Shownotes Transcript
Good afternoon. Welcome to Broken Potholes. I am your host, Chuck Warren, and my co-host and compadre, Sam Stone, and of course, our executive producer, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. Today, we are honored to have a great guest. This is Dr. Anders Kaur. He has received his doctorate in government from Harvard University, and we'll talk about that a little bit, but he is the principal of Kaur Analytics, is the publisher of the Journal of Political Risk,
And he's conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. Has a real influence and specialty in China. And he also writes for the Epoch Times. And Dr. Kaur, thank you for coming on our show today.
Thank you. It's a real pleasure. Let's start with two questions, just so our audience gets to know you a little bit. First of all, what was it like being right-of-center intellectual, going to Yale undergrad and Harvard for a graduate degree? And then two, tell us a little bit about Core Analytics.
Well, I don't know if I describe myself as right of center. I think I'm pretty center. But I do think that I do look at realist variables and I take them very seriously, like economics and military issues. And I think a lot of people, a lot of academics and international relations these days do not take those as seriously as they probably should, which bites them in the you know what.
Afghanistan, a current example. Yeah, exactly. And tell us about Core Analytics.
I started Core Analytics in 2013 after several years of working in military intelligence in Afghanistan and also in Y looking at Asia, just to have my own company and to publish the Journal of Political Risk, which is an independent journal focused on looking at political risks to businesses internationally. Oh, that's fantastic. That's fantastic.
Well, Lily, you had an opinion piece out recently about Vice President Harris calling for action regarding China. But as of all things, she was very nonspecific about what the action should be. Could you tell us a little more about it and how you feel her adventure in Southeast Asia has been so far? Well, I mean, I think that what her recent speech in Singapore shows is that she is not –
pushing the envelope very hard on the China issues. So if you compare her speech to Vice President Pence's speech, his first speech about China was very, very tough. It was seen as very hawkish, and it really took China to
ask for many, many things. And a lot has happened since then. I mean, that was about four years ago. And since then, both the Trump administration and the Biden administration have called out China and recognized a genocide against the Uyghurs. And, you know,
Kamala Harris's speech did not reflect that new data, all the new data we've had over the last four years about how bad China has been. She actually reverted to kind of the style of speech that you might expect from the Obama administration. So it was a real disappointment for me to see her not take China as seriously as she should. What...
After what's happened in Afghanistan the last two weeks, what our tense relationship with China is, and based on what your careers and your network of people, how is America viewed in the world right now as a national security power? Well, it's definitely taken a big hit. I mean, Afghanistan—pulling out of Afghanistan—
You know, if we had pulled out of Afghanistan smoothly and the Kabul government had been able to hold and the Afghan military had been able to hold some of the provincial capitals and continue the fight against the Taliban...
then we would have been a lot better off in terms of our soft power and our image abroad. But as it happens, it looks like we got surprised, which I think we did, at the quick fall of Afghan provincial capitals and Kabul itself. And then the images of
people falling off of airplanes and clinging to that last hope of America as it took off from the Kabul airport, which is actually where I spent a year and a half. I was there for a year and a half at the airport on the military side because that's where the operational headquarters for the Afghan, for the NATO operations in Afghanistan were. But that, you know, we've taken a huge hit.
I was on an Indian TV show recently, and the introduction to the show was just, America has caused this problem. It's all – the killings and the rapes that are happening in Kabul right now are all America's fault. It was –
very tough it was a very tough session but so we're taking a big hit and but we're gonna have to just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and fight on
Dr., how do we turn this around? Because I think if you look right now internationally at what the U.S. is doing and all the various failures of the last few years, and then you look at what China's doing with their Belt and Road Plan, they're looking very attractive as an umbrella power for a lot of developing countries out there, and we're not. Is that fair to say? And how do we turn that around? Dr.
They're definitely trying to look that way, and I believe that one of the reasons why countries...
fall into Beijing's satellite orbit so easily is that a lot of the leaders of the real poor countries, the small countries around the world, are getting bribed by the Chinese consulates or Chinese embassies or Chinese intelligence, however they do it, Chinese businesses. And there's some proof of that. There's been some convictions made.
of uh... bribes that have happened uh... in terms of chad and some other countries uh... some of the some of the u_n_ some of the nonprofits that are related to uh... the u_n_ uh... do this uh... they even bribed uh... the secretary general the president of the u_n_ general assembly
you know, a couple years ago. And then when he was going to trial in New York, he got killed somehow. I mean, they say it was an accident in the gym that he got strangled by a barbell in his home gym. But I mean, what are the chances of that? That happens every day, right? Yeah.
It happens every day, absolutely. Right before you testify. Let me ask you a question here, a personal opinion. So you're an opinion, you do some contributions to the Epoch Times, which I imagine most of its audience would be opposed to soft diplomacy, meaning giving money or helping build economic benefits for countries and giving grants and things of that nature. Nation building. Nation building, stuff like that. If you want to call it that. Yeah. Yeah.
How important do you think that is that we participate in that, or do you think that is overblown and it's not really useful for exerting American influence and power? Well, I think it kind of cuts both ways, because when you get into this game of spending a lot of money to try to outspend China, and then China tries to outspend you, but the thing is that if China manages to bribe the officials...
right? And it doesn't matter how much you spend. If China spends a million bucks on the official who's making the decisions and you don't spend a million bucks counter-bribing him, then you're in trouble. And if you look, if you look at, even if we look back at Afghanistan in terms of the Karzai government, the reporting is in the New York times where this guy was taking cash from both the CIA and the Iranians and
And, you know, and then the current president of Afghanistan took off with over $100 million in cash when he took off to UAE. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in international politics that we just don't see, we don't read about in the newspaper. But I believe it has a huge effect on the decisions that the presidents and the prime ministers make.
around the world. And I think it's a very difficult game and, you know,
You know, we've tried in the past to develop countries. I think in general it's good to have some kind of an aid program, an international aid program. But that's not all of it. There's much more going on. And we can't just use carrots. We've got to use sticks, too. We've got to go after the bad guys. Do we do carrots or sticks well at all right now?
From Afghanistan, it doesn't seem so. But part of the problem in Afghanistan was we knew that the Taliban were supported by Pakistan. We knew that Pakistan was supported by China.
but we never took the fight to Pakistan and we definitely didn't take the fight to China. And so as long as you don't go for the root causes of these things, it's going to pop up elsewhere and you're just going to play whack-a-mole forever. Doctor, how do you counter a country? Because over and over and over we see China doesn't play by the same rules that the West or the international community has laid out.
How does the United States or other countries compete with that? Because you talked about the bribes, some of the other things they're doing, like, for instance, building entire government complexes that are loaded with listening devices and bugs. They play every angle and have no apparent regard for international mores. How do you counter a country like that?
I think if you look back at the history of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, you'll see that we were playing some angles too, whether it's all of the above, basically. And I think some of this has to be situational. You've got to try to win.
on 10 fronts at once. And that's what we did during the Cold War. And I think that's increasingly what we're going to have to do against China, because as China gets more powerful than us, and actually by GDP, we still have a bigger GDP than China.
But if you look at GDP purchasing power parity, which is an IMF measure of GDP that accounts for things like how much does your dollar buy, how much bread does it buy, how much steel does it buy, how many electronics does it buy. Actually, China passed this up in 2017.
So China, by that measure, is more powerful than the United States by GDP, and they can use that GDP to build ships, naval gear, air force, faster than we are. Now, we believe and we hope that we have better technology than them, but in some places, like supercomputing, AI, in some instances, they have seemed to exceed our technological capabilities. So we're
We're in a very close race at this point, and some are arguing that China's running faster. Well, when we come back here in just a moment, we want to talk about that a little bit more. I thank you very much, Dr. Anders Kaur. Fantastic guest so far. Broken Potholes will be coming right back in just a moment.
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Our guest today, Dr. Anders Kaur, fantastic background, very relevant to the moment. He is the principal at Kaur Analytics and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, has a great deal of experience in Afghanistan, and spent, Dr. Kaur, did you say a year and a half or two years there at the airport?
1.5. 1.5. Plenty of time. What was your surprise about that experience after 1.5 years?
Well, I mean, I think that the speed of the Kabul fall was surprising to everybody. But I believe that we should have seen it because the Kabul government that we supported for 20 years, that we built up for 20 years, trying to make a democracy in Afghanistan, trying to have rule of law, trying to build up a military that could defend the city, defend the country.
uh... from the terrorists uh... you know it these guys were corrupt so what happened was a lot of these guys are taking some money from uh... drug dealers in the taliban which are kind of thing because the taliban controlled opium fields mostly in the south helmand and kandahar uh... so a lot of money that's your afghanistan is biggest opium producer in the world they export
natural opium everywhere uh... through australia through try it through the u_s_ canada uh... malaysia all these that that opium goes goes everywhere and uh... all that you know to get that opium out of afghanistan big growers have to pay the taliban although i tell them what let it go through in the same way we were paying pakistan to get our military gear into the country
through Pakistan because most of it was trucked in. Pretty much every ounce of oil, every gallon of oil or gas that we used in Afghanistan, we had to truck it through Pakistan. So Pakistan was getting a lot of money in terms of aid,
from us. So in a way, Pakistan was, we were incentivizing Pakistan to keep the war going. Now that's exactly what Pakistan did, because they were, their intelligence and military agencies were supporting the Taliban with military gear and money and safe havens so the Taliban could attack in Afghanistan and run back for some rest and recuperation in Pakistan.
We never took the fight to Pakistan. No, we haven't. Doctor, you talked about the opium issue. Talking to our police here in Phoenix, prior to 9-11 and our invasion of Afghanistan, a day's worth of heroin here cost about $120. It now costs $15. This is a major driver of the homelessness epidemic and things that are going on here.
So, I mean, this has consequences all over the world. And I know, Chuck, you had another question also. Well, I was following up more with Pakistan. So how big of a financial hit does Pakistan take now economically because we're leaving Afghanistan and we're not transporting a bunch of oil and other things we need through Afghanistan?
I mean, is there a big financial hit? I mean, I'm sure that's pretty sizable. I mean, it's billions of dollars. And actually, Trump was the one who cut support to Pakistan. He knew what was going on, and he stopped it. And that's just – and Afghanistan too is now –
They're taking a huge hit because there was a war economy. I mean, the GDP of Afghanistan shot up because of the war. We were spending so much money in Afghanistan that that made the GDP go up. And as soon as we drew down our forces starting in 2011, GDP dropped, people got poorer. And now when we leave, I mean, they don't – a lot of those guys can't eat after –
in a couple of months. That's what the UN is saying. So we've got a real humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan showing up here in the next quarter or two. Yeah. I want to go back to the original question. You spent 1.5 years in Afghanistan inside the airport. What surprised you about your experience there personally? What surprised you? I mean, we all go with theories when we go into a new experience, a hunch, but then we actually live the experience.
What changed from your original hunch or theory to what you really experienced there? Well, one of the things that bothered me when I worked there was the way in which intelligence, because I worked in basically doing social and cultural intelligence, both doing some broad military intelligence there, like counting the number of Taliban in the whole country.
figuring out a method to do that, a mathematical method to do it. But one of the things that bothered me was that a lot of the intelligence was geared to making the generals look good because the general would go to Afghanistan and then the general would want things to get better because of what he did. And then he could put that on his report card and get a promotion. And a nice piece in the New Yorker.
Yeah, a real nice piece. So the general would put pressure, you know, I think, I believe, you know, on people down below and would put pressure on people below and below. And it cascades all the way down so that people are sending up good news stories up the chain rather than the reality on the ground.
And I think this is how big intelligence failures happen. And actually, that's what we had in Afghanistan when we didn't foresee the rapid fall of the Afghan military that we produced, because no one wanted to admit that the Afghan military was a house of cards waiting to fall as soon as we left. And we were going to keep paying these guys after we left billions of dollars, right?
But, you know, when we left, there was no air support. There was nothing. And the Taliban, I think, used their guys on the inside, and probably a lot of those guys were bribed or threatened. Because if you're a general in the Afghan army, Taliban just needs to knock on your cousin's door and say, hey, you know, we know that your uncle is General So-and-So. We're going to kill you and all your family if he doesn't do what we say.
So there was a lot of basic problems in how we structured the military and the government in Afghanistan such that it was easy for the Taliban to blow over when we left. We have about 90 seconds here, Doctor, to our next break. Basically, how we've had this incompetent withdrawal process.
Are we going to have any intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan, or has it just become black now and we're just hoping for the best? Satellites and drones. I mean, do we have any human intelligence on the ground anymore? Everybody's like, I can't count on America. I'm not going to risk my family. I'm not going to risk my tribe. What can we expect from this now?
I'm pretty sure we'll have some human intel on the ground. But the question will be, is anyone listening up top? Apparently not. Is that intelligence getting filtered and refiltered and biased as it climbs the chain? Ian, as we're talking about all this, and we talked about last week with one of our guests, that the minute the U.S. pulled their supply line out of Afghanistan, there was really no hope for the Afghan army.
We've spent 20 plus years there at this point. We never built an economy. That's kind of stunning to me that there, I mean, there really is no infrastructure to support Afghanistan as a country going forward, is there?
We tried to build roads. We tried to put in water wells. We put in a, you know, there was a dam that we were protecting. And, you know, we did try to do some of that. But didn't get far enough. Yeah. Well, Broken Potholes coming back in just a moment. Dr. Anders Kaur, thank you so much for being on the program today. We'll be back.
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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. On the line with us today, Dr. Anders Kaur, principal at Kaur Analytics and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. Doctor, right before we went to break, we've been talking about Afghanistan. I want to talk a little bit more about China and what you see coming in the next few years. I think if you look at the news, China has clearly made a commitment to
to expanding their footprint not only throughout Asia but throughout the world into South America, all these other places. You certainly know a lot more about China and their policy, their hopes than we do here. Tell us a little bit about where you see them trying to go. What are they trying to accomplish?
They've been expanding since they were, you know, the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921. And since that time, they first grabbed some territory in about 1930, 1933, about that, in a little province in the south. And then the nationalists beat them.
the nationalist Chinese, who were also a dictatorship but on the capitalist side, beat them and they ran off to the Yan'an Hills. Then they sort of waited out World War II when the Japanese invaded, although they deny that. But they waited out World War II while the nationalists fought the Japanese, and then they came in at the very end, beat the nationalists,
and took over the country in 1949. Then they, you know, after that, it's a communist, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to beat capitalism. They're trying to beat America. They're trying to beat Britain. They don't like imperialists, European imperialists. But what they're doing is they're essentially replacing
other imperialists with their own imperialists. So for example, in 1950 they grabbed Tibet militarily and there was an ancient hundreds of years old government, Tibetan government, and they ran off with about 100,000 people to India when the Chinese came in and took over. And around the same time, the Chinese Communist Party took over Xinjiang
which is in the far west, and it's Muslim. And they're basically trying to eradicate the Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist religions in those places. They started way back then.
and replace it with communism. And communism is against religion. They don't like religion. They want to get rid of it, and they want to replace it with their own ideology. And that's technically a genocide, according to U.S. law, and according to the U.N. Genocide Convention. It's against religion.
It's against international law and it's against U.S. law to try to eradicate a religion. So...
This is what's going on. And they're not only doing that, they're also, they broke a treaty with Britain to grab Hong Kong recently, and they're threatening war against Taiwan now. And they're building up their military forces, whether it's amphibious boats and tanks and missiles,
to destroy the Taiwanese military, which that's where the Nationalists ran after 1949. Well, and U.S., as I understand it, recently held some internal war games based on a scenario of them trying to take Taiwan. And in that scenario, the Chinese wiped out the U.S. Navy in a matter of hours. So this is becoming increasingly possible for them.
Yeah, exactly. The more they build, the better and the more technology they steal from the U.S., the better able they are going to be to grab Taiwan. These aren't the Soviets. But it just never stops. Right. I mean, the Soviets kept stealing our technology but couldn't actually build it. The Chinese build it and in many cases build it better.
Yeah, the Chinese are building very well, and in some cases, according to some sources, some of their anti-ship missiles, for example, go farther than our anti-ship missiles. So it's possible you could get, if you had two ships, U.S. and Chinese, just alone in the sea, it's possible the Chinese could sink our ship before we sink their ship.
I don't know all the details, but people who are in the military are getting increasingly worried about what's going on in China in terms of their military capabilities. But they also have – there's a recent book called The Long Game by Rush Doshi.
And he goes back into all the historical documents from the Chinese Communist Party up to the present, and he argues that China is, and this is a book published by Oxford University Press, he argues that China is out to take over the world. They want to become global hegemons.
First want to do it in Asia, but then they want to want to become an Asian hegemon where they take Taiwan, maybe Japan, South Korea, Australia. But eventually they want to go global and take over the whole world. This is his argument. Then it may very well be a legitimate argument. And it's a very dystopian future for anyone in the West who's used to our freedoms to imagine that. Brogan Pato is coming back.
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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. And today we have Dr. Anders Kaur. He is the president or the principal of Kaur Analytics and the publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. We were talking about China in the last segment. Does Taiwan trust the United States now to have their back if they get into a confrontation with China?
I think they don't know. I mean, you know, there's a lot of issues. I mean, there's Afghanistan, like you mentioned. We didn't do very well there. But in the Philippines, we have a defense treaty with the Philippines since 1951. And China has grabbed little teeny islands and sandbars and things in the Philippine region.
exclusive economic zone where it's supposed to be just Philippine fishing and oil exploration. Well, China's grabbed little parts of that, and we never really did anything, even though we have a defense treaty. China is, you know, almost daily, China will send military flights into Japanese and Taiwan airspace.
The U.S. doesn't really do enough to stop that. And then if you look at all the way into Europe and Ukraine, when Russia grabbed Crimea and the eastern part of Ukraine called Donbass, which has a lot of coal and defense industry, actually, we didn't do anything. Even though we had an agreement with Ukraine that also Britain signed,
and Russia signed that guaranteed Ukraine territorial integrity. We didn't do much at all. The best we've done actually was Trump gave them some javelin anti-tank missiles, shoulder fired anti-tank missiles. But we just, and that's good, but it's just not enough, you know, because Russia still has that territory. So we don't look like a
a strong ally unfortunately we don't look like we're holding up our international commitments and the reality is that because the u_s_ is the world's biggest strongest uh... most wealthy by g_d_p_ standards county
purchasing power parity, but because we're the biggest and strongest country, people look to us for leadership, and they look to us to guarantee the international system. Rightly or wrongly, they look to us for that. And right now, we're not providing that, and so we're going to lose allies. They're not going to... We're going to lose allies from this, and they're going to try to
take more of the responsibility on their own shoulders, which is in part good. I've long argued that countries like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, because of the rise of China, they need their own nuclear deterrent. They need their own independent nuclear weapons that they can use in case they're attacked. And that's peace through strength. That way they don't get attacked in the first place.
Because once Taiwan does get attacked and the U.S. gets pulled into a war with China, we're in a very, very risky situation. If Taiwan had their own nuclear weapons right from the beginning, the war wouldn't start. Can America become isolationist as some want? I mean, is the world safer if America is an isolationist country?
No. Absolutely not. As soon as you become isolated, China takes Taiwan, and Russia takes all of Ukraine, and then they use those territories against us. Why is that so hard for people to understand? I mean, I know there's these people, we don't need to be the world's cop, but we're uniquely qualified to do it, so there is this sense of freedom throughout the world. Well, I think incidents like Afghanistan, though...
that point of view with our incompetence. I mean, if we were doing these things competently, I think that point of view gets minimized pretty significantly. Doctor, your opinion? Yeah, I mean, well,
It's always hard. It's never easy. When you're in a conflict a thousand miles away or more, it's a tough job. But I think the problem is that people don't understand that the world is constantly in flux, that the borders that we see on the maps are actually...
not really there very strongly. And so you've got, you know, you think that Afghanistan is a country and it's got some very defined borders. Well, in fact, you know, there's people moving across those borders all the time. There's terrorists moving across those borders. People can move military equipment across those borders very easily from Pakistan. Pakistan's getting help from China. So everything is kind of connected and
and moving in in flux and if you don't hold the lines that you have and we do have certain lines we should defend them and as soon as you back off of that line and leave a power vacuum it's filled in by the russians the chinese the iranians the north koreans you've got to keep positive pressure on all of those lines all the time and you've got to force your allies to do the same thing otherwise everything starts falling apart
I think that's a great point to end on. Dr. Anders Kaur, thank you so much for being on the program today. Folks, definitely, definitely check out the Journal of Political Risk. I think that's one I'm going to be adding to my reading list going forward. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate having you. Thank you very much.
Well, we need to have him back on the show. Yes. With the Washington Times White House correspondent. I think that would be an interesting conversation to have. You know, when you talk international politics, most Americans, even those who are politically active, sort of turn a blind eye to it. It's just so important for how your life goes daily. They just don't seem to understand it. No, not at all. Not at all. Right.
Look, what's going on around the world right now, as he kind of alluded to at the end, we have a world in enormous flux. And if you're Australia, if you're South Korea, if you're the Philippines, if you're Thailand, you have to be nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof.
That's a good analogy. I mean, especially Australia and frankly, Russia. You know, I mean, well, both of them have storehouses of natural resources within China's reach. And what the wokey liberals aren't getting is everything that's happening in the world and the despair, the confusion. You're going to have another type of Ronald Reagan here real soon.
Americans by nature are just not going to watch this and say, yeah, we're going to become second rate. I think there's one thing you and I discuss this a lot. I always use women's soccer as an example of it. You know, they always talk about how women's soccer had these great ratings during the World Cup and Olympics. But on TV, it's not. Americans like to win. And as a country, even as woke as we are on some segments of society, we're
They're not going to tolerate that. I mean, they probably have really sparked the fire people saying, hell no, we're not. This is not going to be the way we're going to act. You know, watching the early maneuvering for the 2024 presidential campaign and, you know, obviously we have to see what happens with Trump. But with DeSantis, he has established such a strong base on domestic policy, on COVID, on all these things. But given his background...
It's military background. That's a guy I think has a real possibility of stepping up in that role. And he has shown the ability to really comprehend policy in depth. And that's what you need right now. I like Trump's policies. I didn't like his ability to communicate them or lack of ability to communicate. I was listening to him on Hannity last night and he made some good points, but.
You know, you just felt like it was a guy sitting on the bar playing poker and talking on the side. It's word salad. And some of the words are really good. Right. But but at the end of the day, I'm a meat eater. Folks, if you're watching this on TV, if you're seeing this, you can tell I'm a meat eater. I don't need salad. Sam's not vegan. This is what we know. Come out here today. Yeah.
Let's go to broken potholes. I think the world needs a little sunshine today. I think this would be important. So we welcome the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. Welcome back. Thank you for having me back. You're welcome. Okay, this one's kind of cool. So a new study finds if you have someone to talk to, it could delay Alzheimer's.
Researchers observed that simply having someone you can count on to listen to you when you need to talk is associated with greater cognitive resilience. The study adds to growing evidence that people can take steps either for themselves or for the people that they love to slow down the development of Alzheimer's, which is so important considering we still don't have a cure for the disease. The study also showed that although
Alzheimer's affects people 65 or older. People 65 and younger will benefit from taking advantage of their social support. For every unit of decline in the brain's volume, individuals between 40 and 50 with lower listener availability had a cognitive age that was four years older than those that had someone to listen to them. Another sad result of loneliness. Yes. Yeah.
And so many people right now being isolated because of the pandemic and the latest, you know, the concern about Delta, which next year will be concerned about Lambda and so forth and so on. I know from personal experience, you have a lot of family members, especially older ones, who are very isolated right now. You've experienced this personally. My family did not go crazy. They took COVID seriously.
So I still saw my parents during it once a month, but I didn't go hug them or kiss them. I mean, I kept six feet away, but they still had that, and we took walks and things of that nature.
A lot of people, I mean, you know, I remember going and I volunteered to help do the Pfizer. We talked about this one of our first episodes and asking people, you know, you try to make a joke where you can go Miami, you go to Hawaii. And they said, I'm gonna go see my grandchild. When did you see him? A year ago. You know, people just simply forsook those connections, which I'm sorry, it doesn't build your immune system. No.
No. You know, one of the things I think throughout the pandemic that's sort of created a bit of a dystopia for a lot of people is that the people making the decisions have the money to have full houses with backyards. They have space. They have sunshine. They have elbow room. They have elbow room. If you're a single person or a family living in a one or two or three bedroom apartment,
where you don't have even maybe a balcony or anything like that, and you're being locked in the way, for instance, they are in Australia right now, the damage that has to do to your psyche has to be enormous. And as everybody knows here in the studio, I'm a very optimistic person. I have a person with a great deal of faith. I believe that long-term things will be fine. But if you're a person who battles depression or has a bit of an Eeyore mentality—
You look at what's going on in this country and world right now, and you're drinking a lot. And I don't like what's happening. I think we're causing some ramifications long term that we're going to be paying the price for five or ten years from now. That's just unforeseen. Yeah, absolutely. I think what bothers me most is I think a lot of our response was built around opposition to Donald Trump. And that response carried around the globe. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this whole idea of zero COVID that you see these governments still pursuing. Well, Australia's gone insane. They've gone nuts. New Zealand, Australia, Canada have all lost their minds. I mean, COVID's here to stay. Yeah. I hate to break it to everybody. Yeah, you know.
I'm not a scientist, but most scientists, well, probably 99% of scientists would agree with me on this. It's not going away. And so you've got to learn to do the things to make comfortable. If you feel comfortable and you've studied it yourself, get a vaccine. If not, practice social distancing, wash your hands. But you're going to have to live, gang. Yeah, absolutely. And if you don't, you're in for a very depressing life. And that's my real concern. I mean, watching what they're doing in schools again, you can't close these schools again. My son started college, my caboose.
this week. And his first day of school, he goes, how was it? He goes, they got homework. You know, he'd been doing online school his senior year and, you know, second half his junior year. And I mean, online school is a joke. And so now it's just like, oh my gosh, there's this actual work schedule that I'm expected to perform. Well, and this is really terrible theater, political theater here, because the rest of the world is not doing this to their kids. They are not
They are not doing this remote learning garbage. They're not putting all these restrictions on kids. Kids are attending school normally in most of the world. Did the rest of the world have teachers unions like we do? They have such a big prominent force in the education of our children. No, clearly not. I mean, you know, I think plenty of them have teachers unions, but they're smart enough to understand that they're not going to be allowed to harm the kids.
to benefit their members. Well, I'm going to put a bullseye on the station here, but I think teachers unions are one of the most destructive forces our country has right now. Absolutely. You can go back and look what's happening and the finger lays at those folks. And again, they do what unions are supposed to do. They look out purely for their membership, dues paying membership. Thinking they really care about the kids above the teacher's interests is ridiculous. No, they don't.
They have made it entirely clear. Teachers unions have been entirely clear, especially in the last year and a half. Their interest is 100% behind their members and has nothing to do with your children, folks. Broken Potholes, coming back for one more episode offline. If you're tuning in online, if you're tuning in on the podcast, we have one more episode for you. Otherwise, we're back next week. It's the new year and time for the new you.
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I don't think there are a lot of people having conversations like we had with our guests today or like we've had in recent weeks in the podcast world and in the journalist world. There are not enough of these good conversations going on. No, it's not. And, you know, as again, we discussed, I know a lot of people don't like to pay attention to this, but it's just it's really important because it affects your daily life. Yeah, absolutely. People don't think that China will have an effect on their life for the rest of their life. They're delusional.
Yeah. I mean, let's let's let's talk baseball for a minute. Sam, you were texting me this morning and about about the latest curse of the Diamondback. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to get cursed in the Diamondbacks, just know you're probably going to playoffs. Right. Or probably going to get a record contract or you can go to All-Stars. Yeah. No, look, the best thing that can happen to your career is to have the Diamondbacks trade you away. It is entirely clear at this point.
Robbie Ray, I was just reading this morning. I hadn't been following because, you know, it's the Toronto Blue Jays. Yeah, I mean, Canada baseball, who cares? Yeah, plus they've been playing in Buffalo. Nobody pays attention to that, all right? But Robbie Ray is a contender for the AL Cy Young Award, one of the top two or three guys.
And so apparently he found his mojo that we were always expecting after his first year here and could not quite reach realization. And it's funny. You just wonder what's going on with the D-back organization. Even when people come up, there are minors, they do well.
So obviously we have a good farm program. We have pretty good scouts. So what happens in between? In between is astounding because, I mean, at the end of the day, they have traded away more all-star appearances, more, I mean. I mean, how do you feel being the owner of the Diamondbacks and seeing that? I mean, personally, you have to say, I'm happy for them, but.
Good grief, again? Oh, look, if there's an organization right now that has traded away more all-stars, more top talent, I don't know who it is. I don't think it's possible. No. I don't think, I mean, they may be top 10 all time. And they're not getting great return for these guys when they're letting them go. I mean... No, I think part of it too is they get such, you know, they're not a small market team. They're not a large market team. They're mid-market. So mid-market teams always have this debate between...
Do we go for it now or we got a contract coming up? We're not sure we want to pay top dollar. So let's get – and what always happens is they got a year left like, well, I don't want to pay this guy $15 million a year. And it's just always biting them. It always does. They need a really –
They have never had, at least in my experience, they've never had an organizational strategy that you know they're following from year to year. I'm recommending Kylie Kipper, President Diamondbacks. She'll bring the sunshine. I'm kind of down. You know, I want to go back to our guest today, which was very good. Folks, if the America doesn't play a role, the world really sinks into chaos.
Anybody telling you otherwise is just lying or stupid. I can't figure out which one yet. And it goes the same thing with, look, I think right now what you're saying is when America draws back
You know, to use it domestically, it's like, oh, let's defund our police. What could go wrong? Right. Right. Well, I do think there's room for a more focused. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, do we need bases all over Europe? No, they should be defend. They should be ponying up. I think it's I think it's worth the debate. But, you know, leadership stinks.
It carries grave responsibilities. And, for example, I would love us not to have bases in South Korea, Japan, because, you know, it's their national security. I'm not sure they fill the void. And at the end of the day, protecting those allies or just having our young men and women there is
prevents chaos. And the world is very interconnected now. Well, and if you were listening to what Dr. Kors said, talking about their plans for world domination, for world hegemony, I mean, they are a really imperialist nation, and they feel like they missed out on the imperial period when the U.S. and Britain and others were coming up. They're ready to go get theirs.
Well, you know, are we ready to stop them? No, we're not right now. And I think that's why I do believe that you're going to see a rise of a foreign policy akin to what Ronald Reagan had.
Strength through peace. I think you're going to see here our next presidential election or two, someone's going to say, we need a 500-ship Navy. We need X millions of people in our armed forces. And the world, you're just going to either job on board and live in peaceful coexistence or buckle up. You know, I always go back to the debate, and you would remember this too, as I was growing up around Star Wars. Right. You know, the satellite defense system against nuclear missiles. Here's the thing. There's really good evidence out there that we built it.
Not in the laser design that they originally came up with, but with a concept called Brilliant Pebbles from Lawrence Livermore Labs, which basically uses a mag rail gun on a satellite to do this. I think we're a lot better off to have that. All these programs right now, people need to think very carefully. If you're going to oppose these type of programs, you need to think very carefully what that means in the future. Well, it takes long-term thinking, which most people can't do. So, for example, he made the point about AI in China. Yeah.
And I look, you and I, you, you and our capitalists were free markets, but there are certain things the government's got to give the jumpstart on funding for it to get done and then let the private sector take off from there. And if you don't have it, it's not going to get done because our markets are very based on our ROI. And based on we have markets and quarterly reports, we're very short term thinking. So there are certain things that the U S government and the taxpayer need to invest in. So for example, COVID has shown us, um,
the disparity and the weakness of our supply chain. We should not be having Tylenol and aspirin and penicillin made in China. No. It's stupid. It is reckless. And because we are doing same-day production and staffing and things of that nature, we have to go back and think, what are the things you really need
And again, I don't view this as an isolationist view. I view this as common sense policy. And I think you're right that when that figure arises, that foreign policy hawk figure, it
This needs to be part of that agenda. You and I have polled it here in Phoenix, and people support sort of American first enterprise zones. Yeah, just go figure out everything you need in a crisis. Food, energy self-sufficiency, which Biden has absolutely destroyed. Unbelievable. This is how bad Biden is. You're getting back to record inflation after three decades. We were energy independent a year ago. Oh, boy.
And no one knows about it because we're stuck watching this cluster in Afghanistan, which he has endangered all these life, caused the death of lives because the man's not competent. Well, you know, going back to something we were talking about early in the program, if you're an international leader.
The contrast you have is an American jet running away from Kabul with people falling off of it versus the Chinese premier standing in the middle of an eight lane highway cutting a ribbon. And which of those looks more attractive to you? Yeah, no kidding. I mean, it's just unbelievable what we are doing to this country and to our position in the world right now.
Well, folks, thank you for visiting us this afternoon on Broken Potholes. We'll be back next week with a great guest, which you've already lined up, have we not, Kylie Kipper? Yes, I have. His name is Eric. I don't want to butcher his last name. Eric Hoffman. Eric Hoffman. Okay. He's the last name.
We were going to go with just Eric No Name. What does Eric Hoffman do? Stop asking hard questions. You're the executive producer. What does Eric Hoffman do? I know, but I did a great thing where I started lining up all these amazing guests. Listen, we just demoted her from president of the Diamondbacks to deputy assistant to the general manager. She's the George Costanza deputy travel secretary for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Folks, this is Broken Potholes. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back with you next week.
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