Where do you think we're overemphasizing the lessons from Ukraine, whereas where are we underemphasizing them?

So I think that we're definitely underemphasizing the lessons from Ukraine in the sense that we still don't really have react to drone drills.

And we're also not really taking these drones seriously.

One good example is casualties we've seen in Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait.

Saudi Arabia in the in the theater of war with Iran right now where like hey let's just put a bunch of people inside a talk inside a tactical operations center it's at a command center that's not hardened or underground but we've only been watching the war in Ukraine for the past four or five years you know why would we put our people underground You know, or give them some overhead cover.

And, I mean, it's one of those things that's funny but not.

It's not funny because six people freaking died.

now to being you know is it really a threat to europe i think probably underestimating russian forces what what's your read on where russia is right now

Yeah.

And Ukraine still has a long way to go, but so far Russia has never had to face direct consequences for its actions in Ukraine.

Unless you knew personally somebody who was a soldier, a lot of wartime Russia looked not very much different than the United States during the global war on terror, where the only time the war actually affected you was when you knew someone who was killed or injured.

Uh, and everyone else just kind of went about their lives.

There were a couple of things, like, uh, Western companies shut down in Russia.

It was harder to get things like microchips.

But for the most part, the average Russian wouldn't even notice what was going on.

I, I have a, I have a friend who lives in Regina.

Sure

...

but I can tell you this: with the blockade, what you're seeing is Iran losing between $450 to $500 million a day, and that would be tough for any country to absorb.

So you may have a system where people aren't getting paid.

The IRGC might not be getting paid on time.

Uh, you could have people printing money, trying to put them in armored cars, uh, sending out cash because their banking system was disrupted by coalition attacks.

So the biggest issue facing Iran is they're going to run out of places to put oil, and that's a really big deal because when you stop drilling for oil, when you shut down a well, apparently that oil sinks back down to the well.

What are the consequences, economic consequences, to all of planet Earth if Iranian oil gets taken off the market? Are they significant? Is it, is it nothing? Uh, what is it?

It's just between you and me, so you can tell me anything classified that you might know.

Um, well, all right.

Let's, let's start with this.

How depleted are, uh, US munition stockpiles? So the short answer is we really don't know.

The long answer is that we could kind of estimate that, you know, uh, one of the things that, uh, CSIS came out with was a study where they said we run through about 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, uh, JASM missile, about 1,000 of those, precision strike missile, uh, 40 to 70 of those.

SM-2, SM-6, which are our main interceptors that are fired off of destroyers, uh, we may have run through about 500 or so of those combined.

THAAD, we're, again, we're not sure, but maybe a little under 300 or so, and Patriot, we might have used up to 1,000.

Mm.

Are they beating your expectations militarily? Not particularly.

So the amount of missiles that they have been launching has been falling.

I don't believe a tanker or any ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz has been hit and 10 days, something like that.

One thing that beat my expectations was the use of USVs, unmanned surface vehicles, which are essentially drone boats.

Ukraine pioneered these.

And these drone boats, AI controlled, right? You say, hey, go out to this point and start searching for a ship.

And you could even load into the AI, hey, the ship needs to look like this, if there's a specific kind of tanker or ship that you want to target.

Yeah.

Uh, what can you tell us about that?

Uh, so this deal came directly from President Trump.

I believe it was 24 or 28 F-35s, uh, proposed for sale.

Now, there's a lot that has to happen before we actually sell an F-35.

It has to get through Armed Services.

There's a number of committees that have to green light this transfer of technology.

Uh, the Saudis have to, uh, agree to establish, uh, send their pilots to an American school and learn how to fly the F-35.

And, and the downside to a sale like this, you already mentioned the technology transfer issue, but, you know, what a- what about the downside?