#118: The Pete and the Pentagon, Naval Intelligence, TRUMP JESUS, Cuba is NEXT? w/ Ralph DeFalco

Nearly 7 weeks into the war, I welcome retired operational intelligence officer and national security intelligence professional, and now author, Ralph DeFalco. We discuss his new book, how to best present your ideas to the world, his most fulfilling work, working on a team and inspiring people, being in a senior military position, where things have gone with the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, nuclear options, when Japan was introduced to baseball, mutually assured destruction (MAD), the Budapest Memorandum, whether or not Cuba is next for war or infiltration, and much more!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome back to Divulgence. Uh, very excited today. We have a former operation operational intelligence officer and national security intelligence professional. Um Ralph DeFalco, uh retired captain of the United States Naval Reserve. How are you today, my friend? It's it's a pleasure to meet you and um thank you so much for your service.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Well, thank you, uh Jordan, for having me on your wonderful show. Uh it was both a privilege for me and an honor to serve our country.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Uh obviously, you uh so so how how long was your um because you you have your military career, your your intelligence, so how long have you uh essentially served the country from when you entered the army or sorry, the the naval or or whatever your first step was to uh whenever you retired from service?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Well, uh I uh entered the naval reserves as an intelligence officer and spent 25 years as a naval officer. And during that 25-year career, I was recalled to active duty seven times for a total of nine years of active duty. And then in addition to that, I was very fortunate. I had another career as a uh civilian intelligence professional on the staff of the director of naval intelligence in the Pentagon for 18 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Wow, so 18 years at the Pentagon, that must have been uh that must have been quite interesting on its own. Absolutely, absolutely. And now, um you you're an author and a speaker, you um you have a new book. Uh is it I don't is it is it officially out now?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, actually it was released on Monday.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, okay, very recently.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

The official release date of the counterfeit was on Monday.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Well, congratulations um to you on that. I'm gonna pull up the uh thank you the cover for everyone to see. Why don't we start with that? Can you let us know what it's about and and and what uh inspired you to write it, Ralph?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Well, the counterfeit takes place in the years soon to come. After years of failed policies and the terrible consequences of having lost the Pacific War to China, the United States is both a vanquished and a bankrupted nation. The United Nations is administering the country, China is pulling its strings, and Beijing wants to make its puppet the next U.S. president. But a group of Americans led by paroled military officers are beginning to fight back. Their audacious plan is to put one of their own, a spy, into the highest reaches of government. So Commander Philip Nolan, United States Navy, survives the war and captivity as a POW, and now will take the place of his look-alike brother as the head of the Internal Security Directorate of the United States government, which has become an American Gestapo.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Wow, that is that's interesting, and obviously you have all this experience to draw on. So um, yeah, what inspired you to uh write it, and what inspired you to write a novel as opposed to nonfiction?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Well, as you know, uh I've written nonfiction for many, many years and publish book reviews, essays, geopolitical analysis, commentary on foreign affairs. But a novel takes you in a whole new direction, as you well know. And what inspired me to write it was looking at trends, trends in today's America, trends in geopolitics, and extrapolating those trends to uh what I think could be a bitter end. And that's what was the inspiration for the counterfeit.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Um, can you maybe talk a little bit about if you have any um real-world influences or real-world characters or events that you uh you bring into the book?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Oh, no question about it. One of the things that happens in the pages of the counterfeit is that I make use of a plot device that's very unusual for thrillers. And that plot device is a phenomenon well known to intelligence analysts, and it's called creeping normalcy, where a series of small changes go almost undetected over a period of time until there is a significant, significant change in the uh in the threat landscape. And the counterfeit introduces the reader to an America that at first seems very recognizable, and gradually, bit by bit, they learn more and more and more about how America has become an authoritarian police state, about how America has created two levels, two stratified levels of society. One for people of wealth, power, and influence, and one where ordinary Americans struggle to survive. Now, if I had thrown that out as a backstory in the front of this novel, people probably would have just thrown up their hands and said, ah, beyond the realm of possibility, beyond the realm of belief. But by introducing it bit by bit throughout the novel, at the end of the novel, people come away and say, holy smokes, this could actually happen in our country. And people have told me it's actually in some ways uh terrifying. Some of people have mentioned it could be predictive, but all of them have said it's a very unusual approach to writing a geopolitical thriller. So that's kind of what the counterfeit uses as a as a storyline, as a plot line. And it does draw on my experiences, it does draw on my knowledge of geopolitical history, and all of that is woven into the novel.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

How does this differ differ um from other thrillers? You kind of just nailed them.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

You kind of just nailed it, but um well, I think the other thing that happens here is that in many thrillers, you have characters that perform what I call mission impossibly feats. My characters don't do that. We don't have characters in the counterfeit jumping out of airplanes without parachutes and surviving because they land in snowbanks. That doesn't happen. The tension in the novel and the authenticity in the novel comes from putting these characters in real-life predicaments. These are characters who experience doubts, they experience fears, they make mistakes, and throughout the entire novel, they are grappling with issues that range from identity to service to country to courage to cowardice, and all of that plays out. It's I like to say it's woven throughout the novel. And I think that's part of uh part of the challenge moving from being a writer of nonfiction to becoming a fiction writer is making those kinds of characters terribly, terribly authentic. Because you have to create them out of whole cloth.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

It sounds like quite the uh the project.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Um, it is in many ways because not only do you have to create these characters out of whole cloth, it is you have to go beyond simply imagining a character as a fiction writer. You have to know what they look like, how they walk, how they speak, how they think, and you have to create authentic voices for these characters. And when the characters interact, the dialogue has to be real. One of the challenges that I found in writing The Counterfeit was that I had never had to create characters before. When you write nonfiction, the characters are already standing right in front of you. You can interpret their actions, you can interpret what they have to say, but it's all laid out in front of you. You don't have to manufacture or create that that character, that person from Whole Cloth. But in the pages of the counterfeit, what you'll find is I tried to create authenticity in these characters. And the the what I finally discovered was that if I treated the written page like the script for a movie, I could actually develop characters. I just thought of them as characters on the big screen, and they began to come to life. Must have been fun too. It was. It was fun. And it's totally different than what I'm used to doing. I'm used to assembling my facts, getting my arguments in order, sitting down and writing against a theme. Uh, much of the work that I've published in uh the geopolitical arena and world affairs, uh, it's it's based on current events, it's based on the real world. And the counterfeit was an extrapolation, it was a way to take what's real world, take a string and tie that string and pull it into the future. And that was uh not, it was fun. It was a bit of a mind twister at times, uh, trying to keep all these disparate parts in place. But I think for me, this was my first novel. It was a revelatory experience in many ways. I learned a lot about writing novels. I'd read them for years, but actually sitting down and writing one is uh is an experience in and of itself.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Um, something else that's uh a little unusual for a novel that you did is uh uh chapter notes. Um can you talk about that a little bit? Why why you decided to do something like that?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Well, I'll tell you what, that that was something great that you picked up on. I originally wanted to add footnotes to my novel, and I wanted to add footnotes because so much of the novel references either literary events, historical events, real-world events, that I wanted to tie those in and not have characters give speeches all the time about those events. So instead, what I decided to do was create those chapter notes. So, for example, um, the very first chapter note in the book refers to the protagonist of the counterfeit, who was Philip Nolan, and I did not pull that name out of thin air. Philip Nolan is the character in a very famous short story, and the name of that short story is The Man Without a Country. It was written in the 1850s by Edward Everett Hale. For many, many years, it was typically included in anthologies of English literature for junior high school students. Um, I'm sad to say that is no longer the case because it's a wonderful story, an absolutely wonderful story. So the name Philip Nolan comes from that short story, A Man Without a Country, and the Man Without a Country is Philip Nolan in the counterfeit.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Wow, I like that. That's really clever. It's kind of fun, isn't it? That is very good.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I like that. So, and when readers get into the counterfeit, if they flip back to the the chapter notes as they're reading, they'll discover that many of the things that are described, the act the things that are actually going on in the novel, have historical antecedents. It's not unusual, for example, to have a country that's been bankrupted run by other countries. Uh, it's not unusual, the United States, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which I talk about in the footnotes, in the chapter notes, actually explains how Roosevelt told the Caribbean nations, look, if you get in financial trouble and overseas powers try to take over because of the fact that you bankrupted yourselves, uh, we are going to come in and we're gonna take over and manage and run your country. And that was expressly in agreement with Cuba after the Spanish-American War. And one of the reasons why we have a perpetual lease in Guantanamo is that was supposed to be the staging base for any U.S. troops who had to go into the Caribbean and especially Cuba and put things right if they went off the rails. Most people don't know that, but it's a nice historical tidbit, and it's it's it's based in facts that many people don't know, and I think that adds another level, another dimension of credibility, even though this is a novel that's cast in the future.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Do you have any inspiration or inspirations when it comes to uh writers or uh any specific thrillers or books that you kind of um pulled from when you decided to write this?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

I don't think I really pulled from any other thriller writers. Again, I wanted to avoid that whole Rambo-esque kind of thriller where you have these heroes who blaze away with 50 caliber machine guns hung from their hips and as I said before, you know, do those kinds of mission impossibly driven things that can't possibly occur in real life. So I wanted to stay away from that, but I I have been impressed over the years with thriller writers who draw from current events. Uh, Rosenberg, for example, is a good example of uh a writer, a thriller writer who draws from current events. And that approach influenced me in laying out the plot line and the storyline for the counterfeit. Start with real events and go from there. And make it in that way you have a foundation that's credible. Uh, everyone knows that the successful appreciation of fiction begins with the suspension of disbelief. But I didn't want people to be too disbelieving of everything that was going on. So, and again, it was a process of integrating these elements into the novel as the pages unfold rather than front-loading everything and having people throw up their hands and say, Oh, that could never happen. There could never be a police state in the United States. There could never be food rationing, there could never be a foreign government that's running our economy. So if you had loaded all that stuff up front, people would say, Oh, this is just this is too much. This is just baloney. So that's why I did it the way I did it. And uh, why I took some lessons learned from thrillers and from some thriller writers, I took lessons learned that said, Don't do this. Don't don't write like this, don't strain the bonds of credibility.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Interesting. Well, again, congratulations on the book. Um, I believe on the 23rd, I think is World Book Day. So um, yeah, I I I recommend people check it out. Um do you have any um I I mean I know you just put it out, it's uh it's still hot off the presses, but um, do you have any thoughts or plans for a follow-up or um like a sequel type thing, or is this is this kind of like a standalone in its own universe type of story?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Well, I'll tell you, Jordan, that uh I've actually been begun work on a sequel. Okay. All right. When I first when I first sat down to write this, it was a much bigger book than what finally came out, and I realized as I was writing it that I had a I had a half a dozen stories I was trying to jam into one novel. So I sat back and I said, okay, there's only one way to handle this, and that is to have sequels. I'm I'm happy with some of my characters, I want them to survive. I don't want some of them to be killed off in the novel in some cataclysmic explosion or some apocalyptic event. So I want to see some of my characters go forward and continue to be a part of the saga. So there is another book, actually. I've already begun writing it. And the other thing you might find interesting is I actually cut, uh, I actually cut from the pages of the counterfeit about 30,000 words. And yeah, that's quite a bit. It is. It goes it goes back to that whole idea. You've heard the expression, the footage that's left on the cutting room floor. Uh the film analogy, I think, works really well. If you're gonna write a uh a nice tight piece of fiction, I think you have to be willing to be a ruthless editor and cut out things that do not advance the storyline. If it's an interesting anecdote, if it's an interesting incident, if it's in there simply because you like it, but it doesn't advance the storyline, it doesn't pull the reader along, then it's gotta go. You gotta you have to take it out. Now, I think as an author, that's a very, very challenging thing to do because you you get married to your work. You get married to the work and you say, Oh boy, this is really great writing. I like this scene, I like what I wrote. Just like the editor does or a director does with a film. It might be a great scene, but there's really no room for it because it doesn't help to advance the story. So that was that was one of the challenges. That was another one of the challenges.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Well, um, I'm very excited for you on that. Um, it it's um it's interesting. I like what once once you get the ideas flowing, you kind of have to determine, okay, what is my what's the best medium to tell this story, right? Is it one book? Is it multiple books? And that goes, like you said, when you're talking about crossing over to film. Um, it's the same thing with uh like is a short film or uh you know uh a long movie, or is it better to chop it up into like a a series, which obviously is more popular now? You see these like one season series uh a lot now because the story is just better told in that fashion. Um well, in their opinion. Um, so yeah, it's um it's interesting when you're you know when you're an artist and you're you're kind of figuring out how to take your ideas and properly uh deliver them to the world.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

You know, I told someone the other day we were chatting about writing and writing a novel, especially. Uh, when you write not when you write nonfiction, it's actually a process of assembly. You assemble things, you have facts, you've done research, you pull things together. Um many nonfiction writers work from an outline as I do. You make a nice outline, you remember you learned how to do all that in school. So you've got your major points, you've got your subpoints, you got your supporting sub points. So you've outlined what you're going to write about. You really can't outline a work of fiction. You really cannot outline a work of fiction. There, there is no way to outline these kinds of things. Although I've told people have told me that, oh, yeah, there's fiction writers who have a definite path they want to follow. For me, it was more of an opportunity to take a big block of stone, like a sculpture, and uh just like a sculptor would do, cut away the pieces that weren't needed. Take the take the big block, the big story, and chisel away what doesn't help, doesn't show, doesn't make the story come to life. So I did a little bit of that as well. And it goes back to what I was talking about, the uh stuff on the cutting room floor and leaving things behind. But you also raise another good point. When when you write fiction like this, especially in a novel like The Counterfeit, you have to be extremely careful, I think, to ensure that the reader can understand and appreciate the scenes and the plots that it develops. One thing has to logically lead to another. There are no giant leaps, no gaps. The other thing that I did in this novel, and again, I think you hit on it. You you really hit on it. People like series, they like bite-sized pieces. This is not a Tom Clancy novel, it's not 980 pages long. And the chapters, it's not Dostoevsky, you don't have a set 70-page chapter. The chapters are fairly short, and I've had uh people say to me, you know, I really like that because I sometimes I like to read it, you know, a little bit before I go to bed, read a chapter, and darn, you I just hated this when you gave me these short chapters because you left me hanging and I had to read the next chapter, and then I read the next one. So I just yeah, so I I I I refer to that as having created cliffhangers without the Hollywood cliffs. There are no prop cliffs in the novel. Uh, we're not gonna suspend a character in midair from a helicopter with a fraying bungee cord. That's not going to happen, but we are gonna put them in predicaments and we're gonna hang them out there, and we're gonna ask the reader to say, holy smokes, what happens next? And that that I think is part of the fun of the counterfeit as well. The characters are in real life difficulties, they're grappling with real issues. As I said earlier, they make mistakes, they get angry, they get upset, and all that plays into this novel. It's it's uh as as close as I could make it to real people interacting to real trouble in their lives and real difficulties, absolutely challenging scenarios. And I think that's what that's what allows you to go from that first nugget, that first episode to the second episode to the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah, it's um it's interesting how sometimes you're uh you kind of mentioned it when you're in bed and you're like, okay, one child. Or you know, sometimes you're in the mood to watch TV, or sometimes you're just okay, I need something to do before bed. But if something pulls you in, sometimes you're okay, I need to all right now I'm into this, and that but some stuff it's it's just more passive and it doesn't grab you, and you're just okay, I can go to bed now. It you know, I don't need to see anymore. Um, so yeah, it's huge.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

It's akin to what happens when you get hooked on a uh television series, for example. You watch the first step and you say, Oh boy, I really want to watch the next episode. And if you don't happen to see all the episodes or you delay watching the series, that's where we got the term binge watching. People binge because they're they're hooked, they just want to keep going, they want to keep understanding what's going to happen next. They they they're they're caught up in the story, they become a part of the story because they're visualizing everything that's going on, they're seeing it on the screen, they're enamored of the characters. All those different reasons play into it. So I would hope the same thing happens when people read the counterfeit, that they look at those short chapters and become enamored of what's going on and want to keep keep going, keep reading and reading.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Yeah. Well, again, congrats on the book, and I I I wish you all the best on it. Uh, thank you. I would love to uh talk about um your career a little bit. Sure. I I honestly I don't know where to start. Um what was your most fulfilling position or or um or place of work or you know agency that you worked with um during your long-spanning career?

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Well, uh I have to say one of the most challenging, challenging opportunities I had. I finished my career as a uh in the Pentagon in uniform as the deputy director of intelligence at the National Military Command Center, uh running the National Joint Operations and Intelligence Uh Center from the Intel side of the house. That was a dynamic, fascinating, fast-paced, incredibly at times rewarding and always stressful. But I had an enormous amount of help. You don't do these kinds of jobs alone. I had a tremendous team of professionals that I was working with, people from the other armed services, people from across the intelligence community. I think I was very, very fortunate in my military career to have gone into the joint world very, very early. I went joint early on and got an absolutely marvelous education in how to work with the other services and subsequently how to work with our international partners. One of the things that uh steaded me well when I uh served in Afghanistan. So it was an opportunity to understand and see how all the parts can be pulled together to deal with the operational challenges that you confront when you're in those kinds of positions. Certainly in the Pentagon, you're looking at huge operational issues, you're looking at break-in crises. In Afghanistan, it was uh boots, support of boots on the ground, uh very much fluid, very dynamic, but again, relying on and trusting the people that you work with and relying on their skills and their ability and their knowledge. And really, when you get to these levels where you are working as a senior, when you have command level responsibilities, your job, your job is really to pull the very best out of each and every one of those people and to empower them to do their jobs. I can't I can't do 15 other analysts' jobs, but what I can do is I can direct them, I can encourage them, I can support them, and I can make sure they have the additional resources that they need. And that's really the challenge, I think, as you become more senior, and especially as you become more senior in the military, is to understand and really how to get the absolute best and motivate and reward, absolutely reward the people who are doing the heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Uh, when did you so you you retired out of the Pentagon? Um, when did you leave what administration was that the first Trump administration or Biden that you left?

SPEAKER_00 26:34

I uh I actually I actually uh retired from the Pentagon, left my last duty assignment in the Pentagon in 2021, in March of 2021.

unknown 26:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

So I came out of the Pentagon in 2021. My last military assignment, my last uniformed assignment, uh was in 2013. And there's some overlap there because I think, as I told you originally, I was a reserve officer. So I had a reserve career at the same time I had a civilian career. And boy, I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

That sounds so busy.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Like those last couple of years where I uh bounced back and forth from my civilian career to being recalled to active duty were very challenging. But very fortunate. I was very, very fortunate in that uh when I came back from my my assignments on active duty, I was, of course, covered by you, SERA, the Uniformed Services Employment Rights and Reemployment Act. And uh the Pentagon uh Defense Department, I worked for the Department of the Navy, uh, actually found ways to make me gainfully employed once again when I came back from my active duty assignments. And you you meet people, you work with people, you come back from those assignments, and you you get back into the groove, back into the swing of things, and you find that you're in positions where you've basically picked up where you've left off.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Um I guess you've probably worked um so I secretary of um defense. I so you'd be working under them, right? So how I guess you probably worked under quite a few different secretaries of defense.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, I didn't report, I had no direct reports to the secretaries. Typically, typically my reporting relationships were up to the uh the flag level. So I I supported and worked with a variety of different flag officers in the Navy and had a flag officer report when I was uh working the intelligence problem set at the Pentagon at the uh National Military Command Center. So my relationships were really not at the at the political level, the SECDF and above. It was really that echelon below, supporting the Joint Chiefs, uh supporting the uh the uh director of naval intelligence. I was very, very fortunate to serve with some exceptional, exceptionally talented men and women, and actually had served served for under four different admirals during my time in the Pentagon. So that was a great experience, very great experience for me. Interesting. Yeah, we in fact uh I count some of those men and women today, still today, as some of my friends, which I think is uh it's a terrific, it's really terrific. I uh I uh treasure my friendships and uh I had fabulous working relationships with the flag officers that uh I reported to. Tremendous working relationships. It was great stuff. And I, you know, it's interesting you asked that question because in the novel, in the counterfeit, one of the tension points is Nolan's difficulty in working with his putative boss, who is basically his handler. Nolan has become a Nolan is has become a spy. He's not he's not an intelligence officer anymore. Now he's a spy, and it's a whole new world for him. He knows what human intelligence is all about, humant, but now he's got a handler, and he's not always comfortable being in that role, and it plays out with a great deal of tension. Uh, you've read the novel, and you know uh very well that at one point they actually have a fist fight, there's a fight between Nolan and his handler. Nolan gets the worst of it. Oh no, but you know, Nolan Nolan gets to the point where he's incredibly frustrated and he's angry. So, what do people do when they're frustrated and they're angry? They say, Oh, this is bad. I need to see my therapist. No, they lash out. So that's exactly what happens in the novel. Nolan lashes out. That's what I go, uh what I was talking about earlier when I said real world, real world reactions, authentic characters. You're angry, you're frustrated, you confront the person who's making you angry, you confront the person who frustrates you, and before you know it, you have conflict. And in this case, in the novel, the conflict turns into fisticuffs, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

And you would you would almost think, well, that's not realistic because of that that boss relationship. But when you kind of look at it, well, now he's a spy and now he's the handler, it's you know, it's not it's not an out in the open relationship, so to speak, right? So, like the fight can kind of you know, he's not gonna get you know uh called into HR or anything like that for the fight. So you know, so it's just real, it's more realistic, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah, no, no one, no one is gonna file a grievance over this. There you go. As you remember, the fight actually takes place in an old garage. It's not even it's he's not, you know, no one's not at work. He's he's he's not even he he's not he's nowhere, he's in a garage in Chicago. He actually has this tete, this fight with his handler. And again, as I say, it's uh your readers when they get to that chapter will find out the reason why it's very one-sided. But no one, uh, no one expresses his frustration and anger by getting into a fight in this garage, and uh that's one of the pivot points, as you know, in the novel. It it forces his hand. Nolan comes out of that fight with a realization that he has to do something, and that's the point at which he finally decides that he's gonna make the commitment and become the spy. Up to that point, as you know, he's ambivalent. He's ambivalent, and he gets to the point where he says, Okay, that's it. This this is the this is the decision point, and I've made my decision.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah, um, I'm I'm very curious um with to the extent that you're you're comfortable talking about it. Just curious of your thoughts with how you know the change, maybe any changes or the directional changes with the uh I mean, for for starters, the Department of Defense is now the Department of War. Um, what is your thought on that change?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Well, it's interesting you asked that question because uh it was for century for better half better part better part of a century and a half, the department of war. Okay, it started out as the department of war. Okay, so so uh it it it's it was a fairly recent innovation. Uh, you don't quote me on this, but I suspect the change was done somewhere around 1949 or so that it became the Department of Defense.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

That sounds makes sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah, it became the Department of Defense, I think, at the same time or thereabouts when we created the U.S. Air Force, and it was no longer the U.S. Army Air Forces, it was the Air Force, and it was probably in the same period where we created the CIA. The CIA was a post-World War II creation, and it was created, as you well know, because Congress was not terribly happy with the debacle at Pearl Harbor. And during World War II, I know this sounds bizarre, and most people don't realize this, but during World War II, FDR got intelligence briefings. He got one one day from the Army and one another, an opposite day from the Navy. So the Navy and the Army took turns briefing the president. Congress looked at that and said, This is this is this is this is messed up. We have to have a central repository for our intelligence, hence the Central Intelligence Agency. And then, of course, the director of CIA would give the president his daily intelligence briefing, which survives to this day. There's a daily intelligence briefing for the president. So, not one day from one agency, one day for another. And now it's a single monolithic document. They're not monolithic, there's a single document that goes up to the president that's not monolithic, but it draws on the efforts of all 18 intelligence agencies. And most people don't know that either. There's 18 different intelligence agencies in the United States today. It's a remarkable, remarkable effort to pull something together and coordinate it over 18 different agencies. But that's exactly what we do. Exactly what we do. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Um, what are your thoughts on um on Pete on Pete Heads on Pete Heggseth? Um, I mean, obviously there's the way he goes about things and how you know how he handles the press, and now during you know that how this war has gone, and now he's he's starting to fire uh pretty senior high-up officials. Um, I don't know if that's to take away some of the heat from him. Um some people say he might be close on the chopping block as well, so maybe he's trying to divert some heat. Um but uh yeah, have you ever met Pete Hagseth? Do you like what are your thoughts on him? Do you support Pete Hegzeth?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Um Well, I've never met the secretary, but I can tell you this. All military officers report up to a civilian chain of command, and that is one of the most novel things about how the American military is structured. That's not necessarily true in other countries. In some other countries, the military is the chain of command, right? In the United States, we have civilian oversight, we have civilian leadership. The Secretary of Defense has an enormous job, an enormous job, not only managing an entire bureaucracy, but at the same time, operational responsibilities and reporting relationship with the commander-in-chief, who is also a civilian. So uh it's a extremely difficult job. It's difficult to criticize people from the outside when you're look looking in from the outside. It's very difficult to criticize because you really don't understand all the complexities that are being dealt with on a day-to-day basis. You know, they say hindsight is 2020, Jordan. I think the best possible way to judge secretaries in any capacity in the cabinet is uh from a historical perspective. Judging them in the moment in the moment, I think, can be sometimes short-sighted. And the media loves to do this. This is this is daily fodder for the media. And let's frank, let's be frank about it. The reason the media does that is because they can't, and they do it because it generates viewership, it generates readership, and it's not always particularly well informed. So that's another challenge that you have. We we have media today where people are producing what is called news or opinion that's not particularly well informed. I always wonder just how many of the people who cover the Pentagon have served in the military. And I I asked that question once, and I I was shocked to find out virtually all of the reporters who were assigned to the Pentagon, virtually all of them have no military experience. None, none. And that that makes me wonder. I said, okay, what qualifies you then? You're a journalist, uh, what qualifies you then to cover the Pentagon? And the response I got, this was an off-the-record conversation, by the way. I won't repeat who I had it with.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

The response I got was if you don't play baseball, how can you be a baseball writer? If you don't play hockey, how can you write if you know if you don't play football, how can you write sports? I said, you know, that's that's a that's a tough analogy because frankly, virtually every sports writer played some kind of sport.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

So it it it's or they have or they have a huge uh passion for it to the extent where they they they they they essentially know the game as if they had played.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Yes, there's a lot of truth in that, but uh it it's interesting. I'm I'm working on a little project right now. I'm I'm looking at uh the history of baseball in Japan. Oh wow, and how fascinated the Japanese people are with the with the sport. And I suspected uh when I first started doing my research that the Japanese people were introduced to the game after World War II, that the GIs came over to Japan and brought the game with them. No, actually, they got engaged in the in this sport in the 1870s from Americans who came over to Japan during the Meiji Restoration and were in the treaty ports. And the game was introduced to them in that fashion by Americans. Some of them were teachers and some of them were in the treaty ports, but once again, the knowledge that they gained and they assimilated quickly, they they learned by doing, they learned by watching. And uh, as you know, that we have some outstanding Japanese ball baseball players today, and the Japanese leagues are terrific to watch. Terrific.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Well time or last year. I think he's Japanese.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Yeah, oh time he's bad. Signed the biggest major league baseball contract in history, 700 million dollars. 700 million. So the reason I bring that up, the reason I make that point is yes, you you're right, Jordan. You're absolutely right. You can bring to the table your knowledge by watching, as many as some sports writers have done, but I don't think you can bring to the table the knowledge that you need to be an expert on military affairs or on the Pentagon or on the workings of the Defense Department simply by having watched from afar. I think that's one of the reasons why you see on our television programs, you have experts who have served in the military are expressing opinions. This goes well beyond what you read in the editorial pages of the Times or the Journal. Uh that that whole media aspect of it is something quite different. Something quite different when you look at what people are saying who have some background and experience in the military.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

I would uh I would really love to hear your your thoughts on uh on this war in Iran, uh how it's going, um, and and just your thought on whether or not the U.S. should have gotten involved. Why don't we start there?

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Okay. It's it it's um your question is very timely, of course, but it's also even more timely because I've just finished writing an article for my friends over at Law and Liberty uh on uh U.S. nuclear options. And one of the things I discuss in my piece is how we have moved over the course of the last several decades from a nuclear posture of deterrence where we wanted to deter a Soviet attack. And our idea of deterrence, as you well know, was something called Mutually Assured Destruction, where we each built massive stockpiles of warheads in the hopes that after each side had expended all of their warheads, the United States would have at least one left. And mutually assured destruction, I always laughed at that. You know, the acronym, of course, is MAD. Mutually assured destruction. It was in fact madness. At one point, there were 70,000 nuclear warheads around the world. Now we've we've made some great strides and we've we've reduced those stockpiles, at least in the United States. Reputable sources report based on uh the New START treaty that we've got about 1,550 warheads in the arsenal, as do the Russians. The problem is that we moved from a nuclear posture of deterrence into an age where the threats weren't just nuclear anymore. We now have the threats of weapons of mass destruction, chem bio. We have rogue actors, rogues, rogue states, we have non-state actors, terrorists. So the threat posture is completely changed. And the question, of course, now becomes how do you adapt to that? How do you change? What do you do with an adversary that's bent on suicidal practices? How do you deter basically a national kamikaze like Iran? They're absolutely convinced that if they commit these heinous crimes against other nations, that they're going to get some kind of celestial re reward. How do you deal with that? The thing that's happened in the United States is we've moved. From a posture of deterrence to a posture of what I now refer to as denial and preemption. Iran with a nuclear weapon is an existential threat to the state of Israel. There's no question about it. Iran has made no bones about the fact that they want to destroy Israel. They want to kill every person in Israel. That's one of their stated goals. I take very seriously and soberly the comments that dozens and dozens of people, leaders of Iran, have made over the last 40 years when they get on television or they make public statements and they say death to America. I take that seriously. Now a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat, immediate existential threat to Israel. A nuclear-armed Iran with intermediate range ballistic missiles, and we saw them launch those missiles at Diego Garcia. I think that came as a surprise. I could be wrong, but I think that came as a surprise to the U.S. intelligence community. Again, I could be wrong about this, but they launched intermediate range ballistic missiles, range of more than 2,600 miles towards Diego Garcia. Now, if you take those missiles and you mate them even with a conventional warhead, what that means is that every capital in Europe is within range of that strike. So what do you do when you have that kind of information? You realize that Iran is committed to building a nuclear weapon. You realize that they now have long-range delivery capabilities. Do you sit and wait for them to marry those two capabilities up and present a clear and present danger to your allies in Europe, your ally in Israel, and to the United States itself? Or do you act? It's analogous to the same situation we were in for many years, uh, going back to uh the 2000s, where we watched uh sub a uh a um clandestine program emerge from North Korea and woke up one morning in 2006 to find out Korea had a nuclear weapon. That's not a particularly stabilizing event in uh in Asia, in the Asia Pacific region. So the question is when you see these things occurring, do you simply sit back and wait for them to take their natural course and become an enormous threat? Or do you act preemptively? Now I think the decision was pretty clear at that point. This administration decided that denial and preemption was a better policy going forward than deterrence. Incredibly complex issues, incredibly difficult issues, and certainly uh not the kind of issues that are grasps uh that you grapple with lightly. So that's that's basically my thought on what's happened here. You're kind of hitting my sweet spot, too. When I uh worked on my doctorate at Georgetown University, I uh actually studied the international laws of armed conflict and the moral uses of force. And my dissertation focused on the preemptive and preventive uses of armed force. So this kind of falls into my wheelhouse a bit based on based on those studies. But I think you're dealing with huge issues here. Uh, and the issues don't go away. These issues of nuclear proliferation have been with us since the first atomic weapons were dropped, and the Russians developed their own nuclear capability in 1949. So we've seen massive proliferation over the years in India, Pakistan, uh, North Korea, Israel, who's never admitted they have or do not have nuclear capability. They're just not saying, well, okay, that's an interesting posture to take, right? But we've also seen states that have turned away from their nuclear programs, South Africa, for example, it voluntarily destroyed their dismantled their nuclear program. Places like Iran and Iraq pursued clandestine programs, India and Pakistan pursued clandestine programs. You know, the nuclear genie, once it's out of the bottle, it's pretty tough to capture it. And the the administration, the current administration was looking at that history of proliferation when it looked at the Iranian problem. It was also very well advised that after many, many attempts to bring the International Atomic Energy Agency in and conduct inspections in Iran to true up what Iran was saying about, oh, it's for peaceful purposes only, they refused to allow inspectors in to certify that. So you're really, really dealing with an enormous problem here that would potentially lead to another nuclear armed state, which is frankly, I think, my personal opinion, the last thing in the world that we need is another nuclear armed state.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yeah, it uh it just takes one armed state to push the button. So every every additional country that has a nuke is just uh a very scary.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

It doesn't even take a nuclear armed state anymore. It takes a uh non-state actor gets a hold of an of a dirty bomb, a suitcase bomb. And then there's plenty, there's plenty of thrillers out there, as you well know, that I was gonna I was gonna I was gonna ask you um if you uh enjoy the movie uh Feel Safe. Fail safe, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, those those scenarios exist in faction because they're plausible. They're plausible. You know, it goes back to what I said earlier: the willing suspension of disbelief. You don't have to have terribly too much disbelief to believe in a terrorist actor getting a hold of a dirty bomb. And uh we know what terrorists are willing to do. 9-11 is proof. That was the big wake-up call. That was the big, big wake-up call of how suicidal terrorists can wreak havoc. And we then we saw it play out in places like Iraq with suicide bombers that attacked uh coalition forces. Uh, this is a this is a challenging and difficult world we live in. And the question you asked about Iran, it's challenging, it's difficult. I think under the circumstances, the decision that was made was probably prudent given the risks. Probably prudent given the risks.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

Um what are your thoughts on uh you know uh getting out of the war? Um, how do you think that's a how do you think that's going to be achieved? And and what at what point can can Trump uh declare victory and walk away and you know bring it back to the American people and say, look, we won. Trust me, we you know, this is a victory for us.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

You know, there's only four levers of national power, Jordan, as you all know: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. The more of those levers you pull, the more likely you are to succeed in achieving your goals. Now, currently, we've pulled the military and the economic lever. The blockade of Iran can be can be hugely punitive if we cut off their oil revenues with the blockade. We've pulled the military lever. We're trying to pull the diplomatic lever. The diplomatic lever, if we succeed, will be Iran giving up its nuclear ambitions for a weapon. And if they give up those nuclear ambitions, if they agree to routine inspections by the an international agency, not the United States, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, if they agree to those routine inspections, if they become a party, once again, to the non-proliferation treaty, if they become a party to the comprehensive test ban treaty, if they fall in line with all many other nations in the world who have agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons, they become treaty signatories, then you begin to deal with Iran on a completely different level than you're dealing with them right now. If they become signatories to international treaties, and we have confidence, we have absolute confidence that those are credible signatories to those treaties. I think Ronald Reagan was the man who said trust but verify. Same thing applies here. Trust but verify. By the way, that's a Russian proverb. Did you know that? Reagan, Reagan learned that Russian proverb for his meetings, yeah, for his meetings where he talked about nuclear disarmament. So and it's possible. It is possible to do disarmament. We've seen it happen. The START treaties accomplished that, the new START treaties accomplished that. We saw with the Budapest memorandum that bound Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and England to guarantee the sovereignty of Ukraine in return for the Ukraine having surrendered its nuclear weapons. And then those weapons were destroyed under the watchful eyes of a joint commission, American and Russian Commission. So all the nuclear weapons that were in one time in Ukraine, that were part when they were part of the Soviet Union, those were destroyed. And it was part of an agreement, an international agreement. The Budapest Memorandum provided for the destruction of those weapons. You those kinds of credible measures, those kinds of actions, I think is what serve us best in a difficult and dangerous world. I think that's what we're looking for in Iran. What what you asked the question, what constitutes victory? What constitutes victory is an Iran that becomes a part of the larger community of nations, abides by its international agreements, and turns away from the use of force to achieve its its its its goals of extermination of an entire people. I think that's what we would see as success.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

That keeps keeps seems to be popping up in the news every little bit. Pentagon ramps up planning of possible military operations in Cuba. What are your thoughts on now bringing a fight to Cuba, especially at a time like this where uh I mean before the war, a lot of a lot of uh weapons and money was was uh used uh for Israel and Gaza, um for Ukraine against Russia. And now obviously there's this Iran war going on. Um, do you think it's wise to be taking on another battle? Um it just it just seems like all chaos is breaking loose um around the world here.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Well, I I think you raise a very, very good point. Uh there is something called ways, ends, and means. Uh when we look at national strategy, we look at military strategy, we balance ways, ends, and means. Uh, you could very well be right. We could be exhausting our means, but there's there are other avenues, as I said earlier, that can be used to achieve national security objectives: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. Now, as you well know, Cuba has been has been really on the short end of uh economic sanctions for many, many years. Uh we had hoped, probably vainly, that those sanctions would moderate the influence of the Cuban government. Let's remember that for many years, Cuba was a net exporter of terrorism. The Cubans acted almost with impunity for many years in South and Central America and it tried to export Marxism, tried to export the revolution, and they really didn't care how many innocent people died in the process. We know that Cuba was for many years a client state of the Soviet Union, was supported by the Soviets, subsequently got more modest levels of support from Russia. And we also know that uh Cuba is uh becoming increasingly a client state of China. Allowing China to have a foothold in the Caribbean is probably not a long, a good long-term strategy for the United States. Allowing China to have a foothold there is probably perilous. Not probably, it is perilous. And whatever action is taken in Cuba in this point, I think has to be taken with a view to accomplishing three things. First, once again, bring community of nations, make them part of the international rule of law and make them not only follow it, but embrace it. Secondly, to pry Cuba away from communist China, and finally, to normalize in some way the relationships between Cuba and the United States to restore those relationships and create a sound economic footing for that country based on normalized trade relations, not just with the U.S. but with the rest of the international community.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

Fair enough. Fair enough. This is uh I would I would love to uh have you back, Ralph. I've really enjoyed this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Um well I'm I'm telling you, Jordan, this is uh this has been a tremendous opportunity, and I would welcome, frankly, a chance to sit down with you anytime. Uh you're you're well read, you're up to speed on uh on current events, you're certainly up to speed on international relations. Uh, this is uh this is the kind of conversation that I I really enjoy. And frankly, these are the kinds of conversations I think that not only your viewers, but viewers across the country and in Canada need to be exposed to. People need to subscribe and to listen into these kinds of programs where you have two people who can have a clear, cogent, and direct conversation. And without hyper hyperbolic expression, without anger, this is something we've lost in the current debates. We've lost the ability to sit down and that what's that famous expression? Come and let us sit down and reason together. Remember that one? We've lost the ability to do that. And when we don't do that, we are missing out on the opportunity to find common ground and reasonable paths forward. And those are that's what's so important going forward in the world today. There's so much separation based on ideological bent that we've lost, we're we talk past each other. We've lost the ability to talk to each other because we talk past each other. So these kinds of conversations that are based in uh reasonable discussion, uh good, solid questions, probing questions, insightful questions. I want to commend you for doing that. You've you've asked some excellent questions here. And those give those give people an opportunity to really chew on stuff, which is which I like to say, you give me it, give me an authentic problem to chew on, and I'm a happy guy. And the more I chew on it, the more we chew on it, the more the discussion evolves, the more likely we're we're likely to find light instead of heat. And so anytime you want, you want to call me up and you want to chat, I'm here for you, buddy. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 59:39

Thank you for having me. Oh, absolutely, and and I'll definitely be in touch. Uh, before you go, um, please take take as much time as you need to uh let everyone know where they can find you. If if you're on social media anywhere, where they can get your book, um, and anything else that you you want to any other messages you might want to get across.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

Well, I'll tell you that I'll tell you straight up that the best place to go and find my book is your local bookstore. Your local bookstore is standing on the forefront of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Please patronize your local bookstore. If you can't order through your bookstore, you can certainly go online to bookshop.org. You can go to Barnes Noble, and of course, you can go to Amazon. So any of those avenues will lead to you putting a copy of the counterfeit in your hand. And I would hope people would reach out after this discussion and place their orders. And how can you get a hold of me? You can get a hold of me. You can look at my author page on Amazon, and you can also get a hold of me through my publisher, Lost Coast Press, in beautiful Fort Bragg, California. So you can contact Lost Coast Press and you can get a hold of me that way. You can also contact your friend, Wes Seely, if people would like to get a hold of me through uh Wes Seely and PR by the book. That's the agency that hooked me up, thankfully, with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Absolutely. Yes. So shout out to Wes. Well, Ralph, thank you again. Um, good luck with the book. Um and congratulations um on another new uh venture in your life, um, uh of a very busy and very fruitful life.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Well, thank you, Jordan. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and I look forward to our next chat.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:28

Okay, all the best, Ralph. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

Take care.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

Bye-bye. All right, guys. Well, that was interesting. Um, I just I I thought I would bring him on to uh uh talk about his book, uh get to know him a little bit, and uh yeah, I think that was very nice. He's a very nice gentleman. Um, Ralph the Falco, everyone. Um, I will definitely have to bring him back and um yeah, have another conversation, maybe bring him on a panel show or something. Um, yeah, really, really nice guy. I really enjoyed that. Well, um, everyone, thanks for all the viewers, listeners, supporters, everyone out there. Please subscribe to the Divulgence Podcast on YouTube, Rumble, uh, Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts. Um, we are trying to uh get the numbers up, so please uh make sure to do that. Please share it with someone, family member, friend, whatever, co-worker. Um, yeah, I guess that's about it for now. Make sure to go to the Scott Horton Academy. Um, I've been um starting classes on that, and that's really interesting. So if you want a discount on that, go to Scott Horton Academy.com slash divulgence and um yeah, I think that's about it. Uh tomorrow we have William Ramsey on, and then uh we have what else do we have? Sorry. Um on the 20th, we have Courtney Turner coming back on the 23rd. We have um Austin Wade Picard coming back, and um maybe Brad Binkley might come back. I'm gonna ask him to come back for that show, and then uh the day after that we have um JJ Vance and Landon Humphreys coming back with Hadsburg. Um shoot, there was um, I think I missed one. I think I missed one. Uh oh, and on the 17th, uh we're doing a night show uh around 7th, uh around 8 p.m. Eastern. Uh Ryan Dawson is coming back. And I think that's uh it for the next uh week and a half or so, anyways. And uh, like I mentioned last time, I have a whole handful of shows that I'm booking for the rest of the month, so uh we'll get those out there. Um we got Bart Sabrell, Moon Man. Uh he's coming on soon. Um author of Moon Man, that is. Um who else? Uh shoot. I have so many. I just I just can't keep track of them. Um I just I've had a crazy couple of weeks. Um not that I want to get into it right now, but anyways, uh thank you everyone. Much appreciated. Uh enjoy the rest of your day. Be safe out there, and um, yeah, please support the show. And if you have any suggestions, send them on over. Thanks. Take care, guys. Bye.