SAS Commander Breaks Down the WW3 Threat & Australia’s Role in a Global Conflict

Mark Wales is a former SAS soldier who served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, now providing strategic analysis on the unfolding Middle East conflict and Australia's defence vulnerabilities. Wales breaks down the current Iran operation, explaining how it differs from previous Middle East campaigns and why traditional military technology still requires boots on the ground. He discusses Australia's concerning defence gaps, from our 35-day fuel reserves to our minimal submarine fleet, and explains how geopolitical tensions could cascade into a broader global conflict involving multiple fronts. We get into: • The strategic differences between Al-Qaeda and Taliban operations in Afghanistan • Why Iran's nuclear capabilities represent a regional tipping point • How Israel's long-term intelligence operations enabled recent strikes • Australia's critical defence vulnerabilities and fuel supply risks • The role of robotics and AI in modern warfare • China's military capabilities and Pacific theatre implications • Why current conflicts could escalate into multi-front warfare Find out more about Mark Wales here: https://www.markwales.com.au/summary Join my exclusive Mentored+ community: https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mark Wales, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Good timing.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Good timing.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Do you feel like you're putting on a uniform and sort of going back out there?

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I had a few mates joking their day. I think my back will be sore the day they ask us to return.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  So you have some background in this. So like, mate, give us a bit of background on like what Mark Wales did before he became a survivor, a survivor staff.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, so I joined the army young, but then I was mid nineties, went through officer training and then by 2001, army starting to go to East Timor and places like that. But Afghanistan hadn't really picked up till 2005. That's when I joined SAS and then we deployed there flat out for kind of six, seven years. And that was the start of Australia's experience there. And that was when I got most of my exposure to the Middle East from that 2005 to maybe 2010 period. But during that time, I was in Afghanistan a lot, Iraq quite a bit, Lebanon a bit. And, and plenty of time in the Gulf states like Oman, you know, Abu Dhabi, sorry, not Abu Dhabi, Dubai.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  So I saw the region a fair bit during that time.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  As, as a SAS soldier?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  As a SAS soldier, yeah.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  As a soldier, but, but seeing active duty in all those areas?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Active duty in pretty much all those areas. Mostly Afghanistan was where the heavy lifting was happening for sure.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  What's it like? I mean, I guess you're fighting the Taliban as well as them and whoever else is there, the Russians, whoever else is in the area. I mean, like, was, were the Russians still in Afghanistan during that period?

• 1:35Speaker 01

  No, they were gone. But, I mean, and the reason we went there is to deal with the Al Qaeda guys initially, and which, and then the Taliban who were obviously housing them. But the Taliban never really had this broad kind of apocalyptic agenda, the way Al Qaeda did. They're very different groups.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  So maybe you could explain who both are. So just for historical sense.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  So a quick breakdown on Al Qaeda came from, I guess Saudi Arabia and this extremist belief in establishing Islamic caliphate. They very aligned against the West. They wanted to break down our dominance in the Middle East, um, which led to attacks on the US, the, the, uh, the coal, uh, the, in Yemen, and then eventually September 11. So they were a serious terrorist organisation led by Bin Laden. Whereas the Taliban were a nationalist force that took over in the civil wars that happened after the Soviets left. So in the nineties, the place collapsed into chaos.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Taliban came in, imposed order, very strict, very Islamic, very, um, you know, formed their own courts and everything.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Like warlord style?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Warlord style. So these strong men came out and took control, out of Kandahar, took control of, of most of Afghanistan. Now, Pashtuns, very dominant tribe in the south. Eventually, al Qaeda, uh, because they were being hunted by the US and were looking for, um, a place to house themselves, did go to Afghanistan. And Bin Laden had fought there as well. He'd fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. So he was able to form al Qaeda in the mountains, train them up, base it as a logistics area. And then we went and invaded them. We dealt with al Qaeda quite quickly. We, you know, the Americans surrounded them and sorted them out and ejected them from the country within the first six months. And then the war kind of transitioned into a war against the Taliban.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  And what was Australia's role and your role?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  And we had, so we had, I know, an SAS squadron went in two thousand and one, straight away. So about ninety or a hundred guys. And we were supporting the Americans with reconnaissance work. And when, when eventually we went back, which was two thousand and five, John Howard committed us, we sent SAS squadrons into Oraggaran province, which is in the south. And we were kind of the same as in Vietnam. We had an area that we were responsible for securing. And we worked with coalition to target enemy leaders, uh, do, you know, recon areas that we hadn't seen in years. And we'd go out into parts of Afghanistan, no one wanted to go to. And

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Why? Why wouldn't anyone go there?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Because it's such a hard, like, it's hard to believe that a modern army couldn't impose its control over a country. But when you see it, like the, the mounds and the ravines and the, the way the tribes set up, you can't really get in there. That's why they've existed as tribes. They have thousands of years. Hard to get in and out of the valleys.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  But like, uh, uh, logistically, like in a physical sense?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  In a physical sense, yeah. Just even just driving in there, you'd have to, you're susceptible to ambush because there's only one road in and one road out. So and there weren't a lot of helicopters in the early days. And then by, as the years went by, more and more came out of Iraq, which they were trying to win and went into Afghanistan, which they then tried to stabilise. It was kind of, we're fighting a two-front war the whole time.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  And what is it, what is a, an SAS soldier like in particular, what would you be doing? Like surveillance, what's that mean?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  So we would, so I'll give you an example. When, when I first, I did a trip in two thousand and seven, I was a troop commander, which was about thirty guys. We landed in the main base, which is called Taran Cau. We landed there. Me and my boss were looking at how we're going to support the operations that were happening that year. And he goes, look, we're going to have to take back this valley in the north. It's called Chura. It's, you know, thirty Ks away. We've had a lot of trouble trying to get it back. It's important. Taliban have been there for ages. Let's go secure it. And our role is to go in, find out exactly where all the enemy were in that area, try and find out if they had heavy weapons. We're going to land helicopters in there. So I wanted to make sure they didn't have all these heavy machine guns that could shoot them down.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  So we'd be out there on foot at night, uh, looking for enemy positions and watching them during the day and just building a picture of what was in that valley.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Like taking notes?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Taking notes.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Drawing stuff?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Drawing stuff. One of the guy I worked with got into an enemy pit at night and measured the thing out and.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Was the enemy there?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  They, they were around the area, but they weren't in that pit. But, um, and we gave the intelligence back to the Brits and I said, well, I looked at this drawing of the pit and I said, your guys are either lying or they're, they're mad. Like how they get this intelligence. But yeah, it was old fashioned, going behind enemy lines and getting information.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  At night time?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  At night time. We do it during the day too. But during the day, you might sit back and sit on a hill and watch, you know, you might see enemy moving around during the day. And then at night you go and look at that area.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  But like, like obviously under the cover of darkness is what, why are you going to night time? So they're not, you're not going to be detected.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  But surely they'd be expecting you to do that anyway. I mean.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  They did, they did. The problem is. Cause our teams were were small, we moved at night and we had that cover of darkness. It's very hard to go up against those teams at night because you can't, you can't sneak up on them. They're gonna see you coming.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. So what's gone through your head when, when that's happening like, or are you sitting back in the command part?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Well, I did a bit of both. So I was leading the mission, but a couple of times I'd attach myself to a team and go in with a team. And it's a weird thing because all of our training centers around the basics of moving in country and not being seen.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  In country being?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  In a theater, like a, it could be jungle.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  A bit like bush.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  In bush, whatever it is, yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  But not in desert?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Um, in desert as well, but obviously, obviously it's a bit harder, but, but yeah. And once you're in vegetation though, and there's a bit of cover and you can move around and not be seen.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  You're basically crawling around on your belly sort of thing?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Not really, but you, because you know, because you've done so much training, you know, if you're moving at night and there's a bit of moonlight, you stay in the shadows and you don't move fast and you don't make noise. And you traverse through certain areas to try and mask noise, like if it's raining, you might move a bit quicker. So you just learn all these things from experience and means you can move around the enemy.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Do you ever have a fit bit on something to bridge your heart rate?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  No, but I, I think they do now.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Do they really?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Mine would be, would be right up there, I reckon.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Well, is your heart rate going now or you learn how to sort of control it a bit?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  No, you learn how to control it because you're always put in these highly stressful situations. You just learn to like get that breathing to kind of calm yourself down a bit. Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Do you worry about losing your life or you, or is it so hectic that you, you don't have time to worry about that? You're just always on, on alert?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  I think, no, everyone does at some point. And I did, especially when I was younger and new to it. I was, I was quite like, you're trained to deal with it, but you have that thought does cross your mind. But I think once you start moving and taking action, kind of all the, that fear goes away quite a bit. And it's like a, you know, waiting for a schoolyard fight, waiting for it's always worse than.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Getting into it.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Than when, when it actually happens, you're, oh, it's not so bad, you know?

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Yes, right. Yeah. I've got a broken nose. It's okay.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  So, and, and, and in terms of that period that we're talking about, the early two thousands. Was tech a big deal? Technology a big deal?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a big deal. It was. And what, but what's surprising about the campaign is that um every time we go into battle, there's some new tech, some new amazing tech and they go, this is going to change warfare and it never does.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Well, it does to some extent, but it's always just, it's an incremental adaptation to the battlefield. It's not like a revolution. The way maybe gunpowder was or um information warfare was like these new drones and that. I know it looks interesting and exciting, but really it's it's an ad- adaptation of stuff we've always had.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  So like you did, I was gonna ask you about the drones. Um we'll get on to the geopolitical stuff in a second too, because that's really interesting to me. Um but if I just talk about the drone tech, instead of sending someone in to draw pictures and, you know, like to do the reconnaissance. Um wouldn't it be just easier to send, can you, I don't know if there's such a thing, but send a drone in that does makes that whirring noise and actually to take photographs from the sky?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they've got, I mean, we have, there's so many different layers of what they, what they have in terms of drones, all the way from the strategic ones that are in the bloody stratosphere, all the way down to the tiny ones you can send in a house. But they're all complementary to people.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Because someone's got to control it.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  So generally someone's got to control it or you need someone on the ground that can actually direct the effects, you know what I mean? Well, we're not at that point where machines can do that alone. And so it's like what you're seeing now in Iran, there, there are limits to what air power can do and they've tried this before. It's, it's, you do need people on the ground to, to shape the outcomes that happen for sure.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Because I saw something interesting, I don't know if I was bullshit or not, but I saw something on, um, it's, you know, embarrassed to say it on social media. Um where the Chinese. Chinese were demonstrating robots.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  To a foreign minister from one another country. Uh, it wasn't the US and it wasn't Australia. And and it could have been AI produced, I don't know the answer. So you probably got a better much, you definitely got a much better idea than me. But these, these robots were doing Kung Fu.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Or something like Kung Fu, but they were moving.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Like, like a person.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Now, I don't know how long they could go for. Maybe they're going to have battery limits and all that sort of stuff. I don't know the answer to those questions. And maybe they just can only do one thing. But are we at a stage at some, are we getting close to when um sovereign nations will start to have this type of technology? Instead of sending an SAS soldier in, but they might send one in and 10 robots.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think robotics will be um could be that game changer. I know their countries are throwing a lot at making sure we have these autonomous partners that we can go into battle with. Cause when you think about how complimentary that is to people, they'll never get tired. They can carry out a battle, they don't get afraid. Um, there's limits to what they can do, of course, but over time they'll just get better and better. And even the early ones are looking pretty good now. Like, I know there was a rescue of a Ukrainian soldier using a remote drone that was able to drive 30 kilometers out to pick this guy up, put him in there and he had an armored cage and they drove him back out again.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  While he was getting attacked by drones and so, so there's a place for them in the battlefield. There's all these things that you have to do in battle, like move casualties out, get ammo forward. Um, you know, clear houses, all these things can be done by robots for sure.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  And the robots don't have to look like human.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  They don't have to be.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, like a drone.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  They can be cheap.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, drone is sort of like a robot. Well, he's a robot.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  It's based on robotics and, and, you know, and, you know, cameras and stuff like that. But it's based on robotics. I mean, cameras are just a set of eyes, but just a bit of a bit of a mechanical version. Are you in your? Intense interest in warfare, which is fair to say, and also your intense interest in geopolitical environments. Do you think, is there anyone more advanced in the world on this stage relative to robotics than anyone else? Like, I mean, I'm sure Australia's way behind, but anyone out there that is outstanding do you hear?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  I think the Yanks have a lot of capabilities that are really far, far advanced. Like, and it's something, some things are even difficult to conceptualize now. Like, if you go back to the 1960s, for example, and look at the Blackbird, for example, the spy plane, they created this, it looks like a space age weapon even now. So I know they've built stuff recently in aerospace and probably in robotics that is super advanced and they keep it in the locker in case there's some major conflict. So I think the Americans will have a huge interest in it and they'll have massive capabilities. And then all the other nations will be playing catch up. They, you know, China and Russia, all our adversaries are trying to get that information

• 13:57Speaker 01

  wherever they can to find out what the direction we're going in, to exploit it or get samples or whatever they can. It's all fair game.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Because the constant promotion we get is China is actually got better technology than everybody else, just that they're not showing anybody. I mean, do you think that's a possibility?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  I think they've made big advances in sensitive parts of warfare that have worried the Americans, like hypersonics.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  What's hypersonics?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Hypersonics, super fast moving missiles, for example. So I think it's more than five times the speed of sound is hypersonic. Like really fast because they're hard to defend against. So I know some of the carrier killer missiles they've developed.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  What, sorry, what's a carrier killer missile?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  An aircraft carrier, the Chinese have developed some super heavy ballistic missiles that can go in the atmosphere and then strike a moving American carrier because they're moving.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  So fast.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  So fast, yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  And also, obviously, they must be using some sort of satellite technology to.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Satellite train, yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  To direct it to where it's gonna go.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  I mean, as someone like, what scares you most right now?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  I think the one, I mean, there's that, which is a. Bit of a, you know, black swan, you know, American carrier gets sunk. That means that's a pretty substantial, pretty substantial thing that would uh create a much broader war. Because I don't think they could, for example, Iran could do that without support from China or Russia. I don't think they could. So that's one. And the other one is, I think the thing that keeps the three major powers from going to war is they've all got nuclear weapons. So in a way that kind of World War Two, all the major powers did end up fighting a total war. Sometimes I think that probably is less likely now because it would lead to an escalation that could, you know, could destroy the the world.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  So I think that thing that stops them from entering into full combat.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  And therefore, let's, on that basis, let's just look at what's going on at the moment with Iran.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Is that, does that, that actual point legitimize why Israel and the United States have sort of gone to, let's call it gone to war with Iran? Because you don't need a fourth power with this nuclear ability?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, if if Iran did secure the bomb, it would precipitate an arms race in that region. I think Saudi Arabia said, if Iran get it, we'll have a bomb straight away. So it would have been a much broader proliferation of of nukes, which the Americans were trying to stop. And then Israel would have been potentially, you know, under threat straight away because they're a small nation and pretty. If you, if they were targeted with a nuclear weapon, you probably, that'd be the end of them. So I know the Americans have said, it's a red line, you can't have a bomb. And that's what the negotiations are over. It's like, we don't want you enriching uranium, um, we'll give you what you need. We just need you to not pursue the bomb.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  And they could never get that assurance and with good reason too. If you look at it from Iran's perspective, the minute you give up that capability, there is a chance that your country can be, can be hit. And that happened to Libya when they surrendered their WMDs and it happened to.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  What's WMDs? Weapons of mass destruction?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Weapons of mass destruction, they surrendered there. I think they had a nuclear program a while back and the Americans were able to stop that. And also Iraq, they, because they didn't have WMDs in the end, they weren't able to, you know, defend themselves. So it's kind of this um chicken and egg issue. But North Korea, for example, that did get nuclear weapons, they're not going to get invaded by the Americans anytime soon. So it is a security guarantee they wanted, clearly, but Americans wouldn't let them have it and Israel too.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  It's interesting, because Israel has nuclear power?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Weapons, I should say, yeah. Um, it's interesting, um, if,

• 18:01Speaker 00

  what, if you're, if you get, if you allow someone to develop nuclear power, nuclear weapons, I should say, to some extent, it's likely they won't use it because that gives the opposition a reason to use nuclear power back, a nuclear weapon back.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Or, and maybe that's the way to go, or is it um better that you don't give them the opportunity to have nuclear weapons at all? I mean, like, which means they'll never be a really, really will be a threat to anybody. How do you look at it as a?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  It's a bit of a double standard because we've, all these major powers have developed nuclear weapons and saying, that's it, no, no one else can do this. But there is a good reason for it because when they, when they do it, all the other adversaries are going to follow suit. And then we'll have so many weapons on the planet.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Everyone will have them.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Everyone will have them. Your chance of mistake is much higher. Um, so that's why they try and stop it from proliferate.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Is it more about mistakes, I mark? Like, because it's interesting you should say that because I would just imagine, you know, just following through what you just said. So let's say Iran got it, you know, for whatever reason, they all decided, look, let's let them do it. Um, and then you just said Saudi will say, if you've got it, we want it. For whatever reason, then Saudi has it, then let's say it just cascades through the whole region.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  The issue is, okay, if everyone in the region has got it, then no one's going to, no one's going to press the button. But.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  If it's the mistake that you just mentioned.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Let's explore that a little bit. What is, what do you mean by the mistake first?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Well, there's been a lot of cases in the past where sensor systems from, say, the Americans or the Russians have picked up signals that look like ballistic missiles had been fired at them. I think there was an example in the eighties where there was a, someone will correct me if I get this wrong, but they basically detected, I think it was three or five ICBMs being launched.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  What's an ICBM, sorry?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Uh, the intercontinental ballistic missiles. They picked up that some had been launched from the US over Alaska towards Russia. And the Russian base commander that had picked up this signal just thought it was odd. He goes, if it really is an attack, why is there only three to five? They didn't fire back, even though they were meant to. Uh, they found out later that was, uh, it was either a flock of geese or some, I think, once there was a rising moon that reflected radio signals back. But it was a mistaken case of a system that was meant to pick up a launch.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Mistake in terms of detection?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, detection.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  As opposed to a mistake in terms of actually pressing the button, so to speak.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yep. And there's been other cases where we missed it. I know that there was Soviet subs that were armed with nuclear torpedoes in the Cuban Missile Crisis in the sixties. And they were told to use them if they were threatened or if the blockade was run or anything like that. And I think the local commander, the actual sub commander, um, XO refused to use these, these missiles. So if, the more there are, the more chances there is of a major accident.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  So it's not like, um, let's call it Trump making an error, um, saying like accidentally pressing the button.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's a bizarre one because there's no, the chain of command for the use of nuclear weapons is, is one person in the US system. It's literally the president.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, the commander in chief.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And. All orders from the president then are followed. But there's no, he doesn't have to consult anyone to do it. It is a pretty crazy system.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  But he has to tell someone to, he's not the guy actually sets it off. He has to tell someone to do it, I presume.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  He can authorize the launch of nuclear weapons from this case that's carried around is never further than ten feet from him.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Oh, are you serious?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is, there's a book about this called, I think it's um Nuclear War Scenario by Annie Jacobson. And there's been a lot of research that's normally classified, that's been declassified, but talks about American nuclear weapon strategy and how that deploy it. And you can imagine it's pretty closely closely held stuff. But yeah, he has a, there's an, there's a attaché that walks with him that has a case which is called a football. That's got all the targeting material and radio systems needed to initiate a nuclear launch. And that's never separated from the president.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Surely some, yeah, I'm getting nervous. But surely um someone's on the other side, yes, Mr. President, like, is that a good idea? I'm, I'll, I'll, I'll launch this stuff, but do you really want to, there's no double checking system like?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  There will, there'd be, obviously he has his um advisers, but the, the actual chain of command for authorizing it is literally from the president to the, to the missile systems.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  So you're, as a former army person, um like, do you take, if your orders are given, whether you agree the orders or disagree the orders, do you just have to do it? Like, how's it work? Like?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  You don't have to follow unlawful orders.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  So you get trained in the laws of war. And if, if it's an unlawful order, you don't have to follow it. So if someone says, you know, blow that school up and it's not a legitimate target and it's not allowed, you can say no. That's how it works in theory. Um. But in practice, it's not always as easy as that.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  So what would like, what would happen um if your commanding officer said to you, look, we want to blow up that shopping centre or something like that, um you know, and hit it with a bazooka, whatever sort of weapon you're going to use. Um. And you have to make the call as to whether or not that's a legitimate target.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  It's ver- it's even, there are, there's rules about chain of command, but it's still a human system. Like, if you don't think something's right, you can still challenge.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  You can.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  You can challenge.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  But whatever your commanding officer says, hey, Mark, I mean, mate, uh, what would, when I call you Mark, he would probably call you whatever, you know, whatever you're supposed to be called by. Um. Do what you're told.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Otherwise you're in trouble.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I'll be okay. And then you'd, you'd hit a grid that's five hundred metres to the north of it and say they missed.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  He missed.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, people would fight, figure out a way to kind of make.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Not do it.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Not do it, yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  But it, but it, but then the commander comes up and says, we'll have another crack. I mean, do I, can you, do you get a chance to argue the toss?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  You do.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  You do.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Do you think that would be the case in, in terms of the US, for example, or Russia, for the example, or China?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Well, I know that, I know they debated this hev- this Iran mission heavily before they went in there. Uh, and I, I know there were a couple of camps, one that was kind of pro targeting Iran and another was against it. And I think the vice president was actually against it.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  J D Vance.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  J D Vance, yeah. And I don't know too much about the Mac and like how it all worked, but they, they would have had strong competing arguments about for and against views of, of actually doing this. And I've talked about it for years.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Would that, would that, would that get brought to the president to attack Iran? Or does that, is the president, is it sort of top down? And he says, listen, guys.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Been driven. Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Which way?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Trump, nothing would have happened if the president didn't, didn't want that.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Didn't agree to it or didn't want it to happen. So do you think he's sort of pushes for it? Did he speak to Netanyahu and say, well, mate, we're, we're together on this, we're going to do it. I'm going to tell my generals to do it. Or is it the generals from both sides get together and say, listen, um, Mr. Prime Minister Netanyahu, Mr. President, um, Trump, this is what we think needs to happen. How's it? What's the process?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  They would have been, they've talked about this for decades, about a mission to go and attack Iran. So all the militaries would have talked about this and planned for it. And I know I had mates that I was in business school with that had planned. For these missions to go and capture the enrichment sites.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Oh, really? This is when you're warden.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of my mates was was a pilot with the special ops aviation unit there, the one sixtieth. And he was a black hawk in a little bird pile of helicopters.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  So a combat pilot.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Combat pilot. And he goes, mate, we had plans and this was a one way mission. We get in there, we try and secure these sites and there was really no way for us to get out. It was just however we could.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  May not come back.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  And I thought I thought there was no way the Americans would do it because it's such a big. This is different to Iraq again. It's a much bigger country.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Huge population.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Huge population. It's much bigger.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Ninety million people.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Ninety million. The the standing security forces is around a million people. Uh, it's a much bigger problem. So I I didn't think they'd do it and I don't think it would have happened unless that it would have been driven by the political leaders for sure.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  But but is it, would it be fair to say that um from top down, it's a decision that gets made based on logic? I mean, do we sit down, do they sit down and say, okay, we've been working on this for a long time, just in case we're ever going to do it. But here's here's the logic and the, let's call it the ethics around all this. This is why we should do this.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  As opposed to what we just hear the president say, because he's not going to tell us all the details. He's not going to say, we've been looking at this for fifteen years or something. Um, you know, for obvious reasons, but these guys and girls have been working on this for a long time. Do they look at, do they debate to get to debate the ethics of this stuff? Because everyone's sort of saying, oh, we're just doing what the US doing what Israel told us to do. I mean, I just can't cop that like.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  They would debate the ethics, but being a military system, it's like, once it's decided, then that's that's what you're going to be doing. So if you don't agree with the ethics, it's not a case of further debate. You kind of have to get out of the way or or leave.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Or leave.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  You have an opportunity. You can.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  You just say, look, I don't feel right about this.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Participate in it for sure. But it's one of those things like a fast moving train. Once you're on board it, it's very hard to kind of get off. Once these things are moving, I could see, because they were they were saying to Iran with these negotiations, like, this is what we need. And they they they weren't able to get those responses they wanted and they were warned like we're going to hit you if you don't do it.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  What did you think when you saw that the US Navy, I mean, someone like you, I mean, I. You know, every day, I mean, I'm too busy with my job. I'm not, this is not my territory. It's not my theatre. Um, but you know, I thought to myself, I should have seen it coming when I saw there were so many ships deployed to the, you know, to the, to the Gulf there.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Um, with someone like you thinking yourself, this is going to be, it's inevitable.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Well, I made the point, I made a video about this, like a day before they hit. I said that you can't, as a political leader, put that much, uh, military pressure on someone and, and, and amass that much force and then not use it because it's a big blow to your credibility internationally and also from your own military as well.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  It's a big bluff, isn't it?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  It's a big bluff. So he, he wasn't bluffing. That was the point. And Putin did the same thing.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Amassed all these forces. And then once you start seeing these unusual things in that force, you kind of know something's coming. Like with, once I heard Putin had bakeries and mortaries and blood banks.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Did you say bakeries?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Bakeries.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Those in bread?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Bread, ba-, yeah. All the, all the stuff you need for an extended invasion. I was like, they're actually going to do this. You don't get that stuff in when it's a, when it's an exercise. That's a real, they're, they're planning to invade.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  It's different to, because you know, at one stage I thought it might be just posturing. You know, the, the art of the deal.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  You know, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna crush you unless you do the deal that I want you to deal, do, you know, typical posturing, which by the way, Trump's brilliant at. He, he uses posturing all the time. Um, he does it with tariffs, all sorts of things, threats of tariffs, I should say. Um, you saw, did you see it as much more than posturing?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  I thought he was, I thought he was being serious. And the reason I thought it is because in the past, when he said he's going to do something militarily, he almost always followed through.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  At some stage.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  In his first term, what he did with Syria, when they used the chemical weapons, he threatened them and then, and then executed on it. Uh, with Venezuela, he was talking about that for a while. With Iran, the first time he was telling them for a while, if you don't, you know, if you don't stop, we're going to bomb your facilities. And so he'd done it three times so that I could remember. And this was the fourth.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  So in terms of the, the, the so-called, um, Americans, so-called just, um, doing, um, Israel's bidding, you would reject that?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Uh, I think both things are true. It is, it was Israel's plan all along, and especially Netanyahu. And people don't realise this about Netanyahu. He was, his brother was killed in the Enteb raid, which happened in the seventies. They were trying to recover.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Israeli hostages, his brother was killed. Uh, he himself was wounded. He's a hardcore.

• 30:53Speaker 00

  Military guy.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Guy that understands that region and has had a plan for a long time to just dismantle his enemies. And then the way I've, I've seen this unfold, I think, is when the Hamas attack on Israel happened. They use that as their opportunity to knock down these players, the Hezbollah, Hamas and the.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Houdies.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And the final piece of that puzzle was Iran.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  But do you, do you think that this war will finish in, this, this skirmish will finish in a two week period like Trump? Or four week period like Trump's talking about?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  No, now that he's started it, it's not up to him when hostility ceases.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  And what, what makes you think that? Like, or is it just your experience in, in war?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  It's, it's just the genie's out of the bottle. So, and this happened in two thousand and three. They, you know, they land and said, that's it, mission's accomplished, land on the aircraft carrier, that's it. Major combat operations are over. We fought there for another seven years and the same thing will happen in Iran, I think.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Well, maybe even worse because Iran's much better organised than any of the, any of the other countries in the zone.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  I mean, other than say Saudi or Israel, but like much better organised.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  So it's like huge risk, potentially huge reward. Like if they do, they might find a way to subjugate and come up with a sympathetic administration and all of a sudden you've got a more compliant kind of Iran. And the, the Middle East could be secured for generations or it could descend into, into regional conflicts.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  What's your read?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  I think it will descend into conflict. I don't think it will end the way they they think it will.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Well, given the um um Trump and his administration keep saying there's not going to be any feet on the ground, so in other words, they're not going to put troops in there.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Bombing it's one thing and having, you know, control of the skies is another thing, but these guys are probably burrowing underground and, you know, it's it's seem to me logical. You've got somebody, you've got to send some people in there.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  To find someone.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Then you're off, you're off the slippery slope, you know, I think. There's there'll be that temptation and I just heard this anecdotally and then I researched it quickly and I think it's the the truth that they've cancelled. Training and leave passes or at least training for the eighty second airborne. And the hundred and first airborne units in America, which are the storied parachute units that landed behind enemy lines on D day. They're really famous units. There's a chance they could use them to secure key infrastructure. That's like a bread and butter kind of job for them.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  But that but that's sort of what you participated in in in Afghanistan and Iraq, like you.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  A little bit. That's it's more a conventional role, like parachuting into enemy territory, you know. The, you know, securing a bridgehead or whatever it is, that's they might try and do something like that with the either the enrichment sites. Uh, this, the opening of the mouth, uh, Strait of Hormuz, if they want to reopen it, they might. Get troops in to secure something really strategically important. And once you do that, you then open to more casualties and then you're really in that.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  The grind starts.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Then the grind starts, then you're in a war.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  And so the the Iranian, whatever the call themselves, I um, whatever it's called, IRPG, whatever they call themselves. Um, the the hardliners, um, would they be, would you consider them to be well trained soldiers?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  There's quite a few of them too.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I I know you spoke to, uh, I think it was Mick Ryan.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Mick was here.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so and he was talking about it when I was in Baghdad as well in like two thousand six, two thousand seven. And the Iranians had gotten in there and were supplying.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Oh, were they?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  They were supplying the militias with these really advanced shaped charges. These are like.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  What are they?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  It's like a copper disc that you that you house on the front of an explosive. And when when it's blown up. It turns into a molten slug that moves at many times the speed of sound, really fast moving, can penetrate armour. So. Tanks, any kind of armour it can go through quite a bit.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Really?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so the Americans were getting hit with these and they were going through the serious armored vehicles like Bradleys and Humvees and all that, armored Humvees. Lot of Americans lost, you know, double, triple M amputations. Um, Iranians really gave them hell. And I think, I mean, Trump's side, it's not a reason enough. Once you're in a war like that, you're kind of fair game for the, for the rest of the region. But that's, they certainly had a lot of blood on their hands from, from that. There were thousands of troops killed and injured from that stuff.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  What's your sense then? Do you think that they will deploy the eighty first and eighty second or they won't? I mean, or they rely on the region?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  They'll be tempted to. I think as it, there'll be, there'll be ground force operators in there already. There'll be, you know, CIA ground operations linked up within.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  More intelligence.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Well, not necessarily. They could be organising airstrikes. They'll be, they'll have, uh, subterfuge and sabotage and all sorts happening. Cause they're able to move a bit more freely now, but there'll be ground forces in there right now that are, that are not the conventional, uh.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  Not, not, not uniformed, so to speak.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Not uniformed. So they'll all be in there for sure. But as for uniformed boots on the ground, I mean, Trump said he hasn't, wouldn't rule it out. So I think there'll be a chance they'll, they'll do it.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  So what's the general view on Israeli soldiers? Cause I mean, they're already, they're now being deployed to Lebanon to, after Hezbollah. Obviously there's still a force in Gaza doing, you know, whatever they continue to do there. Doesn't seem like they've had to do any down with the Houthis at this stage. Um. Does Israel have enough soldiers to send over to Iran?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  No, I don't. Well, I think they would, they'll obviously be securing their immediate. They, they might have some in coalition for sure. Cause they're so, they're so good with that region. And I know. They do, the Mossad have a lot of undercover agents and operatives that work in Iran as well, which is one of the reasons they were so successful. In the middle of last year, they had weapons, pre-positioned drones. All the launch sites were being targeted, all the air defence sites. Cause the playbook for the Israelis and Americans has been followed for years. It's like target the air defence systems, get more aircraft in, hit more targets. And then if you can hit that crack, you kind of break the whole system open. So they've been good at that. Israelis have been, no one's been better than them.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Mate, Mark, if you would mind, I mean, you obviously know the stuff backwards, but let's just go back through that, what you just said. They've been using the same sort of called strategy for a long time. Obviously it'd be tactical changes, but just the overall strategy. It seems as though what Israel, well, someone's very good at anyway. Maybe a combination of intelligence people, intelligence people. We're talking about knowing where everybody's hanging out, you know, where the leadership is, where the various sites are. That stuff takes years. Mossad seem to be really good at this stuff.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yep, really good.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  And I often wondered how is they do it though? Do they do it by paying, you know, local people off? I mean, do they get people to be, you know, treason, commit treason?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  All the above, like they, they use human intelligence by getting agents to work with them. They hack, I think the, the way they got coming, I read this in open source is they had hacked some of the traffic cameras in that area. They picked up vehicles that were associated with his protection detail. They were in that area. So they knew he was likely there. Then they matched it with some human intelligence and probably signals intelligence. So you do need all those working together, everything, satellite, everything. And you need to fuse all that information. So you've got a clear picture of what, what might be happening on the ground.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  So it's a probability event though.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Probability. They're trying to say, look, we've got now got very high confidence that he's in this building.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  And with you, cause he was there with all his. Senior leadership team, let's call it. Um, and, and then someone that just says, okay, well, let's target that particular position at that particular moment, that particular day.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  Um, and

• 39:16Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Like, but, and it's interesting, you just said like they get satellite information and then they, as you say, they hack into the cameras. Cause there'd be cameras everywhere in Iran for sure, because it's that type of state where they want to watch what the citizens are doing. They want to make sure no one's playing up.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  But no one even knew they were being hacked.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  No, not necessarily. No. They, they just, again, that they might've done this 10 years ago and they've been sitting on it for, for that long until they need to. It's like that page operation.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, unbelievable. That, that was selling pages to Lebanese Hezbollah. Um, or Hezbollah and, uh, and they sat on it for years.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Years.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  And they just decided to buy more of it once. It's mental.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I'm not laughing about it, but it's obviously.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  No, but the, the intellect of it is crazy.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  The, the, it's as in terms of an operation, that's, yeah, it's crazy what they've, what they've been able to achieve. And obviously they've had so much time being surrounded by people that have, and Iran said that, you know, we would wipe Israel off the map. So they, they did take it seriously. Um, yeah, we're now a war over it.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. So for, for years and years and years, they've been setting up this, this process, like it's been a major, um, stitch up, as we would say here in Australia.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  A major stitch up at a political and at a personnel level.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Um, and then would they, would, would it be the case that, let's call it CIA or CIA or the Americans would be shared with that information the whole time?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they'd be collaborating pretty closely, I would think. Yeah, for sure.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  And so is this an example of where tech is changing warfare?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's always, it's funny. I remember being in Afghanistan and getting briefed on American special capabilities. These are really advanced ones. They had the, either tracking or weapons or whatever. And for all the, like, we had so much stuff there, all the best tech in the world, all these tricks and traps and aircraft and none of them mattered. In the end, we didn't, we still didn't win.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  So it's.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  What do you put that down to?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  It, it comes down to political, political priorities and political will, and whether it's an achievable mission in the first place. And I think we kind of, it wasn't, what we were trying to do wasn't really achievable. And there also wasn't the political impetus to make it happen because it was too, it would have been too costly a, a mission.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  And relative to the benefit, like the relative.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Relative to the benefit. This is a terrible trade off.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, and, and of course, if you get a change in the administration, that makes a big difference. Like, because then you've got Biden come in, et cetera, and then others sort of say, well, that's all too hard. We're getting out of it. In fact, I think it was Trump pulled him out in the end.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Biden pulled him out. Trump, I think Trump wanted to, he reduced the size of the force, but he wanted to retain some of the key bases there. I think, um, Bagram and a few others. Um, and then Biden pulled him out.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Pulled him out of Afghanistan. That's right.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  But almost, I can't put, I don't put too much blame on him because we deluded ourselves for a long time as a military that it was an achievable task and it wasn't achievable.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Did you think, did you, do you, when you say we, do you think you were someone who was in those, um, theatres? Um, do you feel as though you were, um, sort of diluted a little bit?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Like, I was, you've got to be a bit optimistic. It's even if it's a hard job, you've got to be optimistic and you have to work towards.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  There's a difference between optimism, delusion, I guess.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. But towards the end, I was like, this isn't working. This was what I'd been every year for, I think, four or five years. And I was like, this isn't working because this has gotten worse. We're getting more casualties. Um, we've thrown more equipment and troops and firepower at the problem and we're, we're still not getting ahead. And the reason was is because we were bound by Pakistan. So we couldn't stop ammunition and troops and IEDs, the, the roadside bombs coming over the border. Uh, there wasn't a functioning Afghan government and police force. They were, they are only effective or rankable. So it was all, it wasn't a mission we could achieve realistically.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  So do, do you think that, is this, is this event right now?

• 43:25Speaker 00

  More likely to create a larger event? Or more likely to fizzle like everything else that's happened, like Afghanistan, Iraq, et cetera?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I think that it's, if ever there's been a probability of a major escalation, something like this makes it more likely again.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Why do you think that then?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Because it's, there's, there's multi-front wars happening at the same time. If you go back to, we've got major European war, major Middle Eastern war, and the chance of a major conflict in the Pacific, of quite a high chance, if you

• 44:03Speaker 00

  As in Taiwan?

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Taiwan. If you believe what the Chinese president's saying, you know, we are going to reunify with Taiwan. We're going to do it, it's just a matter of when. And if you go all the way back to, say, the start of World War Two, even like the early, like the summer of 1941, for example, the war had been going for about a year by that point. Um, almost two years. And then there's no eastern front that hasn't opened up. So the, the Germans haven't started the operation to

• 44:32Speaker 00

  Towards Russia?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  The Americans haven't been attacked at Pearl Harbor yet. Um, there's just some, you know, Battle of Britain's being fought. There's some action in North Africa and Scandinavia, and that's it. So it didn't really feel like a world war in 1941. But within six months, the whole world was, you know, aflame. So I keep seeing a similar parallel here. I'm like, there are these major spot fires that if you, if you rewind the clock even 10 years, you'd be shocked by one of them. We now have two happening at once with the possibility of a third one opening up.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  The third one being the Pacific?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  The Pacific.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, and so the ones you're referring to is Russia, Ukraine. If I, if, if I'm Putin and I'm sitting here feeling, you know, thinking to myself, well, the world's been criticizing me for what I'm doing in the Ukraine. Then the next, my, in my next breath, I think I say, yeah, but hang on, the people criticizing me are doing exactly the same thing in Iran.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Um, therefore I'm now justified in doing what I'm doing. And by the way, the tension's off, the attention has come away from Ukraine.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  And I'm also thinking to myself, America right now is now, uh, spending a lot of money, a lot of times sending a lot of, um, ordinances over. They're going to run out of stuff. Money, stuff, political will.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Horsepower, attention.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Everything. So this is a good time for me to just put more pressure on Ukraine. Which is like if I'm doing the hard of the deal, if I'm negotiating, then if I'm over in China, I'm thinking to myself, well, maybe now, no one can really criticize me, America. The ones I'm worried about is America, UK, you know, AUKUS, you know, Japan, they're the ones I worry about criticizing me if I'm China.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  They can't criticize me.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  No. People don't think about this in the West. We, especially because of Iraq, for example. It's very hard for Russia to take us seriously in Ukraine when we say, you know, don't, don't invade that country. It's the wrong thing to do. When we did exactly the same thing not that long ago and we've done it again now. So I'm not talking about right or wrong here. I'm just saying that's the dynamic.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  It's a logic.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  It's a logic that plays out. It's like, who are you to now tell us not to take Taiwan when you've just done that in Iran?

• 46:44Speaker 00

  And, and you did take us back to World War Two and it sort of makes a little bit of sense because Mussolini came into the, into the fray. He then decided to attack Greece and then the Greeks kicked him out and Italy, Germany had to go back in and support their ally.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  And they took control.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  And then of course, the Japanese decided, well, we might as well have a crack too.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  And, and then it was just one cascade after another.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  You, as someone who's, you know, none of us have been in war. We're all sort of, you know, citizens, citizen warriors, all of us. Best we ever do in close wars, we get in the jujitsu mat. That's as close as we ever get.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  It's probably worse than war.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  There's no worse. No, no, I think what you've done is worse, but, but you've actually been there and you've seen how these things can escalate. Do you think then that irrespective of all the technology, it comes down to a game of who wants it the most?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Just about. Well, yeah, that and the kind of the national imperative to win is what matters most. Like Ukraine, that's it. Their backs against the wall.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, they want to win. They got to win.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  And they talk, this is where they talk about, theorists will talk about that just war versus, you know, a war of choice. Or, what is it? War of choice versus the essential war. We've, we're in a war of choice here and we've been doing that for a while. So they're much harder to win once they get hard.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because like, you know, if, if, if, if they're going to secure. Places in Iran, because if they don't, if they don't secure it, if that, you know, there's no point bombing the shit out of it and then not securing situations because they'll go back to doing what they're doing before. I mean, there's no, so you've got to go secure it. If you don't secure, if you try to secure it, I should say, they're going to say, well, hang on, this is my country. I'm going to fight to the death, a bit like the Ukrainians.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Like, you're not giving me any choice.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  Unless there's some sort of revolution or something, which is maybe what they're hoping for. What, what about that part of it?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's what they're hoping for. They're hoping opposition government forms that can assert control over the place and that they don't need to go in there with troops and, and do it.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  That, that sounds a bit fanciful to me.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  It does sound fanciful. Yep.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  I mean, because it's, it's not like the Iranian presidential guard, I think that's what they're called, but whatever they're called, there's like, there's like a million of them or something. I don't know. It's a big bloody force.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think across the, all the branches, so like army, police forces, republican guard, or I think it's about a million from total, but it's a, it's a huge force. If they want to suppress a revolution, they, they might still be able to do it. I, I know they're breaking down their ability to, to the structures, the military equipment, all that stuff is being destroyed, but it doesn't mean that out of the ashes is going to come this opposition and, and everything's going to be fine. It might descend into civil war, like, who, who knows?

• 49:40Speaker 00

  But that's what I'm saying. Like, it could end up being a civil war, but the ones that are going to win are the ones with the guns and the training.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  That's why in Afghanistan, after.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  After 10 years of the Soviets fighting there for 10 years, it became kind of war autism and, yeah.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  And, and I'd imagine, you know, the, the, the push for power. So right now, of course, Iran has anointed their new leader.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Who's the Khomeini's son. Um, do you think that he's, he would be a dead man walking? I mean, would, would it be a case that the Israelis or the Mossad or the United States of all of them know exactly where he's hanging out because they've been looking at the cameras?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  They'll be pretty desperate, yeah, to get him, uh, to target him, I think. But all, but you, you're right though. All this is like, they don't actually know where it's going to go. And once you start a war like that, you can't really predict. You can't predict what how it's gonna look at the at the end. Like it's just, it's it's out of their hands now. And the argument is always you're better the devil, you know, and uh.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  I mean, like, if we just talk about the net effect on the world, like the net, the net effect on the world's economy. You know, unfortunately, we're in a region where we all, the the biggest export is something that the whole world still relies on fossil fuels, oil, gas, gas in particular, but oil for sure. Um, still, there are other oil producing countries, but a lot of gas comes out of that area. Um, and it's got to come through the the Straits there of war wars. Um, is it possible for Trump to control that? With all, with all, you know, with all the Navy that he's got sitting there. Can he control that and sort of protect those all tankers to come through? Let's put the insurance side part aside.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can. I know they've, they would have wargamed this a lot and they'll have the the ability to do it, but it'll take a lot of, a lot of naval assets, a lot of air, like it's only thirty nine kilometers wide at the mouth. It's like tiny.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Tiny space, but they, yeah, they they will have.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Twenty four miles wide, whatever that is, kilometers, don't you know?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Not big. And so they'll, they'll have a plan to secure it and keep the traffic moving. But it's another drain of resources, like it's another.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  How long can they do that for though?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  I mean, like, I can't imagine what one of those big aircraft carriers costs to run.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Enorm, enormous. And one's been already been on deployment eight months. You're gonna have to cycle it out soon. So you don't have, and you made a good point, you don't have infinite resources. So if another front did open up somewhere in the world, what?

• 52:11Speaker 00

  What happens now?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  How how are you gonna deal with? You got all of a sudden, half your resources diverted to another front. This is what happened in Iran, sorry, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was effectively a two front war and we just didn't have what we needed to win.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Did you think that, uh, because like the oil price, I mean, last couple of days had been like, you get brain damage trying to follow it, but it's gone up, it's gone down, it's gone up. Things gone back down that whilst you and I are talking. Um, and the share markets responded each time. So, you know, we lost eighty eight billion off the share market of the A C X yesterday, but it's recovering today. And people sort of looking at their superannuation and, uh, you know, the thing of, oh, what the hell. America would be worse. Um, do you think the political pressure?

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Relating to oil prices is the strength is the the string in the bow of Iran that they haven't played enough of yet.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a big pressure point and also the Gulf states will be pressuring America to keep it as short, as short a war as they can because their, their economy relies on expats and all the, um, all the oil industries and whatnot. So they'll want to keep this as short as they can. And then the average consumer in the West with going to higher inflation, you know, I think they predicted five percent.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Interest rates will go up.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Inflation, we've already had interest rates or like there's a lot to deal with at once.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  Do you think they've worked it? Do you think the, um, the ITOla, they knew this stuff before?

• 53:37Speaker 01

  I know they've got some sway, but one advantage for the Americans is I think only three percent of the exports that come out of there go to the US.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, because US is quite self, self sufficient when it comes to oil. But the rest of us, like Asia, Asia suffers big time, particularly with gas and, and oil. And a lot of, in Australia, like a lot of our, we've only got like a month's worth of, um, supplies.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Thirty five days or something.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Maybe you could explain what, what is this, this general, I don't even know about this, but I heard about it on the news, but this general consensus around the world that there's, everyone should carry 90 days supply. Every nation should carry 90 days of the supply.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  They need to, yeah, they need to expand it. I know it's expensive to hold those reserves and I don't know what some of the other countries have, like the US for example, but I know here we've got about thirty something days. If that runs out all of a sudden, you know, all heavy industries, hospitals, medicines, foods, it all, it all stops.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Farmers.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Farmers, it all stops. The economy will just grind to a halt. And if Australia in particular, if we can't control our northern shores and get imports coming in, if, if there's a Pacific war, for example, we'll, we'll run out of, we'll go to fuel rationing and it'll be a very different economy once that happens.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  It'd be scary.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Be scary. Yeah. We won't have been in that territory since World War Two.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Do you think we would be vulnerable? I mean, like if, if, if we're around these.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Very, very vulnerable.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Jim, um, Jim Nolan, um, when he was a senator, I'm not so much proud of that, but I, I used to follow him a lot when he was a senator and his, his thinking.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Back then, before he passed away, was about how vulnerable we are to our neighbours. If anybody decided to poke the nose in here, we're a country full of resources, even though we don't mind most of it, but we're full of resources. We're a very attractive place to come to, but we're completely undermanned, both in terms of people joining the army

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  or the military, but also, you know, our equipment.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  Hopeless.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  We could not defend ourselves, could we?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  No, for a short time, and then we wouldn't be able to. We don't have the kind of mass to be able to do it. And I think our entire military is, I think, seventy thousand roughly. It doesn't even fill the MCG. It's a tiny group. And we've got good equipment and good training, all that stuff, but it just, it won't, like, it relies on external support, so allies and whatnot. So my point has always been like, why would you not have a fully self-sufficient defence force or the capability to protect yourself with no allies? Because we won't. If there is a major war, this happened in World War Two when we lost Singapore. The

• 56:30Speaker 01

  US, the UK, all our major northern hemisphere allies might be totally committed to other battles.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  Totally. Like, if something happens in Taiwan and the US is already stuck in the Middle East, they have to go on the centre of earth. There's nothing left for us.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  No. And to his credit, Kevin Rudd picked this up in the first, I think it was the first white paper he did in two thousand and nine. He said, we need to have a subfleet that's at least twelve submarines. We need to be able to protect shipping to our north.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  You mean our shipping?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  And now fifteen, sixteen years later, we still don't have submarines. We're very vulnerable.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  And, but how many do we get, even to get people to join the military? I mean, you're ex-military, like.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  As I understand it, this bit like the police force, no one wants to join either one. Um, how do we get people to become more keen or interested to join the military?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Oh, I think that they've, the recruiting for it has been off the mark quite a bit. The way they present the force is this, come here for an opportunity, you know, don't work too hard, you know, you get your stuff paid for, or a super diverse force. The traditional marketing they did was very service orientated, adventure orientated, and I think that works better. But also the economy, the broader economy is a big, big effect too. So, once unemployment goes up a bit, military recruiting.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  Kicks, kicks off. Does it? Yeah, because I can get a job and get paid.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Definitely. And I watched in the army during certain economic boom periods, we just couldn't get people in the door. Because there's more lucrative jobs out there, you know?

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because, I mean, do we need to go as far as what the United States done? You know, change from the Department of Defense to the Department of War? I mean, like,

• 58:13Speaker 01

  rebrand.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  And yeah, rebrand and appoint some, a Pete Hegseth, like, you know, Karl Stefanovic or something, I don't know. No, but you know what I'm saying? Like, because I wouldn't mind your, your views on this, because it seems to me that the United States has actually completely repackaged their whole offering when it comes to military. And it's no coincidence that they're, they're now in, at a war or in a war theatre. And, but these things, these changes were made some time ago. It's nearly like they were building up for it. I mean, it's nearly, I mean, I feel stupid, but it's nearly like when they renamed the defense portfolio as the Department of War.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 00

  I should have worked that out.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  Because like, because we're going to war.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  We know we might be going to war at some stage.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  Um, and Hegseth's the next military guy anyway. I'm not taking it away from him.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Reserve stuff.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, he was reserved. I thought he went to.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  I think he was reserved, but he deployed, I know he deployed, I think to Iraq and whatnot.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  So like, do you think we need to be sending those messages though, to our potential, you know, um?

• 59:19Speaker 00

  Threats?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Well, I think, and to talk about the rebrand quickly, and you have to give Trump credit with that because of his experience in television and business, he does understand branding and marketing and how you present something. And I think they've done that with the military. They've repackaged it, as you said, and presented as this fighting force and

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Adventure.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Flag and adventure and all those kind of in Department of War, all those things point to a certain feel that it didn't have before, felt a bit more bureaucratic maybe. So they, yeah, you do have to give them credit on that front. They have repackaged it to something that's been more suited to what they wanted to use it for. Australia hasn't really done that. But having said that, I know a few, a fair few of the officers that are at the top of the army now, I served with when I joined and they're all really capable. But again, they're restricted by the budget, which is not big.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  And they're restricted by the government's aggressiveness or assertiveness around building defence capability.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  Or lack of aggressive, aggressive, aggressive.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that whole, some governments just don't have a good grasp of security and force and foreign policy. They don't, they don't kind of get the military. I feel a lot of politicians don't.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Well, some of the utterings in the last couple of days between the Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Defence have been about, yes, we are going to send some, some support to, I think Dubai or to the Emirates.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  And, but, but making it really clear that the only part they're going to play in all this is defence, they're defending environments, like we're going to help defend the 24,000 Australians living in.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Both ways.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, both, both ways. Or the two or three guys or people who were on that submarine that sunk that frigate, they had no part in all this. They were just a sort of, you know, war tourists or something. I don't know.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  You know, I was like, well, they're on a New Girl submarine.

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  They're probably engaged in offensive operations.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  They'd have a role. They're not just sort of seeing.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  They may not have pushed the button, but.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  No, but like the way that was described was that, well, they're just onlookers, the type of thing.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  I find that frustrating because everyone knows that's not true. Anyone with common sense would say, well, that they're participating in it for sure. But they.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  They'd have a role. They'd be doing something.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  But obviously, they're trying not to put Australia in a situation where we maybe don't want to be in where we're.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  But what we're not, they're not going to come down here, though, are they? Iran's not going to come to Australia.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  The big dilemma is now we're partnered with the US. We've got these bases up north. We've got the submarines, the orcas and all that. If there is a major conflict, we're going to war with the Americans. That that decision has been made for us with this kind of orcas plan. And I don't know if that's the right way to do it. Um, that's something that wasn't debated nationally. It was kind of foisted upon us a bit.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  It, I've often wondered, you hear stories about this, but how important is Australia from an intelligence point of view relative to how wars play out? Given physically where we sit on the globe relative to satellites and all that other stuff, time zones, et cetera.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Well, so pretty important. And surprisingly, it's not until you, I read a bit about how they how they signal submarines in the southern hemisphere. It comes from the bases up in northwest WA. So there's ultra low frequency towers that send radio waves into the ocean, basically to communicate with submarines in the event of especially nuclear conflict. Our bases are the ones that are going to pass that signal on. So Australia is uniquely positioned in that sense. And then.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Physically, on the globe.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  And if anything happens in the Pacific, again, we're a really good base that's far enough out of the firing line that there won't be a high volume. There'll be missiles that can reach us, but it won't be as high volume if we're in, say, Guam, you know? So so our by having our base back where they've got bombers and support and they're able to resell all that was all true during World War Two as well.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're just doing it again. Like, it was a good launching pad into the Pacific.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, for the Pacific. Yeah. But but obviously, they weren't using the same technology in World War Two as they are now. But we've got places like Pine Gap. We get like this satellite, um, you know, you talked about earlier about um using satellites and hacking into the cameras and all that sort of stuff. And um, you know, you know, you're not, they're not using the internet. They're using something else. They're not making phone calls on their mobile phones. They're using some other signal system. Um, Australia's physical position in terms of technology would, I would have think would be pretty important. Therefore, I would have thought we're therefore at risk.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  Because like if I am the enemy and I say, well, let's try and stuff their, you know, their signaling capability.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, they're all targets. And that's what I found interesting about the Chinese fleet kind of circumnavigating Australia is they were, they were testing that ability to kind of reach out and hit whatever we've got on the eastern seaboard that might house.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Capabilities. Yeah, they would have been practicing for that for sure.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  Or, or sort of doing simulations.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Simulations, yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, so, oh, okay, so.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  It's, you know, we go to the South China Sea and do the same thing, so.

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  Do we?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Australia does?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Australia with, in concert with the Americans and other.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  But we send our, we don't have ships, do we? We have many ships.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  We've sent, no, we've sent, I think frigates up there, yeah. I'm not sure what type, I'm not that across the Navy Ops, but they're definitely up there for sure.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  I like just sort of seeing how, what the distance is to a certain point that we might be interested in.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  You know, show of force around in, or reconnaissance in international waters, uh, supporting the Americans, it might be a, a shoal or some, uh, some activity they're trying to monitor. Our submarines would probably go up that far. So there's a lot of, we, we play in their front yard a lot and they've come down here and done the same thing.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Cause I thought to myself originally because that it was just like a, a bit of posturing, a show of force, um, or, or show of that we, we can do this, we do whatever we want. But you just opened up another thinking process for me. Um, maybe, well, it may well be they'll actually snooping.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  At that time.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  All, all, all the above. They're like training for, uh, offensive strike missions, collecting whatever intelligence they can, testing our maritime capability or our surveillance capabilities, how well we can monitor our coastline.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Do you think we were monitoring them?

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  I think we were, but it was, it was interesting when the defense got caught out because they did that live fire drill and it was picked up by a commercial aircraft.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Going to New Zealand.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Going to New Zealand rather than the defense force. So if something's gone wrong there, I don't know, I don't know if they were, didn't have eyes on for a period. I don't, I'm not sure why they didn't pick that up.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Are you worried about, um, anything like, like relative to what's going on right at the moment?

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  The only thing that I'm worried about is that I don't think people understand how, uh, at risk our country is. And even, and we're not doing the things that you need to do with a lot of lead time to improve it. Cause it takes so long to build. Military capabilities, fuel storage depots,

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  defence infrastructure, whatever it is you need to be self sufficient. It takes a long time, a lot of money, a lot of effort to do it.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  And commitment.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  And commitment, political commitment, all those things. And I just think people don't fully understand that we're at that point where we should be doing it. We might not need it, but better to have it and not need it than, you know.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  I was thinking last night when I was listening to the news, because like, you know, during these periods, I mean, I get fascinated with CNN, Fox News, Sky News. Like I just, I like become obsessed by it all.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  And, and I was thinking to myself, they were talking about the cost of production of the ordinances that

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  They're being like, then the cost of a long range missile compared to the, you know, the stuff that like massive costs. And I thought to myself, someone has to physically produce all this stuff made out of steel or whatever it's made out of. And given that we have a lot of resources here in Australia, I wonder why Australia's ever thought to itself to become a supplier to the world of manufacturing this stuff. I mean, I mean, is it some specialists? I mean, obviously it's got to be specialized, but is there something beyond our capability to manufacturing these ordinances and actually sell them to America or sell them to whoever?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  It's not, and we've got, I know they've got some artillery production facilities. They're starting to expand out in Australia now. There's new ones getting built because they're seeing in Europe with the Ukraine war that just the volume of artillery they're using is so enormous. That that might use, I think I read six to eight thousand rounds a day during the offensive operation. And these rounds, they're like as tall, you know, the waist height, thirty kilo rounds. And they're churning out thousands a day. And in Australia, I think we were producing six thousand a year or something. So we've got, they're now looking at factories that are able to ramp that capability up. The US are building ones that are automated and just run with minimal people.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Apparently the Chinese have fully automated factories that work around the clock building cruise missiles. So really advanced, really advanced missiles. And there are some defence startups in the US now that are trying to build really low cost munitions and weapons and all that to, to compete with this.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  Would you, is there anything that you've often thought yourself would be a great opportunity from Australia from a, an export point of view, maybe becoming the drone capital of the world, like build the best drones or, and I know a few companies like Drone Shield have tried to sort of start that up. But is there anything that you see as an opportunity that the world needs that we could, we could be providing apart from our, you know, our, our, our position on the globe relative to intelligence. What other things do you think someone could do really well in Australia that the world's in demand for now?

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Oh, we've got, we've got certain advantages when it comes to niche manufacturing. Like we don't have all the broader stuff that the US has, but you're right, some robotics, some, there's been rocket companies starting. There are a lot of, and tech as well, so and AI as well. So there, there are some fields where if we really put some impetus behind it, we could become known for some of those industries. And I think it'd be smart because we're, we're not a complex economy. It's really quite a basic economy, you know, mining, engineering, tourism.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  Because it's been too good for us.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  It's been, yes.

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just say rocks out of the ground, send it somewhere else.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  So well, yeah, we've gone rich off the back of that.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Because sort of like semi lazy.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  If you know what I mean. I don't mean.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  More lucky than, than good.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, more lucky than good, more, more, yeah, correct. More lucky than competency and commitment.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  I mean, we are competent in what we do, but it's more like it's been, it's, but we've been able to live off our luck.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  And we did it off the sheep's back for a long time and, you know, sheep grow their own. Well, we don't grow it and we just have to take it off and send it somewhere.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  And the same with minerals.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  And it seems to me that, you know, artificial intelligence seems like one way we could go. Where do you see AI performing in the theatre of war today? I mean, compared to say when you were. Deployed.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Well, actually, in taking a step back, that data centers was one.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, data centers.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  I know that, yeah, coming down and saying you could be a center that hosts data centers. I know the UA are trying to do the same thing.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  So you could do that.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  But UA right now is a bit of a drama because you're in the theater. I mean, and if I'm an investor in, because you know, you need investors to put money to build these things because they're expensive and you need to build infrastructure around a lake, water and power, of course.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  Electricity.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  I would think Australia would be better, a less risky position.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Be a great bet.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can put it out in the desert or not the desert, but you can put it out somewhere a bit more remote. Doesn't have to be in the middle of Brisbane or something.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's one opportunity I reckon would be perfect, but.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  And the, and the people like the AWSs of the world could, you know, heavily rely on us in that regard.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  So we, but do you see, do you think, when I want to go back to the question I asked before, Bad, is there something that worries you about us? Just if I could just think about Australia for the moment, be selfish. Is there, do we really need to be worried or is it just something we need to keep eyes on?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  It's one of those things where I think we'll be fine.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  But the probability of something catastrophic happening has gone from one percent to now 10%.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  You know, it's just a much higher chance than it used to be. And so because of that, I think you've got to take dramatic steps to try and make sure that worst case doesn't happen. Or if it does, say we are cut off in our economy, rise to a halt because we've got trouble with fuel or not able to get import exports going because we've lost control of that northern waterways. Like, what do we need to have set up now so that if that, if we encounter that problem, we're going to be in much better shape?

• 1:12:22Speaker 00

  Does anyone ever come and talk to you? Do you ever get, I mean, apart from this type of environment, does government ever talk to someone like you? Someone who's actually been in the theater, like you know what it's about? Does, do you ever get contacted?

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes, sometimes. Andrew Hasty is a good mate. He, we talk about this a fair bit. He's, he's got a strong interest in this as well. And I think people who have been, who have seen war zones, like, oh, it's.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Well, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  You understand how bad it can get for people, you know, like you don't really want that coming. I feel like they're not listened to very much. Jim Mullen was another one.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  He, he was banging the cage for a long time about the Pacific. And I just don't feel like those lessons have really landed because the budget hasn't changed. The, the psychology of the country hasn't changed.

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  Do you think it's because we, we as a nation don't put enough emphasis or pressure on governments to take, pay attention? Because, I mean, a lot of governments these days are poll driven. And if they thought the polls were saying, let's do something, I'm, I'll guarantee they would do something.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  That would change.

• 1:13:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I don't think, I think we're so far removed from a lot of it that we don't think this way. We don't really, we don't get touched by war in the way that other countries do in the northern hemisphere. But in World War Two, we, we did, we got bombed. You know, my grandma told me she was getting into bomb shelters in Perth when they were bombing Broome. And that was eighty plus years ago. If, if it happened again today, they could reach us with no, no issues at all.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  Well, submarines came from Sydney Harbour.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Sydney Harbour, exactly. And they were shelling parts of Sydney Harbour.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. Because I, because where I live, there, there was, there's a, an obelisk there which commemorates the net that went from south head across the north head.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  Like across the Mossman type area with, it was a net meant to catch submarines, stop them from somehow going through. Again, that's, that's on your front door.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  So what, what could they do now?

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Autonomous things and, you know, so we're not as separated from this as we think we are. And I just think that our psychology around it

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  is one where it just needs a little shove so that we can take steps now and be way more prepared later. Not, not, there's no need to panic. It's just, we need to be prudent about defence capabilities, fuel and oil capabilities and manufacturing. If we've got those things down, we can be pretty resilient.

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  And budget.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  And budget.

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  Start allocating more stuff towards these things. So your YouTube's been going pretty good. What's been flying off the handle? What's, what's, what's been the biggest response?

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  It's funny because when I started, I was going to do a lot of business content. And then I, I did one on the Chinese fleet that sailed around. I just did a video, it was like one at night, recorded a short video on it. And I rang my air tower, I go, don't, don't edit this much because I don't think anyone's going to watch it. And that one really took off, like four hundred thousand views or something. So I thought I'll do a bit more on current affairs and just start talking more about current affairs. And I was a history undergrad and I've always had an interest in it. So I'll just talk about, you know, current affairs that's happening and throw in a few business things occasionally. And yeah, it's just a good, good medium to do it on.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  You've taken a different path as opposed to the typical path of a former soldier. I mean, you've, you've gone to Wharton Business School, Wharton Business School, you got it.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you got to get an MBA there or something like that. Yeah. But in addition, you've done some other studies. You've worked with one of the, you know, one of the big consultancy organizations, like McKinsey.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:43Speaker 00

  And worked McKinsey.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  I think you've written a book.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  You're now doing your, you're doing your commentary, just, just a fun thing, but it's sort of pretty spot on from what I've seen.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  Your level of research is not just, you're not just sitting here making stuff up. I mean, you're actually in the guts of it. I mean, you've, you've come from that background, but you're in the guts of this stuff. Like you're researching these things probably as a civilian. You're not, you're not, you're not sort of tapping into the Department of Defence or the Office of National Intelligence or anything like that. Maybe you are, I don't know. But I mean, but this is just observational stuff, but based on what you've experienced, as opposed to say someone like me, who might be a civilian observationer.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:16:37Speaker 00

  You're actually a former engaged observationer. Like you're actually making observations based on your former engagement. In other words, what can be the effect of what I'm seeing based on what I've experienced before?

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  So apart from, you know, people looking at this stuff, is it getting any traction? Like the Jim Moll and stuff was, like Andrew Hasty could do it for you, sort of was like in that position. Is it getting any traction?

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  You mean the, the warnings about what could? I think it is. I think people are starting to go, are starting to see the direction the world's heading in. And these constant arguments about Australian capabilities not being where they should be. And it's, there's a bit of a mismatch because they're saying on one hand, yeah, it is a really dangerous environment. But on the other hand, we're saying we need to raise all these capabilities, but to do it, we're just going to reorganise the defence budget without increasing it, including selling, you know, selling properties or what, like, it's just, they're tinkering at the edges of it.

• 1:17:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, just move the deck chairs around.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Just moving, like, it really needs a hard push and they need to find the money from somewhere to do it. That's just a key part of it. It's expensive to do it and there's plenty of money out there. They can, they can find the money.

• 1:17:51Speaker 00

  It takes balls, mate. They need stones to do this sort of shit.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  It takes political capital, which, you know, maybe some governments don't prioritise it. And, and this is where you have to give Howard a bit of credit because he committed Aussie forces to his team or in 99, we'd been neglected for 15 plus years after Vietnam. We could barely pull off that mission properly. We couldn't deploy it. It was 400 kilometres off Darwin and we still could barely deploy there. So he said, that's it, we're going to build military back and threw a lot of effort, time, money, budget at it. And that, that took 10 years, but we built a pretty good capability out of that.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  So if, and I don't want to draw too long a bow, but there was some evidence that was put out there by ASIO, maybe six, seven months ago, that Iran was behind some of the attacks on the Jewish synagogues and various other things. And I'm sure ASIO are not saying that just for the, for political capital, they, they just tell the truth.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Speaker 00

  Do you think that terrorism is a soft form of war against other nations where there's distance between us?

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they'll try and influence countries as much as they can without going to war. And it's, the Americans are good at this too. They formed the CIA after World War Two to try and avert really a third world war because if you had a functioning CIA before World War Two, they could go in and influence the German elections or, you know, elevate someone over who eventually came to power in Nazi Germany.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  You'd have, you might have a totally different outcome. So even though what they do with interfering in other countries might seem morally bad, i- if it averts a third world war, is it, is it bad or, you know, it might be good. So all countries are doing that. Iran's no different.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  They're doing it to perhaps not necessarily avert a war that could be there trying to influence the war.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, you know, it's like.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  Or conflict.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So everyone's doing it to some level, but you know, like, like boxing, kind of the trick is hidden, hidden, don't get hit.

• 1:20:00Speaker 00

  It's not always that easy.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  It's not always that easy.

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  It's not that easy at all. As, as, but do you think that, do you, you expect that those cells of a bit like what Mossad probably did in Iran, you know, 10, 15 years ago, do you think those cells have been well established here for a long time at the moment? And we just, we just have no sense of it at the moment.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  I, I think there are a lot of cells, Hezbollah especially have done it. Iran has done it as well. The Russians have been really good at it. They've put people into countries that from a young age and left them there for 20 plus years, only to activate them at a certain point.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  I remember seeing that Netflix series on that.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's all real. So I don't know how effective it is. Uh, and a lot of this obviously happens in the shadows and you only hear about it when it goes wrong. But it's definitely a technique countries have to try and have agents that are in countries fully integrated that still operate on their behalf.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Now I'm going to be walking around thinking to myself, who the hell is looking at me here? Why do they want to talk to me? Well, mate, I, I, I thank you by the way, for your service to, to, to our nation.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  And I, and I don't think enough people in our country, um, thank our former service people, um, in, and, and that goes, cuts across. First responders back to people like you who go into other countries and put your life on the line. We, I want to say thank you for that. On behalf of all those people who would like to thank you. Um, and I'm saying that, I want to say that loud and proud. So thank you for that. And I really appreciate your insights into today. And I just wish more people would pay attention to people like you. Whether you're right or wrong, doesn't matter. Let's be aware and, and more importantly, let's be prepared.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, mate. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you giving me the time to, you know, talk about it. And yeah, I love what you've done with the podcast. It's awesome.

• 1:21:47Speaker 00

  Thanks, mate.