This show proudly sponsored by Real American Freestyle Wrestling. Let's bring in my next guest. He's Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Senior Director of the Center for Cyber and Technology Innovation for Freedom of Defense of Democracy. Welcome back, Admiral. Hey, thank you for having me, Brian.
So, Admiral, it turns out we got called out by some of our allies. They don't like they're not going to share intelligence with us off the coast of the Caribbean, their Caribbean properties, or anywhere in the region. How do you feel about that? They don't like what we're doing with the ships, those boats that are going, moving drugs throughout the area. You know, so this is interesting.
I'm going to break it up into, I think. I personally would attack these boats in a different way, but I'm not the president and the secretary of war, so they get to do it the way they want. But the sharing of Intel. If you're concerned that we're not hitting the right ships, Not sharing the intel with us is the exact opposite thing to do. It makes no sense to me.
The good allies. Do we have collateral damage on strikes, you know, not routinely, but on occasion? Yes. How do you avoid that? Good intelligence.
So, if you think you're producing good intelligence as a European partner in the United States, The exact wrong attitude is to pull that intelligence from the United States as we're conducting sophisticated strikes against these narco-networks. You think we're being effective?
Okay. No I actually think we're shooting arrows and not the archer. If we if we want to be effective. We need to place some.
Well, precision guided munitions. into the factories producing the cocaine. You know, the paste comes over from Colombia. I think it was made into powder in Venezuela and then shipped out to the United States, these islands, and Europe. We should strike it there.
I mean, you would, you would do. 100 boats worth of damage in one strike. Maybe two, you know. I couldn't even imagine, you know, the difference between what a factory has in it versus what. an individual small boat has in it is pretty significant.
That's how you do it. And you have a much more likely chance of holding the actual owners and operators of these illegal narco factories accountable. By destroying their Um facilities. When you sink these boats, they they're not owned. Most of these boats, they contract them out for the u for the use of this you know, for this narco delivery.
So I actually would hit the the quiver of arrows or the archer, not the actual individual area.
So you'd hit inside Venezuela? Inside Venezuela. If this is a national security, look, if your argument as the president is that this is a national security imperative, Why limit yourself to picking off the small guys? Go after the big guys. And look, our missiles will get through, and our pilots will not be at risk.
So we know that.
So do you think that it does send a message with these ships? Yeah, it's messaging. I consider it a little performative. Look, personally, I'd be using law enforcement to take the ships over. I think this is unnecessary, but I would use kinetic weapons.
Against the factories because there's no law enforcement. We can't drop a bunch of DE agents into Venezuela.
So we're going to have to take those out. Do you think we're getting that to that point? That's the show of muscle we're seeing we're seeing. If that's what we want to do, if we want to stop the flow of these drugs, that's how you do it. You don't do it one boat at a time, you know, 17 boats over four weeks.
That's not going to stop the flow.
So I want you to hear Marco Rubio talked about what's happening because now Venezuela says they're mobilizing COT23. Any response to Venezuela's government saying that it's doing a massive military mobilization in response to what they call a threat from the United States? Yeah, well they don't have a government. There's an illegitimate regime that's basically a narco-trafficking organization that's empowered itself. By the way, many of the countries represented here at the G seven don't recognize the Maduro regime as a legitimate government.
So I don't generally respond to what they're saying.
So they they're starting to mobilize. We're starting to train in jungle training in Pa in Colombia as well. Listen, I'm not arguing for A ground-based Invasion here. What I'm arguing for, and what I think our administration will do. Is a very sophisticated Air campaign.
Against the narco-terrorists. potentially against the military for its support to the illegal regime. and then eventually potentially against the illegal regime. There's a lot of ways to get rid of Maduro. I would like to do it in a way that caused the least civilian casualties, you know, when there's a populist uprising to restore their duly elected.
uh uh president Don't you think it makes the job easier? Nobody wants to overthrow a government. We'd rather things worked out themselves. But if it affects the U.S. security, that's different.
But the fact is, they had an election. We know exactly who the people want to win. We're not picking up Venezuelans that live in Miami and say, do me a favor, run the country.
So that's a very reasonable thing to do. But the whole problem is, where's the loyalty to the Army?
Well, I think a lot of the Army is loyal to the Minister of Defense, Minister of Interior, and the President. I mean, they've been part of a kleptocracy. Over some period of time. I'm not going to say all of them. But and I'm confident some of them would run for the hills, so to speak, you know, when if either the United States threatened something or they saw Maduro teeter.
I mean, the big Maduro's biggest, our biggest problem is, I don't think Maduro has a plane that can get him to Russia so he can get a dacha next to Hassaf al-Assad, you know, outside Moscow, because that's where he needs to go. I mean, the proper solution to this is to exfiltrate him, get him out of the country. And allow the duly elected president to take the position. Every day, America's first responders stand ready: firefighters, law enforcement, paramedics, doctors, dispatchers, and people who put themselves on the line for public safety. But keeping them connected in moments of crisis has not been easy.
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The other big story is China. China is inserting themselves back in the area. They're going to be supplying and basically taking over Venezuela if we let them. We know Iran and Russia has a presence. But let's talk about China for a second.
We're talking to Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. Admiral, you wrote a column just about how China is getting closer and closer to moving on Taiwan. When that was brought up by Japan, they basically threatened to cut off the Prime Minister's head.
So bring us bring us into the Pacific. Where's I'm liking the new Prime Minister of Japan? She uh she says She's feisty. She's she is. And she was mentored by Prime Minister, former Prime Minister, the late Prime Minister Abe, and it shows.
So, look, what's going on here? China, I'm not saying that China is more likely to do a cross-straight invasion, that kind of most dangerous scenario. I think we've made investments. as have Japan and Taiwan and Australia to kind of push that off even beyond twenty twenty seventh. What's likely is the most likely scenario, which is a cyber-enabled economic warfare campaign that's going on right now.
That's using diplomatic tools, law, legislative tools, legal tools, economic tools, cyber influence operations to weaken the societal resilience of Taiwan. And the real risk is energy. Um Taiwan, you know, takes, it's 100% imported. They have to import their fuel. 50% of it's liquefied natural gas.
And they only had six or seven or ten days worth of um On island stowage. If the Chinese can cut that off, Brian. The electrical power grid of Taiwan will cut down to 50% of their normal load. How protected is it? Look, it's one of the most fragile grids in the world because it's maintained in such a high, it's so much of what it's running.
75% of it's running all the time as compared to, say, 60 or 65% in the US. What that means is they have no room for cyber error. If there's a cyber strike, if there's just an actual casualty, they're right at the limit. And then when you cut off the LNG, The president of Taiwan is going to have to make a tough choice. Do I give power to my people, to homes and hospitals, or do I give power to my industrial capacity, TSMC and UMC, the people who make all the chips for everything in the world?
And he'll probably choose number two, and Taiwan's small problem will become a world economic maelstrom. Does it worry you that we have so many assets in our hemisphere? Yeah, well, look, China's trying their hardest to pressure to create challenges for the United States. Pressuring us in and we their Africa one doesn't push us too hard, although there are some critical minerals and rare developments to look at in Africa. But getting into our hemisphere is pure there's a little bit of economic gain to China.
There's a lot of the idea of putting pressure on the United States trying to force us to focus here So that we can't support our allies in Asia, which, you know, as you mentioned, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, longtime treaty allies of the United States. He'd even say Vietnam these days. They seem to like us a lot better than they do China.
So, Admiral, big picture question. What do you think bothers China most about Taiwan? Does it give their people an idea of how their life could be if they just were allowed to have a somewhat representative government? Do they hate that example that clearly is getting to their people? That's exactly it.
It's the China that worked. It's the China that has democracy. It's the China that has free elections. It's the China that has capitalism. It's the China that, with a very small, a population one 50th the size of mainland China's, has become the dominant semiconductor for logic chips, for high-end chips.
I mean, Taiwan is the most fantastic example of democracy in Asia that you can imagine. And over a short 35 years, They've really done this. It is a terrible example. For the Chinese Communist Party, for their people to see what Taiwan has done, and they're gonna do everything they can to coerce Taiwan into becoming part of China. and losing that example to their people.
And lastly, just on what's happening with Ukraine and Russia, I hear Ukraine's making big gains in targeting the oil and gas and the energy of Russia. Russia is starting to make some gains on the ground, however, correct? They've had that's exactly it. But these are small gains. As I've told you before, Ukraine is not going to lose.
They're not going to lose this war, Brian. They're going to lose a few kilometers here, kilometers there. They're not going to lose. Their societal resilience is so strong. But it's they can in tying.
Lose a lot more people and a lot more critical infrastructure.
So, these attacks they're doing now, imposing costs on Russia. Is going to drive Russia out of this. That, when you combine it with the president's recent decisions on sanctions, European actions on sanctions, I wish we hadn't given Hungary that waiver, but still push on India to get India to stop taking the shadow fleet. If we can lower Russia's fossil fuel sales, And at the same time, Ukraine striked their refineries. You're going to force Putin to choose between his war machine and keeping his base together domestically, and he's eventually going to have to stop the war.
We saw that picture of him, and his hands were all swollen. And a lot of people are starting rumors again about his health. What do you hear, Admiral Montgomery?
So it's hard to say, look, first of all, I mean, he's got. He's actually got his sister studying, you know, she's a doctor on life extension. I mean, think what, remember he and G like a month ago were talking about living to 150 and organ transplants. It was a little kind of, you know, it was a little dark. But yeah, the look, he, I don't know that he's been sick.
He's gotten better. I'm not rooting, I mean, I'm depending on what I'm rooting for. I'm not relying on that. to solve this problem. This problem has to be solved by President Zelensky.
The Secretary General Rutte, President Trump, and the other leaders of the free world imposing our will on Russia's fighting warfighting machine. Right. They definitely didn't plan on a four-year war. I'll tell you that. Admiral Montgomery, thanks so much.
Appreciate it. Always great. Thank you for having me, sir.
