The Team House - Russia Stress Testing NATO | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

In this episode, the panel discusses the recent decision by the US to halt military assistance to Baltic nations amidst rising tensions with Russia. They explore the implications of this decision on NATO dynamics and Baltic security. The conversation shifts to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the complexities of Israeli military operations, and the ethical considerations surrounding civilian casualties. The panel also debates the US's role in global conflicts, particularly regarding Taiwan and the potential return to Bagram Air Base, highlighting the challenges and controversies in US foreign policy.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our new newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comFind Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?uBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 US Military Assistance and NATO Dynamics18:07 Escalation and Airspace Violations24:36 Lessons from Ukraine: Technology and Warfare28:50 U.S. Defense and Technological Lag31:22 NATO Decision-Making and Article 533:01 Taiwan and U.S. Arms Deals35:14 Comparing Baltic States and Taiwan39:36 Deterrence and Military Preparedness42:55 The Gaza Conflict and Humanitarian Crisis58:38 Ethnic Cleansing and Civilian Casualties01:00:25 Bagram Air Base 2.0Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

A lot of the conversation around NATO, for example, is interesting where people who should know better think that, you know, if a country in Europe doesn't pay their 3% GDP or whatever into NATO into defense that we pick up the tab, that the American taxpayer picks up the tab. And it's like, no, the reality is that America pays something like $200, $250 million a year into NATO, depending on what exercises are run that year. It's a very low-cost investment for us. And it's the most successful military alliance, maybe the most successful alliance America has had historically full stop. So, I mean, if you want to cut costs, I get it. But like, we'd be a little bit smarter about it. And if we are cutting costs, my question is, where's my tax break? And I don't just mean that, like, ironically.

I mean, if you're, like, slashing the size of the government in half, then it stands the reason that the budget. it is slashed in half and that the American, average American worker should be taking home more money, right? But I haven't seen that in the conversation anywhere. What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. We got a full crew today. Jason Lyons, Andy Milburn, Mick Mulroy, Jack Murphy, and myself, a lot going on and chatting a lot. I wish I could have played, I wish I could have recorded what we were talking about before.

I feel like people would probably get a kick out of it. A lot happening as usual. The world's falling apart. It seems like a thing that just popped off recently, like literally an hour before we kicked off. Pentagon informs European diplomats that the U.S. will partially halt military assistance to Baltic nations and NATO states bordering Russia. All this happening when, this is from Reuters, all this happening when we, you know, for the third time in about a week, Russia has breached NATO airspace, Poland, Romania, and just recently Estonia. I think that was yesterday. Estonia invoking Article 4, even though Article 4 was invoked by Poland.

I think this makes history because the last time Article 4 was invoked, I think, was Turkey. And that happened within a couple months of, like a few months of each other. This is like the most, the quickest it's been invoked in like history. Andy, we spoke about it last week. The article 4 is kind of like, you know, window dressing a little bit. I mean, it doesn't, you know, NATO did come up. with the Operation Eastern Century and stuff like that. I'm assuming, I guess Estonia wants to like kind of step that up a little bit.

Maybe they don't think it's going far enough. What do you guys make of us pausing or halting military aid to our NATO allies in the East while this is all happening? You guys can mud wrestle for who goes first. Anybody? Make you on mute. Sorry. Short-sighted to say the least. I think I looked at it, the boss.

Baltic security initiatives only around $250 million, which is a lot for, you know, the dudes on this podcast. But it's really not that much when it comes to U.S. natural security, which is about $1.1 trillion right now for the next defense budget. So if you really put that into, it's not that much, but it's symbolically a big deal to cut it off, right? from these Baltic countries that are on the border of Russia, right? So Poland and then Latvia, Lithuania, and I think Estonia, right? So those countries need to be bolstered. They need to be prepared. That's how you have a strong defense in NATO, is to be ready.

I think the U.S. was right over multiple administrations to push our NATO partners to do more from their own defense. But they are now. but it's not the time to just pull out, which is in many ways symbolic, but security for those countries to be able to get their stuff together. And, you know, as you guys know, my son's deployed an 101st out there right now. And they are working to make sure that our NATO allies are ready to go. And, you know, it's anecdotal, of course, but everything I've heard is these countries aren't fucking around.

They are quadrupling their defense budget. They are doubling the size of their military. They are spending money. They are basically doing everything I think we had asked them to do. That's not the time for us to then withdraw our support for the very military alliance that fought side by side with us 20 years after we were attacked on 9-11. And not only in Afghanistan, but going to Iraq with us, which had nothing to do with 9-11. 11. So I know I get on the soapbox a lot when we talk about this, but this is just another

indication that the United States is withdrawing from which has been a privileged position as leader of the free world for, you know, as long as there's been one. So I think you're pretty clear. I'm against said withdrawal of support. We need to be increasing it now. The last thing I'd say, obviously, throw it to the rest of the you folks is I do agree with. with the idea that Europe needs to stop buying energy from Russia. I think we should do the secondary sanctions to prevent countries like India and China and Turkey from buying Russian oil, but the fact that there's still European countries that are buying, at the same time they're begging for U.S. assistance, I think it sends the wrong message

and it's the right message from the White House to tell them that they need to cut that off as well because that's how we fund this war machine. you know I think first of all I hate to you're a little laggy yeah it seems to be a little if you want to cut out

come back in maybe reset your internet and stuff and cut back in and be here thanks yep I'll do it sorry Andy go ahead yeah I was I hate to sound monotonous but I agree with Mick

you know I hate to agree to agree with Mick that much, but I do. But, you know, I think I think the question really is, why are we doing this? You know, rather than, then it be in our court to reel about it again, it's really, it's incomprehensible. You know, Mick pointed out the tiny amount of money that we spend on Baltic defense compared to our defense budget. And then, you know, at the end of the day, look how much, I know it's a bad example, but look how much, we spent on futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, trillions of dollars, right, let alone the bloodshed, and we got nothing out of it. And again, in the proxy conflict against Russia that Ukraine has been

waging the last three years, we and our NATO allies have gained a great deal and the cost only of money. And again, a fraction of the money that we spent in Afghanistan. So where were all these critics during the 20 years in Afghanistan? Some of the same voices were the same people going, oh, yeah, you know, we're on the verge of victory over and over again every year for 20 years. And I had a discussion the other day with the guy. I can't really call him a moron. I mean, he's a West Point graduate. Okay, but let me continue on this.

He's a Westman graduate. He's a PhD, and he made this incomprehensible statement to me. You know, first of all, why do people bring up politics and cocktail parties nowadays? So I just don't understand it. It's one thing for us to talk about geopolitics here. But, you know, we've learned we stay clear of domestic politics just because it's become such a hot issue and advice of among people who don't have enough maturity to argue. But anyway, so this guy brings up politics at a boozeless cocktail party, by the way, which is even worse.

Yes. Yeah. And he says to me, you know, it's about Ukraine. So he knows my background. And it's probably not a good idea to defend Russia. But he's like, you know, I'm just tired of seeing the Americans waste, an American taxpayer wasting money on Ukraine. And then the second question thing, he said, I don't even understand what the war is about anyway. You know, I mean, this is from a PhD.

And then he went on a long monologue about, you know, how much money it was costing this and that. And I'm thinking, dude, where were you in the last 20 years? I mean, I went easy on him. But he's not unusual. Where is he today? We're still, I mean, dumping money into Israel and nobody says anything about that. Yeah. We just, we just rogered up to another $6 billion, right?

6.4, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but that's apparently not an issue, you know, for the American tax ban. Well, what did he think we should be spending all this? I assume he wasn't against the $1.1 trillion defense budget, right? So where would he think it would be more? I know this is somewhat a rhetorical question, but I would be wondering if you asked him, like, then where would we get a better bang for the buck than supporting Ukraine, who's fighting our most, I think, dangerous adversary, right?

Well, fully enough, you should ask that question, Meg, because he thinks that D.C. is deploying the National Guard military to places like D.C. is a greater use of our defense budget. You know, I mean, the math doesn't quite correlate and, you know. A guy that went to Westboy thinks that having soldiers pick up trash in D.C.? A PhD. I'm serious. But I'm not, I'm not saying this just devilify. him, I'm saying sadly,

sadly, this is not uncommon among people who you would think were educated to think better. I mean, we all know. I don't even think they're just repeating something. I don't even think they believe it. I agree with you. I agree with you, but one thing that upsets me a little bit, probably doesn't upset Jack because

he enjoys the controversy and the cut and thrust of vicious debate. Any time you can dunk on Army officer I'm here for it. No, I'm with you. But for guys like you and me, make normal human beings, don't you find it at times?

I view, I look back and I view, you know, obviously I look at a view my military service, you know, without regret. But, you know, we've talked about this. But I'm amazed how many of my former colleagues seem all caught up in the same,

kind of weird argument about our current foreign policy that that Russia is no longer an enemy and that you know Canada is or Venezuela is or that China is no longer something to be concerned about or Taiwan isn't something that we should even think about you know I mean think about defending or pretend to defend you know these are you know that's yeah that's what's so confusing is from the norm among people that we use to think we're rational human beings. And alongside... It used to say the exact opposite, like four years ago.

And they're in their 50s. So they go from thinking that China and Russia is the main adversary, actually participating in drafting the national security strategy. And then four years later, in their 50s, they decide that the U.S. military should focus domestically. I mean, I have a problem with people disagreement. I was in policy, right? You know, that's fine.

But I don't even believe that they believe what they're saying right now. Yeah, you do have to wonder about the sincerity when they seem to flip-flop every couple years, right? Yeah. Is it just about keeping a job or do they actually have an ideology when it comes to U.S. national security? Hey, guys, how's it going? It's Dee. I want to thank you for watching this show. I really appreciate it.

I love for you guys to check out our Patreon. It's at patreon.com slash the teamhouse The link is in the description Super easy to find If you're listening, it's in the show notes as well You can find it right there What do you get? You get ad free audio Ad free video for both eyes on geo-politics and the team house podcast

So two podcasts add free for the price of one You also get the shows a couple days early On both video and audio And you have the opportunity to shoot us a message Ask questions whether it's team House or Aizan, we could cover topics and stuff like that. It really, really helps support the show. We really appreciate the patrons that are there now.

We couldn't do it without you guys. So consider supporting the show. It's at patreon.com slash the team house. The link is in the description and in the show notes if you're listening to us on audio. Really appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Yeah, you got to ask them. Yeah, good point.

That's what they got to ask themselves. Yeah. It's almost as though their belief in a certain stance in domestic politics has driven them into, admit, unrealistic views of foreign policy that in their hearts, they know that's little foundation. Yeah, I mean, it's like a lot of the conversation around NATO, for example, is interesting where people who should know better think that, you know, if a country in Europe doesn't pay their things. 3% GDP or whatever into NATO, into defense that we pick up the tab, that the American taxpayer picks up the tab. And it's like, no, the reality is that America pays something like $200, $250 million a

year into NATO, depending on what exercises are run that year. It's a very low cost investment for us. And it's the most successful military alliance, maybe the most successful alliance, America has had historically full stop. So, I mean, if you want to cut costs, I get it, but like, we'd be a little bit smarter about it. And if we are cutting costs, my question is, where is my tax break? And I don't just mean that, like, ironically, I mean, if you're, like, slashing the size of the government in half, then it stands the reason that the budget is slashed in half and that the American, average American worker should be taking home more money, right? But I haven't seen that in the conversation anywhere.

Sure. And that's a good point, Jack, because it's not a country club, right? It's not that we have to make up for the dues. It's about spending money on your own defense. So if we say, you know, some of the extreme views would be pull out of NATO, well, we're not going to save any money. We're going to have to actually pay more money to build our own defense because we're going to be an island of one.

So if you amass all the other countries in NATO, they actually have a pretty substantial military capability. Within five years, it could be a substantial military capability, right? Because they are like, they are taking this stuff serious. So it isn't our own national security. It isn't charity. And at the same time that we're looking at whether we should have this alliance, and I agree with you, Jack, it's probably the most significant military alliance in history. Our adversaries are building alliances. They're going the other direction. Look at the, look at the conference they just had, the Shanghai cooperation. Why do you think Russia keeps attacking NATO and trying to undermine NATO because it knows it's the biggest threat to them?

Absolutely. And they're trying to build their alliances, even including countries that have historically been more aligned with the West. They're trying to build those. So we're trying to withdraw at the same time. They're trying to expand. And we're ignoring the fact that the U.S. could lose its place as the primary country, you know, the indispensable, when they're. in the world because of our own actions, right? We're almost enhancing.

And for those who are disinterested, and we've talked about this a little bit too, who think that we can take a early 19th century view of America first and that are, you know, only concern ourselves with immediately what's crossing our borders. As all of these things turn south, it's going to have an effect on the ground. global economy, which is going to have an effect on the pocketbooks of every single American. I mean, do you think the Chinese are going to take Taiwan?

I know you guys know. Do you think they're going to take Taiwan and the global economy will go on just ticking along as though nothing has happened? I mean, look what Taiwan is the source of, you know, all the chips, then the video uses, that micron technology uses come from Taiwan semi, what's it, semi-sum semiconductor, TSN, semi-conduct manufacture. It's, anyway.

Yeah, it's interesting, Andy. I mean, we have played this game twice before, right? Isolationism. And it didn't work out either time. Another interesting example is Japan. Japan self-isolated itself for something like five or six hundred years. And because they did that to kind of preserve their own culture and not look outward, they fell so far behind technologically that when they came back into contact with the West and with other civilizations,

they were so far behind they were getting their asses handed to them. And that's why the Meiji Restoration happened and they disposed of the Shogunate and restored the emperor and all this other kind of stuff. It was because isolationism just doesn't work. Especially if there's a global economy, right? Right, right. We're not in 1600 either, right? Right, exactly. this is it's kind of odd that we're even having this debate.

But my point, and then I'll get off it, is I think a lot of the people were having debate with don't actually believe what they're saying because they didn't a year ago. So I don't understand how one could go shift your entire geopolitical view of the world where the U.S. should be and shouldn't be that dramatically that quick without anything other than events like the invasion of Ukraine happening, right? the expansion of Chinese influence around the world, the withdrawal of U.S. foreign assistance being made up by our adversaries, especially China.

I mean, one of the things that came out of the Shanghai cooperation organization was they're going to come up with a developmental bank collectively, right? What is that going to do? Well, it's going to replace everything that we were doing, these developmental countries, to build allies and trading partners. That's what they're, they didn't. they didn't just come up with that. They saw us doing it.

They thought it was working, and then they saw us withdraw. And so they're going to replace, you know, the U.S. with the Chinese version of that, you know. And now not just the Chinese. It's with these 20 nations that went to China to have this son. So, yeah. So what do you guys thinking in terms of like, you know, in 2012, when we saw the Russian jets penetrate Turkish airspace,

Turkey shot down the jet. Is the thought process of the analysis a little bit different now because Russia did go full-scale invasion into Ukraine? They're not, you know, maybe they're not, they're operating at a different level. Are NATO allies, the people that are on the front lines, whether it's Romania, Poland, or whoever, are they more worried about, like, shooting down a Russian jet that breaches airspace for 12 minutes as like are they worried about escalation where in compared to when turkey shot them down like they they you know didn't do shit i don't think the difference is overseas

the differences here in the united states so when you think about it and i mean it was it was the same i mean it was trump administration when uh it was um uh yes it was the trump administration when when all those russian contractors we killed all those russian contractors in Syria. But the difference was that you had Madison McMaster, right, who were who was shaping the environment. I mean, you had, you had adults who understood the rules of geopolitics and understood where the Russians would back down. You had guys like, you know, I'm not blaming the current CENTCOM commander, but you had guys like a Votel then who had CENTCOM, who was able to, to craft, shape the decision making so that if the Russians crossed the red line,

everyone from the president downwards was on board with a rapid response. And the Russians backpedaled rapidly after that. They never did it again. They lost some 250. And by the way, it wasn't just contractors. They lost a few other active duty guys, too. Grasimov, who was their general in Syria, admitted to that too. So, you know, it was, if you're talking about escalation,

and killing Russians, not just mercenaries, but members of that military, you would think would bring them to the point of escalation. But it did not. And I think the difference is just because the guys involved in the decision-making and shaping the president's view on this had years of national security experience behind them and understood Russian mentality. We're talking for hotel. We're talking Thomas, who had.

That's so calm. McMorreux. McMulroy. McMulroy. Exactly. I was with all those guys. I agree with you on their capabilities and leadership. That's for sure.

And the only thing Russia understands is consequences, right? So I'm not saying you should shoot down a plane for flying in there five minutes. But I'd say, what do they not want to see? They don't want to see military buildup on their border. So every time something like that's happened, they should say, oh, cool, we're doing another exercise. or putting some more, you know, NATO assets on the border. Every time. Every time, right?

So what are they? And what do they look for? They look for weaknesses. What's weakness? We just talked about it. That's how we started the podcast, right? So we just withdrew from the Balkan security initiative or some of the funding. Why?

So it's going to send a message to Russia. Great. Keep doing what we're doing. Right? Because these guys are backing down. But every time they do an encouraging, NATO should. do something different that Russia doesn't like, doesn't like. That's the only thing they get some attention.

They don't care about. We can compliment them all day. We can appease them all day. All that does is inspire them to go further. That's what they're looking for. So bayonet, cliche that I'm sure our audience is tired of hearing. But we need to keep that. I think I might have been saying it the last time I was on here,

that Americans are just like, they're not cynical. enough to be effective at foreign policy. We have these like childish ideas that like we're just going to pat Kim Jong-un on the back and he's going to be our friends, you know, he's going to play basketball with Obama or Trump and it's going to be okay. They just look for that as a giant side of weakness. I mean, the same bullshit happened with like Putin and Russia and Trump meeting in Alaska a month back.

And literally nothing's happened besides escalating and not probing NATO, you know, defenses. It's just inspired them. Just inspiring to continue. Moving air defense systems closer to the border, I mean what the borders of NATO and Russia and Belarus, engaging perhaps not manned aircraft, but certainly drones, if they are heading in the direction of NATO airspace

because it shows intent. These are all things that are within the rules of, you know, within rational rules of engagement. and yet send a message to Russia. They're not escalatory. What are we going to wait until drones to include those that might be carrying payloads, explosive payloads? Are we going to wait until they cross that border?

Or are we going to announce our intentions beforehand and say, hey, listen, if they cross such and such line and they're heading towards NATO territory, we're going to make the assumption that they are going to violate NATO airspace, and we'll engage them early. We make that announcement early and then we follow through. I mean, what is where is she going to do? You know? I mean, it's, I don't know.

Just since we've been talking, I was just texting to ask if I could talk about the decision of the U.S. to pause Patriot sales to the European allies. I don't know if that's true, but what the hell? What's the point of that? We're selling, right? So now we're actually hurting our own defense industry. Yeah. We're going to pause sales. I mean, it's not even a defensive weapon, weapon.

weapon, so to speak. I mean, it's purely in a defensive capability. And we're selling it. They're buying it. It's not even a giveaway. So, yeah, it should be the least controversial

decision is to sell something to an ally for defense. So it just looks like we're trying to play to Russia and we've gotten zero out of playing. But why are we playing in Russia? What's the fucking point in that? We've learned a ton, by the way. I can't answer your question, D.

But we've learned a ton as far as research and development by using our weapons systems, the weapons systems being used in Ukraine against Russia. You know, we've learned a lot about air defense tactics, and the Ukrainians have been masterful at the use of Patriot. And we've learned about the limitations of attackers and Haimars and a lot of our GPS guided, well, for all our right, precision guided weapons, we've learned about, you know, because the Russians have absolutely within a period of weeks found counters to all those systems as we trip, fed them to the Ukrainians in just barely enough quantities, not enough

quantities to change the direction of the war, but enough for the Russians to adapt and come up with countermeasures. But we've learned about that. We've learned how in effect of a lot of these weapons are in an incredibly intense EW environment. The Russians have massive EW systems every 10 kilometers along the front. And it has changed. You know, we've talked a lot about drones here, but it's not so much drones themselves. It's how they're used and the continuous adaptive cycle, which is less than 30 days, 30 days where the Russians, the Ukrainians will adapt to a new tactic and then adjust their industry to be able to produce a platform with a technology that is already that is already the next step. I mean, we can't do that. I mean, we should be learning so

much from that. And now the Ukrainians, remember, we've talked about this a lot, they were a fair amount. You know, when the Marines got rid of their tanks, it was such a hugely emotional decision, blah, blah, blah. Well, it was a little premature, but the era of the manned tank is now over because the Ukrainians have come up with a non-man tank that operates with AI systems. I mean, it's incredibly sophisticated. And they said they were going to do this a couple years ago. And the Russians were losing, you know, at that time, Russians, I don't know what the total is now. The Russians lost like 2,000 tanks, you know, a lot of them to handheld weapons systems. And so the question was, are tanks really obsolete what the man tank is? And Ukrainians now have moved to

the next generation of tank. It's not the M1A4. It is an unmanned, much smaller version. because you start putting human beings in a thing, now you've got to cater for them, and you make that platform more expensive, lower, more vulnerable. But the Ukrainians now have a rolling gun platform, highly capable, with both missile and guns. It can do everything that a tank can do. It's less vulnerable. And, of course, it's relatively expendable. I mean, it's a lot of money.

but it's not, you don't have human beings inside. So these are all things that we should be learning from and thanking the Ukrainians. But I'm not sure. The US have always had what they call it, we call an offset strategy, right? Trying to get, make technological leaps in front of our adversaries. You know, the first was the nuclear weapons program. The second was mostly GPS and precision guided munitions. that the,

we could be the third offset. Like that's what they've been talking about, Pentagon for decades, is this advance, everything that Andy just said, right? So the integration of AI, robotics,

potentially quantum computing. And it's all happening now. So, but the question isn't who's going to find it. It's already there. The question is who's going to embrace it? Because we have so many legacy weapon systems and thoughts on warfare, that it's almost like holding.

us back, not that we need to develop it because it's being developed. It's already there. It's whether we embrace it or not that that's going to really determine whether the United States has that offset, and the offset being that we advance beyond our adversaries, or whether we actually lag behind, which should be the first time ever in a significant issue for our defense. But, Mick, I can't see any alternative to us lagging behind, and we're already lagging behind. You know, we don't, and for a number of reasons, one of which is our acquisition, cycle so incredibly slow and creaky. The defense industrial complex doesn't serve the needs of defense anymore. And you've got, you've got a handful of large defense contractors who are not the

best, the most adaptive when it comes to this new technology. And we don't have that integration with civilian companies that exist in other countries. You know, from Ukraine, Israel, China, we don't. It's almost an adversarial relationship. with the big civilian tech companies. Think about Google, think about Amazon. You know, they're not, they're not meshed in with DOD. And those are things that we should be concerned about, not, you know, the paltry amount of money

that we're spending on Baltic air defense because what I'm talking about really is going to have repercussions for ability to defend ourselves, not against Venezuelan fishing boats. I mean, you know, against, against real threats. And last thing I'll say, this cliche topic of asymmetry,

things are about to get more asymmetric than they ever have been before. We're having glimpses of this, and we talk all the time about swarms of drones, blah, blah, blah. We still don't have a credible short-range air defense capability against such things, especially when you think about now that they are programmed with AI,

they're resistant to EW. We're far behind the power curve. And those are things that our Defense Department I think should be really worried about. Groundbeat, buddy. Yeah, I'll take him off, Newt. Andy, thank you, Andy. No, sorry, I thought Jack was going to ask a question.

Just for, I want to ask, like, because I'm a dummy, I don't know anything about, like, how NATO works in terms of, like, decision structure. Let's say this happens again. They breach airspace and stuff. Who makes the decision to be like, scramble jets, take it out if you need to.

You know, who, like, is the U.S. involved in that decision? I mean, it would be that country, you know, that the sovereign airspace is being violated. So in this case, the Estonian military would have to respond to that. However, they don't have any jets. If Estonia gets attacked, they can invoke Article 5, which then that drags all of NATO ostensibly into the conflict. Yes. Yeah, because that recent, like, in, uh,

breach, they've scrambled like Italian F-35s, because Estonia doesn't really have an Air Force at all. I mean, it's like three and a half million people in that country. Well, you're a sovereign state. You can always request allies to come. Jack's right. You have to invoke the articles too, right? It's not just, it's just not like triggered. So they have to ask for Article 5. And then if they're attacked, then then it is, it is. required, but it's actually, if you really dig into the article, what is required is not clear. You know, does it mean immediate military reaction? Does it mean a strongly worded statement from the country? Does it mean moral support? We've always, and I always viewed it as a military response,

but there's now plenty of people making the argument that it is not as ironclad is, you know. You know, analyst has made it out to be. Which is even more worrisome. And it sounds great to Russia whenever they hear us debating things like that. Yeah, it waters it down. Just to touch a little bit on like, so Taiwan are an arms deal. Our arms package was canceled or paused. That was worth $6.4 billion.

We talked about it really quick. I mean, I think it works hand in hand with what's going on. when the Baltics are like, you know, kind of hesitants to help keep supporting Ukraine. If you're China, who's like our nearest peer rival, what are you thinking? I mean, are you thinking, hey, maybe now's the time or in the next 18 months is the time to go into Taiwan? So to be fair, to both sides of this argument, I think that, the White House would say they're going into negotiations with China, that this is something they can withhold until those negotiations

and use some kind of leverage. On the flip side, it shows that the U.S. is willing to throw an ally under the bus, not just an ally, but actually we have the Taiwan Relations Act, TRA that requires us to support Thailand. impose it on ourselves, but up to the point where they can defend themselves. So obviously, cutting off military assistance would be directly contrary to the law that we actually passed and imposed. So I think it's, I don't think it's going to change Chinese view of whatever it is they're going to negotiate economic security wise with the U.S. So it's,

it's not going to have the devired effect. I think it's going to, that taken with our lukewarm support of Ukraine against Russia is making it more likely that China would do something toward Taiwan, even if it wasn't a full out invasion of, you know, maple blockade or something like that. If we stop providing support and we show somewhat of indifference to our other ally that's under attack, it only inspires China more and it is the opposite of competing with our near peer there. It's capitulation. Jack Andy gave me something. I mean, the only thing I would point out is the difference between the two.

I mean, they have a lot of similarities, but I think one of the big differences is with Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, is that if the Russians decide to mobilize on those countries, it's all over in 24 hours if they decide to do it. And once they're there, there will be no heroic American rescue. It will be a done deal. The difference with Taiwan is that it's not going to be over in 24 hours. The first 24 to 48 hours would be pretty ugly, I think. But there's going to be a period of time where China is going to be lobbing ballistic missiles and doing air strikes and hitting them with electronic warfare. And then at some point, the amphibious landing is going to come.

And we don't know. Is that a weekend? Is it two weeks in? Is it a month in? We don't know. But it's, you know, either way, they're both incredibly damn. dangerous scenarios. Yeah, and I actually took place, took part in the war scenario with China and Taiwan where the U.S.

did militarily intervene. Complicated outcome, but essentially everybody's a loser. We win technically. I could go down the list of just how much it cost us. But it was a Pyrrhic victory indeed. I mean, and I'm not an economist, it destroys the international economy, right? So it is important to point out that this is nothing's taken in isolation. We could essentially win militarily against China's attempt to invade if we win all in.

But we would lose a lot. I don't think the U.S. popular, I don't think the U.S. is willing to send men and women to die for this. So that's another issue. It's a political issue. But either way, everybody loses and the world economy is. substantially affected negative. In that like tabletop exercise, Mick, how many warships does America lose?

I, this, it was about a year ago. So I can't, I don't, I'm going to get it wrong. I think it's that was actually published. There's a online version of it. If I can find it off, I'll send it to you. But it was, I want to say six or seven. Okay. Japan itself, the actual country was devastated.

Why did the Chinese hit Japan? But to hit the forward operating bases that we have there? So yeah, under the scenario, which they have to make some assumptions that could be wrong, was that the U.S. would actually militarily intervene, right? Once we did, they hit our bases. You're right, Jack, in Japan. bringing in Japan and Japan's a treaty in ILA anyway, right? So then they're in. And it's devastating Japan. Taiwan's not even worth taking by the end of this thing, right? I mean, it's like why even

want it? And China loses a lot and they throw mass amounts of people into it and it teeters on a nuclear engagement, which all sides, you know, the whole mutually assured destruction thing takes takes hold and basically ends the conflict. But ultimately, nobody's a winner. It's in every sense of the world, the Pyrrhic victory that nobody wants. And the global economy is just completely devastated. So I think you can Google it. I would assume it was the most recent one. But the U.S. should pay close attention to that. And so what is the alternative? Well, the alternative is to put up such a united front that China doesn't try it. We want to avoid war, right? You avoid war by being strong and appearing strong. And that's, I think, what the U.S. should do not only in Europe,

but also in the Indo-Pacific. Pulling back only makes war more likely that we'd have to then join later after it's already started and have a lot to make up for. Yeah, they, it's, And there's another aspect of this that has to do with a view of deterrence that is more sophisticated than I think the American public understands. And that is, yes. Oh, and by the way, I'd like to point out that those six ships lost were all aircraft carriers at a total loss to the U.S. government of $72 billion. Were they all aircraft carriers, Andy? Or maybe two or three of them? How in the hell would we have six carriers in the Pacific all those things?

This is a continuing joke on... I didn't say they were all carriers. I don't even remember. No, this is a continuing joke we have on the show where Andy hates aircraft carriers. No, but I mean, but in defensive aircraft carriers, they're getting back to deterrents is that, you know, our... And we talked about this with, you know, the Marine Corps in particular, but we are primed to go to war. Our defense budget, our training, we prepare as though we're going to war with a near-payer competitor. Who's that near peer competitor? It is China. All right. Everyone knows that.

Okay. Would we actually do that over Taiwan? Well, between the four of us semi-cognocentric here, we know probably not. But the whole point about this, deterrence is the ambiguity. You don't admit that. You don't ever have a government say, hey, we wouldn't really use all this shit, because you just undermined your deterrence, right? You keep the Chinese guessing, whether or not people agree with you or not, whether or not 95% of the American public goes, no, we don't want to go to war over that. You, regardless, Democrat or Republican, never tell the Chinese that or never give indications to the Chinese that you are not 100% prepared to go to war with them if they go off to Taiwan. The other thing that I try to like lay on people when this topic comes up

is, you know, this idea that we won't go to war for Taiwan and or we won't go to war over some rocks in the South China Sea that are just visible during low tide, right? We're not going to do that. And that's probably, there's probably some truth to that. But China may not see it that way. And if they start lobbing ballistic missiles at an American warship, maybe it's a carrier, maybe it's something smaller and they sink that ship. Let me tell you something.

That's going to be the next to 9-11 type event for Americans. And the news stations are going to play, they're going to show the pictures of every soldier that died on that ship. There's going to be memorials, but people. And look, we're Americans. We know this country and we know what Americans are like. America will flip the fuck out over that. They will absolutely lose it.

And they will fight a war over that. There's no doubt in my mind. Well, Harbor. There you go. Your isolation is still that, right? Right. Up until you can't be anymore. That's right.

It's interesting, Jack, that we would, America would totally flip the switch once. Yeah. All of those people that Mick was saying that, you know, do you really believe this? They would flip the switch and it would go from isolationism to, you know, let's nuke China. Yeah. They just, yeah, absolutely emotional views. Totally.

All right. Moving on. Let's touch on a couple other subjects. Unless you guys have anything else, please bring, you know, feel free. Gaza, Israel started their offensive into Gaza City. I think they're trying to, they were trying to move upwards of a million people out of there into the south. I think 30 or 40 percent of stayed in Gaza City.

It's getting worse, if you can imagine, that it could get worse. UN recently deemed it a genocide, editorializing for a second, I happen to agree. What are they looking to get out of here? They said there's about three or four thousand Hamas guys in and around Gaza City. What is what's going on, guys? You guys tell me, I don't know. I get too emotional with this. So it's about 350,000 left the city.

Okay. So that leaves about 600,000 left. It was about a billion. I think you're right about the, it's about 3,000 Hamas. Israel has about three divisions now. engaged in the fight. And they are really heavy-handed when it comes to like preparatory fire. So they've been just taking out buildings. They're just knocking down fucking skyscrapers or whatever, you know, high-rise. So it's, it's a complex military problem. I don't need to tell anybody

on this, this podcast, but you know, you're fighting in buildings. You're fighting on the surface. The surface is completely obstructed because of the damage. Then you have the tunnels. You have, you know, they believe it's the 20 remaining living hostages are basically human. shields in these tunnels. I mean, it's a super complicated military task that's going to take four or five, six months maybe. Hopefully, I mean, I'm all from every Hamas person being stopped out. But there's a massive, and we talk about a lot in this podcast, but I'm sure everybody knows it, a massive humanitarian crisis. And it's only getting worse. There should be around 400 food distribution points for the 2 million people. There's four. And they're all in the south.

So it's an effort to move the population to the south. Whether they'll meet their objectives, I'm not even, I mean, you can even look at the IDF statements. I don't even sure what the objectives are any. You never stop Hamas out. There'll always be some, you know, person who joins an ideology. But they've seriously degraded their military capacity to harm Israel, I would say on positive. And then the last day, it's a, on the, so as far as the UN declaration of genocide,

it's important to point out that wasn't a vote of 193 members. It wasn't a vote of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council. It was a commission of three people. Okay. It was an Australian, South African, and Canadian.

Canadian. So it was three individuals that decided that so it's a i'm not saying that it didn't happen they did but it's also important to point out that's three people who've determined it it's not the united nations uh even though they say you know it's a united nations commission but when you dig into it it's three people it will have an effect in the sense that you know the ic j and the icc will use it you know in their investigation yeah i mean we we can you know mince words in terms of like like, all right, maybe it's not a genocide, but like crimes against humanity, war crimes.

I mean, it's clear. They're starving these people. They still haven't given up aid. The GHF has to use Israeli food. It's like, bro, open the fucking floodgates. If you're going to try and fucking smoke these people, and yeah, there's 3,000 pieces of shit, which are Hamas guys, 100%. I'm not a fan of Hamas, and they should get clipped.

But at what cost? Is it at the cost of 100,000 civilians? And at what cost is it, like, another 30,000? fucking extremists, they can rebrand it, you know, and they're still going to go after Israel, bro. If I was born in Palestine and Gaza and I've been getting bombed my whole fucking life, I'm not a fan of Israel.

Point blank, end the story. And I'm probably fighting against them. Sorry, I'm getting fucking worked up. So, like, Mick, I mean, you're totally right in terms of, like, the rational way of doing this. And it's, like, it's completely irrational what goes on there. It's completely irrational. The IDF doesn't even believe in this shit.

Musa doesn't even believe in this shit. It's only that war cabinet. Andy, what do you got? Thoughts and comments? Yeah, so I think back to in the immediate aftermath the 7th October. More group of U.S. Special Operations officers

went over to Israel. They were sent there by DOD to kind of talk to the IDF about the upcoming campaign. And these were guys, in fact, there was a Marine Toussar, and they'd been involved in the campaign, as was I, not that I'm, you know, pounding my chest here, involved in supporting Iraqis soft going into Mosul, right? And so they were there just to kind of talk them through

what an amazingly complex operations was going to be. I know that's overused, but that even when you are trying your hardest to minimize civilian casualties, you're going to cause a lot of civilian casualties. Of course, they had no idea that the number of civilian casualties were going to be on the scale that have occurred in Garth. And Mosul was nothing like that. And, you know, the Islamic State arguably were a harder target, harder proposition than Hamas dug in as they were into Mosul, you know, a city of, um, say 750,000, but it was two million, you know, certainly at the outset of the war. But anyway, my point is this, I was talking to one of these guys when he got back and he just,

he said, you know, we explained all this and the Israelis were like, we don't care, you know. It's a different frame of, we just don't care. They, civilian country is not a, not an issue for us. We're concerned about protecting our guys. And that's, that's been their mentality from the outside. set, Israeli casualties, military casualties in Gaza, have been incredibly low, all right? And yet, you know, and I'm using, you know, guys know I'm writing a book on this doesn't make me an expert, but I'm using sources among the IDF as well as sources, objective observers.

You know, one of the problems here is that we talked about this on the show. The IDF falls short. Their infantry doesn't operate well at all. they're not well trained. They don't fight at night. They do not fight at night. Let me repeat that. They do not fight at night.

They don't train at night. Now, their special operations do, but they don't. They don't clear and hold. They're not trained to clear and hold. None of these are excuses. I'm trying to explain, though, that there are a number of reasons behind the high number of civilian casualties. One is absolutely.

Absolutely. One is a mentality of vengeance of we will show them. And, you know, the head of Israeli intelligence, military intelligence. intelligence caught on tape saying we will kill, you know, and in fact they killed more than that, but we'll kill 50 Palestinians for every Israeli that died. And he said, and he's quoted as saying, I don't care of their children. So this was a very widespread, this feeling of vengeance, coupled with the knowledge that their own infantry, their own military were not good, they're checkpoint soldiers. They've been operating in the West Bank. That's the only operation that they've

focused in. And this and me just saying this, getting this from Israelis. They don't zero their weapons. They don't train at night. They pull back into these fobs every single day. That's why they have to go back and clear again. And when they clear again, they lead with fire, always. So they're clearing the same area over and over again and flattening those areas. And you have civilians who have come back into those areas, perhaps overnight, to retrieve things or whatever, thinking they're safe and they're not. So there's a lot of things going on that may not be purposeful, but it's certainly kind of, from our point of view, targeting negligence. And then you have certainly an undercurrent of feeling that they're not dealing with real

human beings. And that is prevalent. And a lot of people you talk to, it's amazing. People who otherwise seem cultured and compassionate, and yet when they talk about Palestinians, it's at a different level. And it's a very much kind of an us and them mentality. Now, so their targeting methodology is different than ours. Their acceptance of collateral damage is off to charts different than ours. A number of people that they are within their rules of engagement, allowed to kill, to kill like a Hamas going after a Hamas leader, you know, 100 civilians.

And I'm throwing numbers around here, but 100 civilians can die if you're going after. Well, those, that formula, two things have happened. to it the number of civilians accepted at every level of Hamas dude that they kill has gone up and the decisions on who can make that the threshold and who can make those decisions has been pushed down to battalion and brigade level

and so you get this mentality of I don't care how many guys die as long as I protect my soldiers and frankly I've seen that in US officers too but it's not you know and it's reprehensible whatever you see it so you've got all that And then I would say, yes, you've got, you've got, and I couldn't put a number on it, but you have purposeful war crimes that have gone on. And there's enough evidence mounting of that. I'm talking about snipers, shooting people in their head, you know, clearly unarmed. And more than anecdotal evidence that children being brought in the hospitals with headshots from a distance. So it was a sniper through a scope, and there's no way they could have been mistaken for him. There is enough of that going on, not being investigated. Ostensibly, there is a process that the IDF will tell you.

Because remember, a lot of my sources coming from the IDF, they will tell you, here we have a process to investigate every time this stuff happens. That is true. But they haven't come up with a single conviction yet of a single soldier. And part of the reason is that the process works so slowly, they can't find witnesses, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, the last thing I'll say, a lot of, there's a lot of discussion, Mick, this will, you know, this will resonate on something we're writing, but a lot of discussion about the role of artificial intelligence and targeting.

And The Guardian wrote an article on it. There's a good West Point think tank article on this, too. They use a couple of systems. Lavender is one that's known. Another one is gospel. Well, use of those artificial intelligence systems by themselves don't constitute a war crime. They are essentially, it's very low-level AI. They're really a decision-point, a decision-support mechanisms,

to narrow the field down when you're making a decision to pull the trigger or not. The problem is this. It's not in use of those employment of the systems. It's that the human being, the human judgment in how those systems are being, implemented has gradually got less and less so that people are making targeting decisions based purely on what this decision support matrix is providing them without you know without all the stuff that we put into it with you know do we do we do we have um do we have sufficient reason all right to go after this particular individual as an example so you've got a lot of a lot of

factors there. And I said that was the last piece. The last piece I'll say is when it comes to starving civilians and the Israelis will tell you this is not a deliberate policy of ours. From the IDF point of view, that is true. From the IDF point of view, this is about population control. You cut off food into one area to persuade the population to move out, then you can move in, right, and find the Hamas guys. It's a very crude form of population control. But they haven't been, the way they've implemented it has been incompetent. And I say that in that favor. It hasn't been that, oh, hey, we're going to wipe everyone out and start off the death.

The messaging to the local population has been cack-handed. They've moved civilians back and forth, back into free fire zones inadvertently. All kinds of things have gone wrong. So that civilians are afraid to move. They're afraid to find food. They're afraid to move from sector to sector. So all of these things are combining. you know, to create what has happened.

And then at the same time, you have a government that is quite frightening in some of its, you know, the thing, it's official comments that it's made. And you take, guys, I know everyone wants to talk about Bengavir and Smoldrich, but when you have a photograph taken of yourself, you know, with a thumbs up in front of graffiti that says death to Arabs. and you are the, you know, whatever Smoldrich is, Ben-Gavir, and you're the minister, you're a cabinet member, what message is that sending? And we've seen the way Ben-Gavir has treated cases of police or security forces on the West Bank reported for turning a blind eye when Palestinian villages are getting burnt to the ground.

So there's all these factors at play, and it's it's a tragedy for Israel. They may be winning in the short term. They may, you know, they've performed well on the global stage as far as disabling Hezbollah, going off for Iran, calling Iran's bluff. And as you guys have pointed out, reducing the threat from Hamas. But what about the long-term strategic effect on the state of Israel? It can't be good.

You know, I mean, as we talked about, for every Palestinian killed, there's a family and And there's young men who are going to grow up with a tremendous amount of antipathy to it. So they're creating, I would argue, problems down the line that no one seems to really be paying attention to. You can't wipe out an entire population such that you never have to worry about them again. Surely that is a lesson of history. Well, said, who wants it? Who wants it? Jack, Mick, you guys let the Irishman fight.

I don't know that I have much more to say than these guys. as they've been really on target. And I'd just say that, you know, from my point of view, the massive civilian casualties, the demographic displacement and the destruction of civilian infrastructure all appears to me to meet the definition of an ethnic cleansing. And, yeah, quite frankly, I'm just deeply ashamed of both the Biden and the Trump administration for making us complacent or complicit, I should say, with it. Yeah.

Make anything? There's never going to be an excuse for Starvation. covering a child, right? So you can both support Israel and any country's absolute right to defend themselves and to eradicate the world of terrorist organizations that want to kill your civilians and did. And you can condemn not being, not being, you know, taking the needful to avoid civilian casualties, 65,000 dead right now in Gaza. And the use of food is any kind of leverage of war. for a commission or to determine this. But that is why we have the Geneva Convention.

I mean, it was one of the first things that was discussed when we talked at the end of World War II. We saw 80 million people killed in World War II, right? It was the first thing is you can't starve civilians, certainly women, children, elderly for a military objective. So to extent that that's happening, again, you can see it. People can make their own determination, but that needs to be investigated. And if that was in fact the case, there should be some people held responsible. So I think you can both support Israel as I do. And it's also important to point out. I mean, people act like Israel's homogenous. There's huge differences of opinion inside Israel right now. And there's a lot of people don't support. the continuation of this war, including in the Israeli defense forces, all the way to the top.

So it would be really good if this could come to an end soon. Yeah, well said. All right, last bit, Bogram Air Base 2.0. Are we excited about this or what's going on? How do we feel? We actually signed that, I mean, the first Trump administration, it doesn't really, shouldn't really matter which administration it is. The U.S. should obligate itself.

and then it's honored by every other one. But just since that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, the first administration did the Doha 2020 agreement, of which withdrawal of all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan was a major part of it. I disagreed with that. I disagreed with how we left. I think we should have left a residual force.

Obviously tried to keep our troops out of harm's way as much as possible. But it wasn't just the counterterrorism. an effort, it was the strategic importance of where it is. So now to be talking about paying upwards of a billion dollars to the Taliban to go back, I think validates my point then and now. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think a Taliban will allow it. But the last I heard is that they're saying a billion dollars a month, which is basically saying no. Why we're talking about this out loud? I don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the, the weirdest grifts I've heard recently.

Like, where is the constituency for this? Where are the Americans that are like, we need to go back into Afghanistan? We just got out. Let's go back in, guys. Let's do it. Let's give it the old college try. One more time. Who is saying that?

Fucking no one. It's, I don't understand. Yeah. It goes to the point of making your argument then invalid. and now to Jack's point, I can't imagine anybody that thinks this is worth that or how it would actually work out.

We actually deploy people into the middle of Taliban country. Yeah. Yeah. It looked weird as, you know, it looked odd as fuck. I mean, the memes were out there

where they're showing like the C-17 unloading like the Barger King and stuff like that. Like we're so back and stuff. Hopefully it doesn't happen. So, I mean, now is it. Guys, incredible show. I know Mick's got to run. Jack's got to go to brunch.

Andy's got to do bicek curls. So we got a lot going on. I did high rocks training today. I got to make sure I tell everyone that I did high rocks training today or I won't make any gains. It's mandatory. Nobody knows what that is. It's okay. It's okay.

I've thrown it out there. It's out there in the public sphere. So I actually legitimately exercised. Now it's official. What's high rocks? It's a weird Brooklyn thing, dude. No, it's actually not. I think it might be Australian.

But it's like conditioning, exercise, endurance conditioning. So high rocks is actually an event. I've never done the actual event. But like half of it is running. And then there's like road machines and medicine balls and the ski machine and all that kind of stuff. So like as far as like the training for it, it's the. that it's like today you know sprinting 300 meters and then a row machine sprint another 300 meters uh you know do dumbbell lunges sprint another 300 meters and do the row or whatever and it goes on

and on i love it jack i'm looking forward to the progression pictures all right boys thanks a lot really hey guys i want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses is both the Teamhouse podcast, the Aiz On podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on AisOn and the team house and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms

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