Too Much News: Gulf Fighting Heats Up & Implications, Congressional Outlook, Space Weapons, And AI Doomers

So first question, fellas, Operation Epic Fury, I guess we're not calling it that anymore.

Thoughts on where things stand, anything in the Middle East, war powers votes, sale to the Saudis, what the Houthis are doing and any thoughts on that and who wants to go first?

Let me just sort of start process wise, Washington process wise.

So I think it was kind of a sort of a reckoning week for maybe what Operation Epic Fury was.

may or may not cost and how many munitions, especially interceptors, may or may not have been depleted because you had first the IG report that came out, which had kind of a stunning admission in it from Duffy's office, the Undersecretary of Acquisition and Sustainment, that acknowledged that we are, there's a shortfall in strategic munitions and the war has exposed bottlenecks in the supply chain.

And up till then, really publicly, all you'd heard was everything was perfectly fine.

In fact, you had Admiral Cooper, the CENTCOM chief, go on 60 Minutes only like two days before and say, I'm not concerned.

Well, Duffy's concerned and he's the guy who buys the missiles and he told the IG he's concerned.

So that was a thing.

And then like the next day, you had the Congressional Budget Office put out its report on the cost of the war and estimating that... you know, it's possible that two-thirds of the Interceptor stock has been depleted.

Now, they do not necessarily stand by all that analysis.

It contains kind of what some have called a glaring admission that, OK, DoD didn't cooperate at all.

So there's reasonable uncertainty in some of this.

But they relied on a lot of analysis done by CSIS and I know AEI.

So I think it was sort of, I would say, maybe a week of reckoning or people who are interested in all this trying to reckon with DoD what the cost is and where we are with the stocks.

So it was, you had two major events happen.

Yeah, just to note, I mean, it was actually even it wasn't the next day, even Tony, it was literally hours later, which is just a very funny one to punch to hit us on a Tuesday.

The CBO office came out and said it's about $38 billion between the start of the war and August 1, it would be two to $3 billion per month going forward.

That roughly lines up with what the IG found their window is a little bit shorter, the dollar figure is a little bit shorter.

But if you do the math, it all kind of comes out to about the same.

So I think that seems to be a safe baseline that we can use.

They also said, the CBO said it'll be five years before the missiles that have been used can be reconstituted.

Now, the argument may be, do we need to reconstitute those missiles? Are there new missiles we could buy that are different? That's, you know, a fair argument.

But The thing is that the Pentagon has not just strongly said there are no munitions concerns, but attacked anyone who raised that there might be munitions concerns, including all of our publications and our colleagues at various points, including Marcus in particular, that terrible, terrible reporter.

It's just black and white.

So first question, fellas, Operation Epic Fury, I guess we're not calling it that anymore.

Thoughts on where things stand, anything in the Middle East, war powers votes, sale to the Saudis, what the Houthis are doing and any thoughts on that and who wants to go first?

Let me just sort of start process wise, Washington process wise.

So I think it was kind of a sort of a reckoning week for maybe what Operation Epic Fury was.

may or may not cost and how many munitions, especially interceptors, may or may not have been depleted because you had first the IG report that came out, which had kind of a stunning admission in it from Duffy's office, the Undersecretary of Acquisition and Sustainment, that acknowledged that we are, there's a shortfall in strategic munitions and the war has exposed bottlenecks in the supply chain.

And up till then, really publicly, all you'd heard was everything was perfectly fine.

In fact, you had Admiral Cooper, the CENTCOM chief, go on 60 Minutes only like two days before and say, I'm not concerned.

Well, Duffy's concerned and he's the guy who buys the missiles and he told the IG he's concerned.

So that was a thing.

And then like the next day, you had the Congressional Budget Office put out its report on the cost of the war and estimating that... you know, it's possible that two-thirds of the Interceptor stock has been depleted.

Now, they do not necessarily stand by all that analysis.

It contains kind of what some have called a glaring admission that, OK, DoD didn't cooperate at all.

So there's reasonable uncertainty in some of this.

But they relied on a lot of analysis done by CSIS and I know AEI.

So I think it was sort of, I would say, maybe a week of reckoning or people who are interested in all this trying to reckon with DoD what the cost is and where we are with the stocks.

So it was, you had two major events happen.

Yeah, just to note, I mean, it was actually even it wasn't the next day, even Tony, it was literally hours later, which is just a very funny one to punch to hit us on a Tuesday.

The CBO office came out and said it's about $38 billion between the start of the war and August 1, it would be two to $3 billion per month going forward.

That roughly lines up with what the IG found their window is a little bit shorter, the dollar figure is a little bit shorter.

But if you do the math, it all kind of comes out to about the same.

So I think that seems to be a safe baseline that we can use.

They also said, the CBO said it'll be five years before the missiles that have been used can be reconstituted.

Now, the argument may be, do we need to reconstitute those missiles? Are there new missiles we could buy that are different? That's, you know, a fair argument.

But The thing is that the Pentagon has not just strongly said there are no munitions concerns, but attacked anyone who raised that there might be munitions concerns, including all of our publications and our colleagues at various points, including Marcus in particular, that terrible, terrible reporter.

It's just black and white.