Stephen K. Bannon and Admiral Gary Hall dissect the fourth week of U.S.-Iran conflict, highlighting Trump's 48-hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face power grid strikes. They critique Operation Epic Fury's joint U.S.-Israeli efforts against Iran's nuclear program and question the risks of amphibious assaults on Karg Island. The discussion extends to NATO's reliance on American funding, China's expansion in Micronesia, and vulnerabilities in UK assets like Cyprus bases. Ultimately, Bannon compares this strategic dilemma to Alexander the Great's retreat from India, emphasizing that logistical planning is critical for survival in a brutal coastal environment. [Automatically generated summary]
Night in a post on Truth Social, he wrote, quote, if Iran doesn't fully open without threat, the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first.
These threats seem to be coming hourly and scattershot, pardon the analogy, from this president, which makes me wonder still, as I was thundering yesterday, do they even know what they're doing?
I think the thing that was, there's a lot of interesting things in this post, but he has said over and over, we don't need the Strait of Hormuz.
Everything's fine.
So why is he so angry that it's closed?
Because the truth is we do need it.
The United States.
Everybody in the world uses it in some way, shape, or form.
And so when you have a president who uses smoke and mirrors, who obfuscates, who lies, who allies and adversaries can't actually understand what you want or what you're thinking about or what you might do, who knows what this 48 hours means?
He loves to throw out a time, 48 hours, two weeks.
At the same time, at this point, we are essentially funding a war against ourselves as we have seized Iranian sanctions.
And so the more we continue to bomb out their infrastructure, whether it's energy, oil, anything that is coming out of that area, but continue to ease sanctions and try to alleviate some of the economic pressures happening, it is a vicious cycle here.
And the one thing that I feel like all of us keep hearing on the show and off the show is just that Trump cannot unilaterally decide that this war is over.
That takes multiple parties at this point.
And Iran sees what is going on now as the sole leverage that they have left.
And that all lies in mucking up what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz.
And I think even if he decided he wanted to end this tomorrow, I'm not sure that's an option anymore.
And also, when countries are desperate, when human beings are desperate, they act in certain ways.
And so what we're seeing in the Strait of Hormuz, what Iran might do if Donald Trump goes through with this threat, Iran, again, like you said, has a vote.
But most importantly, when they're desperate, they might do things that we hadn't even thought of at this point.
I think an increasing number of countries are starting to see their own interests at stake here and are starting to think about what they can do to contribute to efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to protect their own national interests.
However, they're limited really in the capabilities that they can offer.
So we've already seen the UK and other countries expand access for the United States to use their bases in more ways.
And there's some talk among states in the Gulf as well as the UK of potentially contributing to U.S. and Israeli offensive strikes on Iran.
And so that's something that we could see in the next couple of days, which would be yet another escalatory step.
But as far as these countries contributing naval capabilities for some kind of effort to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, I see that as very unlikely, just given the constraints on their capabilities and their historic unwillingness to take on the types of risks that type of operation would involve.
One is to break completely their nuclear program, break completely their missile program, break completely their capacity to produce the components for both of these programs.
We're well on our way on achieving it.
We've also set a goal of creating conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow this tyranny that has tormented them and made life miserable and is making life miserable for the entire world.
Overnight, President Trump said that if in 48 hours the Iranians don't open the Strait of Hormuz, that there will be strikes against the power grids in Iran.
Will you participate in those strikes and what do you think should happen next in this campaign?
As the Prime Minister was leaving, I asked him about President Trump and he talked about the great relationship that these two leaders have amid Operation Epic Fury.
The operation has now entered week four and we do anticipate heavier strikes against the Iranian regime in the hours and days ahead.
Well, that does seem to be one possible option that the Pentagon and the White House are considering.
And it's something that the Marines that are on their way to the region could potentially participate in.
It's something that they would be trained for, an amphibious type operation.
However, it would be very high risk and would likely involve significant U.S. casualties for very low gains.
I think the strategy here is that if the United States were able to seize this island, which would significantly reduce Iran's ability to export oil, it would be an economic shock to Iran that would limit its ability to continue fighting.
But there's a few problems with that logic.
The first is it assumes the U.S. operation will be successful.
And there's definitely no guarantee of that.
Amphibious operations are very difficult.
And even if forces were able to come onto the island, they would be subject to drone attacks and artillery fire.
So there's no assurance here that that would be a successful operation.
Even if they did that, it would do nothing to reopen the strait forcibly.
It's not the right location for that.
And right now, Iran's strategy is very low cost.
It does not need a lot of revenue to fire a few dozen drones and missiles to keep the strait closed and to keep the pressure on the Gulf states and the United States.
So I guess I see this as a very bad option.
It has very high risk, high costs, and very little upside potential in my view.
When it ends, it's going to end, as President Trump and Prime Minister have said, where there is not an entity in Tehran that's going to threaten the region.
Now, if that's going to be brought about by this regime having a change of heart, hard to imagine, but going on the assumption that that happens, then it'll take place that way.
Probably it's going to take place because the Iranian people have had enough.
They tried to raise up last month.
They were brutally put down.
I think that we need boots on the ground, but they've got to be Iranian boots.
Sunday, 22 March, in the year of our Lord 2024, the kind of complexion of this war has changed, I think, over the last 24 hours.
And the next 48 hours, I would say, would be another inflection point.
Right there, the Israeli ambassador to the United States and Dana Bash.
It's not a kerfuffle.
It's an outright second time.
And this is what's gotten us in the last 72 hours in this kind of jam with no off-ramp.
Once again, the Israelis in a joint unified command decide to do their own thing against a standing order from the President of the United States, which was attack this oil and gas field jointly owned by the Iranians and the Qataris, managed by the Qataris.
The Qataris are saying took out 17% of their capacity for LNG, and it's led them to threaten.
I don't think they've technically done it, force Majour on five-year contracts for gas for principally European countries, I believe, some Asian.
And now in the last 24 hours, there's been basically a knockdown drag out.
Ballistic missiles fired at, a ballistic missile fired at Dager Garcia.
Cleo Pascal will be here for that.
The Israelis trying to hit, I think, the potential nuclear facility of the Iranians.
The Iranians are striking back with a horrific attack on the Israelis.
President Trump, at first, saying, hey, you know, POCs on all your houses.
We've taken care of what we've taken care of.
CENDCOM and the joint staff has told us that we've degraded DeFang to Claude.
We're going to do a little bit more of this, and then we're out of here.
And Hormuz and keeping it open is your problem.
Whoever uses it, Asia, the Asian countries, and the European countries, it's your problem.
Then yesterday, Dublin Downs said he's giving him a 48-hour ultimatum.
And that would approximately be 4:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow.
If we're basing it upon the true social posts, and President Trump said, hey, mark the time right now that they've got to open up to all shipping, to all shipping, or suffer the consequences of he will take out, he will call for strikes to take out their entire electric grid.
This continues to get ratcheted up every moment of every day.
We've got Admiral Gary Hall, who used to be the commanding officer, once the commanding officer of the USS Terawa, which is what the Tripoli is, same class of ship, also was a special assistant to the President of the United States in the White House and National Security Council about alliances, particularly NATO.
And I think I'll be prepared, I don't know, Monday or Tuesday to go into this more.
But I was thinking over the weekend that one of the other great strategists, maybe arguably the greatest strategist and field commander combined in history.
Alexander the Great, had this issue about the same part of the world in 324 BC in a retreat from India, maybe a strategic repositioning, I think they would call it.
He and his generals, the war council, because the Macedonians and Greeks, as hard as they were, as tough as they were, going from Greece through Persia, all the way through the Khyber Pass into India, I think all the way to the Indus River, maybe beyond, they decided maybe we've gone too far from our logistics chain, and maybe it's time we go back.
And this concept was: hey, maybe we go back and we'll go back to Babylon, right?
That's the nicest place, and we'll regroup and we'll rethink.
And if you want to be the king of Asia, maybe we go back to Egypt and North Africa and we do the whole thing, and then you can call yourself the king of Asia all the way from where we touched India all the way back through it.
At around this time in 324 BC, think about that.
2300 years ago, 2,300 years ago, probably the greatest expeditionary force, at least from the West.
I realize Genghis Khan and these guys were too shabby coming from the East, but the greatest expeditionary force to ever exist in the West.
And really, although they were mainly Macedonians, they had enough Greek to be the foundational pillar of democracy and debate.
They had the same dilemma.
The same exact dilemma.
They were on the retreat.
They decided it was going to be too hard, too tough to take the entire army and march it back through Persia.
That what they were going to do is go along the coast of what they called the Indian Sea, but really the North Arabian Sea, because the Arabs weren't really a thing then, weren't really a known entity.
And they were going to put into a fleet, a fleet that would be just off the coast in the North Arabian Sea, and would head through, wait for it, the Strait of Hormuz, and go all the way up past Karg Island, all the way up Pesos, gas fields, which obviously back then no one knew about the wealth and how that would drive the modern industrial society.
They would go to essentially Mesopotamia, the Tigris and Euphrates, and they would take as many vessels as they could up to Babylon, and then the army would disembark and march up there.
And his army would go through the Greek capital, visit the tomb of Cyrus the Great, but they would trail him on the coast, the same exact coast.
And when you read the Greek historians that gave the eyewitnesses account of that, it was, although they weren't fighting the entire way, they had fought all the way over there, but coming back, particularly in that part, it was absolutely brutal.
Maybe I'll show them here in a few minutes about the coastline.
It was not easy then.
And these were pretty tough ombres.
2,300 years ago, the greatest, probably military genius of the West, greater than Caesar, greater than Napoleon, Alexander the Great.
In fact, the one from Caesar to Mark Antony to Napoleon to all of them used as the template.
In fact, there were many stories about what Caesar went to the, when he was in Egypt, went to the tomb of Alexander the Great, that Cleopatra saw him, and he wept because Alexander had done by the age of 31, 32, 33, what Caesar had not accomplished in his 50s.
Going through the same logistics problem.
It's quite ironic.
And I think there's a lot we can learn from the Greeks and a lot we can learn from those men about exactly what we're biting off here.
Exactly what this has got to be thought through.
With all the modern technology and everything going on, warriors are still warriors.
So this has got to be thought through.
We've got a lot of, I got Admiral Hall, Admiral Gary Hall.
And the reason I asked you here today, Admiral, thank you for doing it, to change your Sunday plans to join us, is that you were the commanding officer of the USS Tarawa, which is the same class as the Tripoli.
You obviously, as an aviator, and they do have, I think aviators are always the commanding officers of those amphibians because of the central mission of the air assets in support of amphibious operations.
As these, as one from the Tripoli from Japan and now the USS Boxer, I think, from San Diego, I think we'll have a combination of around 5,000 fleet Marines, amphibious force.
It could be up to 5,000 men and more could be put in there.
I think the 82nd airborne elements, the 82nd Airborne have been put on notice.
Just what is the thinking right now of CENTCOM, specifically as President Trump has kind of given this ultimatum that the Iranians either keep free navigation of the Strait of Hormuz by roughly 5 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, Eastern Daylight Time, or he's going to unleash hell on their assets?
Clearly, one of the capabilities that people will be looking for and maybe executing the president's plan is an amphibious operation on the islands in the coast right there at Hormuz, which the Greeks had to deal with, plus Karg Island.
Just walk us through what CENCOM, Admiral Cooper, and people like you on that staff.
I might add also that Admiral Hall was on the staff in the first term of the Trump administration as an assistant to really take being in charge of for the president our alliances and particularly NATO.
We'll get to that in a moment.
But right now for the amphibious part of it, what are people thinking of?
The amphibious operations in World War II, which I think are a good benchmark for things, is it not a not assumption, but is it not a part when you're looking at SEMCOM's looking at this, that one of the key elements is obviously air superiority or air supremacy, but just as important is naval superiority, naval supremacy.
Do we have to essentially have some sort of naval dominance around the Gulf of Oman, what leads into Hormuz, Hormuz itself, and then up to, because there's these islands off of the coast of Iran right there that look like they have to be seized.
That's one of the reasons that they're getting pounded right there on the coastline, pounded with these bunker-busting bombs, because it looks like they've got elements dug in there.
But do you have to actually get naval forces, not as escorts for tankers, but actually in there to get naval supremacy to make sure the speedboats can't come and everything like that before you launch?
Or can you actually launch with the helicopters back off in the Gulf of Oman?
And we want those naval surface ships like you served on to provide anti-missile defense, anti-surface defense.
And so the Gulf of Oman is the doormat.
Straits of Hormuz is the gate to the North Arabian Gulf.
So could we go from the Gulf of Oman?
Yes.
And so basically it's not so much helicopters now, but V-Stall, the V-22, which has capability of traveling at over 300 to 400 knots, can carry Marines and get them, provide both helicopter-like capabilities as well as fixed-wing capabilities.
So yeah, there's no beach beyond our reach, as we like to say.
And World War II, you said private private.
Now, if you think about World War II amphibious operations, completely different.
They didn't have the same capabilities we have today, and it was against tremendous opposition, where right now we're looking at drones or missile attack.
I think our naval capabilities, our goal has always been if there's a naval engagement with Iran, we're going to sink everybody in their port.
A few more questions on this to make sure people understand what's being planned for.
And they're doing a lot of planning and getting and putting capabilities.
They haven't pulled the trigger yet on an amphibious or air assault, but they're certainly, as Admiral Cooper and General Kane want to make sure they got every capability in case the commander-in-chief pulls the trigger.
They're going to have a lot of amphibious capabilities.
Also, the president the other day said, hey, look, we've, you know, if you follow Captain Finnell, we've defanged and declawed them.
Maybe not perfectly, but enough, and we'll do a little bit more.
But the Strait of Hormuz and coming in out of the Persian Gulf should be the countries that really use it.
That would be the flags of Asia, Japan, and the Chinese, Chinese Communist Party, plus our European allies.
Also, the wildcard in this is the Houthis, who gave as good as they got back in the summer against the United States Navy.
And the, was it the gate of tears down there in the Red Sea is, I don't know, 10 times more lethal than Strait of Hormuz.
Leads right to the Suez Canal.
We'll talk about all of that.
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So Admiral, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot, although you're an old and dear friend, so I'll put you on the spot.
The full disclosure, Admiral Hall was my kid brother's, I guess you were the senior stick.
You were the plane, the Lamps pilot commander.
My kid brother was your co-pilot for many, many years and learned to be a great pilot under your mentorship.
You were known as a great pilot.
But you've done, as you went up in rank and became one of the rare helicopter pilots that makes admirals, one of the things you did was you were a great briefer, thinking through problems and briefing.
That's why you were over, that's why you were at the White House in the Trump first term and particularly given, quite frankly, something that became a flash, a hot flashpoint, the NATO situation.
If you were with Admiral Cooper today and the president kind of calls in from Mar-Lago, give the audience one or two minutes of the pros and cons, because you've got to understand the risk and how to mitigate it,
the pros and cons of for the president to get a framework for thinking about a potential amphibious assault onto Karg Island to basically seize control of seize control of the Iranians' capacity to actually get their oil out and monetize it, sir.
Okay, well, first of all, you know, I remember CENTCOM, when I was involved with CENTCOM at the beginning of OEF, talked, we have to take data, turn it into information to facilitate a conversation in order to make a great decision.
So you were at the head of the 40 million leaflets into Iraq.
We did the radio broadcasting into Iraq.
I think we saved a lot of lives and saved a lot of the infrastructure.
We did computer network attack and computer network defense.
So it laid the groundwork for the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
So I think we have the Intel and also the amphibious ready groups, the Tripoli and the Boxer, have superior, extremely classified intelligence gathering capability and sensors.
So we control the electronic communications environment.
So I think, you know, at CENTCOM, at Fifth Fleet, they're going to be deciding, do we have control of the air?
Do we have control of the sea?
What is the latest intel on the infrastructure at Carg Island?
And then we do massive briefs and rely on our training.
So I think it's very capable that we could take, secure that island, defend that island, and secure the infrastructure.
No, the Muse, they've gone through this training to get certified to deploy.
We spend more time training than we do deployed.
And even I was talking to your little brother and we talked about the training that makes all our operations capable and how it lasts us throughout our lives.
So I think the Marines, and when you have two amphibious ready groups, that's going to be a tremendous power if needed.
Because as Klausvitz says, the center of gravity of this battle is not Tehran.
The center of gravity of this battle is the Persian Gulf.
Understanding that and understanding that CENCOM understood it and the Joint Staff understood it and Fifth Fleet understood it and the Chief Naval Operations understood it.
Does it surprise you that we're night when on day 19 is actually when the Tripoli got underway and day 20 is when the boxer got underway?
Because they're not going to be there for, what, a week or so?
So if you want to use this capacity, you want to have this capability, it's not on station, sir.
Well, I think that showed, you know, as I thought about that, having traveled a boxer's route to the Persian Gulf, it literally takes, you know, if they go optimum speed, it's going to take three and a half weeks to get there.
So I think that this is a tempered approach that maybe you want to put those ready groups in there for phase four of the operation where there are capabilities that can be moved in and out of the Gulf as needed.
So I look at it based on the timing that it takes to get there, that they're used for the end state of the operation.
Let's pivot and I want to get George Papadopoulos.
I'm going to get George into this conversation too.
I want to talk about, and maybe Cleo, NATO.
You were on the National Security Council in charge of a hot potato, NATO back then when the president was saying, hey, look, guys, you got to get to 2%.
And I want a real 2%.
I don't want women's health care.
I don't want climate change.
I don't want all of it.
Your assessment at the time was that NATO was not a real, basically a functioning alliance because the politicians just wouldn't put the money into interoperability, into maneuvers, into equipment, that this was really on paper an alliance, but it actually didn't work day to day as an alliance.
Was that your, I just want to make sure I'm not miscommunicating that.
That was my position while on the National Security Council.
But also, Steve, I spent two and a half years at NATO Northwood in the Maritime Component Command as the Assistant Chief of Staff of Operations.
And so during that time, you know, yes, we throw great parties.
We have a lot of fun.
But even something as planning the summer picnic, all the NATO nations shuffled their feet, waited for the United States to say, okay, we'll take charge of it.
So they had a small standing naval destroyer group in the Mediterranean and a small anti-mine group, you know, in the Black Sea, but very little capability.
In fact, we came up with the idea of a naval quick reaction force, and we would exercise it.
We would have countries sign up per quarter.
So we would have four functional naval quick reaction forces.
In one quarter of the annual calendar year, we would deploy those forces.
Well, guess what?
No NATO nation signed up for the quarter where we were going to deploy.
And so the United States took that.
So they're a very fickle force.
They love to talk about the alliance and how important it is.
But the combat readiness comes from national forces, not from NATO forces.
And the other concern when I was there was, can we keep up with the communication and information operations with the United States?
When they spent all their money on social programs and not on defense, they couldn't keep up with the technology, simple basic radio communications.
it's staffs i think we we got to have we got to have you back during the week in more detail but But I want to go back to the summer in the Red Sea, because the Red Sea, that gate of tears that gets you into the Red Sea, I think from the Gulf of Aden, into the Red Sea and then up to the Suez Canal, 95% of what goes through there is for Europe.
During the summer, it had to be an American carrier strike group down there fighting the Houthis.
And folks, don't discount the Houthis because they're a bunch of tribesmen in the mountains.
They're kind of, they got the, they're born fighting like the Scotch-Irish.
These are tough guys that have beaten the Egyptians, the British.
They're just tough.
They beat UAE, the Saudis.
Nobody's ever really been to get, and the reason is they just fight to the end and they're very savvy.
And they gave as good as they got with the United States Navy last summer.
And I kept screaming and screaming.
I think the British eventually sent a frigate and the French sent a Corvette and the Italians sent a supply ship and that was about it.
Right now, when the President of the United States says, hey, look, we've done what we're going to do.
And I'm going to have Cooper and Kane is going to defang and declaw for another week or two, but we're out of here.
And if you use the Strait of Hormuz, that's your problem.
And you guys got to go in and keep it open.
What is the possibility of that being a reality with the combined navies of NATO?
Let's throw in the Japanese and maybe even give the PLA the People's Liberation Navy.
Is there any combination thereof that could actually take the place of the United States Navy to practically keep the Strait of Hormuz open?
So when you say clean up, you mean after we've, are you saying, hey, after we go into phase four or whatever this phases is, that we've actually taken Karg Island, when we've secured the perimeter of the Persian Gulf, even if we have to take a beachhead on southern Iran, and if we've got Karg Island at that time, you think we could turn over escort duty to the Europeans and to the Japanese to escort the tankers in and out?
Or is there something we can do beforehand, like President Trump originally said, to kind of walk away and toss it to him?
Well, I think as we get, as we wind down this, that it's not that difficult to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
I've been through that Strait of Hormuz dozens upon dozens of time, both in daylight, at nighttime, in all sorts of conditions.
And so I think right now, just based on industry and insurance rates and things like that, everybody's being super cautious.
But I don't think it's going to take a lot of military power to maintain the straits open so that there's a freedom of navigation and that shipping can flow freely.
Look forward to talking to you in the next couple of days, particularly as President Trump's got this ultimatum for 4:45 Eastern Daylight Time on Monday.
Of course, we know that the Iranians are reaching out to people to try to negotiate.
Admiral Hall, do you have social media that could people go and get you a website somewhere where they can track you down?
Well, if you want to see my live streaming of my podcast or live streaming of once a month, we pray a rosary for our classmates in need of healing power.
In fact, we've included your brother there on YouTube.
I'm the Admiral's Almanac.
And if you want to communicate with me, you can go to Instagram, GaryHall76.
So that's how you can get a hold of me.
Not a big social media presence, but I do have a couple of podcasts, a radio show, and Catholic Radio Network.
Remember, when you saw this kind of major escalation between the Iranians and the Israelis last night, with both of them being hitting each other, that's on top of the Americans, I believe, another intense night of bombing on military objectives laid out by CENTCOM.
So remember, that's kind of the substrate of this.
I think that Rabbi Wilicki's telling me that the Tehran regime has issued a response to President Trump's ultimatum.
They kind of said it the other day, I think.
They said, hey, look, if you're going to come in and take out our electoral grid and you're threatening it, we'll take down every piece of oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf, or words to that effect.
So we'll see.
Rabbi Walicki is going to have an update in a moment.
George Papadopa is going to talk about maybe some alternatives.
Cleo Pascal, nothing warms my heart more here in the war room than have someone introduce someone like you to the audience, I don't know, a year or so ago, and to be so dead spot on on Diego Garcia.
The expansion of this war, and of course, Bibi, I think, did a good job explaining: hey, look, they do got the ability to deliver farther beyond than Israel and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is they launched a ballistic missile towards Diego Garcia, which you had pointed out for over a year here on the show that how important strategically it was.
The Persians think so too.
If it was not, I think, for an Aegis-class destroyer cruiser to take it down, there would have been a could have been a catastrophic hit onto the atoll in the pier in the runway that is Diego Garcia.
I'm very grateful for the coverage on the war room of the situation in Diego Garcia.
There were two missiles launched at it.
One disintegrated effectively, and the other one was defended.
I think that this points to an even larger problem.
Admiral Hall was talking about NATO and UK capabilities.
They're becoming increasingly clear that this is a serious problem, and all of the UK assets, I think, need to be looked at.
There was a drone strike on one of their two bases in Cyprus, for example, and now the Cypriot government is talking about, oh, we're going to have to perhaps renegotiate or take a new look at having UK bases in Cyprus after this conflict is over.
That's another real serious problem for the U.S. There are, I think, some major signals intelligence operations going on out of Cyprus.
And we're seeing a degree of potential penetration of the UK government that raises concerns also in financial sectors where you've got that large embassy that they're talking about, the Chinese are talking about building in London being built near some of the cables that transmit key information into and out of the city.
And of course, those transmissions are very time-sensitive if you're doing trades or things like that.
And there was also reporting they've arrested a few people in the UK recently on suspected spying for the Chinese.
One of them, a labor advisor, spoke directly to Marco Rubio in December 24 about Chagos, just before he became Secretary of State.
So we're going to have to really look not just at them being not particularly helpful, perhaps, as Admiral Hall was describing, but potentially being an actual vulnerability across multiple areas.
I'm hoping that it's making them recalculate a little bit.
On the ground, I don't see a lot of slowing down.
So I was recently in Yap and Palau and Guam.
And in Yap, if you remember, we covered the Chinese rebuilding of that Imperial Japanese runway on Woolleyi.
That construction crew has now moved on to the main island of Yap, where the U.S. is putting in $2 billion worth of infrastructure.
And according to Secretary Hagsa's public statements, although the negotiations aren't complete, and this is where you get a concern.
I look more at kind of the left of Bang, what happens before things blow up, so that hopefully things don't blow up.
That same Chinese company that was doing the runway is on the main island doing a bridge, which is in a location between the port and the airport that the U.S. is looking at rebuilding.
And they've also settled in to do over a dozen secondary roads on the island.
So from a situation of about a year ago where there was essentially no Chinese installed government-linked operations on the island of Yap, they're now settling in and they do the relationship mapping, figure out who they can buy, who they can influence, and they're settling in for the long run.
So that runway, which is about 400 miles from Guam, which they've completed, they've completed the runway, but they've left behind on Woolleyi containers.
And I don't know what's in the containers.
They also left behind a couple of tenders.
One of them has sunk and has leaked oil into the lagoon.
So the locals are having problems with their fishing supplies.
It's just, it's not dialing down.
So I hope that they're reconsidering.
But all of this, everything we've spoken about, the islands, the Garcia, what's happening in Cyprus, this is all logistics.
This is all about the four, right?
And unless we can kind of do a proper assessment and regain control on the logistics, which is where the Chinese are trying to cut off the U.S. If you remember, Admiral Keating testified in 2008 that he was told by a Chinese official, you take Hawaii East, we'll take Hawaii West.
And they're putting in place logistical control in order to try to make that happen, like happened with the Japanese Drug World War II.