All Episodes
Previous Next
May 2, 2025 - Epoch Times
09:22
Medal of Honor Recipient Says Drones Have Completely Changed the Landscape of War
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Listen, I believe that if we spend a little bit more time willing to actually have our conversation with people who defer in ideas from us, that we will go a lot further than we possibly could ever imagine in terms of bridging that gap.
I ask questions to my family and my friends.
I didn't live in the 60s and 70s.
I've watched a lot of reports.
I've seen movies.
You read books.
You learn about it in history.
And it sounds like those days were pretty tough, too.
We had a very unpopular war.
We had a hippie movement.
We had a lot of racism in this country.
We had an impeachment in a president.
We had the Cold War.
We had a lot of issues.
A lot of changes in our society were technologically growing.
I wonder, and I asked these questions, I said, did you guys think it was the end of the world that moment?
The way we think about it today?
So I look at those moments, and I look at the concept of this nation.
And one of the beauties to me is the idea of freedom of speech.
Because freedom of speech doesn't mean that we're all going to have great conversations with each other and listen to each other.
Freedom of speech means that we're going to very much disagree, And at times it's going to be very notorious, nefarious as well.
And that's going to create this concept or this idea, specifically to our enemies, that we don't like each other very much.
That we are a country that is on the brink of civil war.
No!
We are a country that is utilizing our God-given rights and our constitutional rights.
To disagree.
Sometimes we take it too far.
We are taking it too far right now.
100%.
But to me, that's human nature.
It's a cycle.
I hope that we find a way over the next couple years to say, okay, this is a little bit too much.
I really want to better understand why you're thinking that way.
And maybe we find a little bit of common ground.
Will it happen?
I don't know.
I'm not Nostradamus.
I don't have a crystal ball.
But I do know one thing.
As someone else decide to mingle in and really take a shot at us, you will do the job for us.
You will bridge that gap rather quickly.
And I hope that doesn't happen that way.
I hope that we're able to do it internally.
But it does create a little bit of worry for me because...
I don't want another war.
I don't want my son to have to make a decision when he's 18, 19, 20 years old.
Well, my country's at war.
It's in my turn to put the uniform on like Dad did.
Like Grandpa did.
Like my uncles did around the world.
I don't want that.
I want him to think about how do I become...
How do I go to Mars?
I hope I actually don't go to Mars because he'll be gone for a long time and I'll be scared.
I have to go too.
But I want him to think about how do I become a doctor?
How do I do whatever he wants to do?
Instead of going to war.
And I hope that by the time he's 20 years old, you know, and I really hope we fix this a lot sooner, that he lives in a nation where people start to listen to each other a little bit more.
And so there's a lot of responsibility to go around.
Right here on the hill, that's a big responsibility.
But it comes down to our communities.
It comes down to people just like you and I. We have a responsibility to do our part.
Why should I expect anyone else above me to do the job for me if I'm not willing to do it myself?
And so I challenge myself, my friends, and my community around me to be a little bit more open-minded, to potentially grasp the concept that, hey, I might not be right.
Or if this person is thinking complete opposite of me, why?
What am I missing?
Curiosity, a little bit.
And then have conversations.
No, it doesn't mean that you're going to agree with them.
It doesn't mean you're going to solve all the world's problems.
I'm not saying it will happen overnight, but I do believe that...
We have the opportunity here to be just a little bit more mindful that if we're willing to have a conversation and not be judgmental from the onset, that potentially we have an opportunity to heal a little bit faster.
But I'm an optimist at trade.
I can get that.
People who are listening to this, some people are going to dismiss me, probably call me an idiot.
We've been thinking that way.
What country do you live in?
You're not reading the sea leaves, whatever.
That's fine.
I'm the dude.
That sat there at the bottom of a draw with three enemy firing positions on top of me, and everybody else probably thinking, we're dead, and my mindset is, if I take this one out, then I'll be able to take these two out.
And so I'm an optimist by trade, and I'd rather be an optimist than a pessimist, personally.
What is that line?
Is it how you eat an elephant?
It's one bite at a time.
One bite at a time.
Right.
I mean, the message I hear you telling me is that...
At the grassroots level, at the person-to-person level, we absolutely have to talk to each other, or try, or do our best trying, or maybe die trying.
I hope not.
Maybe that's what you're saying, right?
You mentioned, of course, that you're an immigrant, like me.
How was that, growing up as an immigrant in America?
It was awesome.
I don't come from anything.
You know, I was lucky enough to have parents that loved me and cared about me, so that's a huge benefit for whether you're an immigrant or not.
When I came to this country, I didn't speak English, and I learned it really rather quickly, and I had friends from the moment I got here.
I was never judged, you know, for who I was and who I wasn't.
I was embraced by the community, and it helped me.
Made my life decision of joining the military really, really easy because I felt American.
And that, to me, is why I'm an immigrant that loves this country more than anything else in the world.
Because I understand what this country gave me and the opportunity to become one of its own, to become one of its sons, one of its citizens.
And I'm blessed.
And I will never take that for granted.
And that's why I'm always committed to serving our nation.
No matter who's in power, you know, that's my commitment.
I think seeing some friends die, too, serving this nation, children changing your mindset a little bit, it definitely can make you more or less patriotic, however you deal with it.
It 100% made me more patriotic in a sense that I want to make sure that I continue being a positive influence in my community, for my country, and for the people around me.
And that's why I think I'm more open-minded.
That's why I'm willing to have those conversations with, you know, everybody and learn more.
You've been writing quite a bit on a number of issues.
You know, of course, DeepSeek, that's where I noticed you.
Also about unmanned aerial.
Drones.
And this is a technology which has been rapidly, rapidly growing, especially in the Russia-Ukraine war.
I've been learning about how, you know, even over the course of two years, the entire systems is this kind of, you know, evolution of systems as they're fighting each other.
What is the situation right now?
And what is specifically the China threat here?
First of all, the situation is that the concept of warfare has changed.
We have probably one of the most fascinating battlegrounds that you could have ever imagined in this day and age happening in Ukraine, which is a World War I-style trench warfighting with a utilization of technology, specifically drones.
So Group 1, small, and Group 2, sort of mid-range.
And the devastation of these capabilities.
Just the concept of...
Terrorizing your enemy is what I see from these small drones.
That you're in a trench or you're hiding in your bunker or whatever it is, and you hear that zzzz sound coming up, and you don't know if it's coming right for you, if it's watching you, it's been watching you, attracting you.
And then you see it, and if it's on you, you try to run away, try to shoot at it, whatever it is, and next thing you know, you have a small type of explosive just detonated on you.
And the sheer chaos and fear it creates is going to be terrifying.
I didn't have that issue when I was fighting the war.
It would have been a pretty significant change in our battle concepts and our tactical concepts to fight this type of warfare.
So it is absolutely imperative for our military, and we are doing that as a nation, and I'm sure others are doing that as well, to identify ways to...
One, employ these types of technologies to protect our troops, but more importantly also on the counter-UAS side.
How do we stop these swarm of drones?
How do we stop these one-off drones?
▲
Export Selection