Ex-Defense Advisor Says U.S. Needs Multi-Year Munition Contracts

前国防顾问称美国需要多年期弹药合同 美国的国防资本限制与僵化的年度预算可能导致军方缺乏在对抗敌对政权的高强度冲突中获胜所需的武器储备。 本期节目探讨了美国面临的复杂军事与地缘政治挑战，重点聚焦伊朗突发事态、霍尔木兹海峡以及殉道驱动型意识形态构成的威胁。Darren Farber 分析了中国和伊朗等威权大国的结构性弱点与工业产能，重点指出了军队清洗和工业规模等系统性问题。讨论还评估了通过采购改革、多年期合同以及风投支持的“新型军工承包商”（neoprimes）来重建美国弹药库深度并适应商业技术创新的迫切需求。最后，对话探讨了美国外交政策向保护国家利益方向的演进，以及威胁现代国防决策的新兴网络和AI数据投毒安全漏洞。 军事胜利的定义取决于明确的政治目标，而非仅仅是重新开放霍尔木兹海峡等单一作战指标；若仅恢复原有通道，其长远战略价值将难以证明其代价。 (0:00) 伊朗政权融合马克思主义与殉道文化的极端意识形态，将自我牺牲视作精神胜利，极大削弱了西方传统威慑手段的效力；同时伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队（IRGC）掌控了约50%的经济，使内部缺乏可行的政治替代力量来实现政权更迭。 (5:00) 美国国防战略正在艾森豪威尔的极限威慑与泰勒的灵活反应学说间寻求平衡，但持续维持灵活军力必须解决弹药库深度不足的问题，并警惕中国庞大工业制造产能对其体制脆弱性的弥补。 (13:27) 国会预算拖延导致的持续决议案（CR）依法禁止启动“新项目”，严重阻碍了国防技术的快速迭代；必须推行多年期采购授权，为新型防务科技公司（Neo-Primes）提供稳定的资本回报预期与实战检验机会。 (25:28) 美国外交战略正从二战及伊拉克时期的“按自身形象重塑”转向“按自身利益重塑”；此外，现代战争决策系统正面临敌方蓄意在公开数据源中投毒、使军事AI模型陷入严重误判的全新威胁。 (40:53)

Darren Farber of Albion River argues that while the United States maintains unmatched conventional military capabilities, its strategic deterrence is constrained by an asymmetric pain tolerance against ideological adversaries, domestic procurement gridlock, and an industrial magazine depth deficit. Countering pacing challenges from Iran and China requires pairing defined political objectives with structural acquisition reforms and the integration of commercial defense technology. Ideological Asymmetry and Deterrence in Iran (0:00) Farber explains that defining victory against Iran requires establishing clear political outcomes—such as securing commercial transit in the Strait of Hormuz—rather than merely executing Pentagon fragmentary orders (FRAGO) to degrade military assets. Deterrence is complicated by the ideological influence of Ali Shariati’s "red Shiaism," a fusion of Marxism and martyrdom where extreme suffering and self-sacrifice are celebrated as spiritual victory, blunting conventional Western deterrence. While 85% to 90% of the Iranian public may desire regime change, Farber notes that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls roughly 50% of the economy and monopolizes state weaponry, exfiltrating billions into European luxury assets while ordinary citizens face $7 ATM limits. Regionally, the U.S. operates largely alone in securing international shipping, though Gulf partners like the UAE have demonstrated resolve, even leaving OPEC to project military force. Farber cautions that fully ending the maritime blockade and enforcing deterrence long-term will require deeper magazine depth and the potential commitment of amphibious ground forces. China's Institutional Distrust Versus Industrial Capacity (17:12) Authoritarian regimes, Farber observes, appear structurally formidable until their sudden collapse, drawing a parallel to the unexpected dissolution of the Soviet Union. China exhibits profound institutional fragility stemming from systemic distrust: senior military leadership has been purged three to four times in three years, missile units suffer from widespread corruption, and elite CCP officials routinely keep relatives in Western nations as an exit strategy. Regarding Taiwan, Farber suggests Beijing may prioritize political accommodation through Taiwanese electoral outcomes, such as a Kuomintang (KMT) victory, over an amphibious invasion that would force rapid regional militarization by Japan. However, China’s primary operational advantage remains its vast manufacturing output and magazine depth. The central strategic tension for American planners is whether qualitative, high-trust U.S. operational superiority can withstand China's mass industrial production without an aggressive American effort to rebuild domestic munitions stockpiles. Strategic Doctrine and Procurement Bottlenecks (13:27) Contrasting Dwight D. Eisenhower’s maximalist "Massive Retaliation" with General Maxwell Taylor’s "Flexible Response," Farber argues that modern deterrence requires middle-tier conventional tools, such as Tomahawk cruise missiles and HIMARS. However, without explicit political boundaries, flexible power risks gradual mission creep and domestic fatigue. Applying this power is further hindered by Pentagon acquisition rules: frequent reliance on Continuing Resolutions (CRs) legally prohibits "new start" programs, freezing private capital and delaying modernization. Farber stresses that modern warfare has shifted from the inaccurate mass of World War II to hyper-precise but cost-prohibitive systems with inadequate stockpiles. To restore industrial depth, he argues Congress must transition from single-year allocations to multi-year procurement authorities for critical munitions like 155mm shells and Tomahawks, giving defense manufacturers the long-term contract visibility needed to scale production. Commercial Innovation, Neoprimes, and Cognitive Warfare (33:02) The conflict in Ukraine illustrates how cheap commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and garage-built strike drones iterate faster than standard military cycles, altering attrition economics. While venture-backed "neoprimes" are deploying software-driven signals intelligence and targeting tools, physical autonomous hardware faces longer adoption timelines within joint service doctrine. Farber argues that accelerating innovation requires Congress to redirect research funding away from rigid Federal Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) toward commercial entrants, advocating for focused investments approaching the scale of the Manhattan Project (around 1% of GDP). Farber also warns that open societies remain vulnerable to cognitive warfare and data poisoning. Adversaries can plant fabricated data on public repositories to corrupt the baseline inputs of military AI decision engines, creating "towers of Babel." Consequently, U.S. foreign policy has shifted from attempting to reshape foreign nations "in our image" to restructuring environments strictly "in our interest," as seen in recent structural shifts in Venezuela. Farber concludes that American strategic success hinges on reconciling rapid commercial innovation and multi-year industrial scale with realistic, bounded political objectives. An unresolved challenge remains whether democratic systems can maintain the long-term domestic political will required to outlast autocratic adversaries unconstrained by public opinion.

Albion River管理合伙人Darren Farber指出，美国在应对伊朗与中国等对手时面临意识形态与工业产能的双重挑战；西方必须走出采购体制与威慑学说的局限，通过采纳新型国防科技企业与多年期采购来重塑弹药库存深度，并以自身利益而非强行改造他国为导向来推进地缘战略。 殉道意识形态与非常规威慑的局限 (0:00) Farber认为，现代威慑理论在面对将毁灭视为胜利的极端意识形态时往往失效。在部分什叶派体系中，Ali Shariati将马克思主义与殉道精神融合成“红色什叶派”哲学，视极端自我牺牲和内部苦难为精神胜利的明证。这与二战时期的日本神风特攻队和当下的加沙冲突类似，即便常规军事技术存在代际差距，对手依然能够依靠视毁灭为胜利的世界观持续行动。Farber指出，美国五角大楼的内部断片命令（FRAGO）虽然致力于削弱伊朗军事能力，但单纯军事施压难以直接达成政治胜利。 在伊朗内部，政权体制呈现出脆弱与强权并存的特征。Farber引用学者Abbas Milani的研究指出，伊斯兰革命卫队（IRGC）控制着伊朗约50%的经济，政权高层将数十亿美元资产转移至西欧购买伦敦房产，而普通民众在银行倒闭潮后每日ATM提款限额仅剩7美元。即便85%至90%的伊朗民众渴望改变，但在缺乏外部组织依托且反对派被定罪的情况下，反抗极难自发成型。Farber进一步推测，哈梅内伊甚至可能通过故意暴露自身以促成殉道，从而解决内部接班人危机。 战略学说演进与霍尔木兹海峡困境 (12:16) 在军事学说层面，Farber对比了艾森豪威尔的“大规模报复”与马克斯韦尔·泰勒的“灵活反应”。艾森豪威尔依赖核威慑来阻止所有主要冲突，但会导致对低烈度挑衅束手无策的威慑缺口；泰勒主张的对等灵活威慑避免了全有或全无的核灾难，但在缺乏清晰政治目标时容易陷入越战式的渐进升级。类似HIMARS和战斧巡航导弹等精确打击工具虽然提供了中间梯度的威慑手段，但若缺乏明确的政治底线，同样会导致战略任务漂移与公众支持流失。 这一矛盾在霍尔木兹海峡危机中暴露无遗。目前西方盟友普遍作壁上观，迫使美军单方面承担商船护航任务。除阿联酋退出OPEC并表态愿动用军事力量外，多数国家缺乏介入意愿。Farber指出，彻底解除封锁需要更深厚的弹药储备与两栖地面部队部署，而美国公众对预防性战争的厌恶可能进一步削弱长期行动的政治意愿。 威权体制的脆弱性与中国工业储备差距 (17:12) Farber分析指出，中国等威权政权呈现出内部高度互不信任与对外工业动员力极强的双重属性。威权体制缺乏基于被统治者同意的合法性基础，因而极易引发内部清洗与偏执；中国高级军事指挥官在过去三年内轮换了三到四次，腐败和缺乏联合作战能力削弱了军队战斗力。然而，中国庞大的国防工业产能和深厚的弹药库存在很大程度上抵消了这些制度缺陷。美军虽然在战备素质、人员训练和精确打击上具备优势，但在实际武器库存规模上面临巨大赤字。 为了遏制此类对手，美国情报系统正利用威权体制内部的偏执心理进行渗透，并依托高层亲属在西方生活的现实将其作为突破口。但在台海态势上，Farber认为北京可能更倾向于通过台湾内部选举产生妥协型政权（如国民党执政）以达成政治统合，从而避免高风险的两栖登陆；但若直接军事封锁爆发，将迅速迫使日本等区域国家扩大战备。 国防采购瓶颈与新一代军工企业的演进 (33:02) 美国解决弹药库存赤字的最大阻碍在于国会的采购机制。长期的单年预算拨付以及频繁出现的持续决议案（CRs），依法禁止了军方在新预算通过前启动任何“新起步”（New Start）研发项目，严重阻碍了技术迭代与民间资本进入。Farber强调，国会必须加速向关键弹药（如155毫米炮弹与战斧导弹）发放多年期采购合同，为民营资本建立可预测的商业退出路径，防止军工初创企业在资本链断裂中倒闭。 与此同时，以软件算法、自主无人潜水器和无人机为代表的国防科技新创企业（Neo-primes）正试图打破传统军工巨头的垄断。乌克兰战争证明，低成本商用现成供应链与快速车库化迭代能颠覆战场消耗比。然而，新创硬件进入美军标准序列仍需漫长的联合条令验证，目前仅信号情报与瞄准网络等软件系统得到了实质性实战应用。Farber建议，国会应借鉴曼哈顿工程集中调配GDP约1%规模的经验，将联邦资助研发中心（FFRDCs）的部分资金向风投支持的新型企业倾斜，以廉价精确制导技术拉低弹药成本，重构美军的物理规模优势。 外交范式重构与AI数据投毒隐患 (40:53) Farber指出，过去25年间美国外交政策经历了深刻转变，从伊拉克战争时期试图“按自身形象重塑他国”的民主输出，转向如今“按自身利益重构外部环境”。近期在委内瑞拉采取的结构性调整便是例证，美国在没有发起全面政权改造的前提下使当地权力格局转向符合美国国家利益，促成了此前无法想象的经贸接触。 在未来战场与战略决策中，Farber提示了人工智能模型面临的“数据投毒”安全盲区。近期实验显示，将虚假的非同行评议医学论文上传至公共学术知识库后，大型语言模型在数月内即将其吸纳并向用户诊断虚构疾病。Farber警告，若敌对势力将虚假数据注入军事AI决策闭环的基础数据源，自动化指挥系统可能沦为彻底的“巴别塔”，在冲突中引发灾难性的战略误判。 Farber的核心论点在于，美国依然拥有全球最顶尖的作战部队与宪政韧性，但正受到国内预算程序迟滞、弹药规模不足以及认知领域渗透的制约。西方若要在不陷入全面战争的前提下应对长期威胁，必须在战略目标上保持务实克制，并在技术采办上赋予新一代国防企业多年期的制度空间。

## Background 本期节目由投资商业播客平台 Colossus 旗下的旗舰栏目《Invest Like the Best》于 2026 年 5 月 26 日发布，由主持人帕特里克·奥肖内西（Patrick O'Shaughnessy）主持。访谈录制于一场突发的伊朗军事冲突期间，特邀曾任美国国防部特别顾问、现任防务投资机构 Albion River 管理合伙人的达伦·法伯（Darren Farber）重返节目。本期核心聚焦于在伊朗战区中“何谓胜利”、美国国防工业基地的弹药储备深度（magazine depth）、乌克兰战场的经验教训，以及新兴国防军工企业（neo-primes）在国会与采购体制层面面临的现实诉求。 ## TL;DR 对话深入探讨了西方民主政体与奉行“红色什叶派”殉道意识形态政权之间的不对称博弈，明确指出在霍尔木兹海峡危机中，打破封锁与瘫痪对手武装重组能力才是务实的战略胜利。达伦·法伯对比了艾森豪威尔的大规模报复与泰勒的灵活反应战略，强调美军若要填补印太及中东的威慑缺口，必须通过制度改革破除国会单年期“持续决议案”（CR）对弹药储备深度的枷锁。结合乌克兰战场民用低成本硬件的飞速迭代，法伯分析了新型国防科技企业跨越联合作战条令壁垒的路径，并剖析了大国竞争中专制体制的内在合法性危机与 AI 时代认知战的深层风险。 ## Atmosphere & style 整场对谈洋溢着冷峻、直率的战略现实主义色彩，兼具五角大楼体制内幕的高维洞察与国防投资界的一线敏锐度。嘉宾发言毫无官僚腔调，在冷静解构残酷地缘博弈与殉道文化的同时，始终贯穿着对美国制度抗脆弱性的坚定自信与对官僚采办死结的尖锐针砭。两人交流节奏紧凑、思维交锋极为密集，在冷战历史镜像、现代战场技术与文明冲突的终局追问之间不断穿梭，带给听众一种置身于大国博弈指挥中枢般的严肃与紧迫感。 ## Bulletin - `10:00` 针对当前伊朗战局，达伦·法伯指出战略胜利的核心指标在于确保霍尔木兹海峡畅通，并彻底重创伊朗军事力量以阻止其依靠石油收入迅速重整供应链。 - `20:05` 美军正推动常规弹药多年期采购授权（Multi-year Authorities），以打破国会常态化临时决议案（CR）中“严禁启动新项目”的掣肘，稳定工业界长期扩产预期并充实弹药储备深度（magazine depth）。 - `29:30` 乌克兰战场经验表明，消费级民用商业供应链正以极其廉价的成本推动无人机在三年内完成约50次迭代，使低成本可消耗型武器（attritable systems）成为现代不对称消耗战的核心支柱。 - `33:27` 新型防务初创企业（Neoprimes）面临将前沿单点技术融入全军极其严格的“联合作战条令”（Joint Doctrine）的制度壁垒，同时急需国会提供跨年度采购授权以避免在风险资本冷却后陷入资金链断裂。 ## Key takeaways - `02:59` 地缘冲突中的“胜利”由政治目标定义，面对将极端受难升华为精神胜利的“红色什叶派”殉道意识形态，西方民主政体在痛感耐受度与道德底线上面临巨大不对称。 - `05:00` 伊朗政权更迭极度困难的根本症结在于缺乏组织化且合法的替代权力依托（defect to），革命卫队牢牢垄断了国家武力与超半数经济命脉。 - `13:27` 现代国防威慑必须融合艾森豪威尔的终极核威慑与泰勒将军的“灵活反应”常规手段，但常规梯次升级若无清晰坚定的政治目标，极易导致战事陷入泥潭。 - `17:12` 美军在训练水平与全球武力投送能力上依然位居全球首位，而对手即便拥有庞大工业弹药产能，但高压清洗与信任赤字严重削弱了其跨兵种联合作战能力。 - `21:36` 专制体制缺乏底层法理合法性与统治阶层的内在猜忌，为秘密情报系统提供了战略运作空间，其精英阶层在面临不安全感时往往将西方视为后路。 - `25:28` 开放社会的言论自由机制正被对手通过社交媒体与认知战反向利用，但美国三权分立与参议院架构等制度“刹车阀”提供了极强的抗脆弱性。 - `27:31` 国会每年频繁通过的持续决议案（CR）明令禁止启动新项目，附带的“视资金情况而定”条款严重阻碍了私营资本对军火库扩产的长期投资。 - `36:58` 二战美军依靠全域地毯式轰炸拥有绝对规模（Mass）但精度低下，当今美军过分追求高精尖导致单价畸高与产能枯竭，未来需用低成本商用软硬件配合高精算法找回规模化产能。 - `31:11` 台海局势中武力登陆代价极其高昂，北京更可能倾向于通过政治博弈与国民党胜选等和平手段达成目标，但领导层的历史终局执念仍可能在时间窗口关闭时激化冒险倾向。 - `41:40` 美国对外干预范式正经历从“按自身形象重塑外部（如伊拉克战争）”向“按现实利益重塑外部（如委内瑞拉模式）”的转变，但世俗利益计算面对宗教殉道文化时依然受限。 - `44:00` 未经验证的虚假学术数据对公域网络和大模型的认知污染，若深度嵌入军方指挥决策闭环，可能从源头导致战略预警失真，引发“现代巴别塔”式的认知崩塌危机。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### `00:00` 播客开场与对谈背景 节目开篇介绍了赞助商 Ramp（帮助企业节省开支的财务自动化平台）、Rogo 推出的专属金融智能体 Felix（可自动将提示词转化为符合机构标准的交付成果、财务模型与研究报告）以及 WorkOS（为 B2B 及 AI 原生企业提供单点登录与企业级安全基础设施）。随后，主持人帕特里克·奥肖内西（Patrick O'Shaughnessy）引出了本期嘉宾达伦·法伯（Darren Farber）——国防风投机构 Albion River 的管理合伙人，此前曾担任美国国防部副部级特别顾问。 本次对谈录制于一场伊朗突发军事冲突（Iranian contingency）期间。世界正经历深刻的地缘政治转向：过去宏观叙事普遍认为美国正在从世界舞台后撤、放弃“世界警察”角色，但现实却急转直下。两人重点探讨了在伊朗战区中“何谓胜利”、美国国防工业基地的弹药储备深度（magazine depth）、乌克兰战场的经验教训，以及新兴国防军工企业（neo-primes）在国会与体制层面面临的挑战。 --- ### `02:59` 何谓胜利：霍尔木兹海峡与“红色什叶派”的殉道逻辑 在定义地缘政治冲突的结局时，达伦强调“胜利”本质上是由政治目标所定义的。在这场危机爆发前，霍尔木兹海峡处于通航状态；如果美军费尽周折最终仅仅是恢复海峡通航，那么从战略产出比来看是否值得深思。虽然五角大楼通过分段作战命令（FRAGO）大幅削弱摧毁了伊朗的军事能力，但霍尔木兹海峡作为全球经济咽喉在事实上陷入停滞，而全球商业与能源流动必须依赖其重新开放。与此同时，美国国内虽然面临高通胀，但市场依然强劲运转。然而国际上的传统偏见始终认为：与对手相比，民主国家的痛感耐受度要低得多。 更为复杂的根源在于意识形态。在什叶派穆斯林世界的部分地区，学者阿里·沙里亚蒂（Ali Shariati）将马克思主义斗争理论与伊斯兰殉道精神融合，形成了所谓的“红色什叶派”（Red Shi'ism）。这种意识形态将极端自我毁灭和殉道升华为“获胜”与“精神升华”的终极证明。只要将自身带入毁灭的边缘而未屈服，在他们的世界观中就是胜利。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 现代非对称战区意识形态对抗结构 accDescr: 对比西方民主政体与基于红色什叶派殉道文化政权在目标与承受阈值上的巨大差异 subgraph Western["西方民主政体决策框架"] W1["政治目标驱动<br/>（如打通霍尔木兹海峡）"] --> W2["军事行动与损耗削弱"] W2 --> W3["道德底线与民意掣肘<br/>（无法无限承受残酷暴力）"] end subgraph Adversary["红色什叶派与威权极权框架"] A1["沙里亚蒂意识形态<br/>（马克思主义与殉道融合）"] --> A2["承受极端苦难与肉体毁灭"] A2 --> A3["殉道即胜利<br/>（将自我毁灭视为升华）"] end W3 -.->|"不对称痛感耐受差"| A3 ``` 正如在加沙地带所发生的，尽管加沙在物质和地理层面上几乎被彻底夷为平地，哈马斯的军事技术能力与以色列国防军相比宛如“烤面包机对抗太阳”，但残留的哈马斯残余势力在其思想体系里依然自认是胜利者。面对这种狂热，民主国家陷入了两难：在本土（如纽约）并未感受到生存性灭顶之灾的前提下，为了达成既定政治目标，民主政体愿意在多大程度上牺牲自身珍视的道德纯洁性？ - **经济咽喉与通航**：冲突导致霍尔木兹海峡处于实际瘫痪状态，暴露出全球商业航道极易受到区域代理人和不对称打击的封锁威胁。 - **红色什叶派思想体系**：由思想家阿里·沙里亚蒂系统化，主张彻底的内部控制与极致的自我牺牲，将殉道直接等同于超越性的政治胜利。 - **痛感承受力不对称**：西方社会计算胜负的标准是经济代价、伤亡数字与基础设施完好度，而对手的计算标准是意识形态存续与殉难证明。 --- ### `05:00` 泰勒与艾森豪威尔学说、日本先例与伊朗政权的结构悖论 在战略应对上，达伦对比了麦克斯韦尔·泰勒（Maxwell Taylor）提倡的“灵活反应”（flexible response）即比例对等反击，与艾森豪威尔时代的“大规模报复战略”（Massive Retaliation）。历史学家斯蒂芬·科特金（Stephen Kotkin）曾言：“如果不了解历史，所有的事看起来都是史无前例的。”二战时期的旧日本帝国同样将殉道文化刻入了军事体制，不仅组织神风特攻队，在冲绳战役中甚至将士兵锁在树上死战到底。美军投下第一颗原子弹造成空前毁灭后，日本军部依然拒绝投降并准备战至最后一人，直到裕仁天皇打破僵局才宣告停战。如果当年天皇没有介入，整个民族将走向自我献祭。类似地，二战盟军对德累斯顿的毁灭性大轰炸造成数万人丧生，其背后的残酷逻辑也是迫使狂热政权意识到自己彻底战败。面对狂热主义，常规力量往往不得不跨越极高的道德阈值。 对于伊朗而言，在殉道文化笼罩下推动政权更迭极其困难。根本障碍在于“叛离至何处”（defect to）：社会民众可以选择脱离现有体制（defect from），但如果内部缺乏一个合法且组织化的替代权力架构（defect to），即便 85% 到 90% 的民众渴望政权更迭也无济于事。现实中，伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队（IRGC）掌控着国家超过一半的经济命脉和全部武力垄断权，根本无法被轻易撼动。 与此同时，正如学者阿巴斯·米拉尼（Abbas Milani）翔实论述的那样，革命卫队高层实质上是一个黑手党式的腐败集团：普通伊朗民众在自动取款机（ATM）单日只能取出区区 7 美元现金，国内第二大银行在本次军事危机前两个月刚刚倒闭；而统治权贵却向西欧转移了数十亿美元财富，在伦敦购置顶级豪宅和奢华庄园。 独裁政权呈现出极其矛盾的“二元一体”特质： 1. **极度脆弱**：统治缺乏正统性，从未经历开放政治竞争的考验，唯一的生存条件是只要压倒被其定为非法的反对力量即可； 2. **极度坚固**：牢牢霸占着国家机器、财政分配与武装暴力手段。 甚至有越来越多迹象表明，伊朗最高领袖哈梅内伊（Ayatollah Ali Khamenei）此前身患重病、接班机制面临内部倾轧，他选择暴露于地面并成为被定点清除的目标，某种程度上正是为了借由自身殉道来一劳永逸地化解政权危机，这与沙里亚蒂的红色什叶派叙事完全契合。 最后，达伦指出，面对对手将宗教与狂热融合的长远运作，以色列与西方阵营在“正面政治宣传”（Positive Propaganda / 政治叙事营销）上的投入严重不足。对手在这方面的巨额投入收效显著——早在《奥斯陆协议》签订后，联邦调查局（FBI）就曾在费城一家酒店通过激光监听麦克风，破获了哈马斯如何策划通过长期渗透来影响和拉拢美国大学校园的早期布局。 ### `10:00` 长期认知战与霍尔木兹海峡的现实困境 达伦·法伯（Darren Farber）回顾了一段历史背景：当哈马斯发现自己被和平进程边缘化、彻底失去政治依附后，联邦调查局（FBI）曾截获并记录下他们的一次关键秘密会议。在这次谈话中，穆斯林兄弟会与哈马斯明确制定了一项长达 20 年的长期战略——系统性渗透西方大学体系、学术机构与教学大纲，旨在用一代人的时间彻底重塑西方舆论。法伯援引杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）的名言指出：“只要你制定一个七年规划，你就赢了，因为绝大多数人都会半途而废”；而这些人执行了一个整整 20 年的规划，并且大获全胜。他强调，不能把当前西方校园对激进势力的支持天真地视为某种出于道德觉醒的自发形成，这掩盖了对手高超的战略心机。其本质是一群自愿为残酷压迫本国人民、践踏基本人权的极权政体辩护的西方拥趸，而这正是对手精心设计并精准落地的结果。 谈及当下正在发生的伊朗危机，法伯批评本届政府在通俗语境中不断游移“何谓胜利”的标准。在他看来，战略胜利的标准极其清晰：只要确保霍尔木兹海峡畅通，同时重创伊朗的军事能力，使其无法在短期内利用石油利润快速重组武装力量，那就是胜利；反之，若霍尔木兹海峡被封锁，且伊朗能够迅速重建其输出恐怖主义的供应链网络，则无论过程如何都属于战略失败。 当主持人问及霍尔木兹海峡的现状与各方动向时，法伯直言现实非常残酷：除了美军、伊朗军队以及悬挂外国旗帜的商船外，国际社会绝大多数国家实际上只是在袖手旁观，唯一的例外是海湾阿拉伯国家。海湾国家展现出远超外界预期的作战意志：阿拉伯联合酋长国（UAE）不仅退出了欧佩克（OPEC），还明确宣布将动用本国军队直接参与武力投送。这些海湾盟友目前最大的担忧，恰恰是美国会因承受不住短期经济阵痛而丧失战斗意志。法伯警告，若要打破伊朗的封锁，美军必须具备更深厚的弹药储备（magazine depth）并在该地区集结更大规模的部队，甚至不得不部署两栖部队实施岸上投送，而这无疑是一场重大的军事升级。 --- ### `13:27` 艾森豪威尔与泰勒：两种军事战略学派的交锋 两栖部队登陆的升级风险，将讨论引向了冷战时期两位战略大师的思想碰撞——德怀特·艾森豪威尔（Dwight D. Eisenhower）与马克斯韦尔·泰勒（Maxwell Taylor）将军： ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 两种军事威慑学派的理论对比 accDescr: 对比艾森豪威尔的极限制胜论与马克斯韦尔·泰勒的灵活反应战略及其各自的局限性 subgraph IKE["艾森豪威尔战略（极限制胜 / 大规模报复）"] A["核心依托：超级核武器"] --> B["机制：极限制慑（Maximal Deterrence）"] B --> C["弊端：非黑即白，缺乏应对低烈度冲突的手段"] end subgraph TAYLOR["泰勒战略（灵活反应 / 比例威慑）"] D["核心依托：常规武器与梯度升级"] --> E["机制：比例武力（Proportional Force）"] E --> F["弊端：升级阶梯难控，缺乏清晰政治目标易泥足深陷"] end IKE -.->|两者必须结合| SYN["现代美军体系：既要终极核盾牌，又要充足弹药库与灵活投送"] TAYLOR -.->|两者必须结合| SYN ``` 作为肯尼迪时期的参谋长联席会议主席，泰勒将军是一位卓越的战术家，但他主张的“灵活反应”战略也被广泛视为导致越南战争步步升级的理论根源。相比之下，艾森豪威尔在著名的告别演说中警告“军工复合体”，其底气来自于超级核武器的存在——既然核弹具备终极的极限威慑力（Maximal Deterrence），任何常规升级最终都会导向核按钮，何必耗费巨大的国民精力去堆砌昂贵而冗余的比例对抗能力？而泰勒则敏锐地指出了艾森豪威尔模式的“威慑缺口”（Deterrence Gap）：当对手实施微小的越界或擦边球式侵犯时，美国难道真敢贸然发动核战争？ 法伯指出，两种理论在现实中必须相互补充。如果只采纳艾森豪威尔的极限威慑理论，国家在每一次冲突中就只剩下“按下核按钮”或“忍气吞声”两种极端选择，世界将陷入极其危险的境地；而泰勒的优势在于通过战斧巡航导弹（Tomahawk）、海马斯火箭炮（HIMARS）等现代常规武器，为决策者提供了梯度分明的应对工具，这也是今天美军格外强调弹药储备深度的底层逻辑。然而，灵活反应模式的最大陷阱在于升级的不可控性——如果没有极其坚定、清晰的内部政治目标，战争就会无休止拖延，最终导致国会反水、预算蒸发、民意流失以及行政当局失去掌舵能力。 --- ### `17:12` 美军真实战力评估与中方的致命短板 面对主持人关于“今日美军实力相比你在五角大楼任职时如何”的提问，法伯给出了极其坚定的正面评价：“我们依然是世界最强的，老兄（We're the best, man）。”他强调，美军本质上是一个庞大的政府机构，不得不受制于国会一年一度的拨款周期、官僚层级的走马换将以及繁文缛节，但就单兵训练水平、装备能力以及全球武力投送能力而言，美军依然是人类历史上所见过的最强作战力量，理应获得极高的评分。 法伯特别引述了知名中国研究历史学家迪凯特（Frank Dikötter，冯客）的理论，剖析美中竞争中对手“既强大又脆弱”的双重特征： - **体制合法性与高层清洗**：专制体制底层缺乏合法性，权力结构内部充满了不安全感与极度猜忌。比如与最高领导人有发小交情的军方高层人物神秘消失，三年内军队最高层人事更迭三到四次，火箭军高层更是深陷腐败泥潭。 - **信任赤字阻碍联合作战**：现代联合作战极度依赖跨兵种的高信任度与部队自身的团队凝聚力（esprit de corps）。在一个“人人都担心后脑勺随时挨上一枪”的高压猜忌环境中，根本无法建立起高信任的军事文化。 - **工业弹药库的硬实力挑战**：尽管体制缺陷显著，但中国在工业层面的弹药储备深度极为庞大。当前的战略核心博弈，正在于其庞大的工业弹药产能是否能够压倒并弥补其制度层面的致命短板。而这也正是美国当前竭尽全力重启本土工业化、扩充常规弹药库深度的根本原因。 ### `20:05` 弹药储备深度与威慑鸿沟：从单年预算到多年期采办 主持人提到 Palantir 首席技术官 Shyam Sankar 所著的《动员》（*Mobilize*）一书，核心探讨的正是如何提升美军的“弹药库储备深度”（magazine depth）。当被问及美国在这方面的实际表现与推进状态时，Darren Farber 直言民主体制与独裁体制在此类任务上面临截然不同的制度约束。在专制独裁政权下，抓弹药深度是官员唯一的硬性死任务，“如果不去建立储备深度，你的下场就是丢掉性命”，这种极端的强制执行机制简单直接。而在美国民主体制中，军费决策必须在多重力量之间权衡：工业界会算计项目是否具有长期盈利性、订单是否具备持续性，而国会传统上习惯于按年度拨付单年期资金。这种碎片化的拨款逻辑严重削弱了军工供应链的扩产信心。 令人欣慰的是，目前国会正在推进针对常规弹药（ordnance）的多年期采购合同（multi-year procurement contracts），这在五角大楼采办历史上属于突破性的先例。Farber 指出，调整采购制度架构以充实弹药储备深度已是当务之急，因为美国必须以更快的速度填补“威慑差距”（deterrence gap）。当前在印太与东南亚方向，与美国签有双边防务协议的国家（例如菲律宾）正频繁遭遇灰色地带的越界侵扰，美军必须具备充足的现役弹药基数以慑止边缘冲突。尽管与西方其他盟友相比，美国的军工产能依然最为强大，但对手特殊的政治体制赋予了他们将局势推向悬崖边缘的能力。 - **多年度军火采购授权**：五角大楼正在打破传统的单年期拨款限制，首次尝试为弹药类消耗品建立跨年度采购机制，以稳定工业界长期扩产预期。 - **填补威慑缺口**：美军弹药储备的扩充直接挂钩印太盟友防务承诺的兑现，旨在遏制对手在菲律宾周边海域等热点地区的低烈度侵蚀。 --- ### `21:36` 极权体制的内在脆弱性：情报渗透与合法性危机 尽管对手在动员规模上具备体制优势，但 Farber 强调，其根本劣势在于政治合法性的彻底缺失。这种缺乏合法性的垄断权力反而为美国秘密情报部门（clandestine services）提供了巨大的运作空间。面对主持人的追问，Farber 透露，美方情报系统近年在渗透与瓦解对方高层政治生态上取得了突破性进展。极权体制的核心弱点在于最高统治者挥之不去的偏执与猜忌：“习近平每天早上醒来都在想，他的政治局常委里到底谁是站在我们这边的，谁又是效忠他的；他每天都在盘算是不是该把某个人清洗掉。”这种源于权力垄断的极度不安全感，正是美方的最大战略优势。 这种秘密情报能力的恢复来之不易。过去美方在华情报网络曾因多名关键线人被捕而遭受重创，但如今已通过极其沉稳、日复一日的专业建构实现了全面重建。Farber 描绘道，美国情报官员每天带上午餐便当开车去各联邦机构上班，常年无休地钻研如何精准渗透并削弱对手的政治结构。这种突破之所以必然发生，是因为其高层体系存在着无法消除的内在矛盾： > “中共中央政治局常委中的每一个人，不论隔了多少代亲属关系，总有亲戚生活在美国，在那儿经营着小生意、日子过得很体面、能够自由地说想说的话，并真切地享受着自由生活。我们绝不能忘记是什么让我们独一无二——即使对于那些整天担心自己失势失宠的常委要员来说，美国才是他们心底唯一的‘最终逃生点’（bug out point）。” --- ### `23:45` 历史镜像：为何中国与伊朗政权注定走向崩溃 Farber 做出了极具震撼力的战略预判：“我相信在我们有生之年，中国将会倒台；我相信在我们有生之年，伊朗政权也将会倒台。”关于中国政权倒台后将呈现何种形态，他认为未来这片土地的治理模式很可能会走向台湾现行的民主宪政模式。他回顾了冷战时期的苏联记忆：在数代人的认知中，苏联曾被视为一个拥有庞大工业和顶尖技术实力的不可撼动的庞然大物；然而，尽管在苏联解体前两周五角大楼内部还在传阅评估其力量依旧无比强大的战略文件，这个庞然大物却在一夜之间骤然崩溃。 归根结底，根本原因在于其统治架构的法理基础是彻底腐烂与虚妄的。一个通过宪法条文宣称某特定集团永久垄断权力的体系，在人性与文明常理面前注定无法持久。历史的未知数仅在于这种倒行逆施是维持五十年还是一百年。Farber 坚信，人类追求自由的自然秩序与内在法则最终必将取得胜利。然而在此之前，美国面临的严峻考验在于：极权对手正在极度娴熟地反向利用西方世界的自由机制作为攻击武器。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 极权体制看似强大与骤然崩溃的内在逻辑 accDescr: 对比表面动员质量与底层合法性缺失，展示极权体制走向苏联式解体的演变路径。 subgraph Surface["表象：威权动员与技术规模"] A["庞大的人口与制造业规模"] --> B["自上而下的绝对强制动员"] B --> C["对外展现铁板一块的强权形象"] end subgraph Reality["实质：底层合法性缺失与内在猜忌"] D["权力永久垄断，缺乏宪政合法性"] --> E["最高统治层内生猜忌与清洗常态化"] E --> F["高层精英向往海外自由，寻求后路资产"] F --> G["秘密情报系统精准渗透与腐蚀"] end Surface -. "掩盖危机".-> Reality C --> H["历史拐点：骤然脆断（如苏联解体前夕）"] G --> H H --> I["回归普世自由与宪政秩序"] ``` --- ### `25:28` 自由的代价：认知战威胁与美国宪政架构的抗脆弱性 在当下对抗中，极权对手最致命的招数就是利用开放社会的自由规则反噬西方。Farber 指出，对手正通过社交媒体发动极其庞大的认知战与心理战（psyops），而美国社会在言论自由的旗号下对其几乎不加防范。这就催生了当代最困难的治理困境：为了抵御冷血反社会、缺乏法理底线的境外对手，美国是否不得不主动收紧一部分传统自由？在国门之内，人们习惯了无边界的言论自由，但这同时也为恶意的虚假信息（disinformation）大开绿灯；当虚假信息被算法无休止放大且没有任何过滤闸门时，大量公众便会陷入脱离现实的虚幻世界中。这是立宪先贤在建国之初完全无法预见的现代技术异变。 然而，美国先贤所设计的宪政体制依然展现出无与伦比的抗脆弱性。Farber 深度剖析了美国宪法中“政治僵局”（gridlock）作为制度刹车阀的精妙设计： - **议会制民主的先天缺陷**：英国等欧洲议会制国家中，上议院（如英国上议院）基本属于礼仪性机构，实权完全由下议院掌控；一旦执政党掌控议会多数，行政首脑（首相）便由党内推选诞生，形成了立法与行政权力的高度垄断，极易在群体狂热期滑向法西斯主义或激进专制。 - **美国分权架构的防火墙机制**：参议院拥有完全独立的权力与更长的错峰任期；总统由选民直接投票产生，完全独立于国会各政党。现任与历任总统经常做出违背党派意志的独立决策。这种权力的深度制衡虽然导致平时应对反应缓慢，但在根本上粉碎了任何单极力量篡夺政权的野心。 针对外界唱衰美国、鼓吹威权效率超过西方的论调，Farber 尖锐驳斥：“当有人高谈阔论什么他们的社会正在全面超越我们时，我的反应是：老兄，你吸高了吗？你在那里甚至连说话的自由都没有！” --- ### `27:31` 国防工业基地与采购死局：破除持续决议案（CR）的枷锁 谈及工业产能，主持人提到了记录二战时期美国工业界超速转产武装盟军的经典著作《自由的锻造者》（*Freedom's Forge*）。然而，民主体制在和平时期的产业动员历史却充满泥潭。Farber 指出，若要让美国重回世界最强防御姿态，关键是要彻底改造五角大楼的资金拨付机制，为自由市场资本提供清晰的长期可见度，从而激励企业投资建设用于力量投送的纵深军火库。 当前阻碍国防创新的最大制度毒瘤是国会常态化的“持续决议案”（Continuing Resolutions, 简称 CR）。美国国会平均每年要通过四到五次临时 CR 预算，而 CR 的硬性规定是**“严禁启动任何新项目”（No new starts allowed）**。在商业底层技术以周为单位快速迭代的今天，军工采办却因为 CR 机制在法律层面上寸步难行。即便军方与企业签署了十年期框架合同，后面也往往带有一句致命的“视后续拨款可用性而定”（subject to availability of funds），这种巨大的违约风险令严谨的资本市场望而却步。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 国防采购拨款死结与改革路径 accDescr: 展示持续决议案如何扼杀军工创新，以及多年期授权如何释放产能。 subgraph Bottleneck["当前困境：单年预算与 CR 枷锁"] direction TB CR["每年 4-5 次持续决议案 (CR)"] --> Ban["法律硬性规定：禁止启动新项目"] Ban --> TechStall["商业与国防新技术迭代被强行冻结"] 1Year["一年期单次拨款机制"] --> Risk["附带'视资金情况而定'条款<br/>私营资本拒绝长期重资产投资"] end subgraph Solution["改革解法：多年期战略采办授权"] direction TB Multi["确立多年期采办权威 (Multi-year Authorities)"] Pool["参照联合战机 (F-35) 机制<br/>设立关键弹药战略储备联合目录"] Multi --> Pool Pool --> Scale["战斧巡航导弹 / 155mm 炮弹持续放量生产"] end Risk -. "倒逼改革".-> Multi ``` Farber 呼吁，美国必须在法律和采办规则上全面推行真正的多年期授权。正如美军在开发多军种通用装备时建立“联合打击战斗机”（Joint Strike Fighter, 即 F-35）项目机制一样，五角大楼将装备列入联合武器核心目录后，制造厂商便拥有长期连续订单的明确预期。美军目前必须将这种多年度保障模式推广至所有消耗性打击弹药中，包括战斧巡航导弹（Tomahawks）和 155 毫米火炮炮弹等核心消耗品。这需要对国会拨款模式进行根基性的政治改革，并在国防部设立免受党争短期干扰的专业职能岗位。 --- ### `29:30` 乌克兰战争的深刻教训：商业技术飞跃重构消耗战规模 在审视整场乌克兰战争的演进历程时，Farber 总结出的最核心教训在于：**民用商业领域的技术进化速度，已直接转化为战场上决定胜负的打击规模与质量（mass）**。战争的形态正在被成熟的商业货架产品以不可逆的方式重构。 以无人机为例，早在越战时期美军就已经开始使用无人机系统，但这并未引发战争样式的质变。乌克兰战场上的根本转折在于：民用商业供应链将无人机的生产成本压缩到了极端低廉的水平，从而让无人机蜕变为一种真正意义上的新型正规战争物资。因为单机成本极其低廉，作战部队承受战损的代价微乎其微。这种源自商业市场的大规模、低成本可消耗型武器（attritable systems），正在彻底改写现代高烈度消耗战的经济学规则。 ### `30:00` 商业供应链赋能的不对称战争：从乌克兰无人机到“百思买”式军事力量 现代战争形态的演进速度在很大程度上正由民用商业市场决定。商用无人机等民用产品在战争初期不仅提供了极其宝贵的信号情报（SIGINT），还能利用敌方防空系统的漏洞施加精准杀伤，但其真正颠覆性的优势在于“商业可行性”与“无处不在的商业渗透率”，正是这种规模效应为军方注入了海量消耗品级的作战质量（Mass）。战争的迭代节奏在很多时候甚至比资本市场还要快。以乌克兰战场上的无人机为例，对比三年前与如今的设备，其进化程度令人难以置信——在短短三年内完成了多达50次技术迭代，诞生了层出不穷的新型作战能力。 这种革命之所以能够发生，是因为工程师完全可以依靠成熟的民用商业供应链，直接在自家车库里拼装出具备实战能力的武器系统。长期以来，公众和军界往往习惯于以《壮志凌云》（Top Gun）式的经典大片思维来构想战争——聚焦于造价高昂、技术精密的尖端隐身战机与航母，极少有人会认为那些在百思买（Best Buy）货架上就能随手买到的消费级电子产品能够成为投射军事实力的核心支柱。然而事实证明，正是那些在民用商业世界中高度普及、成本极低的技术和硬件，构成了打赢现代不对称战争中价值极高、不可或缺的关键输入。 - 乌克兰无人机在过去三年内经历了大约50次软硬件实战迭代，展现了惊人的演进速度。 - 民用供应链的敏捷性让车库研发与组装成为现实，彻底打破了传统国防军工长达数年乃至数十年的漫长研发周期。 --- ### `31:11` 台湾局势评估：习近平的历史执念、国民党与日本的安全焦虑 谈及近六个月的地缘冲突对台海局势可能产生的连锁反应与冲击，达伦·法伯（Darren Farber）援引了澳大利亚前总理、能说一口流利普通话且拥有相关学术背景的著名中国观察家陆克文（Kevin Rudd）的判断。陆克文认为中国领导人习近平在本质上是一个敢于冒险的人（Risk taker）。对一位已经步入特定年龄的国家领导人而言，收复台湾被视作其毕生追求的“人生最高成就”（Apotheosis）以及完成中共历史叙事的终极一环；而台湾作为一种成功运行的华人社会治理模式，恰恰构成了对这一叙事的反向挑战。 然而，在法伯看来，武力统一或许根本不是北京实现意图的唯一甚至首选方式。如果主张对陆缓和、追求和平而非对抗的国民党（KMT）在后续选举中胜出，北京甚至可能“连一发子弹都不用打”就能达到目的。台湾艰险的地势会让渡海两栖登陆战极为血腥困难，且军事行动将使中国在国际社会彻底陷入孤立，从纯战略角度看代价极其高昂。但如果和平手段的窗口关闭、时间耗尽，且其领导层步入暮年，军事冒险的几率便会陡增。正如俗话所说，“胃口会随着进食而膨胀”（The appetite grows with the eating），一旦台湾在军事演习或突袭中被攻陷，亚太地区其他与中国存在深厚历史恩怨的国家必将沦为下一批目标。这正是为何新一届日本首相——一位以作风强硬著称的女性领导人——如此高调且极力呼吁日本加强国防建设的核心原因；中日之间有着真实的深刻历史宿怨，冲突绝不可能仅仅止于台湾。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Beijing Strategic Calculus on Taiwan accDescr: A decision flowchart comparing political accommodation via the KMT against high-risk military reunification and its geopolitical ripple effects on Japan. subgraph PeacefulPath["和平演变路径（成本低 / 国际阻力小）"] A["国民党（KMT）若胜选"] --> B["推行缓和政策（'要和平，不要战争'）"] B --> C["政治整合与妥协"] C --> D["不费一枪一弹达成北京战略目标"] end subgraph KineticPath["军事冲突路径（高风险 / 历史终局执念）"] E["和平选项耗尽 / 领导人任期暮年"] --> F["强行发起渡海军事行动"] F --> G["面临艰险地形与全球全面孤立"] G --> H["吞并台湾成功，野心进一步膨胀"] H --> I["引爆深层历史恩怨：日本成为下一目标"] end ``` --- ### `33:02` 新型国防军工巨头（Neoprimes）的破局之道：战场实验室与国会的采购改革 美国国防创业领域近期迎来了罕见的繁荣局面，打破了长达数十年的初创企业荒漠，呈现出“百花齐放”的态势。除了声名显赫的 Anduril 之外，无人机、无人潜艇、高速攻击艇及巡航导弹等细分赛道涌现出大批新型防务公司（Neoprimes）。假定在十年之后，这些新一代企业大获成功，其产品被广泛列装，甚至在实战依赖度上超越了传统老牌国防巨头（Old Primes），那么实现这一跃迁的核心前提究竟是什么？ 法伯指出，评判一件武器装备是否真正顶尖的唯一标准，就是“带它上战场”（Go to war with it）。战场本身就是军工装备的终极实验室，这也是为什么美国空军的 A-10 雷霆二战机（Warthog）被国会或军方提议退役了近30次，却依然一次次被重新动员并投入包括当前伊朗危机在内的实战部署——因为它的实战任务生存与支援能力已经在血与火中得到了无数次确证。日常演习和模拟训练固然重要，但“布丁的滋味得吃了才知道”（The proof in the pudding is when we actually fight）。正因无人机在乌克兰的真实冲突环境中每天经受考验，它们才实现了如此迅猛的迭代，并一跃成为现代战争的关键支点。如果新一代国防科技企业的产品无法在实际交火与猫鼠博弈中被推向极限，军方就无法真正摸清其能力的边界。 针对美国国会，法伯直言不讳地提出了在制度层面上支持防务创新的具体建议： - **重构研发预算方向**：美国国防部2027财年（FY27）的规划预算高达1.5万亿美元，即便实际拨款无法全额到账，在这笔庞大的预算盘子中，国会也必须拨出更大比例的专款用于支持“高风险、高技术回报”项目。具体而言，应将联邦资助的研发中心（FFRDC）的一部分预算重新定向给商业初创产业，以协调一致而非碎片化的方式支持民用技术的军事演练与模拟实战。 - **确立跨层级的多年期采购授权（Multi-Year Authorities）**：持续性依靠“持续决议案”（Continuing Resolutions, CR）度日正在活活掐死创新型军工企业。初创企业目前虽然依靠风险投资和资本市场的狂热支持跑赢了五角大楼和国会的官僚创新速度，但“资本市场的树木不会长到天上去”，风险资本迟早需要商业回报与退出渠道。如果国会不赋予军方多年期采购资金授权以形成稳定的采购飞轮，大批新一代军工企业将在资金断裂中倒下。 - **对标曼哈顿工程的战略魄力**：当年的曼哈顿工程消耗了相当于美国国内生产总值（GDP）1%的资源；如今面对大国竞争，美国必须在几个决定未来霸权的关键技术支柱上，拿出相当于数百个基点（Hundreds of basis points）GDP的资源倾斜与多年期长远战略规划。 --- ### `36:58` 联合作战条令的壁垒：精确制导、规模质量与新技术的落地现实 面对主持人关于“世界各地战火不断，新一代防务公司的装备到底有没有在实战中大量应用”的追问，法伯解释了公众认知与军事采购现实之间的巨大断层。许多 Neoprimes 成立时间尚短，尚未建立起被正式列装的“记录在册系统”（Systems of Record）。美军对其陆军、海军、空军、海军陆战队等一线将士有一项庄严的道德承诺与契约：军队必须确保为战士们提供经过最严苛检验的训练与装备，以赋予其在战场上克敌制胜的最大几率。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Neoprime Military Integration Barrier accDescr: The workflow required for new commercial defense technologies to move from commercial labs to battlefield deployment through the Joint Doctrine of Warfare. subgraph Innovation["初创与商业界"] A["商业化新技术 / 独立部件"] end subgraph MilitaryIntegration["军方准入与联合作战条令测试"] B["战场模拟演练"] C["与现有武器系统跨域协同"] D["符合联合作战条令规范"] end subgraph Deployment["前线部队与记录在册系统"] E["列装记录在册系统（System of Record）"] F["保障前线将士战斗胜率的道德契约"] end A --> B B --> C C --> D D --> E E --> F ``` 这套严密的体系决定了，军方绝不可能仅仅因为一家科技公司制造出了某种看起来很酷的“新型小构件”，就立刻将其直接送往前线。新技术必须被深度融入并推演至极为复杂的“联合作战条令”（Joint Doctrine of Warfare）之中，与雷达网、通信链路及传统重型平台协同配合。目前，新一代技术在目标定位（Targeting）与信号情报分析方面已经得到了极其深入且关键的应用，但在小型无人机之外的远程力量投射和动能打击领域，依然还在艰难攀爬这堵条令高墙。 法伯进一步对比了二战与当下的战争哲学： 二战时期的美军依靠庞大工业产能进行全区域地毯式轰炸，生产了天文数字般的装备与弹药（Mass），但打击效率极其低下；当今的美军走向了另一个极端——武器拥有惊人的极高精度，却由于技术过分精巧复杂导致单价高昂、产能不足，彻底丧失了数量规模。未来的出路在于寻找新的平衡点：利用新一代科技公司开发的低成本软件、传感器网和目标定位算法，降低弹药机载昂贵制导硬件的成本，用“低成本软硬件 + 高度精确算法”重新找回制导武器的规模化产能。因此，指责 Neoprimes 的技术没有在极端实战中全面铺开是不公平的，其核心堵点在于将颠覆性技术融入全军联合作战框架所需的制度与条令消化周期。 --- ### `39:53` 伊朗僵局的终局之问：政权更迭、什叶派殉道文化与文明的冲突 对话重新回到最初的核心命题：在对伊朗的军事与地缘对抗中，究竟怎样才算“胜利”？民意调查显示，绝大多数美国民众对卷入伊朗冲突持极度反对态度；而在民主制度下，公众意愿决定了政治行动的合法性边界。根据估算，在伊朗9000万人口中，真正效忠于现有神权政权的仅有大约1000万人左右。那么，在完全实现全面政权更迭之外，是否还存在某种有限的手段能够被定义为胜利？ 法伯半开玩笑地感慨：“如果我知道这个问题的确切答案，白宫直通这里的红机电话（Red phone）恐怕早就被打爆了。”极权神权政权的政治韧性超乎常人想象，它们往往能在极其残酷的内外部压力下维持统治数十年之久。美国面临的最根本困境在于，一个以2到4年为一个选举周期的世俗民主制国家，如何才能凝聚起跨越政治周期的持久政治意志，去对抗深植于对方社会骨髓中的“红什叶派殉道主义文化”（Red Shia culture of martyrdom）？ 法伯直言，西方社会最终不得不面对一个残酷的真相：这本质上是一场不可回避的“文明的冲突”（Clash of civilizations）。某些神权文化的核心价值体系已经被彻底劫持，并表现出与现代世俗文明根本性的不相容。然而，没有任何一届政府愿意在非必要时主动接下这个烫手山芋。无论是采取行动还是作壁上观，前方的道路都布满巨大风险；但“预防性的行动在心理上永远让人感觉更糟糕”（The prophylactic always feels worse），因为在珍珠港式的灾难真正从外部降临并强行替美国做出决断之前，社会内部永远无法就何时必须主动出击达成清晰共识。 ### `40:00` 预防性打击与红什叶派殉道文化的本质冲突 Darren Farber 回顾了美国参战的历史教训。美国当年并非直接因担忧纳粹德国而加入二战，而是因为日本偷袭了珍珠港，日本以最明确无误的方式将美国拖入战火。然而站在后见之明的高度来看，如果当年能采取预防性（prophylactic）行动，在对手积聚足以颠覆世界秩序的庞大能量之前将其扼杀，结局无疑会好得多。纳粹德国的价值体系与人类现代文明的底层世界观彻底冲突，而 Darren 认为，如今伊朗政权所奉行的“红色什叶派（Red Shia）殉道狂热崇拜”同样与人类的生存延续无法相容。一旦这种将殉道视作神圣归宿的极端狂热分子掌握了投射核武器的能力，其灾难性后果难以想象。 在威胁变成实质性的灭顶之灾前采取先发制人的手段，向来在政治上极不受欢迎且饱受争议。因为当危机尚未完全爆发时就动手，外界永远会质疑决策的时机是否正当、行动是否操之过急。但放任狂热政权积累杀伤手段直至不可逆转，代价则是全人类无法承受之重。 - **二战的历史反思**：珍珠港事件虽是美国参战的直接导火索，但面对与现代文明世界观根本对立的强权，早期进行预防性遏制本应是代价更低的路径。 - **红色什叶派狂热与核扩散**：极端殉道文化如果与能够远程投射的核武器相结合，对人类文明构成了无法调和的系统性毁灭威胁。 - **先发制人的政治困境**：在威胁演变为“存亡级别（existential）”前行动往往会遭受舆论与政治上的强烈反弹，因为行动的先决条件永远会被人不断复盘和质疑。 --- ### `41:40` 流程迷思与结果导向：美国外交政策的范式转移 当被问及近期脑海中最关切、却尚未被深入讨论的话题时，Darren 引用了一位著名驻美大使向他分享的深刻见解：“民主党人沉迷于流程（process），而共和党人沉迷于结果（outcome）。”理想状态下，一方严谨把控形式与程序，另一方死盯目标与实质结果，两者相辅相成才能达成最优决策；但在极化的现实政治中，双方在国会与政府间的角力却往往将对立无限放大。事实上，自杜鲁门总统时代以来，历任美国总统频繁在没有获得国会正式授权的情况下直接介入或发动军事应急行动，而每当对立党派执政这般操作时，另一方就会将其抨击为对宪制权威的严重冒犯。 这种“流程对决结果”的思维差异直接映射在当前的冲突应对中。常规流程通常要求先提交联合国安理会通过决议、开展漫长的外交穿梭斡旋、在公开的战备动员后才正式交火。然而，如果按部就班的漫长程序最终完全无法带来预期的战略结果——正如第二次海湾战争（伊拉克战争）的惨痛教训一样——流程本身的意义便荡然无存。如今的决策范式更倾向于“只要最终结果被历史证明是正确的，人们就会宽恕程序上的越轨与打破常规”。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 战略思维范式演变对比 accDescr: 对比传统流程导向与现代利益导向的外交范式，并展示委内瑞拉与伊朗的不同适配性。 subgraph Paradigms["战略思维范式"] Process["传统流程驱动 (重视联合国决议/漫长外交/程序正义)"] Outcome["结果利益驱动 (破除陈规/精准斩首/重塑利益格局)"] end subgraph History["地缘战略目标变迁"] Iraq["第二次海湾战争 (试图按自身形象 Remake in Our Image 失败)"] Venezuela["委内瑞拉模式 (按现实利益 Remake in Our Interest 成功斩首)"] end subgraph Challenge["核心拷问"] Martyrdom["伊朗殉道文化：视苦难与受挫为信仰试炼，利益重塑能否生效？"] end Process --> Iraq Outcome --> Venezuela Venezuela -.无法轻易复制.-> Martyrdom ``` - **重塑形象与重塑利益的根本转变**：过去二十五年间，美军在伊拉克等地试图“按自身形象重塑外部环境（remake in our image）”，结果深陷泥潭；而当前战略已彻底转向“按自身现实利益重塑外部环境（remake in our interest）”。 - **委内瑞拉案例**：近期多位前国会议员及商务代表团前往委内瑞拉开展业务，这在四个月前完全不可想象。委内瑞拉内部深层权力结构并未发生翻天覆地的重构，但通过“斩断顶层首脑”，整个环境已成功被规训并导向符合美方利益的轨道。 - **殉道文化的特殊挑战**：尽管按自身利益重塑环境是现实主义的有效进化，但面对将受苦受难本身视为战胜异教徒、检验信仰纯度的“殉道文化”，这种基于世俗利益计算的威慑与打击能否改变其根本行为模式，依然是一个悬而未决的死结。 --- ### `44:00` 人工智能的认知污染与“现代巴别塔”危机 谈及人工智能（AI）可能给未来国防与全球博弈带来的全新变量，Darren 并未将焦点放在常规算力或战术自主化上，而是指出了一种更隐秘、更危险的系统性漏洞——AI 模型极易在源头上被操纵与“统战（co-opted）”。如今互联网上已出现大量虚假学术论文被故意发布在权威学术预印本网站上，虽然平台标明“未经同行评审”，但这些由虚构病症或凭空捏造的概念所组成的垃圾信息会迅速被大型基础模型当成事实语料抓取并内化。例如曾有实验者凭空捏造了一种疾病概念放置在网站上数月，随后询问大语言模型时，模型便笃定地给出该虚构病症的诊断结论，彻底把谎言当成了医学事实。 当这些大模型被深度嵌入军队高级指挥与武器系统的决策闭环（loop of decision-making）中时，对手完全不需要攻破复杂的物理防火墙，只需在公网环境中系统性投放具有欺骗性的事实假象，就能从底层重塑模型的认知基底。Darren 警示，若任由这种垃圾与虚假数据持续污染模型的认知基础，未来很可能催生出一个认知彻底崩塌的“现代巴别塔”平行世界——人类制造的高智商工具最终会因为吞噬了自身释放的认知毒素而彻底失控并与现实脱节。 - **学术投毒与模型捕获**：虚假信息利用未受严格审查的权威平台渗透入公域网络，导致大模型在毫无甄别机制的情况下将其奉为客观事实。 - **国防决策回路的致命盲区**：若未来自动化作战指挥系统依赖遭受认知投毒的基础大模型，对手可通过制造虚假事实底层轻而易举误导整体战略预警与战术打击决策。 - **“现代巴别塔”隐喻**：AI 可能会由于海量低劣、伪造信息的反噬，演变为一个看似拥有超级算力却充斥错乱认知、与人类现实世界根本脱钩的系统性灾难。 ## Notable quotes > `05:00` 如果不了解历史，所有的事看起来都是史无前例的。 — 斯蒂芬·科特金（转述） > `10:00` 只要你制定一个七年规划，你就赢了，因为绝大多数人都会半途而废。 — 杰夫·贝佐斯（转述） > `17:12` 我们依然是世界最强的，老兄（We're the best, man）。 — 达伦·法伯 > `21:36` 中共中央政治局常委中的每一个人，不论隔了多少代亲属关系，总有亲戚生活在美国，在那儿经营着小生意、日子过得很体面、能够自由地说想说的话，并真切地享受着自由生活。我们绝不能忘记是什么让我们独一无二——即使对于那些整天担心自己失势失宠的常委要员来说，美国才是他们心底唯一的‘最终逃生点’（bug out point）。 — 达伦·法伯 > `23:45` 我相信在我们有生之年，中国将会倒台；我相信在我们有生之年，伊朗政权也将会倒台。 — 达伦·法伯 > `25:28` 当有人高谈阔论什么他们的社会正在全面超越我们时，我的反应是：老兄，你吸高了吗？你在那里甚至连说话的自由都没有！ — 达伦·法伯 > `31:11` 胃口会随着进食而膨胀（The appetite grows with the eating）。 — 达伦·法伯 > `33:02` 带它上战场（Go to war with it）。 — 达伦·法伯 > `33:02` 布丁的滋味得吃了才知道（The proof in the pudding is when we actually fight）。 — 达伦·法伯 > `39:53` 如果我知道这个问题的确切答案，白宫直通这里的红机电话（Red phone）恐怕早就被打爆了。 — 达伦·法伯 > `39:53` 预防性的行动在心理上永远让人感觉更糟糕（The prophylactic always feels worse）。 — 达伦·法伯 > `41:40` 民主党人沉迷于流程（process），而共和党人沉迷于结果（outcome）。 — 达伦·法伯 ## Mentioned 达伦·法伯 (Darren Farber), 帕特里克·奥肖内西 (Patrick O'Shaughnessy), Albion River, 美国国防部 (DoD), Ramp, Rogo (Felix), WorkOS, 阿里·沙里亚蒂 (Ali Shariati), 霍尔木兹海峡, 德怀特·艾森豪威尔 (Dwight D. Eisenhower), 麦克斯韦尔·泰勒 (Maxwell Taylor), 斯蒂芬·科特金 (Stephen Kotkin), 裕仁天皇, 伊斯兰革命卫队 (IRGC), 阿巴斯·米拉尼 (Abbas Milani), 阿里·哈梅内伊 (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), 杰夫·贝佐斯 (Jeff Bezos), 迪凯特 / 冯客 (Frank Dikötter), Shyam Sankar, 《动员》(Mobilize), 《自由的锻造者》(Freedom's Forge), 陆克文 (Kevin Rudd), 习近平, Anduril, A-10 雷霆二式攻击机 (Warthog), 战斧巡航导弹 (Tomahawk), 海马斯 (HIMARS), F-35 闪电 II 战斗机 (JSF), 中国国民党 (KMT), 哈利·S·杜鲁门 (Harry S. Truman) ## Video description My guest today is Darren Farber, and this is his second appearance on the show. Darren is a Managing Partner of Albion River, a defense-focused investment firm and he previously served as a special advisor to the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. We recorded this conversation in the middle of the Iranian contingency, and we spent most of our time on what winning actually means in a theater like Iran. We discuss why magazine depth matters for the American industrial base, lessons from Ukraine, and what the rise of neo-prime defense companies will require from Congress. Please enjoy my second conversation with Darren Farber. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:29) Darren Farber Intro (00:02:59) Defining What Winning Looks Like in Iran (00:12:16) The Strait of Hormuz (00:13:27) Eisenhower vs. Taylor: Two Military Doctrines Explained (00:17:12) US Military Readiness vs. the Pentagon Era (00:20:05) America's Magazine Depth (00:21:36) China's Vulnerability (00:25:28) Trading Freedom for Security (00:27:31) Today's Industrial Base (00:29:30) Lessons from the Ukraine War (00:31:11) Impact of Iran Conflict on Taiwan Risk (00:33:02) What Neo-Prime Defense Companies Need to Succeed (00:39:53) Can We Win Without Full Regime Change in Iran? (00:45:46) AI's Impact on Modern Warfare [Source](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CLS3936356790.mp3)

[5:00] 斯蒂芬·科特金（转述）: 如果不了解历史，所有的事看起来都是史无前例的。 [10:00] 杰夫·贝佐斯（转述）: 只要你制定一个七年规划，你就赢了，因为绝大多数人都会半途而废。 [17:12] 达伦·法伯: 我们依然是世界最强的，老兄（We're the best, man）。 [21:36] 达伦·法伯: 中共中央政治局常委中的每一个人，不论隔了多少代亲属关系，总有亲戚生活在美国，在那儿经营着小生意、日子过得很体面、能够自由地说想说的话，并真切地享受着自由生活。我们绝不能忘记是什么让我们独一无二——即使对于那些整天担心自己失势失宠的常委要员来说，美国才是他们心底唯一的‘最终逃生点’（bug out point）。 [23:45] 达伦·法伯: 我相信在我们有生之年，中国将会倒台；我相信在我们有生之年，伊朗政权也将会倒台。 [25:28] 达伦·法伯: 当有人高谈阔论什么他们的社会正在全面超越我们时，我的反应是：老兄，你吸高了吗？你在那里甚至连说话的自由都没有！ [31:11] 达伦·法伯: 胃口会随着进食而膨胀（The appetite grows with the eating）。 [33:02] 达伦·法伯: 带它上战场（Go to war with it）。 [33:02] 达伦·法伯: 布丁的滋味得吃了才知道（The proof in the pudding is when we actually fight）。 [39:53] 达伦·法伯: 如果我知道这个问题的确切答案，白宫直通这里的红机电话（Red phone）恐怕早就被打爆了。 [39:53] 达伦·法伯: 预防性的行动在心理上永远让人感觉更糟糕（The prophylactic always feels worse）。 [41:40] 达伦·法伯: 民主党人沉迷于流程（process），而共和党人沉迷于结果（outcome）。

[0:00] Darren Farber: You can bring people to the precipice of their own destruction. And in that ideology, that form of religious ideology, they're winning. [5:00] Darren Farber: Dictators are enormously strong and enormously weak at the same time... They only have to be stronger than their strongest opposition, and opposition is outlawed. [17:12] Darren Farber: When you have power and you ascend power in a fundamentally illegitimate structure, who do you trust? The answer is no one. You're constantly worried that someone's going to put a bullet in the back of your head. [40:53] Darren Farber: Can you imagine if you can create a foundation of fact that is wrong for a model? I could see an alternative universe where the models become complete towers of Babel... because of what they've imputed through the junk that we've posted.

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The best AI and software companies from OpenAI to Cursor to Perplexity use WorkOS to become enterprise ready overnight, not in months. Visit WorkOS.com to skip the unglamorous infrastructure work and focus on your product. Hello and welcome everyone I Patrick O and this is Invest Like the Best This show is an open exploration of markets ideas stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at colossus.com. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum, All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUM.VC. My guest today is Darren Farber, and this is his second appearance on the show. Darren is the managing partner of Albion River, a defense-focused investment firm, and he previously served as a special advisor to the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense. We recorded this conversation in the middle of the Iranian contingency, and we spend most of our time on what winning actually means in a theater like Iran. We discuss why magazine depth matters for the American industrial base, lessons from Ukraine and what the rise of neoprime defense companies will require from Congress Please enjoy my second conversation with Darren Farber I think to begin you have to define what it might mean for us to win some of these open theaters of war in the world right now. We came through this period where anyone that was a macro type person that I would have in that seat would talk about this multipolar world and the U.S. is retreating from the global stage and it's not going to be the world police any longer and we don't need the interaction with the rest of the world. It seems like we're in a very different world now. Everyone's wondering what winning would even mean in a theater like Iran. And I'm curious for you to just riff on that. So winning is politically defined. The Strait of Hormuz was open before this contingency at the end of the day. And so if all we get is the Strait of Hormuz back open, strategically maybe was the juice worth the squeeze, for lack of a better term. I would argue that you've degraded an enormous amount of Iranian military capability, which is what the department's internal frago, their order, was to do. And so you have degraded that. But the Strait of Hormuz as an economic choke point has to open back up in order for commerce to work. But we're sitting here today, the straits functionally closed, the economy is still ripping here In the United States markets you have high inflation But I think the conventional wisdom is that America can withstand less pain than the counterparty There this hybridization that happened in certain parts of the Shia Muslim world through the works of Shiriati, which is a hybridization of Marxism and martyrdom together, which is kind of like an absolute control of an environment and to say, if you martyr yourself, you're winning, you're ascending. It's such a satanical philosophy because it promotes internal destruction and sacrifice to the limit as evidence that you're winning. We were talking right before we sat down. Gaza has been leveled by any stretch of the imagination. There are still elements of Hamas operating, but have they won? Well, in their mind, in that Shiriati form of red Shiaism, they're winning. You can bring people to the precipice of their own destruction. And in that ideology, that form of religious ideology, they're winning. You're going to have to bring an enormous quantum of hurt. And the problem or the challenge with democracies are how much of our moral rectitude will we compromise in order to achieve the political goal if we don't feel the existential threat sitting [5:00] here today in New York. So that is tough. There's the Taylor view of flexible power, of this proportional response to threats. And then there's the Eisenhower School of Massive Retaliation. I love Kotkin because he talks about, if you don't know history, everything is unprecedented. The Japanese had a martyrdom culture that they memorialized into their force structure, right? Through kamikaze, they would chain people up in trees in Okinawa. Why did we drop two bombs on them? We dropped the first bomb. Enormous mass destruction. They refused to surrender. And they were prepared to fight to the death. We dropped the second bomb. And it was only Emperor Hirohito that broke the tie. If he didn't break that tie, if he said continue, they would have sacrificed themselves. It's extremely hard with a martyrdom culture to have regime change. And then the question is, what are you going to defect to? You need an alternative power structure there to defect to. You can defect from, which is you leave, but to defect to, to get regime change, even if 85 or 90% want the regime to change, you need an alternative force structure to do it And so the IRGC controls half of the economy and they have all the guns They have all of these elements of power they very hard to replace Can you co them successfully between all the assets that they own in Western Europe? They own an enormous quantum of assets in Western Europe. What kind of assets? Homes in London, villas, billions of dollars that they've exfiltrated from the country. And Abbas Malani has documented this in voluminous detail. He's a wonderful scholar on the topic. But really, think of the average Iranian. The limit of the ATM is $7. That's how much you can pull out. You had the second largest bank fail about two months before this recent contingency. Milani calls it a mafia style regime. And it's true. The quantum of corruption is absolutely enormous. Dictators are enormously strong and enormously weak at the same time. This is actually like a good frame for our entire conversation, which is to say, we have to be able to hold two competing ideas in the same vessel, and both can be true. A dictatorship can be enormously weak because they're illegitimate. They haven't been tested. They only have to be stronger than their strongest opposition, and opposition is outlawed. And so they're weak. And at the same time, they're strong because they control the apparatus of the state. This is the cauldron that you have in the people that you fighting And there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that Ayatollah Hominie martyred himself He allowed himself to be above ground and to be targeted to die to solve a whole series of problems He killed potentially 30 or 40,000 of his own people. He was sick and succession was unclear. I think maybe there would be some infighting. And so martyrdom in the Shiriati school of Rachiism is like this beautiful solution. He was sick and ill. And so there's a growing body of evidence that suggests he wanted to be killed. These are the adversaries here. Winning at the limit in the way we think of it in almost like a documentary for World War II is really hard. But we experienced that in World War II as well. The bombing of Dresden. There was this horror that we would firebomb a city and kill 30,000 people under the premise that they have to know that they lost. And this is what happens when you deal with fanaticism. it makes you question the kernel of your moral fiber as a democracy, and you have to go really far. I just think the analog with Israel and Hamas and Gaza is like a perfect example. Israel has annihilated Gaza It has been leveled You can say that Gaza from a technological standpoint that Hamas from a technological standpoint has any kind of military capability compared to the Israelis It like comparing a toaster oven to the sun In order to win it, look how far that they've had to go. And I don't know if Netanyahu has the support in the Knesset for the purposes of doing this last leg in the groundwork, but it's what's necessary for his condition of winning. You have to have a design on a concept of positive propaganda. Propaganda has a bad connotation to it, but it's just- It's marketing. It's your political worldview. Israel has just not spent the calories on it. And so the question is, should they? I believe the answer is yes. In a fine egg pie, how much of the pie should they spend on it? It's not immaterial. Their adversaries are spending enormously on it because it's working. But also the martyrdom culture has, because it's hybridized with religion to create a higher form of fanaticism. It allows you to run for so long. The design to co-opt American universities can be traced to a single hotel room in Philadelphia by the FBI, listening with laser microphones, where after the Oslo Accords, Palestinian Authority with Arafat is brought in, and Hamas is going to be in the same way. [10:00] considered, left out in the coal. They go to Hamas, they go, guess what? You're not in this deal. And so now this is a political organization with no home. They laid out in this single conversation that the FBI has transcripts of, their plan to co-opt universities and co-opt university teaching and institutions for the express purposes of changing Western opinion over the course of 20 years. I think Bezos has attributed the quote that if you have a seven-year plan, you win, because most people give up. These guys had a 20-year plan, and it totally worked. But to make it seem like it was this natural formation out of the ether through moral will is to downband the sophistication of what these people in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas set out to do. They set out to do this. They were so committed to it, and they saw it through. We're talking about people advocating for a society that brutalizes their own people and denies the rights. You have a series of people advocating for them that would be denied those same rights there It was done with intent It was by design But this administration is moving the goalposts in the popular vernacular of what winning means But my view is if you have a straight open and you have a degraded Iranian military capability that can't reconstitute itself very quickly through oil profits, then that will be a win. And if it can quickly reconstitute its export network of terror and the strait is closed, then strategically it will be a failure. What do you think will happen in the strait? How would you describe the state of things today and the options that the rest of the world has or we have going forward? What do you think will happen? In practical terms, the rest of the world were there. And then we have the Iranians and there are foreign flagged and commercial vessels there. But no one else is there in practical terms. It's just us. And the rest of the world is really, to a large extent, watching, save for the Gulf Arab states. The amazing thing is the Gulf Arab states have a much stronger will to fight. UAE has left OPEC. That's kind of big. And then they said they will participate in projecting force with their own forces. That's pretty big, too. They are very concerned that we will lose our will to fight by virtue of the fact of whatever economic pain in the interim basis that it generates But the concept of overcoming the blockade is going to need more magazine depth more forces in the region We going to need an amphibious force on the shore for sure. That is a major escalation. And so that's where Taylor's theory and Eisenhower's theory begin to merge. Can you describe those two? It's such an interesting history. Maxwell Taylor is a four-star general, is Kennedy's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a great military leader, but also could be blamed for the escalation of the Vietnam War. Eisenhower's warning about the military defense industrial complex really came out of this concern of we now have this new super weapon. And so that should really work as the maximal deterrent for any of these things breaking out. And so why spend all the calories on building all of these proportional capabilities when through a chain of escalation, it's just ultimately going to lead to the big red button. Those are kind of the competing theories. Eisenhower's theory was maximal deterrence. If you do anything, we're going to use the really special stuff. Taylor's was we're going to use proportional force. And he had viewed it as a deterrence gap because are we really going to go nuclear for small incursions small foot faults I think to an extent that was right but all of it leads towards escalation If you don embark with this very clear directive internally of what you want to accomplish from a political standpoint, and you're not crisp about it, then you lose political will, and then you lose the ability to do it. You lose Congress, you lose the budget, you ultimately lose the executive. So that becomes more and more important. But you have to paint the target of what you want to accomplish. And so all these things are political. So who is more right, do you think, between Eisenhower and Taylor? And apply those two lenses to today's stance for the U.S. What is the U.S. doing, not just in the Iranian theater, but in general with its military, with the Department of War? What are they doing? What should they be doing that they're not doing? What are they doing that they shouldn't be doing? I think it's fair to say you need both. If you took an exclusive maximalist view of Eisenhower of having this nuclear deterrent, your only response is nuclear deterrence. Can you imagine the world that we'd be living in? Now you'd say, there are some people that say, well, great, that would mean we wouldn't get involved in any of these contingencies and we wouldn't have gotten involved in Vietnam, wouldn't have gotten involved in Iraq, probably wouldn't have gotten involved in Afghanistan because we wouldn't have this flexible projection of force to correspondingly respond. And maybe we wouldn't have the temperament to drop a bomb. [15:00] on someone. Maybe we would, but the binary choice would be so stark. Flexible power has all these gradations of capability that Taylor outlined and that have been modernized for the new concepts of warfare. And that's how we build magazine depth and all of these things. Tamax missile is not a nuclear weapon. HIMARS is not a nuclear weapon. It's the concept of being able to enforce the smaller infringements, if you will. You probably need both. I just think it would be a very scary world if all we had was a nuclear button in order to prevent a full-scale contingency. Vanta automates security and compliance for over 16,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, keeping them audit-ready around the clock. It's the number one agentic trust platform, and it now helps companies like yours watch for the risks that show up between audits across your vendors, your AI tools, and your whole environment. Every new tool your team signs up for every vendor that turns on AI features is an opportunity for something to go wrong. And most security programs weren't built for AI's pace of growth. 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How would you compare the state of our military capability and prowess today to when you were in the Pentagon? We're the best, man. So someone asked me earlier today, they had said, what's the grade that you give it And I said it not fair to do this huge compound grade because one this is a government organ So how great can a government organ be But our ability to train and equip the forces and what they deliver it the best fighting force in the world that the world has ever known. You have to do some relative comparison to the rest of the militaries around the world. We are number one, but it is a body of government. And so because it's a body of government, it gets one year money from Congress. You have deck chairs that constantly change. You have these features of government that make it suboptimal. But as a grade, as a military and its capability, I give it a super high grade. Is the bureaucracy a problem? Yes. Do we have to modernize it? Yes. Do we go through it every 20 years? Yes. Do we recognize how important it is? But our ability to project force is so good. I think having a pacing threat unto itself is valuable to make sure that we are serious about maintaining capabilities. But I love the works of Decatur because he's so clear about how strong and weak China is at the same time. Who's Decatur? So Decatur is a well-regarded historian on China and has a theory on how China is not a super power just by virtue of how illegitimate and how weak it is and how tense the plenary in the party is He has good points The Chinese equivalent of the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff has disappeared He went to kindergarten with Xi Jinping These guys are close When you have power and you ascend power in a fundamentally illegitimate structure who do you trust? The answer is no one. You're constantly worried that someone's going to put a bullet in the back of your head. And then that form of illegitimacy cascades down through the immediate organs of that government to include its military. We've talked about their lack of jointness, the corruption internally within the force, the corruption in the missileer crew. They have turned over their senior military leadership three or four times in the last three years. That is not a high trust environment. High trust comes through esprit de corps and believing in the mission and legitimacy of what you're doing. That is one of our enormous strengths, but their magazine depth industrially is so enormous. So the calculus becomes, can the magazine depth overcome their institutional weakness? It's a good question. And that's why we as a country are embarking on this enormous effort to industrialize in order to add magazine depth to the capabilities we have. You wouldn't add magazine depth if you had the maximalist view of nuclear deterrent. You have magazine depth when you believe in the [20:00] It's a flexible power. I talked to Sham from Palantir about this. He had just come out with his book. I think it was called Mobilize, about this exact thing of increasing magazine depth. I don't think he used those words, but it's what he meant. How would you grade us on that specific thing? What is the state of it today? Are we doing a good job? Who is doing it? How's that going to unfold? We're in a democracy. In a dictatorship, if you don't build magazine depth and that's your job, you're dead. That mechanism of enforcement is pretty compelling. Here, we balance things like, will it be profitable? Will it have duration? And Congress is giving one-year money. And so there are new efforts to create multi-year contracts for ordinance, which we've never done before. We really need it. It's great. So we're changing the architecture to allow us to do more to add to magazine depth. We need to go faster for the purposes of filling the deterrence gap so we can stop small incursions on the margins, especially with the Southeast Asian nations that we have cooperative peacekeeping agreements with, these bilateral agreements where we have to protect them and they're being violated right now, like the Philippines, for example. So we have to do more there. It's getting better. And compare it to anyone else in the West we still the best It just your adversary has a political structure that allows them to bring people to the precipice But the illegitimacy of the Chinese fundamentally an illegitimate power is also our advantage And we are making enormous strides in the clandestine services of co-opting that environment. Say more about that. Xi doesn't know who's on our side in his standing committee or on his side. Every day he wakes up with the thought of, maybe I need to kill someone off. That is our edge. Our edge is that he is fundamentally illegitimate, the monopoly of power that is communism. Their form of Marxism, of communism, is extremely powerful because the apparatus of an enormous economy to pay off all these kinds of people. But they are illegitimate. And our ability to recruit and retain and train, it had really degraded. And we have lost a lot of capability through a series of assets that were caught. We have rebuilt that in a very meaningful way. I don't think she sleeps well at night. Is that very recent, that change? No. These things are built brick by brick. We have these government agencies where everyone goes into work every day, Monday to Sunday, and their job is how am I going to infiltrate this illegitimate political structure for the purposes of making it weak We have people they drive their car in and they have their sack lunch and this is what they do every day And ultimately we break through Why Because every Chinese person in the standing committee has a relative somewhere in the United States, how many degrees removed, that owns a small business, that is doing well, is able to say and do what they want, is able to fundamentally live free. We can't forget what makes us special and that we are the bug out point for the world, even for the people in the standing committee that are worried if they're on the outs. They have a plan to get here. We have weaknesses, but we also have enormous strengths and their weaknesses are also enormous. It doesn't mean that they can't bring us to the precipice. Their mass is so much greater than us, their population size and what they can do industrially. But it is a dictatorship. It is a totalitarian regime. I don't even know how this is up for debate. I just think the threat of that is lost. That's what we're talking about here. They are fundamentally strong and weak at the same time. We can hold both of those in the same vessel. I believe in our lifetime, China will fall I believe in our lifetime Iran will fall What does it mean for China to fall I know what it means for Iran to fall I believe it will be run like Taiwan I believe it will fall We grew up with this concept of the Soviet Union It had this enormous technical capability. It's this monolith. It lasted several generations, and then all of a sudden it fell. It looked super strong right up until the last moment. There were planning documents circulating at the Pentagon about how strong they were two weeks before they fell because their constitution, their concept of a constitution is fundamentally corrupt. That monopoly of power saying that these people are going to permanently be in charge, you know it to be wrong. And so the question is, does it last 50 years? Does it last 100 years? It does fall because it's fundamentally illegitimate. The Chinese Communist Party is illegitimate. They are an illegitimate dictatorship. I believe in the natural order of humanity and freedom that at some point it's the natural state that ultimately prevails. But our enemies use our freedoms so successfully against us. And I think the real issue of our time will be as they use these freedoms against us, how will we have to fence them in to prevent them from being completely polluted. [25:00] The psyop of social media on us, what they do against us in that, it's enormous. And we're kind of allowing it under the rubric of our freedoms. And so are we going to have to degrade a portion of our freedoms in order to protect ourselves? This is going to be a real hard part against a very motivated and sociopathic adversary that's illegitimate. What's an example of the degradation of our freedom for protection? This concept of when you're in the four walls of the country, there's the general expectation of a freedom of speech. That creates the freedom for disinformation. Now that you can amplify disinformation through the concept of freedom of speech, do you create this alternative world where people are disconnected from reality? Think about where people get their news from, that there are no gates on any of this anymore. It's not something founders could have ever contemplated. They are true geniuses in that the gridlock is super intentional. So compare us to every other parliamentary democracy in the West. Every parliamentary democracy in the West has a ceremonial Senate. The UK it the House of Lords They don have real power House of Commons has power And then when the party of power is in power it is a monopoly of power because they also choose the prime minister You don't vote for the prime minister in a parliamentary democracy. In the United States, our upper body is completely separate with a different term that's longer by design. So right there, you have a separation of powers. And then the executive is technically voted on by the people. It is the purest expression of democracy. You vote for the president directly and the vice president. You put them down. You have an executive branch that is separated from the party. And this president and previous presidents do things that the parties don't like. And you do not get that in parliamentary democracies. Parliamentary democracies are more susceptible to being overtaken in these mass hysteria moments into things like fascism, Like these directions where the gridlock was designed to prevent someone from co-opting the activity, and it makes us slow to respond. But we have the overarching architecture is we are fundamentally legitimate. And these guys are not legitimate. When people talk about some of these things of like their society is eclipsing ours, like, dude, are you high? You are not free there. You can say what you want A very popular book these days and justifiably so it a great book is Freedom Forge about the mobilization around World War II The story of how our industrial base moved so fast to arm companies retooling themselves. It's a great book. The history of peacetime mobilizations in democratic societies is mixed or bad. I guess we're not in peacetime right now, but we're not in some global scale war. What are the things that you hope happen from here for the U.S. to be the best overall positioned in the world? We clearly need a change in how we fund the department so we can have longer visibility for capitalism to answer the call and build the stockpiles we need for that depth of whatever instrument of projecting force. A 10-year contract but subject to the availability of funds is scary. We have, on average four or five continuing resolutions a year. The peccadillo of CRs is no new starts are allowed. So if you think the iteration of new technology is going faster and faster, technically, if you have a new start, you can't do it. We're going to have to change some of the laws and the rules of procurement, and we're going to need these multi-year authorities in order to be able to build this stuff There are these things that happen when we design the joint structure where we say okay we going to make a joint strike fighter between these branches of service we elevate it to this catalog of joint weapons And so the manufacturer has a reasonable expectation that you're going to keep on ordering, even if it's one year. We know there's going to be a multi-year authority here at some point. We need to do it for the stockpiles that we believe are critical for projecting force. We need to do it across the board to include ordinance and all these other things, the Tomahawks, 155s, all of these kinetic articles were for. It's politics. You need a fundamental change in how we appropriate. And then we need to create billets that lessen the political influence over the things that we all agree on as a country are non-negotiable. If you look back at the entire Ukraine story now, what are the main things that you've observed or learned? Your main takeaways from watching the whole thing unfold. The rate of technological change in the commercial world becomes this direct input into the capabilities that you can project for mass. Drones have been used since the Vietnam War, but you wouldn't think that. Drones became commercially viable and cheap, and by virtue of that became a new article of war because they were so inexpensive. The cost of losing one is low. [30:00] They gave you a lot of signals intelligence at the end of the day. You could deliver some lethality through the weakness of some of these systems. But it was the commercial viability and the commercial pervasiveness of that product that made it a great input into a military for mass. The commercial world has so much influence on the rate of change that will happen in warfare because it's about your ability to produce and your ability to sustain and withstand. These wars work faster than markets sometimes. The evolution of a Ukrainian drone from three years ago to today, it's unbelievable. There's like 50 iterations. There's all these new capabilities. And that's because you can sit in your garage through commercial supply chains and build the capability. We think of war in this Top Gun style way, and you don't think about but something that you could buy at Best Buy as being important into the projection of force. But things that become permissive and inexpensive in a commercial world have these enormously valuable inputs into fighting kind of asymmetric war, clearly. What does this whole last six months do to the likelihood or impact of something happening in Taiwan do you think The likes of Kevin Rudd and the scholars of the area So Kevin Rudd used to be the Australian prime minister is fluent in Mandarin by the way has a PhD in Mandarin is really a Xi watcher He said that Xi's a risk taker. I think if you've gotten to a certain age and you view it as the apotheosis of your life's achievement in order to complete the journey, which is to say, imperial China is what Taiwan is, and the takeover by the CCP is not complete until Taiwan falls, until that counter-narrative of how a Chinese society can be run. I don't think Xi needs to go if KMT wins the election coming up. KMT almost won last time, and that is a rapprochement party to the CCP is clearly like, we don't want war, we want peace. It's an accommodation party. I believe a bullet may never need to be fired in order for China to get what they want. I think that's the more likely outcome it keeps with their strategy. Why go? That terrain is hard. It will ostracize them in the world. I don't see it strategically. If they were running out of options and they felt they had to do it and Xi was near the end of his life I think the likelihood would increase but the appetite grows with the eating If Taiwan is overtaken in a military exercise is there any doubt that these other countries that have real historical beasts will be next? And that's why Japan has been so vociferous at advocating for strong defense now under this new prime minister. She's a tough lady. She knows what happens. There's a real historical beef between China and Japan. I think that would be exercised. It would not stop at Taiwan, most likely. There's been this thousand flowers booming thing happening on the entrepreneurial side of defense companies here in the U.S. Lots of appetite after a long, long drought, like basically no new companies. Anderle is, of course, the most famous, but tons of companies doing something, drone-specific companies, submarine boats, missiles, basically everything. It's 10 years from now, a whole bevy of neoprimes have been hugely successful. Their stuff is great in the sense that it's used, and it's the thing we rely on more so than the old primes, which from my understanding is still the vast, vast, vast majority of what gets used in war. These new companies have won, and that's a good thing. What do you think has to happen for that to be true? We have to exercise so much of this There a part here where you only really know what really good until you go to war with it That why the warthog keeps on being reused It just so mission capable We were supposed to kill this thing like 30 separate times. We remobilized it for the Iranian contingency. Theaters of war are the laboratories for these products. To a certain extent, we don't really know how good these things are until we have the contingent environment in order to exercise the capability. So we run exercises in the training equipment, but the proof in the pudding is when we actually fight. And that's why drones have had this huge iteration because they're being used in an actual contingent environment. And so that's why we've had so much iteration, so much improvement, and now they will clearly be this important part of the fulcrum of war. So these other things are going to have to be used to really know the limit of the capability in the cat and mouse game. But My advice for Congress is we have a $1.5 trillion designed FY27 budget. I don't think we're going to get all that money. But in that enormous surface area of a budget, you can continually allocate a lot more towards the concept of risk in order to maintain technological superiority. I think the FFRDC budget needs to be, a portion needs to be repointed towards industry. [35:00] so we can encourage the iteration of these commercial developments to see how good they can get and exercise them in our own way to simulate war to see how good we can get them. So we need to allocate a portion of the budget and it needs to be more coordinated so it can't be spread out. We federate the research and development portion of the budget in so many different ways. We're going to have to take a concerted effort here for these legs of future power and we're going to have to continually reinvest in them, even if we don't get a great business out of it. We may not get a war in order to test all this stuff. Obviously, you don't want the tail to wag the dog for the purposes of just exercising the equipment. So we need to allocate a more meaningful amount to try. And then Congress needs to create multi-year authorities across the stack. These continuing resolutions kill industry. And that is something I consistently worry about because we're going to lose these companies through CRs and through the absence of multi-year authority. Because right now the capital markets are working for these businesses and they're able to outpace the innovation of the department and the Congress in order to move faster. But capital markets aren things that No unlimited yeah Yeah trees don grow to the sky And so there has to be return and exit at some point If you get that and you get that flywheel then great Maybe capitalism can be the exclusive solution. But we're going to need Congress to make more multi-year authority money available. And then we're going to have to allocate the budget as a percentage for higher risk and reward. The Manhattan Project was 1% of GDP. We're going to have to have our own couple of hundred bits of GDP levels of effort in these certain areas. We're going to have to make those kinds of investments and have multi-year worldview as to how we get there. Some of these companies have been around. Is any of the stuff produced by these places being used? And if not, why not? If we only know if it works in actual battle, there's a lot of battles in the world right now, a lot of military equipment being used. Is the neoprime stuff being used? some of these companies are relatively new and haven't fielded systems of record. And then the way we build our military and the promise we make to our GIs, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, is that we are going to train and equip you on these things for the express purposes of giving you the chance to win It part of our moral code and the way we train and equip the forces And then we have to simulate it in the joint doctrine of warfare Just because I make a new widget doesn mean I can ingest it so easily We have to exercise it and impute it into this joint concept of warfare with all these other things. So it's not easy. Clearly on the targeting side, these technologies are being used. The signals intelligence, clearly that stuff is being used. The elements of projection of force outside of drones hasn't really gotten there yet. But targeting is pretty important, right? You think of World War II, we would carpet bomb an entire environment. And so people are like, well, we produced so much mass in World War II. But look at the efficacy of the mass. It was super low. What we have now is highly precise, but we don't have the quantum of mass because of the precision and the sophistication. Now we're going to need to bring it back a little bit more to the center to increase the mass. And maybe these targeting networks and some of the software and the knowledge that we've built in signals intelligence can augment the cost of the precision that we have to have on board in order to make them cheaper. It's not a fair criticism to say, oh, the neoprimes stuff's not being used at the limit in war. It's because we have to integrate it into the joint concept of warfare Back to where we started what it means to win The war in Iran is extremely unpopular in polls for U citizens You said we live in a democracy like the will of the people matters What can be done to win the percentage of the Iranian population? It's like 10 out of 90 million or something are loyal to the existing regime. Is there anything short of actual regime change that can cause a win to happen? How do we affect that outcome? If I knew the answer, the red phone over there would be ringing pretty quickly. These regimes can last for a very long time. How do we muster the political will to have staying power that outlasts the political cycle? It's so hard against a red Shia culture of martyrdom. But at some point, we have to agree as a society that the value system of some of these cultures has been hijacked and they are fundamentally incompatible with modernity. This is a clash of civilizations. Who wants to tackle it when you don't have to? There's a risk in going, always. And then there's a risk in not going. The provolactic always feels worse because the clarity of when to go wasn't decided for you. America did not [40:00] enter World War II because of the concern we had over Germany. We ultimately enter World War II because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. They made it crystal clear. But with the benefit of hindsight, obviously, the pro-volactic probably would have been better to prevent the adversary from accumulating all this power because they had a value system that clashed with our worldview of modernity. And I would argue the red Shia martyrdom cult, the fanaticism, is incompatible with humanity preserving itself. Can you imagine if that fanaticism got its hands on the ability to project nuclear weaponry? I get why it's unpopular. Doing something in advance of something becoming existential is not fun because you can always second guess when to go. What have we not talked about that you have your mind on these days? A well-known ambassador to the United States. He said something to me that I thought was so profound. He said, Democrats are obsessed with process and Republicans are obsessed with outcome. That the challenge between these two sides of the aisle right now But really it a very good mix If you have someone that spends a lot of calories on form and someone that very outcome focused too and you can bring the concept together, you should get the optimal outcome. Presidents have declared or functionally created contingencies without the consent of Congress since Truman. When the opposite side of the aisle is doing something, it's an effrontery. That statement is actually very profound because as you can kind of see it in the current contingency right now, we're not following a process that's conventional. What would be conventional? Conventional would be you go to the UN, Security Council resolution, build up to the war, this kind of diplomacy, shots fired. That would be the conventional way that it would happen. But obviously, if it's devoid of the outcome, what was the purpose of it? Think of the Iraq contingency. And so here, there hasn't been any of that process, could you get the outcome that you wanted? And then history would forgive you. You're seeing the strength and the weaknesses of both of those worldviews play out over the last 25 years. Gulf War II, we tried to remake the environment in our image instead of remaking it in our interest Now we operating almost exclusively to try and remake these environments in our interest and not in our image Venezuela is a perfect example of that That environment is functionally remade in our interest. I know a whole series of members of Congress that just went to Venezuela for a trip, former members of Congress. A lot of people are gone. Yeah, for like a business trip. Can you imagine that four months ago? It's kind of amazing. And so the power structure there hasn't changed. We've just chopped off the head and we've remade the environment in our interest, not in our image. I think that's probably a good natural evolution of where we've been. The question is, will it be enough to change the behaviors of these martyrdom cultures that point towards their suffering as a test of faith that they're winning? How do you win that? I realize I didn't ask you about AI. What wrench does that throw in the works of all of this stuff. I'm so fascinated by how it can be co-opted. So I don't know if you've read these stories about people producing fake academic papers and leaving them out there on established sites. The established sites say, this isn't peer reviewed, but it exists in the ether, and we going to get to it and here the access to the paper And then the models pick it up And one in particular one test of this was someone invented a phenomena or I think they invented a medical condition and left it out on an academic website posted for about three months and then asked the large model. And then it said, you have this disease and you made it up. We're talking right now about the power of AI and its ability to do all this computing. It's smarter than us. But if we co-opt it, the danger of co-opting these models when they become part of the loop of decision-making in these important military systems. Can you imagine if you can create a foundation of fact that is wrong for a model? I could see an alternative universe where the models become complete towers of Babel. We've lost them because of what they've imputed through the junk that we've posted. Interesting place to leave it off. Darren, thanks for your time. Of course. If you enjoyed this episode, visit Colossus.com. you'll find every episode of this podcast complete with hand edited transcripts. You can also subscribe to Colossus, our quarterly print, digital and private audio publication featuring in-depth profiles of the founders, investors and companies that we admire most. Learn more at Colossus dot com slash subscribe. 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