Iran downs U.S. Apache helicopter, crew rescued by unmanned "sea drone"

In 2025, Americans lost more than $21 billion to fraud and identity theft. That's why so many people are turning to Aura. Aura helps protect your identity with fraud alerts, dark web monitoring, and up to $5 million in identity theft protection. And if you become a victim, Aura's 24-7 U.S.-based support team is there to help. Don't wait until your identity is stolen. Start your free trial today at Aura.com slash safe. That's Aura.com slash safe. Welcome to today's podcast, sponsored by Hillsdale College, all things Hillsdale at Hillsdale.edu. I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there. And, of course, I'll listen to the Hillsdale Dialogues, all of them at Q for Hillsdale.com, or just Google, Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale. Good morning, Lori and even Grace, America. Hugh Hewitt here. What a show coming up today. Stick around for hour at three. Christian Bros. is coming on. He is the President and Chief Strategy Officer of Anderol, and we're going to talk about the Revolution and Armament. But how we use those arms is something for me to talk about with my first guest, Matt Contonetti. Matt is a columnist with the Wall Street Journal. He's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. And Matt, I'm sure you've seen this story, or maybe you haven't, that... We lost an Apache helicopter today down by the Iranians. They fired on an Apache. And they were picked up by an automated drone. How remarkable is that? Yeah, it's pretty remarkable, Hugh. I heard that detail just before joining the show, and it just is a fascinating illustration of the way in which robotics, automated systems, artificial intelligence, all of these high-end technologies are being integrated into our war machine. It's incredible. I'm glad they were rescued, of course. Now, Christian Bros. who's coming on? I mentioned it in our number three today. I listened to them first on the School of War with Aaron McLean. And we are in a revolutionary period of time on the defense industry. Do you think we can move fast enough to stockpile the munitions we need for any kind of war that might come along, Matt Continent? Hugh, it's a question of political will. It always is. Can we summon the political will to get the capacity required to maintain an American deterrence in this very dangerous world? You know, we have this one and a half trillion dollar defense request by President Trump that's sitting before Congress, the largest defense expenditure request ever. And it seems like there's some resistance, especially among congressional Democrats to it. But I think Republicans need to make the case. They need to make the case that look.

Everyone complaining about munitions and munitions shortages, including the Democrats, where were they when we had the chance to truly fund the Department of Defense or Department of War? Where were they in the 2010s when Obama was drastically cutting our military? Where were they during the Biden administration? When Biden allowed inflation? to cut the value of the defense budget. So I would have the question put to the Democrats. If you're serious about confronting ammunition shortages, if you're serious about protecting America, you have to support the president's defense request for a $1.5 trillion. Well, let's talk about that request, Matt. President Trump has thought it was going to be a six-week war. It's not 100 days. It's going to go another 100 days. I thought it would be over in June. It's not going to be over in June. How do you think... He's communicating about this war. And what do you hope he says in the days and weeks ahead about this war? Well, just before we began the program, Hugh, he said that because of the downed Apache, America would be forced to respond. And I hope that the way in which the United States responds is not just another love tap, as President Trump calls it, you know, taking out an Iranian helicopter, if any, remain or hitting a random oil depot. I think we need to show the Iranians that we're serious about reestablishing deterrence. And then they cannot continue to kind of drag along these negotiations, link to unrelated issues, at least to the American perspective, which is Israel's war against Hezbollah and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. We need to prove to the Iranians that we're serious, that we're not going to allow this phony ceasefire to continue in perpetuity. That's what I hope the president communicates. At the same time, I'm aware he has a different tack. He is definitely interested in maintaining these negotiations for as long as possible in order to calm markets and to, I believe, assuaged the Gulf allies who are concerned that if the war resumed, they would be the first targets, in particular their electricity generation and their desalinization plants. Matt, I haven't had a clearance since 1989, so I don't know anything. I do read that maybe we've used too much of our munitions stockpile, maybe we have a critical gap in Tomahawks or a different kind of weapon system. What do you hear about that? Are we out of weapons? We're not out of weapons, Hugh. My understanding is that we're running low in some key weapons, munition stocks, including attackums, for example, including Patriot missiles, the high-tech air defenses, the technology, the weapons platforms that are very advanced. These are the places where we're running a little bit low. as a result of the lack of investment over the past decade and more in some cases. So that's where I think the concern is. In terms of weaponry, we still have weapons for sure, especially kind of the low-grade bombs, the dumb bombs, so-called. But right now, it's not so much the capacity that's the issue, but it's the lack of will, the lack of will to resume the war.

at the level we were at before the April 8th ceasefire, which is now, you know, this phony ceasefire has run longer than actual Operation Epic Fury. And so when we're saying we're saying it, we're at a war. Well, not really. You know, only one side is firing, and that's Iran. Now, my friends at the Pentagon laugh whenever civilians start talking about doing this or doing that, because we don't know anything about the second order consequences or the third order consequences. But we know that the embargo is working and that they don't have any revenue coming in or only a trickle of revenue. Isn't it time, or I will make my statement, I think it's time to blow up some of their refineries. And I understand that that hurts the Iranian people long term, but there's no way that we can help them until after this regime has changed, evolved, or been defeated. And one way to make the message come home is with their refinery capacity. What do you think, Matt, Continent? Well, it would be a definite step on the escalation ladder. And I think that from the Iranian perspective, they would see that almost as an invitation to target the refineries in the Gulf. And I think the fear of that retaliation is one reason we haven't gone to that level. My view, Hugh, is the real obstacle to any negotiated outcome is the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is essentially running Iran, the political echelon. Yes. They're talking to Trump. They don't run Iran. That's clear. So any new targets, it seems to me, have to start with the IRGC. If the IRGC is the problem, then we should do everything in our power to weaken the IRGC and elevate the political leadership. And so I think that would suggest maybe a different list of targets. And then moreover, there's still unfinished missile stocks. These missile cities are very deep. They're being reinforced. But we could easily go after them again and show that we're still serious about pursuing the war aims. The war aims were to deny Iran the conventional missile shield to guard their nuclear program. We went a long way in doing that, but we still have more targets that could hit those missiles and, of course, the defense industrial base that produces them. I would go there if they were asking my advice for... potential targets. Have they extended, in your view, has the United States been explicit enough in extending our umbrella over our allies in the Gulf? In other words, if you hit the desalinization facility in Saudi Arabia, it's all out war again. If you hit the UAE's desalinization or their nuclear facility, it's all out war again. Have you seen that message communicated? I'm afraid I haven't. I mean, and those are very high-end targets, but just think of the Kuwait airport. We saw a recent attack on the Kuwait International Airport. Americans could have been killed in that attack. There was damage to this transportation hub, and the response from the United States was... It's kind of meh, to be honest. I think Trump has telegraphed that if an American is killed, he's prepared to go back to war. As I said, this downing of the helicopter seems to have provoked him into some sort of response. We'll see what that is. But I think one problem with our approach at the moment is this kind of ambiguity. Trump likes ambiguity usually because it gives him a whole range of options. But right now, I think we need to be very clear to Iran.

that this negotiating process cannot be allowed to drag out ad infinitum, you know. And moreover, if they use Hezbollah to attack Israel or if they directly attack our Gulf allies, America will respond and allow our allies respond to reestablish deterrence against this world's worst sponsor of terrorism. I'm for that. Now I want to switch very quickly to politics. It's voting day in South Carolina in Maine. I know Lindsey Graham will be renominated. I hope Alan Wilson's the next governor down there. But up in Maine, Graham Platner is going to win. It's just a question of whether or not Janet Mills gets 15 or 20 percent of a protest vote. What do you think about Graham Platner in the fall? Is he a zombie candidate given all the way that we know? I'm afraid he's not a zombie candidate. The left-wing base of the Democratic Party has proven that they don't care about Graham Platner's Nazi-associated tattoo. They don't care about all of the horrible Reddit statements he's made. They don't care about these allegations of kind of sexual impropriety or even abuse. They don't care. They want to stop Trump. They like the anti-Zionism, the anti-Semitism, really. The fact that now Platiners go to. response when any question about his past is raised is to say, that's the Jews. That's B.B. Ned and Yahoo. That's APEC. That in itself is disqualifying. And it added to the list of disqualifying characteristics about Graham Platner. But for the left wing of the Democratic Party, they simply don't care. Susan Collins will have to wage a campaign against Graham Platner. I think it's a campaign she can win. I agree with that. She always under polls, but she is known to pretty much everyone in Maine. Matt Contonetti, good to talk to you. Follow Matt on Atset Continenti. Read him in the Wall Street Journal. We'll be on the Thursday edition of Commentary Podcast as well. Thank you, Matt. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Byron York is a Fox News contributor chief political editor at the Washington Examiner, D.C. Examiner. Byron, before I turn to the political news of the day, what do you think the president ought to do in response to the shootdown of our Apache today? Well, you know, a few days ago, the president made what was a really funny line. He said, well, you know, in that part of the world, he was asked, what's your definition of ceasefire? And he said, well, in that part of the world, ceasefire is when you're shooting in a more moderate manner. Right. And it was kind of funny with some of the minor skirmish stuff that we've seen. But now somebody shot down an American war plane, a helicopter. And fortunately the crew is fine, but you can't let that happen. So I think you've got to do something pretty serious. And by pretty serious, do you mean hitting a refinery, hitting IRGC barracks? What's in your category of pretty serious? Well, that's a, I mean, that's a great question. You've got to do something that, you know, when you're carefully calibrating a hit.

And the other side interprets it, well, they feel like he's got to do something to keep up appearances, but he's not really trying to hurt us. Well, he's got to do something where he's really trying to hurt you. Yes. And I don't know that. Yes. And I was talking about this with Matt Continenti before he came on. I said, hit an oil refinery. He said, well, then they'll hit another oil refinery belonging to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or UAE. He said, well, we ought to make it clear that that's just turning on the war again. And Matt suggested IRGC barracks. If they're actually living in the barracks, fine. But I doubt anyone is. Do you think they're living in their barracks? You know, I would think that in Iran, if you're any possible target for the United States or Israel, you've found other accommodations. Yeah, you've gone to ground. They're kind of invisible, yeah. I think an oil refinery makes sense to me, and then just tell them you hit one of ours, we'll hit two of yours. Byron, let me turn to the big race today in South Carolina for governor. I'm an Alan Wilson fan. And in Maine... where I'm anybody but Graham Platner fan. I'm actually a Susan Collins fan. Do you think Graham Platner's going to win after this deluge of bad news and character issues? When the Democratic primary? Yes, I think you will. I mean, well, what's the alternative that Janet Mills is on the ballot? They write in, well, that they write in Janet Mills, whose campaign is still suspended right now. And then she's come out and said, well, you know, I want to remind everybody, I only suspended my campaign. I didn't kill it. I didn't end it. But it makes no sense to me to go vote for someone who suspended their campaign. And besides, I think that you've seen enough Democrats making excuses for Graham Platner that that to win the primary against nominal or non-existent opposition. Byron, I know that you read Herodotus every night, so I know you're familiar with this story. In Herodotus, there's a story of an old king from way back when, who would take a little bit of a poison every, a different poison every day to build up his immunity system. Do you think Graham Platner is now immune to attack? Because he's done everything you cannot possibly do and win. No, well, you're the lawyer here. There are people who cannot be libeled, basically, because they don't have a reputation to smirch.

You know, and they're libel proof. You can just say anything about it because they literally don't have a reputation to defend. I don't think he's there. I think that, as a matter of fact, I think we've seen in the last couple of days we've seen what polls they have, and they don't have a lot of them, actually going down a little bit after the texting story. The public had or the Democrats had made their peace with the Nazi tattoo story. They had made their piece with the Reddit post story. But you have to remember, on the texting story, the sexting story, there's so much we don't know, and we still haven't found out, like, how many women was it? What did the text say? What were the ages of the women? Were there any photographs in the text? And, really big one, did the women want to receive these kind of messages from Graham Platner? Or were they involuntarily received by them? These are really big issues, and they have not been answered. And I think bad answers on some of those questions would be very damaging to it. Now, you know, Susan Collins is chair of appropriations, and she was behind in every poll six years ago. Every poll she was behind. She won by nine points. It's impossible to poll Maine because it's an old state and it's dispersed across a large – it's only 1.1 million people, and Susan Collins knows all of them, I think, has had dinner at everyone's house. Do you think – how does she campaign, just ignore him and let the super PACs blast him? Because I think that's what she's going to do. Yeah, I think so. I mean, she, you know, she just cast, what was it, her 10,000 votes in a row. She hasn't missed that one. This is kind of a Cowl Ripkin of the Senate situation. So, you know, that is that is her identity, which is representing Maine in a serious and responsible way. And I agree. Let somebody else. point out all this stuff about grand platinum and i do i do think there's going to be more uh... but uh... but for her purposes just go forward and you know a lot of times when it when all this platinum news has been happening in uh... camera crews have tried to kind of ambush her in the in the halls of the senate office building She said, you know, I'm going to a hearing, to hear Senator or Marco Rubio. You know, I'm going to this. In other words, I'm doing my job. I'm working. I'm working right now. I'm not running an oyster farm. That's not really an oyster farm. All right, going down to South Carolina, Attorney General Alan Wilson is a friend of mine. I've known him forever. A work friend, like we're not going to go out to a restaurant buddies. But I've known him forever. His dad is Joe Wilson in the Congress. Do you think he's going to win or do you think it's a runoff? Well, what you're saying is do you think he's going to beat the Pamela of the vet? The lieutenant governor has been endorsed by President Trump. And so, now we've seen one Trump defeat so far. And I don't know how many victories, a whole lot of them. I just don't think Trump is going to suffer another defeat in South Carolina.

And the reason I do is because Alan has won four statewide elections and his father may be the best known politician. In other words, there are some basics in politics running, batting, hitting, stealing bases. Alan Wilson has done them all. Finally, when we come down to it and you're looking ahead two more years, when does the presidential race start, Byron York. Well, I would always have said a day after the midterms, and I think it will definitely be underway by the day after the midterms. I agree. But it's kind of going right now. And, you know, obviously some candidates on both sides are making trips to early voting states. They're doing the kind of preparation right now that they need to do before. the sort of official start after the midterms. But in the first week in November, that's when it starts. Yeah, and the first full Wall Street Journal profile of a candidate, Rahm Emanuel, ran two days ago, and I thought that was the starting gun. When you get the big profiles, right, that's when you know people are running. Interesting that he got the first one. Yeah, and he would be formidable for Republicans. I don't know that he can get along in this world's Democratic Party. Byron York can be followed at X. Byron, New York. Stay tuned. I'm coming back with Tim Gaglin. He is the Vice President for External Affairs and Focus on the Family. Stay tuned. Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage. I tell you, bro. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Why am I opening up with the chairman of the board? Because Tim Gaglin, who is the vice president for external affairs and focus on the family, quotes Frank, in his brand new book, What Really Matters. And what really matters, if you get into what really matters, is marriage. Is that a fair statement, Tim, and welcome. Good to have you, friend. Thank you. Marvelous book. You, it's great to be with you. And yes, absolutely. And in fact, I think if the chairman of the board were singing in popular music today, at least 50% of the country would be baffled. What's he singing about? What's he talking about? How do these things go together? That's the whole purpose of what really matters. So being a cheerleader for the traditional married life. you're going to run into a lot of obstacles. And as I was reading through, we'll cover a lot of the specifics, such as the restoring of importance of history and restoring faith as we go through this conversation. But I really did put it down saying, you want people to get married before they're 25. If Ted Gaglin could make a rule, it would be, hey, three quarters of you kids have to be married before you're 25. Am I right? You're absolutely right, and it's because all of the empirical data says so. In effect, it's very dangerous when you use the word never, as you know, Hugh. But when you look at the most important best research, whether it's a scholar of the left, a scholar of the right, no ideology whatsoever, the best large data sets.

say that Americans who get married in their early to mid-20s tend to have the greatest percentage of successful marriages over time. And by the way, If you wrap into that data set, people in their 20s who get married and have at least one child, their percentage likelihood of a long-lasting, successful, contented, joyous, happy marriage is even greater. My great friend, your great friend, Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, Melissa Kearney, another remarkable scholar at the University of Maryland, MIT-trained economist. Very different scholars, very different views, but their objective research says the same thing. Two-parent families are what's best for the rising generation of young Americans and best for husbands and wives. You also say that what I'm holding in my hand and people can see if they're watching on the Salem News channel and they can hear if they're... listening on the radio stations and our affiliates is the cell phone. And if you want to have your thriving marriage, put down your phone and save your marriage, page 23. Thriving marriages are marked by ongoing engaged conversation. You know, the enforcer in that is, is usually the wife. I've been married for 44 years, and the phone can't be brought out in a restaurant unless I need directions. So it is true, Tim, that it... It's destructive of conversation. It's destructive connection, isn't it? It is. And in fact, as you and we and everybody know, George Orwell wrote one of the greatest books, 1984. I think Hugh, there is a truly great book to be written. And the title would be 2010, because broadly defined that is the year that the smartphone was introduced. And if you look at the loneliness crisis, the dating recession, the incentivization of living apart, you know, virtual relationships versus real ones, the breaking apart of friendship. As you know, in what really matters, I have a whole chapter on restoring the American male. And it is shocking to read in that chapter, Hugh, that 15% of all American men have no friends. I spoke at the very end of the recent academic year to a very large group of sophomores, juniors, and seniors at a large, well-known public university. And you know how this is to you, because you speak all the time. You give your remarks, Q&A, and then you have a large number of young people who, you know, come down to the podium and want to continue the conversation. And I know that anecdotes are not data. But in behalf of focus on the family and being in a university that's otherwise not necessarily known for being friendly to our worldview, I continued the conversation. And I just said informally to the men there, how many of you would say you don't really even have one close friend who you are regularly in contact with, let's say, every week or every other week?

And Hugh, there was a forest of hands. And I asked the same question of the young women, the same thing. This is not related to nothing. Increasingly, the best research, and it's why I emphasize it again and again in my book, what really matters, is that the smartphone era for all the great things it can do, and it does. But it really does incentivize staying in your own space, isolation. And I think COVID and the pandemic just. deepened and widened the whole thing by degrees of oceans. I agree with that. I think part of that is the connectivity that's available online is a faux connectivity. It's not the real thing. It's often not with real people. It's with bots. Let me come right back. Tim Gagland's brand new book is What Really Matters. He'll be back after the break. Stay tuned to the Cuckooitt Show. One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. Welcome back, America. The new book is What Really Matters. One is referenced in it as well. The author is Tim Gaglin. Tim Gaglin, in What Really Matters, you talk about Gen Z. That's the people born between 1997 and 2012. They're as young as 10 and they're as old as 25 or 30. They are ignorant of history. They are lonely. They are depressed. Only 52% of them go to church. What do you do about Gen Z? What's the answer there? Well, yeah, I'll tell you, Hugh, as you know and what really matters, I try to divide each of the chapters along the line of restoration. And I'm an inveterate optimist. I truly am. And so the very sobering statistics that you share are undeniable. But I think there are more than silver linings. And I want to speak about that for a minute. Because the most recent and important Gallup survey shows that 49% of all young American men of a sudden say that faith and religion is foundational. When they're asked, even aspirationally, do you want to be married? Do you want to have children? They overwhelmingly say, yes, they don't want to miss the miracle and blessing of fatherhood. Now, it's true. We have millions of young American, able-bodied men, say 18 to 25. Our friend Nick Eberschtat at the American Enterprise Institute has done remarkably important, even path-breaking research that says that large percentages of this generation of men are able-bodied, as I say, but they're not working. They're not looking for a job. They're not in college. They're not in school. They're not looking to be. I think if you are a blue state urban, well-educated woman, or you are a ruby red rural ex-urban woman, if you want to be married and if you want to have children, you're saying that kind of demographical male is... unmarriageable. So I think in large measure this accounts for this wide chasm. It's not necessarily religion and faith, although that's important, but it has a lot to do about aspirations and the future. And in this generation, that chasm becomes yawning in many ways.

Now, let's talk about, because I want to make sure we cover it, your chapter in what really matters on restoring faith. Not so long ago, maybe two months ago, I had lunch with a young man, 22, having a big job in D.C., working in the ODOB, and he said, where did you meet your wife? And I met my wife at a political fundraiser, so that's not exactly where you meet a lot of, for Pete Wilson. If you're out there, Governor, thank you again. But I said, find your church, meet your wife there. And since that time. Tim, I'm Roman Catholic. I have been in the last six weeks. I've been in six different Roman Catholic churches in four different states because of my travel pattern, which is like, they're full. They're healthy and they're diverse and they're young. Do you think there is some kind of thing going on? I absolutely do. And in fact, I believe that we are not just in a prologue, we are in at least the first chapter and maybe chapters one and two of what I think of Hugh as a kind of quiet revival. And it's measurable. I want to take a step sideways for a moment because I mentioned a moment ago. that the best empirical data, which for years showed that, especially among young American men, there was either a plateau or a decline in faith and religion and things of the spirit. Of a sudden, it's a major uptick. I was in a debate of all things on Good Friday morning, and one of my interlocutors said, what are your thoughts about the next couple of days? Empty churches again? And I said, I think just the opposite. I think if you are in the heart of Gotham or San Francisco, or whether you are in a very rural Pentecostal or Baptist Church, I think you're going to find that those parishes, pews, and congregations are going to be full, and some of them full to overflowing, because conversions are real. It's about things of the spirit, faith. This generation has lived, as we all know, Hugh, through. immeasurable brokenness disconnection dislocation and they are of a sudden generationally saying i want something different i want something better i want meaning uh and i think that that one of the first and most obvious places they are looking is to things of the faith so i think that this trajectory is upward for a good reason. And now I think young American men are eager to get rid of the dating recession and to start anew. Now, Tim Gaglin, you did not mention in what really matters what Douglas Murray, who's an agnostic, all right, but he's a brilliant agnostic. He says we're living in a meaning crisis, the meaning crisis meaning that the younger you get, the less likely it is that the individual you're talking with has some idea what life is about. They don't have a Baltimore catechism, no love and serve God. They don't have any catechism at all. How do you fix that? I mean, young life is out there, and God bless them, may they grow as they are growing in India, which is by leaps and brown. But how do you fix the meaning crisis in America? Not everyone's going to read what really matters.

Yeah, may I say, my friend Al Mueller, I think, has spoken and written eloquently about this. There are many other analyses that I, you know, recommend heartily. But Al speaks at length about the distinction between thick and thin theology. And when you look at all the growth numbers in faith, religion, things of the spirit, which is to say meaningful things, broadly defined, you don't find it by and large you in all patterns of faith in America. You find it largely in mass attending Catholics. You find it among broadly defined, you know, Christians who are Orthodox, and you find it in broadly defined Americans who are kind of in confessional or evangelical religious experiences. In other words, mainline Christianity. And many of those formerly full parishes, I think, did not come through the moral and sexual revolution of the 60s, 70s, and 80s very well. And young people are simply not looking there. I want to say something else that I think is counterintuitive as well, but I think it fits to Douglas Murray's point. And I think it's really salient in 2026. which is that young people are also, of a sudden, finding good reasons to say, I'm going to put the smartphone in the drawer. I'm putting this on rest mode. Increasingly, there are people in the baby boom generation trying to get in touch with Gen Z and Gen X, and they're finding that if it's Friday after 6 p.m., they may not get them until Monday morning. But it's not for no reason. It's often related. to fellowship, friendship, dating, and seeking things that matter. And I think that this is so important for the political classes, because what really matters, if we're saying what kind of a country do we want 50 years from now, it's not that it's not about border security and immigration and taxes and war, and I'm all with you and the political classes in that regard. But what really matters, family, marriage, parenting, human life. religious liberty, conscience rights, parental rights, pronouns that have fixed meanings, young people are seeking this kind of concreteness, meaning, and purpose. Finally, Tim, you summed up by saying we need an ordered society. And that is actually, from the beginning of human history, we have sought an ordered society. We are blessed to live in a land where we have the most brilliant foundation of framers who came up with the most brilliant. foundation and we're coming up on our 250th anniversary. But the ordered society is fraying, isn't it? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Last question, Tim Gagland.

I am a categorical glass is more than half full optimist. I believe that America's best days are ahead of us, but not because of confetti to the wind optimism. I am a Christian, therefore I'm a hopefulist. But the most important thing is look at what the data says. We don't have to rely exclusively on data, but what are the trend lines? The trend lines are not back into the kind of morally relativistic spiritual crisis that lands us in an era at. war with objective reality, good, bad, right, wrong. I think the rising generation of young men and women, Christians and not, but those seeking meaning and purpose, I think overwhelmingly. They want something different. And they are asking what really matters. And I think that the political classes increasingly see that all of the political slogans and promises and talking points of a sudden no longer work. But it's not because this generation is uninterested. I think they are turning toward the things that really matter. And that's why I wanted to write the book. What really matters in bookstores now, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever books are sold. What Really Matters by Tim Gagland. Thank you, Tim. It's always good to catch up with you. Vice President for External Affairs at Focus on the Family. Be well, Tim. I look forward to the next book. It's Election Day in South Carolina and, of course, in the great state of Maine, where Graham Platner is on the ballot. Rich Lowry is the editor-in-chief of National Review. Rich posted on X only an hour ago. We've seen a lot of unimpressive Senate candidates, corrupt Senate candidates, unfaithful Senate candidates over the years, but Graham Platner is something new and different, a shockingly twisted Senate candidate like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie, truly dark and disturbing. I agree, Rich Lowry. What do you think he'll get in terms of percentage of the Democratic vote? It'd be quite high. I don't know what, 60, 70%, 75%. I mean, they're all in on them. They shouldn't be. It's ridiculous. It's a very bad choice. I thought I was kind of bullish on his chances against Susan Collins when all it was was a Reddit post and the tattoo, even though he was clearly lying about the tattoo. But these stories over the last week or so. When you get into this kind of area, Hugh, with the sexting and the abuse of girlfriends, there's more where that came from. So there'll be future shoes to drop. Democrats are very nervous about it, but it's too late now. I want to run down for the benefit of the audience. You may have lost... track of all of the scandals. He does have a Nazi tattoo, an SS tattoo associated with the death camp guards. He had numerous Reddit threads on which he made numerous sexist and homophobic comments. They've been erased. He, um,

candidate, of course. So they figured this Graham Platner is the same, it'll be the same play, even though he's not really an oyster man. It's kind of a fake business of recent vintage. And there's, I think, cute kind of an element of condescension here where they think working class guys, they all have these problems, they're all abusive to their girlfriends, they might have shameful tattoos, you know, comes with the territory. But of course, it doesn't. You know, these are unique attributes to Graham Platner. And it doesn't come with Marines. The most interesting parallel, I've come up with Rich. JD Vance comes out of a troubled home with an addict mom and a somewhat crazy grandma with guns lying around the house. And there's a lot of disturbance in his life. He can't even figure out how to apply to Ohio State back in the day. So he goes in the Marine Corps for four years. And the Marines, he goes to Iraq. He gets straightened out. He learns how to live life. He comes back to two years at Ohio State University. and then goes to Yale Law School. Graham Platner is a screw-up in high school, bounced out of Hotchkiss school, goes to another exclusive prep school, and then he goes in the Marines, and he comes out more screwed up. What's that tell us about the Marine Corps, of anything? I don't think it tells us anything about the Marine Corps. Look, there's stresses under combat, and people do have bad times afterwards. And that's why I think he could have gotten away with just the Reddit post. But the sexting is a very recent vintage when supposedly he's a reformed person. And I think the Marine Corps is actually an amazing institution in terms of... turning people around. You talk about JD Vance going into the Marines and coming out a different person. I've been around the Marines a little bit and gone to their training camps. And these kids, you know, they're not always the great greatest material coming in. You know, they're budgy, they're out of shape. They might be little disciplined. They haven't done well in school. Maybe that's why they're signed up for the Marines. And they come out these incredible guys, you know, tribute to our nation. So I think in that respect, the Marines is just absolute great. institution, and you can't judge it by Graham Platner, obviously. Yeah, a classic of the genre is called Making the Core by Thomas Ricks. Richard from the Washington Post years ago. Lives up in Maine now. I wonder what... Tom Ricks thinks of Graham Platner, but he followed a platoon from New York City where they all gathered up all through their training camp down at Parris Island and how you make the court, tear people down, build them back up. And it works in most case. But JD is on the far right side of the bell curve for success. And Graham Platner is on the far left side. The stuff he talked about, have we found any Marine that went with him into the... Croatia tattoo parlor where he got the deathhead? Has anyone stepped forward from his unit to say, oh yeah, he's a good guy. I did that with him.

Yeah, I don't think we've heard that yet. And one reason this story isn't plausible to me, Hugh, that he had no idea what this was. It's in Croatia, you know, which has some experience with Nazism. And obviously, someone who has an interest in military affairs in World War II, he's posted about World War II matters. He's posted about Nazi symbols and members of the military supposedly using them. And he's defended members of the military. So look, I think he's just so said, I was a dumb kid. I thought this looked tough. Yeah, I know what it was. I shouldn't have done it. I'm ashamed of it now. But instead, he's lied about it flagrantly. And that's another aspect of this New York Times story about the abusive relationship with the girlfriends is one of them who has no interest in military affairs somehow knew a couple of years ago what this was. He referred to it as mine, Toten cough. And there's a record of her discussing this with her friends. So obviously he's lying. So, Rich Lowry, a famous Rich Lowry exit question. Would you give me the odds from 1% to 100% of the re-election of Susan Collins in November? I answered this very excellent question about a week and a half ago, so I got to eat crow because I said I'd favor Graham Platner, but I think, you know, what's emerged over the last week and a half or so. It's bad. Plus, there's very likely to be more. So I'd give her, you know, 60% chance of winning. I think it's going to be a very tough year. I think it's always tough up there, even though she's an institution. So I'm not saying it's an absolute lock. But she's clearly should be the favorite now. And if she wins there, the map becomes very hard for Democrats to take the Senate, very hard. Right. I think it is going to be tough here. I think, for example, John Houston in Ohio has got to show up at every town corner every day between now and September if he wants to meet Sherrod Brown. And I think Michael Whatley's on tomorrow in North Carolina has a rough hold to go. However, I don't see El-Sayed beating Mike Rogers, do you? I think it's going to be tough, and that's going to be a real close one. That's another terrible choice of candidate, but another one the Democrats are probably going to make. But if you just assume for the sake of argument, Republicans don't pick up anywhere, including Michigan. And Susan Collins holds on in Maine. I think North Carolina is going to be a loss for Republicans. Then Democrats, to get there over the top in the Senate, they need to win three out of the four of Texas, Ohio, Iowa, sorry, and Alaska. And that just seems a very, very tough poll. Okay, last quick exit question. President Trump said he has to respond to the shootdown of the Apache. You want a small, medium, or a large response, Rich. I'm on the large response category. Yeah, I would favor large, but I think Hugh just has been established now over the weeks. He has very little interest in reigniting serious kinetic operations. The war never really ended, right? The Iranians always were making a mockery of the ceasefire. Blockade is an act of war. They're blockade of the strait, an act of war. But I think he's pretty desperate for a deal and doesn't want to do anything that would potentially spiral into a real shooting conflict again.

Do you think he's figured out that the politics – I think he's wrong on the politics. I think to be passive right now is going to hurt him in November. Last word to you, Rich Lowry. I think he wants a deal and doesn't – I see what you're saying. It's been better to win, right? Yeah. But I'm not sure to – I think the moment. Rich Lowry, always good to see you. Follow him on next at Rich Lowry. Listen to the editors, which Rich hosts flights a week on wherever iPod, podcasts are heard iTunes, Apple, Spotify, wherever. The editors. Thank you, Rich. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. joined now by Alex Gray. Alex is the CEO of American Global Strategies, one of the great consulting firms inside the Beltway on national security affairs. Alex, President Trump, has said he is going to respond to the shoot down to the Apache. What are his options? What do you think he ought to do? Well, Hugh, I think it was very smart of the president to keep his options open militarily, keeping while the blockade was in place, the right military assets. So there's optionality in the event that he had to escalate or respond to Iranian escalation. And look, I think. What the president's going to do, and we kind of have a bad taste in our mouth for this term, proportional because of past presidents. But I think when this president launches a response, it's going to be a proportional response to the Iranian attack. And it's going to be with a larger strategic goal in mind of finding a pathway to a diplomatic solution that accomplishes his goals and ends this conflict. The president's made very clear that he wants to open the straits. have a nuclear negotiation that ends with Iran, not having a nuclear weapon, and it establishes a Middle Eastern equilibrium that doesn't have an Iranian terror state running amok. And so I think the president's going to push back, show the Iranians he means business, and then get back to the business of diplomacy, which is ultimately how this will be settled. Now, Alex Gray, you were the chief of staff and the National Security Council on the first Trump White House. What is going on right now to give the president options? So the military, through the joint staff, the uniformed officers who form the nucleus of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's kind of planning and operations arm are going to work with Central Command based out of Tampa and with a Ford deployed element in the Middle East. who are generating the actual options available to the president. And then those are going to go to the National Security Council through Marco Rubio, the National Security Advisor. This is a very lean, mean national security council. There's not a lot of undue, unnecessary process and meetings for the sake of meetings.

It's going to be a very tight group that look at this information, that see the options that are generated by the military. They're going to have, you know, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State slash National Security Advisor Marco Rubio. You'll have probably the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, a couple of trusted aides, the vice president, very small, circumspect group are going to be with the president when these options are presented. And knowing how the president operates, the president. Ask good questions. He asks probing questions. He asks questions about chances of success. And he wants the military to be able to show their homework. How did they get to the conclusions they got to? It makes everybody better. And ultimately, he usually arrives at really good military options because he keeps. unlike some commanders of chief, he actually has the capability to go toe to toe to with the military on, you know, what are we doing? What are we trying to accomplish? There's no blank check. And he wants to know why they're recommending what they're recommending. So I think the president's going to have a good set of options and make a good decision. Now, Alex Gray, there's a political dimension here as well, which is its campaign season. We've got primaries today. in Maine and in South Carolina. It's going to continue on until the actual elections are done in November. I think the political danger for the president is too little, not too much. Do you agree with me? Well, Hugh, look, I think that the president actually has, I think he's achieved a tremendous amount already. And I think the blockade is extraordinarily successful. The blockade is choking the Iranian economy. It is succeeding. The Navy is doing exactly what it said it could do and what the president tasked it to do. The Iranians are rejiggering their supply lines. completely through Central Asia. They're having to totally redo their economy on the fly. And we are starting to see cracks in the regime. Student protests are growing regularly. All this to say to you, I don't think the reprisal for what the Iranians did to our aircraft. I don't think that is how we're going to win this to our favor. The blockade has to run its course. The challenge that I think we're seeing, to your point about the politics here, the challenge is that the timeline, the Navy's on, and the Iranian economy is on may not be the American domestic political timeline. And the president as commander-in-chief has to go to the American people and lay out what... is actually going on on the ground and why we have to have patience so this blockade can work and bring the Iranians to their knees to the table so they can give us the deal that we deserve and that we've earned and that we need so we can ultimately, I would argue, Hugh, get out of the Middle East once we've accomplished these objectives. Now, the blockade is designed and is throttling their lifeblood. They're not getting any revenue.

One thing on my list of possibilities is bomb a refinery, a gasoline refinery, because they already have gas shortages and already have a de facto rationing underway in Iran. The response is, well, then they'll shoot at the Saudi oil fields or the Kuwaiti oil fields or the UAE or Bahrain oil fields or Qatar's gas field, to which I think, no, they won't. They're not stupid. They don't want to start that war. What about a refinery, Alex, as a target set? I think it's a proportional response. I also think doing an expanded version of what the Israelis did a couple days ago and going after all of the air defenses that they've tried to reestablish since the end of Operation Epic Fury. I think there are a lot of command and control targets that, you know, if, God forbid, we have to have a more aggressive kinetic response down the road because talks break down, it might as well just lay the groundwork for a more permissive airspace. for if we have to do that again. So I think there are ways to have a proportional response that actually also accomplish some potential operational objectives for the future. A refinery could be part of that. I think there's also a reason to go after some of the infrastructure that might be used for the fast votes if and when there's a further escalation in the Strait of Hormuz. So I think he's got a number of targets that make sense. All right. A final question. The airmen, who were uninjured, thank goodness, were picked up by an automatic boat, by a robo boat, by an SUV on the water, by a driverless taxi on the water. I saw a picture of it. That's kind of stunning, isn't it? Well, it's stunning because we haven't seen it play out in an American theater of war. But this is the type of thing we're seeing on the Ukrainian front every day in different forms. As you know, Hugh, the Ukrainians for the first time in the history of warfare recently captured a position, a Russian position using nothing but robots. There wasn't a single human involved in taking the position that the Ukrainians took. It was all automated. That's the future of warfare. And I think one of the things we're seeing is the Pentagon is doing some interesting, innovative things, but we aren't fully wrapping our heads around the automated future, the autonomous future that we're in. Hopefully this wakes some people up and they start to realize we're getting a little behind the curve that we should not just be doing this for search and rescue. We should have a preponderance, a significant part of our fleet going forward needs to be autonomous. You know, Chris Brose is coming up next hour. He is the President-Chief Strategy Officer of Anderil. I know they're working on submersibles and very small aircraft. How many companies are doing this, Alex? We've got 30 seconds. We've got 100, 200. How many people are making the weapons of war? You know, candidly, Hugh, in terms of credible ones that have, you know, programs that could actually be contracted by the Department of War, I think you're talking half dozen, maybe 10 or up to a dozen. It's not a lot. And particularly on the undersea side, it's a very small set of companies. Look at the Europeans and look at the Ukrainians as well. A lot of innovation over there.

Alex Gray, CEO of American Global Strategy. It's good to talk to you, as always, Alex. Stay tuned to America. I'll be right back on the Hugh Hewitt show. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. To go from Focus on the Family Vice President Tim Gaglin to James Lylex is kind of a whipsaw. But Lylex might be a focus on the family guy. I'm not really sure. What's your poster there on the corner, James? It's some ancient battle, the Battle of Solomabe. It's a Birch. Pardon me. I'm on the radio. It's okay. We like dogs and little kids in the shot. We like dogs. We're going to give him a stick here, so he shuts up. Yeah, we've always appreciated dogs and little kids in the shot, but not when we're live on the radio. We normally shut the door on the dog when it's a puppy. Oh, good. He's eight years old. You ought to know better. It's something that I got in Suffolk. It's a poster that goes out for a great ale, a great strong ale, and I put it up there because I have nothing else at the moment. All right. Let me ask you what you think of Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, El Cyan in Michigan, and Graham Platner in Maine. Those are the three M's. Flanagan, El Cyan, and Graham Platner. And that's just wonderful. Well, Flanagan is a lunatic by my light, although by what Minnesota has become politically, especially in the urban area, not so much so. I remember gleefully posing with the T-shirt that said, protect trans kids, and it's got a knife in the middle. So apparently I'm supposed to stab somebody who's not in favor of puberty blockers. She's more DSA than the person against whom she's running. I don't know who's going to win, but yeah, no. As for the other guy in Michigan, I expect that you will find policies that seem to be at... How do we put this? At odds, the national mood post 9-11, put it that way. And Graham Platner is just an interesting case, a fascinating case, actually, a reprehensible character with a bad tattoo, a literal Nazi tattoo, but we have to elect the Nazi in order to prevent the real Nazis from getting power. All three of them bode ill for their particular neighborhoods, and I don't wish them well in the general. Now, the one I know the least about is your home ground, Peggy Flanagan. El Sayed, I have seen answer a question in such a way as to make me think he's anti-Semitic. Graham Platner is almost certainly anti-Semitic, given his comments and his Nazi tattoo. What does Flanagan say about the Jews? Does she talk about Israel and Zionism and Jews? Well, not that I can remember. I mean, it's Minnesota. It doesn't come up all that often. You'd be surprised, but I wouldn't be – nothing would surprise me if she didn't tow the line, which is to say anti-Zionism, anti-genocide, and all the rest of them, which has nothing to do with the Jews, of course, but is somehow also intimately bound up with them. Do I expect that she would be a big friend of Israel? Do I expect that she would –

I don't know. Would she shed us here if somebody went to a statue in Minnesota on the Capitol grounds and spray painted it with free Gaza? I don't think so. Let's just put it that way. All right. So stepping back from the two parties, and you know the title charts of American politics say the Republicans ought to get hammered. It's the six-year of a presidency. You normally get hammered. Do you think the Democrats are in a position to hang on to the hammer? Or are they letting it slip? Well, I think we keep saying this, that they'd be in a better position to win if they would just be normal. All you have to do at this point is pick up that crown that was dropped by Bill Clinton an awful long time ago and put it on and say, hey, you know what? I'm in favor of clean streets, bright, shining statuary, fountains that work in the nation's capital, letting you keep more of your money and all these people who want to turn your kids into the other gender. I don't get it. I'm out there. I don't think boys ought to wrestle and girls. I mean, it's just sort of an easy middle-of-the-road position, but it's also a better. been redefined as now, of course, fascism. The DSA in Minnesota just issued a big, long laundry list of everything that they want to do. And it's precisely what you would expect. They want to give all the land back. They want to dismantle the dams. They want to do every single possible democratic socialist thing you can imagine. And because they're so passionate about this and they're so close to the real truth of what the progressives want to say and admit, nobody really can, you know, can say, you guys are nuts. Go over there, sit down. You're going to lose this elections. They have to be admired because they're more angry and they're more pure. So the people who previously would have said, that's ridiculous. That is not my Democratic Party. That is not what it means to be a liberal in America are now either silenced because they don't want to get shouted down by the people who are, you know, screaming to dismantle the dams and give the land back. Or they actually sort of kind of believe it themselves because they don't really believe anything anyway. There's a great dog park in Minnesota in Minneapolis where we used to go all the time. No leashes. Dogs roaming free. But they say that it's an indigenous burial ground. There's no real proof of it. And so they're going to say that it can no longer be a dog park. People can walk there with this great environment in which anybody could go. And the people who say, no, this is ridiculous. This is preposterous. How many years old claim? There's no proof that anybody was. They're shouted down and they're just given the side eye because you can't say anything critiquing this particular demographic. And so the moderate people shut up and go home and the crazy people win. Hopefully they vote. All right. Now, I got a boomer question for you. The other day I watched probably 12 minutes of a video about Bob Dylan appearing on a Frank Sinatra special, and it was narrated. And I thought I'd never seen this or heard this. And it went for 31 minutes. And about 12 minutes in, I thought to myself, This might be fake, but it's really good, and it's a good story, and it was fake. Have you fallen for that yet? People do this. They set boomer traps. Well, I was watching Jimmy Hendricks play with the Fred Waring at his Pennsylvania in 1942. Have you fallen?

I have not fallen for a boom for a boomer trap. No, there are certain tells you can have by how good it is, unless they're really getting, you know, good at faking old kinescopes and the rest of it. But it's interesting. People will fall for it. And even when you tell them that it's, you know, that's a boomer trap, they'll say, well, you know, it kind of sort of could have, should have happened. And, you know, way, they're right. Because there was a crossover spillover between the counterculture and the 60s and the old culture where you would not be surprised to find somebody like Jimmy Hendricks playing in the Brady Bunch reunion show. Well, it would have been afterwards. Or, you know, there were so many variety shows, some of the bad variety shows on television that, yeah, they would drag these people in. And so it's completely, completely understandable, you know, that Tommy Boland and T-Rex would be lip-sinking at one of these shows on Merv Griffith. So, yeah. Well, I'm not as credulous as you, Hugh, and I spend a lot more time in the AI space, so I think I would have liked to think that I would have found that. Well, I really like Dylan and I really like Sinatra. So they set up a boomer trap, but I don't know what they get except 11 minutes of my life. I didn't buy anything. But I want you, Jim, keep a Jim. James. I want you, James, to keep a diary of if you fall into any boomer traps. I want to know what it's like the Swiss family Robinson. Or the one where David Bowie is singing with Bing Crosby. Come on, and that Christmas show, like I'm stupid enough to believe that. Actually, it happened. It did happen. And so there is a difference. That's why boomer traps are so dangerous. Weird stuff happened in the 60s and the 70s. Thank you, James Lillick. James Lillich.com. I'll be right back, America. I promised an important hour ahead. Christian Brose joins me. Chris is the president and chief strategy officer for Andral Industry. Before that, he was many years the staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee, former speechwriter for secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Jerome Powell. Before that, he's a graduate of Kenyan College. I do not know. If he was blessed enough to be born in Ohio and root for the Browns, but I'll find out. Christian Bros. Welcome. By the way, why Kenyon College? So first of all, Hugh, thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure. Kenyon College, I learned about because I was a swimmer. And for those of you who are not familiar, Kenyon College has the longest running, unbroken string of national championships in any sport and any division in the country and history. So I think they, we. tapped out at about 32 consecutive national championships in Division III swimming. I was there for 20 to 24, 20, 21, 22, 23. I can't do math in public.

So, yeah, that's how I learned about Kenyon. I did not have the pleasure of growing up in Ohio. I grew up in Philadelphia. Dad is from Cincinnati, so not a Browns fan. And, you know, growing up in Philadelphia, I'll just say it didn't make me a Browns fan either. That's unfortunate. It makes you an Eagles fan and a Phillies fan, but we'll put that aside because Anderil, much depends upon the success of Anderl. I want to recommend to everyone your book, The Killed Shane. I started listening to it, and I'm listening to it, after your interview with Aaron McLean on the May 19th edition of School of War, which I found so interesting that I immediately asked our booking team to get in touch with you. So thank for this. Let's begin, though. Aaron, of course, being a Marine, left a lot of facts, not in evidence on the table. So I'm going to go back and do the lawyer thing and begin by asking, tell people what Androll is. Yes. So Anderl is at this point a nine-year-old defense technology company. We're venture-backed. We're privately held. We focus on building primarily... Software-defined systems, autonomous systems, low-cost weapons, integrated counter-dron and air defense, but really focusing on building weapons and defense technology differently. So putting huge amounts of our own investment into building these products and capabilities, taking them directly to the Pentagon or to U.S. allies and partners internationally, working with them to meet their needs, and then really focusing on hyperscale production to just get kind of an order of magnitude. increase in the quantities of military systems and weapons that we're bringing to the battlefield. So it's a weapons company, and that's what I want people to understand. Correct. Defense company, but you build munitions primarily. You might build other things. But unlike Palantir, for example, and I've been over at Palantir with Gallagher, and Schum's been on this program, you actually build things that go boom. And how many different things do you build that go boom? The barracuda being the most obvious example. Yeah, so the barracuda you're referencing is a family of cruise missiles that we build. So these are jet-powered weapons. You know, some of them are going to fly, you know, 100 miles. Some are going to be, you know, kind of a few hundred. Some are going to be several hundred miles in range carrying a lot more payload. You know, so these are, again, designed differently to be not like the weapons that we all know so well that are so remarkable Patriot missiles and Tomahawk weapons, but really systems that are going to be. simple to build, mass-producible, lower price, you know, a fraction of the cost of what their more sort of exquisite, you know, kind of peer systems are going to come in at. So, you know, the barracuda systems we're building, we're building surface. launched air defense weapons, you know, to be able to go after these, you know, Iranian one-way attack, you know, kind of group three drones. And then we're building a whole host of different, you know, kind of integrated autonomous systems, robotic fighter jets, robotic submarines, you know, all of which we can go deeper on. But you're correct, you know, we're building a lot of weapons. We're winning a lot of programs to build a lot more weapons. It's a huge area of focus for the business and something that, you know, that America desperately needs, as I know you know.

Well, what is revolutionary about Andrew L, for the benefit of the audience, is that it's the inversion of the old model. The old model is that the Pentagon would put out a spec sheet, and then people would bid, and it might be a cost plus contract, or it might be a lowest bidder contract, but then the Pentagon would change the specs. In fact, they spent... About three hours with a couple of Navy guys who were there at the beginning of the frigate and were there when we put the frigate to death after two frigates were built because of change orders. That's the old system. You aren't under that system. You're taking all the risk, though. You're building something the Pentagon doesn't have to buy. So explain to people how that works. Yeah, a lot of times that is the case. I mean, there are also a lot of programs where we're coming up with interesting and novel ways to share risk with the government. But you're putting your focus squarely on what we believe is the sort of the central importance here, which is getting accountability back onto industry. This has been a huge focus of the presidents and the executive order that he put out. You know, for too long, you know, industry, defense industry has not been as accountable as they need to be. for the cost and schedule and performance of the weapons that, you know, the American taxpayer is buying. So when those programs go off schedule, when they go over budget, you know, much of the risk for that, you know, is landing on the government. It's landing on the taxpayer. And that's not something that we view as right. And it's certainly something that we view as. you know, frankly, cancerous to the kind of company that we're trying to build, which is focused on performance, setting a high bar, attracting high performers, you know, rewarding and compensating high performers, delivering and building technology at the speed that it is possible to build it and deliver it, you know, and trying to get back to something that looks more like market-based principles in defense, where, you know, we sign a contract with the government, we have the risk of funding the development of that system. building our own facilities, funding, you know, the workforce, and then delivering. So if we go off schedule or over budget, you know, that risk is on us. That keeps us hungry. It keeps us energized. It keeps us focused. It reduces cost. It improves in performance. You know, crazy things that happens, you know, when you actually let markets and capitalism, you know, back into defense. Now we need to educate the audience on the need. If they want to know what it looks like when we're at full tide, the fleets at full tide, you read Arthur Herman's, the Arsenal Democracy. If you want to know how we got where we were three years ago, you read The Kill Chain by Chris, and he'll explain it all to you the Last Supper and how we ended up. But what I'd like you to begin, at least in the segment of, we are in a deep hole. And that deep hole is one I don't know that most Americans are aware of. They hear munitions shortages, but they don't really believe it, Chris Brough. Tell people what we're looking at right now and why it's urgent that we get busy. Yeah, so I think at the macro level, the problem is when we look at our adversaries in the world, foremost the Chinese Communist Party, they've gone to school on us for 30 to 35 years. They have studied how America fights, how we project power.

And they've systematically been building up and modernizing a military to hold all of that at risk, right? So to take away our land bases, our aircraft carriers and sea bases, our access to logistics and information, intelligence, you know, the electro-bangnetics spectrum, space, they have weapons to deny us access to all of that. And I think when we look at a lesser version of that problem with Iran, You know, we're also struggling because, you know, we have optimized our military over, you know, the same period of time around a set of assumptions that I just don't think hold up anymore, right? I think we have been assuming for too long that protracted conflict is not something that we're going to have to be involved in. That if we have to fight a war, it's going to be over in, you know, hours or days or maybe a couple of weeks. But that's just historically never been the case. That's not what the world wars look like. That's not what our experience in the 20th century looked like. But when you make those assumptions... you know, everything downstream follows from that, right? We don't assume that we're going to have to have a lot of weapons, that we're going to shoot a lot of weapons in war, that once we've shot them, that we're going to have to then reproduce them and do that for months and years. Again, all things that we did in the 20th century, we've just assumed for the vast part of the generation that, like, we don't have to do that stuff anymore. So, you know, where we find ourselves, you know, now looking at, you know, as Aaron McLean said, right, war is an audit, looking at the audit of Epic Fury. You know, we shot something like eight to ten years of Tomahawk production in the opening weeks of that conflict. You know, when we have, you know, been called to respond to the inbound weapons, you know, the air defense mission in the Central Command, sort of, you know, Middle East area, you know, we have fired years of missile defense production, Thad interceptors, Patriot interceptors, and just so the reader, the listeners understand, these weapons are. millions and millions of dollars apiece. They take literally years to build. They are remarkable pieces of technology. We need them. We need as many of them as we possibly can get. But once we've shot them, we don't get them back, you know, in a matter of days. It's a matter of years. So, you know, the problem that we have here flows from the assumptions that we've been making for a very long time. And again, regret to inform people that we've had adversaries who have gone to school on us. And, you know, we are not currently postured for the kinds of conflicts that I think we are going to have to deal with in the very near future, which are going to look a lot more like the conflicts that we've studied throughout American history and a heck of a lot more like the recent experiences that we've seen. in Ukraine, in Iraq and Syria and Yemen in the Middle East, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, all of this evidence is right in front of us. And I think they just call into question the assumptions under which we've built the United States military. Don't go anywhere, America. Chris Brose is with me for three more segments. We're going to dig deeper into the need to swivel, pivot to a new model, or at least a hybrid of two models.

about our munitions, about our defense tech. Stay tuned to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Chris Brose will be right back from Andoral Industries. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. If you miss the intro of Christian Brose, he is the president and chief strategy officer of Andrel Industries. Andrel is all over the country. They're building a big plant in Ohio right now, which I want to salute you for doing that. Aaron McClain's May 19 School of War episode is a fabulous episode. Aaron's really good at this, Christian, don't you think? I think you had to be the 60 minutes correspondent right now. That is a hot button I don't want to touch, but I think Aaron is outstanding at what he does. Yeah, and so it's a great part two. Part one, though, is what's the mess that they were talking about? The mess is we haven't got enough of anything. Why did you pick Ohio to build the barracuda in, Chris Brose? Yeah, and just to add, I mean, we're building barracuda. We're building a lot of other things in Ohio in addition. So that barracuda cruise missile we're building there. The fury robotic fighter jet for the United States Air Force is being built there, a host of other things. The reason we ended up in Ohio, when we made that announcement of January of last year, it was on the back end of over a year-long search, really kind of diving through. You know, kind of all of the detail across all of the states to determine where ultimately we need to make a billion dollar investment to build out, you know, several million square feet of defense production capacity in the United States to make all of these weapons and more that you're talking about. So. When we ran the analysis looking at everything from access to infrastructure and airports to labor markets, I mean, everything that you would imagine a company would do, its due diligence on, you know, we narrowed it down to a handful of states. And, you know, Ohio just leaned all the way forward. The relationship, the leadership was phenomenal from the governor. You know, the rest of the leadership team there in terms of welcoming us to the state, you know, really making it worth our while to set up shop there and becoming an, you know, become an enduring part of Ohio's industrial base and economy and society. You know, as we said earlier, I mean, I've spent my entire childhood going back and forth to Ohio, visiting my relatives there, going to school there. There's a number of us in the company who are very excited about the fact that we're going to Ohio, but I can assure everybody. You know, our personal thumbs on the scale did not lead to us going there. It was honestly the business case and the phenomenal environment that, you know, that Ohio has to offer in terms of infrastructure, workforce, state incentives, and everything else. One of the things you described to Aaron is that you yourself with a few weeks training and you're not technical, you're not a craftsman.

I have less skills than you, by the way. I don't even have any tools in my house. But you yourself could be ready to work on the line or in the production with a few weeks training. All you're going to need now is workforce. This is a problem at every shipyard in America. I assume it's going to be a problem at Anderol factories as well. Have you guys ever thought about starting a high school adjacent to your plant and just training workforce from 9 through 12 so they're ready to go into the line when they turn 18? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that we've discussed off and on. I mean, I think the real question for us is whether we're going to have the need for that. You know, part of the reason we're so excited to be in Ohio is we have access to... you know, literally millions of qualified workforce, you know, people who are currently working in aerospace and defense and commercial automotive and, frankly, like your higher performers at, you know, Lowe's and Home Depot who have the kind of levels of technical training and ability that are required to produce the defense systems and weapons that we're building. And this, I think, is the critical point, right? Part of the reason our shipyards and so many of our other defense industries are struggling with workforce is because the systems that we have designed, the military systems that we have designed are so complex. They're so artisanal. The way that they're built requires years of master craftsmanship, that it becomes very difficult to bring new workforce in and start building quickly and building at scale. And, you know, we're actually taking more of a playbook out of the way America used to do this back in the arsenal of democracy during World War II, where, you know, we didn't design... remarkable military requirements and wish that we had an industrial base that could build them. We were designing military requirements that we knew the industrial base that we had in America could produce and produce quickly and produce at scale. Like that's how you got Rosie the Riveter. It wasn't, you know, Martha the Master Welder. It was someone who was coming in with, you know, little to know, training and experience who was able to get onto the production line, trained up relatively quickly, and start contributing on a very... short period of time. So that barracuda cruise missile that we're talking about, that can be put together with about eight tools, all of which are available at your local hardware store. This is work that we can train a lot of people to do very quickly. You know, the robotic fighter jet that I mentioned is obviously a more capable system. It's a more complicated system requires a bit more training. You know, but this isn't, you know, 14 years to qualify as a master shipbuilder. This is a sort of level of skill that we believe, you know, lots of people in Ohio and then, frankly, lots of other parts of the country where we're also actively building are going to be able to start contributing to the real. reindustrializing of our defense sector very quickly, because as you know better than anybody, we don't have a lot of time to waste here. Well, we don't. Now, you referenced a few times in your conversation with...

Aaron that Andy Marshall used to sit around in his office at the Pentagon and think about the war of 20XX. I think about the war of 20X too. We don't know when it's going to come and we don't know how it's going to start. It could very well be with a nasty surprise in a lot of places and be non-nuclear. How long would it take us to mobilize to meet our munitions mass necessity in the aftermath of that kind of terrible surprise? Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, you and I would agree that if, you know, we wait until that catastrophic surprise to start mobilizing, it could be too late. But if, you know, the bar, the question is, you know, at what point do we become serious, which I think we are, right? I mean, I give an enormous amount of credit to the current administration, the current leadership of the Department of War. I mean, they're starting to do things. They are doing things that people have been talking about doing for a very long time, and I think they're actually starting to do them in terms of large contracts for these. you know, lower cost, more producible weapons that we're talking about, things that Anderill is building, things that a lot of other companies are building. My belief is that we can mobilize much faster than people realize. Like, it's not going to occur in days and weeks, right? I mean, this took us literally decades to get into the predicament that we are in. It's going to take us a bit of time to get out in the spirit of the old adage of, you know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and today. If we start going today, I do believe we can stand up an enormous amount of production capacity quickly. The key is we have to be building weapons that are designed intentionally from the get-go. to be mass-producible, to be low-cost, to be weapons that the largest possible swath of the American workforce can contribute on because that's how you go fast. So, you know, just to give you an example, we announced that we were going to begin building in Ohio in January of last year. We opened the doors on the first 800,000 square foot production facility in the first quarter of this year. So barely one year later, We are already in production on robotic fighter jets and cruise missiles. We have, you know, Ohio-based workforce that are building those systems, and the sky's the limit in terms of being able to just go faster and to scale with those systems and with others. I think that this all goes a lot faster than people realize. If the demand signal from the U.S. government is there, if the money, the contracts, the defense budget is there to back it up, which I know is a huge issue of yours as it is for ours, I think all of this happens incredibly quickly. I'll be right back with Chris Burroughs of Anderil. Don't go anywhere. We're going to talk about getting the money through Congress into the Pentagon and, more importantly, from Pentagon. to the actual builders of the weapons that we need stockpiled. Stay tuned to the Yu-Giote Show.

Welcome back, America. Christian Bros. is still with me, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Anderil Industries, which is among other places in California and Ohio, but across the United States. Chris, I have talked with Chairman Susan Collins of Appropriations, members of the Appropriations Committee like Shelleymore Capito. I've talked with a lot of defense contractors. Everybody agrees, even if we get the Congress to appropriate, then it goes to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon has to allocate and push it out. You can't do a CAP-X. until the money is actually in your bank account and that there's another slow spot, another narrowing of the tunnel there. Is that changing fast enough to get the money that Congress says spend through the Pentagon to you at Anderrol and your sister's companies? I think it is starting to. I mean, I think, again, you know, a lot of credit to this administration and the leadership of the current leadership of the Pentagon, I do think that they are getting more money for defense and they are moving it faster out to industry. But, you know, what I also think they're demanding in. demanding in return, which is very important, is accountability from industry and buy-in from industry, and the fact that industry needs to put its own skin in the game. So, you know, funding capital investments, you know, building facilities, developing products, you know, these are things that... The Pentagon leadership, I think the leadership of the White House, wants to see industry funding rather than it having to constantly be the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for those kinds of internal investments. How about the capacity within the military to understand what you're doing and to go with the flow? There are a lot of people, for example, in naval plans whose whole life has been built on tweaking. They tweak this, they tweak that, and that's their career. And they end up in the SET. Have they developed an adapt, go, go, go attitude that we really need right now? I think in any bureaucracy there's just going to be a large degree of path dependence because that's what bureaucracies do. So I can't fault them for being what they are. I think this is where senior leadership is so vitally important. You know, they have to set the tone. They have to sort of set the aim point that we're all going after. They have to determine the speed with which we're moving, and they need to force the institution to do new and different things. Again, I think that is starting to happen. I think that we still have a lot of work to do. There are still a lot of parts of that process that are just used to doing things the way that things have always been done. They're going to throw up the same reasons for slowing down, you know, the same objections that they always would, you know, traditionally flag.

I just think that leadership is what has to push through that. So I think that we're starting to see that. My hope is it will see a lot more of that, you know, over the coming months and years because there's an enormous amount of work to do. And I would say the final thing is... I think it is able to go, it is possible to go a lot faster and move through a lot of these bureaucratic hurdles when we're doing these kinds of new and novel programs like Andrel is performing on. So, you know, low-cost weapons, autonomous systems. These are systems that almost defy the rules that, you know, many of these processes were built upon. So, you know, it's like you can get around the rules because the rules weren't written for these kinds of programs. You can't get around everything. Again, with leadership, they can say, look, this is a very different type of system. It's a very different kind of weapon. Let's not hold it to the same standards that we would hold, you know, our ICBMs, you know, or our B-21 bombers. That's ridiculous. So I think there's a lot of ability to go fast, you know, when the leadership is leaning in. And that's certainly, I think, what we're starting to see from the current administration. So two minutes to our last break, Chris Brose, you've got to be worried about security because whatever you're building and however you're building it, the chikoms want it, right? How do you even handle that? I asked that to the Facebook guys at their D.C. and they looked at me like I was asking them to set up Stasi. I'm not. How do you handle security at a place like Anderol? So the good news for Anderil is from day one, we knew exactly who we were. We were a defense company. We are building weapons and weapons systems for the United States government, military, national security enterprise, allies and partners. From that central insight, Every other decision follows. Our security posture, who we hire, who we don't, you know, whose investment we take, whose we won't. So when it comes to security, this has been absolutely mission critical from the beginning. And it cuts across everything we do in terms of the security of the systems that we're building, the security of the facilities that we're working in, you know, the ways in which we, you know, kind of understand what's happening inside of our own company and our networks, the cyber hardening and the cyberpillard. posture of the company, which is world class. You know, we are adopting, I think, a security standard that is second to none in the industry and probably in the world because we know that every single day the Chinese Communist Party and a lot of other bad actors are trying to break in, figure out what we're doing, compromise our systems, etc. We are under that kind of assault. You know, we are holding up to it because, you know, this is the standard that we set for ourselves. This is the kind of trusted partner that we want and have to be for the United States government and our allies around the world. That's an enormous relief to hear. I'll be right back for one final segment with Christian Brose, President, Chief Strategy Officer of Anderrol Industries. Now, I want to take a moment to tell you about our great sponsor consumer cellular. They have a brand new offer, so I want you to listen carefully to this. You've probably seen the headlines are worse, your latest sell bill. Big wireless is raising rates again.

Well, you can switch to consumer cellular right now and get $200 off your bill by going to consumercellular.com slash hue and use a promo code, Hugh 200. That's right, Hugh Hewitt, UGH, 200. And when you switch, you'll get the same coverage as big wireless carriers, just not the coverage that's anything other than high quality. Are you tired of your wireless company telling you you have to talk to an AI chat box or even pay 10 bucks to talk to someone when paying your bill? That's happening now, really. With consumer cellular, you'll talk to an actual human being based right here in the United States who will help you every step of the way when you switch. For a limited time, if you're over 50 as well, you can get $200 off your bill when you switch two unlimited lines. That's two lines of unlimited talk, texting data for $60 a month, plus $200 off. Hurry, the extra $200 off your bill will not last long. This offer ends June 14th. Visit consumercellular.com slash you. Use the promo code. Hugh, 200, or call 1-800-4-1-41-44, 1-800-4-1-4-4-44, 1-800-4-1-4-4-4-4-54. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hugh Hugh. Christian Brose is with me for one more second. He is the, one more segment. He is the President and Chief Strategy Officer of Andrew Industries. If you want more, you can get his book, The Kill Chain. It is read like he's on codeine. It's very, very, very, you warned Aaron McLean, you'd been sick as to be with COVID. Yeah, and so you've got to do it at 1.2 on the speed, but it's very, very interesting. It's very true. How we got here. On the other hand, when you got to the end with Aaron McLean, You were talking about things that most of my audience won't understand. The series age 61 billion dollar investment. The investment environment for startup defense company. It can't be great. How many and rules, and I don't mean making what you make, but in the space that you're in trying to do what you do, how many are there? I hope the answer is at least 100. So the great news is, you know, in this world of venture-backed defense technology companies, you know, so we're talking about companies that are privately held, that are trying to create something out of nothing that are raising private capital from venture capital firms and, you know, other private capital markets. That... That ecosystem of companies has never been more vibrant, larger, more exciting, probably than ever before. I mean, if you roll the clock back nine years ago when Anderil got started, there weren't a lot of companies doing this. And there was very few investors who wanted to make that investment. They didn't believe that defense was a place where you could build a viable business, certainly not on a timeline that made sense. And many of them, frankly, didn't believe that it was work worth doing. They viewed it as, you know,

morally compromised or evil. We have come an enormously long way as a country and as a segment of our market. in that period of time. And yeah, as I sit here today, there are dozens and dozens and hundreds of companies doing this work. I mean, obviously, you know, Andrel is at a very different scale. We've been doing this longer. You know, we've been very successful. We've raised a lot of money. We've grown an enormous amount. But I also think that part of what we're doing is showing people that this works, showing people that this is something that the U.S. government is hungry for, that there's a market for this, that engineers want to come in and do this work. They want to build defense technology and weapons. that you can make a profitable business out of this. And I think that we're now seeing, you know, some of these companies start to separate themselves as well. So, you know, when all is said and done, no, I don't think there will only be one andral. But I don't think there are going to be a ton. I do think that there will be more than one. I think that's exciting. I think there's an enormously exciting period of time coming here as, you know, the better performers separate themselves from the PAC. You're going to see interesting consolidations and mergers and acquisitions, which is exactly the way capitalism should work. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, the, you know, the warfighter and the taxpayer are going to be way better off for it because we're making the American defense industrial base more like what what it has been over the course of American history, which is not, you know, this very consolidated, very stagnant segment of the economy that we've seen over the past generation since the end of the Cold War, but something where you have, you know, many, many companies, large companies, small, medium-sized companies, you know, all doing really exciting work, all viable businesses, some of whom have active commercial businesses in addition to their defense businesses. And again, this is American capitalism in the service of American defense, which to me is something that I think we've lost the plot on over the past generation. But, you know, we're getting it back with some real enthusiasm here over the past decade. Let me close with the most alarming thing you said to Aaron. which is that an operation spider web could happen here. That's where the Ukrainians using commercial trucking, took their drones deep into Russia, launched their drones, took out a third of their strategic bombers, and forever, they're not being produced anymore. We're vulnerable to that. And I thought, I wonder if anyone sits around an Anderrol in a room like Andy Marshalls and tries to imagine the best and the worst, the necessary, and that which can't be imagined. Do you have a room like that? Have you got a crazy room where people try and think about the future of warfare?

My strong belief is that probably every room at Anderil is a bit of a crazy room. I'm certainly thinking about the future in every one of the rooms of the company. Look, to your point about Spider's Web, I mean, this is something that keeps me up at night. I still think as a country we haven't processed what has happened over the past five to ten years in terms of the proliferation of drone technology, how easy it is for countries and bad actors to get their hands on this, you know, to build dark drones that are, you know. something that you're not going to recognize just with, you know, kind of commercial means. These are systems that are overflying if public, you know, published reports are to be believed. They're overflying U.S. military installations, bases, critical infrastructure, somewhat routinely. You know, we're seeing the kinds of attacks and overflights in Europe and the Middle East. So I think we, as a country, We still have not gotten our minds around the scale of the threat and the vulnerability we have. I fear that we still have too much of a September 10th mindset. for what is a September 11th scale problem. So, you know, this is certainly work that Anderil is doing in terms of drone defense, counter drone and air defense. We're doing an enormous amount to support U.S. warfighters, allied war fighters, homeland defense. But I think this is something that we have a heck of a lot more work to do on and not a lot of time to do it here in the United States. So a very last question. Hubris has always been the enemy of a great power. And I heard you talking with Aaron about this. to sit at ease and we can go down that road. But hubris usually defeats great power. They don't see it coming. Do you think we are on alert to the threat that we face from the CCP and there are other rogue states out there? You just mentioned it doesn't have to be a superpower. It can be a little power with a couple of drones. Are we on alert? I think that we are more so than when I wrote that book six years ago, certainly more so than when I was working for John McCain in the Senate 10 years ago. I think that we have come a long way in recognizing the threat that we're facing, the problems that we're facing, the degree to which we have to get our own internal house in order. And I think the silver lining of all the bad news of late. is that we're seeing examples in the real world through Epic Fury, through the war in Ukraine, about how vulnerable we actually are, how far off we actually are in terms of things like our munitions inventories and our defense spending and just generally the health and status of our industrial base. I do think the good news is that's changing. I think people look at the fact that we... are expending all of these high-end munitions in the opening days and weeks of these operations around the world. And you can't but not draw the conclusion that we just need an order of magnitude increase in our defense arsenal, in our weapons inventory. I think you've got companies like Andrel and a lot of other companies that are.

adding to our ability to build it. I think you have an administration that is excited and energized and motivated to get after it. And I think with that, you can do an enormous amount. And hopefully we will over the coming months and years. That is great. And you're Christian Brough's president, chief strategy author of The Kill Chain, which has been out for six years, but still reads like it came out yesterday. Thank you for joining me. I hope you will come back, Christian, when there's updates to be had. Stay tuned to America. I'll wrap up today. Here's something most people don't know. When Warren Buffett was just 13 years old, he didn't put his money into a savings account. While other kids were earning next to nothing at local banks, Buffett put $114 into a little-known investment. Today, that $114 would be worth over $15 million. And it wasn't a risky trade, it wasn't even insider knowledge. It was an account that's been around since 1888, and over the last 25 years, it's average 29% a year. That's what happens when your money is allowed to compound. Compare that to today's savings accounts, paying less than half a percent, while inflation quietly eats away at your buying power. Buffett understood early. Banks are great... great businesses, just not for savers. If you'd like to see what some investors call the 29% account, go now to account 29.com. That's account the numbers 2.9.com. Again, account 29.com.