Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/3/22 Tom Secker on the Pentagon’s Control Over Top Gun: Maverick

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

Scott interviewed British journalist Tom Secker about the Pentagon’s role in producing Top Gun: Maverick. The Department of Defense has an entire office set up to work with Hollywood. They give producers access to some military personnel as well as equipment in exchange for the final say over the script. Secker has gone through many documents over the years to find exactly what the military has changed in popular films. But with the Top Gun movies, the relationship is on a whole other level. Secker lays out the history of the first film, the sequel that got scrapped after the Pentagon pulled out in the 90s, and the eventual production of Top Gun: Maverick. Both Scott and Secker point out that they don’t have a problem with action movies like this being made, just that the military hijacks film productions in order to boost its reputation far beyond what it deserves.  Discussed on the show: “Documents Reveal How Pentagon Shaped ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Into A Recruitment And PR Vehicle” (ShadowProof) “Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like ‘Top Gun’?” (Los Angeles Times) Scott’s previous interview with Secker Tom Secker is a British-based journalist, author, and podcaster specializing in the security services, Hollywood, propaganda, censorship and the history of terrorism. He is the author of National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood. Find him on Twitter @spyculture. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing tom secker he is a private researcher who runs spyculture dot com and here he's got this great piece at shadowproof dot com documents reveal how pentagon shaped

Top Gun Maverick into a recruitment and PR vehicle. And, you know, there's a companion piece to this too by a guy named Roger Stahl in the LA Times that references Tom and his great work here as well that you can read. It's called the op-ed. Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like Top Gun? Welcome the show, Tom. How are you doing? Welcome back, I should say. Yeah, thanks for having me back.

It's great to be talking with you again. good to have you on all right so i'm gonna start off by fighting with you in the name of other people's fair opinions why you gotta ruin this movie for me i like flying i like fighter jets and then got all these whiners coming and whining about how you take the fighter jet movie and it's all some kind of bad war propaganda sure it is i already have people saying that on twitter and the thing is i have to admit i'm a little bit sympathetic because i was completely washed by the first top gun when I was 10 years old. And in fact, I was remembering, as I was watching the bootleg of the new top gun off the

Pirate this morning, or finishing it up there, that, what happened was I actually gave up Star Wars for a little while and switched to G.I. Joe, because they had an F-14 Tomcat. It was awesome. And, yeah, Tomcats are cool with the variable wings and all that. And this is actually part of why I supported Iraq War I when I was in ninth grade. was because fighter bombers, man, explosions and missiles

and not really dog fights, but potentially dog fights, right, and excitement. I like stuff like that. And Hollywood helps me to enjoy stuff like that. So how come you're ruining this movie for us all, jerk? I'd argue I'm not the one ruining this movie. It's the Pentagon who ruined this movie.

I'm not the one turning these films into war propaganda. I'm just the one kind of most prominently pointing out that they are war propaganda, if you know what I'm saying. My aim here certainly, I take your point. I get this a lot. My aim is not to ruin people's enjoyment of movies, not at all.

I kind of enjoyed, like you, I watched the bootleg, I didn't pay to watch this movie. I kind of enjoyed it just as a movie. I'm not saying it's like a bad, unentertaining film that you shouldn't watch. If people want to watch it, go watch it, or preferably download it for free.

but um my issue here is that it's not so much with the movies it's that because governments do so many terrible things and because the movies are helping them do these things and helping either promote or rationalize or give these little psychological justifications for all of this sort of thing and that's what the pentagon and other government agencies are in hollywood to do that's the problem i have if the government wasn't doing terrible things then the movies wouldn't matter, and I wouldn't care one jot what was in them or wasn't in them. The issue here is the warfare state, the security state, it's the destruction, it's the environmental destruction, it's the destruction of people's lives, it's the suffering, it's the

violation of people's rights. If all of those things weren't going on, then a top gun movie wouldn't matter and people go and watch it and watch the planes run around and go womb and fine, I'd have no issue with it at all. But because those things are happening, it makes this movie something more than just a fun movie about some aircraft zooming around and some pilots saying some creepy things you know what i mean yeah and listen i mean is even necessary for the Israeli foreign ministry to participate in this or just everybody knows that iran's not allowed to have a uranium enrichment program no mention of whether they had to pull out the iaea inspectors from their safeguarded facilities before they bomb them in this movie you know no no i mean that was

one of the fun things about it is in all of these briefings, and since you mentioned Star Wars, did you notice just how much they ripped off Star Wars the Force Awakens in Top Gun Maverick? Which is, yeah, one of the most horrible movies ever, too. Why would you copy that?

Well, fan service. That's how you do a soft reboot and make a billion dollars, I guess. But, yeah, where they said, and the target is only three meters wide. You've got to use pro-toms torpedoes. and there's even a bit where son of goose has like a you know luke turning off his

targeting computer moment and he says you know talk to me dad and he's having this obi one can obi right yeah there you moment and then he re-engages and flies really fast thank god for me i never pay that close of attention to these things man or it would drive me crazy go ahead but yeah i was amused throughout this whole film by just how much it was a rip-off of the force awakens which itself is a rip-off of a new hope yeah um yeah Yeah, in these briefings, they're talking about how this uranium enrichment facility has been built in violation of some NATO multilateral treaty. And I'm thinking NATO doesn't do multilateral treaties on uranium enrichment plants. That's not what NATO does.

They're kind of trying to paint them as like either the IA or the UN or the OPCW or one of these more. I mean, I guess none of those organizations actually have great reputations, to be honest. Right. But they're trying to make NATO seem more like that, more like some kind of international. I don't know, diplomatic or peacekeeping organization, you know, the images that these project themselves, they're trying to sort of stick NATO into that pile. That's not what NATO is

at all. And I have a feeling that's partly the whole NATO versus the rogue nation. I guess that's to try and tie in somewhat with what's going on in Ukraine, because they're caught between Russia and NATO, they're caught in the crossfire between those two.

And I guess that's where they were going with that. But I can't be sure, because of course, none of that was actually going on when the film was being shot. So I have to wonder, did they do some additional dialogue to stick an extra line in? I mean, was NATO in the original script? NATO doesn't get mentioned much in movie scripts. That's why it was, it struck me. You know, it stood out to me because you just hardly ever hear about them. That's a good question of whether they decided to splice that in, you know, this year. Although I could see them saying, you know, they got to come up with

an organization anybody's ever heard of. You know what I mean? They're not going to say the IAEA. What the hell is that? So, you know, Yeah, no one watching a talk to the lazy, you know. Yeah. Anyway, here's the real lead we're Barry in here is you got your hands on all these documents showing the real, in fact, secret history of the Pentagon's role in developing this sequel over the last 35 years. Is that right?

Well, kind of, yeah. I mean, it's one of those questions, isn't it? Why, when almost every popular movie of the 1980s got a rushed not particularly great sequel, either in the late 80s or early 90s. Why did we never get a top gun too at that point? It was an absolute smash commercially. It was an enormously successful film, the original. And the answer, the answer basically is they were making one.

They had one in development in the late 80s and into the 90s, and the Pentagon were initially on board. But then there was the tail hook scandal, which for anyone who's unfamiliar with that, was the tail hook conference in, I think it was 1991, A whole bunch of Marine and Navy pilots attended this conference. And over the conference weekend at a hotel in Las Vegas, they assaulted sexually assaulted dozens and dozens of people,

men and women, mostly women. And when this hit the news, it obviously caused quite a controversy. It got a lot of criticism towards the Navy and the Marine Corps. And the Inspector General report, when they did an investigation, flagged up the film Top Gun and this whole boozing and womanizing culture within the Navy as being partly to blame.

for this. They even said at one point there was a top gun mentality at play here. And so when Brackheimer and the rest went to the Navy shortly after this and said, yeah, yeah, we're now putting top gun two into production. The Navy said, no, no, we're not doing this. We don't want to remind people of tail hook. We don't want anything that looks like tail hook. And we don't want to, you know, touch this basically. And so the film died. It's actually because of the Pentagon that we never got a top gun two in the 1990s. And the thing kind of sat on the shelf for about 20 years. No one was really touching it and then in 2012 they revived it um that's when they first actually approached the military was i think in the summer of 2012 that's what the documents show they actually had discussions

with them 10 years ago about this movie that's where it all started and obviously at that point the military were like well no one remembers tail hook anymore so yeah we're you know turn on the afterburners we're in on this thing um and since then there's been this somewhat on off in the first few years, but in the last, from about 2015 to 2019, when the movie was in pre-production and development and interproduction, the military were involved at every point. They're having meetings to discuss the overall storyline. They had the writer and the producers go on embarks on Navy ships and talk to top gun instructors and commanding officers and all sorts in order to develop their character arcs within the movie. That's what they actually says in the

documents that, like, they're basing the characters on people that they meet. And obviously, the people that the Pentagon puts up for them to meet. They're the, I guess, brushed aluminium versions. They're the very media-friendly versions, the sort that Hollywood would like. They're not going to put up the guy who's, you know, got a bit of a drinking problem and swears a lot and doesn't have particularly high opinions of women. They're not going to introduce them to them, are they? They're going to find a nice one, the ones that present very well. And then even after all of this, and, you know, the reports, say, for about a year after these tours and all of these introductions and things that they

went on. They said, you know, script is still being revised in response to all of this access that they had. Then the military reviewed the script, the DOD and the Navy reviewed it and asked for some changes to the characterization. It's not specific about exactly what those changes are, but if you see the movie, you can probably guess. And even after that, when they signed the contract in, I think it was 2018, the contract allowed the Navy to, in their words, review the script's thematics and weave in key talking points. So even though they'd been working on this movie at that point for about three and a half years, they were still like, no, no, we still want to continuously review this script

in production and weave in our ideas and little bits of dialogue that we want. They had someone on set providing dialogue throughout the filming. They had tons of influence and input on this film. Yeah, that's amazing. And the thing is, you know, part of it is just what's not in there at all would be any kind of remark on the dysfunction of the Navy or the corruption or the any kind of thing at all you know all those things are just omitted yeah I read a thing that was probably by you I don't know somebody along the same lines this is your work here that wrote about Forrest Gump and how Forrest Gump originally had a lot of anti-war stuff in it and then it ends up that it's actually like nah it's one of the most kind of um sterile takes on Vietnam that you could see in the movies, you know, in a sense, I don't know, Tropic Thunder or something. But no, I mean, well, and that was meant to be that way, but, you know what I did?

I mean, like, it was just, you know, Bubba's heroic sacrifice and whatever, but there was none of that kind of jaded stuff that you got from Hamburger Hill or, you know, anything like that. They took all of that out, and it was due to the cooperation of the government, of the military, in making the movie. You have to take all this anti-war stuff out. So all those, you know, insightful things that Tom Hanks would have said that, like, well, that's when I figured out that this whole war was just for Bell helicopter or whatever the line was. All that was just not in there, you know. And so, yeah, anyway, it's the scene and the unseen as the libertarians like to emphasize. You know what I mean?

It's not just the propaganda that they put in there, like, wow, what a great American. flag on his jacket that he has while he's riding his motorcycle in the sunset and whatever you know what I mean but it's also just all the things that could have been in there if the riders had not been extorted into making it the most sterile kind of take yeah no sure sure there's no hint of corruption there's no sexism or racism there's no criminality within the ranks there's no one assaulting each other there's there's no one who's evidently suffering from serious mental health I mean, the only thing that they even touch on in that is that Maverick is suffering to some extent from survivor guilt over Goose's death in the original film. But that's kind of just resolved.

Right. It's not really explained why or how. It's just, you know, he goes to talk to Iceman. He talks to the good looking woman behind the bar and he figures it out and then that's fine. And it's like, that's not how mental health problems work for one thing. and for another, the suffering of both people within the ranks and veterans especially from mental health issues is enormous and it's something that these films, they just skate around or they avoid completely

and on the other occasion they actually touch on it or deal with it. They always paint the military as dealing with the problem. It's like, oh, no, no, we've got all these mechanisms set up now and the VA and we've got mental health specialists on staff and blah, blah, blah. And it's like you talk to people who've actually been in the military, and they'll tell you, yeah, okay, that might happen one percent of the time that someone actually gets a decent treatment for this, but for the most part, it's either the terrible treatment or it's nothing.

I think it's hit or miss by facility, you know, yeah. Yeah, yeah, all of these sorts of things, they could have incorporated something out of this big gamut of problems within the military institutions. They could have put something of that in there, and maybe it was in there in some of the earlier drafts and got scooped out. I mean, this is one of the things that I found in the years and years of. been studying this is that these scripts are de-radicalized. Anything that's critical or subversive or challenges prevailing assumptions or essentially just challenges their agenda or in some way questions

it or criticizes it. It's not just that it's watered down. They quite often just scoop it out of there. They say, nope, you're not having that dialogue. You're not having that character. You're not having that scene. And they just take it out and it's, you know, never seen again. And that's in such a popular movie, that's even more important, because that's the best place to actually explore some of this stuff. You could have a character, you could have a veteran character who is more skeptical towards their experience in the military, or at least how the institutions work, and how the whole political infrastructure above it works, and all that kind of stuff. You know, you hear veterans talking about it all the time on independent radio. I'm sure you've had tons of people

that you've talked about this. You've had tons of other people talking about this on your show. It's real. We all know those perspectives are out there, but you never see them in movies and TV. particularly not if they're sponsored by the military. Give me just a minute here. Listen, I don't know about you guys, but part of running the Libertarian Institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors. And who wants to stand in line all day at the post office?

But stamps.com? Sorry, but their website is a total disaster. I couldn't spend another minute on it. But I don't have to either, because there's easyship.com. Easyship.com is like stamps.com, but their website isn't terrible. Go to scothorton.org slash easy ship.

Hey, y'all, Scott here. You know the Libertarian Institute has published a few great books. Mine, fools errand, enough already, and the great Ron Paul. Two, by our executive editor, Sheldon Richmond, coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. And of course, no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Grigg, our late-great co-founder and managing editor at the Institute. Coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarious handbook, edited by Keith Knight,

a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons, one more collection of essays by Will Grigg, and two new books about Syria by the great William Van Wagonen and Brad Hoff and his co-author, Zachary Wingard. That's Libertarian Institute.org slash books. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th, from the director of Meet the Parenthood. parents and the writer of Poor Things. Comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving

that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. You know, that whole thing about the Glomar response, where we can either confirm nor deny we won't address you and it's a secret and we refuse to show up in court and address it and all that comes from the F-14 Tomcat and a torque wrench

I guess it was a nut on a bolt and they were supposed to have a torque wrench to torque it to the exact specifications and they didn't have the right wrench so everybody would always overtighten the nut just to make sure that they didn't under tighten it and then that ended up leading to some problems with some F-14s falling out of the sky

and these wives losing their husbands and then trying to sue over it And then the government said, oh, yeah, no, it's a top secret thing that's top secret. And the Soviets would find out a thing when really they were just covering up for their own criminal negligence. And that was where that came from in the first place was faulty F-14 parts and dead Navy flyers. Yeah. How ironic. I didn't know that. But yeah, that's kind of astonishing, really. Because that sort of thing happens all the time. Look at the F-35, not just as an enormous waste of money, which it clearly is. but the number of pilots that have died, just testing the damn thing.

You know what I mean? You know, that thing's barely been in any kind of combat situation. And they crash, they fall out the sky, they've had no end of problems with them, that have killed pilots, they've had problems with the breathing apparatus, all sorts of stuff. It's ridiculous that this thing has cost, and I don't know, over a trillion dollars that program has cost, and it doesn't work, and people have died because of it. You know, it's serious. Why isn't this in there?

In fact, the only mention of the F-35 in the entire movie was that they could. couldn't use it because the enemy had some kind of GPS blockers or whatever. And it's like, that's convenient, isn't it? That this massively embarrassing aircraft that's kind of a symbol of almost everything that's wrong with the Pentagon. Oh, we'll just keep that out of the film and just, no, no, stick to the F-18s, the good old trustworthy F-18s, because at least those things fly. Yeah, seriously.

And, I mean, in that really the answer, right? They couldn't get enough good footage of a F-35 doing what it's supposed to do. And so they're like, well, quite possibly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty glaring thing, right? Oh, no, the Iranians have these fifth generation fighters, but we just have these F-18s. They're supposed to have their own Navy version of the F-35. And anyway, so I want to go back to the old days for a second there because, as I said, I was just 10. I don't know how old you are. But I was just 10 when Top Gun came out. And that was a whole lifetime to me then. But of course, 10 years is a blink of. and i now and looking back on it of course i can see that that was really only about 12 years you know 11 12 years since the real end of the war in vietnam which is nothing and you know rambo three where america all of a sudden we are the vietnam helping resist against the evil imperialist invader in afghanistan uh you know served a big part of this whole kind of um you know redemption

from vietnam i think people even took star wars in that way too. They're like, well, never mind Vietnam and Korea. Let's go back to World War II and our heroic fighter-bomber guys, you know, kind of attitude. I'm not so sure, but I don't think that was Lucas's intent, but I think probably some of that came through with the

original Star Wars too. But this thing, just 10 years, really 10, 11 years after the end of Vietnam, this really was over my head at the time. But for the adults at the time, this was a real kind of redemption sort of a story. Sort of like Rocky

the Great White Hope or whatever. We're sort of just, we go to the movies and retell the story in a way where now it makes it okay, where we've just done, you know, kind of thing. And this is really powerful for that, right? And you have in the documents here where they talked about, go, thank God that Top Gun came out and was really a PR miracle, not just for the Navy, but for the entire American military. And they named the Vietnam Syndrome, right? that this is, it helped to get the American people over it.

For that matter, probably helped to get us into the war in Iraq War I, a few years after that. I'm sure it did. Yeah, I mean, like I say, this is why these movies matter is because of the wars, is because of the security state, is the, you know, all the, the imprisoning of people, all the violations of people's privacy and property and all the other violations that the government has,

you know, carries out against just ordinary, innocent people all the time. If they weren't doing that, then these movies really wouldn't matter, but because they are, they do. And yeah, that's what the document says, that the original Top Gun completed the rehabilitation of the military's image, which had been savaged by the Vietnam War, which is accurate. I'm not disputing that analysis.

It's just an astonishing thing for them to have written down. But to kind of understand that statement and why it matters, let me just give you a little bit of film history here. In the 50s and 60s, Hollywood was making about 20 war movies a year, 200 a decade, and the military were supporting the overwhelming majority of them. Over 95% of these were getting military support, and they were mostly about

World War II. They kind of ignored Korea, and they ignored Vietnam. But then in the late 60s and early 70s, you've got the rise of more independent studios, and Hollywood, you know, the industry just kind of shifted and became more diverse and more disparate and, you know, more independent in many ways. And so you've got the rise

of much more critical war movies. And that was a real problem for the Pentagon. because they were used to having these very, you know, anodyne, relatively dull, heroic World War II movies being churned out, you know, to a month or something, that went away. And suddenly you had people like, you know, Coppola, whoever, making really critical movies about Vietnam and saying, no, this is a gigantic screw-up. This makes no sense. The people are coming back, bringing the war with them. It's wrecking our society in various ways. It's wrecked the people that we put through this, let alone the people on the receiving end.

in Vietnam. And the Pentagon rejected all of these. I mean, they tried to rewrite some of them. They tried to negotiate with some of these filmmakers, but got nowhere. And they were suddenly rejecting far more war movies than they were supporting for the first time in their history. And so then in the 1980s, Reagan's White House, he had a Hollywood liaison called Joe Holmes, who was out in Hollywood trying to get them to make what they called more pro-hero stories, which were kind of as a counterbalance to this. They were trying to make more, you know, pro-American. are the heroes still kind of movies, but they were very much focused on individuals,

you know, that this summer one man does whatever, that sort of film. Whereas Top Gun was perhaps the first where you see all of the characters are essentially military characters. They're in a group. They're not just a set of individuals.

There is a main character, but there's a whole bunch of other characters too. It's not just the story of Tom Cruise's character. And so you have a very different kind of movie. It's what I've called possibly the first post-war movie, because it's kind of a war movie, but it's not reliant on combat. It's not reliant on violence, and it's not reliant on victory. The story isn't dependent on those things. So it's a very pro-military movie, but there's no war. So yes, it did rehab their image,

which had been savaged by the Vietnam War by presenting this entirely idealized and sanitized view of military life. And Tom Cruise said it himself a few years later when he was filming born on the 4th of July with Oliver Stone. He said, it would be irresponsible to make a Top Gun sequel. It would be irresponsible to make TopCon 2, 3, 4, 5 because it's presenting people with a fairy tale. And then the interviewer sort of said, you do know it. It was like the first film was a massive recruiter for the military that a lot of people signed up after watching that. And Tom Cruise kind of jokes, yeah, yeah, I'm kind of responsible for starting World War III. And it's like now, I mean, what happened in between then and now? Because now he's

been so enthusiastic about this new film. But you take my point that, you know, he then got involved with a very critical Vietnam War story, got to see some of the truth for himself from people who were there, you know. That film was written by and directed by people who were in Vietnam. So that clearly changed his perspective, at least for a little while. But in the intervening decades, obviously the ground has shifted once more,

or possibly Tom Cruise wasn't being particularly honest at the time. Who knows? And now he's fronting this thing again. And it's doing the exact same thing, because the military is in a similar position now. There aren't that many heroic movies about the Iraq war or the Afghanistan war. There are none about Libya apart from 13 hours, which was supported by the CIA. I don't think there are any about Syria.

It turns up occasionally in the odd CIA-sponsored or military-sponsored TV show, but I don't think there's any movies about it. So it's come at the right time for them at a time when they needed a movie like this. I'm trying to picture a Syria movie, you know, all of a sudden it's the year, 2014 and there's a caliphate and we got to go fight it. Come on, guys. And then they just don't tell the story of how the dirty war led directly to the caliphate of the proceeding three and a half, four years before that. Now the whole thing was rooted in Iraq anyway and probably never would have happened if it wasn't for the Iraq invasion and yeah, so on and so forth. I heard Assad and Putin are the ones propping up ISIS in the first place. It wouldn't be difficult to write, but it would be a really dumb and inaccurate movie.

But you see what I mean, there aren't really that many heroic war movies anymore. There aren't even that many war movies anymore, full stop. Oh, I bet they're working on one about Ukraine right now, where the Azov Battalion are a bunch of moderate rebels and there was no coup in 2014 and everything is awesome. Yeah, that nothing's happened in Ukraine since 1991 until the Russian invasion. Yeah, exactly right. So we're sitting there eating our breakfast and all of some, the Russians attacked us. Out of nowhere. Yeah, man.

It happens sometimes. So you see what I mean, the new movie, you could say about it. It is rehabbing the military's image, which has been savaged by Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen. The list goes on, you know, the drone program. I mean, that's a big theme, I think, in the movie, is the, I said this in the shadow-proof article. It's about the re-veneration of pilots in the era of drones. And there's even a bit right at the start of the film where Ed Harris is saying to Tom Cruise, you know, you're kind of finished. You know, you're all just going to be replaced by drones.

We want an aircraft that don't even need pilots anymore. And Tom Cruise says, well, maybe, sir, but not today. Which is kind of a funny line, but they've nicked it from the film Battleship, which is an awful, awful movie. That's funny. But you see what I mean. They're very much situating this movie. Right. And then the rest of the movie goes.

The pilot's actually cool. Yeah, it won't end up wasting your life stuck in a cargo container on an Air Force base in Nevada, killing people by remote control. It's actually heroic and fun. exciting thing to do when it isn't. Right. Yeah, exactly. As you point out in the article, it's a huge bait and switch. They have this whole line that they use over and over again. It's not the plane. It's the pilot in order to dupe all these kids into joining the Air Force where it's the plane all right, because you're going to be sitting in a trailer in Nevada, killing somebody by remote control on the other side of the planet. No fun at all. Just killing.

Yeah. There's no excitement in that. You don't get a rush of adrenaline from You know, because, I mean, let's face it, aircraft are fun to fly. Man, I met a F-18 pilot the other day. You know, he's at the Libertarian National Convention. A meta-F-18 pilot says he's anti-war now. I think him and his brother, if I remember right, as him and his brother, both, you know, kind of found our anti-war stuff and liked it. And so I think if I remember right, he's no longer a pilot.

But that was his job for the last, you know, flying swordies into Iraq over God knows how many years. here and I didn't get a chance to talk to him enough. Hey man, if you're listening to this, email me and let's talk. I mean, I was only laughing that's such a familiar story. How often do you hear that? Military veterans are often some of the most anti-war people you'll ever meet. Oh, absolutely. And that's a good thing, but you know, it's a problem for the Pentagon. It's not just about recruitment in the first place. It's about retention. It's about keeping those people in those institutions. It's about keeping them in those jobs. Because if they aren't doing them, they have a problem

they don't want to send some fresh newbie with six months training off to do these things they want experienced people but if those experienced people are quitting because they're starting to feel guilty

or they're starting to see the world in a different way or they just can't do it anymore or for whatever reason it may be that's an issue for them so a top gun film helps them keep those people

and obviously Maverick in this film he's about I don't know 60 or something I don't know how old it used to be in this movie Hey, someone should do a movie, Tom, where you and I start Armageddon with this interview, because what happens is recruitment goes down, and so they rely more on drones and autonomous systems, and that's what leads to Skynet taking over and starting the nuclear war.

It could be Terminator 7 or whatever they're working on now, you know? It would be Terminator 7, yes. Couldn't be worse than 4. All right. Listen, I got to go I'm so late for my next interview But thank you so much for doing this show again I'm sorry for talking so damn much

But I love talking with you Tom And I love your great work And everybody go and listen My previous interview of Tom About this from a couple of years ago too There's all kinds of gold in there This one is that shadow proof Our friend Kevin Gostola

And Them It's called Documents Reveal How Panagon Shaped Top Gun Maverick Into a recruitment and PR vehicle. Thanks again, Tom. Appreciate it. Thanks for having you, Scott. The Scott Horton show,

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