The Chaser Report - The Sub Cost Fallacy

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Dom and Charles bring you one of their patented updates on the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, and how it's looking in these times of war. Plus, should Australia's defense specialists be taking a leaf from Iran's book?---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. The official podcast of the Orcus Scheme, as you know, and Charles, there's an interesting update on Friday. Retired Rear Admiral, Peter Briggs. I don't know why they're called Rear. Is it because they do their job from a long way away from the front? Yeah, I think that's probably that.

I'm not sure. But anyway, this guy, this guy ran. the submarine squadron that the Navy had when they had submarines. And he said, speaking to a conference on Friday, that both the American and British stages of Orcus, because, you know, we were going to get the American ones on loan and the British-made ones.

He says they're both likely to fail, leaving the country with a dangerous under-seek capability gaps, as the Herald. And if I can quote him here, he said, Orcus was a wasteful folly. Yes. We're facing the loss of a submarine

capability. Yes. And then here's the bit that's been reported. It is never too late to stop a plan that is not going to bloody well work and it is not going to work. We are heading for a train smash. Now, Charles, I just want to briefly question that because the train smash involves vehicles moving fast and vehicles that are there in the first place.

So is it the best analogy, I know. It can't crash if there's no trains to crash. Well, maybe that's why it's a train or not a submarine because the submarine never arrived for the analogy. Let's take a break though, because I know you've got an. update on this. Yeah. But before we go to my update on this, I do want to just address what this guy, this

rear admiral was the sunk cost fallacy. Right. car, and then you realize, oh, fuck, we're never getting the submarines, right? Normally, you'd say, oh, that's a sunk cost fallacy. You shouldn't keep throwing money, good money after bad, just even though you've spent a few billion dollars on this idea, let's just park it and, you know, it's much better off just cutting your losses and walking away, right? Charles, is that an argument for stopping doing this podcast?

No, but when it comes to submarines, it's different, right? Right, like that. The sunk cost fallacy, you want it to sink, right? Right? Okay. You want it to be sunk. It's a win. Yes, it's a win.

Things being, sinking. If you're following the sunk cost fallacy, you're on a winner. Well, it means you have a submarine. Yes. Which is, which is something better than what you've actually got already. So just to say why he says this, he says, American shipyards are very low. They're only going to have 49 submarines in 232. There won't be any surplus ones for us at all.

Yes. And the president of the day has to certify that there won't be a problem, which is It's very unlikely to happen. But the thing is, Dom, that what this whole August deal is based on, besides which we're thinking, is the idea that, look, staying close to the US is a good idea, and they'll look after us. Like, even if we don't get all the submarines exactly as intended, by being part of this alliance, we sort of, we'll end up, you know, submarine-ish.

Yeah, adjacent submarine. We'll be able to sort of, like, lend, you know, lean on America with their submarine fleet. We're in the fold. We're under the umbrella. We're under the umbrella. The only tiny, tiny, tiny little flaw to this argument, right, Dom. No, there's a lot of floors there.

Is actually similar to what I've been saying for years, which is actually part of the Orca's Agreement means that at any point, because it's a sort of vague umbrella style of arrangement, at any point, even our own submarines can then be just used by the US, right? Because they're actually going to be based in North America, right? And a lot of people have pooh-poohed that idea. And everyone's going, no, no, no.

They'll be our own submarines, right? Is this like how our fuel reserve was also based in the US? Yes, yes. Which means that you've got to get it to Australia to use it, which is difficult if there are fuel shortages. Is that, I mean, I think we should just base more things in America. I think we'd just, should we be based in America. I reckon what we should base in America is the Parliament.

Yeah. Oh, that's very good. Canberra in Texas. Everyone's moving to Texas. Are they? Yeah. Yeah. You all started it, didn't you?

Yeah, exactly. And we just put Canberra in Texas. They can get on with giving money to the US. And then we'll sort ourselves out here. Well, Canberra, yeah. What would the difference be? It would go from being the most livable city very quickly to the most unlivable city. It would be a win for the people in Year 6 who have to go and visit Canberra.

But also, it would be run. by the Greens in Texas. Like, because Canberries run by the Greens, isn't it? It's got a, it's the only government. It'd be like Austin. It'd be this weird little, weird little lefty bubble in the middle of Texas. Oh, that's an idea. Very good.

Anyway, as long as they don't have to travel from Australia to Texas via submarine, because I don't think that option's going to be available sometime soon. Okay, so just on Friday, something quite big happened, which really does, you sort of drive an arrow through August, which is Switzerland. Switzerland. Just recently, just in the past sort of a few months actually, have sort of got a little bit of cold feet. So Switzerland and the US have a deal for the US to deliver 36 F-35 fighter jets. To Switzerland?

To Switzerland? To Switzerland? To neutral Switzerland. But because America has sort of been, you know, committing all these war crimes and bombing countries and, you know, primary schools and stuff. Switzerland has actually, they've got a stated policy of neutrality. in times of war. Yeah. And they've actually stopped making their payments to this air defense system.

Oh dear. This 36 F-35 fighter jet. America won't like that. So they just paused it right, but they still have fighter jets as part of the scheme, but America's just holding on to the fighter jets, right? They're just borrowing them. You don't need them right now. So America on Friday went, okay, we're just going to take these Swiss fighter jets

and we're going to use them in our war, right? And this has caused a huge controversy in Switzerland. Oh, really? The neutral Swiss fighter jets had to go and fight in Iran. They're now going and fighting in the Iranian conflict. And this has caused a huge controversy in Switzerland because it's like, hang on, we paid for them. We paid for them. Sure, they're not quite delivered yet, but they're ours.

They're not yours, right? And then they're sort of quickly looking through the small print of this agreement that they'd signed. So they only poured the plan. Are you telling me Swiss bankers didn't read the fine print? They didn't read the fine print, Doc. Oh, my goodness. Even a Swiss banker got duped by the military industrial complex. But Charles, and so it's exactly what's happening.

Like, that is the exact same sort of deal as we've got much bigger with this was only a few hundred million dollars worth of. This isn't going to be a problem. You're worrying about nothing. No, no. The submarines are not going to arrive. There's going to be no. There will be no submarines to not loan.

But Charles, I think you've hit on a fantastic solution. by bringing Switzerland into this. It's a fascinating example. Firstly, I mean, what's mine, what's yours? Do these lines even matter between friends? I mean, if they're America, are they sort of ours in a way as well just because we're friends with America? I mean, no, I think is the answer. But who even care, what even is a possession anymore? So that's one thing. It's a very old-fashioned way of thinking. Yes, yes. It's a sort of, I don't know, capital-as-grat. It's like when I tell my kids that they can just share all the toys. It's not about who owns the stuff toy. It's actually a good lesson.

Very good lesson for Switzerland, I think. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. But Charles, more to the point, you've actually hit upon a permanent solution, I think, to Walkers. Oh yeah. Now, when you brought up Switzerland, I thought this is going to be an elaborate setup for a joke. Oh. And the joke I thought you were setting up. Oh, right.

Was that we were going to get submarines from Switzerland, which is, of course, famously landlocked. Landlocked, yeah. No submarines. And so what this makes me think, Charles, is that the solution here, is actually for Australia to not need the submarines because we're landlocked. And there's a lot of ways we can achieve this. If you think about it, like, why don't we just reduce our territorial boundaries further? You know how we did that with the migration zone?

Like 100 metres would be fine, right? So you know how how did that with the immigration? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, the migration. Yes, right. I think it was one building in Adelaide you had to go and get to or something. And that was the migration zone. It was like BAR and TIP.

If you got there, you could stay. If you're under about 40, you probably wouldn't remember this. But basically, during the sort of scare campaign that he ran against migrants in the refugees in particular in the early 2000s, Howard came up with this wonderful legal fix, which was to excise Australia from its own immigration zone. Well, they started with the island and then they started going to the mainland. And so then suddenly it was like the whole of Australia is not part of Australia. Yeah, it was. GPO box 394 in Queenby, I think it was.

You had to touch that box and then you were actually in the migration zone. We do the same. But the brilliance of this one is like all the most valuable property in Australia is basically in 100 metres near the beach. That's right, in the waterfront. So if we excise that, wouldn't we just end up with like all the cunts, all the rich cunts would no longer be part of Australia? Well, Charles, they're already building a Trump Tower on the Gold Coast.

Yes. That could be, this is what I'm saying. If we made the immediate waterfront region America. then America would have to defend it with America's subs. Just like one kilometre back, I think, from the beach. Would we have their gun laws, though? Well, in that one kilometer. We'd never go into that area.

Right. But then how do we get access to the beach? Look, I'm quite like the beach. Oh, I mean, you'd be able to go in under passport controls. If you didn't get shot, you'd have, you know, you'd have to go and get a visa. You'd have to get Manester. I feel like this is not one of our best solutions. Maybe we give America, you know, everything other than 100 meters.

Well, they'd also have, they'd also have Kingswood Smith Airport, but we'd have Western Sydney Airport. We'd fly from there to Thailand if we want to go to the beach. Avalon. We could have a lot. Yeah, yeah. But Charles, it's basically Alice Springs. Like, just shrink Australia down.

Yeah. We could all live there inland in safety. We wouldn't need submarines anymore. And America would look after. The only way to make America look after anything is to have been. American. I mean, that's why Pine Gap is strategically important. I kind of feel like, because, you know, the whole point about defending Australia is you

can't, right? No. It's very large and there's very few. And so the sort of, you know, high-tech reason why you want nuclear subs for that style of defence is you want people to not know where your subs are. Yeah, because I can say underwater for months. For months and they can be really quiet. They can be much more quiet than these ones.

And so you literally can defend it. you know, the theory being you can defend 5,000 kilometres of coastline with a couple of subs because, you know, it's too risky to know where the subs will be. I hope no one tells Iran about this or the straight form moves would be quite hard to reopen. But then isn't the whole point that what Iran has proven is that you don't need a $240 million missile defence system if you can build $240,000 drones that do essentially the same. So you think we just need drones, like clouds of drones along the coastline? Little sub-drones, like submarine drones.

Underwater. Yeah, because I know that Australia is actually leading the way in that sort of... Aren't we sending them to fix the Great Barrier Reef and it won't actually work, but it looks good. What they should do is they should put some missiles on these Great Barrier Reef drones and start blowing it up as a test site for blowing up, you know... It's not a bad idea. The other thing we could do, Charles, is if you think of the Great Barrier Reef, don't think of it as a reef. think of it as a foundation for concreting.

Yeah, we've talked about this already. If you concrete along it, then the ships can't get past. Yes. Can they? How would they get past? We should just do that around the whole of Australia because that would lead to a construction boom.

Construction boom. Yeah. You could put windmills on it and Donald Trump wouldn't like that. The Great Wall of Australia. The Great Wall of Australia, all the way around. All the way around. And you'd keep out the sharks as well. I would keep out the bull sharks.

Might keep in the sharks. No, the bull sharks They hug the coast, don't they? Okay. So it needs a little bit more work. Maybe we could have drones to take out the sharks. Maybe we have... Maybe we need to get the sharks to be a...

Why aren't we using the sharks for defense purposes? Yeah. Because they're now tagged. We don't need submarines. They're all being tagged. They're all being tagged over in Western Australia. They're now tagging them in New South Wales. I've got the shark smart app.

I can see I get notifications when one pops up. We'd have to get rid of the shark smart app. Oh, because that would be able to make where they're Foreign invaders we'd be able to track our arsenal. But we've got some positive. I think that's a good idea. You put some nukes on the sharks. We just say to the academics who are running the shark tagging scheme,

can you also just put an oozy on the shark? Yeah, or one of those fun-sized nuclear weapons, I think, like the really small ones. I'm not supportive of using, like, having a sort of shark suicide mission. I don't think, I think. Oh, we should have a kamikaze shark. They should be able to deploy missiles right now. Yeah, they're going to deploy, but it's unfair on the sharks. We did, like, let's not pick a fight with the sharks.

No, no. It's just like, is that a win? Yeah. I've seen Shark Nago. We can't have this goes. I'm pretty sure we can't beat sharks. Particularly when they become airborne in the middle of tropical cyclone. Okay. Nevertheless, Charles, I do think as ever, we are the ones on this podcast.

We're finally, like, you know. Defending Australia. Everyone else is sort of throwing billions of dollars. This wouldn't cost more than about 20 bucks. No, no, a shark with a rocket launcher on the back. You get that of bunnings, can you? So there we go. Australia saved.

Podcast done. There's nothing to two podcasters with a loose grip on reality can't solve. Oh, that's what I like to see. We are part of the iconic lesson week. Get you tomorrow.