The Pentagon is leaking to the press that America doesn't have the missiles to win a war over Taiwan — and the Iran war is the reason why. Meanwhile, a Special Forces master sergeant is looking at federal charges for a $400,000 Polymarket bet on the Maduro regime, and SecNav John Phelan spent an hour sitting in the West Wing lobby waiting to get fired.

To discuss, WarTalk is joined by Bryan Clark (former submariner, Hudson Institute), Justin Mc (former Green Beret, now in defense tech), Eric Robinson (former OSC NCT and 101st Airborne, now a lawyer), and Tony Stark of breaking beijing.

We discuss…

Why the Pentagon is leaking that the U.S. can't win a war over Taiwan — and what it means when the primes, INDOPACOM, and the deputy all scatter-shot the same message through the Washington Post
The case for scrapping the legacy munitions portfolio — burning LRASMs on the Iranian Navy, the GPS-jamming Excalibur problem, and why locking in seven-year buys of Cold War weapons sets us up for the next round of failures
A Special Forces master sergeant, $400,000, and the Polymarket Maduro bet — plus the hairdryer-next-to-a-thermometer scam at Charles de Gaulle, and why financial libertinism is "smoking in daycares"
The firing of SecNav John Phelan — the waffle-bar bundler, the Golden Fleet fantasy, and how Stephen Feinberg captured the submarine program office and knifed his own Navy secretary

A preview of the last two years of Trump II — DeSantis, Cotton, Chairman Rogers, and whether Congress flipping means more foreign adventurism or just acting secretaries all the way down

Song, "Phelan on the couch when it happened" https://suno.com/s/C0LmG53KdrT3evfe

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

‘Any other child would have died’: the miraculous survival of Nada Itrab

The Audio Long Read

Outro

The AI-powered Podcast Player