The War That Ends American Dominance | Robert Pape on Iran

[00:00:01] Nuclear infrastructure in the UAE is under attack as President Trump visits China and the American Navy and Iran continue to exchange fire in the Strait of Hormuz, despite supposedly their bringing ceasefire still in place. Welcome to the next segment in our ongoing series, The Escalation Trap, with Professor Robert Pape from the University of Chicago. If you've enjoyed this content, please be sure to like, subscribe, and share with a friend. It really helps get the show out to more people. With that, let's get to our conversation with Professor Pape.

[00:00:31] Well, good morning and welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Scott. It's great to see you again. And I'm really glad we're able to do this on a regular basis. It really keeps, you know, sort of a great schedule here. And we're now in a lull. So I'm hoping it'll stay a lull for some time, but it is. And we've just come back, Trump, from the summit.

[00:00:58] So there's macro things changing in the atmosphere, but so far, no, nothing tactically changing on the ground. Yeah. Now people are really enjoying the weekly touchpoint. So we appreciate you taking the time to do it. So yeah, looking at highlights over the past week. Let's see. Yep. Trump went to China. The UAE had a nuclear facility struck. They're blaming Iran and Iran's proxies. That doesn't seem like great news.

[00:01:23] The ceasefire is apparently still holding, but the U.S. Navy and the Iranian military have been shooting at each other in the straits. Israel's been bombing Lebanon again. That ceasefire keeps holding. I'm not sure who has the record for most violent ceasefire of all time, but I'm pretty sure this conflict might be drifting into contention territory. I'll have to contact the Guinness Book of World Records and see where the stats are. Well, we're definitely in this, these, they call them skirmishes, which I think is fair.

[00:01:50] I also think it's fair to refer to them as demonstration attacks here. This can go on, you know, these minor engagements, you know, for a long period of time. And they're kind of become background noise for the media. So the media now is not really covering these very thoroughly.

[00:02:10] But the big thing I think to mention here for for troops here that might be watching is there's some fairly big pictures, events or changes that have happened that were already happening, Scott. But the summit with President Trump and Xi made this really very, very pointed.

[00:02:33] And I think it's important for our folks to understand that this war, the Iran war, is becoming now a hinge event that's almost the inverse of the 1991 Gulf War. So in 1991, and of course, most of our troops would not have been born then.

[00:02:55] 1991 was a major hinge event for the United States and the U.S. military. So before that, of course, we had Vietnam and America left Vietnam in 1975. Well, America's military reputation was was in tatters from 1975 until the 1991 Gulf War.

[00:03:21] So the Gulf War happened just a year after the Soviet Union, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union lost a lot of power as it withdrew from different parts of the world. So the 1991 Gulf War happened at the end of the at the beginning of the post-Cold War world.

[00:03:41] But it had another big effect, which was America's technological military prowess was on display in ways that it had never been before.

[00:03:53] And that war, although I realized it's, you know, 35 years ago, that war really defined the era of the post-Cold War world, which has gone on for 35 years as the era of American military dominance, escalation dominance, where we could basically have that escalation dominance any place on the planet at our choosing.

[00:04:21] So that is incredible era.

[00:04:51] President Xi is now fully well aware that America is losing this war badly. It's a strategic disaster of the first order. Now, not a tactical disaster, but a strategic disaster, meaning that our military might is not translating into strategic outcomes. And I've been telling you this, explaining this to you for four weeks.

[00:05:16] But it's important to understand that what I'm doing here is I'm not really coming at this to criticize President Trump. I'm coming at this to under to give people a heads up on where world leaders are going to go, how this is really going to matter over time, Scott. And this is why this is painful to hear. But it's real.

[00:05:36] And it's important to know that it's not just with America's Gulf allies now, Saudi Arabia having, you know, sort of pulling back on airspace limits. It's not just with Chancellor Merz in Germany insulting President Trump about how we're being humiliated. It's not just Iran's diplomats humiliating.

[00:06:00] But this is a humiliation here that is a product of the failure of to have a strategic failure in this war. And we would be doing great right now to just get a tie. If we could go from this L, OK, to a tie. Yeah. We would be doing great. OK. And maybe there's going to be a way at some point to get there.

[00:06:26] But I think that what's important to know is that is that what you're seeing now is that President Xi has more than anybody else put an exclamation point on this. Others were moving in this direction. But now that he has defined America as a declining power, he has directly asked Donald Trump. And this is according to Trump's report himself.

[00:06:51] He directly asked, she asked Trump, if there's a war with Taiwan, are you going to militarily defend Taiwan? And President Trump did not give him an answer. Now, he apparently also did not do a strategic hedge either. So what that means is silence, you see. So this is not strategic ambiguity the way we've understood it amongst all. This is not strategic ambiguity. This is Trump going.

[00:07:18] This is Trump going to a shifting toward strategic isolation. And then he adds and then Trump adds even more. He says, I can't imagine fighting a war 9,500 miles away. Actually looked at the map, tried to figure out where he thought 9,500 miles because it's always 7,800 miles from the White House. I mean, to Taiwan, but still. Trump doesn't really study geography, math. It's not really.

[00:07:47] Somewhere around the other end of the world. If he had a globe in the Oval Office, I'm not sure we'd be doing what we're doing right now with Iran. Yeah. If anybody could figure that out here, please send me a note because I did try to figure that out. Anyway. And it's about the same to Iran, too. So I wasn't quite sure why one was. Maybe he met kilometers, you know, conversion. That's right. Maybe that's what was going on. The military uses that. And he. I don't know. Maybe that's what he's seeing. Anyway. The.

[00:08:17] But. But then he. But then he also pointedly said that he had not decided to give the 15 billion in arms to Taiwan. Basically putting that in limbo. And and and then he's he's he's also said, and this was on the Fox News interview, something that I'm connecting the dots. Maybe maybe others. Maybe I shouldn't.

[00:08:43] But I'm just going to tell you what I'm connecting, where he actually made a point of pride that President Xi was not sending military weapons to Iran. So what that told me is that I think in President Trump's mind, he may be trading off Taiwan for Iran, not in the sense of massive shifts either way, but in shifts either way. And that tells me.

[00:09:07] But anyway, so back to the bigger picture here is that this is going to mean that our allies in Asia, there's a giant question mark now on Taiwan and they're already, you know, squawking about that. The rest of our South Korea and Japan are kind of edging. They're not quite sure what to make of all this. But basically what you're seeing is the consequences of a strategic defeat here are just massive, Scott.

[00:09:37] And and this is this isn't this isn't just, oh, we're going to move on to Cuba or something else. You know, go find a country we can beat. You know, that's that's not going to get us out of this hole. You see, even if we beat a country that's not going to we beat Grenada after Vietnam and it didn't work. You see, you needed to have our true demonstration of victory to get that prestige. And that prestige loss then has lots of material consequences.

[00:10:07] It's not just a clickbait or something. So this is something that's really important to understand as we as we go forward. Allies. I was just on with every week I do something with India. So I I was on Friday with the UAE just to, you know, Scott, this is one of the things that I'm I'm privileged to do. I've got people from all over the world now on these regular podcasts.

[00:10:32] And I'm just just telling you that from what's coming here, is it absolutely crystal clear that the Iran war is a pivotal war, a hinge war. And it's changing the expectations here of what America's value is in the world. And that's a pretty big deal. Yeah. So you're describing it as a hinge war, military force not translating into strategic outcomes.

[00:11:01] You know, a lot of things that folks who listen to this are familiar with are the dime model for national power diplomacy, information, military economic. We're all taught it. And then the American military establishment just throws out D.I. and E and just focuses on the M. But how is this war if military might is not translating into strategic outcomes? Is it going to force America to pivot to other elements of national power or is everything else collapsing along with it? Because it seems like diplomatically we've already shot ourselves in the foot.

[00:11:31] Well, what you're saying is that the alliances are going to start to fragment even more here than they are than they have already. Because each country remember so listeners here will remember that on your show, I explained how Iran's horizontal escalation and its growing power is going to fragment. The Gulf alliance have been put together against Iran and then each country would start to make its own independent decisions.

[00:11:58] And that's what you saw with the UAE pulling out of OPEC and then Saudi Arabia and Kuwait making decisions about their own airspace independently. So what you're seeing is an atomization, your fragmentation, where it's not a whole wave of countries suddenly bandwagoning with Iran. That's that's not the way to think about it. It's what's occurring is a fragmentation. Well, that's what India is doing.

[00:12:26] That's what's happening in Europe, that countries are really rethinking what does their security look like? If the core assumption they've had for 35 years, Scott, which is that America provides a powerful security umbrella and then they navigate underneath the umbrella. OK, and what's happening is this isn't a matter of burden shifting issues.

[00:12:55] This is a matter that that security umbrella is now that lid is off. That lid is off. And so you're going to get those countries are still navigating, but they're not tacking directly to America. Now, it doesn't mean they're going to abandon America here. It just what it means is, though, you're going to get a lot more individualized decision making.

[00:13:20] Now, present she in Asia, there's a concern immediately and I'll be saying more about this. So I'm developing two substacks, Scott. I've had the escalation trap. I've also had this other one called the Professor Pape substack. I started these accidentally together, but now I'm seeing the real lane for the Professor Pape, which is stuff that's not about the Iran war. So that way it's more global. It deals with other issues and so forth.

[00:13:49] And there'll still be about 10 percent overlap, but not as much as there was. And so there I'm going to really develop here what this means for Taiwan, Taiwan security, how to think about this, because that's what there that's what there is. And then also India now. They've just asked me on this podcast, you know, let's really just talk about India. Let's put aside the Iran war. What does this mean in big picture for India? You see what I mean, Scott? And that's coming from them, you see.

[00:14:18] So what's happening is they're seeing this change. And now America. One of the big things that I'll be. I've just I have a book coming on American political violence in September. I've just signed a contract for another book about a year and a half later on what America's international position. So you're saying, what does this mean for America?

[00:14:46] Well, one of the big things you've heard me complain about here in a small way is I believe after visiting China last June for two weeks to see its advanced industries. We're like 20 years behind in terms of the full development of what's happening with AI and modernization. China is not just ahead in certain like chat GBT for a few months versus deep seek. This is a mistaken view, a soda straw view of the competition.

[00:15:15] What's really happening is China has uplifted a second tier set of whole cities, 50, 100 million people that are similar to our Rust Belt cities. These were cities which which 20, 30 years ago, rather fishing villages or steel cities like Pittsburgh. Well, now they've been uplifted with this AI revolution across not just the AI companies, but health care in those cities.

[00:15:43] The infrastructure of those cities, DMVs in those cities. So there's a whole modernization happening similar to when America is was was going through its own technological revolution in eras past. But we're not really doing this here at Pittsburgh. I mean, we're in fact, we have whole swaths of our country that have been left behind. And I think that and of course, this is one of the things driving MAGA and driving Trump's support.

[00:16:11] But I think that we got to get going here. I mean, it's it's not enough to just be, you know, yes, people left behind. Yes, you're angry vote for me. It's are we actually getting ahead ever five or 10 years here? So I'm not I'm not really coming at this as a Republican or a Democrat. I'm coming at this that there's whole swaths of the country that are very evident to me could have been sentient, could have been Hank Joe.

[00:16:39] And it's not that I want to be a sort of a PR machine for China. That's not the issue here. The issue is, is where why are we in these areas 20 years behind here? And that's what I think we need to see. So we say, what can we do about this? We're not shifting this with the dime model. The dime is way too short term thinking.

[00:17:03] It's about the, you know, sort of the the sort of implements of national power as they would affect to, you know, change political outcomes. This is not what's I think the right way to think about this. This is a much bigger. This that would be like saying, what's the dime model in 1989 versus 1991?

[00:17:22] It's too narrow of a slice to understand what happened with the first Gulf War was a fundamental shift in how America's power was viewed by the world. And for states like China, what that meant is in 1990, they had three and a half million men troops in China, three and a half million. And they gutted that to two million after the first Gulf War.

[00:17:49] Two million got rid of all of that because they realize there's no point in just giving targets to the U.S. military. We're just going to eat them up. You see what I mean? It's two. It's two. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. You see, so what they realize is they had a 10 year, 20 year problem on their hand, not a short term, a rearrangement of the chairs problem. And I think that's really what we're facing right now. This is a major hinge war.

[00:18:18] And I believe as time goes on, this will become even more evident. Just what a, and it's, you know, really this, this taking this war on, it's just, it's, it's just, it was a tactically our troops did great strategic disaster in the Persian Gulf. Now it's becoming a grand strategic disaster for Americans.

[00:18:42] So to try to address the problem that you're identifying, I'm trying to think of a time in American history where we've done that successfully. The only thing that comes to mind is the mobilization for World War II, which happened in a very short period of time. And then we rode those coattails until Vietnam kind of took the gas out of the tank. Yeah, just to remind, just to remind people how dramatic a shift that was also was in the 1930s, we had the depression, 25% unemployment.

[00:19:12] So, so let's start there and understand that we had enormous unused capacity in the United States. So if you make a parallel to that today here, think about that as the Rust Belt from Syracuse. Okay. Where you are. Okay.

[00:19:35] Erie, Pennsylvania, where I was born, Pittsburgh, Ohio, over down to Kentucky, and then over to Detroit and all the way to Gary, Indiana. Okay. And also the South side of Chicago. That is about 70 million people live in this generalized area. You could also go all the way up to Milwaukee, by the way, here. You could, so, so to really fill this in.

[00:20:02] So the Rust Belt here is not just a few cities, towns here or there. It's a rather dramatic area of the country of essentially underused capacity. You see what I mean? And what you're describing as a real shift, that did happen. And America pulled itself up by its bootstraps to do it. But it has to be a priority.

[00:20:29] So I've given various talks here in the last few weeks. I think I might have even mentioned to you. So I was in 2008 simultaneously on the primary committee for Barack Obama and a foreign policy advisor to Ron Paul. If you can imagine that. It was a simpler time. Simpler times. Well, and also naive professor thinking that, you know, you could do that kind of thing. But anyway, but I went to Ron Paul.

[00:20:59] You really don't like it when you play both sides, I found out. It's just. It's hard to say. The guys want to help everybody. They don't like that. I'm still doing it. Yeah. I'm going to go on Newsmax in a little bit here. Okay. And I was on MS. I was on CNN yesterday. So, I mean, I'm just going to still keep doing this. Anyway, when I was at his, he invited me to come because he has a conference there and I hadn't seen him in a while.

[00:21:25] Well, anyway, I gave a big talk there about the future of America's policy and how to truly try to get out of the preventive war trap, not just the Iran trap over time. And then I had, and I was talking about this kind of issue we're just talking about right now. I had some people from Ron Paul's orbit come up and say, hey, I'm running for Senate and X state. I don't want to say who they are because they may not want to, you know, identify themselves there in any way. But what they said is, oh, yeah, I really think that's right.

[00:21:55] That's my third priority. That's economic modernization. And you can guess what I said. No, it's got to be the number one priority. I understand why social issues are so, you know, I know. I hear you. I'm studying that with my other book. So I'm not oblivious to that. I'm just pointing out that when we, anytime I hear somebody tells me it's third priority. The third priority is not a priority. That's the thing.

[00:22:24] No, you know that. It gets squeezed out all the time. It's on the list to cover your ass in a staff meeting. That's all it is. You'll get to it when you get to it, which is never. And life goes on. So I'm going to make, I'm going to, I'm going to make more of this over time. I'm going to, and also Scott, just another thing for your, your group to know, because they can watch it, I think, live on the sub stack this Friday. Yes. Um, I've got a big event here, which we're doing an in-person event here, um, uh, in Washington,

[00:22:54] DC, uh, at, um, uh, and I'm, and I'm a partner here across the political spectrum. So it's the escalation trap is the host. Uh, then it's the left hook, which is of course a more liberal group on sub stack. And now the American conservative has joined. So this may be, it's really just the Bob. I mean, this is what Bob Pape likes.

[00:23:20] I mean, and I know that people are going to say this can't possibly ever work and maybe not, maybe not, but I'm going to keep going down these roads because they're all basically agreeing, all these different groups. They're not going to vote for the same people. This isn't about, I'm not coming at this to get anybody to vote for, I'm not, it's not third party. Okay. It's not about any of that. This is about, we got some common problems we all understand. Okay.

[00:23:50] And maybe we can talk about some common things we might agree on such as modernization, economic modernization, which, you know, if you're going to have a lot. That is way too rational of a conversation for American politics. That does not. Well, we're making too much sense. It's not going to, it's not going to work. So it may not, but we're going to give it a try. And what's going to happen is this is this, I don't know how many people are ultimately going to watch this things.

[00:24:18] I'm, I'm, I'm thinking it could be well over a hundred thousand on, on, online here. So, cause it's, we're have all these different groups merging their online presence on Substack and acts and all that. And so it's going to be this evening on Friday, six to eight Eastern time. I'm, uh, and I'll be sending out the links and so forth. And then in the afternoon, I'm going to have a small little private seminar here at the hotel, um, Washington Hyatt.

[00:24:45] So, so that's just going to be for a smaller group. Uh, because what I'm thinking, Scott, is we, we going to, I'm going to experiment. So what I've been doing with this Substack ever since the war began is I've been experimenting. I had no idea about Substacks really before I tried the on, uh, with, I tried it. Then I did some online posts, basically like little column or op-eds. And then I discovered, oh, they have this live video thing over here. What's that about?

[00:25:12] And then somebody told me, and that's why I do the two every two week video briefing. And now I'm just going to try the in-person thing and we'll see, we might do the in-person thing every two months, uh, here just to keep it going because you might end up seeing that, oh, over time, this will be a useful thing to bring people together here. And it doesn't always have to be the same topic or the same collection of actors. Um, but I'm, I'm going to try to experiment with this because I'm really seeing possibilities,

[00:25:43] Scott, of pushing, uh, this, um, communications technology much, much, much further, uh, than I think we have. And I'm just going to keep trying things out and not everything's going to work, uh, here. Um, uh, not every, you know, X thread I do is going to have a million views. Um, but that, but a lot of them do. And a lot of them are getting a lot of views. So it's just useful to try them out. And I'm learning as I'm doing. Now I've been doing the same evolution here with the show.

[00:26:12] It started off as a, you know, audio only podcast, started picking up traction and pressure military circles. Um, and then Spotify created the option for video. I'm like, well, I'm recording the video anyway. So I'll just upload it. And then someone said, well, you need to put it on YouTube. Then it's actually easier to get, especially for folks overseas and some of the Apple and Spotify stuff. When you're working through VPNs, I'm like, oh, cool. And yeah, so like this stuff, I'm sure this will drop tomorrow. It'll have 50,000 views on it within 24 hours. That's been the trend, um, for the talks with you specifically.

[00:26:42] So it's interesting learning how this technology works and where distribution actually breaks through. And I think this is actually going to be, this war is a hinge war also for that because, um, it really is the case. It's become quite evident here that we need some other, uh, some other priorities. We need some other approaches. Um, and just, um, you know, president Trump in the short term here, he's got a massive political problem on his hands. Now he's got a problem.

[00:27:11] I mean, he knows what, I mean, he put out a post yesterday that was, that was basically threatening Iran and nobody covered it. I, in fact, when I see, I was going to go on, I was on, they asked me to come on CNN. Okay. And they, uh, asked me to talk about, um, this big picture, uh, uh, article I did that I just talked to you about. Uh, but I said, before I got on, don't you think we should talk about president Trump's post?

[00:27:41] Seriously? I didn't even know about it until this morning. I'm like, oh, it's Monday. I got to look up what's happened in the last seven days. And it came up and I'm like, oh, well, I'm just pointing out that this is definitely, this is, I mean, he, he definitely knows that this is not good. And, and, uh, uh, now what he'll do, everybody's got me on, you know, speed dial. Okay. The bombing starts and we'll talk about that if that happens, but it is, it is the case

[00:28:09] that, um, uh, these, this is just now a massive problem here that he's unleashed and trying to duck it, trying to divert it, uh, here, all the off ramps, all the easy off ramps, uh, Scott, um, have a totally been exhausted. They're just not there. And the big thing also for your, your group to know is, um, and there's not a whole lot

[00:28:35] they can do about this is that we're, we're probably going to see a massive, uh, shock economically in June. Uh, so I just wrote a big piece about this. Uh, and it's, uh, that's what I'm talking on Newsmax about, but it's, it's what you're going to see is all of the essentially Scott, all of these, um, economic forecasts, like by the IMF and so forth, that have come out. They've all assumed a short war, all assumed a short war. So I'm explaining all that.

[00:29:04] I'm going through that. So I, that's cause I, cause people have been asking me for a long time about what's going on here with this. Uh, and the bottom line is, um, that this is actually pretty easy to completely understand. It's like a lot of data fights in. So we have a lot of jargon and complicated math and Greek letters here that are really great for insulating, uh, arguments.

[00:29:31] But once you peel it over the peel it, you often discover things are much, much, much simple word, uh, here. And the bottom line here is once you realize, um, that the estimates that have been published so far are all built on either, um, a one month war or a two month war, uh, and the furthest out they went was three months. The furthest out they went, well, we're already at three. You see what I mean?

[00:29:58] So these are about to get, we're about to get some new estimates coming out from all these so-called fancy places. Okay. And they're not going to be good. Fancy places are really good at coming up with fancy models to justify high fees. Yeah. Very few of them actually provide value for transactions. Um, and I say that, and I know I have a bunch of friends who work in the industry that do financial modeling. And I know they know this cause I was just down in Atlanta with them like two weeks ago, uh, having a good time.

[00:30:26] And they are well aware of how their bread gets buttered and it's not actually providing long-term accurate forecasts. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it hinges on things like, um, we talk about on strategy, which is, well, what is the reasonable expectation for a length of the war? So with us, we've been doing this for months now, and I've been explaining that there is,

[00:30:53] you may hope for these short-term endings, but you need to understand 70% likely this was going to just keep going. Uh, doesn't mean you don't try for the short-term doesn't mean you don't hope for those off-ramps, uh, but it does mean you need to have a solid baseline for understanding where you're at and what, and what's, what's reasonable. Uh, but that's the opposite of what's happened here. They've been projecting, uh, it's like 80% likely this will be over in the short-term.

[00:31:22] And now that's changing and it has to change because literally we've passed all those benchmarks. You see what I mean? So all of that is going to change. And, uh, and then on top of that, we've got these wonderful ticking time bombs in different parts of the world that are all going to come together in June. And, and that's a, a, just a real, uh, a real problem. So we're going to see that the economic costs of the war are going to be more manifest, more

[00:31:51] evident, and that's going to weigh on the white house and the white house, president Trump. Uh, I really, you know, think he follows, uh, the markets. I know he's trying to manipulate the markets, but he also follows the market. So I'm pretty sure, uh, he's pretty well aware of what's coming. Even if his own S the public estimate, public face is different. That's going to be, that's going to be, um, uh, the short term.

[00:32:17] So his problem of getting out of the short term is not going to be over. That's good. The hole is going to keep appearing to get deeper, even though most of it's actually already dug and we're just now measuring the hole. Yeah. It'll be interesting when see when markets actually start to collapse with the loss of public confidence in the, the ability to get anything into the country. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and what's going to happen is we will come out, um, uh, ahead, but we have

[00:32:43] so much trade with Asia that as Asia's manufacturing contracts, we're just going to have higher prices, uh, here. So it doesn't mean, um, that, uh, and, and it will affect by the way, MAGA will get hurt the worst here, which is really, really the, the hard thing, except for the tiny numbers of MAGA who are in, um, oil and gas, which are some, okay. But, uh, the truckers, so the price of, I mean, the actual core blue collar of MAGA,

[00:33:12] uh, here is the ones who are going to be hurt, uh, the most just because they're the least off. That's the whole point. They were the least off, you know, so, uh, they're going to be hurt the most. And, um, uh, and I've said this on, on Fox, but I'll say it on here. I'm really struck that the white, or I said this like a month ago, I'm really struck that the white house has not, uh, started to think about ways to help the truckers, you know? So Trump's worried about the farmers. Okay. Um, those are donors truckers.

[00:33:43] I don't think have the money. I mean, you're not saying that political priorities follow financial contributions. Are you? That would be completely antithetical to a free and open society. Well, I'm just saying, writing some letters here and saying, Hey, remember us. We're the ones who actually have the diesel. We're the ones who do diesel. I mean, just saying we're the ones. It's not those. The farmers do too, though. They, they, they, they need it for their, I understand. Yeah.

[00:34:12] Maybe there can be a big, uh, rally in DC and maybe they can approach a building full of politicians and, um, share their opinions. I think Trump may have participated in something like that before. If I, if I were. Well, he might want to remember how Trump got on the garbage truck, you know, that was a big, he might want to get on the 18 wheeler. Cause this would be a, I'm just saying that the, that this is not going to be. Why not? Well, and it's coming because it's not, we're, we're, we're literally the off ramps here.

[00:34:42] And in fact, some of the people responding to my, uh, to my post, cause I put this out first yesterday are saying things like, Oh, but professor paid, once we take Carg Island, this will all turn around. See, it's everyone listening. He's actually looked at taking Carg Island, just crap their pants a little bit. I'm just pointing out that that's the people will see on the sub stack. So it's not, I'm not revealing anything.

[00:35:10] They're just there and I don't actually get to read them as much, uh, here because I got to go teach and do podcasts and other things. So I really, I might see 5% of the comments at most because I'm just, I should do more. And maybe over the summer when I'm done teaching, I'll have some more time to read them, uh, here. Um, but it really is, it really is the case that, that there's still this hope that all of this could be magically turned around in just a few days.

[00:35:38] And I think that's where then you get the impetus for a short-term bombing campaign or, uh, which could start short-term because remember the, the first bombing campaign was supposed to be just a few days, right? Yeah. Then we had the backup plan in case, and then we switched into backup mode. So, so once we go down anything here, I'm not, I'd be shocked if this was presented as here's another six, six week bombing campaign.

[00:36:06] Uh, fun times. Well, thank you so much for talking to us this morning and over a little over time. Uh, appreciate you. We'll talk again in two weeks. Enjoy your holiday. Everybody have a great, a great holiday. And really thanks to everybody for their great service here. They're they've done their part. That's for sure. Yeah. Okay. See you.