March 16, 2026 - The Lindell Report - Mike Lindell
59:16
The SAVE AMERICA Act, Dangers of AI, and global impacts of the Iranian conflict: The Mike Lindell Show
Heather Mullins and Allison Steinberg dissect the SAVE AMERICA Act's contentious additions to voter ID, including bans on transgender surgeries, while analyzing General Kane's kinetic strikes against Iranian mine-laying ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The discussion pivots to AI tensions, detailing how Anthropic faced supply chain risks after refusing Pentagon demands for uncensored kill drones, contrasting this with OpenAI's secret compliance amidst China's $174 billion AI dominance. Ultimately, the episode highlights the precarious balance between regulating autonomous warfare and maintaining national security parity against global adversaries. [Automatically generated summary]
We have another full week of news here on the Mike Lindell show.
I'm Heather Mullins, guest hosting for Mike today.
We're going to jump right in and talk about something we've been talking about for a while with our very own Allison Steinberg over there on the Hill, but she's working from home today.
But we're going to unpack the Save Act and what is the latest on getting that passed.
Allison, thanks for joining us.
Hey, Heather, good to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Yes, it's a busy day today, this Monday, as we finally head into the very long-awaited week.
The week the Save America Act is going to be brought to the floor.
Now, I have some major updates on how this is all going to take place.
There's been a lot of debate over whether this is just going to be brought to the floor for a vote, whether or not Jon Thune is going to do the right thing and implement the talking filibuster, do away with the zombie filibuster that has been enacted for so long, ultimately as a result of laziness, I think, in the Senate.
So obviously there's a mounting pressure to get this legislation passed.
As we know, the president said he will not sign any new bills until we get this done.
So hopefully we can get it done this week.
There's been a lot of conversations happening between various senators on the Hill as to what the strategy is going to be to ensure this gets done.
We'll get more into that in just a minute.
But first, I want to play this quick clip of President Trump once again, really putting the pressure on Thune, calling on him to be a true leader.
Let's take a listen to that clip for President Trump.
You want to pass the Save America Act.
He says there aren't the votes to do it right now.
What's your response?
Well, he's got to be a leader.
You know, if he's a leader, he's got to get him.
It's the most popular bill I've ever seen put before Congress.
And it's voter ID and it's voter.
You have to be able to be a citizen to vote.
You've got to equal citizenship.
And we're also adding in no men playing in women's sports, no transgender mutilization of our children, and no mail-in ballots, fake mail-in ballots.
We have none of that except in the case of the military etc.
It is the Save America Act.
It's the most popular bill I think I've ever put before.
So again, hopefully Thune is listening and he does the right thing.
Pressure, again, just mounting for him to get this passed once and for all.
But we have also seen many calls on social media to start looking at alternatives after this is all said and done.
You know, if Thune isn't able to get the job done, then perhaps we look at replacing him as majority leader in the Senate, because ultimately, you know, if he's not getting the job done, then why is he leader?
Ultimately, it seems to me like he's doing more to hold things up and stall things.
He's had SAVE Act sitting on his desk for years at this point.
If you look back to the original SAVE Act that was brought forward by the House, it's been passed twice and now a third time rebranded as the Save America Act.
So this is critical that he gets it done.
If not, I do think we need to start having a serious conversation about potentially replacing him, though it would take over 20 senators to rally behind this idea, which I don't know if we have the support in the Senate to do that.
I don't even know if I could count five decent non-rhino senators on one single hand, let alone get to 26, which is what would be required to actually replace Thune.
So we'll see what happens.
We'll take it one day at a time.
I do want to talk some more about how we're actually going to get this accomplished.
Like I said, there's some updates and some revised ideas moving forward as to how they are going to finally bring this through the finish line once and for all.
Senator Mike Lee, who's been pivotal in pushing the standing filibuster or the talking filibuster, is now saying that they're going into this with sort of a hybrid approach that they're not going to enact the traditional filibuster the way it was intended, but they have sort of a new way that they want to implement forcing people to talk on the floor.
Let's take a listen to this clip from Senator Mikely.
Okay, important update on the Save America Act and the effort to get it passed.
Look, I am guardedly optimistic.
We've turned kind of a corner.
Over the last few days, there's been some uncertainty about exactly what procedure we will be and will not be using.
In the end, we've been working closely with Leader Thune and his staff, and they've been great to work with.
What we're coming up with is something that I think is best described as a hybrid version of the talking filibuster.
But look, let's not get mired down in nomenclature.
What matters far more than what we call it is what we do with it.
We're going to bring it to the floor.
We're going to debate it for an extended period of time before filing cloture.
And in my view, at least, I don't want to speak for anyone else.
This bill needs to remain on the Senate floor before we file cloture on the bill for as long as it takes to get it done.
Now, the fact that Leader Thune and his office have been willing to work with us on this and they appear open to a variation of that is a good thing.
So let's keep up the momentum.
Let's encourage them to continue to do this.
Let's put the bill on the floor.
Let's make those who want to filibuster speak and keep it on there as long as possible.
Thanks so much.
So typically, you know, with a standing or talking filibuster, the opposition party has to go on record and try to drag out all the reasons why they don't want this legislation to pass for as long as possible.
And then that's when you would ultimately hold the vote after that.
But now it's sounding like with this hybrid filibuster, it's sort of a new process that maybe hasn't really been done before.
Ultimately, it's a scheduled multi-day floor process intended to force a formal debate and votes despite the lacking of 60 votes for closure, which we know obviously you got to have 60 votes for the bill to pass.
Instead of relying on continuous floor speeches to physically block action, the majority is using the Senate's scheduling and procedural calendar to bring the bill up and require roll call votes that highlight who supports and blocks it.
The way I'm thinking this is all going to go down is that Republicans, as opposed to Democrats, the opposition party and all of this, are gearing up to take the floor, open up that debate, give all the reasons why they think that it should be passed as opposed to Democrats going on the floor talking about why it shouldn't be.
So from what I'm hearing, it's sounding like it's going to be a long multi-day process, hours of conversation and reasons why this should go on.
And then ultimately, the end goal is getting nine Democrat senators to come around to vote with Republicans on this measure.
So who knows?
Maybe there's nine sensible Democrats or moderate Democrats that will do the right thing.
I know Senator John Fetterman has kind of been on the cusp.
Maybe he's one that we could see come around.
We also have some independents that typically vote with Democrats, but when it comes to these really common sense issues, sometimes they go over to the Republican side.
So it'll certainly be interesting to see what comes of this hybrid filibuster that we're now hearing about.
Yeah.
Well, so if like if the SAVE Act in particular gets passed, will that be implemented by the time it actually like is like implemented before the midterms?
Because I feel like once it gets passed, I'm assuming you're going to have the, you know, dogs for the left like Mark Elias heading to the courtroom challenging these at the state level or something like that.
So it's just sort of like one step in the right direction, even if we get it passed.
What is the likelihood then though that it's actually in force and rolled out by midterms?
Well, that is the question of the century, Heather.
And that is exactly why I've been trying to highlight the importance of this issue for the last several months because time truly is of the essence here.
And just like you outlined there, I do expect this to get held up in the courts.
I'm sure the opposition party will do everything imaginable to try to stop this from being implemented.
And since midterms are just around the corner, we don't really have a whole lot of time to waste.
Ultimately, then I think it comes down to the states having to do the right thing.
We know there are several states that do, you know, already require these measures, simple measures like proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote.
But then there's also the radical blue states that don't.
So, you know, I don't know, Heather.
I think I wouldn't hold my breath.
I wouldn't hold my breath that this is actually going to be implemented around the nation as it should be.
I would foresee every possible obstacle happening, probably happening.
But hopefully, you know, the point is if we can get this at least signed into law sooner rather than later, at least we get the ball rolling and at least we start the process that could end up becoming very lengthy.
So I don't know.
We'll see.
Another thing that I wanted to highlight too, Heather, is the fact that the Save America Act was, I mean, it's sort of getting convoluted here.
And this may be detrimental to the overall goal of getting this passed because what the Save America Act primarily focuses on is proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote in elections.
Two very simple measures that should really just, you know, be common sense.
But now we've been hearing from President Trump about all these other things that he wants added to it, which aren't actually in the bill as it stands now.
We keep hearing from President Trump about mail-in ballots, no men and women's sports, no child mutilation surgeries, which obviously more common sense measures.
I totally agree with those and I think they're critical and should be prioritized.
But I'm also kind of concerned that perhaps adding these measures to the Save America Act might muddy the waters and convolute the overall goal of securing elections.
This should be a number one priority, really.
It's such a critical issue.
And like you mentioned, we're just ahead of the midterms here.
So I think that potentially adding these additional measures could sort of not perhaps work out so well for us.
And let's take a quick listen to this clip from Caroline Lovett who talks about these Revised version of the Save Act.
Take a listen.
You give us an update on the Save America Act.
It seems like the majority leader, Senator John Thune, is going to bring it up for a vote.
This has to be a red line in the sand for the GLP, right?
That's what we're hearing, and it's what we're hoping.
The president has made it very clear he wants that bill on his desk here at the White House as soon as possible.
It is five of the most common sense proposals that any party has ever put forward, and the American people overwhelmingly support this bill.
Voter ID, proof of citizenship to vote, no mail-in ballots, which we know create tremendous amount of fraud in our electoral system, cannot transgender mutilate our young children.
We need a ban on those procedures in surgeries.
And then, of course, no men in women's sports.
That's what the president is asking for.
It's the Save America Act.
It's a great piece of legislation.
I look forward to seeing how Democrats can possibly oppose these overwhelmingly popular and positive policies for our country and for the American people.
I think it's an 80-20 issue.
Everyone, the majority of people want you to have to have an ID in order to vote.
90-10 in some 90-10.
I don't disagree with you.
So, again, those additional add-ons there are not in the legislation as it stands now.
Again, that's no transgenderism for kids, no men in women's sports, and no mail-in ballots.
Besides, you know, certain circumstances, if you can't make it physically to vote, then you have to provide a copy of your ID with your mail-in ballot, which I think is important.
Again, all these things are important, but maybe we just focus on getting the Save America Act passed as is and don't give Democrats any further reasons to vote against this, right?
We want to get as many of them on our side on this issue as we can to try to get this passed.
So, I don't know.
It could backfire or it could, you know, steal the deal.
It'll be interesting to see what happens on that front, Heather.
Yeah, didn't President Trump, like right in the beginning of his term, though, sign something about the men in the women's sports already?
And then he was ended up going to court with some of these governors because they weren't listening to it.
Like, I just feel like we like that.
I thought that was already kind of taken care of and being fought at the court level.
That's a really good point.
And I thought the same.
I know for a fact he signed some executive orders pertaining to getting rid of men in women's sports.
But then, again, remember, that's just an executive order.
As soon as he's out of office, then that could be immediately erased.
So, perhaps this is his effort to codify that into law so that it is the law of the land and cannot be undone moving forward under a new president.
While I do like that tactic and I think it is important, I think, again, we need to just like keep it as a single or a double issue bill.
We always end up convoluting all of these bills with so many other issues and so many other projects.
We need to just keep it, you know, simple and focus on the importance of getting our elections secured through citizenship and photo ID and even the mail-in ballots.
I do like that addition.
I think it's critical.
There is also the MEGA Act that I wanted to point out, which has been introduced by Congressman Brian Style.
It is like the supreme election security bill.
It encompasses all of this and more.
It really does address the mail-in ballots.
It addresses getting rid of the corrupt and crooked machines that we know Mike Lindell has been so vocal about.
It requires hand-counted ballots, single-day voting, all the stuff.
So, I think what we need to do is focus on getting Save America Act passed, probably keep it short and concise, and then we can go on to really look at and dig into the MEGA Act and then work on getting that passed because I think that is crucial as well.
So, we will see what happens.
I did also want to point out that the House is really standing firm on this House.
Election Integrity Backing00:04:29
Republicans are also trying to put the pressure on the Senate to get this done this week because they're now saying that if the Senate tries to send them any more legislation, they will not even begin to pass anything, anything the Senate sends the House is going to be dead on arrival.
We can pull up that post from Annapolina Luna, who said this week the Senate will learn all their bills will die in the House until they can get election integrity passed.
We will kill every single one of their bills for as long as it takes.
So that's great news.
I'm also hearing that about 50 House Republicans are on board with this.
So I think that has a really strong backing and should send a very strong message to the Senate that if they want to try to, you know, play any funny business, then it's not going to go over well with the House, who is very serious about getting this done.
Like I said, they've tried to do this.
This is their third attempt now to get this passed.
So hopefully the Senate does the right thing this time.
And if not, they should definitely heed Anna Paulina Luna's warnings because now she's calling for primary challenges against any rhino senator who blocks the Save America Act.
She's urging a convention of states to bypass the corrupt DC Uniparty.
Obviously, we know these rhinos are everything that's wrong in the Senate.
Everything good, everything that's good in Congress just unfortunately goes to die as soon as it hits the Senate.
They are responsible for so much of this corruption, so much of the inaction that we see time and time again.
Americans are growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that the MAGA agenda is being stalled and is not being codified into law.
And I think we have to point the finger primarily at the rhinos.
Yes, the Democrats are often to blame in many of these circumstances, but it's more frustrating when someone who has an R next to their name is solely responsible for not getting these actions passed and for often voting with Democrats more than they do Republicans.
So yeah, it's time to really look at who these rhinos are and start to primary them so we can have some real lasting change in the Senate and actually get the MAGA agenda codified into law once and for all.
Well, what's interesting though is it's actually with the election integrity, a lot of Democrats actually support it too.
So it's just really one of those things where, and this is something I stressed for so long back when I was, you know, my investigative journalism primarily focused on the elections, was that like I can remember in DeKalb County, Georgia, there was a Democrat commissioner that ran for office, right?
And her and her husband go in to vote for her, right, on election day.
And the official results for her Democrat primary showed that nobody voted for her in her precinct.
And she's like, well, I know I voted for myself and I'm hopeful my husband voted for me.
But what ended up happening is they found during the recount that the machines put the wrong two people in first and second place.
And so they had to completely like redo those results.
And that was a Democrat.
And so, you know, when it comes to the election integrity issues, it really isn't a right versus left thing because, one, whether it's, you know, incompetence or full-on corruption, when there's issues with our election, nobody's vote really counts, Democrat or Republican, right?
Like it's either the result of organized crime and corruption, or it's the result of incompetence and processes that don't work.
And so we should all sort of have this, you know, mutual agreement that we want free and fair elections and may the most popular candidate win.
It's just sort of something that was fundamental to Americans of both parties for so long.
And now we have a media that has really tried to make it a right versus left issue, but it's just not the case when you talk to the grassroots, whether you're Democrat or Republican.
So hopefully we get it passed because that's just what Americans want.
Yes, it really is.
I mean, as you heard in that clip with Caroline Lovett, it's an 80-20 issue, oftentimes a 90-10 issue.
So yes, this is an issue that is near and dear to virtually all Americans' hearts.
We would love to see it get passed.
Don't think it should be controversial.
I don't think it should be complicated, which is why this has garnered so much attention and why I continue to harp on about it.
Not because I want to, or it's, you know, my favorite thing to talk about, it's because it's common sense and simply holding it up or not getting it passed is a betrayal to the American people who all deserve free and fair election.
So let's get it done.
Let's secure our elections and let's stop having to worry about fraud because we know that as long as there is a machine or a computer involved, there will be fraud.
Simple Healthcare Solutions00:03:38
So that is the next step.
We have to tackle the machines next, as you rightfully pointed out there, Heather.
And hopefully, this will be the last we have to talk about it for a while.
Hopefully, the Senate gets this done this week.
So we'll see.
Amen.
Amen.
Well, we look forward to having you back on and giving us the latest.
Thank you so much, Allison.
Thank you, Heather.
And don't go anywhere.
We got a lot more coming up.
We're going to take a quick break.
And when we come back, we're going to go into some AI and tech stuff that's been going on.
Companies like Anthropic went to war against the Pentagon.
What's really going on with that story?
We're going to break it all down for you when we come back.
We'll be right back.
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Underwater Mine Clearing00:14:48
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And welcome back, everybody.
We're going to change things up here with the lineup of the show.
We're actually going to go to another guest.
But before I do that, I want to play a quick soundbite from the Pentagon briefing I was at this past Friday and General Kane really giving an update of what's going on over there in Iran.
Take a listen to it.
As the Secretary said, today will be our heaviest day of kinetic fires across the operating area.
CENTCOM continues to attack ballistic missile and drone capabilities so that they are no longer a threat to U.S. forces, our bases, or our partners.
They're continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation.
And this means going after Iran's mine laying capability and destroying their ability to attack commercial vessels.
And we're targeting their defense industrial base so they cannot rebuild the capabilities that can harm America's interests or our partners in the future.
As Admiral Cooper said in his update on Wednesday, Iranian combat power continues to decline as a result of the continued strikes, as the Secretary talked about.
We've attacked over 6,000 targets and our strike packages continue to launch every hour and we've maintained an unprecedented number of sorties up over ahead of Iran.
CENTCOM is now persistently over the enemy and a result we've seen a reduction in missile and one-way attack fires as the secretary said.
In less than two weeks, we've rendered the Iranian Navy combat ineffective and continue to attack naval vessels, including all of their Soleimani-class warships, which were armed with anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft weapons.
We've made progress, but Iran still has the capability to harm friendly forces and commercial shipping.
And our work on this effort continues.
But I want to make something clear.
The only thing preventing commercial traffic can flow through the straits right now, which there is some through the straits, is Iran.
They are the belligerents here holding the straits closed, although there is some traffic moving through there.
We've made it a priority to target Iran's mine-laying enterprise, their mine layers, the naval bases and depots, in addition to the missiles that could influence the straits.
And CENTCOM continues to attack those efforts.
And we continue to make progress on the industrial base to include factories, weapons, and warehouses that are stored in.
And we will continue to do so in the coming days, especially today.
So that was the update there from General Kane and joining me now to unpack that and so much more.
My first time having him on the show, he's former Lieutenant Commander Tom Sawyer.
Thank you for joining us.
Hi there.
It's just, you know, it's Tom Sauer.
It's okay.
No, no worries.
Yeah, so this is my first time sort of, you know, meeting and interviewing you.
And you came highly recommended from John Conrad, my fellow Pentagon Press Corps member there, who's very knowledgeable in the shipping world.
So it's, how do you say it again, Tom?
Sour sour.
Yeah, like sauerkraut.
Yeah.
Or like sick sour, right?
Yeah, like sig sour.
Exactly right.
Yeah, there we go.
I'm familiar with that up here in New Hampshire.
We got their factory right around the corner.
But thank you for joining us.
So you, you are, I guess, in the United States Navy, you were over there, like in the Strait of Hormuz, which is sort of the subject of the controversy right now.
What, to your knowledge, you've got your finger on the pulse.
What actually is taking place there right now?
Because there's been some mixed information coming out all over the place.
Sure.
Yeah.
And thanks for having me on, Heather.
Appreciate it.
Just for a little bit of background, I was a Navy.
I'm a Naval Academy graduate.
I spent a lot of time on both surface ships in the Persian Gulf and also later as what's called an EOD officer, which is explosive ordnance disposal.
We are the bomb squad for the Navy.
And additionally, in part of that, it includes underwater explosive ordnance, right?
So we are the ones who clear mines, right, as EOD divers who, you know, in a situation like this are the ones who clear the Strait of Hormuz.
And, you know, I absolutely love that community.
We do a ton of other stuff more than just clearing mines, but that's one of our core missions.
I also did a great deal of special operations work.
My last deployment was with an Army Special Forces unit based in the Pacific, but I spent a lot of time in the Gulf.
I have transited the Strait of Hormuz dozens of times, maybe.
I can't really remember how many times, but a lot.
And I've also worked a lot in the Persian Gulf, up north, particularly when I was the executive officer of a coastal patrol craft.
What we were, it's kind of like a little mini gun, it's like a little gunboat with about 120 feet long, 26 guys.
And we were defending the Iraqi oil terminals.
This is back during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
We were defending the two main oil terminals, which kind of a similar situation to what Iran has over at Karg Island.
They had two offshore oil terminals, the Iraqis did, two offshore oil terminals that were only like half a mile, about a mile or so from Iranian territorial waters.
So spent a lot of time there.
So to give you the background, you might have been seeing on the news on a lot of the corporate press that is outside of the mainstream media, fake news, a lot of that, have been stating that the Trump administration and the Pentagon under Secretary Heggs' leadership, like had not considered or had not planned for the possibility that the Iranians would attempt to mine or to otherwise close this strait.
That is the most charitable response I can say to that was that they are stupid and don't know what they're talking about.
But honestly, I'd say it's more likely just being deceptive and they're lying that for some reason they didn't know that.
And here's why is there two task units, well, one task force and another task group, which is slightly smaller, that are dedicated completely.
They're permanently stationed in the Middle East.
And for example, one of them, which is called, we call it CTF 52, Commander Task Force 52, which is the Mine Countermeasures Task Force.
That is the unit that controls all of the minesweepers, all the EOD diving, all the mine sweeping helicopters.
We actually use helicopters sometimes to sweep mines and to hunt for mines.
Now, you might have also seen the news that our four of our minesweepers were recently decommissioned and came home.
That's true.
But the thing is, we've replaced that with other technology.
But just get back to the main point, though, is, for example, my little brother, who is currently serving as a Navy EOD officer, just a few years ago, was the operations officer for Task Force 52.
So, I mean, like, and like, this was his entire mission.
Like that's why he was there and why his boss with the Commodore, my old boss was there, why all the people he worked with and all the EOD assets were there were strictly to be prepared to clear the Strait of Hormuz.
So I wanted one thing I really wanted to just like absolutely put to bed.
Now, currently now we have other technology and other assets that are there such as UUVs, which are unmanned underwater vehicles that are in, they're stationed out there that are out there.
And they're able to basically autonomously or search for underwater mines.
And to like give your audience, so I don't know if I have the time, but can I try to give your audience a little bit of a primer on mine warfare, just so you kind of know?
So basically what I'm going to tell you, you're going to know more about mine warfare than like 99% of people out there, right?
All right.
So one of them is that, yeah, so since 1945, since the end of World War II, the United States Navy ships have been either sunk or damaged by mines more than they have been by torpedoes, missiles, anything like that.
They've caused way more damage than Navy vessels.
And it is a great example of asymmetric warfare, right?
Where you might not have all the fancy whiz-bang cruise missiles and you might not have the nuclear submarines, the torpedoes, but mines are very, relatively speaking, very cheap.
They are hard to find.
They are even harder to clear.
And you can just create a massive problem for your enemy.
The best in the business were the Russians a lot.
They were very good at mine warfare and they exported a lot of their mines to countries we don't like.
You know, the North Koreans, the Chinese.
The Chinese have actually have much more sophisticated mines.
But when you think of a mine, many people might think of almost from like a cartoon, like a big sphere with these couple of horns on it.
It floats around in the water and then a ship hits it and boom, right?
That's what most people might think of.
But that's not really how most modern mines work.
Some do.
There are some like that that are very simple and they might just float on the surface or they might be moored by a chain or a cable resting on the bottom and they are, and then they're just below the waterline, right?
But the most sophisticated mines are called bottom mines or also known as influence mines.
And that those mines do not need to hit, be hit by a ship or a submarine in order to be fired.
Instead, they've got magnetometers.
That's a fancy way of saying a metal detector.
They have acoustic listening devices, right?
So instead, when they hear, when it either hears a ship or it senses a ship through its metal detector of something big and metal cruising over it, it'll fire.
Now you can even get more sophisticated with that, where you can have things where, hey, it will only fire when it hears the acoustic signature, as in the sound, right?
The specific type of sound frequency and everything like that that a warship makes or a oil tanker makes.
You can even, some of the really sophisticated ones that we don't think the Iranians have, actually, no, they don't have, are so sophisticated that you can narrow it down to one specific individual ship if you have the data on it, right?
If you've had enough listening and you've been able to listen to a certain ship or a submarine, you can narrow it down so it will only fire on that one.
They also do what they have, what they call ship counters, where a mine will allow one, two, three, up to, I think, 12 different ships to pass over it before it fires.
The idea behind it is that several ships will pass over and like, oh, the coast is clear.
It's fine.
And then another ship, boom, and then it fires.
It's meant to create chaos and confusion and all that.
So, you know, we think that the Iranians had anywhere between, and I'm not giving away anything classified here, but between like 2,000 and 6,000 mines.
It's a lot of mines.
You can do a lot of damage with that.
But what we did is we were very smart about this.
And I'm glad that there are some smart people in the room when they're making these decisions, is they took away Iran's capability to lay mines effectively.
So there are mine laying ships that they have that we took all of them out.
Now, and the thing is, in order to really lay mines effectively, you kind of have to go into a pattern, right?
And you have to lay, you have to lay a lot of them because even though the Strait of Hormuz is very small, you know, when we're talking about individual ships and laying mines, we actually do damage, you know, it's still a lot of water.
It's really big.
And the whole idea behind that then is you is you really have to lay a lot of mines in a concentrated area in order to do that.
Now, the Iranians probably have or have attempted to at least lay mines with small boats.
So, right?
They could just get a, you know, a mine laying ship or create a mine laying ship, so to speak.
Just they'll look at an old fishing boat or an old trawler or some other type of ship that does not look like a military target and kick a couple of mines off the side.
You could do that.
However, it probably wouldn't be very effective because it takes an awful lot of mines for anything to really truly be effective.
And also, we are watching everything like a hawk.
You know, we took out all of their mine laying ships and we took out a lot of other ships that could be a potential mine laying ship.
So right now, to my knowledge, just so you know, for whatever, you know, I'm talking to all the guys who are in country right now, right?
And obviously we all know not to share anything classified or anything like that over, you know, these are signal group chats.
And usually those group chats that I've been on for years are usually just, it's like we're all a group of friends because EOD guys are a very close-knit community.
And we're just, you know, sharing, oh, I had a baby or my kid got married or kid graduate high school.
And now everyone's talking about, hey, what's going on?
Who's there right now?
Are you guys okay?
What's happening?
So from what I can tell, I haven't seen any indications yet that the EOD and mine clearing assets have gotten to work yet.
I believe, and I don't know this, but I'm guessing because I, you know, even if they were willing to tell me, you know, they couldn't.
And I can't really tell you here.
But I don't think they've gotten to work on actually clearing the straight yet because we're waiting until everything else is clear.
Because right now there's still a huge threat of drones, rockets, et cetera.
We're making sure that's all cleared.
But the first thing we're going to do once we actually clear, once we actually have the green light, and again, I'm not giving anything away.
This is just how things are done, is you have to clear what are called the queue routes.
That's what we call them, Q routes, which are the shipping lanes, right?
Strategic Strait Clearance00:04:39
So on any major traffic area, you've got like a traffic separation scheme where on a map, the chart, as we say, in all things maritime, is, hey, all the shipping traffic goes through this lane right here.
That helps to just keep an easy flow of traffic in a congested area, right?
So just traffic coming in and out.
We got to clear that first, right?
So that's a relatively narrow, but very critical point.
We got to clear all that first.
And then afterwards, we're going to start.
And then that way we know that, hey, traffic we think has the green light so far.
And then after that, then we're going to start clearing everywhere else around that.
It's going to take a long time to really fully clear the strait.
But what's really important, though, is that shipping traffic, You know, continues, resumes as quickly as possible and as much of it as possible.
Like General Kane said, I was actually at the Pentagon this morning when you texted me asking to come on the show.
I was in the parking lot just getting ready to leave.
But what General Kane said is how there's already some traffic going through, which is good, but there's some real risk there, obviously, because, you know, question for the audience: how many mines does it take to stop traffic?
And the answer is zero in the sense of they just have to think that there might be a mine there, or you could throw barrels of concrete in the water and that might spook people and slow things down.
So, but I think that with everything resuming now, I'm actually very optimistic in the long term.
Yes, there's going to be some pain here right now, but I mean, I haven't checked the price of oil.
It's gone up, it's gone down.
I think we haven't seen any crazy spikes just yet.
So, that is my very long-winded little monologue on what's going on right now.
I'd love to answer any questions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's super informative.
I got one quick question for you before we have to go to our next guest, but just what has China's role in all of this been?
Because I know, obviously, their navy is one that we compete against.
They have, you know, a number of their own ships and devices and technology.
Have they been willing to work with the U.S. at all?
Because I know President Trump was set to meet Xi Jinping in a couple of weeks.
Now we're seeing some tweets here.
I think we can put one up on the screen that Trump threatens to delay the summit with Xi Jinping if China continues to reject his request for assistance to open the Strait of Hormuz.
So far, Beijing is not budging.
Is that what you're hearing?
And, you know, just really, what is China's reaction and role in all of this conflict?
Just real quick, if you don't mind.
I think that's a great question.
And I'm actually, I've got a lot more experience and expertise on East Asia and China and all that than I do in the Middle East.
I'm very much awaiting the time where we can truly focus on the real global threat, long-term, the biggest enduring threat, which is China.
That really is.
You know, I'm pretty sure that Bridge Colby, the Undersecretary of War for Policy, just beating his head against the desk because he wants like, hey, guys, Middle East isn't it.
We need to focus on China, which is true.
But I think once we solve this problem in the Middle East and we were able to leave there, hopefully soon, we'll be able to shift and really pivot to China.
But the reason why the Chinese, I believe, are not helping is because it hurts us, the United States, right?
Why?
Even though it might be in their own self-interest, right?
Because they still get a lot of oil, you know, a ton of their oil they get from the Persian Gulf, but also, you know, that might impact them economically.
But what helps them even more is hurting the United States, you know, which is their biggest enduring adversary.
So it doesn't really make sense for that from the Chinese perspective.
You got to be able to have what we call tactical empathy.
And what that really means is like putting yourself in the enemy's shoes, right?
If I were China, what would I do?
Right.
And so I don't really think that China coming to assist us in clearing the strait, I don't think it's really in their long-term best interest.
It might be in their short-term interest, right?
But in the long term, like they have no incentive to help the Trump administration or to give the United States more legitimacy than it already has.
So I think that they're willing to take the shock because, you know, remember, that's a dictatorship there.
And even though it might hurt China in the short term, like it's not, you know, like they're playing the long game.
That's one thing that everyone I think your viewers should always really recognize.
China will is, they think in decades and centuries.
We think in quarters and election cycles.
AI Guardrails Debate00:14:28
Yeah.
Very well said.
Well, I'd love to have you back on here, or maybe we'll get you on for like a longer segment and really get to unpack some of this stuff down at the grassroots level there.
But thank you so much.
I really joining us.
I appreciate it because it's much of what I like doing.
This was more so.
I know you got to run, but I like this a lot more because I'm going on Laura Ingram tonight, let's say, right?
And it's like, I've got like 60 seconds, get it out.
And then, like, that's it.
I can, you know, I can educate folks.
I actually, I think it's better, like, when you present the news, I try to give every guest at least 20 minutes because the audience really needs to understand things, not just here sort of like bullet points, but actually, you know, bringing on people like yourself to break down what does this mean?
What does it look like?
And how does it, you know, like impact the real world?
So, very much appreciate you and would love to have you back on the program again, Tom.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Heather.
All right, we're going to switch gears a little bit, but not too much.
We're going to hit the AI and technology topic here.
And joining us now, Zach Voorhees, who is a Google whistleblower.
Zach, I've known you for quite some time now, but thank you for joining me.
Your first time on Lindell TV.
Thank you for having me on, Heather.
It's good to see you again.
Yeah, good to see you.
So I reached out to you back when the Anthropic story first sort of like broke the news.
There was just this battle between the Pentagon and Anthropic.
And I'm like, I know you worked for Google.
You've been, you know, covering sort of the AI technology, all that kind of fun stuff.
So I just wanted to get your reaction.
We have this headline that says the Pentagon went to war with Anthropic.
What's really at stake?
So I was hoping, Zach, let's just start off.
What is really at stake here?
Can you break that whole sort of controversy down for us?
Yeah, what's at stake here is that Google wants, I'm sorry, and the government wants Anthropic to get rid of the guardrails, the censorship, so that they can use the uncensored version of their AI model.
And this was part of negotiations that happened back in June of this year.
They failed to negotiate and come to a resolution.
And so, you know, Pete Hegaseth with the Department of War put out an ultimatum.
Basically, to Anthropic, you basically got to get rid of the guardrails and let us have the full access to the uncensored version of your AI, or we're going to kick you off of our government lists and we're going to be able to designate you as a supply chain risk.
Those negotiations didn't go very well.
Basically, Anthropic said, these are red lines.
We're not willing to give you full access to our AI.
We're not going to allow you to use it for automated kill drones.
And as a result, Trump said, you guys are out and designated them a supply chain risk.
And now Anthropic's being removed from the government.
What's really funny is that OpenAI did a backstabbing where they came out in support of Anthropic.
And then as soon as the government kicked them off, it was revealed that OpenAI had actually signed the deal that they said that they were fundamentally against and had their own red lines.
And so now what you see is you see OpenAI being part of the government, getting their contract, Anthropic now on the outside of that.
And now Anthropic is suing the government, trying to say that, hey, this is unfair.
And we have corporate policy that we need to follow.
We don't want to be involved in the kill chain.
And that's the current risk that they're facing.
And they're trying to get out of that, effectively, a ban throughout the entire government for using their software.
So what is like the balance here?
I feel like I'm somebody who like there's still so much when it comes to AI and technology I don't understand, but I have a better grasp than the average person.
When you bring that into like the warfare component, it does seem like there's so many reasons where things could go wrong.
How do you balance sort of the regulation of the AI industry just in general, right?
Because if you have, you know, somebody like Anthropic saying we're going to put guardrails up for the U.S., well, are they putting those same guardrails up for China, for example?
And if China is developing AI with unrestricted sort of development fields, but yet in America, we sort of have these borders where we're not allowed to develop and research outside of these parameters.
Does that put us at a disadvantage at competing against, let's say, China's AI?
And then just like, how do you balance it?
Because I feel like I have no answer for this.
And it's like, I understand the ethical questions.
Like, you don't want, you know, some autonomous robot firing without any sort of human oversight because there's so many reasons that could go wrong.
But at the same time, you don't want a country like China to have less regulation to where they could develop things that are sent after us that we can't create something to defend against.
Right.
And I think that gets at the heart of it, right?
Is the Quen AI or is the deep seek AI are they going to have the same sort of guardrails for the Chinese Communist Party?
And the answer to that is probably not.
And so right now, Anthropic's in a losing position because they're like, well, we've just invented, let's say, guns to make an analogy.
And Anthropic says, hey, we can't sell you automatic weapons.
And meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party, they're getting automatic weapons from their AI companies.
And so the thing is, is that if we put too many guardrails on this technology, we're going to lose the number one position from a military standpoint.
And that we're going to be at the mercy of our adversaries.
And I think this gets to the heart of it: you really can't have these guardrails.
You got to uncensor the models, at least for the government.
I feel they should be uncensored for, you know, the commoner like you and me.
But, you know, that's a different question.
And so I think at the end of the day, it's we pretty much need to have an uncensored AI because we don't know what this technology is going to do.
And it's very powerful.
And China's not going to sit around and put up with this nonsense that they don't get access to uncensored models from their own companies.
Yeah.
Well, we have a sound bite here, real quick, from Anthropic's own CEO and just some of his concerns that he was discussing.
So let's take a listen.
Second one I said was what I would call oversight.
And this is the idea that, you know, right now you have an army of human soldiers and there are norms about serving in the military.
You're supposed to follow orders.
But, you know, if something crazy, if something crazy enough happened, the soldiers would say, I'm not going to do that, right?
You have basically have a bunch of norms about, you know, how soldiers serve, right?
You know, what they see their duties to be.
What if you have an army of 10 million drones instead of 10 million human soldiers?
What are the norms of the AI-driven drones?
I think if we handle this wrongly, you could have a situation where there's a very small number of people or one person who has their hand on the button and kind of controls those 10 million drones.
And we need to answer these questions because we don't want to make companies more powerful than the government, but we also don't want to make government so powerful that it can't be stopped.
We have both problems at once.
To some degree, I see that where he's coming from.
It's like, you know, like, but I feel like the answer to everything is always just free market, right?
Like cut regulations for everyone.
So, in the free market, if something goes wrong, someone's developing something to combat it.
Is that kind of how you're going to be able to do that?
Yeah, I mean, pretty much there's no good answer here, right?
There's only trade-offs.
And that's sort of the tragedy of this whole situation is that there's really no right answer.
There's only an answer that's less bad.
Like, we could be the good moral people and say, well, we're going to have a human involved in all the kill chains.
But then, if China launches a surprise attack, then all of a sudden we're at a disadvantage.
And so, you know, do we want to be under our yeah, do we want to be under our own unoptimized laws or do we want to be, you know, essentially at the tail end of an adversary and their domination of the global theater?
And that's the choice that we're facing right now.
And I don't really see Anthropic winning on this.
I think they're going to eventually capitulate and give the government what it wants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, hopefully, because I mean, I can't even imagine just China getting a hold of some of that technology.
I mean, even on the like wars aren't really fought as much.
I mean, yeah, we have, you know, some missiles and stuff being dropped in Iran, but the real big wars are almost like bio-warfare now, drone warfare.
It's like if you have China developing some sort of bioweapon, like, you know, we'll say COVID, for example, and then, you know, you're the only one with the cure for that, right?
Here in America, they wanted to, I know, ban gain of function, gain of function research at one time, but I was kind of like, does a ban on gain of function also sort of put the same sort of disadvantage on research that on us that China doesn't have, right?
And so it's like, how do you find that balance?
We were like, man, I understand both sides of the issue, but where do we go from here?
Because it's just the way wars are fought are not like they were 100, 200 years ago with guns in a field.
It's like, it's so much more advanced.
And it's almost like everything's advancing beyond what we can sort of control.
Right.
And we're essentially, you know, one false flag away from having this decision completely reversed.
I believe, you know, in my heart that this decision will be reversed.
This could even be said as some sort of theater, you know, where we say, yeah, Anthropic's good now.
But at the end of the day, I think they're going to capitulate.
I think they're going to give the government what they want.
You know, this, we're in a military campaign right now.
We've got geopolitical adversaries.
They're not going to have the guardrails.
And if we don't get in line, we're going to lose the country.
So, you know, as much as I like the presentation of moral goodness, at the end of the day, this is about our national security.
And we can talk about the ethical deliminations later once, you know, we kind of figure out who's going to win this whole AI battle, because we're just in the beginning of this.
We're at the very foothills of this fourth industrial revolution.
And anybody that puts the most guardrails on their AI is not going to be the one that comes out on top.
And if the United States wants to, you know, put a bunch of, you know, guardrails, then we're going to lose this thing.
So I don't think that we want to lose this.
I think that eventually through this civic system, they're going to come to the logical conclusion, which by the way, I'm a guest.
I would love for the whole world to sign a moratorium that says that there always has to be a human in the kill chain.
So I'm not for this.
I just know that from a security standpoint, they need to have an uncensored AI for the government to use.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I'll play this last headline here where we have just China's AI industry actually exceeds the U.S. $174 billion in 2025.
So this is sort of the other thing is how much money are we going to be allocating as a country to the AI race?
And is it going to be enough to keep up with what China's doing?
Your thoughts.
We're in a really bad catch-22 right now because China's got open access to all of our AI infrastructure.
And China is a closed system.
So we can't, we have trouble stealing a lot of their technology back.
For example, DeepSeek just released a new open source AI model in which they openly state that they took the output of Opus 4.6, Anthropic's newest model, they distilled it into their own engine, and then they applied what's called obliteration, which is that they uncensored it by asking it a bunch of questions and figuring out where the censorship guardrails were.
And then they're able to scramble those guardrails so that they could get an uncensored version of the model.
And that's basically China saying, look, you know, here's what you have.
We're going to give it away for free at a very cheap price.
And we're going to take away the censorship guardrail.
So what's Anthropic going to do now?
Right?
Like, if they're not going to deliver the uncensored model to the government, the government can now download a distilled version of their AI that's already uncensored.
Right.
So it's almost as if the point is now mute about whether the AI should be censored or uncensored at all.
There's now an uncensored version, a distilled version out there on the internet that anybody can just download and use if they have the proper hardware.
And let me tell you, I know that the government has that proper hardware to run this uncensored version of their model.
Yeah, well, absolutely.
Thank you for joining us today, Zach.
And I look forward to having you back on the program.
Where can people go to follow you and like just stay up to date on all the information that you're putting out?
I like to put out a lot of information about artificial intelligence and technology in the censorship complex.
You can follow me at x.com/slash perpetualmaniac.
If you want to see my disclosures about how Google censors and controls your access to information, you can visit my website at zachvoorhees.com.
You can also check out my book, googleleeksbook.com.
It's the inside tale of how I exfiltrated Google's censorship engine called Machine Learning Fairness.
It's an incredible story.
Go check it out and give it a positive review on Amazon.
It's been very, very popular on Amazon and it's a fantastic read.
Well, thank you so much, Zach Voorhees, for breaking all that information down and happy to have you back on.
So thanks for joining us.
Thank you very much, Heather.
Tech Awareness Breakdown00:01:34
Till next time.
Till next time.
Love it.
But man, what a packed show today.
I mean, everything from the Save Act to the straight of Hermuz there with Iran learning about the mind-laying capabilities of both Iran and the US's abilities to find it.
Then you move over to AI and tech.
And let me just tell you, there is no shortage of information to take in working at the Pentagon because it just feels like, you know, we're rapidly advancing as a country so much so.
And I really enjoy bringing on guests like Zach today and the lieutenant commander there, Tom Sauer, to break down some of these things because I feel like that's what's so important is that American people really understand the way our technology is evolving.
Because it's when we don't understand it that those that do can exploit that lack of knowledge and awareness.
So thank you guys all for joining us today.
We're going to have another show tomorrow and a lot more great guests to unpack some information for you guys.
Heather Mullins here on Lindell TV.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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My pillow guy, Mike Lindell.
He is the greatest, the my pillow guy.
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