The Ricochet Podcast - ¿¡Cuba Libré!?

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

The Founders™ are on their own this week, but even on a James-less week, the show must go on! First up, Rob and Peter discuss the tumult in Cuba, along with their personal attachments to our tragic seaside neighbor. Then, journalist David Adler joins as their guest to make his case on the particular triumph of Operation Warp Speed. His article for American Affairs Journal is a deep dive on the... Source

They say you can't hurry love, but if you don't get to your post office by March 23rd, you'll miss your chance to save €2.50 on a book of 10 heart-shaped love stamps. Now, just €14. Down from €16.50. Perfect for all kinds of love messages like, We're getting hitched. You're still my favourite. Or,

Growl McCree. If you've a couple of fuckle. Buy yours now at your local post office or at onpust.com. Send joy. Show growl. Send love. Onpust. For your world. T's and C's apply or at OnPost.com. Send joy. Show grow. Send love. OnPost. For your world.

Decencies apply. See OnPost.com. Mango only pawn in game of life. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. The government was hoping that they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated, and it isn't happening. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 552. I am Rob Long, joined as always by my friend Peter Robinson. James Lilacs is off. Stay tuned. We're about to have a podcast. Hello, welcome to the Ricochet podcast. This is episode number 552, which is just an insane number to think about. I am here. I'm Rob Long in New York City. I'm joined as always by my co-founder of Ricochet, Peter Robinson, in Northern California. Peter, how are you? Oh, I'm just staggered by 550-some. What was the number again? 552. You know, if I had five bucks for every hour I've devoted to this lunatic project that you talked me into. I know, isn't that crazy? Although I have to say I've enjoyed it. Yeah, like but it's one of those things we started it when it was like this weird thing

i've got a bunch of stories though well what is that what was weird idea of starting a podcast and then even that we started the podcast before we started the site ricochet.com so this is what's brought to you by ricochet.com uh we would love you. A lot of people listen to this podcast. Not as many people are members of Ricochet.com, and we would love to change that. It doesn't have to be all of you. It has to be some of you, because we really do need to keep this thing going.

And so we do need you, and there's probably a nicer, better, more elegant way to make that membership pitch, but I'm making it anyway. Please go to Ricochet.com and join the conversation and the community. You will love it. We should also say that the third, but I'm making it anyway. Please go to ricochet.com and join the conversation and the community. You will love it.

We should also say that the third of our regular party here, James Lilacs, he's off this week. It's like summer, right? So sometimes I'm here, sometimes, you know, we're all at half speed. And we have a great guest today, David Adler, who I've long admired. So stick around for that. In the meantime, Peter, Cuba. Cuba. Now that is a subject close to your heart.

It's extremely close to my heart. If listeners care to, I've been married for 30 years now to a woman who is Cuban. Although there's a complication there. Her parents left in 1959, my father-in-law, and she was born here in this country. So she's born to Cubans. She has never spent a day in her life in Cuba. She's never set foot in Cuba for the reason that her father, who is still with us, just doesn't want his children to go back. I know you've visited Cuba, and you actually are far more up on contemporary Cuba than I am,

but I know a little bit about the Cubans in Miami and in this country. And one reason people feel so strongly about it is that in the old days, it was all personal. It was a small island. And I guess to put it crudely, there's really no other way to put it, that the wealth was very unequally distributed and the families that had some land all knew each other. My father-in-law knew Fidel Castro. They were students together. And when Fidel took over, he extended an invitation. It was clear that my father-in-law was expected to accept that invitation. Fidel extended him an invitation to join the new Ministry of Economics. My father-in-law had been teaching economics, and it took him three months to figure out what was going on and to get his family

out of the country. But this is what he, I'll go ahead and tell this story. This is why it's painful for him even to think of it anymore. He gave the keys to his house, to his friend, the Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba, as he was taking his family out of the country. And by old Latin American tradition, I don't know what standing it has in international law, but this is the way it was in those days, an embassy was considered sovereign territory of the country it was representing right i think it still is so is that still the case i think it's still the venezuelan embassy announced that my father-in-law's house was now venezuelan territory with the result my father-in-law heard about this afterwards because they left the venezuelans turned it into announced that it was venezuelan territory people crowded into the house and into the garden seeking asylum and then came a moment

when a jeep pulled up and a machine gun was opened on the back of the jeep and it just sprayed the people in the back garden oh my god now you hear about something like that happening in what was your house 24 hours earlier and you're not eager for your children to go back so that's that's that's that's that's where it stands in in the family which i'm here peter they have they have free health care high literacy um it fidel is one of those interesting characters a 20th century characters 20 i think 21st century characters too but there aren't he may be the last one i mean you could see or i mean he's dead but the most recent one p man all men who spanned an enormous span of history, bridge of history

from black and white movies, from black and white history, from Kaiser Wilhelm and Stalin to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and Technicolor. I was always shocked, of course, that Franco, who died in 76, was on, you know, not good terms, but certainly collegial terms

with Hitler. I mean, these are people who sort of, this was not an era that died on, you know, at Nagasaki in 1945. This is an era that just kept going for a long time into the sixties, into the seventies,

into the eighties. And I think that the, probably for me, having been to Cuba, the trauma of Cuba is the sadness of Cuba is that it's, this is not like East Germany. It's not like Poland. They were not invaded by a foreign power.

This was something deep in their roots and um despite i i see the protests in the paper the ones the papers are allowing us to look at um and what we're what it will require is a wholesale cultural transplant but i don't think the cubans, especially famously Latin, are willing to do. The only way out of this mess, and there's no happy way, is they need to repudiate Castro, and they cannot do it. They cannot do it. I was there a couple years ago. They sing a lot of songs that we like. They hum the tune we kind of want they cannot they will not ever have the commission that says you know what opening fire in the backyard of your father-in-law's

house was a crime it'll never happen as long as it won't ever happen as long as that pride is still there just generationally i don't think it's going to be real change in cuba for another 50 years because you you everyone who remembers him everyone who remembers him, everyone who remembers that time, everyone who romanticizes that is going to have to be long dead, unfortunately. So I'm a little bit pessimistic. You remind me of a moment, oh, this may be 15 years ago now, but I was watching, I may be mistaken about this, I think it was a 60 Minutes interview. It was a 60 Minutes style interview. It may have been Mike Wallace, for all I know, it may have been Diane Sawyer interviewing Fidel. And I watched this with my father-in-law and then my mother-in-law, who has since departed, alas. The interview ended and I thought, I braced myself because I thought there would be a stream of invective.

How dare he? He's been there. And my father-in-law looked at my mother-in-law and said, well, he's still got it. There was this weird kind of grudging admiration. He was a bastard and a criminal, but he was still a product of their culture and someone they knew. I don't... It's a strange kind of pride. How long ago were you there? A couple of years ago in May, I was trying to set a TV project up, and there was a period in the, there's a kind of a weird, as it always was in that administration, a weird moment of, in foreign policy, on Trump, a brief moment of clarity. Where you thought, oh, wait a minute, maybe somebody in there is really thinking anew.

And there was this idea that they were going to readdress the Cuban policy, American Cuban policy. policy so that would be kind of cool like when it all happens we're all on the the show pitch was this really uh eventually it's all gonna on uh you know the wall will come down however you describe it between the united states and cuba and there's a whole lot of unfinished business and current business going on between south florida and cuba there's a lot of stuff happening a lot of stuff happening houses that a lot of whose house who A lot of stuff happens. A lot of houses. Whose house? Who got killed in what house? All that stuff.

And it'd be an interesting anthology cop show about a young Cuban-American woman who is a member of the Park Service, but she had relatives who are still alive in Cuba, but she doesn't know them, and a grizzled old homicide detective in Havana. And they work together to try to untie the knots and uh and solve the mysteries that are happening even now between south florida and cuba and it gets kicked off by the the discovery of a dead body in a ditch in the everglades that is a cuban national with with Cuban dental work who has only been in the country for a week

and has no record because of course there's there is a lot of traffic between two countries people don't talk about um and that was the show and so we went to Cuba met a bunch of people and some people were really excited about it and some people were very cautious about it it took a three or four dinners before the detective in the Havana police force whose job it is to investigate homicides would admit that there were in fact homicides there because they still right paradise there's no homicides there but we met an academic who was a you know a considered dissident academic and we were meeting him on the rooftop of a of a havana hotel and um he was late and so our guide

you know said he's gonna probably be at half an hour late, maybe 45 minutes late. He's here in a hotel, but he's late. What does that mean? Well, he's being detained. Because you're not allowed to walk into a hotel in Cuba.

He's being detained, but when he comes up, remember, this is a dissident. When he comes up, it's impolite to make him say he was detained because it will embarrass him because he's going to try to tell you that that doesn't happen in Cuba. That's a dissident protecting the police state in Cuba.

Very strange psychology. He arrived and oh, the traffic was terrible and parking was hard. He doesn't have a car, so he didn't have to park. Traffic in Havana is not terrible because they don't have any cars because they're broke. But we just had to sort of accept these sort of politenesses to each other. And so he and I got in a discussion. It became a very polite debate, and we talked a lot about the American crimes in Cuba.

And the biggest crime, of course, is the embargo. The American embargo with Cuba is considered the great crime of cuba and uh the biggest crime of course is the embargo the american embargo with cuba is considered the the great crime of cuba great crime against cuba today and i said well what if reagan you know he's nuts right what if he just sat up one night and said give me a piece of paper i'm going to lift the embargo and some entrepreneurial cuban americans or just entrepreneurial floridians decided to buy in Florida, the state of Florida, used cars. Now, a used Toyota in Havana, you can buy for about $70,000. What if they put them on the back of a bulk carrier and sell them 90 miles from Florida to Havana? It's not that far. And sold them off the dock for, I don't know, cost plus right you know they take a 15 big could they do that assuming the american embargo is lifted and he said no well why because there's an cuban embargo

against american imports so will cuba ever lift that and he said no because if they lifted it then everybody in cuba would know how great everything in america is they'd say well why are we accepting this bad stuff when we should be accepting the good stuff so the outcome really was that you politely sort of agree to disagree and then he told us some great stories and then we had to it was great it was great material he was fantastic but you just that the level of delusion and self-delusion that is necessary to be a dissident even in cuba is much higher than it was to be a shiransky a social needs in in the soviet union there's just a it's just a bigger bigger deal anyway those are my two anecdotes i've got i've got one thought and i want to see

if you agree with this you contrasted a moment ago this wasn't your point but it struck me you mentioned francisco franco and then you mentioned castro c c and franco so this is a latin what's that? Franco. How am I supposed to say it? You're American. Franco. El jefe. So this is a Latin tradition.

The man on horseback. The strong man. Really, when it comes down to it, what distinguishes let's put it this way. There's an alternative... String theory is true. There's an alternative universe someplace in which Fidel was just a charismatic, Latin strongman. And Cuba's free and prosperous today, even as Spain is democratic and quite a liberal place, a progressive as opposed to conservative place today.

The difference is that Castro became a communist. And communism, it really is. This is on my mind because I've been interviewing people about China. And there's a quotation from a late analyst, wonderful man, who was a colleague of mine here at the Hoover Institution called Harry Rowan. And he wrote in the 90s, this is a piece in the Wall Street Journal, it got published in a major place. He predicted that China would become a democracy by about the year 2015, because that economic growth was placing it on the same trajectory as South Korea and Taiwan. And they would be about as rich in 2015 as South Korea and Taiwan were when they became democracies. So, what did everybody miss about China? And the answer is,

they're communists. There really is something singular and distinctive i really more and more the more i think about this the more i place communism and anti-semitism in the same category they are diseased modes of thought that do things that no mere ideology or political tradition can do or attempts to do and they're unified theories right it does explain everything which i think is that and even saying the word you know you say communists it just sounds so retro like like they're coming like it's like it just sounds but there's a it's retro because it's true it's fun i remember i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm i am absolutely gonna mess this up and i'm almost 100 certain this

is true it could be there's 10 chance i guess 90 chance it's true 10 chance i just invented it in my head um but i do recall someone once talking about talking to franco in the late 60s early 70s and the interview with franco i guess, and saying, would you consider yourself a fascist? Are you a nationalist? What are you? And he said, I'm a Spaniard. And then someone said, well, that's Salazar,

the sort of mini-Franco in Portugal. He is a Portuguese. It was self-evident to Franco that, what are you talking about? Systems? No, no, i'm a spaniard and you do get you got the sense a little bit i know i'm gonna get in trouble for this with pinochet right pinochet was the not not necessarily nice guy but he was you know he's definitely in the continuum of leaders of that country so it isn't as if he's what sort of an outlier in the

chilean um pantheon of leaders of leaders, certainly not that different from his predecessor. And that is different from Castro, who I think believed he was a world leader on the world stage in defense of an ideology that became an important thing and then becomes kind of a fetish object for those guys, just to get Freudian for a little bit where they they simply cannot let it go and there's a there's a horrible uh psychological pattern that people have identified in children young children and they'll you sometimes you play a diving game you know they'll dive you'll throw a weight into a swimming pool or a um you know um one of those kettlebells into a swimming pool. And the children have to dive. They have to dive, dive, dive, dive, dive and get it before it hits the bottom of the pool.

And some kids, just their brain freezes and they hold on to it and they can't let it go. And they just can't let it go. And they drown. This happens. And why didn't he let it go? Why did the kid? It's just some part of your brain that you refuse to let go this heavy thing that's dragging you down. And it's the most amazing thing. Castro and Castroism and communism has dragged that country

into the third world, which is a very hard thing to do when lucy married ricky in 1955 nobody on television in america certainly the america of the day and if you believe you don't even have to believe critical race theory theorists or any of those other people to believe that in 1950 in the 50s america had very very strict rules about interracial romance it was not considered it wasn't a hispanic he was a he was a cuban he was a spaniard it was a it was a it wasn't a first world country people went down to havana because it was cheap but nobody thought there was something weird it was not different race and somehow castro managed to demean in some weird way in communism an entire nation uh that would have been absolutely

unpredictable in 1959 and i don't even think during the during the during the 60s during the height of the cold war it wasn't obvious that they were going to lose because they were broke um that was something that happened later that reagan taught us that the problem with these countries is that they're going broke um anyway so that that's my so my my pessimism about cuba is they're going to have to they have to renounce the way they have to let go of the anvil and the kettlebell that's dragging them down it's going to be very very hard for them rob do you remember you mentioned i love lucy do you remember our man in havana alec guinness yeah Coward? My favorite books, yeah. Okay. So, Our Man in Havana, it turns out, Our Man in Havana was filmed in Havana on location just a few months before Fidel marched into Havana.

So, you can see in the background of scene after scene havana in 1959 and people are well dressed yeah and the buildings are beautiful and the streets are full of commerce and the automobiles are brand new american cars you have a prosperous beautiful city and you go to youtube or just google on havana today the cars are the same vehicles oh my god yeah and all those beautiful buildings the plaster work is falling away and they look decayed you make the most to me i this is to me the most heartbreaking point i think and it's i hadn't thought of it quite this way until you said it yourself. In Eastern Europe, you could say, we didn't do that. We were invaded. In Cuba, it's their own regime. Even in Eastern Europe, I have learned in talking to people who lived under communism, even in Eastern Europe, there was something

humiliating about having permitted it, right? And here, having permitted it, and 90 miles away, there are a million Cubans who have rebuilt Miami, flourished in all... Oh, right. One of Ronald Reagan's big. So how do you get out from under that kind of guilt, really guilt, humiliation? And it's double guilt, right?

It's double guilt. It's not just the guilt of the people who stayed, you know, it's very hard to get people to say, wait a minute. Are you telling me that the past 50 years have been a self-inflicted misery? Are you telling me that i could have stopped

this all along i refuse i would rather believe a fantasy a fairy tale yes believe that it's too crushing but what about those people 90 miles away what about those rich cubans that there's a lot of guilt there too which is that that look how good we've got it. Now, I am probably off base here. You feel free to reprimand me. But it seems to me that all that wealth and power, wealth and power enough. I mean, in the 2020 election, the Trump campaign pulled out its TV ads, took the money out of Florida about three weeks before the election, and put it into states they thought they were going to lose, like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, because they knew they were going to win Florida. They were smart people. They

knew they were going to win Florida. They knew they were going to win florida they knew they're going to win florida because that cuban population is larger than that but that was that's the kernel the crucible of it the hot right red hot center was it was absolutely in favor of trump so that this is a powerful group of people now they could have been favored somebody else i'm not it's not trump's civic it's just that they have a lot of influence and power and money and they don't spend a lot of time the way the south koreans also don't spend a lot of time trying to undermine that regime it's as if the part of them kind of that's been a long time i mean you think you overstep a bit. Okay, well, I open that. There are efforts underway constantly.

There are, I am told, let's put it this way, by reliable sources, that all over Miami, there are safe deposit boxes holding contracts from which day one is the day the regime falls and by day three you will have invested in a hydrofoil that go begin service between miami and kai you will have invested in in in a fund to buy up land i dream of that day i don't well yes it is a dream and you could say perhaps more should have been done it could have been done but these are people who at least in my father-in-law's generation the next generation i don't i just i don't know because I'm not in touch with them. But boy, these are people now in their 80s and 90s and still... By the way, this notion of a certain guilt, that's the wrong way to put it, I think.

But the wrinkle in my father-in-law's story is he left the country. He left Cuba. He had a useful cover in that he was partway through a doctoral program at Georgetown. And so he was able to say to his superior at the Ministry of Economics, it will be good for the revolution if I finish my doctorate. So, they let him go, and as he was laying plans to enable his wife and their then three children, little children to join him, he got letters from friends, including Jesuit priests, saying, come back, you owe it to Cuba. It's always the Jesuits. Oh, I mean, it's not, it wasn't Dominicans or Franciscans, it was Jesuits. You owe it to cuba it's always the jesuits oh it is i mean it's not it wasn't dominicans or franciscans it was jesuits you owe it to the revolution and he went back and then he decided no they're wrong i have to leave i have to take my family out but this notion yeah that they were able to talk him

into returning to the to what was by then clearly a communist regime by playing on this notion of patriotism. You betrayed your country. I mean, the West Germans I have met since reunification who had money or whatever and some kind of influence, they have gone from a very very undecided uncertain unenthusiastic uh support of reunification of germany yes to some to even now a grudging well i guess it turned out okay but you guys say this there's those saying their counterparts in south korea are as far as they're concerned, no, we do not.

We are not interested in a reunification of this country. We cannot afford it, although they can. The two cultures are different, although they're probably not any more different than East Germany and West Germany. There is a powerful urge in the people who got out to stay out. And I don't know. It's wonderful to see protests. it's wonderful to see protests it's wonderful to see people protesting it's dispiriting to think that the american foreign policy response will be how can we help them in other words how can we ruin this for them let's that this is their fight they

need to have it um and the less we do the more effective and the more free cuba will be i think in the future the more we do i, I think, the less free. But I do feel like there's a huge amount of economic mischief we could be doing that we're not doing, mostly because we have a, you know, the policy itself is so... I think that instead of having the government do it, we should just sort of take a relaxed position

to Cuban Americans doing it. There's lots of positive mischief-making we can do in all sorts of despotic regimes that we don't do. I've been asked a few times, what should our regime, what should Biden, the administration, sorry, what should the administration do about the Cuban regime? I only think that I see two things clearly. One, let's not let those people starve. The embargo does not apply to food, by the way. So there is free trade in food, but for goodness

sake, let's not let them starve. Let's not let them turn into North Korea. If it comes right down to it, just start doing airdrops of food to the island if necessary. It hasn't come to that. I doubt it will, but that's one thing I think i can see and the other is beam the internet in be me technically not that easy but technically not impossible either i'm told give them the internet so they can see so they have some chance of hearing the truth no i think that's that's really true i think that and i mean that when i was there they had just uh opened it they had they had opened and closed it a couple times and there's apparently there's a discord uh app on a discord uh thread um and i think part of what's going to happen with these protests is that once they start being coordinated for the first time ever um it's going to be very

hard to uncoordinate it but of course as you know peter the internet is the secret and the internet provides you a lot of freedom but also some danger free email services like like Gmail and Yahoo aren't really free. And this was a really good transition. I just want to make sure this is right. It was a segue to be remembered. Free email services like Gmail and Yahoo aren't really free. This is true. You pay for them with your privacy.

And since those companies have access to every email you send and receive, big tech can sell your data to the highest bidder. And they, in fact, do that. These companies know a lot about us. And it's disconcerting when you think about it. Business plans, medical records, social security numbers, other sensitive information, they have access to far too much, and they can sell this data to target people with intrusive ads, which open you up to identity theft and phishing attacks and more. So why don't you switch to a safer alternative, I know I will. That's why I trust StartMail to secure my email. StartMail keeps my email private, period. Every email is encrypted. Even the recipient doesn't

use encryption, which means big tech can't read, scan, analyze, or sell my personal information ever. Not even Big Brother can stoop around your email, Peter. StartMail also prevents government agencies from spying on you, like in Dragnet operations that we've heard of recently on certain news networks. With StartMail, deleted means exactly that, deleted. When you delete an email, it's gone forever. That is not true with ordinary email, as we've discovered. And StartMail uses their own servers, not Amazon's, which means they cannot be put out of business, like Parler or other internet services. And, of course, we here at Ricochet have taken steps to protect ourselves in that very same way. StartMail is also backed by the most stringent privacy laws in the world. You get unlimited anonymous aliases. This feature protects your main email address from spam and phishing attacks.

So when you're giving your email to a company but want to protect your identity, StartMail can generate a shareable alias email so people can't sell your information and they can be deleted anytime. I don't trust big tech and neither should you. So start securing your email privacy with StartMail. Sign up today and you'll get 50% off your first year. Go to startmail.com. That's all one word, startmail.com slash ricochet. That's StartMail. That's with a T. I'm not a very good radio voice. S-T as in Tom, A-R-T, mail.com slash ricochet. For 50% off your first year, startmail.com slash ricochet. We thank StartMail for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. We also thank them for creating a great product that we all are more and more aware we need peter we have a guest it's

not just you and me yak and we've got a great guest david adler is the author of the monograph the new economics of liquidity and financial frictions i know you've read that peter very well and you understood memorized it actually uh and he's co-editor of the forthcoming anthology the productivity puzzle both were published by the cfa institute research foundation he's also an advisor on industrial strategy at the common good foundation in the uk but more importantly at least for me and for you normies who probably could only get through two pages of the economics of liquidity and financial friction he wrote a great piece for the american affairs journal called Operation Warp Speed, a new model for industrial policy. And you know, Peter, that Operation Warp Speed is my current obsession.

I feel that everybody on the right should be talking about nothing but Operation Warp Speed. We should stop talking about Hunter Biden's laptop and all that other nonsense and focus on the incredible success of free market economics. But David has also spun it into a larger argument for a new model for industrial policy. Two words, as a conservative, I'm always terrified to see together industrial policy. But boy, was he ever persuasive. David, thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me. And we can discuss some of the sensitivities around industrial policy, but maybe we can tell the story of how Warp Speed did it, and then you can share your conclusions. So tell me why. I love Operation Warp Speed, but I love it more after reading your article.

So help other people love it as much as I love it. Well, I think anyone who's had a vaccine and does not have to spend the rest of their life worrying about COVID or arguing whether to wear a mask or not actually you still might have to worry argue about that but the point is you know how vaccines you have to worry about covid that was accomplished by operation warp speed usually it takes 10 years to develop a new vaccine they did it in about nine months so so was it so my my thumbnail sketch i say to people is, okay, massive COVID pandemic, massive failure on the municipal government, state government, federal government side, bureaucracies, complete jokes. One area of American culture came through, big pharma, which we've completely vilified for the past 30 years, because we got the regulatory relief and the financial incentives aligned.

That's true, but you need to go further back. That didn't create a vaccine in nine months. Really, the hero of the story is DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. You know, DARPA invented the internet. Right, that's from the 1960s. Yes, but it's never actually went away. It has good periods and bad periods. So it never went away. It was known for creating the Apollo rocket engine. It created drones, self-driving cars,

and it actually was key to developing the mRNA vaccine technology that made operational warp speed successful. So the backstory is mRNA was just this idea that you could program cells using messenger RNA to create really whatever you wanted the cell to create. DARPA in about 2011 said, well, maybe we could use that technology for vaccines. Though it's not well known, DARPA has a 2011 said, well, maybe we could use that technology or vaccines. Though it's not well known, DARPA has a biodefense unit because soldiers are always going to the tropics, are exposed to infectious diseases. Current vaccines, as I said, take 10 years. And DARPA said, we need something faster. Maybe we'll try mRNA. So the backstory is DARPA then helped fund a company called Moderna, which if you think about it, is short for mRNA.

Moderna. That was about... I did not know that. Yeah. So about 2011, DARPA began exploring this and said this could work. So they proved that some of the technology could work. We can get into the details of how mRNA actually works, but since we're going to talk about the sensitive policy, the sensitive industrial policy,

not for all conservatives, only some. Me. Well, you know, people change. That's true. That's true. All right, well, wait, let me ask you that. So, That's true. That's true. All right. Well, wait, let me ask you that. So your argument is the bedrock, the foundation upon which we had this incredible big pharma success was built on kind of large scale, slightly indiscriminate government spending for technology. That DARPA was really designed to be the way you communicate after the nuclear holocaust, right? When all the telephone lines are down, we can communicate through DARPA. Is that sort of how it started, right? Sort of. It was really when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik,

the U.S. said, oh, we've got to do something equally advanced. So DARPA does sort of outlandish ideas that are 10 years down the road or even 15 years down so they're kind of thinking over the horizon of military threats they're not totally indiscriminate they have a certain strategy which is they always use a portfolio approach they always try multiple projects at once of different ways of tackling the problem with the idea that one or two will fail and you will see that in how warp speed was organized warp speed was packed full of darpa people and warp speed used darpa type portfolio strategies so there are many different vaccines they didn't put everything into just one vaccine that's dark but why am i so surprised i guess when you say industrial policy to me what i hear is uh government um tax credits for

crackpot solar panels in a company that then fails but makes certain investors very rich do i just have to swallow that and say well you know what we're gonna lose some you gotta you know throw some money away at nonsense for climate change uh but in exchange you're going to get uh four working vaccines am i just do i have to just suck it up and say we're going to waste a lot of money on your definition of industrial strategy and say well look who's running no i think you do you have to do it for me i i you're the guy who wrote this book called economics of liquidity and financial frictions i mean that's all right you're a bigger egghead than me that's a different topic but the point is the u.s can get its act together and they can do

it in a private public partnership which this was this i mean warps me took the idea of darpa and then rolled it into a private public partnership between big pharma or small pharma or bio frank technically and the federal government so we can talk about that partnership for a second. Often private-public partnerships are just a scam, frankly, to get something off the balance sheets of the government and the idea that, oh, the private sector will do it better. But really, the private sector can't. Neither the private sector nor the government is capable. And when they fail, they return to the government.

In this case, you actually had a capable department um basically the department of defense and people from darpa running things so a lot of it comes down to the people that's true so i roll my eyes when i hear about government spending i roll my eyes when i hear about defense department efficiency but you're telling me that it worked. I'm not saying the Defense Department is hardly ever efficient. I'm just saying there are capable units within the Department of Defense, namely DARPA, and DARPA always has a stretch goal. It has a tangible goal that they're trying to achieve.

It's not just sort of vague. But your DARPA goal, it's a stretch goal. So it's one of those goals where you allow yourself to fail. Yeah. And you're not punished. They sort of know they're going to fail most of the time.

How many, I guess what I'd say is, and you mentioned this in the article, how many failures failed vaccines? There are lots of failures failures like merck's vaccine failed traditional vaccines failed i mean you could argue in a way the u.s got lucky no one knew that was going to work but it did so that's what it did but i mean but they but they the part of the part of the operation warp speed the the genius of it ultimately whether it's a person's or just the organizational genius was to have multiple ways to solve the problem.

Right. And so the idea is focusing on the failures. It's like in a venture capital business, you don't focus on the companies that don't work. You're trying to like, you're going for moonshots, right? Yeah. I don't like the word moonshot because that's associated with climate change. I don't use the word moonshot. In fact, people talk about industrial policy as a rule would exclude moonshots because they have a very that word is laden with overtones if you're deep into industrial policy.

But here's the key thing that both of you need to think about in terms of industrial policy to make it work. It needs to involve competition. So it's not just the Port Authority of New York saying, let's do something. You need to have competitive units. You need to have the possibility of failure. And that's kind of one key to its success. So you bring in the idea of competition. And now let's, I don't want to inflame you both further, but let's talk about why Chinese state-owned enterprises are working so well, because they're very competitive. They're not, you think of them as like, oh, a big U.S. government. They're really

not. They just have unlimited resources from the government, but they have to compete to each other. If you look at Korea, when it began to industrialize early on, it had to meet the companies receiving funding from the government had to reach export targets. And you know what happened if they did not reach the export target? The CEO was arrested. And I don't know if they were or not, but so there was, I kind of like that. There was a stick. It's not like, um, yeah, let's all just work together and hope it works out. They're like very concrete goals. There's the possibility of failure and there's competition. So maybe rethink the industrial strategy policy or, you know, how about just the way things used to be done? Um, you need to bring in competition.

Okay. And I know Peter wants to jump in and he will jump in right after I tell you. We all love that clean, minty, fresh feeling you get from mouthwash. Those plastic mouthwash bottles though, not so much because they're big and they're bulky and they're not so nice to look at, which is why a lot of us end up stashing them under the sink. And it's pretty hard to kill germs or help prevent cavities from down there. It's true. If I can't see it, I don't use it. So luckily, the oral care experts at Quip created an alcohol-free mouthwash that keeps your mouth healthy without the burn, and thanks to a sleek refillable dispenser, it's pretty easy on the eyes too and can stay right there on the sink. You know Quip, the makers of the electric toothbrush and floss you hear about

all the time on this podcast? Well, they've launched a new mouthwash to help you complete your clean. Quip kills bad breath germs, helps prevent cavities, and leaves you feeling fresh. The four times concentrated formula packs everything your mouth needs with none of the alcohol or artificial colors that you find in other brands. The refillable dispenser's compact footprint will fit in any bathroom, big or small, and with five colors and two high-end finishes to choose from, you're guaranteed to find a dispenser that matches your style. This is the one mouthwash you definitely won't want to hide under the sink. Sitting on your counter, it's a beautiful reminder to rinse every day and a subtle way of letting everyone know that oral care game is at the next

level. Add a mouthwash refill plan and make sure your rinse never runs out. With a customizable subscription, you can get refills automatically delivered straight to your door every three months. So you can stay on top of your Swish without lugging any bottles home from the store. And that is actually truly refreshing. Along with mouthwash, Quip also delivers, of course, the fresh brush head, floss, and toothpaste refills every three months for $5. So you don't have to buy any of that stuff. It just comes right to you. Shipping is free, so you can save money and skip the hustle and bustle of in-store shopping with affordable refills plus free shipping. It's so easy to keep your whole mouth healthy. Join the over 5 million mouths already using Quip and start swishing today. 5 million. I remember when they

just started and they were advertisers on our podcast. It's always good news. Five million, that's great. And if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet5 right now, you can get $5 off a mouthwash starter kit. That's getquip.com, all one word, slash ricochet and the number five, all one word, right now. That's $5 off a mouthwash starter kit, which includes a refillable dispenser and a 90-dose supply of Quip's four-times concentrated formula at getquip.com slash ricochet5. Ricochet5 is all one word, ricochet, and the number five. G-E-T-Q-I-P.com slash ricochet5. And we thank Quip for sponsoring

the Ricochet podcast, and congratulations on 5 million customers. David, you talked about competence in the Defense Department. I'm going to ask a question that will sound facetious, but I don't mean it that way. Honestly, I don't. As succinctly as you can, distinguish between 20 years in Afghanistan, 2,400 American lives lost,

thousands more wounded, and a trillion dollars spent. And for 20 years, nobody staged a terrorist attack on the United States from Afghanistan. There is that much to be said. But it's very hard to say that this 20 years and trillion dollars was spent competently, that it got us anything. Distingu distinguish between that and operation warp speed this is both the defense department they're both using slices of a budget of 700 billion dollars a year what's the difference american we're all americans you say well how can americans do that and americans be i mean the defense department we're talking about something very specific we're talking about

advanced technology development where afghanistan was a political decision. I'm really talking about how the U.S. develops new technology, and a lot of new U.S. technology comes out of the Department of Defense. Okay, so, but as I say, I'm not trying, I'm actually not even attempting to provoke you, although industrial policy is provocative and I'd like to push back, we even set that aside. Here's what I've been doing some thinking and interviewing with people about China. And here's why I really want to understand how we pulled off Operation Warp Speed. First of all, lay out the background thinking in my mind, and you can correct that if you want to, but the background thinking runs as follows. China's a problem. As a military matter, they're always going to outnumber us.

They already spend 60% as much on their defense budget, as best our intel can figure it out, as we do, and we're trying to defend the entire globe. They're concentrating on the Pacific. We're in category after category, surface vessels, submarines soon, so forth. They already have us heavily outnumbered. So the only prospect for a permanent edge over China by the United States military is innovation, technological dynamism. Point one two point two of two as distinct from the cold war when a lot of those decades when the government would say we need this technology or that technology and it would often be developed in the government within the ambit of the government itself nasa those people were drawing federal paychecks.

Now it takes place outside the government. Warp speed got developed by private, the vaccines got developed by private companies. Okay, so, and the further wrinkle is that out here where I sit in Silicon Valley, a lot of young tech has no interest in working for the federal government or even being particularly helpful to the Pentagon. So the question is, how does the Pentagon, to my thinking, the question is, how does the Pentagon ensure that it is rapidly incorporating technological innovation into our military structure so fast that it can do it before the Chinese steal it. Is that the right question? Yes and no. I would say, Jadar, part one, I agree with. Part two, in terms of innovation, yet the United States has various venture capital units inside the Department of Defense

to incorporate software. But the bigger part of the article, this will shatter both of your minds, Operation Warp Speed, the DARPA argument, what DARPA did was partially a failure. What DARPA did, DARPA created the vaccine technology, and then nothing happened. Because there's a flaw in American innovation right now, which is the government or whomever can develop a new idea that say that it's hardware hard tech and there's no way to scale it in the united states right now there's no financing the venture capital industry is interested in software things that scale for basically zero cost um and that's true for and there's interest in some aspects of pharma and that's about it so if you have you create an amazing new widget or new

way if you have a new factory going i'm going to make a widget an incredible new way wherever this innovation comes from that's not a silicon valve that's not area that's not of interest to silicon valley the returns are low the risks are high there's an enormous amount of capital so the earth shattering takeaway from my article is a negative one. And that is, yes, the U.S. pulled it off for vaccines. But there are many, many, many other industries where the U.S. might have great new innovations. And they're not going to grow in this country. They're going to grow in China because China is going to fund them. So Silicon Valley was a great idea 20 years ago.

It's amazing what it did. But the problem right now is in hardware and manufacturing. And that is not Silicon Valley. I know it's earth shattering, but that's a fact. Well, it is a little bit. I guess I'm just thinking Tesla. Well, how much of that is Chinese? In fact, if you talk about advanced batteries, the U.S. has many different advanced battery startups.

The whole.S. has many different advanced battery startups. The whole world does. But because the U.S. lacks large conglomerates, they can kind of scale them or funding for them. It doesn't mean the U.S. is going to dominate the EV batteries of the future, which is a problem. So my reflexive, free market, small government, stop, uh, invest picking winners and losers that all that stuff that's misplaced. Well, no picking winners and losers definitely cannot be part of industrial policy. Industrial policy. I guess the competition.

I guess my, my point is that, that I, I, I, I cannot wrap my head around a government policy, a government industrial policy that is not corrupted in that way. Well, first of all, let's talk. We all know how corrupt the free market is at this point through monopolies, politicization, et cetera.

So that part of the argument is already withered and gone. I would say make treating this as neutrally as possible. And this is not part of the public discussion but needs to be there's a problem in the innovation system in america actually relating to the financing of innovation which is is it's the venture capital system is an amazing breakthrough it's superb at software but currently it is very hard to get financing for new factories or hardware if you have a breakthrough idea so there's a key study at MIT looking at hardware startups, not software, but hardware, that came out of MIT and there are like 100.

It's how many of them did they end up manufacturing in the U.S.? How many ended up scaling in the U.S.? And the answer was zero. They all went to Asia because Asia paid for them. And maybe Asia picked some winners, picked some losers, but the point is the U.S. is rapidly deindustindustrializing, or already has it de-industrialized because of this, and is falling behind in innovation outside of software. So, David, I'm trying, I think I have this right, John Whitehead, who was a major figure for many years at Goldman Sachs, and then he's on my mind

because then he retired from Goldman sacks and became assistant secretary of state as i recall during the reagan years in any event he's a major figure in this history of american capitalism in mid-20th century and he was famous for using and insisting that his partners at goldman used products of their clients which meant that he drove a certain kind of car i can't remember whether it was GM or Ford. His refrigerator was a Westinghouse. I'm making this up, but you get the idea. All his electrical appliances were produced by General Electric.

You could lead a life surrounding yourself with objects financed by Goldman Sachs that were manufactured in America. You're saying that doesn't happen. And my question is, is that because there are no more John Whiteheads? Is it because it's unprofitable? Why do we go from Goldman backing American manufacturing firms at mid-century to Wall Street backing software startups today? Well, there are two arguments. One is the cultural, which is, as we know, American elites feel no particular allegiance to other Americans. You know, there's that class divide. So, you know, there's a whole argument, which might not be appropriate for my article, that, you know know using woke audiology

is a way to buffer and distract people from attacking their moves so goldman sachs i don't know why an investment bank would feel any alliance whatsoever u.s workers um i know why i think they should but i don't think they do but secondly it is the u.s once it began to stop tariffs with other countries pursuing mercantilist policies, like certain countries come to mind, that they exploited free market ideology in a way to undersell the U.S. So was it less profitable to manufacture in the U.S.? Maybe only in the short term, but it's like people go, oh, labor costs are so much higher. At this point, labor costs aren't even that high in the U.S. Like U.S. factory workers, people who make cars, earn about half what people do in Germany. So the U.S. just rapidly deindustrialized.

It just sort of lost interest in it. And, you know, so there's a political reason. David, you realize what you're saying here, and I'm going to be the one to sum up your argument for Rob. David Adler, whom Rob already introduced as one of the smartest people he knows, and who is clearly confirming that during this conversation, David Adler, Rob Long, is saying that Donald Trump was right. I apologize. I raised the T word, and I promised to Rob I wouldn't do that for months. None of you are Trumpists. I would say, first of all, in terms of war speed in Trump, Donald Trump floated some of these ideas, but you can't really say he.

No, but the basic critique that the country had been hollowed out, something had happened, something basic had gone wrong. And for Rob and me, what's hard about that to take is that it means that somewhere or other the markets didn't work. Right, Rob? That's what's unsettling to us or that or that i mean and i shouldn't answer this for david but or that the markets um were are were distorted in favor of financial services and you know um i mean if you're a venture capitalist and you make a billion dollars you don't pay that is not income you pay that as capital gains which is a much tax much lower rate but all those things are true um and so maybe i'm david help me out here because i'm now i am just sit this one out because both of you can no way no way that's so much fair not fair

just to say nothing just keep going and talking about both sides. industrial policy mechanism like you're describing like you could i mean i guess or would it i mean is there a way that you could say okay what is that distill the darpa success uh into 10 basic principles and apply them to agriculture and and and and and taxation and would that work i would say first of all let's just take trump out of the equation because there's this whole yes warp speed by trump and very enough warp speed people don't forget people who are sort of upscale doctors in this country who are basically what warped speed people were. They're all Democrats. They've all left the Republican Party. So they'd be deeply offended to be called Trumpists because any aspirational person in the United States, maybe you two accepted, has rapidly left the Democrat, has left the Republican Party like they wouldn't touch it.

So they'd be as offended as you are by Trump is. There is, as you are well aware, a schism in the Republican Party between younger Republicans or certain senators who do favor industrial policy, who are not Trump. You know, Rubio, Cotton, we'll see about J.D. Pence. I actually have a more tangible, pragmatic solution. There's just a little institutional tweak needed in U.S. financing. You don't have to abandon the free market. Competition is critical. You do have to think about free trade with someone who's going to

undercut you. I mean, it's insane not to. And Paul Krugman for years has argued you should do free trade even with someone who undercuts you. There's no reason not to trade with a merciless competitor so basically you it sounds like the other two panelists that'd be both of you aside from me are basically paul cruz so david what is that nicely done boy you are smart three things i can demand of my uh enfranchised elected representatives it is one thing actually it is the u.s needs to find a new, it's a mouthful, we'll make it simple. The U.S. needs to find a new financing mechanism so that startups scale up outside of software. So to put it another way, we can look to Israel, which used to be known as startup nation, but was not scale-up nation.

So Israel would invent all these things, and then they'd watch their inventions vanish, except to some degree for software. So Israel began a program, actually with the European Development Bank, to start funding, to figure out a way of how banks could fund manufacturing. So the U.S. needs to retrain its banking system, because this is not really glamorous enough for venture capitalists, to retrain its banking system to start funding manufacturing startups that's basically in a nutshell that's the whole story it's sort of leave venture capital as it is it does what it does but there's this kind of missing middle of getting things financed in terms of manufacturing the u.s financial i don't know

if there's money to be made no retraining should be necessary to be made in but well did you see steve case's piece in the wall street journal two three days ago he's more of a venture capitalist this is more scale up manufacturing yeah i think he's doing heartland go ahead and summarize that for people who are listening and and may not have read his article but i know what he does. Oh, okay. So it's still Heartland, where this is kind of duller. It's expensive. It requires huge amounts of capital. So there needs to be a financing system, and then maybe there needs to be a demand side.

And the demand side could come from, frankly, tariffs from mercantilist countries. So there's not a huge amount of... The returns are not glamorous enough for venture capital, but they're glamorous enough for the Chinese government that's taking a long-term point of view and is rapidly catching up technologically with the United States. So it's a strategic decision. Do you want the money?

It's almost like it's biblical. You know, Esau, do you want your... What was the offer? Like breakfast? Bowl of soup now. Yeah, take it now or take it later. There's an old psychological experiment. There's like some old homily here. That if you can look at the marshmallow and not eat the marshmallow for 10 minutes, we'll get two marshmallows.

And some kids are just like, well, to hell with that. I'm going to eat this marshmallow. And some are like, we'll wait for their two marshmallows um so what you're saying is we need that the the as efficient and ruthless as the financial system is and about as as the gigantic venture capital investment you know financial wash with cash systems are they will always eat the one marshmallow they'll never wait for the second marshmallow that is not a bug that is a feature according to you but the bug is that we don't have a marshmallow hoarder mechanism. And that's what, that's where the government should step in.

And this is patriotic economics for you. There you go. Or let's use the word patients, which is the marshmallow story. These are more patient capital term for all this. But it also could use further demand either through buy American or tariffs. That might be I think at this point, given how much the U.S. hasn't deindustrialized and how much has flowed to China, some sort of more intervention or intervention is correction is necessary. Maybe what Milton Friedman was doing for his era was necessary.

You know, I'm not saying it wasn't, but it may not be the appropriate policy response right now. When China is manufacturing, when China dominates. I mean, I, it's, I, I, you know, I made a little joke about it, what, how arcane it is, but it is in fact fascinating. And we did see it. I guess what makes it the most fascinating thing is that most of us, 60% of us,

have gone in and gotten injected with industrial policy as you described it. And private partnerships. No, I'll give you that. It was not pure industrial policy it was a

the u.s basically once the u.s set the incentives correctly under war speed the product that's what i mean the exhibit a for your argument is the covid vaccine yeah you know by the way rob my injection of industrial policy gave me a headache and a fever for a day and a half so thank you very much for that so so you know what we're we're to my mind what we're stumbling around here trying to do the whole question is china they're forcing us to rethink all kinds of things. Actually, maybe next week we can invite my pal Doug Irwin, who's the free trade economist, free trade economist. But even, I've had some conversations with Doug and he says, no, China does change things. David

is exactly correct in saying that Milton Friedman's position was that free trade is so good for you. Milton made this point when Japan was a problem. If the Japanese want to dump stuff in this country, if they want to sell us their products at below market, let them. That's great for us. Let them worry about bankrupting themselves. And that used to be the pure free trade argument, even as applied to China. Sure, let their workers work. They work cheap. If they want to subsidize steel that they sell in this country, let them. But then, of course, you begin bumping into arguments of national sovereignty, of national defense, really. And David Ricardo,

Adam Smith, even Adam Smith, the great Adam Smith, there's this carve-out from pure free trade when it bumps into national security, the defense of the nation. And I believe that in one way or another, actually, I don't want to care, David's making a broader argument. Let's put it this way. I'm willing to entertain David's arguments to the extent that in my own mind, I'm trying to figure out what we have to do about national security. If something like letting DARPA, giving DARPA a freer reign, or erecting more DARPAs and spending money on them is necessary to defend the republic? Okay. I say reluctantly, okay. But it's China. Really? Isn't it? It is. Japan kind of showed also that industrial strategy worked, but Japan was an ally. Japan had the Plaza Accord where the U.S. had stopped China, Japan from currency manipulation.

But also one other thing about Japan is Japan did not have huge offshoring from U.S. multinationalists. The U.S. companies did not manufacture in Japan. Japan was a closed market. So you didn't have a corrupted U.S. multinationals. U.S. companies did not manufacture in Japan. Japan was a closed market. So you didn't have a corrupted U.S. elite. As pro-Japanese, the situation is much more dire today because U.S. multinationals now manufacture in China, have an alliance and allegiance to China. And then finally, China is not under the U.S. You're telling me that if you're Tim Cook, the CEO of that quintessential 21st century American company, Apple, you have to pay a lot of attention to Beijing because your supply chains, it's not just supply chains, the assembly of one Apple product.

Where's my iPhone? Assembled in China. When I ordered my iPhone, Apple gave me a tracker so that I could follow the shipment from Shenzhen or some unpronounceable place to my home in California. You're telling me that the Tim Cooks of this world, and there are a lot of them, who owe a duty to their shareholders and therefore have to pay very close attention to what Beijing wants, have a diluted loyalty, but their interests are complicated. In a way, in the 80s, during the Japan, you know, Japan is number one, that whole argument that loyalties were not so complex.

John Whitehead was backing American manufacturing to the hilt. And there was just, it was simple. So there needs to be some sort of, I guess, concerted effort involving tariffs. Maybe your heads are going to explode, but actually the main thing I want to say to you both is wear a mask. It's a joke. This is fascinating. We got to, we got to have you back.

I want to keep talking about this. Because my biggest fear about what you're saying and about the article that you wrote is that I will be persuaded by it. Yeah. You've got the shot. You're not wearing a mask. Yeah. But there is something kind of – I guess the idea that there are – a new world economy requires a sort of slightly altered approach, a slightly altered application of free market competition principles. I find that I'm on the fence, but you're pulling me over, I gotta say, as embarrassed as I am. Oh, God.

And my deepest fear is that I'll be persuaded by Rob. David, thank you for joining us. I'll just say, the piece is fantastic. It's in the American Affairs Journal. It's called Inside Operation Warp Speed, a New Model for Industrial Policy. We'll put a link on Ricochet so people can click to it, but you should absolutely click to it.

It's fascinating. And it's... What I love about it is that it's not theory, because I know what happens in the last reel of this movie. I get a vaccine. And that's the most extraordinary thing, and I think

we should, as certainly as whatever we are all here you know center right uh people of some description need to continually remind ourselves that um that this was a remarkable thing that happened and it happened for reasons that we should be proud of exactly and it happened in the united states otherwise we'd be doing just pursuing a chinese totalitarian solution that doesn't have to happen but that doesn't work thanks david thanks all right that's right just to stand in front of the zoom um thank you very much for joining us really appreciate it all right uh again that was david adler author of autograph new economics of

liquidity financial frictions which i think 17 ricochet members will read and enjoy. But I think everyone should read Operation Warp Speed, a new model for industrial policy. It's from where I sit. Of course, where I sit, it's in front of a Zoom. This is a terrible segue. I'm not even going to finish it. I'm just going to go right to this. The unknown came in 2020 and changed the workplace forever. While some of us are getting back to the office, some of us find ourselves in a new normal at home,

and the future of work has changed, so the future of seating has to change, which is true. I am actually sitting on my desk. That's how I do these, and I need to change. And here's the change coming. The X-chair and its newest innovation, LMAX temperature regulation, will take your seating comfort to a whole new level.

Patent-pending LMAX allows you to experience cooling, heat, and massage in your lower back. So if you're warm this summer, you can set the LMAX to cooling, the air conditioning in your home or office is cranked up too high. You can set your LMAX to heating. You can warm up and soothe tired muscles. If you're feeling stressed from too many Zoom calls, yes, you can turn on LMAX massage therapy and relax. X-Chairs patented dynamic varial lumbar, DBL, was already best in class with incredible responsive low back support. And now with LMAX, your comfort is guaranteed. You won't believe the difference until you feel it for yourself. Imagine regulating your body temperature and getting massage therapy while you're working.

While I'm doing a podcast, it would be great. Xchair, while James is doing these spots. I could just sit back and relax. LMAX, Xchair LMAX delivers cooling, heat, and massage technology directly to your core, regulating body temperature, helping increase blood flow, muscle recovery, and energy. All perks that make working from home or the office a joy. There's never been a better time to ditch that old no-name office chair and boost your productivity by treating yourself to the joys of Xchair. And it is now on sale, $100 off. You go to xchair pod.com. So X

like the letter X chair pod.com. And that's the letter X chair pod.com POD, or you call 1-844-4X chair, 1-844-4X chair. X chair has a 30 day guarantee, complete comfort, or you can finance your purchase for as little as $30 a month. You go to xchairpod.com now. Use the code XWHEELS for free XWHEEL blade casters. xchairpod.com. We thank them for not only creating a great product that I am happy to use, but also for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. Brief personal testimonial. I have an X chair. I'm not sitting it right now because I had to leave home because the plumbers are arriving, but I have an ex chair. Look, it's hip, it's cool. Young people will love it, but here's why I love it. I'll be honest. First thing in the morning, my lower back. So here's what I do in my ex chair. My first hour of writing writing that vibrator and heating thing whatever it's called

that thing that sits right in the small of my back is on and you know what it makes it a lot easier to get going in the morning the x year the elderly gentleman at this point you're an elderly gentleman at this point you you need all the help you can get um but i would say i mean look this is dumb right i don't know where x chair is manufactured but like that it is an interesting thing we see i don't know i'm still sort of in the david adler mode of like thinking okay where's thing where are things made and who's paying for that and the interesting thing for him is that is that there we do seem to have more objects that we that are sponsors on our podcast i mean x chair is a thing they send it to you um the quip toothbrush that's a thing yes um it does seem like we should be able to make more

things in america yeah yes yes yes. I mean, I share the impulse. I just don't know what the policy is. I'm just really, really, really skeptical when somebody comes along and says, yes, yes, yes, of course free markets and competition, except here. That argument, oh, it is a slippery slope. And once you begin to admit, at the same time, smart people I know who are thoroughly conservative and Doug Irwin, I mentioned Doug Irwin before, I'll use his name again. Maybe we'll have him on next week. He is an apostle of Milton Friedman, and he has said, no, no, China changes things. China changes things. We really can't have pure free trade the other bit that changes things you know there's the this to me strikes me as a pretty interesting trend the federal government can't do stuff that the private sector right can do right so why is palantir such a fantastically valuable company it ipo'd at 40 billion dollars and went up to 50 billion dollars i have to say i know some of the people who founded Palantir.

And all along, I've been thinking to myself, data analysis for the Pentagon, for the intel agencies, they have their own huge budgets. Why don't they hire analysts? And the answer is, they just don't do it as well as the private sector does. If the model begins to become become here's the one thing we know the federal government can really do and it's the only thing on which we can rely on the federal government to do and that is to spend our money to reward it and and if the model there is if it's a darpa model, we need a vaccine.

We needed this. We needed that. Here's a little bit of money to get you started. And if you pull it off, if you fail, you fail. But if you pull it off, the reward is gigantic. That's fine with me. I think that's probably a much better use. I know it's a better use in principle of federal money, federal, of our tax money than hiring bureaucrats and expanding the

federal maw okay i guess i can't help yeah the federal health care spending through the roof um but would anybody argue that the federal health care spending under the principles of operation warp speed shouldn't be curing alzheimer's right right or that alzheimer's cannot be cured i mean i don't know that maybe the the i understand the moonshot argument that david was saying we don't like using moonshots mostly because i think i didn't get that on his side i think he what's the environmental thing about a moonshot there's all sorts of like you know uh eco kind of nonsense oh because of rocket fuel is a carbon well no i think it's more like the idea

is that they want to spend enormous amounts of federal money and our taxpayer dollars to subsidize crackpot energy schemes um like you know wind farms and so i see right so lindray would be the and we shouldn't be doing that um i don't know how you keep us from doing that if we're going to have industrial policy, but that's my current concern. The Biden plan is just to dump trillions into that sort of nonsense. Into that sort of nonsense without any, anyway. this which is um you know we uh i have been making uh uh membership pitches for ricochet for you know 550 000 podcasts so far uh and i always talk about the community how great it is and it is in fact great uh but every now and then we have sad news and um and i want to say this on the radio on the podcast because i know we have more listeners than we have members.

But I want our listeners to know just what the bedrock foundational aspect of the Ricochet podcast is. And this Ricochet site is Ricochet Community. And we want to say a few words before we go about the passing of one of our most active, engaging, and beloved members, Brendan Welsh. Who actually was known on Ricochet as Boss Mongo. He died a few days ago, and there's no really way to calculate how much he'll be missed. His prose was enviable. His time with the United States Special Forces, where he eventually retired to our great benefit,

because he retired a lot and told a lot of great stories on our pages, at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, made him a special kind of writer, one who wrote from real experience. And that's one of the great bedrocks of Ricochet is the people, when they write, they write from their own life experience and that is there's nothing no nothing compares to that so like a lot of the members who've expressed their grief over brendan's

departure we you know we wish we knew more about him we wish we had taken him up on his open invitation to meet up at the florida keys where he lived um i'm i i guarantee you in the time i've spent the keys i must have passed him a couple of times i'm pretty sure i saw a guy who looks just like that guy um but we'll just say this boss mongo brendan welsh was a special ricochet member his posts comments like button clicks make it clear that he cared deeply about the community he found here despite having played life for the highest of stakes he never seemed to think any of us in this little club that we're in were not worth his time. He shared his life and his life views with us.

If you approached him online or, I guess, in person, you got kindness, good humor, and grace in response. If you needed advice or help, he was always there to offer what he could. And if you go to Ricochet, look at the comments Memorial posted that have come in over the last few days, and that's a testament to this. His loss is great for Ricochet, for the community. Obviously, it's not like the one his family and close friends are experiencing. But even though we didn't have the honor of being among his inner circle, IRL, as they say, we were very privileged to get to know him on our pages at Ricochet. We hope to learn a little bit

more about him from members who knew him and experienced him and maybe interacted with him more on our pages. If you have not been to Ricochet yet, you should go and just check this out and see what kind of community,

what a really great community on the internet can look like and be. And what we say to Brendan Welsh is rest in peace and to his family and friends we say our hearts are with you. So Peter, we'll miss Boss Mongo, we'll miss Brendan.

And I don't... We don't have anything else. I mean, I think that's the way you should... We should end the podcast like that. Like something... Yeah. So remember that this podcast was brought to you by SmartMail, Quip, and Xchair. Please join today and support them for supporting us.

Listen to the best of Ricochet Radio Show, hosted by James Lilacs, this weekend on the Radio American Network. Check your local listings. It is there. Or come to Ricochet.com, and I'm sureacs this weekend on the radio American network. Check your local listings is there, or, or come to a richie.com. And I'm sure we have it on our pages too. If you have a moment, please leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts. I know everybody says that,

but it actually really does matter for the magnificent crackpot algorithms that rule us all. Um, and if you are having more than five minutes, leave a review. So other people can find us. Uh, and we will see you next week with James and Baines Baines back and me and Peter. Um, and if you are having more than five minutes, leave a review so other people can find us. Uh, and we will see you next week with James and Baines Baines back and me and

Peter, um, for, uh, podcast 600,009 next week, Rob next week. I guess I just feel like, I guess I just feel like.

Nobody's honest. Nobody's true. Everyone's lying to make it on through. I guess I just feel like I'm the same way too I guess I just feel like Good things are gone And the weight of my worries Is too much to take on I think I remember the dream that I had That love's gonna save us from a world that's gone mad

I guess I just feel like what happened there Ricochet! Join the conversation. The future is fading And the past is on hold But I know that I'm open And I know that I'm free And I'll always let hope in Wherever I'll always let hope in wherever I'll be. And if I go blind, I'd still find my way.

I guess I just felt like giving up today. Oh, okay. Rig Shave 5 is real. Yeah, I know. It's like I had a friend once who heard somebody say that his favorite band was Dead Mouth 5.