happen first. So like, I kegan's point about cyber having to, like not only just using kinetic fires, but also non kinetic fires through cyber to hinder any sort of air defense or any sort of communications on the island itself but I think looking at Russia that was a pretty good they really did show that they were like oh we're totally not gonna invade Ukraine by holding the largest exercise in Europe at the time and then in turn Ukraine, I think a big precursor to that would be a, Hey, we're just the Eastern Theory Command just doing our largest exercise

ever on the wherever essentially getting ready to move everything forward to prepare them for some sort of invasion. We're also going to monitor those aircraft carriers because geopolitically that's a projection of force. That's your international credibility of I'm in charge. So the US has 10 nuclear carriers and the British went, I kind of want big carriers too. Got to go back to that old Imperial mindset.

They start bringing out their bad boys moving to the Pacific. It's almost like calling the Chinese bluff. And so they have three aircraft carriers now and two are former Soviet just shells that they propped up and they have one organically produced. And so you just got to watch those because that's where the aircraft is coming from. It might come from mainland, but closer the planes can get to the island itself and surrounded on say three corners. It would also definitely an indicator.

I also remember reading this article a while back just talking about how China's been converting civilian ferries for the use of amphibious operations and I hate to keep saying or I was gonna say the the book Ghost Fleet is continued to just continue to show like hey we're predicting the future but that's neither here nor there but I think it's really interesting that that would be if they were to mask like a shipping manifest from mainland China to Taiwan and, oh hey, surprise, it's a ship full of tanks and, you know, military equipment. Back to like those old German commerce ships where they had cargo ships, but they had guns on the side. So if a British destroyer cruised up went like, hey, lay down your arms, they went, absolutely

not, and would just blast them and they were just cloak and dagger their logistical ships back in like World War two Now do you guys know the Chinese Ships are all running off of diesel Yeah Yeah, whereas we we have like our issue. Yeah, and ours are running off of nuclear power so they can stay out there for, you know, years, they need to kind of like your submarines, right?

You know, close enough to a resupply ship and do a RAS real quick. That's, which only takes a few hours and you can just keep going for months. So yeah, that's a that's pretty big. You know, I know some people like to say that doesn't really matter because they're so close to the mainland that they could just go back and refuel. But at the same time, if they were trying to project it far out, you know, they're going to have a much more difficult time doing something like that than we would when we can just sustain ourselves out there for months and months without having to refuel. months without having to refuel. I wonder if anyone's considered Vietnam because the Vietnamese and the Chinese had a war back in the 70s. Vietnamese absolutely crushed them. And then the Chinese move now is to surround the local fishing areas with their like people's fishing militia little rinky-dink boats, but they just surround the entire and force the Vietnamese and the Filipinos out of the way so they could capitalize on that entire market. And the Vietnamese don't really like the Chinese. So I don't know if anyone's thrown an olive branch their way and said like, hey pal, just in case there is an operation, what are you going

to do? I feel like much how Vladimir Putin was afraid of NATO expansionism and so he invaded Ukraine, which caused NATO to have two more members join the organization and then bolstered like unity within NATO. China is, you know, they've been pretty vocal. They don't want an Asian or a Pacific NATO. And I feel like because of their aggression towards all their neighbors, either politically, economically, or militarily, this is going to result into an Asian NATO. I know I brought it up here a few times, but the Vietnam, for example, and the Philippines,

although they have territorial overlap or territorial claims that overlap in the South China Sea, China is claiming all of it. So that'd be one aspect to engage both countries to say, hey, work with us or work with each other more accurately to counter any sort of Chinese aggression. It's almost like there was an alliance in the 60s and 50s called CEDAW, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization that completely failed. But I don't know, just bring that bad boy back. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, is a lot of these countries, they want like, their main focus is they want

prosperity for their people the same way any other country does, right? You know, right now, Vietnam is still kind of a developing country in the sense of just like comparing them to, you know, places like the UK or Canada or America or things like that. places like the UK or Canada or America or things like that, but they're making pretty big strides to develop their economics. And it's very much fashion after a capitalist system because they see all of the opportunity that it's afforded people in the West. You know, that's just one example.

Taiwan's done the same. I mean, if you go to Korea, South Korea is a thriving society. I mean, I was there in 2015 and I mean, they are very industrialized and very advanced and they have some of the greatest electronics on earth and that's as a direct result of having a capitalist society where, you know, the people are free. It's a free and open society where you can, you can build something and you know, the government's not going to take it and claim it for themselves. Now, so it also goes back to like Hong Kong, which China didn't start making any money until Hong Kong and Macau were incorporated into the Chinese sphere of influence. That's when their

economy started booming. It's almost like capitalism was working. And then in the mid-2010s, the Hong Kong people were going like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. And there was weird, almost like they started bringing back pictures of the Queen of England and their old Imperial colony flags. They're like, can we go back to this? So the British extended that, hey, you know, if you were born before 1997, you're allowed to apply for UK citizenship. And then that's when the huge clampdown from the CCP came down in Hong Kong going, no, two states, one party, it's not how it works anymore. No, it's everything. So yeah. And then looking at Hong Kong, that is almost a template of how they would subjugate. Say if Taiwan rolled over and just let the Chinese in, it would go exactly like Taiwan or Hong Kong, because it's the people don't want to be a part of the CCP, you know, subject subjugated populace.

I can see that. Do you remember the year when they took Hong Kong? It was 97. End of Empire. Yeah, and it was, that's when everyone goes, wow, the Chinese economy rapidly advanced faster than any economy on the entire history of the planet where some people go like, well, the Soviets went from farmers to the outer space in 50 years, but the Chinese went from a fuel society to the numbers, the second largest economy on the planet within 20 years. That's impressive. But then you go, what year did that start? 97. I think there's something going on there. Well, you know, the Chinese are doing a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that's very economically driven across the planet, specifically in places like Africa, right? So what they'll do is they'll go in,

since they have all of this, all these materials, and they have so much influence, and they have money, they'll go into this, they'll go into a poor country in Africa, and they'll be like, Hey, we noticed your, your road systems here need, need a little bit of maintenance, like, Hey, we noticed your your road systems here need need a little bit of maintenance. Like, well, I'll tell you what we'll do. We will build infrastructure for your whole country. And you don't got to worry about paying for it right now. You just pay us back later. Right. And they're doing that all over the place. And then these these countries end up becoming

kind of enslaved via debt because the Chinese are coming in and investing all this capital. And then on top of that, they're like, hey, just also you got to make sure that we have access to all of your minerals and resources, you know, and they've got bases all over Africa that are popping up like they've got one down the street from us in, I think Djibouti. It's five miles. I think it's like five clicks or five miles away from the Navy base. Now from the guys I know that went to like Camp Lemonier, they go, Oh, we could see the Chinese mustering every morning. They are we could see them. at the two different ways, because the two different ways the Russians and the Chinese are going into Africa, where if there's a problem in say, Mali, Russia descends Wagner,

and they go, who's the problem? Cool. And they just hose everybody. They're like, cool, neutralized. But the Chinese just go to the top of the government and go, yeah, you need you need roads. Everybody needs roads. You need clean water. Everyone needs that. So it's two different ways. They're each achieving the same end state. They're just doing it differently because the average people are going, wow, the Russians are pretty badass

or taking care of everyone. The French, who are these guys? They just did nothing for eight years. But then the Chinese are looked upon as, yeah, I mean, these guys gave us a reservoir for water. But then I think everyone in Africa is waking up going, oh, this is not for our best interest. No, this is returning the clock back a hundred years. It's not good for Africa. I think the most recent manifestation of Chinese debt-shapping working is the Solomon Islands

recently stopped the Coast Guard from refueling there. I think that's just like the the lowest level of Chinese exerting their influence over a country to get a goal they want. Well, that or Sri Lanka, which was in revolution a few weeks ago, and there was reports of the Chinese going like, hey, we built that airport. Is there any way we could go in there and make sure it's not burned down? Our guys are just going to go in there, secure the airfield, nothing crazy. We're going to leave. And I didn't see anything like that coming to fruition fruition, but it's like, it would be insane if they did.

Yeah, there's a lot of like real subversive, like insidious things that they're doing because they, I don't remember, I can't remember if I'm quoting it correctly, but they talk about things like the thousand year, like thousand year plan or something like that. You know what I'm talking about? Where they're like, they're, they're thinking ahead a thousand years, like what's going to happen if we do these things now? How's that can impact our empire a thousand years down the road? Well, because they like to play the, like you said, the long game where they understand that the entire world runs in four years since, and that's because

the American president's elected every four years, plus or minus eight years. Let's say that, but the Chinese go, well, we just marched on, uh, Rome and said that she's never leaving power. So yeah, we could just wait this out and we'll just pick the next guy to take over. Same thing with Vladimir Putin. They just kind of wait. But their biggest issue is that they have that top heavy population of aging men where the youth is pretty non-existent because no one's having kids because in China it's all guys. They have entire cities with no women where those ghost cities that everyone calls them just is essentially a perfect template of keeping a potentially aggressive male population in a box and monitored because they want those guys revolting.

And then you have the Russians who are going, we're going to give you hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a baby because we're not having any. We just lost 50,000. So looking at like the big picture of like a thousand years. Yeah, it's cool right now, but what if in 10 years, a half your population dies off because you can't afford to A feed them, get them clean water. Was it 15% of China's land is irrigatable? What is the word? I don't know, but yeah,

they're allowed to self sustain themselves about 15%. So they rely heavily on the African imports of food and rare materials and water and these kinds of things. And so it's, yeah, there's a lot going on in China that the CCP really want to dress. And if you go on TikTok and mention it, you get banned. So Oh, yeah, 100%. I think I read somewhere that China wants to be like the sole superpower, I think was like, what 100 or 1000 years or whatever.

And it's like direct competition is with the US, they don't even like really acknowledge Russia, it's like a huge economic threat to them. They want to be the sole superpower in the world. And I think that's pretty, it should be a wake up call for everybody to start working towards, you know, countering China. If I wanted some living living space and I was a Chinese government official I would just start looking into eastern Russia because no one lives there what are they going to take Vladivostok the Russians really going to fight tooth and nail to defend that no I don't think so they know they know that if they went into Russia though that would just be a horrible move on their part though that's the thing yeah, just act like I guess just from the international, you know, perspective,

just because they don't, they don't really have a whole lot of friends right now. You know, at least the Russians have Syria. That's kind of cool. But I don't think the Chinese have anyone. I mean, other than North Korea, you know. Yeah. And that's just a loose cannon. Who's yeah. Yeah. There's always reports that you can see on. Was it live maps or telegram saying like, oh, the Chinese are sending guys

to the border of North Korea. You're like, interesting. I wonder what's going on in North Korea. They probably want to keep mass brainwashed refugees from crawling into China. Oh, guaranteed. I mean have you ever heard, did you ever, I don't know if either of you guys know who, the woman who escaped North Korea, she fled to China and then managed to get to the United States. I think Joe Rogan interviewed her on his podcast. Oh yeah. Not too long ago. It's a beautiful story but like, you know, really gives you a little bit of an insight on how things the

status of that country, you know, I don't know if you guys ever watched law why 86 on YouTube, but he was an American who lived in China for 10 years from the like 2002 to maybe 2012. And then she pinged became president. And he was like, it went from a pretty like a melting pot society to very interface, very racist, very nationalistic, very xenophobic, very like unless you're Han Chinese, get out. And so he escaped, got back to the States. And since he's like, well, I know Chinese and I know everything about the system because

I lived there for 10 years, sort of making videos about what goes on in the country. And he's on it's hilarious on his Twitter is just Chinese bots saying like, oh, go to hell, you don't know what you're talking about. But he always talks about their agriculture system or their real estate system where it's completely failing because the Chinese people don't have any money, so they buy property because it's very sustainable. But then that goes down to like, oh, the Chinese economy is collapsing because capitalism is eking its way in where the Chinese people think, well, I can't have money, but I have a house. But if I get married, me and my wife have to live in the same house. So she has to sell her place. So we'll be permanent life partners, we'll never get married, we'll have two places and rent out the second. And then it's just that mindset is spreading across China where everyone's trying to make a few dollars and is completely crushing the Chinese economy that's based on, you know, no dollars, no money.

You know, I have a friend of mine I went to corporals course with back in 2016. She, she's a Chinese immigrant. I don't think she was born in China or maybe she was I can't remember but she's got a lot of family there still and she was telling me about how a lot of the even the college degrees and whether the colleges are set up over there like if you if you're part of like the like aristocracy like and you your say you're a guy and you own a really big company or whatever, a lot of these guys will pay universities over there a fee for their degree to give to their kid. And then they'll just have their kid take over their business after they have a degree to show that they have some credentials, but they'll have no formal training, you know, and that's like the aristocracy level, I don't know what exactly life would be like for, say, the middle or lower class, or even if there is that type of a thing over there. But

class specifically, like they'll save. If they're a farmer, they'll trade their goods, whatever, make a few dollars. And then they'll spend every access dollar they have on like a Pepsi and they'll sit on that for weeks. And they're like, no, this is the coolest thing I have as a, as a room temp Pepsi. And so they'll just sit on that and go like, yeah, I really absolutely love this idea of getting something beneficial out of the work I'm doing. And so it's when I think it was 2000, was it 2012 or 14? No, it was 2008 when there was the Beijing Olympics. And a lot of the

Olympians went there and thought like, wow, everybody in China does not seem to hate the US they really want to be a part of Coca Cola and juicy fruit. So I, you know, the one thing that always comes to mind, and you guys probably know this better than I do, honestly, you know, the one thing that always comes to mind, and you guys probably know this better than I do, honestly, but like, you know, you see the level of poverty we have in America, you know, the, the type of poverty you see in this country is completely different from the type of poverty you see in other countries. You know, specifically like Africa or the Middle East or probably probably Asia or Eurasia and areas like that. Like the poorest of the poor here are like the middle class there.

You know, and this thing you might be able to elaborate on this, but say if there's such a separation between America's lower class, which could be considered China's upper class, it's very easy for someone who runs say TikTok to exploit the minute issues of American or Western culture where it's almost like, all right, look, we're not gonna win in a fight. What we can do is have the people be very not cooperative. So they'll just say spam, anti-US propaganda or whatever,

create division, these kinds of things that are exploited through say propaganda or whatever, create division, these kinds of things that are exploited through say, TikTok or, you know, whatever the Chinese are doing today. Oh, absolutely. Like the, what is it, the militia that's solely dedicated to like, it's called like the people's militia of I can't remember the name, just solely use like things like the cyber militia used to spread misinformation, like oriented towards the US and internal issues or Taiwan pretty much anything anything anti-Chinese is what they're countering and I think it's insane going back to going back to North Korea

though I know like it's it's like a big wild card about what the Kim dynasty is what's gonna happen you know if it's his if it's Kim Jong-un or his sister. But I think this is just like a wild card. Koa, they're essentially keeping them in their China's keeping North Korea in their back pocket to say if Taiwan were to go off and they attack them, they can use North Korea to leverage leverage them to attack South Korea to divert US and allied forces to another crazy humanitarian disaster because Seoul would be wiped out of the earth straight up. Oh yeah, of course.

And then I also think that if they were to try diverting forces, that also we'd see a lot of kinetic activity within the South and East China Sea through the Chinese maritime militia. So it'd be, if there'd be a flashpoint, it'd essentially be in Korea, the first island chain as a whole, more or less, except for like, Australia, New Zealand, and all them. Well, looking at South Korea, whenever there's defectors from North Korea, they're ostracized from society, they are unable to integrate with the South Korean culture, even though they speak the same language, they're going like, No, you're from the North, you're traders. We want nothing to do with you. So they create their own little

communities and whatnot. But if the Chinese put their guys along the North Korean border to say, in a theoretically stop a human wave of refugees coming into China, we can say the same thing about the South Korean military and say, second army infantry division, stopping refugees from crossing the border because I don't think they want another say Kabul on their hands with millions of malnourished brainwashed individuals trying to escape captivity. And then that's just leads to a whole other completely humanitarian crisis. Well, a lot of the bridges that lead down into South Korea are laced with explosives. So, you know, and everybody knows that on every side of the aisle, you know, because they obviously there's contingencies for if any, they wanted to,

you know, prevent any type of invasion to happen, you know, so I don't know. I don't know if that's something they're, they're really like as concerned it is a potential COA. It's not outside of the realm of possibilities. Talking about North Korea, and you guys might have seen this, that there was, I forget who, it might have been Northern Provisions who said that Korea offered up like 10,000 or 100,000 soldiers to fight in Ukraine with Russia. Like, what would that secondhand effect be like if a whole bunch of malnourished North Vietnamese or not North Vietnamese North Korean soldiers show up and say donbass. So you can look this up now. A lot of people don't know this. In Syria, North Korea, North Koreans were there building their, like their facilities regarding like nuclear energy. And the really? Yeah, it's really weird. And so if they were in the Donbass, they'd be probably I think they'd just be doing the same thing,

just construction or maybe try getting some common experience out of those guys for their future generals or colonels or whatever. That's just, that's just an idea. That's pure speculation. Yeah, I the their military a little bit more so than they do their average citizenry. So I don't, I don't know how malnourished their soldiers are. I'm sure that they're still malnourished compared to our standards, but, um, I don't know if that's even important side note, but this, you know, I'm sure that that's one of the things, especially when it comes to like the North Koreans trying to like do a show of force,, hey, look at our military, they'll have like all of their most healthy, nourished soldiers performing in front of everybody, just for, you know, just for visuals, you know, meanwhile, everybody else is like, you know, starving. I imagine that the Russians would look too highly upon North Korean soldiers. Then I just want them to like a build a bridge or be clear a lot land minefield just like, Hey, we're not losing our guys. So hey, do whatever.

Oh, speaking of minefields, have you guys seen the guy tip of the spear on him around? Yeah. Yeah. I've been sharing some of his stuff. He's a former green bray. He's been over there in Ukraine, clearing farmland of anti-tank mines for these farmers over that that are Ukrainian farmers. They're just trying to make a living. And they're their farmland is just laced with anti-tank mines. And he's been going in there personally with a CMD a compact metal detector. And just like digging up, like he's dug up like hundreds of landmines and just like disposed of them for these farmers so they can continue to grow crops. Do work on that if you get if you guys haven't had an opportunity to check them out. I highly recommend it. He's a good dude.

I've had some conversations with him. So yeah, there's I do remember earlier when the war started the the I can't, I couldn't be the guy to do that. It's still like, we do this every day. What? What? This is just life. Well, those people grow up in just a harsh reality. You know what I mean? So like, it's, it's just, it's hard for people like, well, at least for me, it's hard for me to wrap my head around that kind of stuff, cause I live so comfortably

compared to a lot of people in other countries. You know, but the important thing is just being able to acknowledge that. And, and, and like be, be aware of that, that, that I, you know, we've got a pretty damn good, you know? Yeah. I think the only guys are the only community of people in the West who are accustomed to that lifestyle is probably, I don't know, some Brits living in Northern Ireland, they're like, oh yeah, bus bombs. What about it?

Oh yeah. The Scots, man, they're pretty hard people too. That's where the British commandos go for their school. Yeah. Those talking about that. There is that base in Indonesia or it's Borneo is the island of Borneo where the Brits, I want to say send a lot of their guys for their Pacific training. So sometimes they go to like Okinawa and hang out with Americans or they'll go to their own little combat town with a mat town and whole village and

whatnot and Borneo and train up and that's where they send Gurkhas and I was like, man, that's imagine a Gurkha coming out with you with a shovel like that guy lives a hard life. Yeah, that's that's for sure. But all right guys, I think we're getting to about, you know, that hour mark. So the do another one here soon give it a look. Yeah, I'll keep. Oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Just to plug my stuff real quick. As to 40 could find me on Instagram underscore s to underscore FWD underscore. It's my original make out chat handle for those that know that is you can find me on Twitter. I have a link tree with all my stuff. Thanks. And for me just, you know, you can search my name on Instagram and Facebook, but most of my stuff is on Instagram. So just Kagan, K-A-G-A-N dot Dunlap.

And, you know, I'm going to continue to share this stuff that I see on the Crotone report and also on S2 Forward and Lethal Minds and everybody else that's influential in the military community because we're collectively trying to make each other better and more informed, you know, and I like to throw out like, like, like you said before, I like to throw out stupid stuff that's entertaining and funny as well, because life is short, you know, and it's important to laugh once in a while, but we can also learn at the same time. So before we go, as to Ford, how did you get that on Mako chat? Because it's not uncommon to jump into a Mako chat room. There's just everybody with the same name. So the it's it wasn't actually like s two forward. I was in three seven from 2014 to 2018. And so as their call time is blade so I was a blade to Ford all the

time so not actually s2 Ford so you lied all right got it I'm a liar you were you were in 370 said 37 my buddy was their chief scout for a couple years. I don't know if you know a guy named Trujillo. I can't remember right now. I don't think so. Might have been after that. I'm not sure. He left from 2-3 as well.

He's one of my fears. Good dude. That's hilarious. Too easy. But hey guys, one again again thank you for coming on and I'm gonna cut this right now but afterwards if you want to like hang on for a second like shoot the shit we can but I'm gonna cut the recording sure The Thanks for watching!