The David Knight Show - Interview: The East Coast Drone & Missing Nuke Mystery
Aired: 2026-04-08
Duration: 01:04:58


=== Drone Surveillance Mystery (14:56) ===

[00:00:07]  Joining us now is someone who has spent their life during reconnaissance and surveillance.
[00:00:12]  He's now into drones.
[00:00:14]  And I think you're going to find this very interesting.
[00:00:16]  We're going to talk about what happened to the great drone mystery back in the, I guess it was about a year and a half ago, back on the East Coast, as well as what has recently happened with some drones seen of the military bases where War Pete and Rubio live and the threat really that it presents to all of us and how it is completely.
[00:00:37]  Upending really the military order, I think.
[00:00:40]  So joining us now is John Ferguson, and he's got a couple of different places where you can find him.
[00:00:45]  He's got Saxon Unmanned as his company, and they have saxonunmanned.com.
[00:00:51]  He also has a website about his personal story, johnbferguson.com, which is very fascinating.
[00:00:56]  We'll try to talk a little bit about that as well.
[00:00:58]  And he's also got another business, javajons.net, just in case you're looking for some coffee.
[00:01:04]  But thank you for joining us, John.
[00:01:06]  Well, thank you.
[00:01:07]  It's very nice to be here.
[00:01:08]  Thank you.
[00:01:09]  Let's begin with the great drone mystery.
[00:01:12]  There was a lot of people trying to tie this into UFOs and stuff.
[00:01:15]  And it's like, well, they've got lights on them.
[00:01:17]  You know, let you know which direction they're going.
[00:01:19]  So that might be a tip off.
[00:01:21]  This is not something from another galaxy.
[00:01:23]  But tell us, you know, when you looked at this investigation, what was your take on all this stuff?
[00:01:30]  Well, you know, again, thank you for having me on.
[00:01:33]  You know, the whole drone thing back in 2024 and 25, you know, I just, I'm a real common sense kind of a guy.
[00:01:42]  And I just got really tired of hearing the people that we elected to run this country and elect our, run our states were out there saying that they're coming out of the water and they're Iranian flagships and all this stuff.
[00:01:56]  And it's like, yeah, we had sheriffs who said, I can't catch them.
[00:01:59]  It's like it's supernatural or something.
[00:02:01]  I just thought, oh my gosh, this country is in so much trouble if these are the people that are running the country.
[00:02:07]  So, I just wanted to give a common sense approach, you know, and really just show America what, as a manufacturer, a subject matter expert, and again, I've been in unmanned system technology for over three decades, right?
[00:02:27]  So, I'm one of the few people in the United States that has not only subsurface, subsea, but Ocean surface and tactical robot crawlers and unmanned aerial aircraft experience, right?
[00:02:39]  So I'm really kind of a different person than most.
[00:02:44]  So I just wanted to give a common sense approach.
[00:02:47]  The thing is, is that myself and two other gentlemen have been working for quite some time on trying to uncover the fact that some of the old Soviet era nuclear warheads had come up missing.
[00:02:59]  There were 132 of them that came up missing and they were put into the black market.
[00:03:03]  And we, the gentleman that I was working with, had accidentally been exposed to one of these warheads and became very sick.
[00:03:11]  And so from that point forward, he was tracking these things to try to find out where they were.
[00:03:17]  And so that's when they brought me in.
[00:03:20]  And the information that we had is that they were here and that they were planning on using it as a false flag operation.
[00:03:27]  And so when all of these elected officials were out there saying that they're aliens or little green men or whatever, and all this other stuff, I just felt compelled to just say, look, folks, I couldn't say at the time what exactly it was.
[00:03:43]  I just said, look, I do believe that they're not looking for anything nefarious.
[00:03:47]  Don't try to shoot them down.
[00:03:50]  I don't think they're nefarious drones.
[00:03:51]  I don't think they're an African nations drones.
[00:03:54]  I think they're looking for something very specific.
[00:03:56]  And I believe that they're looking for the radioactive warhead that we have been working on.
[00:04:02]  We knew it was.
[00:04:03]  And, you know, so I had some cease and desist letters from the Biden administration.
[00:04:10]  And of course, I didn't cease and I didn't desist.
[00:04:13]  But we, you know, we kept going with our investigation and we proved that, yeah, this is what they're looking for.
[00:04:20]  Right.
[00:04:20]  And, you know, they're flying, they're, they're, Respecting somewhat of our FAA guidelines on unmanned system flight operations.
[00:04:30]  They had lights on.
[00:04:32]  They're trying to somewhat fly within our rules, right?
[00:04:37]  So I knew that they weren't an adversarial nation.
[00:04:40]  And then what administration would allow huge, large aircraft like that to fly over our critical infrastructure without permission?
[00:04:52]  Like this aircraft behind me, it's a 14 foot wing aircraft, 150, 200 grand at its base model.
[00:04:58]  You know, could you imagine an adversarial nation flying dozens and dozens of these over our critical infrastructure and our country just going, I don't know.
[00:05:10]  So, you know, it just didn't make sense to me.
[00:05:13]  So that's why I did that video.
[00:05:14]  And then still to this day, a lot of people had asked me, whatever happened?
[00:05:19]  Did they find the nuke?
[00:05:20]  And I was like, well, I don't know.
[00:05:22]  And so we had also recently uncovered that that is still out there and it is still in the hands of the bad guys.
[00:05:29]  And they are planning on using that thing in September, October of this year.
[00:05:34]  So we met with the authorities to try to bring this to light and get these folks to investigate this.
[00:05:42]  And every time we brought it to the authorities, we've been shut down.
[00:05:46]  So it's all been dismissed.
[00:05:48]  So we turned over all of the black and white, the emails, the photos, the videos.
[00:05:54]  There was a Pentagon report that stated that they had thought in the 90s that one of these assets was brought over.
[00:06:00]  So, what we did is we proved to where it was processed, who owned it, who sold it, who they sold it to, how they packed it, how they shipped it, how they brought it over here, who received it over here in the United States.
[00:06:16]  And then we lost track of it from there.
[00:06:19]  So, you know, these are facts, it's not conspiracy or anything.
[00:06:22]  And that's where we're at.
[00:06:23]  So, who is this?
[00:06:24]  Who are the bad actors that can you say who they are?
[00:06:28]  You know, all of the bad guys that people speculate here in the United States are real.
[00:06:35]  You know, I don't want to seem like I'm a politician and dodging a question, but for my own safety, I think I should leave it at that.
[00:06:42]  But all of the bad actors that you know exist, you're right.
[00:06:46]  They're there.
[00:06:47]  Yeah.
[00:06:47]  Yeah.
[00:06:47]  Well, that's one of the things that really concerns me.
[00:06:49]  When you look at Iran, for example, and the drones that they have, you know, who knows how many drones they've got?
[00:06:57]  They were giving drones, selling drones to Russia during the Ukraine war.
[00:07:01]  So, they were making more than they thought they actually needed.
[00:07:03]  So, I imagine they've got quite a few of them that are there.
[00:07:06]  And it really has changed the face of warfare, hasn't it?
[00:07:09]  It absolutely has.
[00:07:11]  And, you know, that Shahid drone is, you know, it's an adequate drone.
[00:07:15]  And I try to impress upon people that a drone doesn't have to be this highly technologically advanced piece of equipment, right?
[00:07:23]  I mean, my gosh, they're building drones out of cardboard.
[00:07:26]  Oh, yeah.
[00:07:27]  And they're working, right?
[00:07:28]  You know, they're building them out of balsa wood, which they've been doing for decades, right?
[00:07:33]  So, Um, the only thing a drone has to do is do its job.
[00:07:38]  I know it sounds pretty basic, but it just has to fly.
[00:07:41]  You know, there's a $500 module in that aircraft any aircraft, really, a commercial aircraft that tells the drone exactly what to do, when to do it, how much power to put out to wherever.
[00:07:54]  And you can fly them completely 100% autonomously.
[00:07:59]  You can plug in the coordinates and tell it what to do and just let her rip, and you can pack up and go home.
[00:08:04]  And, uh, And it'll just go out there and just do the job.
[00:08:07]  So it doesn't have to be technologically advanced.
[00:08:10]  Again, it just has to carry a payload and do its job.
[00:08:12]  And that's it.
[00:08:13]  Yeah, it's really been an equalizer, hasn't it?
[00:08:15]  It's like the improvised roadside bombs that we saw in Iraq, except this is a lot more flexible, a lot more reach that we've seen.
[00:08:26]  Now, the drones that you sell at Saxon, tell us a little bit about your product line.
[00:08:31]  You mentioned the large one behind you.
[00:08:34]  What type of drones do you sell?
[00:08:36]  How big are they?
[00:08:37]  What are they capable of doing?
[00:08:38]  Do they carry a payload of.
[00:08:40]  you know, how much and so forth.
[00:08:42]  Yeah, you know, the drones that we build, you know, I've developed a couple of different technologies to try to help save lives.
[00:08:52]  I've built subsea power pack systems, tactical crawlers.
[00:08:57]  And my drones are kind of unique in the industry.
[00:09:02]  And the reason why is because I've managed projects overseas for submersible vehicles that have a cost of $1.2 to $1.5 million a day cost.
[00:09:15]  And so You know, I've seen 50 cent parts drop a project for two weeks.
[00:09:20]  So there's 1,440 minutes in the day.
[00:09:23]  And when you have a project that's $1.5 million in value or in cost per day, you know, every minute has a huge dollar sign attached to it.
[00:09:33]  So I developed my aircraft to be, you know, modular, robust, you know, very rugged, very dependable.
[00:09:41]  And it's designed to save lives or to, you know, Provide intelligence that our warfighters wouldn't normally get in the battlefield with a high level of dependability.
[00:10:00]  And of course, you did that when you were in the Marines.
[00:10:02]  You were doing recon and you were doing it in the water yourself, right?
[00:10:05]  Tell us a little bit about that.
[00:10:07]  Yeah, I, uh, I want to make sure that I don't over, oversell what I did in the Marine Corps because of stolen valor and all that other stuff.
[00:10:15]  But I, you know, I was a reconnaissance scout swimmer.
[00:10:17]  You know, I wasn't like a Navy SEAL or force recon guy.
[00:10:21]  You know, I was, I was low level reconnaissance scout swimmer guy.
[00:10:24]  So they would drop us off in the water and we would swim in and attack the beach or the pier, do the reconnaissance and, uh, and then set in lanes for the boat company, the raiders to come in and attack the objective.
[00:10:37]  So, So, yeah, I've done a lot of reconnaissance type submissions.
[00:10:43]  And that's really how I developed my company, because I wanted to kind of be back in the Marine Corps and not have to follow orders.
[00:10:52]  Yeah, there was a guy that I worked with at Texas Instruments.
[00:10:54]  I was a little bit older than I was.
[00:10:55]  And I told you this as we were talking off air before the interview began.
[00:11:00]  They would do that to him in Vietnam.
[00:11:02]  They would take him and way out behind enemy lines and drop him in the jungle, and they'd have to find their way out.
[00:11:09]  Took them several days and they're, you know, trying to move at night and sleep during the day.
[00:11:13]  And he'd wake up and there's spiders all over him and a enemy patrol just a few feet away.
[00:11:17]  And he said it was a really harrowing experience.
[00:11:20]  And, you know, they would just work their way back and write about what they saw.
[00:11:23]  And he said, what was really strange about that was then after you did that, they would fly you to Hawaii for a couple of week vacation.
[00:11:29]  Then it's back into the jungle again.
[00:11:31]  It's just like whips on them back and forth, these different experiences.
[00:11:34]  So you were doing stuff kind of like that, I guess, except in the water.
[00:11:38]  And then now, as you pointed out, With the drones, they can do that kind of surveillance without endangering people's lives.
[00:11:44]  So that's an important thing.
[00:11:46]  But talk a little bit about what you know in terms of the drones we see that are happening in this Mideast war right now that's going on with Iran and how that has changed the battlefield and the threats that that presents to critical infrastructure here in the United States.
[00:12:07]  Probably not something that's difficult for somebody to get across the border with.
[00:12:12]  It's also, we have to be concerned about cartels as well as hostile nations attacking our infrastructure, don't we?
[00:12:19]  Yeah.
[00:12:20]  And that's, it's very serious.
[00:12:22]  You brought up a really good point.
[00:12:24]  You know, again, from the beginning of warfare, we've always sent out reconnaissance teams to collect data.
[00:12:30]  And, you know, those folks have always given their lives to try to collect that data.
[00:12:36]  And, you know, you don't need a big drone like this to go collect information on a, on a, on an objective anymore, right?
[00:12:45]  A two or $3,000 drone that you buy at Best Buy or Amazon will do all of that for you.
[00:12:50]  So, You know, these drones will fly over and they'll take pictures of critical infrastructure or the potential battlefield.
[00:12:57]  And all of those images have geotagged images on them.
[00:13:01]  So you can take all of those images and put them all together in this software and you can create a map.
[00:13:07]  And this map could be accurate down to less than an inch, right?
[00:13:11]  So every military map you'll ever see or pilot's map will always have, you know, for the most part, they'll always have elevations on them.
[00:13:22]  And that's very important for covering concealment, you know, depressions and Etc., and so these drones can fly over a target, and you can get the digital elevation model that tells you the elevations, right?
[00:13:34]  You can get the altitudes or the height of buildings or you know, vehicles, and you can build a 3D map off of these.
[00:13:42]  And so, anytime you're going to go and attack an objective, that you will need to have that data because maybe you want to blow up a building, but you don't know how big of a missile you need to use or whatever.
[00:13:53]  But that information will tell you, okay?
[00:13:56]  That's more information that you'll collect in minutes.
[00:13:59]  Over what any human being can collect in the same amount of time.
[00:14:02]  So that's very important, especially allowing drones to fly over here domestically over our critical infrastructure.
[00:14:11]  Now, the Ukraine and the Russians have done an amazing job.
[00:14:14]  Not that I agree with that whole war, but the Ukrainians and the Russians have done a fantastic job of revolutionizing the battlefield because you can take a less than $1,000 drone and strap a grenade to it or some form of an explosive and you can send it out on its mission.
[00:14:32]  And that can absolutely devastate the battlefield.
[00:14:35]  And so, you know, the Iranian drones, I mean, these things are just adequate drones and they're highly capable and they're terrifying.
[00:14:46]  And that's what they're used for.
[00:14:48]  Now, the cartels, the Marine Corps had published a few years ago during the Biden administration that the cartels were sending 100 drones an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with fentanyl, you know, coming into the United States.

=== Swarm Technology Risks (14:40) ===

[00:15:03]  And I spent several years working on the border to combat narco terrorism, human trafficking, and child sex trafficking.
[00:15:09]  You know, I just volunteered a lot of my time to do that.
[00:15:12]  But I also work south of the border doing the exact same thing.
[00:15:16]  And so I got a different perspective on the stuff coming into the United States than most people do.
[00:15:21]  Right.
[00:15:22]  So, with all of this fentanyl and all these nasty drugs and weapons that the cartels bring in, they can just do it with drones.
[00:15:33]  And the Problem is, is that our counter drone defense is great.
[00:15:38]  There's a lot of great companies out there building it, but it needs to get better and it needs to get better fast because, you know, a lot of these things can slip through the wire, but mostly it's pretty good.
[00:15:49]  But, you know, we get those incursions.
[00:15:51]  And again, you know, if we're going to be starting wars everywhere with everybody, it's going to be not just drugs coming across, but it's going to be things like bombs and that type of thing that's coming across as well.
[00:16:02]  So the drones that you have, like the large one behind you, what would that be used for?
[00:16:08]  This is a great platform because it carries 15 to 20 pounds.
[00:16:12]  And, you know, that 15 to 20 pounds can be a sensor or it could be some form of a munition.
[00:16:18]  Of course, we don't do that.
[00:16:20]  Got to clarify that.
[00:16:22]  But, you know, it flies for 18 plus hours.
[00:16:26]  Not that you would fly a drone for that long, but it's, again, very highly reliable.
[00:16:33]  But a drone is really just a platform to give a sensor a ride and give it a good ride, a smooth ride.
[00:16:41]  Right.
[00:16:41]  So, Again, you can put, we can use this for agriculture.
[00:16:46]  We can use it for construction asset management.
[00:16:50]  You can use it for search and rescue.
[00:16:53]  It's largely built for ISR, which is intelligence surveillance reconnaissance.
[00:16:57]  So you can put that little ball turret gimbal where there you go, that gimbal in there.
[00:17:02]  You can zoom 30 times zoom power down to a location.
[00:17:09]  So you can really get a good sense of what's down there.
[00:17:14]  And if there's, You know, targets of interest or whatever you can loiter over a battlefield as a loitering munition.
[00:17:21]  So you can stay aloft for many hours and wait for the bad guys to come through, you know, or, you know, find people lost in the mountains, you know.
[00:17:31]  So there's nothing you can't do with these things.
[00:17:34]  The only things that limit you on drones is your imagination.
[00:17:38]  Wow.
[00:17:38]  Well, in our area, we've got our own personal drone, but I can't fly it because we've got so many hawks around here.
[00:17:44]  I look at these people and say, how are we going to defend against stuff?
[00:17:47]  It's like, well, if it's really small drones, you just get a bunch of.
[00:17:50]  Predatory birds that don't, you know, but they wouldn't do too well against the one that's behind you.
[00:17:55]  But birds are very intelligent.
[00:17:57]  I've done work with birds and drones, and their birds are so intelligent.
[00:18:03]  You would never realize how intelligent they actually are.
[00:18:07]  You know, there was an interesting novel a few years ago by Daniel Suarez.
[00:18:12]  It's called Kill Decision.
[00:18:13]  I don't know if you're familiar with that or not, but he was really ahead of his time.
[00:18:17]  It's about a decade ago.
[00:18:19]  And in it, he was talking about drones and the use of warfare.
[00:18:22]  And it was very interesting the way he Constructed it because he had a confluence of some military industrial types along with some people who were entomologists, insects, right?
[00:18:34]  And so they came up with a kind of a way to signal with each other, like mimicking insects that allowed them to do swarms of drones.
[00:18:45]  Where are we in terms of that?
[00:18:46]  Do you think, in terms of drone swarms, that's the thing that is really concerning?
[00:18:50]  And of course, when we look at warfare, that is a real issue.
[00:18:57]  What about drones, drone swarms, and being able to lock onto a target and kind of have some communication between them in terms of artificial intelligence and that type of thing?
[00:19:08]  Yeah, that's again, that's a great question.
[00:19:11]  You know, this aircraft behind me here, it can swarm.
[00:19:14]  You know, that's just software, right?
[00:19:16]  So, you know, the autopilots will actually, I mean, again, the $500 autopilot will allow you to swarm this type of an aircraft.
[00:19:24]  It's $500, right?
[00:19:27]  So it's very insignificant.
[00:19:29]  A lot of people say that the Shahid drone is a $30,000, $40,000, or $50,000 drone, but I could, I guarantee I could make that drone for less than $20,000, right?
[00:19:39]  But that drone, Can swarm.
[00:19:41]  Swarm technology is wonderful, and you get to see all kinds of pretty stuff on Super Bowl halftime shows and all that stuff.
[00:19:49]  It's wonderful.
[00:19:51]  There is some technology issues that we have with swarming drones.
[00:19:57]  And when you have the larger drones, the swarm, yeah, that's a problem.
[00:20:02]  But is it likely that we're here domestically in the United States going to get hit with big drones like this in a swarm?
[00:20:09]  Not really.
[00:20:10]  It's highly unlikely.
[00:20:13]  But a lot of people have seen the videos where you got little bitty small drones that can acquire a target and have an explosive and take personnel out, right?
[00:20:22]  And using AI, it can choose who to take out.
[00:20:25]  There are certain laws of physics that you can't overcome and that you can't, you know, your battery life, your power consumption, and the power discharge from the battery to keep the thing in the air is really limiting on your amount of flight time.
[00:20:44]  So those little bitty drones, they only will get maybe.
[00:20:47]  Three to five minutes of flight time.
[00:20:48]  So you can't launch it, find a target, acquire the target, then prosecute the target in three to five minutes.
[00:20:57]  It's just not going to work.
[00:20:58]  So I don't think people need to be too concerned about that at this time.
[00:21:03]  The battery technology is not out there yet, but that's not saying that we should not be concerned about adversarial nations getting a hold of small drones and utilizing them here in the United States.
[00:21:16]  And of course, that video that was done was part of a TED talk thing, I think somebody did where they were talking about those assassination drones, determining which ones, which people are going to target, you know, and using that against politicians in Congress or something like that.
[00:21:32]  But yeah, that's something that is down the road.
[00:21:35]  It's just incremental increases in technology, I guess.
[00:21:38]  But the other aspect of it, and, you know, we've had a couple of things that have come out in the news recently that had some domestic connections.
[00:21:47]  One of them was the fact there's drones flying over the house of.
[00:21:52]  Let's see if I got the clip here.
[00:21:54]  Which one of those is it, Lance?
[00:21:56]  Over the military bases here.
[00:21:57]  You got War Pete and Rubio pointing to the drones because they're flying over the military bases where these guys are living because we had a lot of Trump administration people have now moved on to military bases.
[00:22:09]  And so they had these drones that were spotted over that military base.
[00:22:14]  Talk a little bit about that.
[00:22:15]  What was behind that?
[00:22:17]  Well, you know, a lot of people around the United States are getting wrapped around the axles on this thing.
[00:22:23]  And of course, it's very ominous to think that an adversarial nation can fly drones over our most critical infrastructure and our executive leadership in our country, right?
[00:22:39]  This happens all the time.
[00:22:41]  It's not new to have people who are ill equipped and ill informed to fly their aircraft over these bases when they're not allowed to.
[00:22:50]  You know, the Chinese have, of course, the administration is working on getting the Chinese spy drones out of here.
[00:22:58]  But they have a software built, a software packet that's integrated into the system where it won't allow you to fly into a no fly zone.
[00:23:08]  And those are clearly marked on the maps when you plan your route.
[00:23:13]  You can bypass that, but you are electing to bypass that.
[00:23:18]  And if you break the law, then, you know, that's on you.
[00:23:22]  And we also have what we call remote ID, which is a little module that is in every aircraft sold here in the United States that shows law enforcement of who owns the aircraft.
[00:23:34]  And then I believe it shows the location of the pilot's ground station.
[00:23:38]  I'm not sure if that's correct, but these people can fly drones over military bases.
[00:23:46]  And I think it's just people doing stupid stuff.
[00:23:48]  Again, I'll go back to one of my original statements.
[00:23:52]  That this administration or any other administration would allow this large of a drone to fly over the base without permission.
[00:24:03]  Yeah, because we just had that situation down in Mar-a-Lago.
[00:24:06]  You had somebody who was, it sounded like they were kind of out of it.
[00:24:09]  It's no-fly area there.
[00:24:11]  And they sent up jets to intercept them.
[00:24:13]  And they said, Yeah, this guy, we kind of wake him up.
[00:24:15]  You know, basically, he's not paying any attention.
[00:24:18]  But what was really alarming to me was I saw these comments like, just blow him out of the sky.
[00:24:22]  You know, this guy doesn't deserve to live.
[00:24:24]  And it's like, Whoa, let's back up a little bit here.
[00:24:28]  But, yeah, they're very quick to scramble the jets for things like that.
[00:24:34]  And of course, even if it's flying over the homes of politicians, high level politicians like that, those are going to be pretty hardened targets.
[00:24:43]  What's not hardened, I think, are the utility power plants or things like oil refineries here in this country.
[00:24:51]  There's so many issues with that.
[00:24:53]  They immediately started talking about, well, we got to worry about our AI data centers.
[00:24:58]  So we're going to have some automatic guns that are.
[00:25:01]  Maybe driven by AI that are going to shoot these things down.
[00:25:05]  It's like, well, yeah, they don't ever talk about it for us, though.
[00:25:08]  You know, they're worried about our high ranking officials.
[00:25:11]  They're worried about the artificial intelligence that's going to be used to spy and surveil us, but they're not really worried about whether or not we can turn the lights on.
[00:25:20]  That seems to be the common thread with all this stuff.
[00:25:23]  Well, I would challenge you to go back in our 250 year, uh, history and find any administration that gives a damn about the American people, right?
[00:25:32]  Um, that's right.
[00:25:33]  But, uh, but you know, you can shoot these drones down.
[00:25:37]  The problem is, is that we trip over our own bureaucracy here in the United States where other countries don't, you know, you can disrupt the frequency with these drones and they have frequency hopping.
[00:25:48]  So typically we use 2.4 or 5.8 or 900, um, you know, frequency here.
[00:25:55]  To fly our aircraft.
[00:25:56]  That's pretty common, right?
[00:25:58]  There's a lot of other bands.
[00:26:00]  But when you hit a drone with some sort of frequency disruptor, they can frequency hop and they can switch to a different freak and continue on.
[00:26:10]  So those are difficult.
[00:26:12]  You can shoot them with lasers, you can shoot them with microwave pulses, or you can just shoot them with bullets.
[00:26:17]  The problem is okay, if you've identified the drone and you're going to make that decision to take that drone down, but what about the family of four that's in the Cessna that's 10,000 feet?
[00:26:28]  You know, just because you shoot some form of a energy weapon or whatever frequency disruption weapon, you know, at the drone, it doesn't stop at the drone, right?
[00:26:38]  So they don't want to drop a manned aircraft over, you know, because of a drone, right?
[00:26:45]  Right.
[00:26:45]  So what I propose is things that we do on accident, we should be able to do on purpose, and that's crash one drone into another, right?
[00:26:53]  Oh, yeah.
[00:26:54]  You know, you, if you can take an unmanned aircraft like our smaller ones, And you can fly that into a drone that needs to be taken down, you have more control.
[00:27:06]  And there's software that will, you know, select that target and then you can automatically engage that target using another aircraft.
[00:27:14]  That way, it's just going to have a less of a probability of having, you know, adverse effects on the civilians, you know, in the area.
[00:27:24]  And that's what I propose.
[00:27:26]  But we have to really shore up our defensive posture here in America regarding.
[00:27:32]  Unmanned systems.
[00:27:33]  Well, you know, there's something that we've had this debate for a long time.
[00:27:37]  It began a long time ago with EMP, you know, electromagnetic pulse.
[00:27:40]  You know, what if somebody flies a nuke and exposes it in the atmosphere, takes out all kinds of electronics, and maybe takes out some of these big, unique transformers that have a very long lead time to get them replaced and only made in a couple of places in the world, you know, incredibly expensive, difficult to replace.
[00:27:59]  And so there's some very simple things that could be done to protect against EMP, but they don't do that.
[00:28:04]  So, I imagine they're not going to do much to protect the infrastructure against drone attacks either.
[00:28:09]  And there are so many critical places of critical infrastructure, as we're seeing with this situation with Iran.
[00:28:16]  You know, you've got a refinery, it's very, you don't need much of an explosive to get that thing going.
[00:28:23]  And so, when you look at these vulnerable infrastructures, like power generation, power transformers that can be taken out and cause massive cascading effects, and nobody's really doing anything about that, are they?
[00:28:38]  Yeah.
[00:28:38]  Well, you know, all of the reconnaissance on America is pretty much done.
[00:28:43]  Right.
[00:28:44]  So, you know, the company DJI, they build an amazing aircraft.
[00:28:49]  I mean, everybody loves the aircraft.
[00:28:51]  They're easy, they're dependable.
[00:28:53]  You know, they're just good aircraft.
[00:28:56]  But the problem is that they got caught spying on, well, through their drones.
[00:29:01]  So, pretty much every country in the world has had those DJI drones flying everywhere.
[00:29:08]  So, all of that data, you know, goes back, has gone back.
[00:29:12]  To China, right?
[00:29:13]  And that's why the Biden and Trump administration was working on getting them kicked out of the United States.
[00:29:21]  And, you know, critical infrastructure now, you cannot use those types of Chinese drones because they were caught collecting our data.
[00:29:28]  So all of our power lines and refineries and, you know, sewer plants and construction sites and hospitals and every single thing you could ever possibly imagine has already been mapped.

=== Global Data Exposure (11:18) ===

[00:29:44]  Right.
[00:29:44]  And so there's no requirement anymore, really, to select targets to map because they've mostly all been mapped.
[00:29:57]  Right.
[00:29:58]  And so there's nothing that the government can do now about that other than just, you know, stop the spying.
[00:30:05]  They just, there's nothing else you can do.
[00:30:07]  It's all been mapped.
[00:30:08]  So what these drones have done is they have really tested our weaknesses here.
[00:30:16]  In the United States, and the media has done a great job of telling everybody in the world what our weaknesses are.
[00:30:24]  And that's why I've said a couple of times on this show that we've got to really beef up our defensive posture here in the United States regarding unmanned aircraft, because almost every nation in the world has suffered some form of an invasion at one point or another throughout history.
[00:30:43]  You know, I think we're probably past due for another one.
[00:30:47]  And I think I don't want to strike fear into Americans, but I do want Americans to understand that this war that we're fighting, this environment that we're in, the technology that is being utilized, and couple that with AI, that I do believe that we are going to really get hit with drones, some form of a drone attack.
[00:31:16]  Very soon.
[00:31:17]  I don't know when you can.
[00:31:18]  I agree.
[00:31:18]  Yeah.
[00:31:19]  And when you look at it, you talk about how everything is already mapped out.
[00:31:22]  A good example of that, I think, is the fact that we have these very sophisticated systems in the Gulf states that were there.
[00:31:29]  And some of the very first ones that got taken out, there was, I believe, a billion dollar radar facility that was kind of the nerve center, the eyes and ears of these anti ballistic missile systems.
[00:31:44]  And that was one of the first things that they targeted.
[00:31:46]  They knew that we operate in an environment now, as you point out.
[00:31:50]  Everybody knows everything about everybody.
[00:31:52]  All the stuff is exposed.
[00:31:54]  They know where the targets are, and it's not that difficult.
[00:31:58]  As you were pointing out, you can get some very inexpensive devices to drive the drone, and you've already got it mapped out as to where it is.
[00:32:07]  And that's what they did at the opening rounds of the retaliation strikes from Iran.
[00:32:12]  They went right after a lot of very high value targets and radar targets and things like that.
[00:32:18]  And so that's something that's very different, as you point out.
[00:32:21]  In America, we've gone through a couple of world wars without anything happening on our soil.
[00:32:26]  So we think, well, we don't have anything to worry about.
[00:32:30]  But now there's this asymmetry to the warfare that I think is really going to bite us, I think.
[00:32:37]  Yeah.
[00:32:37]  Well, you know, there's some information that was just quietly released about Iran taking delivery of over 500, what do they call that?
[00:32:51]  Oh my gosh.
[00:32:53]  Starts with an S. Seizion missile or whatever.
[00:32:58]  They just took over.
[00:32:59]  From China?
[00:33:01]  From North Korea.
[00:33:02]  Oh, North Korea.
[00:33:03]  And these are hypersonic type missiles that you can't really shoot down.
[00:33:10]  And they have taken over 500 of these.
[00:33:14]  They've taken delivery of all of these.
[00:33:17]  And they can reach here in the United States and most definitely Israel.
[00:33:23]  So.
[00:33:25]  You know, this whole conflict with Iran, you know, I hope and pray that this will be, you know, this will be ending very, very, very soon.
[00:33:36]  But we do have a very high probability of this thing, you know, escalating out of our control.
[00:33:44]  Looks like it's already doing that in terms of reports of Karg Island getting hit.
[00:33:47]  Yeah.
[00:33:48]  Yeah.
[00:33:49]  Absolutely.
[00:33:50]  So one of the things that I really just absolutely despise is, uh, You know, on the mainstream media and a lot of shows, you know, you have these old generals and old retired senators and, you know, people of authority who are very respectable people.
[00:34:10]  But they're going out on the news and they're saying, well, the Trump administration is going to do this and this is going to happen.
[00:34:17]  This is going to happen.
[00:34:17]  This is going to happen.
[00:34:19]  I was never a high level, you know, person in the military.
[00:34:21]  I mean, I was mischievous and I always got in trouble.
[00:34:25]  So, you know, I bounced off rank structure like a yo yo.
[00:34:29]  So, But I was a good Marine, right?
[00:34:31]  But again, I just close my ears when I hear all this stuff because nobody knows the decisions that are being made inside the administration, right?
[00:34:42]  I get that it's a lot of fun to talk about it and speculate, but for these people that go up and just say, well, we're going to do this and this and this, yeah, I just, yeah, I just can't listen to it because nobody really knows.
[00:34:57]  But if we're speculating, You know, this truly does with all of the things that are happening.
[00:35:04]  And there's a lot of things that we don't know that's happening behind closed doors, especially in Iran.
[00:35:09]  That I do speculate that this could get very messy.
[00:35:13]  And I'm hoping, what is it, tonight at eight o'clock?
[00:35:17]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:35:18]  Yeah, we're recording this on Tuesday.
[00:35:19]  And so, yeah, Tuesday night.
[00:35:21]  But of course, earlier this morning, they already attacked Karg Island.
[00:35:25]  So, I mean, he's kicking stuff off and escalating.
[00:35:29]  I'm anticipating that they're not going to have an agreement by eight o'clock tonight.
[00:35:33]  That's right.
[00:35:34]  That's right.
[00:35:35]  Yeah, that's what I'm concerned about.
[00:35:38]  And again, the other thing that is concerning is that as you watch government officials, and I know maybe part of it is they're trying to project confidence or whatever, but what comes across is kind of a detached hubris that thinks that we can't be touched.
[00:35:53]  And that really is disturbing because that is an invitation for disaster, I think, whether we're talking about civil defense.
[00:36:01]  And of course, you point out the American government doesn't do anything about civil defense.
[00:36:04]  So it's a great book about that a few years ago.
[00:36:07]  Called Raven Rock, the plan to save themselves and let the rest of us die.
[00:36:11]  It's not about how there was no civil defense plan ever really during the Cold War for people.
[00:36:17]  And of course, I don't really think there is now at this point either.
[00:36:20]  You see other countries like Germany as they're trying to escalate the war.
[00:36:25]  And it seems to me like Germany and France and these different European countries want to escalate the war.
[00:36:32]  And so, but they are at least doing civil defense drills and drills about how to do mass evacuations and things like that.
[00:36:40]  Not in the American government.
[00:36:42]  They're not going to do anything like that.
[00:36:44]  Well, you know, we discussed at the beginning of this show that there are at least one, maybe two nuclear warheads here in the United States.
[00:36:54]  Fact.
[00:36:55]  Okay.
[00:36:55]  Fact.
[00:36:56]  So we also have enough fentanyl or carfentanyl in the United States to kill every man, woman, and child on the planet 10 times over.
[00:37:06]  We've got to let that sink in, right?
[00:37:09]  And I always said that it was just in the United States.
[00:37:11]  There's enough fentanyl in the United States to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States 10 times over.
[00:37:16]  Well, News, the mainstream media had done like a really quick blurb on that and said it's enough in the whole world.
[00:37:22]  Right.
[00:37:23]  So, you know, that we also let over 30 million people into this country in the Biden administration.
[00:37:31]  And there were some that were bad.
[00:37:32]  Right.
[00:37:34]  So to say that we can't be touched is not something that I would get on board with because everything that we need to be touched is already here.
[00:37:45]  And, you know, we found doing the border work that I've done, we found that China was bringing.
[00:37:51]  Shipping containers in through the cartels with millions of rounds of ammunition and small arms.
[00:37:58]  And the Iranian truck drivers were distributing those containers all around the United States.
[00:38:04]  So, again, fact, not conspiracy or speculation or anything like I did the work.
[00:38:11]  So, everything that they need to do some form of nefarious assault on this country is already here.
[00:38:23]  So, Are they going to pull up a container ship and launch a bunch of drones out of a container ship?
[00:38:32]  100% intent, 0% probability, you know, because we have those big gray things off the coast, the Navy that won't let that happen, right?
[00:38:42]  So, yeah.
[00:38:45]  Well, just so many different.
[00:38:46]  I mean, we saw in some attacks, I forget whether it was a Ukrainian, I think it's Ukrainians doing it to the Russians when they destroyed so many of those very high value planes on the ground.
[00:38:58]  The way they did that was they had some semi trailers that had like a false ceiling in it, right?
[00:39:05]  And they open that up and these things, you know, they park them not too far away from the airport and then fly all those drones in that were hidden and concealed in the 18 wheelers.
[00:39:15]  So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways that you can do things like that, right?
[00:39:19]  You think the Ukrainians did that by themselves?
[00:39:23]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:39:24]  They're really resourceful, aren't they?
[00:39:26]  I'm curious.
[00:39:28]  Yeah.
[00:39:30]  There's a lot to read between the lines there.
[00:39:32]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:33]  There is, isn't there?
[00:39:35]  Well, again, things have changed so much and we don't really.
[00:39:39]  I really understand it.
[00:39:40]  And I thought it was interesting when you're talking about how a little tiny part can completely scuttle the whole mission if it's substandard.
[00:39:48]  We certainly have seen that with the aircraft carrier, haven't we?
[00:39:53]  The Gerald Ford class, they had the toilet issue.
[00:39:56]  Yeah.
[00:39:57]  So I guess they had not an Achilles heel, but they had an Achilles something, though, or the other, right, that caused a problem with that.
[00:40:04]  And now we got the same situation with the spacecraft, the Artemis.
[00:40:08]  They were saying their toilets aren't working.
[00:40:10]  So.
[00:40:11]  We are looking at an SHTF kind of scenario with so many different areas.
[00:40:16]  And it seems to be always the really complicated, sophisticated systems that they build that seem to be taken down by the very, very simple bug that's in it somewhere, right?
[00:40:27]  Yeah.
[00:40:27]  You know, I was managing a project over in West Africa.
[00:40:33]  And our cost, I think our cost was like $1.2 million a day.
[00:40:38]  And there's these little fuses called Pico fuses.
[00:40:41]  Mm hmm.
[00:40:43]  We had some Pico fuses go out in one of our subs, and that dropped the whole entire project for about two weeks.
[00:40:49]  So, if you can imagine 50 cent part dropping a $1.2 million project, and boy, I tell you what, some heads rolled over that one.
[00:40:59]  I bet.
[00:41:00]  Yeah.
[00:41:00]  Well, it certainly is interesting.

=== Pico Fuse Project Failure (05:47) ===

[00:41:02]  Talk to you.
[00:41:03]  Tell us a little bit about your personal story.
[00:41:05]  You've got a website, johnbferguson.com.
[00:41:08]  What's that about?
[00:41:09]  Yeah, that should be going live.
[00:41:11]  I hope here in the next couple of hours, but.
[00:41:15]  You know, I have somewhat of an interesting story.
[00:41:17]  You know, I came from Kansas and I had a lot of.
[00:41:23]  Oh, oh.
[00:41:26]  Sorry, my.
[00:41:28]  Let me get out of here.
[00:41:31]  Uh, so sorry about that.
[00:41:32]  That's all right.
[00:41:33]  So, kind of like Dorothy, you got swept up into the air with the not a tornado, but a drone, right?
[00:41:39]  Yeah.
[00:41:39]  Well, you know, I coming from a small town in Kansas, um, you know, I had lived under a stepfather that was very abusive and actually he tortured me.
[00:41:50]  And, um, and you know, I suffered through many years of that.
[00:41:55]  And, uh, it's interesting, but I have this story about all of this abuse, you know, growing up and, And my father rescuing me, and that had affected me considerably.
[00:42:08]  And still, even still to this day, you suffer those effects, right?
[00:42:14]  So, one of the things that.
[00:42:17]  How old were you when that was happening?
[00:42:19]  Third grade.
[00:42:20]  Third grade when the divorce happened.
[00:42:22]  And in my fourth grade year, I was an angry child because I was retaliating against this divorce, and a kid was picking on me, so I broke his nose.
[00:42:32]  So, they took a box and they put it in the auditorium.
[00:42:36]  And they put the desk in the box.
[00:42:38]  And for the whole entire year, I had to stay at that desk in that box in the auditorium and not, you know, communicate with other people.
[00:42:48]  Then they would funnel all of the children in during the lunch hour next to the box and they would all ridicule me, you know, for they did this for the entire year, uh, because you know, when they were going to have lunch in the auditorium, right?
[00:43:02]  And so I missed out on my fourth grade year and I always was, you know, left behind academically, right?
[00:43:11]  And then You know, coming home, uh, you know, every night to being tortured by my stepfather was, uh, you know, it was a really ungodly, uh, situation for me.
[00:43:23]  And I can't believe I actually survived the whole thing.
[00:43:27]  But, uh, but then, you know, I was always kind of not really taken seriously.
[00:43:35]  And so when, I got into my high school years.
[00:43:38]  I had retaliated and I joined the Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps whipped me into shape and taught me how to set goals.
[00:43:45]  And so I came from this tortured young child who shouldn't have ever survived all the way through high school and into the Marine Corps, and then became a deep sea diver and piloting submersible vehicles.
[00:44:02]  And now I get to meet with presidents, kings, and queens and sovereign councils.
[00:44:09]  You know, I've tried to achieve and I try to do this and be very humble, you know, and not narcissistic because those are big keywords for me.
[00:44:20]  But now I've traveled to 87 countries around the world and I've got to go meet some of the most amazing people in the world.
[00:44:26]  And I've been asked to take my story and get in front of those who may need to hear the story of my survival, but not only my survival, but My abilities to achieve goals and really try to become somebody.
[00:44:46]  And here in the state of Kansas, God willing, I'll probably run for office here.
[00:44:51]  Burundi and South Sudan have asked if I could be an ambassador, the US ambassador to their countries, which certainly is a possibility.
[00:45:02]  But I want to make sure that it's not about me, but it's about the survival and it's about the willingness to really.
[00:45:13]  Focus and try to achieve and try to get out of that nasty situation.
[00:45:18]  So, yeah, that truly is amazing.
[00:45:21]  That story about what happened in the fourth grade is amazing.
[00:45:24]  My wife was an elementary school teacher and they had an open classroom situation so she could hear, couldn't avoid hearing what was going on in the next room.
[00:45:32]  And there was a very abusive teacher in the adjacent room.
[00:45:35]  And there was this little kid who she just picked on him and would make him stand in the trash can, said, You're nothing but a piece of trash.
[00:45:43]  What happened to you is way beyond that.
[00:45:45]  I mean, she saw that and she said, she went to the principal and she said, You got to do something about this.
[00:45:49]  You got to stop her.
[00:45:50]  And he goes, I know she's very abusive, but there's nothing we can do about it.
[00:45:53]  She's got tenure.
[00:45:54]  And so Karen got out of it.
[00:45:57]  What's that?
[00:45:58]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:59]  My stepdad, you know, he would put aluminum foil over the vents in my room, which was the size of a closet.
[00:46:05]  And during the summers, I couldn't get any air.
[00:46:08]  And my sheets were sticking to my back because I'd sweat.
[00:46:12]  And I'd stick my face out through the screen to try to get air.
[00:46:15]  And I'd chew ice all night just to lower my core temperature down.
[00:46:19]  And I, in the same during the winter, but I was always kicked out of the house during the day.
[00:46:27]  So I was never allowed to come back in.
[00:46:29]  They would lock the refrigerator.
[00:46:30]  So, I couldn't get food, you know.
[00:46:33]  I mean, all I was whipped with a graphite fishing rod, and the hook had hooked into my leg and ripped my leg out.
[00:46:41]  And I mean, just all of this just horrible stuff that, uh, um, but I think it made me the person that I am today.

=== Near-Death Survival Stories (02:18) ===

[00:46:50]  And that's not necessarily like a good thing, right?
[00:46:54]  Uh, but, but it's given me the strength with the Marine Corps, it's given me the strength to fight through it and not become a serial killer or.
[00:47:02]  Well, the Marines ought to fund a biopic for you, you know?
[00:47:07]  I don't know.
[00:47:07]  I don't know.
[00:47:08]  But the big thing is that, you know, I never really ever thought that I would stand on a stage and talk to people about my story.
[00:47:14]  But, you know, I've been asked to do that by the Mexicans, you know, come up and talk about what they're fighting down south and the border and, you know, this story.
[00:47:25]  And, you know, I've been in a situation, I was smuggled into China because I was dying.
[00:47:34]  I've flatlined, I've crossed over twice.
[00:47:39]  And so I'm writing this book called Nine Lives and Counting because of all of the different countries I've been to.
[00:47:44]  I've been in situations where I've stood at the edge of death and I've tripped over that line a couple of times.
[00:47:52]  And just recently, I just came back from an African nation trying to help stop some genocide over in an African nation that I won't mention.
[00:48:00]  And I got dysentery and almost didn't make it there either.
[00:48:04]  So this was just a couple of months ago.
[00:48:05]  Wow.
[00:48:06]  It's a hell of a diet program for me, though.
[00:48:08]  I lost 30 pounds.
[00:48:10]  Yeah, I bet that's one way to do it, isn't it?
[00:48:12]  But you said you flatlined a couple of times and crossed over.
[00:48:15]  You have a near death experience.
[00:48:17]  You want to talk about that?
[00:48:18]  Yeah, yeah, a few times.
[00:48:19]  A few times.
[00:48:20]  And that's why the book is called Nine Lives and Counting, because I've been in those situations where I've crossed over into, you know, I've crossed, I've stepped over that line several times.
[00:48:33]  Wow.
[00:48:33]  And, you know, I've left my body.
[00:48:37]  I turned around, I looked, I saw.
[00:48:39]  My body laying there, and I just remember this as crystal clear as if it just happened 15 minutes ago.
[00:48:46]  And, you know, I just said the Lord's Prayer and I just said, Lord, please, not here, not now.
[00:48:53]  And, you know, I have a family.
[00:48:57]  I can't leave.
[00:48:58]  I can't leave.
[00:48:59]  Not here.
[00:49:00]  No, not in China.
[00:49:05]  And I clearly survived.

=== Spiritual Near-Death Experiences (03:06) ===

[00:49:08]  And a lot of people said, Well, did you see the white light?
[00:49:11]  And I said, No, but I smelled a lot of sulfur.
[00:49:16]  That's a joke.
[00:49:17]  That's a joke.
[00:49:18]  Okay.
[00:49:20]  It was a very wonderful feeling to, you know, it's kind of like you had it.
[00:49:24]  It's kind of like you were laying there and somebody was stacking rocks on your chest and you were being crushed.
[00:49:30]  And then all of a sudden, somebody just started lifting those rocks off of you, you know.
[00:49:34]  But I knew that God had, I knew He had other plans for me, you know.
[00:49:41]  So, yeah, there's an interesting book by a pastor in Austin.
[00:49:45]  And he said, he thinks this is something, you know, the medical equipment that we've got now, he said he thinks it is something that is.
[00:49:52]  Really, he sees it as an evangelism opportunity because he said, even though you got a lot of people interpret it differently, he said, if you look at what they're saying, there's some amazing experiences that some people have had, and some people who are different religion, they weren't projecting what they came across.
[00:50:09]  They weren't projecting that from what they expected, for example.
[00:50:13]  And he said, if you look at it, the common experiences that are there, he said, they really line up with the Bible.
[00:50:18]  And so he sees it as an evangelical tool to talk to people.
[00:50:22]  Of course, it's not sufficient, but.
[00:50:26]  It is interesting, and it is something that we're seeing happening more and more, I guess, because of the ability to revive people the medical technology that we've got that we used to not have.
[00:50:37]  Yeah, you know, I never made it to the point where I saw family members or I saw God or I saw Jesus or, you know, anything like that.
[00:50:48]  You know, I, you know, what everything that I experienced was what I felt.
[00:50:54]  And, you know, I felt a huge presence.
[00:51:00]  You know, I knew, and it gives me shivers just talking about it now, but, you know, I know that there's a God, you know, and, uh, I don't have to worry about that.
[00:51:15]  I know what I know.
[00:51:16]  And, you know, people can listen to my story and they can choose to believe me or not.
[00:51:24]  And that's okay because I know in my heart and my mind that there is something so much larger out there and it's peaceful.
[00:51:34]  It's not anything other than just warmth, love, and peace.
[00:51:39]  And that's all I know about it.
[00:51:41]  And I know and I have this feeling.
[00:51:46]  In my mind, that I'm meant to do something here in this life.
[00:51:53]  Maybe I've already done it.
[00:51:54]  Maybe I haven't done it yet.
[00:51:56]  Maybe I'm doing it now.
[00:51:57]  I don't know.
[00:51:59]  But when I ultimately decide to check out, I will know if I've accomplished because I'm sure he'll let me know.
[00:52:08]  I'm sure he'll let me know if I've accomplished the mission.
[00:52:12]  That's right.
[00:52:13]  Well, it certainly is interesting to talk to you.

=== Life Purpose and Honor (02:28) ===

[00:52:15]  And drones are one of those things that are really exploding in terms of their influence on our lives.
[00:52:20]  I hope it's going to be a positive one.
[00:52:22]  Of course, we already have a lot of the things that I find really fascinating.
[00:52:27]  You see a lot of YouTube videos.
[00:52:28]  Of course, people flying over volcanoes or going really fast with the really super fast drones that they can fly through obstacles and stuff like that.
[00:52:37]  So it can make some very interesting video that's there.
[00:52:39]  But it is something that has completely changed the calculus for war and also for terrorism.
[00:52:48]  And it's something we should really pay attention to.
[00:52:50]  Thank you so much for joining us again, John Ferguson.
[00:52:53]  Before we go, Tell us briefly a little bit about the coffee, javajons.net.
[00:52:59]  Or Java.
[00:53:00]  Is it John or John's?
[00:53:01]  I think it's John.
[00:53:02]  It's Java John's with an S.
[00:53:04]  Okay.
[00:53:05]  Yeah.
[00:53:05]  Tell us a little bit about that.
[00:53:06]  Sure.
[00:53:08]  Piloting submersible vehicles, traveling around the world.
[00:53:12]  2002 was a kind of a different time, somewhat different than it is now.
[00:53:20]  But I wanted to just stop traveling as much and get home.
[00:53:24]  So I started a coffee roastery, and my wife and I ran it, and it's still in operation today.
[00:53:30]  So we roast fresh coffee daily.
[00:53:33]  And I actually consider myself one of the first Patriots coffee companies because During the war, my platoon commander had, he was on his sixth tour in Iraq and he had suffered a traumatic brain injury and he started the Wounded Warriors Regiment, not the Wounded Warriors Nonprofit, but the regiment.
[00:53:55]  So he was helping injured men and women come home.
[00:53:59]  So I wanted to do the same.
[00:54:01]  So we decided to build a chopper, a motorcycle called the Chopper of Honor in honor of all of those men and women who have, you know, been injured or killed.
[00:54:12]  In the war, and I would take their story and I would put their picture and their story on the coffee bag, and we would sell those coffee bags, and the proceeds would go to those families.
[00:54:23]  So, and I'll still do that today.
[00:54:26]  But, but yeah, we've been roasting coffee since 2002, and I'm starting to scale the company now, you know, along with Saxon, the drone company.
[00:54:38]  But I think it's important that we just do our part.

=== Manufacturing Job Creation (10:15) ===

[00:54:43]  We try to.
[00:54:44]  Create jobs, growth, and help those that need it.
[00:54:49]  Well, that's a pretty good track record you've got there.
[00:54:52]  You've gone for 24 years, I guess.
[00:54:54]  And so that's pretty good for a business.
[00:54:55]  A lot of businesses don't make it that long.
[00:54:57]  You know, the first five years is really critical.
[00:55:00]  Tell me a little bit about since you got a small business and you're doing coffee and you got to import that, how are the tariffs affecting you?
[00:55:06]  And, you know, and what do you think is, what are you looking for in your business in terms of, you know, we're going to see, I think, transportation costs explode here in the next few months?
[00:55:16]  Oh, Yeah.
[00:55:17]  What are you thinking about as a small businessman when you look at all this economic chaos that's being unleashed on the world right now?
[00:55:24]  Oh, my gosh.
[00:55:25]  You know, I'm an optimistic individual, but I'm only optimistic until it affects my checkbook.
[00:55:31]  But, you know, coffee prices have gone up, you know, considerably.
[00:55:37]  Where I'm being affected more is we were manufacturing our drones in Poland, but then we've.
[00:55:47]  We've, uh, we fell out of love with those folks because they were selling our aircraft behind our backs and, you know, they were, they were doing us pretty dirty.
[00:55:56]  So we, and then of course, when President Trump got back in office, and of course, we are really undergoing the Made in America initiative, we decided it was just a good time for us to repatriate our manufacturing back here to the United States.
[00:56:10]  And that's what we're absolutely doing right now.
[00:56:13]  So, um, everything's just gone up.
[00:56:16]  The transportation prices are just un.
[00:56:21]  You know, this the fuel price and everything.
[00:56:24]  And what about being able to get components?
[00:56:27]  You know, and it turns even things like aluminum that's being affected by what's happening in the Gulf right now.
[00:56:34]  Are you having any shortages yet?
[00:56:36]  Everything.
[00:56:37]  Well, you know, again, it's the tariffs are a huge issue.
[00:56:42]  But right now, you know, we're getting requests for drones, for very inexpensive drones.
[00:56:48]  We're not getting a request for like two or three or five or 10.
[00:56:51]  We're getting requests for, 1400, 5000, 7000, 10,000 drones at a whack.
[00:56:58]  What are people doing with that many drones?
[00:57:01]  Well, they're sending them to the battlefield or they're going to.
[00:57:04]  So it's the government that's doing that, right?
[00:57:06]  Yeah.
[00:57:06]  Yeah.
[00:57:07]  Or interceptor type drones so that they can intercept drone on drone, which is literally what I was saying at the beginning of our interview here.
[00:57:16]  But the problem is that we have this thing, it's NDA compliant.
[00:57:23]  They have to be made in America.
[00:57:25]  And that's okay.
[00:57:26]  That's wonderful.
[00:57:28]  But it's more expensive.
[00:57:30]  The problem is that all of the lithium batteries that we use.
[00:57:34]  All of the lithium cells are manufactured in China, right?
[00:57:39]  All of the motors, the copper, the windings, the magnets, those are all manufactured in China.
[00:57:44]  So we're really being stifled by not only the disruption in the relationship between China and the United States right now, but also all these conflicts that are happening around the world.
[00:58:03]  There's this massive influx of requirements for drones and these.
[00:58:08]  Manufacturing companies that are manufacturing these components, they can't keep up.
[00:58:16]  So it's a great industry to be in because you're busy, but it's not great when you can't fulfill the requirements that you have here in the United States, right?
[00:58:30]  That's right.
[00:58:31]  So it doesn't do any good to get an order for 5,000 drones and get them delivered in a month or two or three or six when you can't get them.
[00:58:39]  It doesn't do any good to have domestic drones if you don't have any source of domestic batteries to run them with.
[00:58:46]  That was my whole issue with the tariff stuff.
[00:58:48]  It's like, okay, well, your goal is this, but you don't even have a way to get there.
[00:58:52]  You're just going to slam the door shut on what's coming in right now without having prepared to make sure that you've got the raw materials, to make sure that you've got the components that are not manufactured here.
[00:59:04]  I mean, you can't do it all at once.
[00:59:07]  I've said so many times we need to send a copy of Leonard Reed's iPencil to the White House.
[00:59:14]  Well, you know, the Chinese, they subsidize their drone technology.
[00:59:18]  I mean, they've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of really smart engineers just sitting around thinking up.
[00:59:26]  You know, cool stuff to do.
[00:59:28]  Right.
[00:59:29]  And that's why they're leading in the drone industry on the commercial side, not so much the military side, the commercial side.
[00:59:36]  And, you know, with all of the tariff stuff that Trump's doing and all of the investment that he's bringing back into the country and all of the Doge stuff, and there's all this money that's supposed to be coming into the United States.
[00:59:49]  You know, why don't we just shave off two or three billion of that and invest that into our drone manufacturing facilities that are manufacturing American made drones?
[00:59:59]  Here in America, you're creating jobs.
[01:00:02]  You're creating growth.
[01:00:04]  You're creating sustainability.
[01:00:06]  You're making people happy and you have, you would be building one of the most, uh, incredible defensive, defensive, uh, uh, technologies in the United States.
[01:00:19]  So why don't we do that?
[01:00:21]  I mean, that's what I would do, but I'm, I'm not in the White House.
[01:00:25]  Well, I'm not in the White House either.
[01:00:27]  My approach would be just to get the government off of our back.
[01:00:29]  And I think that we kind of figured out ourselves.
[01:00:32]  That seemed to always be the advantage that Americans had over planned economies where.
[01:00:37]  The government's going to decide because usually what happens with the government, we see it with our own, is a malinvestment.
[01:00:42]  I mean, you can see malinvestment with China in terms of the housing market and the real estate market that they did there.
[01:00:48]  But so, yeah, my instinct is always go back to the free market.
[01:00:53]  How about if we get freer rather than more subsidized?
[01:00:56]  That's kind of my bias as I look at it.
[01:00:59]  Sure, as well.
[01:01:00]  Yeah.
[01:01:01]  I'm sorry.
[01:01:03]  Again, I have been working in these Central African nations for many, many, many years.
[01:01:08]  You know, I got sick and tired of.
[01:01:11]  Dealing with United States bureaucracy, right?
[01:01:16]  When the drone stuff came out, the FAA had a very challenging job, and that's how to integrate these into our airspace.
[01:01:24]  And I knew that the FAA was going to have to stifle drone growth in America, right?
[01:01:29]  So I went overseas, and we have this thing called BV Loss, Beyond Visual Line of Sight.
[01:01:34]  And everybody was like, oh my gosh, I want to do BV Loss.
[01:01:37]  You know, well, I've been doing it for years overseas because I wasn't going to be stifled by the FAA, right?
[01:01:43]  And again, nothing bad about the FAA.
[01:01:46]  They have to do it right, or they're going to cause loss of life.
[01:01:51]  So, here in the United States, I go and work in these Central African nations to try to build relationships between these African nations and the United States and us, because I don't want to rely specifically on our economy.
[01:02:06]  I want to merge two economies so we can all grow together.
[01:02:10]  And, like, we get African water machines that make water out of humidity.
[01:02:16]  So, there's African villages out there that have never had a clean glass of drinking water their entire lives.
[01:02:23]  So, we bring these water machines over there and they get to have a clean glass of water, something that we take advantage of here in America, right?
[01:02:33]  Yeah.
[01:02:34]  So, I try to think outside the box and not just specifically in our own economy.
[01:02:40]  I like to create multiple mini economies and that way everyone gets to benefit.
[01:02:46]  And I think this was missing with this Fortress America approach that is there.
[01:02:50]  You know, we, We just can't understand how, when we interconnect with things and we have free trade and we have freedom to do things, what a powerful thing that is.
[01:03:01]  But if you're going to shut it down and if you're going to get territorial and tribal about things and you're going to regulate everything, you're going to regulate it to death.
[01:03:09]  And that's what I'm afraid we're seeing right now.
[01:03:11]  But we're way over time.
[01:03:13]  So I'm going to need to cut this off.
[01:03:16]  But it's been really fascinating talking to you, John Ferguson.
[01:03:20]  And again, the websites are he's got javajons.net.
[01:03:24]  Saxonsunmanned.com, where you can see the kinds of drones that they manufacture there.
[01:03:29]  And if you want to hear his life story, he's working on johnbferguson.com.
[01:03:35]  I'll be checking that out.
[01:03:36]  Thank you so much, John.
[01:03:37]  It was fascinating talking to you.
[01:03:38]  It's been wonderful.
[01:03:39]  Thank you.
[01:03:39]  Likewise.
[01:03:40]  Thank you.
[01:03:40]  Bye bye.
[01:03:52]  Common man.
[01:03:55]  They created common core to dumb down our children.
[01:03:58]  They created common past to track and control us.
[01:04:01]  Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing.
[01:04:06]  And the communist future.
[01:04:09]  They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary.
[01:04:14]  But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God.
[01:04:21]  That is what we have in common.
[01:04:22]  That is what they want to take away.
[01:04:25]  Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation.
[01:04:30]  They desire to know everything about us while they hide everything from us.
[01:04:36]  It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide.
[01:04:41]  Please share the information and links you'll find at thedavidknightshow.com.
[01:04:45]  Thank you for listening.
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