The Real Truth About the U.S.'s Nuclear Submarines | Thomas Shugart | Ep. 337

Thomas Shugart is a former US Navy submarine warfare officer. He previously served as a Navy Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where his research focused on great power competition between China and the United States. His work has been published in War on the Rocks, the National Interest and the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings, and has been cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and various other international publications and think tank studies. Find Tom here: https://x.com/tshugart3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured —————————————————————- Today's Sponsors: LUCY⬇️ https://lucy.co/HOUSE Use the code "House" for 20% off your first order! GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 50% OFF!!! American Financing ⬇️ https://AmericanFinancing.net/teamhouse or call 866-889-8010 https://tel:866 Disclaimer NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org ____________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— To help support the show and for all bonus content including: https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  If you sleep hot at night, you know just how disruptive it can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night, or all of the above, that's where Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, Ghostbed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and even cooling bedding. From their signature Ghost Ice fabric to patented technology that adjusts with your body temperature, every Ghostbed mattress is designed with cooling in mind. So whether you want a plusher mattress that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firmer option with exceptional support, your Ghostbed will keep you cool and comfortable all night long. When you purchase a Ghostbed mattress, your comfort is guaranteed. You can try out your mattress for a 101 nights risk-free and make sure it's the right fit for you.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Plus, they offer free shipping and most items ship within 24 hours. If you're not sure which Ghostbed is for you, check out their mattress quiz. You'll answer a few questions and get your personalized recommendation, or reach out to their friendly team of sleep experts for all the help you need. Even better, Team House listeners can get 50% off site-wide for a limited time. Just visit ghostbed.com/house and use code HOUSE at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com/house with code HOUSE at checkout to save a whopping 50% off site-wide. And if you're not in the market for a mattress, check out their pillows, their bedding. They have all kinds of great stuff there. So thanks to Ghostbed and check them out.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Special Operations.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 2:16Jack Murphy?

  Hey everyone, welcome to episode 337 of the Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and our guest on tonight's show is Thomas Sugar. Thomas served in the Navy as a officer on submarines, going all the way up to be the captain of USS Olympia, correct?

• 2:33Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:34Jack Murphy?

  And then went on to positions at the Office of Net Assessment, essentially working in the think tank space and really focusing on the Chinese military. So we're going to talk to Thomas tonight about his career and all about his work today, too. So we're excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us tonight, Tom.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  It's a pleasure. Thanks very much, Jack and Dave.

• 2:59Jack Murphy?

  So to kick it off, tell us a little bit about like your upbringing and what sort of propelled you towards service in the Navy?

• 3:07Speaker 04

  So I mean, I grew up in Texas and went to the University of Texas and was working on mechanical engineering and the right around the time of the very first Gulf War, and I'm dating myself here, but right around the time of the first Gulf War, I was a bit inspired to join up somehow while I was in college. And so I went to the recruiting station and I said, hey, you know, I'm interested in helping out. Is there a way I can be like a reserve officer or something? And the recruiter said, hey, what's your major? I said, mechanical engineering. And how are your grades? They're good. Okay, well, I've got a program for you. So the Navy's Nuclear Power Officer Candidate Program. And that's a, that's a program that still exists very much, going strong. And it's basically a way

• 3:51Speaker 04

  that the Navy can get enough engineers to be the nuclear trained officers on its submarines and aircraft carriers. Because they basically can't produce enough engineers out of the Naval Academy and out of ROTC. They need to pull some right out of college engineering programs and other technical majors to bring them into the Navy specifically to be nuclear trained officers. So all of our submarine officers are nuclear trained. So they have one supply officer on board, but all the other officers on the ship are what we call nuclear trained. So they all go through, they have some sort of technical background, they go through nuclear power school. Nuclear prototype, you know, about a year and a half worth of training and are all trained on how nuclear reactors operate and and and are and are qualified to operate them as supervisors.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  So I got signed up for that program. It is a fantastic program. Back when I did it. So basically what you do is you you sign up and the day you sign up and you can sign up up to two, two years before you graduate, maybe two and a half at this point. You get a signing bonus and you become active duty enlisted in the Navy. But your only job is to go to college.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  You literally, I don't know if it works now, but I can say I got a letter that said that I was both exempt, I was exempt from grooming standards. And that I was neither required nor authorized to wear a uniform. But still could use space available air. Taking for retirement to your job of leave while you're in school and there's it's full activity paid benefits. Back then it was E three, I think it's like E six now, E six or E seven. That you get paid and it's not a scholarship, it's just pay. So you do that program. Up to two years and then when you graduate, you go to officer candidate school and then nuclear power school and then you enter the training pipeline for submarines or surface ships, depending on where you're going.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  So that seemed like a good application of my technical background to really utilize that, but still be able to serve. And I don't thought submarines sound exciting. It was a. You know, independent operations and, you know, kind of doing its own thing. I thought about surface warfare, being a surface warfare officer, but I kind of looked at it as well, you know. The surface ships are kind of there for the carrier and the carrier is kind of there for the pilots. And so I'd rather be a submarine or where we're kind of doing our own thing. I haven't changed a lot since then, so that doesn't really speak that much to the way things are now, but. So that's kind of, that's kind of what got me into the Navy in the, in the first place. I had thought about going to the Naval Academy and actually spent a week there in the summer.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Before my senior year and ended up just kind of deciding, you know, I kind of want the regular college experience. And I'm sure Naval Academy is great for a lot of folks, but I'm quite happy to be able to have, you know, Austin's a fun place to live and. And I had a high grade time in college.

• 6:37Jack Murphy?

  What, you know, you go through this whole program, you go through college, you get into the Navy, and you mentioned all the officers are nuclear trained, but I mean, I guess that doesn't necessarily mean you are like the reactor guy per se. I'm just curious, what was like kind of your first duty position when you showed up?

• 6:57Speaker 04

  So junior officers on board submarines, the first thing you do when you get there is you're going back to the engine room. You're learning how to operate all the equipment back there. The ultimate belief of there's a watch station you're trying to qualify, which is engineering officer of the watch. So you're basically the watch officer that is in charge of the reactor plant.

• 7:15Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  You're not the guy that's actually flipping the switches on the panels and all that. There are those really smart enlisted operators that have a lot more experience than you do that are doing that. So, so like in the control room for the engineering spaces, you'll have, you'll have the watch officer, and then you have two or three panel operators, depending on the type of shift. The ones that are probably operating the, you know, reactor or whatnot. Then you have a bunch of other watch standards that are out in the engineering spaces, you know, turning valves and, and fixing pumps and all that other stuff. A watch team of about 10 or so, 10 or 11 people total back in the engine room. So that's, that's the first operational job you're learning is engineering officer of the watch. So you're, you know, and I'll never forget the first time I did

• 7:59Speaker 04

  a reactor startup, and I was the guy, I was actually on watch, I wasn't in training anymore, and me and my guys started up the reactor, you know, it was, trust me, the engineer officer of the department was keeping an eye on things by all means, but, but it was cool. Like, you know, I walk on the engine room, like, I just started up a nuclear reactor, you know, it was pretty, pretty fifty, and I was like 26 years old, probably. And, and then, then you have your administrative jobs, where you're a division officer, and you're notionally in charge of You know, ten or so enlisted personnel in a division. So it's and you start with engineering. So electrical division or reactor control division or that kind of thing. So you so you start out in that job as a bit of a leadership over and out. We all know if you spend time in a

• 8:42Speaker 04

  service that you've got some senior NCO and yes, you're nominally in charge, but I mean, you're you'd be dumb to not take advice very carefully from, you know, from your chief. And actually, my first electrical division chief recently passed away. So I'll see that. But in any case, that's so, yeah, you kind of start back in the engineering is the that's the first thing you do when you get there and you gradually work your way forward to where you're eventually a forward division officer, like the Navy, like the communications officer or SOR officer or damage control assistant. And then watch station wise, your what your goal is, is to be to stand officer of the deck. So you're you're the guy in the control room in charge of the ship on a minute by minute basis on behalf of the captain,

• 9:26Speaker 04

  you know, while while the ship is steering along.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  And what was the first boat you were assigned to?

• 9:32Speaker 04

  That was my first ship was USS Houston.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  Which was in San Diego. All of you, all of you have seen USS Houston. So that was in the hunt for in October. There's the scene where USS Dallas comes flying out of the water and crashes back down. That was actually USS Houston that did that. Wow. That did that. They were the they were the star of the show for that. So that was my first ship in San Diego, which was awesome.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Is the the nuke program for officers enlisted, is it it is it the same? Do they share classes when it comes to like the power plant stuff and things like that?

• 10:13Speaker 04

  You don't really share the initial book. So you don't share nuclear power school. So nuclear power school is a six month classroom training and there's there is a it's all the same place, but it's separate classes for officers who are enlisted.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  But then you go to the training pipeline. So you go to nuclear power training units. So it's what we call prototype. And that is a, it's an actual operating reactor, but it's a training plant. So it's a, some of them are an old submarine, which has been, you know, refitted to be a training submarine. It doesn't go anywhere. It just tied up and, and it just kind of churned river water instead of going anywhere. But it's a real reactor. It really, it's really operating. So at prototype, there are enlisted trainees and officer trainees. And you're just, you're each, you're each trying to qualify your respective watch stations. So they're qualifying enlisted, junior enlisted watch stations. You're qualifying your junior officer watch station. Now, that said,

• 11:11Speaker 04

  to be ensuring officer to watch, you have to stand watch on all of the enlisted watch stations as a trainee before you can go be the watch officer. So you have to at least for a couple of watches have done their job. Not, I mean, you're a trainee, this is not for real, so to speak, but you, you, you've experienced all the enlisted watch stations before you get to the point that you're supposed to be in charge of them.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  And what's, you know, you get to your first boat. What's it like? What's, you know, what is being on a submarine like?

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Well, I certainly remember when I showed up to my first ship. So again, I showed up to USS Houston and here I am, my service dress blues up topside. And show up, I've got my men's folder and my white hat on, ready to go. And they call down and this, this young guy comes up topside. I won't say his name, but he says, who are you? I'm like Tom Streetard. This, how you doing? I'm, I'm John Doe. Welcome to hell. It's like, great. So my first ship was, uh, our commanding officer was largely kind of a terror, not, not very well regarded among, by a lot of the crew.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  And the ship was, it was tough. It was, we spent a lot of time in the, in the dry dock, uh, which is, sounds great, but it's actually kind of awful.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  And it was quite challenging. So everything got much better when I got my next commanding officer. And it's amazing how the character of a CO can completely change, uh, the quality of life on board a ship. And, and you know, my second commanding officer showed up and, um, He came, got all the officers together and said, you know, I gotta count on all you guys. All of you know more about whatever you're doing than I do about the whole, you know, the bigger picture. Your individual part, you know, better accounting. It was a very different feel than his predecessors. So it was, it was my time. So, um, you know, as a, we were relatively short on officer manning at that point. And so I was for quite a while, I was what they call three section duty.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  So one in every three days I was on duty, but that's on top of your work week. And duty is 24 hours and it's not V for duty. It is you're on the ship for 24 hours. So if you're three section, for example, say a week, your, your work week starts on Monday and you are on duty. So you, you show up Monday at like six to take, take the watch from the off going watch section. Cause you gotta tour the ship. You gotta renew all the logs. You gotta reveal all the maintenance paperwork that's happening. And you've got to turn over to the off going watch officer. So you're there at like six. And now you're on duty for 24 hours, you know, all the way until the next morning, until you get relieved. And then your, then your Tuesday workday starts, um, you know, and you, and you might get maybe four or five hours of sleep.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  And then you're on duty all the next day, Tuesday, then you get a work day and you go home tired. And then, you know, Wednesday is kind of a normal workday and guess what? You're on duty again on Thursday. That's once, whenever, once every three days. Now, okay, through your, now you're on duty all the way through Friday morning. So you go home Friday from work dead tired because you've got, you know, didn't get much sleep. Uh, and then Saturday you get to think about how you're going to have duty on Sunday. So you know, you're, you can't go really party on Friday night if you're tired. Saturday night, you can't really tie it on because you gotta be on duty the next morning. So really, and you just repeat that. And basically you never get a, you never get a real weekend. That you're totally free because you got duty either Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Uh, and that's when you're important. That's not, that doesn't count when you're a C.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  And, and yeah, and I'd, I'd be curious to know about that because that's one that's a, a heavy workload. But two, when you guys do get underway, if you're doing a, a, you know, a, a float, you're talking about a few hundred people, I imagine, in a very confined space. And sometimes I, from what I've heard, like nukes will stay underwater for three to six months at a time. Like how, how do you manage that? How, how is all that managed with personalities, with the workload, with everything else?

• 15:22Speaker 04

  I think the most challenging part is, uh, is just the workload and just trying to get enough sleep. I mean, you know, it is depending on what the ship's doing, it can be quite busy with all the training and the drills and, and watch standing.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  You just see, so people say like, oh, you know, Arch, don't you get bored or, you know, do you think about being under water? No, you're just, you're just thinking about how do I, how am I going to get in a rack shirt off?

• 15:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  I can get, uh, some decent sleep and not be dead tired. Or when is, when's the next set of drills or, you know, when do I have to get this paperwork done? When do I have to have this training plan ready? When I have to prepare training for the, for the guys? What are we doing? You know, and it just goes on from there. So I will say that only once or twice have I been on a submarine where I wasn't part of the crew. You know, what they call a rider, um, where you're just somebody that's on board. And I will say that if you do not have a, if you don't have a job and you're on a submarine, it can be a very super boring place to be. And, uh, because there's nowhere to go, there's no, in many ca, in many occasions, the cruise mask, such as the one big space, will be used for training or they're eating or whatever.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  And if you can't get in the wardroom, which are where the officers hang out because of again, stuff's going on there, there's really nowhere to go. There's not, and there's nothing to do. So, so I will say that it was actually, uh, while I was longed to be a rider, when I was a part of ship's company, um, being one, it was the, like, okay, wow, there's really not much to do here if you're not, if you're not, you know, working your ass off, so.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Yo, what's up, guys? Today's episode sponsored by Lucy nicotine. It's a hundred percent pure nicotine, always tobacco free. Lucy breakers are nicotine patches with an extra little surprise. Each pouch holds a capsule that can't be broken and open to release extra flavor and hydration. Set yourself up with a subscription and have Lucy delivered straight to your door. I've been rocking these for the last couple of weeks. They sent us a bunch and it's pretty dope. My, they, I was screwing around with the mango, but now I've gone to the espresso. So I've been dabbling in a bunch of different flavors. So right now I'm super hot on the espresso one. It's really tasty and delicious. I'm a lightweight, I use two percent. Uh, you can get hardcore, they have a Ton of, ton of different, uh, levels of nicotine. If you're a more hardcore person, you can go for the higher ones.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  I'm a, I'm a, my sis, my sis, I have a sensitive system. My mom always used to tell me that. So I go 2%. Um, and I rock it, you know, whenever I'm feeling a little stressed out or whatever, after a meal or something like that, I'll throw in a little pouch and it's, uh, it's freaking awesome. I love Lucy. You would love Lucy too. Do us a favor. Go to lucy.co slash house and use the promo code house to get 20% off your first order. Lucy has a 30 day refund policy. If you change your minds, you can send it back. No sweat. Again, that's lucy.co. Use the code house to get 20% off. And here comes the fine print. Lucy products are only for adults of legal age and every order is age verified.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Thanks, guys.

• 18:25Jack Murphy?

  The average person today is feeling the financial strain more than ever. Expenses are up, wages aren't keeping pace, and many people are finding it nearly impossible to make ends meet. With little left over for covering the basics, it's no surprise that many are resorting to credit cards just to get by, often carrying high balances and interest rates in the twenties and even thirties. If you're a homeowner and you're stuck in this cycle of mounting debt, you need to call my friends at American Financing. Their salary-based mortgage consultants are saving homeowners an average of $800 a month, helping you put your hard-earned money back where it belongs. Plus, if you act now, you might even be able to skip your next mortgage payment.

• 19:06Jack Murphy?

  There are no upfront fees, so it costs you nothing to find out how much you could save each month. It's time to break free of the stress of debt. Call American Financing today and take control of your financial future. 866-889-8010, 866-889-8010. Americanfinancing.net/TeamHouse.

• 19:32Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 19:47Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 19:58Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 20:03Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 20:09Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 20:29Jack Murphy?

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  So that really, it was a challenge just to get it all done, to get all the work done, get sleep. We've got, the submarine force has gotten a lot smarter over the years. So I first, my first couple of shifts, we were, most of the crew was in a three-section rotation again. So, but it was six-hour watches, so you're six on, 12 off. And so you ended up being on watch, you know, different, all different times of the day on a rotating basis. So you'd be like six to 12 and off until midnight. And then you'd come on at midnight, you'd be on until six, and you're off until 1800. And then you'd be on at 1800 and you'd be off until six. You know, you get the idea, six on, 12 off. It was really not a smart way to do things

• 21:41Speaker 04

  because we all understand now circadian rhythm, you know, is really important to not being dumb all the time. And we weren't doing that. So you basically were continually jet lagged because you're sleeping at different times of the day, every single day. So the sports got a lot smarter about it. They did some studies and figured out that that was not, not a great way to do things and shifted to a, like an eight on, 16 off rotation to again, a circadian rhythm loss rotations where you're, we're on up here while sleeping the same time every day. And that made us a lot smarter. I mean, it made, it made the crews a lot better rested. Uh, even if they were busy, even if you're being, even if you only got five hours of sleep, at least you're getting it the same time every

• 22:23Speaker 01

  day. Right, right. And is it true that, cause I've heard all kinds of like horror stories about, you know, about nuke subs in particular, in the sense of, did, did the enlisted have to hot rack generally? Or was there generally enough space for all of them?

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Well, so it depends on the kind of ship you're on.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  So our attack submarines, smaller, multipurpose, um, you know, they can do sank surface ships, they can sink submarines, they can launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, they can do intelligence collection. You know, there's a multipurpose, uh, kind of boats. They generally will have some portion of the crew hot racking. Uh, usually it's, usually it's your pretty junior guys. It's E2s, E3s, maybe some E4s, maybe a few E5s, uh, but not, not, not usually. Uh, and oftentimes your torpedo room is, is will have some space.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  They're sleeping, they'll have racks where they would have weapons and freeze up some extra space. But when you go into deployment, there's a lot of guys on racking because you look at torpedo rooms full and you're all on deployment.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Over there for a reason. And, and you sometimes will have extra riders on board. I'm sure folks that are there to help you with stuff you're doing on deployment. And, um, in that case, sometimes E6s are hot racking.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Now, officers don't, don't ever hot rack. Um, that's just, I mean, that's just the way it is.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Now, that doesn't mean that their officers are necessarily a state room. Um, for example, on, uh, like a Los Angeles class, there's what's called nine man berating, which is a nine, nine person bunk rooms. It just usually, this is a zero, it's a, um, or, or in zero.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  And you work your way up to a state room over, over time. Now, our newer boats, like the Ohio class submarines, actually they're not newer, but our ballistic missile submarines, they're a humongous submarines. They're, you know, they're two or three times the size of an LA class. And so they haven't, there is no hot racking on SSB and generally, they have enough bunks for everybody because there's all these bunk rooms in the missile compartment in between those huge missile tubes.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  So there's showing no hot racking there. Now there's a whole nother angle now. We have tow ed crews, so to speak. We have integrated crews. Where you have, like on Virginia class submarines, you have bunk rooms that are all female or all male. I suppose all of, all the submarines I was on, none of them were built to have women on board, so they were never integrated while I was on board.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Right. Interesting. And I, I'd like to, you know, ask a little bit more about, you know, you were saying that there's a big difference on the culture of your first submarine where the captain was a bit of a terror. Where, and then the second was kind of a very different leadership style. I was wondering if you could expand on that, like, because you mentioned how big an impact that has on the entire life on the ship.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the CO has a lot of authority on how things go on a ship. So there's a lot of different ways that they can make life better or worse. A lot of it has to do with, you know, do they listen to the inputs that they're given by the crew, by the officers?

• 25:34Speaker 04

  How do they treat them? I mean, is, are they nice? Or, you know, I mean, because there's always times that you have to be, you may not be pleasant all the time, but I would like, for example, this, this guy, I mean, he, I mean, he inspired his next generation to do the same. There's screaming sometimes in the control room. If things weren't going the way that he wanted them to, he started yelling at people. And I, I took away from that as a, you know, as a young junior officer, here's the captain yelling at me or the person next to me. That just, I, I couldn't really function when, when he was doing that. So he's trying, he was attempting to get better performance out of us. But all I could do was, what do I need to do to make this guy stop yelling at me? And, and not so much focusing on, on, on how we do things. So like, I, I made it a point.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  That was kind of a lesson that I learned at that point was do whatever you can to not have emotion, you know, in the control room while you're trying to operate a ship. You know, if you're going to deploy emotion, do so in a very planned manner. With a goal of achieving specific results, if you need to make an example or something, you know, make clear your how important something is, you know, do it on a thoughtful way. The kind of thing that you can do differently that I think helps get them to perform better, that helps for retention. Now, that guy, I mean, to be clear, the ship did really well, or is to hand. I mean, they did really hard missions and accomplished them, but I think it came at an enormous cost of people that were not going to stick around to do that.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  And in some cases, like, one of the things that could happen in the 80s, you can do what's called reenlisting for orders. So you reenlist, and for reenlisting, you get a new assignment. And so his retention numbers actually could look pretty good sometimes because people were reenlisting to get off the ship. And so that doesn't mean they're going to stay in it, doesn't mean they're going to stay in the 80s forever, but, you know, that can be kind of a false indicator. So, I mean, his command tour looked really great on paper, and he did really well, and he was graded, he went to go on to be a major commander, but just a terrible, terrible experience for many people on board.

• 27:38Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. You, you mentioned, you know, the tremendous authority that a sub captain has, and I'd like to ask you a little bit more about that, too, because, look, I know nothing about this topic, other than like The Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tide, and a few other movies. They always, they always show these subs are in isolation, they have no comma with Big Navy, they're out there doing their own thing, and the captain kind of is like the god of the boat. Is that true? Is that accurate?

• 28:07Speaker 04

  It is true to some degree. So, I mean, I would say that, I mean, probably compared to any other part of the military, you are, as a CO, you're an O5's command, you're probably the most independent. I mean, because there are times where you're out doing stuff, and, yeah, you're not communicating, and, you know, and you're conducting, can be conducting pretty high stakes operations. And, yeah, there's nobody to talk to. And certainly, when things go south, you're not going to have anyone to talk to for a while, and you really are going to be on your own. I will never forget. When I was on my, on my command tour, I woke up in the middle of the night to a fire alarm going off.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  And we're hearing a fire announcement, you know, firefight, fire in the engine room, fire in the this and that thing. And I just remember, you know, they ran standing in the control room in my pajamas. And starting to think about, while, while the guys were working on this, and the fire was out very quickly, and they're not, not being a very big deal, but. You know, for that thirty seconds, like, are we gonna wind up on the surface off of Hawaii at night with the crew on the top side, you know? At what point am I gonna abandon ship if I have to? You know, you start, start thinking through those things because in, in that timeframe. Yeah, you're not gonna have the help. You're gonna be, you're not gonna be able to radio home.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  All that kind of timeframe to make those really quick decisions. That being said, you have a lot of guidance. I mean, you know, the submarines are all about procedures and requirements and technical requirements. And so you, you have beaten into you over years of experience exactly what the requirements are for most situations that you'd be in. So most conceivable situations that you'd be in, there was a procedure for whatever the casualty is. Your people should be executing that. You should be overseeing their execution of, of all that. And most of it should be happening, happening, unfolding in accordance with some sort of script. But there is a great deal of discretion requirement in wartime, obviously, that will go up even more, which is why.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  As you see, um, much of the military now is talking about mission command. So, you know, because communications may be quite constrained in a, in a future conflict with China in particular. We're, we're, the, a lot of the military is starting to focus on how do we default mission command to our commanders so that they can. In the absence of communication, still find effectively by making decisions. And I've always said, like, you all want to do mission command, talk to submarine force. Because we're the guys that do that all the time. It is in our absolute marrow of our bones. I'm gonna do relatively independent operations with very little guidance, except for what we've done beforehand.

• 30:48Jack Murphy?

  That's no, it's incredible. And so as you're going through your career here, you know, you mentioned that you're going to these different duty positions across the submarine. And I take it they're sort of like grooming you as a naval officer to potentially be captain. They must be like looking at you like, you know, are you going to be the guy? Can you tell us a little bit about like, kind of what your career progression was like going to these different stations?

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Sure. I mean, so one thing that's kind of funny about submarine force and is that when you sign up for it, there's literally a art that shows your entire career. It shows it's a timeline. It's three years, three years as a junior officer, two years on short duty. Then you go to department head school for six months and then five months, whatever it is. Three years as a department head, two years short duty, two years as an XO, two years in short duty, three years in CO. And that is what is going to happen. As long as you don't fall off the wagon, you're going to be somewhere within plus or minus six months. Every one of those gates is going to happen on your, on your, on your career. The variables are where, which boats, where, what kind of operations are they doing?

• 31:59Speaker 04

  And then what are you doing on short duty? So, you know, are you going to be, you know,

• 32:05Speaker 04

  submarine headquarters, or are you going to be at work college, or are you going to be, you know, on an Pentagon? And so, so that's kind of the flavor. And it starts in the junior officer tour that I mentioned. And then again, you go to short duty for a couple of time, a couple of years. I went to Italy. I was on the sixth fleet staff in Naples as the submarine special operations officer. Fantastic job. Had to travel all over Europe. Can't talk about the boats we're doing that I was involved with, but you know, it was good stuff. And then, then back as an apartment head, in this case, I was on an SSBN, a ballistic missile submarine. And I was the engineer and then split tour. And I was, then I was the navigator, or sorry, started as the navigator and ended up as the ship's engineer for most of my tour.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  And I was in Bangor, Washington, on the West Coast. And then after that, then

• 32:53Speaker 04

  I did post apartment head, I'm sorry. I totally missed the tour. So junior officer, and then I went to San Francisco. I was a recruiter. I was recruiting college students to be a new officer like I was. And then department head, and then by Washington, and then Italy, post department head. Then I went to go be XO on USS Topeka in San Diego, back to San Diego for another tour, which was awesome. San Diego was incredible.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  And then after that, I went to the Naval War College in New Orleans, fantastic experience. Got into war gaming there. That was a big thing later. So I was I was something that's called the Halsey Alpha Group, which is the war gaming group at the war college. They are a China war gaming group. We can now say that. And that was a fantastic experience. And then from there, I went to the Joint Staff. Where I was on the, I was the nuclear branch, nuclear strike branch chief, which is a fun job. We answered the phone, nuclear strike. And so we were the guys that basically did nuclear command and control. So we made, we inspected all the nuclear command centers around the world to make sure that they were able to execute nuclear command and control in accordance with the chairman's directives.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  And then also inspected them. And we also wrote the Black Book. So we helped to write the Black Book. So the book that goes on the football. So the president's suitcase, known as the Black Book, the Nuclear Decision Handbook. So we took part in that. We maintained that book at the day. Wow. And that was a really cool job. So. Yeah, no pressure, man.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's, it's, it's an important book.

• 34:37Speaker 04

  Is, yeah, it's a humbling experience. So and I also trained the military, the guys that carry the football with the president. So I'll train them on nuclear, nuclear command and control stuff. So really fantastic job.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  And then after that, I went to, so I went on a command tour. And that was in Hawaii. And people say like, what's a great job? Right? My opinion, one of the best jobs on the planet. Operational, fantastic submarine commanding officer in Hawaii. It doesn't get much better than that. You know, you get underway, there's Hawaii, the weather's always great, you know. There's a lot of places where it's not very pleasant to stand on top of a submarine as the captain does coming in and out of port. Hawaii is not one of them. It was, it was awesome.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  So I was kind of up through the command tour.

• 35:23Jack Murphy?

  And so I've heard, I've been told that being a submarine captain is maybe the most complex job in the military. I mean, would you agree with that? And could you tell us why or why not?

• 35:35Speaker 04

  I mean, maybe. I mean, it's certainly some of the most, I mean, objectively, objectively, I would say that it's some of the most training. I mean, you have, before you can get to the jobs, it looks so first of all, you have been selected over the years, you're going to keep getting selected. Well, getting selected for a department is pretty easy. XO is a pretty steep cut to go from three departments to one XO and then XO CO is another cut. And what's funny about it is that unlike a lot of other services, like as long as you're ever fallen off the wagon, the selection boards are what eventually will decide your

• 36:14Speaker 04

  rank. And like the, the, the, the promotion boards are kind of automatic. Like if so, if you get selected to go to CO, you're going. And then if you don't get fired during your CO tour, you're going to make those six. As they, as they say, if there's a band at the change of command, you're going to make those six. Ditto rewinding your XO tour. If you successfully continue your XO tour, you will make those five. I mean, it's kind of automatic. So it's these selection boards you have along the way. But, but on the way to that CO tour, you know, the training pipeline is about nine or 10 months between your last part of the job and when you take command. You know, you have three months of training in naval reactors and DC at the headquarters, naval reactors headquarters are the very,

• 36:58Speaker 04

  like you're literally taking classes and talking to the guys that designed the reactor. And that, and that, you know, are responsible for figuring out the procedures and everything. So if you have a question about asking the words, you can go talk to the guy that designed and, and resolve it. So really intensive training, four, eight hour written exams or multiple oral exam boards.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  Where you know, we get through all kinds of situations where you go to command. And then, um, then you go through what we call the submarine command course. Now, this, to be clear, this might have changed. This was, I'm talking 2013, 12 years ago, but I think it's pretty much the same. So submarine command course, you're spending a month in the books, learning about the SAR and fire control systems for the ship that you're going to go to. And then you're in, you're in trainers, simulators with other students, a bunch of guys that are PXOs and PCOs, perspective, XOs and COs that are going to boats. And then you go see as groups and you ride multiple boats. So you'll ride a boat for several days and then you'll transfer to another boat. And you, and you do all, every com- every combat or peacetime operation you can think of, you're doing on these ships.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  So you basically kind of get to be captain for a day. And then, as they say, drive it like you stole it. Cause then, you know, there's, there's a real CO that actually owns the boat and you kind of get to take the reins for 24 hours and, and practice, practice doing it. So then there's the Navy SEAL leadership course, you go to that too. Although compared to the other submarine training pipeline, that, that's a relatively tame course. So it is, it is part of the training. And then when you get to the ship, you have a 30 day turnover, turnover period with the outgoing CO. So you're on board for a month for you to actually take command, which is a much longer than I think most commanders do. And as they say, that's where I go ahead.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, please finish that up. Uh, yeah, finish up your thoughts.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. So that, that 30 day turnover period, you know, some might say that have been through it like it's kind of the longest 30 days of your life, uh, for both you and the outgoing guy. Because, you know, after a couple of weeks, you know, you don't have any authority, you know, you have zero authority until the guy says, so you say I relieve you. He says, I stand relieved. So you're not actually in charge of anything. You're just kind of watching, you're watching everybody that's busy. And after a couple of weeks, you know, the, the, the crew will be looking to the, see the current CEO, hey, what do you want to do about this or that? And he's kind of looking at you like, hey, man, this is, my event horizon ends in two weeks. So what, what do you want to do, you know? But, but at the same time, you're not actually in, in charge. So I think by the end of that period, you're both ready to get it over with.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Cause the outgoing guy wants, is ready to go.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  He's kind of had enough at that point. Um, so that it is kind of a long period. So when all that's said and done, I mean, I, I took command. Yeah, it was, it was like 11 months after I left my last job.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  You you mentioned the the idea of going from oh five to oh six is pretty pretty set as long as you don't like get fired when you're when you're a captain of a boat, right? So one of the things that we've like been told from sort of the infantry minded is that oh five to oh six can be very political for them. You know that that there's also a political game to be played a lot of times. Do you do you feel like in the in the submarine field that it's it's a bit more pure? That because you are so isolated at times and whatnot, that really it's more job based than than doing than playing the politics the right way?

• 40:30Speaker 04

  I'm not sure I would call it politics, you know, I mean, there are there are further selection boards, you know, like, so there is a major command selection board after your command tour. And so that's that's everybody who went who successfully completed command is going to make those sets, but they're not all going to be major commanders.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  So your ma- your major commanders are your submarine squadron commanders. So you own five or six boats and they're CEOs or submarine based CEOs or submarine tenders or the big training facilities. So there's there's major commands. So there may be, you know, there's the selection stuff isn't over yet at that point. So there may, I mean, if you want to call it politics, I mean, it is, I would say, I would call it more like reputation and and, you know, who you're best or not. No, what what's interesting I think about how things boil down for submariners on your fitness reports, for example, most of what matters is how are you ranked by your squadron? So so like, there isn't much competition.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  And what you see have like three department heads on the ship, there isn't that much competition between those three guys. I mean, there's they have three different jobs. They are kind of ranked against each other, but nobody's really paying attention to that. What they pay attention to, for example, is that like if you're a navigator, where are you ranked against the other navigators on the other ships?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  In the squadron. And so the squadron staff and the squadron commodore, they will issue a they will issue a ranking letter that ranks. Who are the top one, two, three navigators in this one, the top one, two, three EXOs, the top one, two, three COs? That is what goes into your fit reps and that is what the CO, EXO, major command selection board see. That's how you get chosen, whether you're going to be go on or not. Is that process? So is that process political? I mean, maybe it depends. I mean, again, people say it's political, but I mean, it can also be called reputation. It could be called a lot of things.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  It's fascinating. It's a, as far as being the sub captain, I know, like when we talk about like deployments and missions, that's very sensitive. Actually, some of, probably some of the deepest, well-kept secrets in the United States government is actually what you guys do at sea.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  But with that in mind, I mean, are you able to speak a little bit to sort of like the pressure that you're feeling as a captain on one of these submarines? Like the amount of different things you're having to think about at the same time? I mean, I must, it must be wild.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I mean, obviously you do different things depending on what part of the world you're in.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  So we can't say much about what we do on deployment. I mean, it's, they don't call, they don't call us the silent service for nothing. And so much of what you do, and obviously you do stuff that you can't talk about.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  I will say that, you know, in terms of that pressure, for example, so what I can say is, you know, I went, I went on deployment, documented that my ship went on deployment in 2014, 2015. We were over there for about six months in Western Pacific. And it's just really busy water space. There's fishing boats everywhere and lots of merchant ships. And it is just super duper busy. And so I felt like the entire time I was over there, you just can't ever let your guard down. You can't never be, you can never not be paying attention out of the corner of your eye to what's going on as long as you're over there. Cause it's just so busy.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  One of the, one of the things that we do when you're doing operations and that like, for example, in a tactically challenging operations is you have basically a, the EXO will kind of be the captain in your stead, you know, while you're sleeping, while you're sleeping. So. It's, you know, we have a term for the job that it takes, but it's basically your kind of duty captains, so to speak. So, um, so, so we, so you can get some sleep, the XO will take care of the normal, most things that would be, need to be reported to the CO, they will take those reports. Most things that require CO permission, they will grant that permission for the CO on the CO's behalf. So you can sleep, um, because one of you basically 24/7 has to be paying attention to what's going on.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Cause this is so busy and, and things can very quickly, um, you know, get interesting and you, what you don't want. Boring. You always want to be boring. Signing's almost never good in that, in that line of work. So, um, yeah, there's a lot of pressure and it, and it doesn't stop when you're in port. I mean, you know, but frankly, in many cases, I was more worried when I was in port than I was when I was at sea. Cause you're worried about your guys getting in trouble out of town. You're worried, you know, there, there's some piece of gear that's broken that you need to get fixed. So you can get back out and do your job. And there's all the parts here. How's the repair going, you know? And even when you're in port, you never really, um, get to really let your guard down. So I would tell you that, you know, when we threw the lines over back in Port Harbor, we came, came back from the planet.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  It was just such a relief to be back, uh, to where, you know, my old home for, and certainly like I tell you, it actually started before that. When the tugs hooked up to me, when they threw their lines over, I felt better because, you know, like in many cases in foreign ports, you never knew what you're going to get from tugs. You didn't know if they spoke English very well or not, you know, how, how are they going to operate? You know, what are their operational characteristics? How well do they understand your ship? And then we, I pull back into Port Harbor and there's the glorious sea tractor. You know, it is this, it's a multi-drive, multi-drive, like super powerful, US English-speaking cat, you know, pilot that knows Port Harbor, like the back of his hand, you know, my ship well.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  And it's like, okay, we're all, I'm, I'm safe. We're all safe. So that was a very, very nice feeling.

• 46:15Jack Murphy?

  I, and another one that I know this gets into some sensitivities too, but are you able to speak at all about the Russian or Chinese submarines and, you know, what their capabilities are? What the threat level is for like you guys as a American?

• 46:29Speaker 04

  Submarines? Yeah, I can talk to somebody about that. So we're fortunate in that there was a graph that the OSN ABLT was put out in 2015 that showed the relative noise data, noise characteristics of various adversary submarines, including Russian and Chinese ones at that point. And you can, so I could tell, I could point at that graph and say, Chinese submarines are noisy, or at least they were in 2015. And the same, the same basic classes are what they're still building to this day. Okay. I'm sure they may have been improvements to some degree, but the basic Type 93 Shang class SSM, that's what they're building.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  The Type 94 Gen class SSBN, that's what they've been building. So Chinese nuclear submarines, we could point at as, in our class, by the way, you can point at, I'd say they're, they're pretty noisy compared to Russian submarines, certainly, and compared to ours. Can you say why, why theirs are particularly noisy? Is it something with the propulsion technology that they just have?

• 47:33Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 47:47Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 47:58Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Developed?

• 49:02Speaker 04

  Well, I can tell you that open source entries will tell you that the Chinese, the nuclear power plant that is in Chinese submarines is a derivative of a Russian icebreaker nuclear power plant.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Which, you know, those were not built for sound silencing.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  It's just a icebreaker power plant. So you can imagine that for reasons probably associated with that, the power plant's just it's loud, it's loud. I mean, it just makes a lot of noise for that reason. Now, they are, we keep hearing every year that they're about to build an entirely, an entirely new class in China. And so that next class can be radically different and can be much quieter than the old ones were, which can make life much more difficult. Now, kind of diesel submarines, some of them can be quite quiet because they're, they don't have that big of a big power plant. You know, they have a battery, they're in some cases they're in a tender propulsion. So they can be very, as is known to be true for diesel submarines, well by, they can

• 50:05Speaker 04

  be very quiet for that reason.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  How do you see, you know, we, there was recently that issue with crew members on a naval vessel using Starlink, an unauthorized Starlink. Obviously, when you guys are at depth, like you're fine, but how do you see, you know, modern technology, a off the shelf in the hands of, you know, anybody can go purchase it, being a threat to, you know, the silent service, for instance?

• 50:42Speaker 04

  I think mostly it would be a matter of um something when you pulled into or you know the the guys on top side and turn their cell phone on, you know, because you can tell, you can tell everybody, hey, don't turn it, like, let's say you're doing something where you don't want somebody to notice that you pulled in somewhere, and you just go in to get parts or whatever, some brief stop, and you're not, nobody's getting off. You might want to not have anybody turn their cell phones off, for example, just in case somebody's tracking cell phones that would let them know, let somebody know that you had pulled into this port. So you can tell you through that, and you just never know when somebody's gonna, you know, surreptitiously turn on their phone anyways, because they think they know better.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  But the kind of thing we saw with Starlink, and there's not, we don't have to worry about that.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  Because it's a submarine, so you're from Starlink, I'm talking about nothing, you know, all the antennas that use it at Periscope depth, they're all Navy antennas, they're all, you know, now, obviously, you have to be concerned about, you know, somebody told their girlfriend where they're going, you know, you're not supposed to do that, humans are humans, and so there's always a possibility to offset, maybe, maybe, it's always, it's obviously not 100% always gonna be perfect, so, so that's the kind of, that's the kind of thing I'd probably worry about more.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:01Jack Murphy?

  And the other thing you had mentioned to us, I think, before we did, started the interview, was how easy it is to get fired as a submarine captain. You tell us a little bit about that, like, and I mean, we see with the, you know, surface fleet, you know, the Navy seems to fire those captains like it's going out of style. I mean, they don't, they don't really hesitate, and it sounds like it's even worse on submarines. I shouldn't say worse, I mean, I guess it's important to have accountability, but what are your thoughts?

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, so, so command is a privilege, you know, you're, there's no, not everybody gets to do it, they don't do it forever, and

• 52:41Speaker 04

  And so you you know, when you go to command, like if if you swap paint, or if you touch the bottom, or if flame shatters dies during maintenance, does it get electrocuted or whatever? You you were gonna get fired. Like, it doesn't doesn't really matter what the reasons are. You know, it doesn't. Like, if the ship, if the ship has a collision with somebody and you're in the rack, you're asleep, it doesn't matter, you're still gonna get fired.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  That is, that is the way the Navy views accountability. That you were the senior officer in charge, so it doesn't. Now, while all your more junior enlisted people might also be held accountable for if they didn't do their jobs. You're you're you know that you're done, so that like that. And that's just kind of the way it is. Like, you know, you just, that's that's part of your calculus. You understand that if you have a collision, you're done. You're done as CEO if you have a collision. A hundred percent. I mean, I've never seen anybody survive that.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  I have.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  On a on a surface ship, but I think I think that they had a sea daddy that that took care of it. It was crazy. Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  At least, at least I can say in the years of my career, I I don't know, I don't know of any submarine CEO in my career that touched the bottom or swapped paint that didn't get fired. Sometimes it took a little bit, you know, they did the investigation. But as I mentioned, yeah, before the show, like the CEO is literally the easiest person on a ship to fire because, like, let's say, let's say you're a CEO and you want to, you want to get rid of an department head or even a chief. You have to have documented, like, that that they, that you told them, here's what you're not doing right, and you gave them a get well plan, you know, a letter of instruction or whatever, and you counseled them, and, you know, multiple attempts failed. And then, once you do all that, you can put together a DS, just a DSC package.

• 54:34Speaker 04

  That stands for something for cause. Anyways, all paperwork involved. For you as the CO, if the command order decides I've lost confidence here and you're, you're gone. There's no, there's no DFC package. There's no, all I had to say is I've lost confidence in your ability to can. And you're done. So no paperwork required.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Would that be like, if that happened, would that be the end of their career? Is there a way for them to redeem themselves and future assignments? Or is that pretty much, they've fallen off the wagon in terms of like the promotion, uh, the timeline and that's it?

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. If you're relieved from command, you're, you've, you've made your final rank.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  I mean, you're not like fired, fired, like I get it. So like one thing I, I respect is that when civilians say like, you say something like you got fired, being fired in the building means like you lost your paycheck, right? And when you're fired, you don't lose your paycheck. You're still an O5.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  You're still, you're just going to go, like I say, you're going to hand out basketballs at the gym until you retire or whatever. You're, you're going to go, there's going to be some job you go to SaaS and, and maybe you'll do valuable work. Like maybe you'll do good things in that job. Cause I feel very talented, dedicated. Officers in many occasions, a bad day happens and just the stars align and was your day, wasn't your day? And doesn't mean they're not great people. They're not really, can't do good things. And quite frankly, I've seen, I've seen guys that I know got fired from command that have then gone on to really successful civilian careers.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  On the outside. So it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean you don't try your best. But it is, that's just the way it is. It's the way the Navy works.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so presumably you survived your time as sub captain. Uh, what was the next stop for you career wise after that command?

• 56:28Speaker 04

  So after that command tour, uh, I signed up for the, uh, so I applied for the Navy's fellowship program. So that's a, like a think tank fellows program. And I actually didn't get in initially. I was on the alternate list. Uh, and I actually was going to retire and go be an airline pilot.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Really?

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Yes. And I had gotten my pilot's license and, uh, and my instrument rating and really enjoyed it. And.

• 56:56Speaker 04

  I put in my retirement papers. I was gonna, I was at my change of command. I was gonna retire at my change of command. It was gonna be a combined ceremony. And then I was gonna follow my also active duty twice, a different ceremony. But I was gonna follow her. Because an airline pilot's a good, good job if you wanna commute, like you can live one place and and your job can be somewhere else. So that seemed like a good thing to do. And then after a couple of weeks of they turned down for the fellows program, I got selected off the alternate list to go be a Navy fellow at the Center for Inno-American Security, which is a really quality, really good quality DC foreign policy and defense related think tank.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  And so I said, all right, that sounds great. I can, maybe I can do something with that. And I pulled my retirement papers and went to CNAS as a Navy fellow.

• 57:50Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  And before I got there, I knew I wanted to focus on China because I had seen, again, from my time at the Halsey Alpha Group, the Naval War College, I had what I think was a little bit of the head of the curve, understanding of the military threat that China was gonna pose. Also from, I mean, my ship was a Pacific Fleet ship, so I'd been thoroughly briefed on all the things that PNA was, was doing and the progress they were making. So I was excited to go to that think tank and be able to apply some of what I knew and learn new things and really focus on, on helping to understand the China, the China, the military threat that was coming from China at that point. Starting to appear from China at that point.

• 58:37Jack Murphy?

  And so, I mean, there's a whole bunch of like subtopics under that we can talk to. But at what point did the Office of Net Assessment come up on your radar?

• 58:47Speaker 04

  So that was a couple of years later. So I did my thing at CNAS for a year and I wrote, I wrote some reports there. I first wrote a report about China's South China Sea, the South China Sea Islands, the big artificial islands they were building. So that one was, at that point, the kind of the party line was that those were not militarily significant facilities, at least with respect to the United States. So they were just an airstrip at a reef. And I'll never forget, when I was there, I started looking at Google Earth and looking at those things. And because I thought too, like, come on, it's just a reef

• 59:30Speaker 04

  with an airstrip on it. You know, I wonder what's up with these things. And at that time, CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, had been doing some great stuff with imagery. And it showed what they were building on these islands. And you could see these huge towers on each corner of the island with multiple places that looked like turrets had gone on them. And so I'm starting to think, maybe these things are a big deal. And then I measured one of them, I'd been mischief brief. And I measured the lagoon, it was like three or four miles across. And I thought, man, that is, that's really big. And so I went on a Google Earth, and I looked at the District of Columbia,

• 1:00:10Speaker 04

  and I looked at mischief briefs, walked into, I don't know, a copy of each. And I walked into the office of our Executive Vice President, Sean Brimley, who is now deceased, for FEDS. And, and I placed on his, on his desk, I said, this is the, one of those island airbases they built. This is the District of Columbia. And these were at the same scale. He was like, oh, my God, these things are huge. And so I wrote an article saying, as master of the obvious, these islands are huge. They are a big deal, and they matter militarily. Each one of them, treat them as a full-size airbase, because that's what they are. They have hardened, they have hangers, they have munition storage, they have hardened underground

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  fuel tanks. This is all being built at that time. 10,000-foot runways. They're full-size airbases. And I think that that's started to change the conversation a little bit.

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  I looked at the P L A rocket force, which again is some viewers may not be familiar with this. The P L A rocket force is an entire arm of the Chinese military that is built around long range pursuit and strike missiles, both nuclear and conventional. We can talk more about that later, but I was really fascinated with that and I got to learn a lot about them while I was there, wrote about, or wrote about the threat that they posed to our faces in Asia.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  What the so are during World War Two, like our war in the Pacific, moving across to Japan, it seemed like it was for a lot of atolls, a lot of inconsequential islands. Is that at all like reminiscent reflective on like these these artificial islands that China's building?

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  I know it's in some ways it's kind of similar and some ways it's pretty different. I mean,

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  they're definitely definitely they are mostly for peacetime. I mean, like, so let's say lots of viewers have said, well, I've seen on the news, these giant Chinese coastguard ships, water, you know, water cannons, Philippine boats, and, you know, the islands of those those ships are all operating out of those island bases. The not all, but a lot of them, that's one of the places they operate from. The all these Chinese maritime militia fishing fishing boats, they're not actually fishing, obviously. They're based out of those island bases. So they are crucial in peacetime. They are a crucial facility that supports long term operation in those in those waters, those contested waters. Whereas we just kind of,

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  you know, US will kind of like these episodic trips down there, show the flag, do phone ops, their navigation operations, whatever. But then we then we leave, right? And so then the the locals are kind of on their own again, where the Chinese are there all the time and are able to do that because of those bases. In wartime, those bases would help the Chinese to protect the South China Sea approaches to the to their major ports, Shanghai, Hong Kong, those control the approaches to those ports, which really matters. And their ability to maintain the their, you know, their supplies of oil and natural resources and all that open. So it's a little more of a static thing, you know, in wartime, can we roll them up and move across that part of the world? I mean, maybe.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  It's gonna be a very different challenge than the Japanese were. We have to remember with Japan was, even the Japanese knew that when they launched the attack on Pearl Harbor, that we had this salute tsunami of naval shipbuilding that had already started in 1938, 1940, a huge shipbuilding program. And those ships of ours were gonna come online 1942, 43, 44. They saw that coming. Our shipbuilding industry was way larger than theirs was, and that they, all they could do, hope was to hold on. Now, China's shipbuilding industry is literally hundreds of times larger than ours is.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  We built 70,000 tons of shipping in 2024, I believe, and China built 26 million tons of shipping. I mean, the numbers are astounding. The Japanese merchant marine that we sank in World War II, it's about 9 million tons of shipping when the war started. And we whittled it down to essentially nothing by the end of the war. China has, right now, more than 300 million tons of shipping. So it is, the numbers are incredible. It's a very different situation.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  What, can you tell us a little bit, because I've read bits and pieces of this, that our, like, our shipbuilding is really, it's kind of a travesty at this point, and it hasn't been addressed at all until recently.

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, it's like one of all. Let's put it bluntly. Um, so there's a lot of different reasons for why that's the case. I mean, in general, in the United States, the defense industrial base in general is having lots of issues because we have turned into mostly a service economy. So we're not necessarily the best anymore at building things. Um, more specifically, submarines force. So, you know, the end of the Cold War, we had this huge drawdown in the size of the Navy at the end of the Cold War. And so, while I can't speak to specifics on surface ships at that point, we basically stopped buying submarines for about a decade. We bought one or two submarines over a decade. And so the workforce at the strip yards that build our submarines just collapsed.

• 1:05:42Speaker 04

  And there was a lot of consolidation. And so we started building submarines again in early 2000s. But we are still paying for that, that kind of short sighted, huge contraction in a submarine industrial base. It's still taking time for us to do that. And what we have happening right now is we have this, at the same time that we're trying to build more attack submarines to be able to deal with China, because they are one of the few survivable platforms that can operate within range of China's missile forces on a regular basis in a wartime. We're also replacing all of our ballistic missile submarines, the Ohio class. So they're being replaced with the Columbia class.

• 1:06:24Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:06:39Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:06:50Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  Ballistic missile submarine, that is, that is the nation's. Number one highest priority building program. So it can it crowds out the attack submarines for that reason, because it has to be the priority. Because if you don't have nuclear deterrence at the other side, if you don't have a nuclear deterrent you can rely on, then you're you're out of Schlitz at that point. So that's and and and the submarines are the survivable part of our nuclear tribe. They're the part that 24/7, 365, there's multiple submarines out at sea, are the nuclear weapons that will never be taken by surprise, that have plenty of time to shoot back and have distribution of that. So there's this huge coming together of all of that together. So trying to build more attack submarines, both for us and also

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  now for our Australian allies, under the AUKUS program, in combination with the recapitalization and replacement of our Ohio class submarines. Now, to be clear, the SSBN program is not an expansion. There may be, there are sometimes anti-nuclear folks that will say, oh, we're expanding the nuclear tribe. No, we're not. We're replacing 14 boats with 12. Each boat only has 16 tubes instead of 24. The previous class, it's not an expansion. It's a like-for-like with fewer numbers, replacement of ships that just happen to be replaced because they're 42 years old.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  And are we, do we have the manufacturing ability to do this? Are we outsourcing a lot of this? What what is our government, like, what's our capability and our plan?

• 1:09:18Speaker 04

  I mean, so there's there's lots. There's a really very complex plans for making this happen. There is, there's not really much outsourcing in the sense of going overseas for any of this work, but they are building new factories, like Aus, I think Ausstal's shipbuilding just started to open a new factory down on the Gulf Coast, that is going to start to build modules that goes into submarines. So they are, there is a huge amount of investment in the US industrial base to try to make, to get these programs, keep, try to get them back on track. They're a little bit behind, some are more, some more than others, and try to get them going again. Things are a little different in the surface ship world. I think they're

• 1:10:00Speaker 04

  That our destroyer program is generally coming along pretty well, early break class destroyers. This is in contrast to the LCS, Ulterior Combat Ship, and the Zumwalt class, which both of which were disasters. Those were ships that, a little different flavor than the submarine contraction, is that the surface force, they kept building surface ships. But there was this decision, the path of the Cold War, we're going to build these ships that are going to operate close to shore. Probably not against the peer competitor. So we're going to have this transformation. We're going to have these lightly crewed, highly automated, multipurpose ships. And it was, it was a disaster. You know, LCS, we built two different classes of ships, totally different classes, which made no sense, I think.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  We made a lot of sacrifices that they can go really fast, even though they don't actually need to go fast for their missions. And then the Zumwalt class, we built three of them instead of building the thirty. So when you, when you, all of your development costs are crowded in the three ships, you cancel the rest of the class, and each one's worth six or seven million dollars.

• 1:11:04Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  And then you, and then you cancel, I think it's more than six or seven, it was just incredible amount. So it just kind of all went sideways. And, and, and of course, none of those ships are really, at least in their original form, are really appropriate for a peer competitor like China.

• 1:11:23Jack Murphy?

  Let's, you know, while we're on this topic of ships and shipbuilding, get a little bit deeper into the rocket issue that you, you talked about, how the rocket program is kind of the crown jewel of the Chinese military. And that would be the, you know, primary threat that I presume our navy would be facing in a potential war in the South China Sea.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  It would be one of them. I mean, so what the P L A rocket force does is, so first of all, it wasn't its own service until 2015. In 2015, Xi Jinping elevated the P L A rocket force to be equal to the other branches of the Chinese military. So it's equal now to the air force. It's equal to the armed, to the ground force and the navy.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  And what they've done that's remarkable is, you know, twenty, thirty years ago, all they had was nuclear weapons. So the P-20 rocket force was kind of equivalent to our, you know, we have ICBMs too. We have submarine ballistic missiles. They're all nuclear tipped. They're just for nuclear deterrence, right? That was what they had then. They also had a few very inaccurate conventional missiles, kind of like the Scuds that we saw in the, you know, in the Desert Storm, right? They're not really useful against military targets. Maybe you get lucky every once in a while and hit some pit of barracks or something, but they're not, they're conventional weapons. They're not, if they're not accurate and they're not nuclear, then they can't really do that much. What China brought to the table over the last 20 years is accurate ballistic missiles, like

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  accurate, single-digit number of meters, because we can see the impact points on their impact ranges where they can punch a hole in the top of a building or in an aircraft shelter or whatever, using a ballistic missile. That is a unique combination of, and a new combination of capabilities, because now it means it can reach out 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 miles and strike targets with precision. And this is, to be clear, this is not what we saw from Iran when they struck, right? Iran's weapons were not very accurate. There weren't any of them. They didn't really, as far as I'm aware, don't really have any ability to get around ballistic missile defenses. China is

• 1:13:29Speaker 04

  far more capable than that. And the P-20 rocket force is, that's what they own. And there's no, there is no equivalent service in the US military that does that. We have ICBMs in the hand with the Air Force, but they're all nuclear tipped. The Army, the Army is now starting to have some long-range conventional ballistic missiles, the J-10 Typhon system, you know, that's something, but the numbers are very small. They're still, they've been in development. I think there's a few deployed operationally, but they're very small numbers, as opposed to The P L A rocket force, five hundred intermediate range ballistic missiles that can reach long, that are almost all conventional, and they also have anti-ship capabilities.

• 1:14:13Speaker 04

  They also can be swapped for anti-ship warheads. They have thirteen hundred medium range ballistic missiles now, according to the D O D, the last China military account report. They can strike all of Japan essentially, and the Philippines. I mean, you know, it's like, what else will these things form other than our bases in Asia?

• 1:14:31Jack Murphy?

  Right. I think we fired a couple of JASMs at Uncle Assad just to prove that they work. But the number of them, yeah, aren't the numbers we have that are published, it's like in the hundreds?

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  Of which ones?

• 1:14:45Jack Murphy?

  The JASM?

• 1:14:46Speaker 04

  Uh, well, JASM is a air-launched cruise missile, I believe, it comes off airplanes. So, they got those two. Trust me, the P L A, the P L A Air Force has also those cruise missiles too.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  So, out of curiosity, and something we've talked about on the show before, is the level of Chinese espionage and our inability to stop it in the States, and how really the Chinese don't have to, they don't really have to have a strong development program, because anything that's developed in the US is immediately in the hands of the Chinese. Is that something that you've seen? Is that something that you've spoken to? Is that something you believe? Can you give us like, basically, your take on that?

• 1:15:33Speaker 04

  So, espionage certainly is a very real thing. We have seen, in the last couple of years, we've seen multiple instances of, in some cases, service members that have been caught spying from the Chinese. Certainly, there's been penetration, in particular, of US Department of Defense contractors have been penetrated by the Chinese. We have a full typhoon thing that's happened more recently. And so, for sure, Chinese cyberpenetration of US organizations is a huge problem. What I would say is becoming less of a problem is, for many years, we had this impression that they were mostly copying our stuff,

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  right? So, the V-20 helicopter looks kind of like a Blackhawk, their J-35 looks kind of like an F-35, although it's not the same. There are some major differences. It's not a copy, but it is similar looking.

• 1:16:33Speaker 04

  So there have been cases where they were, and quite frankly, a lot of their weapon systems are Russian derived, or copies of Russian weapons. That's becoming less true now. So China is now, they're now innovating, they're doing their own things. So you have the J thirty six, the new delta wing, huge long range strike fighter. That doesn't look like anything we have. You have the, um, the new invasion barges that, that make the Gaza floating pier, like a bunch of tinker, tinker toys.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  They have the Renhai cruiser, that's probably the most powerful surface combatant on the planet at this point. That doesn't look like anything the US has. Um, you have a new class of submarines, the type forty one. This is one that, um, the Department of Defense says, actually the first one sank in pier last year. I recall this, they also said it was like a hybrid nuclear diesel, uh, type propulsion system, first of its kind in the world. You have the type seventy six, the amphibious assault ship that has catapult. Never seen that before. Amphibies don't have catapults, and anybody else's navy, so they can launch its own drones, have its own strike, strike aircraft as part of amphibious assault ship. So there's, there's a lot of things, and that's not to mention the, again,

• 1:17:47Speaker 04

  hundreds and hundreds of anti-ship ballistic missiles, which the Houthis had a few of those that they've, they've launched in their ships, but they're way behind the Chinese, and I'm sure nowhere near as sophisticated. So the Chinese invented that weapon system. Nobody else on that planet had anti-ship ballistic missiles where they did. So the days of them just copying what we have, that was true for a while, but it is very much less true now.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  And how do you think the US, uh, can keep up or match? Because we, we used to be known for our innovation, right? Like, we used to be on the cutting edge of military tech. Are we still, have we fallen behind? Like, what's your, what's your sort of assessment of that?

• 1:18:32Speaker 04

  I would like to think that things are turning around some. I know we have certainly tremendous effort at DOD to try to innovate faster, to develop reformed acquisition processes, to come up with kind of incubators for new technologies, to try to embrace uncrewed systems and smaller systems and more dispersion dispersed operating forces to try to get away from those small numbers of large spaces and large platforms. So I think there is an effort for sure. Is it as urgent as I think it needs to be? I don't think so. I think it's hard to get away from a lot of entrenched

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  to be to some degree entrenched officer communities that are used to doing things one way or one way as well as congressional interest groups and defense crimes that are invested in things being the way they are. So I do worry that it's been cathartic and will have to happen to really break loose of

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  old ways of doing business.

• 1:19:41Speaker 04

  But, you know, we certainly can innovate. I mean, there are incredible things we're doing, I'm sure with AI and machine learning.

• 1:19:52Speaker 04

  There are big things for games for sure, but I mean, yes, it's not all a good news story. That's for sure, too.

• 1:19:58Jack Murphy?

  One of the topics that you mentioned that I'd like to make sure we hit up is that you had written an article where you found an impact range that's modeled off of an American naval facility. Can you tell us sort of what that what that was and what it means strategically, like what the conclusion was from this?

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  So, yeah, this was again, this was during my time at CNAS the first time. To be fair, I'm back at CNAS after I retired and now. So I'm Sir Fellow at CNIS, so affiliation with them to this day that I reestablished after I retired from the Navy. But so what I found there was I was looking at Google Earth and I knew I was interested in the P L A rocket force and seeing what they were doing. And I found on the internet the coordinates to one of their impact ranges in Western China is where they this is this is where they test the missiles targets like they they they shoot them from Eastern China, they go all over China and the impact in the desert in Western China.

• 1:20:58Speaker 04

  And so I found the coordinates for one of these impact ranges and I'm looking at it and I'm seeing some shapes and a fake fake so the mock runway and airfield and you could see

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  hardened aircraft shelters. And so you can see them testing against various targets that people had seen before. And that were, you know, kind of thing you would expect that they were working on. But then I saw this shape. It was like a long skate, a long shape and the multiple multiples of them. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, is that is that a ship? Is that like in a shoreer? And so I measured this thing and it's about 520 feet long, something like that. I wonder how big a US Army Army Bird class destroyer is. It was basically the same size. Like, oh, this is the ship. These are ship shaped targets they're shooting at, presumably for like Warhead, I would guess it was for Warhead terminal seekers, like electro optical seekers or some kind of image recognition thing.

• 1:21:55Speaker 04

  Okay, but it could be somebody else's destroyer too. And the other countries have destroyers that size. Also noticed this black line that was going around these shapes, kind of a black outline. And I thought something in the back of my head, but it kind of reminds me of the Inner Harbor in Yokosuka, Japan. That's the headquarters in the Southern Fleet is where a carrier is based out of. And so I looked in on Google Earth and I found Yokosuka. And I looked at this impact range and they were a mirror image that the the black line on the chart on the on the ground in in Western China was a mirror image of the Inner Harbor Yokosuka. And you could that articles, I wrote an article about that, it got a lot of attention. Because people like, look, because if you think about it, they're practicing on multiple ships

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  in a port. Well, how do you catch multiple ships in a port? You strike by surprise, right? That that's how you do that. Otherwise, they're going to be at sea if they have they have warning that an attack's coming. So here they are practicing, essentially practicing what looks like surprise attacks against a specifically a US face. So that that got a fair bit of attention. Now, in a couple of years after that, I also found that the same impact range, a mockup of an E3 AWACS aircraft, so there's a spitting image of an E3 AWACS, unmistakably that that airframe. We're the only country in the Western Pacific that operates those. So that was clearly about us. And then later, a year or two later, I had a Japanese reporter reach out and say,

• 1:23:25Speaker 04

  hey, I found this airplane target. Can you tell me at a different impact range, the same idea? So you tell me if you recognize it. And so I look at this, and again, it's an AWACS airplane, you know, with a big radome on top, big round radome. This only has two engines, which I thought, hmm, that's weird. AWACS are AWACS have three. And I look at it and sure enough, there's like one airplane, only one airborne early warning aircraft on the planet that has those, and that's the Japanese. It's the E767. It's only operated by the Japanese. This kid was like a finance reporter for for for Nikkei Asia, and he just was interested in this stuff. And I said, oh, my friend, you got a story in your hands. Here the Chinese are testing against a specifically Japanese target at their impact ranges. So you can see some interesting things checking those out.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  And I know that you, you know, your specialty is sort of the the military side of it. So I don't want to, you know, kind of put you on the spot talking about economics or anything like that. But like some of the arguments we've heard against China utilizing some sort of first strike or actually wanting to engage in near peer warfare, is there economic investment and reliance on the United States, things like that? To the best of your ability, or however you're comfortable, can you speak to what might be right, wrong about that? Or what you're seeing in sort of China's movement towards a more military style approach to the United States?

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  Well, so I would say that, I mean, I agree that I think if China could get what it wanted without fighting a war with the United States, it would want to do so, for sure. I mean, I agree with this, that ideally would be what they would want to do to accomplish their goals, you know, reunification with Taiwan. Not that Taiwan has ever been part of the People's Republic of China, mind you. They might say that.

• 1:25:21Speaker 04

  Whether it's seething Taiwan or whatever, they would prefer to do that without fighting the United States. I think that, you know, one of the things they may hope by building up this really potent and the goal to being intimidating force is that I think they would probably hope that the US would choose not to get involved, that we would decide the costs were too high.

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  But I wouldn't take too much comfort from the idea that there could be an economic cost for them for a couple of reasons. One is that Xi Jinping, as a leader, has made crystal clear that he is willing to take economic hits on China's behalf for the security interests of the CCP or the Chinese Communist Party. We have seen him cut down Chinese billionaires to size. He refuses to.

• 1:26:13Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:26:28Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:26:39Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a. Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star Trust Pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:27:38Speaker 04

  They're apparently willing to just watch TikTok and go just disappear rather than sell it.

• 1:27:44Speaker 04

  There's a number of different signals that we can see from now that he's not, he's not, he is a Marxist. He really is. Like, he's a believer. And if you, if you give him the choice of, well, I can reunify with Taiwan, and actually, if it works, and maybe I take a 10% economic hit that I could gain back in a few years, he's going to take that hit. He doesn't care if it costs thousands of dollars. He doesn't look at things, I think, the same way as democratic leaders do. You have to remember also, he's an authoritarian leader. He doesn't, he doesn't have to pay attention to what his people want to some degree. Likewise, we've seen the kind of seen this before. There were people in 1914 who wrote quite confidently that there was no possibility that the English and the Germans would go to war because the markets are too intertwined,

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  right? Everybody would lose too much money. And what happened anyways? I mean, so the Kaiser, again, an authoritarian leader with a rising militaristic power, makes the decision to, you know, get involved in a war that's going to cost his people. But I mean, they, he decided to do it anyways. So, so I do agree that there are lots of good reasons for, for them not to embark on military aggression, but they're putting pretty tremendous resources into building the capabilities, the kind of capabilities you would build to be able to do it.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  And then, you know, we talked a little bit before the show about the Belt and Road project and things like that. Can you speak to that and how that aids their economic military expansion?

• 1:29:12Speaker 04

  So the thing you have to remember about China is that the key underpinning, one of the key underpinnings for China's growth and military capabilities is what they call military civil fusion, so MCF. So this is their idea that they're gonna, they're gonna leverage their civilian, industrial and scientific and infrastructure investments to also support military purposes and where, and Belt Road's part of that. So people will say, for example, oh, look, the US has 800 bases around the world, which by the way, that number is complete nonsense.

• 1:29:53Speaker 04

  So if you just go look at on Twitter, look for me and bases and you'll see I, that number, the guy who did the study like counted, like so for example, there was a dog cemetery that was kind of as a base. If you actually go into the spreadsheet, I think I used it, create that list, like naval based army, like 12 bases. It's just completely ridiculous. Do we have hundreds of bases? 800? Not even close. So anyways, they don't have that many official overseas military bases. They have one in Djibouti. They just built one for the Cambodians and re-in Cambodia. What they do have is probably dozens of these Belt and Road facilities

• 1:30:33Speaker 04

  where they built a port, they built an airfield, they built a highway. And so you've got all these key facilities all around the world that are built by Chinese companies to Chinese standards. Who knows what else they baked into the, to these facilities? There may be monitoring surveillance, that maybe they can shut trains down if they want to, maybe they can see what we're doing. So, so they are ostensibly civilian, but they're, but they're built by Chinese companies. What you have to remember is that in particular, Chinese state-owned enterprises are not normal companies. They are arms of the CCP. And one way you're gonna see this, that I always find interesting.

• 1:31:13Jack Murphy?

  The bigger ones also have an actual, you know, PRC representative Communist Party representative like in the corporation.

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I was gonna explain, see, there are, there's many times I have found different Chinese state-owned enterprises. Where if you go look at the English language version of the company website, and this is like not a communication construction company, it's the construction company that's gonna contract us all over the world. They also are the guys that built the South China Sea Islands. You've got Costco shipping, which has, you know, shipping, you know, there are ports all the time. You see these companies and you look at the English language version of the website, it looks totally normal. It's able to do salation plants in Kosovo, we, you know, we're working on getting, helping our customers. Here's our, here's our chairman, vice chairman, yada, yada, yada. It all looks very normal.

• 1:32:04Speaker 04

  Then, if you go look at the Chinese, Chinese language version of the website and just machine translate it, there will be an entire section, and there's an R and A name, this like the party building section, where it talks about the company news now is Xi Jinping thought, and party members did this, and party members did that. And the org chart that used to say chairman, vice chairman now shows party secretary, deputy party secretary, and it's like crystal clear that all of this company leadership is dual-headed as CCP members, that the company is, are, they are an arm of the CCP, that they are committed, like their, their leadership goes, and no kidding, like goes to party meetings and studies Xi Jinping thought, and, I mean, they are, they are, they are arms of the CCP.

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  And it's for many of these state-owned enterprises now. It's not true of all Chinese companies, like some are just kind of private companies, but many of the ones we care about that are doing infrastructure, shipping, transport, they absolutely are dual-purpose companies in many cases.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  And, and Thomas, to, to add to that, because this is something that I think that it can be alarmist or actually realist, and, and I don't know what the answer is, but Chinese company, control of some of our ports, Chinese companies buying up, you know, land around military bases, are those innocuous? Are those just people participating in capitalism, or are those things that we should be worried about?

• 1:33:33Speaker 04

  Uh, I'd say a little of both. I mean, so there, I'm not, I would never say like that every invest, every Chinese investment in the United States is, is some threatening thing. It's not. I mean, there. Let's face it. I mean, we, we run a huge trade deficit with them. They get, they have a lot of dollars in their hands, uh, more than the flow, the flows are the way. So those dollars have to come back. And so they use them to buy things over here, whether it's treasury bills or property or whatever. And I'm sure in many cases it may be innocent.

• 1:34:07Speaker 04

  But I, I think there's certainly been plenty of cases where it doesn't seem like a set innocent. Like why did this happen to buy property in these, these locations? You know, it can, can get quite fishy.

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  So, uh, as for ports, I mean, I, I really do, I do think that there is a strategic plan on the part of China to dominate the port sector, to dominate shipbuilding. It's, I think it's good for them economically, but I think it's also, it helps them in the long run on a very much a, you know, we're going to run the world someday. I mean, people shouldn't understand like. China, China is by every measure but one, they are the premier maritime power in the history of humanity. They are by far the largest shipbuilders. They have the largest merchant marine. They have by far the world's largest fishing fleet. By far the world's largest coast guard now. They now have a navy that has the most ships in the world. It has more ships than the US Navy.

• 1:35:04Speaker 04

  There's only one measure and that is sheer naval tonnage. And that's because the average US Navy ship is bigger than the average Chinese Navy ship. But they are catching up there. So I've done the math. And over the last decade, on a tonnage basis, China has also outbuilt the US Navy by about 50%. So they are, they're catching up there. So, so they're the world's largest trading nation. They have the most ships. We should expect they'd have the, own most of the ports too. It's just, it's all connected.

• 1:35:34Jack Murphy?

  One of the things that you mentioned before we started the interview is that you know kind of the topic or a topic you're focused on is you know the things we've been talking about but leading into how do we avoid going to war with China and so I'd like to kind of specifically put our finger on that topic and ask you know how do we deter a war with China I'd like to avoid World War III I'm sure many other people would too and how do you think we're doing with that like what grade would you give us so far as the United States trying to accomplish that?

• 1:36:06Speaker 04

  So yeah so what I had mentioned earlier was like since I retired from the Navy it's something like my number one goal is to do whatever I can to help avoid help us to avoid a war with China because I think it would be you know one of the greatest disaster in the history of humanity probably maybe a second world war might still be who knows it'll be close it's super bad so different people have a lot of different ways they that they might want to go about that there are some folks they may call themselves their trainers sometimes who would choose to maybe make accommodations with China you know we'll let you have a sphere of influence.

• 1:36:49Jack Murphy?

  Panda huggers.

• 1:36:51Speaker 04

  Your words.

• 1:36:54Jack Murphy?

  What did you say panda huggers?

• 1:36:57Speaker 04

  I mean I'm gonna take it face value that Americans that represent recommend those kinds of measures or that they're honest people that they really do what's best but I disagree with the method I don't think that's the way to prefer not to do that in part because you don't know where they're gonna stop I mean like you gotta understand and I don't mean like China's gonna invade the United States I'm not saying anything like that I'm not worried about an invasion of the United States by the Chinese but what I will say is that a world that's the way that we want it where people speak out about human rights that people speak out about democracy that is not a world that's safe

• 1:37:39Speaker 04

  for the CCP they don't want anyone in any other country to tell them it's to tell them that it's wrong for them to not let their people vote to tell them that it's wrong to suppress human rights and then it's not a world I want to live in where we're not able to say those sorts of things. We don't have to guess that that's how they would be about it because they already did it to Australia a few years ago. They they inflicted trade restrictions on Australia because supporting think tanks were saying nasty things. They they basically had a list of demands. You need your politicians need to keep their mouths shut. Your think tanks need to not speak up about this and that. Stop talking about the Uyghurs. I mean, Australia would have to not be a free country more to be able to make the Chinese happy.

• 1:38:21Speaker 04

  And we should expect to see that kind of thing continue on a greater scale. So that's not a world that I want to I want to live in. So I don't think that's the answer to avoid a war is to give them what they want. Because we have to also remember that if China really does gain naval superiority, they will have the ability to coerce our allies. So you've got to remember all of our allies in the Western Pacific are all island nations. South Korea might as well be. They've got ocean on three sides and Kim Jong-un on the north. They're all dependent upon maritime trade. So if China has naval superiority and can cut off that trade, then their economy is even at the pleasure of the CCP. And that's not a world I want to be a part of. So how do I think we deter China?

• 1:39:04Speaker 04

  I think we have to, we, what I've said in testimony several times, is that we have to create uncertainty in the in the minds of the Chinese China's leaders that their military action will succeed. That's the only way to deter them. You can't just inflict costs. Like if you if you say, hey, we're we're gonna inflict costs and create off-ramps. So we're gonna Yeah, they're willing to absorb costs. Yeah, then they take those costs. Okay, if if you if you hang a price tag on Taiwan, he's gonna pay, he'll probably pay it. Yeah. If he thinks it's it's gonna cost a trillion dollars or two trillion dollars or whatever. Hey, I don't think he would, if he knew that we were gonna stand aside, I think he would pay that price tag.

• 1:39:46Speaker 04

  So you can't just make it costly. You have to make them think we're not sure this is gonna work, that we this may not work. So how do we do that?

• 1:39:56Speaker 04

  I think there's a lot of things you could do. I mean, the good news for us is that invading Taiwan would be really hard. I mean, if these assaults are very challenging, you have to have complete air-enabled superiority to do it. You can't have anybody shooting at ships of these assault ships on their way in. You can't have fighters coming in. So they have to have complete superiority to do it. So it's a high bar to do that. So, you know, I think it takes lots of survivable anti-ship weapons, so anti-ship cruise missiles, mines. And those things have to be survivable on a day-to-day basis. Because China is obsessed with striking by surprise. And it's not, I'm not talking just here about what I saw on Google Earth.

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  If you read Chinese doctrine, go read the 2006 science of campaigns and just go Ctrl+F and search for things like surprise, suddenness. They mention it dozens of times in the documents. They are obsessed with striking by surprise. So if all your missile trucks are all in a parking lot somewhere, guess what? You're probably not going to get to use them 15 minutes into the war. If you have, if you're counting on minefields, if you haven't already laid those minefields, you're never going to get to lay them. You know, like, people say, well, say, well, why don't we mine the Taiwan Strait? Well, so like Taiwan has bought mine landships. They look cool. They go fast, whatever.

• 1:41:19Speaker 04

  But if China has decided they're going to invade Taiwan, they're not going to watch the Taiwanese lay the minefield that's going to stop them. So all of this stuff has to happen at peace time. Our air bases, our aircraft have to be dispersed on a day-to-day basis, or they will be destroyed on the ground. China has more than enough missiles to do it, partly because we have not harmed their air bases and they have. I just released the whole report a couple of months ago about airbase harming. They built hundreds of new hardened shelters at their air bases. We built 22 in the whole region, and most of them are out of range. I did some math. China has...

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  Or enough concrete, building hardened shelters, adding ramp area to airbases, adding runways, that you could pave a four-lane interstate highway from Washington DC to Chicago. Over the last 10 years, that's how much they've done. So, so those are the kinds of things we need to do to be ready to prevent this conflict from breaking out.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  The, so, in addition to just the, the hard aspects of warfare, when you look at the soft, at the propaganda at China's, I think, really successful sort of propaganda efforts within the United States and whatnot, whether it's through social media or whatever, and a lot of people who are lining up in support of China, in support of 15 minutes cities, things like that, are there ways that we can combat that without, without like, giving up who we are, without giving up the First Amendment, without, you know, becoming a country that we don't want to be?

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, you could start, well, for example, you could start with enforcing the TikTok ban, so not having, not having a Chinese, a Chinese company with direction from Beijing, controlling the algorithm that decides what people are going to see in their social media feed, that, because to me, that's what this is all about, like, I don't care about China getting, I mean, I know it's bad, but I'm not worried about China getting like, personal information about Americans from TikTok, like, they don't, they don't really care about, and I'm not that worried about them knowing your, you know, where you live or whatever, what I care about is what, is if China's the one deciding what it is that you're going to see, and what, you know, so, so if you have a crisis breakout, that China, you know, China be the one to decide what messaging the American public

• 1:43:43Speaker 04

  is getting, that is the last thing we want to have happening, and that's why TikTok cannot be controlled from China, we cannot let that happen, like, one of the major sources of information for our people, that's step one, so let's, let's enforce the law that was already passed, that's already, oh, by the way, in case folks haven't noticed, I did the math yesterday, the 75-day extension that President Trump gave them runs out on Saturday, so we'll see what happens with that, but, so that's, that's one thing we can do, we need to enforce, you know, foreign agent registration requirements, you know, some of that was starting to happen, people starting to get in trouble for that, that's good. We can't, we can't shut down foreigners kind of or anything. I don't, that's not, I don't think

• 1:44:28Speaker 04

  that's a good idea for our future for, you know, almost so much of our best innovators and the people that drive the industry that allow, gives us the income we need to buy, you know, to fund our defense, a lot of this immigrants. So I don't want someone to do that, but it is a real challenge. And, but we faced this challenge before, right? I mean, during the Cold War, we had, we had an open society relatively compared to the Soviets and we still won.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  So it is, it is possible.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Hey, what do you, how do you feel about like, for instance, you know, American, you know, high-power American lawyers representing like DGI drones against the government and things like that? Is that part of the American process? Is this something that needs to be looked at more as a national security issue?

• 1:45:13Speaker 04

  I mean, I never felt a problem with the lawyer's representatives. I mean, every, every entity in the United States, you know, that's the way our system's supposed to work. And no matter what you did, or you deserve the right to a lawyer. I mean, ever since John, since John Adams, you know, defended the guys, the three, the British soldiers that, that in the Boston massacre,

• 1:45:34Speaker 04

  that's a key part of who we are as Americans. And so I don't, I mean, this is my, this is my own, I go out to dinner with the guys that do that.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:45:41Speaker 04

  I mean, I think they have, they have a legal right to, to pay people to defend them in court.

• 1:45:48Speaker 04

  You know, but, but I think there, there can and should be limits on, on what, you know, I know there are, I'm trying to get a little easier with legal, you know, legal stuff.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  You know, there could, there obviously should be some limits on foreign money being used to, to conduct influence operations in the United States. I'll just, I'll just leave it at that.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Fair enough. Yeah.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Look, Thomas, thank you very much for this interview and, and sharing your, your expertise with us. Um, is there anything that I didn't ask? Or do we, and do we have questions for Thomas?

• 1:46:21Speaker 05

  From Marcelo?

• 1:46:24Speaker 05

  Are there any differences in the day to day and culture from attack versus missile subs?

• 1:46:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's a very different mission. I mean, so, you know, as opposed to missile subs, I'd say hide with pride, right? So your job is to remain undetected so that you're available and survivable to be able to launch missiles. So that's a bit different than attack submarines, which are, you know, forward leaning, forward deployed, in many cases, multipurpose. And sometimes you might get detected doing it. Like, if you start sinking ships, you're probably, again, there's a good chance you may be detected doing it. So it's a little different mission set. Yeah, I think attack submarines are kind of a little more, a little more schwashfuckling, so to speak, you know, pointy end of the stick type platforms.

• 1:47:11Speaker 04

  However, doesn't mean that being an SSBN sailor is easy. It's, you know, obviously nuclear weapons are very zero defects, has to be a hundred percent ready every time on a mission. So it's certainly enormously important. One key difference between the platforms is that missile boats have two crews. So you have a blue crew and a gold crew. That allows the ship to be at sea more of the time. So basically, you come in and swap out the crews, do some maintenance, swap out the crews. And so one crew gets to wave goodbye to the boat, it goes out to sea with the other crew.

• 1:47:44Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:47:59Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:48:10Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:48:41Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch. OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  For, that's a big quality of life difference. I'll tell you that much, you know, to be in that off group period when you don't have a boat that you're worrying about all the time. That is a, that is a significant improvement, which is why, you know, when I finished my first tour, Division Officer Tour, before I even signed up to go back to sea, I wanted to end riding. That was the ones that I was just being, because I'd been, I'd been rode hard and put away wet on my, on my, my first tour. And I wanted that, a little bit more relaxed lifestyle.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bet.

• 1:49:42Speaker 05

  Another one from M. Corbin. What were their best and worst meals on the boats?

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  Let's see, so there's kind of a routine to get in. So you have Friday afternoon, Friday lunch of sliders, you know, so burgers and fries and chocolate chip cookies and ice cream.

• 1:50:02Speaker 04

  Saturday night, it's a pizza night. And so, you know, and sometimes like the people make the pizza, sometimes the officers will make the pizza. You know, sometimes you'll have different folks make the pizzas. And it's generally quite good. Oftentimes Saturday night's poker night, you know, so guys will play poker in the wardrobe.

• 1:50:21Speaker 04

  Sundays, sometimes surf and turf. So, you know, crab legs and steak, generally, generally steak dinner Sunday night. And then Taco Tuesday, you know, you got fajitas and tacos and whatnot on Tuesday. It's very easy to get fat on a submarine.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:36Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  You know, one of the things that we had always, because I was a hard hat diver and we dove on some of the subs. And one of the things that they had said is that like the chow on subs was always top notch. And they brought in the best like cooks that the Navy had to offer just because it was a major morale point. Would you agree or disagree with that?

• 1:50:59Speaker 04

  I do think the food is, my understanding is quite a bit better, but I think the reasons might be a little different. One is you just get more money per person. So because you get a certain amount of food money that the supply officer can spend on ingredients per person. And it's more on submarines because it's considered to be hardship duty. So your supply officer has a little more money to spend on the ingredients as part of it. But I would say probably one of the biggest reasons why the food is better is because it's all the same food for everyone. So on a surface ship, for example,

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:35Speaker 04

  The crew could, you know, you have like an officer's mess and you have a chief's mess and you have a enlisted mess. And so it's different cooks looking at different food for the different groups. In a submarine, it's the same food. So if the food sucks, the captain eats the food that sucks.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 1:51:53Speaker 04

  Gets to hear about it. So on a submarine.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, on a sub, there's no officer's mess.

• 1:51:59Speaker 04

  There is an officer's mess, but it's the same food. So it's literally, so it's coming off the same line. It's all that's happening is that it goes into a little silver dish. You know, and you've got a guy that brings it into the wardrobe and you pass it around. So the only difference is that's probably colder is the officer food as opposed to coming hot off the line.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 1:52:21Speaker 04

  But it is the same food. So if what the E3 is eating is bad, then what the captain's eating is bad too. And then correct action will be taken.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  Right. Fascinating.

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  That's probably the biggest factor, I think.

• 1:52:34Speaker 05

  Uh, we got a couple more from Sim. Uh, which is more realistic, quote unquote, portrayal of life on a submarine Crimson Tide or the hunt for Red October?

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  Or Das Boot.

• 1:52:47Speaker 04

  So, um, no, they're kind of all a little different. Um, I mean, I don't think, I mean, how far October isn't really betray life that much in a submarine. Although you do have a John B, who was an E three, I think, mouthing off to the chief of the boat, which is probably not very accurate in that sense. Um, or Crimson Tide, I mean,

• 1:53:14Speaker 04

  there was a lot of, um, there's some realism there, some of it, obviously some of it wasn't, not all realistic. I mean,

• 1:53:21Speaker 04

  and things have changed since then.

• 1:53:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, like, like Denzel is jogging in the submarine for P T at one point, isn't he?

• 1:53:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, like you can't, you can't run around.

• 1:53:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it doesn't work.

• 1:53:32Speaker 04

  There's a, there's a, they have a treadmill. Um, so, and, and, and actually that to rewind a bit, that's one of the benefits of an S S D N is a lot more exercise equipment. Cause S S D N would be way roomier. There's a much larger ship. So you have like a little gym in this department where you have like a treadmill, electrical, on a, on a bliss on this attack submarine, you know, your treadmill is outboard the reduction gears in the engine room. It's like a pipe right in front of your face. And, you know, you're running China. It's, it's, it's a much more, uh, cramped spaces, but, uh, I, I don't know. I'm not sure that answers the question. I mean, my understanding of probably the most realistic submarine movie is probably Dust Boot. And my, no, I wasn't on a, on a World War Two submarine, so I don't know, but my impression is that's probably the most accurate.

• 1:54:18Speaker 05

  Cool. Uh, from Big Tuna, uh, which is hilarious. What dynamic of subsurface nuclear warfare has grown significantly in the last decade? What's fallen off?

• 1:54:30Speaker 04

  Um, well, and I think, I think as in, as if true in many other parts of the military, uncrewed systems are becoming a much bigger deal. Now, those are nuclear, they're, well, at least not ours. There's a record one that's very nuclear now, but, um, R U U Vs are all, they're all electronic or diesel electric. So that's a really growing part of undersea warfare is, is those and also UAVs that can be launched by submarines. So the ability to send UAVs up to give you targeting information or whatever.

• 1:55:08Speaker 04

  That being said, in some ways, there's not quite as much change as in other parts of the of the military. So, for example, if you if you read about quadcopters in Ukraine, you know, I've had an article about those and ninety-nine percent of them only go about twenty kilometers, you know, that they can reach that far because they're limited by line of sight communication. So most of what you see isn't very long range. If you look at the ocean, twenty kilometers is not very far.

• 1:55:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:55:34Speaker 04

  It's not much of the Pacific Ocean. Quite frankly, in the submarine force and also in the surface Navy, we've dealt with drones for generations. We call them anti-ship cruise missiles. That's kind of the original, you know, one-way attack drone or homing torpedoes. There's a kind of a U U U attitude, so to speak. So that's probably the biggest area of change, I would say, is cruise systems.

• 1:56:01Speaker 05

  All righty, we have one more from AttackSquirrel. What role do autonomous platforms from companies like Anagro General Dynamics play? Are they a danger to our own forces or allies? Examples such as DARPA stingray?

• 1:56:17Speaker 04

  Uh, so if so, in terms of danger, I mean, so the Chinese are definitely working on cruise systems in a big way. They have some pretty advanced platforms that they're working on, long-range aircraft, U U D's have been spotted on the pier. There's not a lot of details at this point, but China has a very robust, well, I mean, they are the world's largest drone actors by far. I mean, by far and away, they build most of the world's drones. So in that sense, they're going to be a superpower in the in that kind of that kind of drone warfare. How much of a threat are they? So if we're talking about the undersea in particular, I think sometimes the threat from U U D's to submarines can

• 1:56:59Speaker 04

  be a little can be a little overblown, maybe, because it's just physics. I mean, so unless you have a nuclear power plant, as soon as you submerge, you're on a battery or you're running a diesel engine. So there's no drone on the planet that's going to keep up with a nuclear submarine for any significant distance. So while drones might be a threat, like close to a war for submarines, maybe kind of with a glorified mind, open ocean, not really much of a threat.

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  Thomas, what do you think would be, you know, sort of in a sci-fi kind of futuristic idea? What do you think would be an interesting and beneficial way for US Navy to move? Whether it's subs that can go deeper, subs that can go longer, weapon, you know, ideas that maybe that aren't practical or haven't been experimented on yet, but ideas that would be beneficial to us?

• 1:57:59Speaker 04

  Well, I'll tell you, I wrote a whole article about this in 2017. So I proposed, and I still think it's a good idea, an all UAV aircraft carrier. So this is, and what I mean by all, I don't mean that a carrier itself is uncrewed. I just mean that all it carries is uncrewed aircraft. Because I think that, I don't think that drone, you know, UAVs at sea are ever going to get to where they could be as long as they're, as long as, and the carrier, I don't think it'll ever get where it will be, as long as it's bringing along all the liabilities associated with manned aviation. So, like, imagine, like, that's a good way to put it, right?

• 1:58:39Speaker 04

  So, imagine a ship that's kind of, you know, much smaller, 20, 30, 40,000 tons. It's kind of stealthy looking, and all the drones are inside of it. And instead of having a regular flight deck, like you're hurling these things out off a catapult, you know, with G-forces that no human pilot could ever withstand. Let's say they come in and they land, you know, they can land tail-first because they're computer-controlled and can land in ways that human pilots couldn't really do. So if they land tail-first, then they kind of go onto like an assembly line inside the ship. You could send them on one-way missions, you know, double the range if you had to. You could keep them aloft up in the air for far longer than human pilots could, could, um, could, could take, could, you know, deal with.

• 1:59:23Speaker 04

  So, I think that is, that's been my idea over the last year is, is let's build a carrier that is 100% optimized for a crewed aircraft. It really takes advantage of them, like having all the liabilities associated with manned aircraft. Well, guess who went and built a drone carrier?

• 1:59:41Speaker 04

  The Chinese, they built them the last couple of years. Not, not, not quite what I proposed. It looks like they're mostly for, for exercise support, but they, they have built all UAV carriers.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Interesting. And when it comes to submersibles, if we got rid of the human, you know, vulnerability to pressure, if, if we could flood compartments with, you know, with water, whatnot, are, are there electronic, are there systems that could survive at deeper depths than we can imagine and sort of create the, the same sort of capabilities?

• 2:00:16Speaker 04

  There are definitely advantages to be had with UAVs, one of them being like you don't have to have a pressure hull.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:23Speaker 04

  I mean, generally UAVs do still have a pressure hull, you know, that has the electronics and stuff like that inside it, but it's much smaller. Most of the boat could be free flood. It doesn't have to the same safety requirements, the same, you know, you don't, you don't have to spend as much money to, to do the same thing. Which is why, you know, there are some reasons they're very good, they can be very good for it. They can go deeper than a, than an advanced submarine can go. They can be used for mining missions. You would never send a, a human, you know, manned submarine in for and shallow water you can get into riskier places. So to be clear, there are lots of advantages to, to UAVs. I, I just think that, I think there are some people that have these ideas that they're going to be doing anti-submarine warfare, they're going to shoot torpedoes and that kind of stuff.

• 2:01:07Speaker 04

  And I think that's a long, long way to do that kind of thing. Cause submarine, like just, just classifying what you're listening to can be really, really hard. Even with lots of humans with experience and a room full of computers. I mean, there's just, there's just a lot of noise in the ocean.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:26Speaker 04

  Uh, you'd be surprised just how hard it is to even know what you're looking at sometimes. As opposed to, I can very much see like, if you've got this, this UAV out there, let's say it's got tomahawks on board. You know, you send it a message, shoot it this target, this time, this target package, you know. I don't think there's any engineering miracles required to do that. That sounds like something that could be doable. Or go to this place, drop mines in this location. Or, you know, hang out here and if somebody drives by, come up and tell, send a message. You know, I could see a lot of things that could be very useful.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  It's fascinating. And, and so, you know, I, I don't want to make this political and I'm not like here to promote Musk, but I'm going to say that, you know, a private company was able to do something that a longstanding government contractor was not able to do with the rescue is, and, and you know, when we've talked like Alex Hollings about these small companies creating these, you know, hypersonics and things like that. Are, is the government willing to look at these companies that are not like the traditional defense contractors and take on board what they are able to do or what their ideas are?

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Or are, is that, that sort of military industrial complex just so firm at this point that it's tough for them to do that?

• 2:02:53Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, there, we certainly have seen some new entrants. I mean, you know, I, nobody ever heard of Andoril before, you know, not that long ago. So there's a lot about it. I think there are a fair number of other smaller startups that are working on some pretty interesting stuff. And, I mean, it's, it's a challenge for sure. And the prime, I mean, they've got their place. I mean, this is part of the, yet, yet again, one of those post-COVID things is if you look at, there used to be like 30 or 40 major defense contractors and now there's five. So if we can get those numbers back up some and get, and get some more new blood, I think that would be a good thing.

• 2:03:31Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:03:47Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:03:58Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 2:04:29Speaker 07

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star Trust Pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:04:58Speaker 04

  Is there a model in SpaceX? Let's be clear, SpaceX is part of it too, right? I mean, there's definite military applications for a lot of the kind of launch stuff that SpaceX brings to the table. And it's very much a defense contractor. So, you know, could Tesla bring new capabilities to military vehicles? I can imagine they really could. I mean, they're amazing vehicles. So, again, I say again that I think that necessity will be the mother of tension in many ways. I think we're now facing such a severe threat from China, hopefully it will drive us forward to make some progress on these sorts of things.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  Are you seeing that in the government side, Republican, Democrat, regardless, that military, like are people starting to wake up to this threat?

• 2:05:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think Congress, we have a pretty solid bipartisan understanding of the threat. You know, different people have different ideas about how to deal with it, obviously.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:06:05Speaker 04

  And, but I mean, I certainly, in every testimony that I've ever given, you know, to the Senate Formulations Committee or the US China Commission, I mean, I get generally the same. It doesn't feel any different. It was coming from both sides.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:21Speaker 04

  And there's there's certainly certainly with the like folks like in the SASC and the and the intel committees like they're getting the details. There is no ignoring the details. Once you understand them, you know, there, there are people who are not aware of the China threat because they're just not aware of it. Once you understand the scale, once you understand the numbers, it's no denying me like that. It's like I tell people like sometimes some people may think I'm alarmist. I give facts, provide facts. If the facts are alarming, then they are, then they are what they are.

• 2:06:52Jack Murphy?

  Right. Tom, where can people go to find you and find your work?

• 2:06:59Speaker 04

  So as I said, I'm a, um, I jump, jump to your fellow at CNNAS. So my, my work is some of it's on their website, um, you know, for the various articles I've been quoted in or whatnot. Um, uh, you'll see me some from time to time in, in, uh, various media outlets, um, being interviewed for this and that, usually about the Chinese military. I'm on Twitter, T Sugar at three. Uh, that's where I do most of my talking. And that's where I personally, that's where I do a lot of my, what I find things I take, I talk about them there first. So the new things I see in Chinese shipyards, new things I see on marine traffic or whatever is going on. Sometimes they'll turn into articles by other people. Um, that's kind

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  of my, like a labor saving device for me is rather than have to go write an article, I'll just put it on Twitter and then if somebody wants to write an article about it, they can. So that's probably my, my, my, um, number one outlet. I also, most often when I do write articles, you'll find them in War on the Rocks. If you go to war on the rocks.com and look under my name, you'll see all the articles that are written for them, which are where most of my articles are.

• 2:08:05Jack Murphy?

  Tom, thank you so much for spending your evening with us and walking us through a whole bunch of stuff I didn't really know anything about before.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Yes, fascinating. We really appreciate your expertise.

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your interest. I mean, I watched, I've watched some of your videos. And I know this is very different content than you typically have. I hope I'm, I hope I've kept your, kept your viewers interested in something that's very different than,

• 2:08:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:30Speaker 04

  Really, really, quite frankly, exciting and exotic things you guys usually, usually talk about.

• 2:08:34Jack Murphy?

  Oh, this is pretty exciting and exotic. I, I think so, too. It's all new to me, too. I learn so much when I talk to guys like you. Yeah. That are kind of outside that, you know, framework. So yeah, again, thank you, Tom. And everyone else, we will see you again next week.

• 2:08:52Speaker 04

  Okay. Thanks, gentlemen. Appreciate it.

• 2:08:53Jack Murphy?

  Take care.

• 2:08:56Jack Murphy?

  Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of The Team House ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business survive.

• 2:09:39Jack Murphy?

  Especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers. And we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs,

• 2:10:24Jack Murphy?

  all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show.

• 2:10:29Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:10:44Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:10:55Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau

• 2:11:40Speaker 06

  and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:11:55Jack Murphy?

  Really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 2:12:01Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:12:16Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:12:27Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a- Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

• 2:13:11Speaker 06

  With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:13:34Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast. A show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:13:48Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:13:59Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:14:30Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:15:04Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:15:19Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:15:30Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:16:01Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:16:36Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:16:51Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:17:02Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:17:33Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:18:01Speaker 05

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens. Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue.

• 2:18:37Speaker 07

  Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair, paid for by Genentech and Novartis. Underdog already has team picks, player props, money lines, spreads, you name it, they got it. But apparently, somebody over there said, you know what's missing? Screaming like a maniac about a rookie card on your couch. And we love them for that. Because Underdog now has rips. You get a digital pack, starting at just five bucks. You check the live odds, see which grails you could pull, then rip it open to reveal

• 2:19:22Speaker 07

  a real, physical card. And the grails are no joke. They have cards up to $125,000 in value, and plenty to pull. From football and basketball to Pokemon. With new limited edition packs dropping regularly, even cooler, you can decide to keep the card and Underdog will ship it straight to your home. Or sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. And the cash goes right in your account. No listing it online, no stranger lowballing you in the messages. Just rip, reveal, and cash out instantly. Or make some room on your shelf. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Get five free rips packs when you deposit $5. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog.

• 2:20:06Speaker 07

  18 plus, terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.