Pod Save the World - Mystery attacks in Cuba and the man who ran the Navy

Episode Date: October 4, 2017

First, Tommy talks with Ben Rhodes about the mysterious attacks on our diplomats in Havana and the Trump administration’s decision to expel Cuban officials in response. Then, he’s joined by former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to discuss his eight years leading the Navy as well as his time as the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. It's Tommy Vitor. Thank you, as always for tuning in. If you like the show, want to learn more, check out the Pod Save the World Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter at at TVitor 08. Today's episode is a double header. First, Obama's top foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes tried to help us understand what is happening down with our diplomats in Cuba, why so many of them are getting sick or going deaf. We talk about that and the broader implications for the region. Then I talked to the former Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabas. He was the Secretary of the Navy for all. eight years, the Obama administration. He was also the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the 90s. We talked about how he managed the Navy and literally purchased billion-dollar ships at a time.

I think it was an interesting window into how to rationalize a defense budget that can reach numbers like $760 billion a year. We also talked about the changing nature of the economy in Saudi Arabia, their transition from an entirely oil-based economy to one where Oil is dropping below $30 a barrel, and they're going to have to deal with that going forward. It was an interesting perspective on decisions they're making, like allowing women to drive. He also talked about how he tried to turn the Navy green and the Marine Corps green by pushing them to use biofuels and renewable energy. It was a perspective on the value of conservation and going green that I'd never heard before in the national security benefits that I think you will appreciate. So I hope you enjoy it.

On the line is Ben Rhodes. Ben was a speechwriter for President Obama and served as his deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. In that role, he was one of the president's top foreign policy advisors for many years. And specific to this case, he was one of the few people who were part of a secret talks that led to restored diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Ben, you're also a best friend of crooked media, a friend of the pod. Thanks for being on the show. I'm always glad to be here, Tommy. All right. We want to talk about this crazy series of health incidents for staff in Cuba, U.S. Embassy staff in Cuba. So I'll tick through the facts. Starting in late 2016, American diplomats in Havana started suffering from headaches, dizziness, hearing loss.

At least 22 U.S. diplomats have been affected. Symptoms got worse, the longer they exposed, and some of these injuries now appear to be permanent. According to the news reports, the cause of the illness was thought to be maybe a sonic wave machine, Other theories are it's a virus, a poison, some sort of radiation. No one really seems to know what happened, or at least if they do know they're not talking. Some wonder if this was some rogue element of Cuba's intel services or maybe a eavesdropping device gone wrong, some other third-party country operating in Cuba.

There's a long history of Cuba messing around with our diplomats going back to the Cold War. They're not physically injuring them, but they're just kind of letting our guys know that they're watching basic intimidation. But it's notable in this instance that a Canadian diplomats. diplomat was also affected in Canada and Cuba have great relations. So I guess my first question is, Ben, have you heard of anything like this before? And what do we know? Yeah, Tommy, this is really mysterious. And first of all, we're obviously very concerned about the health of our diplomats. And frankly, we weren't aware of this in the Obama White House as we left. I think it took them a while to figure out just what was going on. Now, if you look at what the different theories are, you know,

administration itself, the Trump administration, has not said that they believe the Cuban government is carrying out these attacks. You would think that given their, you know, hostility towards the Cuban government that they would say that if that's what they believed. The fact is, you know, while Cuba has harassed our diplomats in the past, even at the times of maximum hostility between our countries, they never did anything this brazen and this designed to harm people. And the fact is in December, when this started, they were frantically concluding MOUs with us and signing business deals and trying to preserve the opening. So it just strikes, I think, almost every analyst I've talked to as highly unlikely that the government itself is doing this. They've offered to cooperate with the FBI and investigating this.

And you're right. There are theories that range from some rogue element inside of Cuba that is looking to disrupt the U.S. relationship, third parties, governments, the Russians who have harassed our diplomats and other places. The fact is we don't know, but again, it's important that the administration hasn't said this is the Cuban government. And frankly, the Cuba watchers do not believe that this is likely the Cuban government itself. Yeah, I mean, you made an important point there. I mean, attacking 20-some-odd U.S. diplomats or their spouses, that level of aggression would make, like, the Putin-era KGB, I think, blanche a little bit at, you know, going after the U.S. that hard.

I mean, this does seem like it is well beyond the bounds of sort of traditional spy services going after each other, right? Yeah, and you made an important point to, Tommy, which is the Canadians have an exceptionally good relationship with Cuba. Justin Trudeau's father restored that relationship. So it just flies in the face of everything we know about Cuba's relationship with Canada, that they'd similarly be targeting Canadian diplomats. So again, the Cubans have been trying to preserve the relationship, even under Trump. This runs entirely counter to everything else they've done.

So I think that the focus has to be on investigating this and working to figure out what's happening and to protect our diplomats. But again, the steps that have been taken by the Trump administration, and, you know, go well beyond that. You know, the cut in our embassy staff is enormous. And that means now that our embassy is not staffed enough to process visas. And there are, you know, thousands of people in the queue for visas come to to the United States. Often people who have family, Cuban Americans, so this means that families will be separated. The staff that does work on promoting human rights is, you know, going to be affected by this, so we'll be less able to promote human rights in Cuba.

The people who work on a whole host of bilateral issues, like working together to combat narcotics trafficking, is going to be affected. And, you know, Cuba is already reeling from Hurricane Irma. The travel warning, which, again, also seemed excessive since travelers have not been targeted. It's just been diplomats. You know, that is going to harm the Cuban small business owners that the Trump administration says they want to help.

people who own restaurants and host people in Airbnbs who, again, are already hard hit by Irma. So it's going to have very broad and far-reaching impacts on Cubans and Cuban-Americans and their ability to see each other, on promotion of human rights, on the bilateral relationship. And it just strikes me, and I think many people who have watched Cuba for a long time. This goes well beyond getting to the bottom of what's happening to our diplomats is essentially a rollback in the relationship. And frankly, we'd want more people down there to investigate what's happening. So my concern is that this sets us back.

And if this becomes permanent, then we really will be in a much more downgraded relationship than even anything that Trump announced in the spring forecast. Yeah. That was a very helpful summary of the impact. You know, I've also read news reports that say the Cuban officials are apparently ravelled by what happened. They're trying to figure out the cause. It's notable and interesting, I think, that they allowed the FBI to come to Cuba and visit the homes of the diplomats.

Apparently, the FBI looked at security footage and other evidence and hasn't figured out what happened yet. Like you said, Tillerson said embassy personnel were deliberately targeted, but he didn't blame the Cuban government. It does seem to allow for the possibility that another party was responsible. We mentioned that Americans are now advised not to travel to Cuba. On Tuesday, the U.S. expelled 15 Cuban diplomats to match staff reductions in Havana. it sounds like you think this is a mistake, but I don't want to speak for you. I mean, what's your take on the response and what would be the right response? Well, it is a mistake because, look, whoever is doing this is clearly trying to create a rift

between the United States and Cuba, whether it's some rogue Cuban element or some third party. And we're essentially doing their work for them by downgrading the relationship. You know, that seems to be the intent of whoever is behind this. And that really sets back, again, everything from our ability to process the visas, allow families to see each other to advocate for our own interests. When we cut our embassy staff this deeply, we're essentially taking ourselves off of the field. You know, we also work in Cuba to try to deal with a lot of regional issues. And one of the biggest benefits of the opening to Cuba is it dramatically increased the stature of the United States and Latin America.

We negotiated the Columbia Peace Agreement. which is now being implemented in Havana, because we could send diplomats there to do that. Tommy, you've, I think, appropriately drawn a lot of attention to the crisis in Venezuela. If we were better able to enlist the Cubans in a dialogue about Venezuela, that might be able to unlock some progress that has yet to be made in terms of getting the opposition in a more meaningful role and a more meaningful dialogue. So all of our interests in Cuba and in Latin America, I think, are set back if we kind of, you know, use this moment to permanently downgrade the nature of our

relationship. What I think we should be doing is focusing on the health of our diplomats. But I think the way to do that is to deploy, you know, significant law enforcement resources, the FBI down there to get to the bottom of what happened. And, you know, this strikes me as unusual timing, too, because, you know, the bulk of these attacks happened early in the year, we're just now taking these very punitive measures that, again, go beyond even precautionary measures. They include really a wholesale downsizing the embassy staff, a travel warning, even though, again, this has not been a weapon targeted at U.S. travelers.

It's been diplomatic personnel for the U.S. and other countries. So I worry we're making a mistake. And once you do something like this, too, the Trump administration hasn't explained when they will go back to a normal staffing of the embassy. You know, is there a period of time where these attacks don't happen that will lead to restoration of the normal presence? I worry about this becoming a de facto rollback in the relationship in ways that essentially allows whoever did this to achieve their objective. Right.

Yeah, I mean, this is obviously a serious incident. And you and I have had any number of meetings and conversations about the need for increased embassy security to take care of our personnel. We went through the Benghazi attacks and all the mistakes that were made in terms of our ability to secure those facilities. So we can't let this stuff happen to our diplomats anywhere, anytime. But you're right. I mean, the president has to think about the broader implications of unwinding relations with Cuba. And I think people hear about U.S. Cuba relations and they think of it as historic.

And you think of two countries that have, you know, not had any relationship for 50 years, but they don't necessarily understand the way that Cuba could help unlock relations with the broader region. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and what it means to our relationship in Latin America generally. Yeah, and look, I'm glad you made the point about the security for the Democrats. I want to be very clear. If the Trump administration said the Cuban government did this and here's the information that demonstrates that, that would be a whole different ballgame. But the fact is they haven't said that.

And if this is not the Cuban government, again, then I think it's somebody who's trying to harm their relationship. And again, for the United States, it's hard to overstate how much the Cuba policy had been an albatross around our necks in Latin America. Every summit we went to, every bilateral relationship, including with friends of ours, like Chile or Colombia or Mexico, all we heard for decades is how much our Cuba policy was alienating the United States from the rest of the region. It was seen as a legacy of the Cold War, a legacy of the United States trying to push people around in Latin America. And when we changed the policy, there was an outpouring of goodwill from across Latin America. And again, a few concrete things. I mentioned the Columbia Peace Deal. You don't have that without the U.S.-Cuba relationship, because we had an envoy at Tox in Havana,

that hosted the Colombian government and the FARC rebels in Colombia who had ties to the Cuban government. That's a very tangible achievement that could only be reached, really, with a U.S.-Cuba rapprochement. Our friends, you know, one of the countries that we were closely with in the region described to us that this was like a permanent rock in his shoe. Every meeting he went to, he had to defend this, and that was gone. Suddenly, it wasn't politically a disadvantage to be seen as close to the United States. This weight was gone. If we are, again, going to deal with Venezuela, that's easier if we can somehow be. bring Cuba into that discussion, given their close ties with the Venezuelan government. Again,

not because we think we agree with the Cubans, but precisely because if they're at the table, it's easier to pursue a solution. I'd also add, this is an important point, Tommy. If you look at the origins of what's happening in Venezuela, often the biggest burst of oxygen for the anti-American left, to put it one way, in Latin America comes from anti-Americanism. So Hugo Chavez was at his maximum popularity when George Bush was president. And he could essentially accuse us of meddling in their affairs and say that the Americans are coming down here to push us around again. That is what is motivated people like Chavez and Maduro or Daniel Ortega or any number of people who have had anti-American agendas in the region. When we remove ourselves from that conversation

and remove the irritant of the Cuba policy, we have a lot more freedom of action to cooperate with countries to go after drug trafficking networks, to promote better commercial relations, to resolve conflicts like in Colombia, to promote citizen security in places like Central America that are ravaged by violence. It just opens up the door for the United States and Latin America in a way that we haven't been able to pursue for decades. So I worry that we're going to be back in the Cold War and the Americas, chorus of critics on the left saying the United States is seeking to determine what happens in the region. You saw the military threats at Venezuela led to even countries that are critical of the Maduro government saying the U.S. is trying to push

people around again and we can't stand for that. That's what Maduro wants. He wants us to be a U.S. intervention in Venezuela that he can stand up against. So this Cuba piece is connected to how the United States is viewed all over Latin America. And the last point that's, you know, critical here is that this also has to do with the future of reform inside of Cuba, that isolating Cuba does not improve the human rights situation, not really pressure the government. They were very comfortable in a dynamic where they could blame everything on the United States and our embargo. More engagement, more American travelers, more access to the internet in Cuba, more connectivity between Cubans and Americans, that is much more likely to bring new ideas into Cuba and to promote

reforms in Cuba and to help the emerging private sector in Cuba that now employs almost one and three Cubans who are in the workforce. So if we disengage, we hurt the cause of reform in Cuba, we hurt ordinary Cubans, we hurt our own interests in terms of promoting the things we care about in Cuba, but also across Latin America. And again, that would only achieve the objectives of whoever this is who's carrying out these attacks, which seemed designed to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Cuba. Again, it bears repeating. If they do come forward and prove that this is the Cuban government, that's a different story. But it's very telling to me that even an administration like Trump's that is hostile to Cuba has not said that at all. So if it's not the

Cuban government, I don't think this is like a proportional response. Yeah. Ben, thank you so much for helping us understand what happened and the broader implications. And I guess, you know, let's hope our diplomats, their situation improves and their hearing comes back. back and that they no longer feel sick. Let's hope that Intel services could figure out who the hell did this, because, as you know, this is a huge deal for those families and the broader implications for our security in the region. I totally agree, Tommy, and not, you know, this is not a deep state comment. But, you know, I know some of those diplomats, and they want to be down there. You know, I mean, you know how brave these people are. They don't like coming home. You know, they want to

be safe, but they also want to carry out their mission. And so my hope is that they can get back down there as soon as possible, and of course that we get to the bottom of this. Yeah. A reminder, too, respect and appreciate our diplomats who serve in dangerous places all the time, even then we try to cut their budgets. Exactly. Yeah, if you want to, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. I mean, Tillerson could advocate for his own department's budget, too.

That might make sense. That might help the diplomatic security. Yeah, Jesus. All right, buddy. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. All right, man, and I don't think I've been on the pod since you got engaged. Oh, thank you.

So I'm looking forward to that wedding if I can make cut for the end. Oh, don't worry about that. All right, man. See you soon. See it. Bye. I am honored to have, on Pod's Day of the World, in studio, Secretary Ray Mavis, he was the 75th United States Secretary of the Navy and the longest individual to serve as leader of the Navy in the Marine Corps since World War I. From 94 to 96, he served as U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. From 1988 to 92, he served as Governor of Mississippi. Governor Mabas, Secretary of Mabas, what should I call you now? Just a simple excellence he'll do.

Your excellency, thank you for being here. It's great to have you in studio. I'm really glad to be here, Tommy. Thanks. So you were Secretary of the Navy for eight years of the Obama administration. I heard you talk a bit about this with Dorea McKesson, which I thought was just a great interview. Can you explain what does the Secretary of the Navy do? The Secretary is the civilian head of the Navy and the Marine Corps. So you've got 900,000 people, about $170 billion budget, largest single line.

item in the federal budget. You're global. And the secretary does the business of the Navy. So you recruit, train, and equip. So I bought all the ships, all the weapons, recruited all the sailors and Marines, and you do everything up to sending them into combat. When a combat commander, like Central Command, requests troops, it comes out of the services. And so two of the Joint Chiefs reported to me, the Command on the Marine Corps and the Chief of Naval Operations. And it's the coolest job in the world. I bet. When you're buying ships, is it like my hometown in Deda, Massachusetts,

where there's like a Ford and a Chevy dealership that are all in a row, or is it a little different than that? A little different. Okay. You know, from in 2001, the U.S. Navy had 316 ships. Seven years later, after one of the great military built-ups in our history, we were down to 278 ships. Yeah.

So when I came in, we were in the 270s. During those seven years from 2001 to 08, the Navy built 41 ships or put 41 under contract. Not enough to keep our fleet from getting smaller. Not enough to keep our shipyards in business, the Ford dealership, the Chevy dealership. In my eight years, seven budget years, since Congress never got around to passing a budget the last year, I put 86 ships under contract. And so we're going to get back to 300 ships by 19. We'll get back to 308 ships by 21.

And I guarantee you, I guarantee you that Trump will take credit for getting to 300. Oh, absolutely. Even though he had nothing to do with it. And when you said, is it like going down to your local car dealer, we signed the biggest contract Navy had ever signed in 2014. $18 billion to build 10 Virginia class of tax submarines over five years. Now, these things cost $2 billion a piece, more or less. And this is math in public, but it was $18 billion. We paid, and we got 10 subs.

So it's like having one of those punch cards. Buy nine subs, get your 10th one free. This is great. These are terms I can understand. Now we're in Subway. This is working for me. The stories you're telling are speak to a broader challenge with readiness for an organization as large as the Navy, and I would love to get to that shortly.

One of the thing I wanted to ask you is one of the things that was remarkable about your tenure was the amount you traveled. Well over a million miles, 152 countries, you said, and went to Afghanistan 12 times. Where did you go when you were in Afghanistan? I went mainly to see the Marines, and the Marines were down in Helmet. They were at Camp Leatherneck, was their headquarters down there. and then I went to every Marine forward operating base in Helmut problems. Some of the most fierce fighting in the war was in.

Yeah, you were down in Sangan and Musa Keila and all through there. We sent 20,000 Marines in in 2010 and basically fought from south to north up through there. And, you know, Juan Helmut while the Marines were there. Yeah. So back in 2012, Secretary Panetta said that by 2020, the U.S. was going to deploy 60% of U.S. Navy fleet to the Asia Pacific region. And I was talking to you earlier. You said you went to Japan like eight or ten times throughout your tenure. Why is it necessary to have such a presence in Asia?

Can you talk about how we use the Navy to project U.S. power abroad in that region? Yeah. I mean, this was President Obama's reboundled to the Pacific that he announced in 2011 in Australia. And the Pacific is the future. We had about 55% of our fleet in the Pacific anyway, but it's such a huge area. It's such an important area. And because we're getting a bigger fleet, we're not only putting 60% of our fleet there, we're putting 60% of a much bigger fleet into the Pacific.

And you can make a really good argument that the, The reason that Asia is doing so well economically, and particularly China, is the United States Navy, because we've kept the sea lanes open for everybody since World War II. And this is the first time in history that you've had a dominant Navy, which we've been for the last 75 years, that has kept the oceans open for everybody. Right. Not just people fly on our flag, not just our allies. An increasingly fraught mission as the Chinese lay claim to various hunks of rock in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, that have no basis. anything. And the only thing we can do is to just not let it become the status quo is to keep

challenging that. Right. You know, sail those ships within 12 miles, do over flights, and just say, yeah, you may claim them, but they're not yours. They're not yours. There have been four deadly accidents this year involving Navy ships that led to the death tragically of 17 sailors. The Navy is investigating each one individually, and I think that's one of the great strengths. The Navy you see these investigations announced immediately. There's full transparency and accountability. But a number of people, including members of Congress, have said there are systemic problems that come from these long deployments,

less training and sufficient maintenance. I think when you hear about a naval ship getting into an accident, you think they have to have the most advanced radar and the best trained sailors in the world that should prevent something like this from happening. What do you make of these accidents into people who sort of don't understand how with that advanced technology, these things are happening? Well, number one, it just shows what a dangerous job this is.

It doesn't matter if you're at peace or war, being on a military ship, on a Navy ship, filled with high explosives and electricity in saltwater, made out of steel. You're in a dangerous business. Right, right. And these accidents and the loss of these sailors, the false choice that gets presented is, well, the Obama administration concentrated on building more ships.

What it should have been doing was concentrating on readiness. Unless you have enough ships, you'll never get the readiness. Because as the fleet declined, as the fleet went down, as I said, from 316 down into the 270s, during the previous administration, the missions went up. And so there wasn't the option of doing. the maintenance. There wasn't the option of doing the training. There wasn't any option of doing this because those same people who are criticizing the Navy now were saying, okay, where's the Navy? Right. So if something happened off North Korea, if something happened in the Straits of

Formuz, during the time that General Mattis was head of Central Command, who's a Secretary of defense now, he wanted two carriers in the Arabian Gulf. Well, we gave him two carriers, but it messed up all sorts of deployments. And our deployments were getting longer. They were getting way more uncertain. And the only way you're going to, number one, get those deployments more certain and shorter is to have enough ships to do all the missions. And I testified with every single Chief of Naval Operations in front of Congress saying,

if we don't have more ships, we've got a readiness issue. And Congress really did us some favors, too. They shut down the government. They did sequester. Right. They did a hiring freeze. And so even when you could get ships into maintenance, I mean, when you've got a continuing resolution, Congress hadn't passed a budget on time since 2005.

As a governor that must drive you crazy. Well, it's just sort of a normal person that drives me crazy. But, yeah, we didn't have that option as a governor. You like did stuff, yeah. And we didn't have like a checkbook. that we could just keep printing money. But when you do a continuing resolution, it sounds great. Okay, just spend the money you spent last year.

Well, you couldn't do things like a new start. Putting a ship in a shipyard for maintenance is a new start. So when they do a continuing resolution, we couldn't put a ship in the yard during that time. When they did a continuing resolution, if you're building a ship and you spent, say, $300 million on it last year, but you've got to spend 500 million this year to finish it. Couldn't spend over 300 because it was what you spent last year. Right. And all these things and sequester,

just whacking off 10% of everything without regard to how important it was, without any sort of priorities. And now to say to the Navy, you're not ready. You've cheated maintenance. You've cheated training. When these are the same folks who were saying,

You've got to be out there. Right. Where's the Navy? Right. Here are the missions you've got to do, now figure out how to do it. And I think once we get the ships, and we'll get the ships, if they don't build another ship, they'll get to 308, which is what we're building toward in 2021. Then they'll have enough to do the routine maintenance, to do the routine training. But until then, it's just tell us what missions you don't want us to do.

So it sounds like Senator McCain has been very. outspoken, that the Budget Control Act, the sequester that you mentioned earlier, which is a law signed in 2011 that significantly reduced defense spending, roughly a trillion over 10 years compared to what Obama had proposed, is largely responsible for a lot of these accidents. Do you agree that there can be a direct line drawn between those budget choices and these horrible incidents? I think that's one of the lines that can be drawn, but it's sure not the only line. The fleet declining from 0.1. to 08, that's a line you can draw. And that was Congress passing those budgets.

And there wasn't a budget control like then. Right, right, right. That was starving the Navy. And partly it was because there were two land wars, but that's not the only reason. I mean, the Navy was paying way too much for ships. The Navy was paying, I mean, we cut the cost of most ships dramatically just by doing some really simple, common sense stuff. by buying them as a block instead of one off,

by not changing the design halfway through by actually having it designed before you start building, which sounds pretty obvious, but it hadn't been done always. I mean, gosh, the ships, maybe look at like the F-35 program, how many times has that thing been changed as they've gone? But you can draw specific lines to that.

To sequester, you can draw it to the drawdown of the fleet. You can draw it to the government shutdown, to the hiring freeze. I mean, we've got public shipyards in this country that repair a lot of our ships. We didn't have enough people in there. We've got air depots that repair our aircraft. And half a marine aircraft is out of reporting. And part of that was we just didn't have enough people in those planes.

And we couldn't hire anymore. Now, we'll catch up. by 2019. But it took about six years. That's what sequester did. That's what a hiring freeze did. That's what not passing a budget on time does. And I agree with Senator McCain. I mean, he's for a regular order. You know, Congress, you got one major job passing a budget. Right, right. And you hadn't done it since 2005. Yeah, you know, the last time I saw you in person was at a shipyard in Norfolk. There's my last trip, John Favre's last trip as well. We went down with President Obama, like one last time on the road and it was right as the sequester was going through. And he, I think he made exactly

the point you just made, which was the military could absorb a substantial budget cut over time, but to do it all at once like that was challenging. And to not set any priorities. Right. Not let us figure out what was important, whatnot, just here's 10 percent, take it out everything. It's just a meat-ax approach. I'll give you an example of how the military can cut without hurting. Navy's got about $170 billion budget. more or less. I took a look at it. My first elective job was I was state auditor, Mississippi now.

At the time, I never had an accounting course. Luckily, that wasn't one of the requirements. I just had to get more votes than the other vote. But I'm really interested in the money and in following the money. You look at that budget, and $44 billion went to services contracts. So that's like cutting the grass to IT was everything. we set up something called contract courts that said every year every contracting officer's got to bring in there all their contracts and present them and say when the last time it was bid out

how long has the incumbent been there can you put some together do we still need to be doing whatever it is we're doing in two years we saved 11 billion dollars we took it down from 44 to 33 billion 11 billion dollars A year. That's a recurring thing. Now, that's an aircraft carrier every year. And did we get any credit for it? Did Congress say, whoa, that's really good? Use that 11 billion to do something else. No, they just took the 11 billion. And then cut us. Right. Last question on this budgeting stuff, because I find it fascinating. So you and me and maybe two other people, I have three other listeners. So you said, you know, there's 276 deployable Navy ships right now. The Trump administration is considering plans to expand to 350. As you noted, the Navy proposed a $171.7.5 billion base budget this year. That's part of a $762 billion defense budget that Trump submitted to Congress. I think people hearing that think those numbers are just incomprehensibly large, especially when compared to what other countries spend on their militaries, what we spend on domestic priorities that are under constant threat of getting cut. How would you rationalize or justify the return on that investment for the average taxpayer? Well, number one, no other country in the world does what we do.

And I'll just talk about the Navy and Marines now. I'm not talking about the rest of defense. We're the only global Navy. And as I said, we keep the sea lanes open for everybody. If we quit doing that, the world's economy gets shaky pretty fast. I mean, we spend about $80 billion a year keeping the Straits of Hormuz open. We keep it open for oil going mainly to Asia. Yeah.

Rough neighborhood, too. Yeah, and we don't get much oil out of that neighborhood anymore. But here's the way you do that. We put in, the last year I was there, we said, we did a thing called a forced structure assessment. How many ships do you need to do the missions that the country needs us to do? and we came out with 355. This was before Trump was talking about the 350 ship Navy, or maybe it was while he was talking about it,

but we did it for a year, brought it out, and we were on track, as I said, the last four structure assessment said we needed 308. That was in 2012. That's what we're going to get to. Our shipyards are ready. They can get up to 350. the budget that Trump put in had fewer ships than the budget Obama put in.

And so we weren't ever going to get there. It was another one of these, okay, we're going to say one thing. We're going to do something completely different. And the explanation was, well, we need time to gear up. It won't be the 18 budget. It'll be the 19 budget. Now, Congress didn't go along with it. Congress put in basically the Obama budget.

for the Navy. And as I said, with those services contracts, there are all sorts of places. You can cut money in the Pentagon. What's easy to cut is the war fighting stuff. So a ship, an aircraft, a tank, something like that. What's hard to cut is the real waste. And I'll give you one more example.

You know, you've got the four services, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. The three service secretaries sit over those. But then on top of that, you got DOD. You got the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. One out of every $5 that goes into defense goes to that top layer. And it is pure overhead. That's all it is. Not a dollar goes to war fighting out of that.

And a good example is something called the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, DFAS. Last year, the Navy, all they do is write checks. That's it. Right. They, they, they, we get the money, we send it to them, we tell them who to pay, and how much to pay them. Sounds like visa for me. You know, last year we paid them $300 million just to write the checks.

Wow. And, and we couldn't get a clean audit because nine out of ten of their internal controls didn't work. And when people used to balance checkbooks, which you're too young to remember, but. You'd go through your checkbook, and if you couldn't find the last 37 cents, you'd just do a correcting entry. You just say 37 cents. I can't find it. I'm just adding it down here.

Every month, they do a correcting entry. They just can't tell you where the money went, and sometimes it's a billion dollars. That's horrifying. So there's lots of money you can save. But what I just described doesn't make a good sound bite. What I just described, you can't be in a congressional hearing and run. rail against, you know, this aircraft costs too much. This ship costs too much.

But it's where the real money is. And it's where they ought to take money out before they go after the things that actually go to help are people in uniform that are at the tip of the spear. You've mentioned China a couple times, South China Seas. China is rolling out its first aircraft carrier. They claim to have released 12 unmanned drones, maritime drones in the South China Sea. they have reportedly built 83 Navy ships in the last eight years, and some people estimate they will have the largest Navy in the world by 2050. Is China the biggest maritime threat we face over the next couple decades?

Well, they're clearly getting better, and they're clearly building their Navy. If they built 83 ships over the last eight years, they built fewer, and I did. Okay. Good. I like that. And their first carrier, they bought ewes from the Ukraine. And it took them a decade to get it away from the pier. It's got a little ski jump on the end.

Yeah. Yeah. Literally. There are only a couple of countries that have the catapult system. And we're the only one's got more than one of those. But they're getting better. And what they ought to do is they get bigger, as they get stronger, they ought to become more responsible. I mean, it's in their best interest to keep these seedlings open.

It's in their best interest to work with it. So in some ways, they're the biggest threat we face, but in some ways they're the biggest opportunity we've got out there. I mean, it depends on their leadership, which way they want to go. Do they want to become more and more nationalist, more and more focused on? All they want to do is be a regional power there. I'd like to rename the South China Sea. I mean, just take China out of that Western Pacific Sea or something like that.

And, but Russia is also increasing their Navy. They're particularly good submarine warfare. I mean, you're seeing levels of submarine activity that you haven't seen since the Cold War. Yeah, messing around the Arctic. Messing around with their long-range aircraft. So, you know, you've got interesting things wherever you look. The Iranians are, they're still not, I guess, what you call first. team, but they're getting better. The North Koreans don't have much of a Navy, but they sank a South Korean ship

about 10 years ago. They like to use it. Another really easy job you had was U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. It was 94 to 96. Those were some tumultuous times. Those were acute threats from terrorism. Saddam Hussein was a threat to Kuwait in the broader region. Everyone remembers him. Saudi Arabia they've been a close U.S. ally for decades, despite the fact that our interests aren't always aligned. Looking back, do you think that partnership has been a net benefit to us? Is it worth the cost of turning a blind eye sometimes to a regime that can be just as authoritarian, some of our declared enemies, and was funding some of the same extremist groups we were fighting at the same time? Well, I don't think we ought to turn a blind eye to it. I mean, I think the partnership is valuable, but I also don't think it's a partnership that you just say, fine, do whatever you want to do. I mean, that was one of the things I thought was my job as an ambassador there. I represented the United States to Saudi Arabia, not vice versa. It wasn't my job to explain what they did. It was mine to represent our values to them. And I think we need to push them a lot harder in that. They've gotten better. things like tracking money that goes to terror, but they've still got some work to do. But the reason that I think it's an important partnership or alliance to have, it's twofold. Number one,

it's the energy that comes out of that area. It's one of the reasons I push so hard for alternative energy. Right. Because you close the straits for moves, you really could crash the world's economy. And the world shouldn't be that dependent on one area or one commodity, that dependent. But the second reason is the biggest human migration on earth every year is the Hage, where three million people from around the world go to Saudi, to Mecca and Medina on the pilgrimage. And, you know, if you had a government there that was recruiting for terror, that was preaching an anti-Western, anti-U.S. message, then I think our lives get more complicated, real, real fast. I should point out you pushed for green energy not just in broader sort of civilian use,

but in the Navy fleet. Made us better war fighters. Why is that? We were losing a marine, killed, or wounded for every 50 convoys of fuel we brought into Afghanistan. The coal was attacked when it was being refueled. There are two refineries in Singapore. We're dependent on an oil refinery for our fuel in the Western Pacific for a refinery owned mainly by the Chinese. Right down the road, there's a biofuel refinery owned by the Finns. Why are we dependent on the Chinese to fuel our Navy in the Western Pacific? And so we not only made it a goal, we're there. 65% of all the energy on our bases in the U.S.

comes from alternative fuel today. And we are saving money. That's the other thing. At sea, it's about 35% nuclear and biofuel. And again, it's making us better at fighting. The Marines usually don't think of Marines as being ardent environmentalists. Not the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah, you know, there are not a lot of tree-huggers in the Marines.

But they've been leading the way because you were talking about the fighting. The fighting in Sangan was some of the, in Helmand Province, some of the fiercest fighting we had in the war. On the way out the door, we gave the Marines going into Sangan, rollable solar panels, rolled them up, put them in their pack to power their radios, their GPS, things like that. It saved a company of Marines, 700 panels. and batteries. Wow. And that they didn't have to carry and that they didn't have to be resupplied.

So all of a sudden, they're way more mobile, way more independent. We've got seal teams in the field that are pretty close to net zero in both energy and water. They use solar to purify water. And as one seal commander told me,

he said, you know, when you got the generator going, you can't hear. Right. You turn it off and you can hear when the bad guys are sneaking up on you. And he said, and if you got the generator on, it's like a big sign.

Here are the Americans. Here are the seals. Come attack here. And it just makes us better at everything that we do. Everything you just said sounds so logical, almost obvious. Like, how could we do anything else? But I feel like you took some shit for trying to green the fleet. Was that just the typical fossil fuel interests coming at you?

A lot of it was that. They've got a monopoly. Yeah. I thought people in Washington were supposed to be market-oriented. I thought they liked competition. Yeah. Not so much. No.

And, you know, they would come after alternative energy saying, we need to quit subsidizing solar and wind. Okay, fine, quit subsidizing oil that's been subsidized for a hundred years now. Right. You know, if everybody's going to stand on their own two feet, part of it was that. Part of it was just purely partisan, that if it, Barack Obama and his folks were, saying we ought to do it, then we shouldn't. Senator Inhoff from Oklahoma attacked it a lot, saying that we shouldn't be doing it. We unearthed the letter that Senator Inhofe had sent the Navy in the early 2000s,

recommended a biofuel plant in his state to buy biofuels from. And so part of it was partisan. Part of it was the fossil fuel industry. but, you know, one congressman yelled at me. I'm not exaggerating here, but in a hearing, he yelled and he said, you're the secretary of the Navy. You're not the Secretary of Energy. Okay.

True. You know what the difference is? I had more money. I used more energy. Yeah. And the Navy was big enough to bring a market. We could turn markets around, and we did. I mean, we're obviously not the only reason that alternative fuel

have gotten traction, but we were one of them. And the cost, the availability, have just plummeted. And, you know, you read books at tipping point and chaos theory and all this stuff. And systems don't change a little bit at a time. Systems just change overnight. And I think we're past the tipping point

on going to alternative fuels. There will be a long-term rear-guard action by fossil fuels. But in the end, alternatives win because they're cheaper, they're renewable, they don't screw up the planet the way everything else does. And climate change has a direct effect on our military. It's a national security issue. You talked about the Arctic. The Russians are involved in the Arctic. And as the Arctic becomes ice-free, it's going to be the United States Navy that defends those

ceilings. As storms get more intense, the Navy and Marines are our first resorts. And the Navy and Marines are our first responders. They're the people we send out there first. And, you know, the question is, why didn't we have a lot more ships and Marines in Puerto Rico? We had 22 ships and about 30,000 people in Haiti. It was unbelievable. In 2010.

And we're not doing the same thing. I know. I was down the ground for five days. I remember watching these marine airmen opening runways with, like, two glow sticks in a radio, you know, like all the infrastructure in the place. is gone. I think the Vincent was down there and they were airlifting supplies all day every day. The coasties were doing an unbelievable job. It was like the most, it was the most horrific situation I've ever seen and one of the most awe and pride inspiring things I've ever seen.

Well, and you know, you had the Vincent down there, which is a carrier, and it had to airlift everything in. But we sent an amphibious ready group down there. And we've got one that we moved to Jacksonville, Florida. I mean, it's not far from Puerto Rico. We got three ships. the Uwo Jima and two other ships there. And when they went to Haiti, they didn't need a pier. They didn't need a port. They just found a beach and went ashore. That's what the Marines do.

That's what the Navy does. And so they can get there really fast. They can get there with whatever you need. They can stay as long as you need them to stay. And why there was this hesitation. Now, the Navy in this arc had been sent when the hurricanes hit Texas. and when the hurricanes hit Florida, but not to Puerto Rico. Yeah.

And you also have Navy's got these guys called Seabies who can fix anything in the world with a hammer and like a rusty piece of metal. Yeah, you give them a skill saw and some plywood and they'll fly to the moon. Literally anything. You've talked about this sea change in energy. It brings me back to Saudi Arabia.

Until 2014, 90% of Saudi government revenue came from oil. And for decades, the royal family used that money to give free benefits and subsidize. sort of cushy government jobs where people didn't really have to work. No one paid taxes. Sounds pretty good. Then the price of oil drops from $100 a barrel to below 30 for a period of time. And, you know, it's sort of come back up, but it's never seemingly going to hit that $100 barrel price again, knock on wood.

Do you think the Saudi government is going to be able to diversify its economy fast enough to adapt? And can they change this cultural expectation around work for a younger generation of Saudis who think, you know, our parents had these cushy jobs? will too. I think they're going to have to. What the Crown Prince has laid out, Muhammad bin Salman, is a plan to do just that. And we'll see if he's successful. But like he said, 90% was all based. 40% of their population is under 15. They've got one of the highest birth rates in the world. Starting in kindergarten, every Saudi child gets four hours a day of Islamic instruction. And so you've got a big dropout problem in high school, even the people that go into college, a third I'm studying that's in Islamic instruction.

The other two thirds that are going to become the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, third of their time is taken up with Islamic instruction. And so you've got this ever-increasing number of young people coming into an economy that cannot absorb them without the right skills. And that's a bad new story. And that doesn't get any better. And so they're going to have to move into being a much more normal government in terms of their investments, in terms of the way they run the private sector, in terms of opening up things like their stock market and stuff like that. The young people in Saudi, you know, they saw their fathers, their grandfathers, no-show jobs.

Everything was subsidized. Everything was subsidized. and their social contract was, we'll subsidize everything, you let us keep running the place. Right. And when one of those breaks down, you've got some issues. So if they want to keep running the place, they're going to have to have to figure out and figure it out pretty fast.

How do you do this? How do you make this change? The last thing I'll say is they just waste half their society from the way they treat women. Just waste them. And it was a big deal last week that society women got to drive. Right.

I mean, really? Yeah. That's a big deal. Women still have to have to have to have to have a man sign a loan application. Women still have to get male relatives approval to travel or to travel overseas. You know, you can't waste half your society and do that. You know, that I was going to ask you about that.

I mean, can you explain to people listening why the hell there was a ban on women driving in the first place? And why do you think it took so long to reverse it? And do you think this was an economic choice behind this? Well, it sure wasn't because men were good drivers. We are not. Well, in Saudi Arabia, which has around 25 million people, they had more traffic fatalities than we had with 300 million. Really?

Yeah. I mean, for a long time there, you could just walk in and get a vehicle. You didn't have to have a driver's license. All traffic signals are purely advisory. I mean, it's a little bit like Los Angeles. Yeah, right. That is true. And the claim was that it was against Islam, that it was against the Quran for women to do things like this.

As far as anyone could tell, and I kept asking people, there was nothing in the Quran. There was nothing that would do this. Women in Saudi are required to wear the abios. the long black robes and cover up. That was an old Turkish custom. That did not date back to the prophet and Islam. That was a three or four hundred year old thing that came later. And it's just, it was a cultural choice.

An average woman in Saudi Arabia has six children. Wow. And that's why their birth rate is so high. And they have completely parallel. A parallel banking system for women. A parallel customs when you come in from overseas, you come through. Women can only look at pictures of women in passports. Number one, it's bizarre, but number two, it's totally inefficient.

And you cannot get to the economy that you need to get to if you keep doing that. Right. The last question I wanted to ask you is, you are someone who is extensive experience in national security. You are also a Democrat who managed to get elected in Mississippi, which is not the friendliest territory. How do you stitch those two things together? Like, what do you think Democrats should be talking about doing, saying, on foreign policy and national security? Because I feel like this last election scrambled things in a strange way where you had Hillary Clinton talking about this robust presence abroad and being seen as the one who supported the Iraq War. Donald Trump, was lying and claiming he opposed the war, talking about killing civilians, but also talking about pulling back from sort of doing things overseas. What do you think the right path forward is for us? Well, number one, Democrats need to own national security. I mean, if you look, the Obama administration did a way better job in terms of taking care of the military, in terms of taking

care of the of the people who served and their families in terms of, I mean, building ships or aircraft or getting them the tools that they needed. But that's not the narrative out there. And I think you can't be ambivalent about it. That it can't just be, thank you for your service. It's got to be, okay, we're here because we want to protect America. but we also want to protect American values. We want to, the things about keep the sea lanes open. We want to protect the world's economy.

And these young people in the military have got to know that Democrats have their back, that they're not ambivalent about it, but that we also don't send them into wars that are just odd wars. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and why we were there. still is

confusing to everybody. And look what's happened. I mean, in the old Colin Powell phrase, you break it, you own it. And it got broken. Yeah.

But I also think that I think we can't sort of pull back. I think we've got to be, we can't be apologetic about about anything we stand for, about the fact that we want to be inclusive,

the fact that the economy does better, when a Democrat is in charge. The fact that, you know, a Republican administration took down our economy in 07-08 and destroyed a lot of people's livelihoods and their homes and things like that. I think we've got to be, we've got to have a coherent program. National security has got to be part of it, but not national security just to protect us. Right. I mean, it's the, I guess, Saturday Night Live, last Saturday night,

Alex Baldwin, you know, playing Trump and saying about Puerto Rico, well, we got to look after America first. Wait a minute, you know Puerto Rico is part of America, right? Too real. But we ought to also be there when Haiti. Yeah. We ought to be there in the Philippines. We were there when Japan had a tsunami. That's who we are.

that's who we expect to be. That's the better angels of our nature. And we ought to own it. We ought to be proud of it. And not let the narrative slip away. I'm sort of old-fashioned. I actually believe that things ought to have the added advantage of being true when you say them. Yeah.

It's a great answer. Secretary Mavis, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for doing the show. Thanks for your eight years of service as Secretary of the Navy. all the work you're doing in Gulf Coast Reconstruction, which is the second job you took on top of a full-time job for President Obama. And thanks for being here. I really had a big time. Thanks for asking me. Thanks, sir. Thank you again to Ben Rhodes and Secretary Ray Mavis for being on the show. Again, if you like it, check out the POTD of the World Facebook page and rate and review us in the iTunes store.

Talk to you next week.